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catscradle Oct. 5th, 2005 08:27 am)
catscradle Oct. 5th, 2005 08:27 am)Kilgore Trout's epitaph read this: Life is no way to treat an animal. I woke up this morning with this quote ringing loud in my head. Amen.
I've been working 12 hours days since last Thursday for no other reason than the old corporate model dictates that I do this the week before and during the first week of classes. Let me ephasize these words; "corporate" and "education." The entities entrenched in these two words should never be mixed so liberally. And yet here I am working here. I like my job, but it gets frustrating when I find myself participating in adsurdities based on models which could not possibly reflect the reality of undergraduate education. What can we do to increase the number of classes the students take a quarter? I'd probably be fired if I said to pay their rent, gas and utilities while they studied with us. No more would they like the idea of offering more classes so we could actually fit them all snug where they belong. After the end of first week of registration, it's like trying to play Tetris with them. These two problems are the giant pink elephants parading through our halls that the staff and faculty here ignore like the plague. Not because they don't care; the staff here are good people. Corporate. That entity that no one sees but is ever present. Corporate is God. And while no one loves Corporate, they do fear it, which really is all that matters.
So I'm tired and cranky right now. If I were of good mind, I'd stay away from public places, but I'm not of good mind. Here I am.
Speaking of the plague, George Bush is worried about it now. So much so, that he's talking about getting the military involved:
Bush military bird flu role slammed
My first reaction to this was that he's WAY over compensating for his royal fuck up of Katrina. Rather than actually giving the proper funds and leadership to groups that could handle such matters - groups that were in place to see that disaters were taken care of in as much that they could be taken care of, he wants to start with martial law.
Take a look at this closer, and Bush is doing what he's probably wanted to do all along - put us under the governments thumb permanently. It's nicely placed under the guise of helping us in our hour of need. Thankfully the press is actually taking note of this in a matter not flattering to Dubya. Their taking note of his lack of judgement on court nominations as well, which is refreshing. But then, even Rush Limbaugh did a public WTF?!
This isn't to say that avian flu isn't a huge deal. It certainly is a huge deal. I've been watching H5N1 for several years now and it's a serious matter. In it's current form, this flu has a kill rate of those infected as high as 55%. If it mutates and goes airborn, that kill rate will go down - but consider that the last huge pandemic that occured in 1917-1918 (aka the Spanish Flu) had a death rate of 2.5% of those infected - 20-40 million died from it. So WHO's estimate of 150 million, given the population increase from 1918, is not so far fetched.
Bush cares so much about you and me that the US was 9th in line to receive the current vaccine for this flu. France and England were 1st and 2nd respectively. For this year the US has 2 million doses for 290 million people. But rather than pumping a budget into immunizing us, he wants to hand us over to the military? And you wonder why I think his solution to solving our problems has nothing to do with protecting us?
I met an old man on the bus this morning who was carrying a sign that read "Love is the the only way to Peace." He told me they held a vigil every Wednesday between 7:30 and 8:30 on the steps of the Captial to meditate for peace. And I thought how tragic it was that such beautiful gestures were necessary in the face of such abject stupidity.
On top of it all, I made a horrible mistake this morning of ordering a chai with regular milk instead of soy. I'm paying for it now.
Life is certainly no way to treat an animal.
I've been working 12 hours days since last Thursday for no other reason than the old corporate model dictates that I do this the week before and during the first week of classes. Let me ephasize these words; "corporate" and "education." The entities entrenched in these two words should never be mixed so liberally. And yet here I am working here. I like my job, but it gets frustrating when I find myself participating in adsurdities based on models which could not possibly reflect the reality of undergraduate education. What can we do to increase the number of classes the students take a quarter? I'd probably be fired if I said to pay their rent, gas and utilities while they studied with us. No more would they like the idea of offering more classes so we could actually fit them all snug where they belong. After the end of first week of registration, it's like trying to play Tetris with them. These two problems are the giant pink elephants parading through our halls that the staff and faculty here ignore like the plague. Not because they don't care; the staff here are good people. Corporate. That entity that no one sees but is ever present. Corporate is God. And while no one loves Corporate, they do fear it, which really is all that matters.
So I'm tired and cranky right now. If I were of good mind, I'd stay away from public places, but I'm not of good mind. Here I am.
Speaking of the plague, George Bush is worried about it now. So much so, that he's talking about getting the military involved:
Bush military bird flu role slammed
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A call by U.S. President George W. Bush for Congress to give him the power to use the military in law enforcement roles in the event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized as akin to introducing martial law.
My first reaction to this was that he's WAY over compensating for his royal fuck up of Katrina. Rather than actually giving the proper funds and leadership to groups that could handle such matters - groups that were in place to see that disaters were taken care of in as much that they could be taken care of, he wants to start with martial law.
Take a look at this closer, and Bush is doing what he's probably wanted to do all along - put us under the governments thumb permanently. It's nicely placed under the guise of helping us in our hour of need. Thankfully the press is actually taking note of this in a matter not flattering to Dubya. Their taking note of his lack of judgement on court nominations as well, which is refreshing. But then, even Rush Limbaugh did a public WTF?!
This isn't to say that avian flu isn't a huge deal. It certainly is a huge deal. I've been watching H5N1 for several years now and it's a serious matter. In it's current form, this flu has a kill rate of those infected as high as 55%. If it mutates and goes airborn, that kill rate will go down - but consider that the last huge pandemic that occured in 1917-1918 (aka the Spanish Flu) had a death rate of 2.5% of those infected - 20-40 million died from it. So WHO's estimate of 150 million, given the population increase from 1918, is not so far fetched.
Bush cares so much about you and me that the US was 9th in line to receive the current vaccine for this flu. France and England were 1st and 2nd respectively. For this year the US has 2 million doses for 290 million people. But rather than pumping a budget into immunizing us, he wants to hand us over to the military? And you wonder why I think his solution to solving our problems has nothing to do with protecting us?
I met an old man on the bus this morning who was carrying a sign that read "Love is the the only way to Peace." He told me they held a vigil every Wednesday between 7:30 and 8:30 on the steps of the Captial to meditate for peace. And I thought how tragic it was that such beautiful gestures were necessary in the face of such abject stupidity.
On top of it all, I made a horrible mistake this morning of ordering a chai with regular milk instead of soy. I'm paying for it now.
Life is certainly no way to treat an animal.
