little philosophers

Joey, from the back seat of the car: "Why I don't believe in God, is that God is a person, and God created persons,* so who created God? And why Caroline** doesn't believe in God is that God created Caroline, but then..." Here he pauses and stammers as he tries to remember the argument. "God created Caroline, so why didn't God make Caroline believe in God?"





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* Joey pronounces "person" as "perthon" and "persons" as "perthonth"
** Pronounced "Care-wine"

NFM campaign to help adjuncts get unemployment insurance.

Adjunct faculty who find themselves without work are often eligible for unemployment insurance. New Faculty Majority has launched a campaign to help adjuncts get the money they deserve. Employers sometimes claim that adjunct faculty have "reasonable assurance" that they will be hired in the future, but this has been successfully challenged in California and Washington. NFM president Maria Maisto says in a press release

In other industries, seasonal employees who face similarly precarious circumstances do not have to prove 'no reasonable assurance'; neither should college teachers who are denied continuing contracts. This situation stems from higher education's overdependence on contingent employment, which is devastating the teaching profession and is detrimental to education."

New Faculty Majority is a advocacy group fighting for adjunct and contingent faculty. This is the first of what will hopefully be many campaigns to improve working conditions for the 73% of the academic workforce that is not on the tenure track. Please help spread the word to adjuncts you know.

Dear Idea of a Human Centipede

Dear Idea of a Human Centipede: Please get out of my brain. Please get out of the casual conversations I have. Please let me forget your existence.

You enter my thoughts at least three times a week, sometimes spontaneously, sometimes from the words of another. This cannot go on. Your presence hurts me.

I sometimes imagine that the writer/director of the movie The Human Centipede was in a similar position. Once you, this poisonous idea, got into his head, he couldn't stop thinking about it. Maybe he thought that by making the movie, he would be spared, sorta the way in The Ring if you show the cursed video to someone else, and curse them, then you won't die. Maybe he didn't think he could rid himself of the evil thought, but he resented the rest of us so much for being free of it that he wanted to bring us down to his level.

In any case, Idea of a Human Centipede, please leave my brain.