Re: Looking for a PhD position

By now you should have a network of contacts in your area that you can
approach about this question.   Looking at web sites dont cut it as
far as planning and running your life.  Looking at obsolete news
groups for answers in this kind of question suggests a severe lack of
foresight on your part in terms of planning a viable career.   You
should be talking to your advisor and committee members, peers in your
university and making contacts with real people at scientific
meetings.  If you are feeling particularly masochistic and wish to
pursue a PhD,  you can approach professors directly whose research
interests most closely match your area of expertice or planned
expertice in your career plan.  You do have a career plan at this
point right? You have a set of publications related to your area of
interest, it is easy to contact them directly by email queries but you
need start picking up the phone or better arranging one on one
informational interviews with people in your prospective area of
interest.
Keep one thing in mind , it is very easy to get a graduate student
appointment and a series of post doctoral positions thereafter, but it
is extremely difficult to get a regular position unless you plan ahead
now and accumulate the appropriate credentials in your career path.
The PhD is only a licence to compete for a job, and once you have
committed yourself you will limit your marketablility severely in jobs
outside the research world, which is very small, very crowded and
extremely competative.
 I fear for you from the tenor of your letter.