in honor of tonight's state of the union...

...here are the Top 25 censored stories of last year. As a companion to the first topic, I highly recommend Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America.

Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

For a similar take on trying to get by as an adjunct professor, see Corrina Wycoff's "The Adjunct" in The Clear Cut Future.