Random Musings and Notes For Future Posts.

1. This Joseph Bottom post makes sense.

2. I teach in the humanities. I love teaching literature because it's a place for those for whom the world doesn't seem to work. People on the fringes or in the shadows can find friends and a place to call home as they read. No one knows what to make of us because the humanities are not practical. We don't teach people to read tech manuals, and those stories and poems really get in the way of making money and conformity. Whether it's Huck deciding to go to hell and treat Jim as a full human or the X-Men trying to survive anti-mutant hysteria, the basic idea is that conventional morality is usually conventional but not necessarily moral. I need to do more with this idea, but I really think that professors and teachers in the humanities have to do more to defend and expand the teaching of the humanities.

3. Money magazine listed the 50 best jobs in America. They ranked the jobs based on the level of stress that each created, the amount of flexibility that the job allows, the amount of creativity that the job requires, and the difficulty of each job. Teaching's stress level and difficulty would probably rank a B. The creativity and flexibility that it allows are probably at a D.