Scholar for hire...inexpensive but not cheap!

I'm currently unemployed, by choice, in order to hasten the completion of my dissertation but after 8 months I've come to the end of my limited savings and must look for employment. After adjuncting for over six years, I want to avoid that low paid route but after being in higher education for so long, I'm not exactly a hot commodity in the business world.

When I identified myself as an academic at a recent tech conference, I got the pause and half-smile that says, "Isn't that quaint? Do you still read books?"

How to translate writing & research skills to the business world, that is my question to the brave, the few, my blog readers. I've looked at some pay-to-blog jobs which I could do from home but I think the pay is probably minimal. I'm not looking for personal exposure, just a paycheck for a job well done.

The jobs I've loved have all involved teaching & research but I don't have the statistical background to do hard-core website analysis. I'm a qualitative researcher which means I analyze text and interview people. I've worked with delicate issues ranging from sexual abuse to religious experience, to more traditional subject like vocational issues & migration.

This is the ultimate me, me, me column. I'm not really asking for a job, just any suggestions you might have. I think I'm suffering from a lack of imagination on how to translate my job skills to the nonacademic world. Thanks in advance!

I now pronounce you Wife and Life Enhancement Device...

Just saw this news story that made my stomach turn:

Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21271545/wid/11915829?GT1=10450

This "news" story is about a Ph.D. candidate (who else) in the Netherlands who does "work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it". His thesis is called "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners".

The story goes on as the researcher tries to convincingly argue that there is nothing wrong with these "intimate relationships". But how does a programmable machine give "consent" to sex or marriage? Robots do whatever they are programmed to. Artificial intelligence aside, in this generation we haven't created human-like machines that have independent will and volition. So, if you are going to consider a robot a "person" (and so far marriage and the majority of sex is between two adult people), unless a machine can say "no", isn't that rape?

This kind of thinking depersonalizes sex and intimate relationships and what is additionally appalling is that the researcher suggests that robot sex/marriage will decrease prostitution. Well, what is the creation of a robot that exists just for the purpose of easing one person's sexual urges? If you are going to consider a robot a "person" who can engage in a relationship, isn't this just an even more warped form of prostitution? I mean, this guy suggests that it is preferable to have sex with a thing, an object one can control, than an actual person with genuine and spontaneous feelings as well as their own needs. Sex and marriage are just about fulfilling one person's desires and treating the other party as a means to an end...if that is not prostitution, I'm not sure what is.

This isn't even just submission this is slavery. And what is most disturbing is that the Charles Choi, the reporter who wrote this piece, just gives the scholar free rein to make his argument without even bringing up the possibility that there is something wrong with this picture. He only questions whether society will "accept" a robot as a sexual/marriage partner not the effect this could have upon what we consider healthy human relationships. Society will accept a wide variety of things but that doesn't make them good. It is pretty spineless reporting to not even counter this controversial suggestion with the possibility that this proposal might not be the best thing for humanity and just encourages a self-centered narcissism.

Something is seriously wrong with a person when they can only intimately relate to objects and not other people. Along with that comes a lack of empathy and when people lack empathy (seeing life from another person's view), the downfall of humanity is not far behind. A lack of empathy is a common psychological diagnosis when doctors look at persistent antisocial behavior.

I'm not being speciescentric. It's just that in sex and marriage, robots are like children and animals in that they can not legally or morally consent to an act here. And if a robot could say, "No, thanks, I don't feel like sex right now", I think the entire motivation to have a sex robot slave would disappear.

By the way, I can rag on Ph.D. candidates because I am one myself and have been surrounded by other Ph.D. candidates for more years than I'm willing to admit. I'm not surprised a doctoral candidate came up with this theory (many lack basic social skills) but I'm astonished that a thesis committee would grant him a degree. I mean, this student gets his degree on October 11th and on October 12th there is a news story about his thesis? C'mon, he must have sent out his press release when he scheduled his defense and they held the story until he passed his defense. Not surprisingly low quality standards for Internet journalism but I hope if this story gets circulated in the respected media, I hope they will raise some questions and not just be a public forum for this man's warped views on healthy relationships.

The best thing about my friends is that they can tell me when I'm full of myself. They call me when I'm being self-centered, judgmental, insensitive. And I listen to them because they ARE my friends and they don't want me to look like or be an ass. I can't imagine some computer programmer is going to program a robot that will give it's "owner" a second look and say, "I think you're full of shit. And by the way, I'm going home with Ramon." When that day comes, maybe I'll rethink my stance on human-robot relationships.

Scholarship is the Enemy of Romance

This line used to be my email signature until I began to think it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here is where I took it from:

Scholarship is the enemy of romance
Where does that leave me? Alone in the rain again
What happened to the weekend I planned with you?
We didn't even get upstairs this time

I never missed that end-of-term kiss
But where did it go, miss? I don't know, miss

Take me to the fair and hold me close as we fly
through the air
Then suddenly on Sunday, it all just melted away
And when it had gone, between patches of yellowing grass
I found a coin and lost what I was looking for

I never took the advice in that book
Oh you should look, sir, you might learn, sir,
You might learn, sir
--Billy Bragg, Reaching to the Converted (1999)

Dilettantes of the world, unite!

This afternoon, I was reading the acknowledgments page of a book in which the author thanks one prominent scholar for rescuing him "from the temptation of intellectual dilettantism".

On the academic playground, being accused of being a dilettante is akin to a bully calling you a "sissy". But the "temptation" of dilettantism was news to me...oh, yes, it's pleasurable at first and gives one a rush of knowledge but it soon becomes the first step down the slippery slope towards irrelevance and obscurity. One becomes an pitiable object of mockery at cocktail parties and scholarly conferences. As you try to worm your way into other people's conversations, offering a witty comment or two, you later walk up to the bar (cash bar for academics) and find you are the target of hushed giggles and whispers. You, my kind sir, have been called a dilettante!

Worse yet, in academia, one's untouchable status is often exposed in a footnote where another writer dismisses your ideas as mere dilettantism, unworthy of mention except to warn the reader that cleaning out her gutters would be a better use of her time than to spend it reading your work. If widely read by your peers, that dismissal acts as a white kid glove slapped across your face, calling the author either to defend himself on the playing field of battling rebuttals in journals or to resign himself to being an acknowledged--shudder!--dilettante.

I think scholars, amateur or professional, should reclaim the identity of dilettante. My dictionary cites dilettante as coming from the Italian word dilettare ("to delight") and meaning "a dabbler in an art or a field of knowledge", "a lover of fine arts", "a connoisseur". What the hell is wrong with that? Better to be a dabbler delighting in art and knowledge than to sit down to a Labor Day six hour marathon of "Everybody Loves Raymond" episodes; better to crack open a book on a Saturday afternoon or visit a gallery, park, or museum than spend the weekend shopping for plasma screen TVs; better to try to pull together a Greek meal for your Anglo family (with mixed results in my case) than to run into Burger King for a quick dinner fix.

So, DABBLE AWAY! Experiment in the arts! You might fail miserably but it's GREAT material for stories later in your life and you'll learn something about yourself. Explore some aspect of knowledge (Aviation? Winemaking? Python programming? Pierre Bourdieu? Ventriloquism? Divorce Law?) that you're curious about. Try to cook a complicated recipe from Katmandu! Make a mix tape (okay, dating myself here)!

Better to be a dabbler and a lover than a pompous ass who rests comfortably in her/his own small, self-important, and insular world. Break down those intellectual and cultural gates and walk down into the halls of knowledge proudly holding your Dilettante ID card. Now go...log off your computer and GO DO SOMETHING!