How Mary-Faith Cerasoli Gets By

Mary-Faith Cerasoli is an adjunct professor for several colleges in the New York City. Her course load is about five courses per semester. Her annual income is around $22,000 before tax.

52 years old Mary-Faith has no medical insurance, owing 'thousands' in medical bills. She has around $60,000 in student loans. She is not married. She is homeless.

Mary-Faith's situation has been featured by varies websites to highlight the economic struggle of adjunct professors in the US. She appeared on PBS, the New York Times. Some colleagues and friends set up a website to raise funds for her. With a goal of raising $4,000, it received $285 in 17 days.

So Mary-Faith, why do you do this? Obviously, your skill is not appreciated by the college, because it is not appreciate by tuition-paying students. Teaching and learning should be a two-way selection process, wherein the students vote with their money, and you vote with your feet.

Extended reading: The Teaching Class.

Dinosaurs Birthday Dance

The common trait among the three words is that they are all banned by the Education Department of the New York City.

Modern mayors not only have a good idea about how much coca-cola is bad for your health: 12 ounces okay, 16 criminal (mayor of NYC banned selling large beverage city-wide); they also assure you that beef is better than chicken (mayors of Boston and Chicago ordered Chick-fil-A to be kicked out of city limit because of its owner's donation to religious family value groups).

The list of inappropriate words was assembled by the Education Department to be banned from textbooks and exams, because they might stir controversy among students. Other words include Halloween, poverty, divorce, disease, etc. Also a detailed guideline spelled out 50 topics that should be avoided, for example: ".. shouldn't include items that are potentially disrespectful to authority or authority figures or give human characteristics to animals or inanimate objects.

A spokesperson Robert Pondiscio stated that the intent is to avoid giving offense or disadvantage by privileging prior knowledge.

Across the Continent in the great state of California, schoolers gained rights to decide what gender they want to be on the day in school, when using restroom, etc., regardless what gender they put in the registration forms. Previous rules allow students to choose their gender, but require them to pre-register with the school. The new rules eliminated the inconvenience to update school records.

NYC Soda Ban

Mayor Bloomberg's ban on large soda sale is not a compliment on his IQ in general, nor creativity in particular.

Communist China had done better, where people not only were fed only a healthy diet, but also rounded up every morning to do morning exercise together. Even better, students performed an eye therapy everyday at school together.

Critics can quickly point out some factual errors in the measure billed as a way to fight obesity. For example, experiments had shown that the appearance of a huge cup actually served as a suppressor on consumers' appetite on icy soda. Rarely you see people in a restaurant finish their drink. However, smaller cups may actually make them drink more the before. Other study had shown that synthesizer sugar used to make diet soda make people hungry for real sugar thus drink more.

Find your place on the celebrity marathon meter

Katie Holmes finished the NYC marathon last Sunday, became one of many celebrities who conquered the 26.2 mile endurance. Find your place on the following celebrity marathon meter:


Celebrity Marathon Meter

	person	race	year	reason on the list
2:04:55	Paul Tergat	Berlin	2003	World Record
2:46:03	Alan Turing	Amateur Athletic Championships	1947	Mathematician
2:46:42	Lance Armstrong	NYC	2007	Cyclist
2:50:53	David Petraeus	Omaha	1982	Commander in Iraq
3:30:18	John Edwards	MCM	1983	Senator
3:31:00	Michael Dukakis	Boston	1951	Governor of Massachusetts
3:44:52	George W Bush	Houston	1993	43rd US President
3:56:12	Will Ferrell	Boston	2003	Actor
3:59:36	Sarah Palin	Humpy's	2005	Governor of Alaska
4:03:19	Shinya Yamanaka	Tokyo	2012	Nobel Laureate in Medicine 2012
4:26:05	Mike Huckabee	Little Rock	2006	Governor of Arkansas
4:29:20	Oprah Winfrey	MCM	1994	Talk Show Host
4:34:18	Lisa Ling	Boston	2001	TV Host
4:45:36	Jennifer Amyx	Johnstown	1975	5 Years Old
4:54:36	Bill Frist	MCM	1997	Senate Majority Leader
4:58:25	Al Gore	MCM	1997	Vice President
5:29:58	Katie Holmes	NYC	2007	Wife of Tom Cruise
5:40:03	Fauja Singh	Toronto	2003	92 Years Old
6:06:00	David Paterson	NYC	1999	NY Governor, legally blind

Holmes' entry was neither chosen by the lottery, while 60,000 runners failed to be selected, nor secured through one of many run for charity clubs sponsored by the event.