Well, an old one, really, but what with HAcker's Blog closing down, and the greyness closing in...I thought we needed some sunshine in our lives. Another View from the North.
Oh, alright, here's another....
[General
]
29 July, 2008 10:40
[Educational technology
]
29 July, 2008 10:12
Retroid is nothing if not persistent in the search for new things to amuse, and possibly even to educate...but not having time to go on workshops and the like can make it difficult when the learning curve is steep.
Meaning you simply don't do it.
Which is almost what I did with the UCT Vula site Wiki which I was trying to set up for a course I am co-ordinating...but vasbyt! was the cry, and - like any good quest worth its name - rewards unfolded once the door had been knocked on enough. Or hard enough. Hey, Retroid once played a D&D scenario involving future-medieval Japan, ninjas and an old space shuttle for over two years (and still has the notes: I know who ate the Buddhist nun. There is no escaping karma...B-); how hard could it be?
Hard, it turns out. Decidedly not intuitive. With very small links to things like "edit" commands, meaning my failing sight made it difficult to see what the hell to do. But what rewards: layer upon layer of functionality; manifold rooms; instant access to class lists; updatable calendars; announcement and assignment folders....!!
Impressive: way more functionality than the free off-shore one I had been playing with; I shall abandon that without a qualm.
But I'm still not sure how the hell the students upload anything...ah, well; they're the generation that can figure out all of the functions on cellphones that make a Star Trek tricorder look primitive in less time than it takes to read this - so they'll figure it out.
Hopefully.
[General
]
25 July, 2008 13:11
Seeing as none of you got the subtle Pink Floyd reference for the last post, you get another:
Well it would be...if I were Alan. If it were psychedelic. If I hadn't had breakfast already. No mushrooms, but I licked the knife....
As I tell my students, an extra five marks if you (a) name the band (OK, I gave that one away), (b) name the album, (c) hum the tune.
[General
]
25 July, 2008 11:23
OK, no sunset photos - at least, not of last night's - but I'll show all is not doom and gloom NOJS, by sharing this with you.
Taken as I was crawling up past my old residence from 1974, Belsen/Kopano, just after the rain one morning a while ago.
And here's a genuine View from the North: from the stairs next to the RW James building, where UCT's two claims to science/medical Nobel prizes - Aaron Klug and Allan MacLeod Cormack - would have done their physics, if it had been there at the time.
And yes, @AJC, those are palm tree leaves...B-)
[General
]
24 July, 2008 18:24
...so there Retroid was, stressed to the max (sick domestic worker, builders, kinder transport, abrupt cessation of funding, unexpected school debate call-out), and...was solace to be had in red wine? Dangerous.... In the James Page quartet?? Too much headache.... Cream??? Too potentially loud....
No, dear readers, none of these.
A sunset: pinks, grading to oranges, flecked with greys. Out there towards Devil's Peak (Hoerikwagga, big thing above UCT, whatever). Glowing gently. Caring nothing about misguided, possibly stupid funders, dim Reddam Junior Debating team organisers, or even rock n' roll.
Just being.
Man, how Zen is that??
[General
]
22 July, 2008 13:44
View from the North - which is a collective, BTW, and therefore gender-free - was amused to read on the front page of the Weekender yesterday that there is a scholarly tiff brewing between Zakes Mda and one Andrew Offenburger, an "African history PhD student at Yale University".
Specifically Offenburger says that Mda, in his third novel entitled "The Heart of Redness", has "gone beyond the permissible" by "paraphrasing, borrowing sections sequentially, copying and replicating semantic strategies" from another book by someone called Jeff Peires. Who Mda acknowledges. But not well enough, apparently: "Listing 88 instances, Offenburger says paraphrased lines account for the majority of the transgressions...[Offenburger] says even when Mda does not paraphrase or copy, the two books share peculiar words in common, pointing to "an engagement of excessive intertextuality"".
Ooooh-KAAAY...so not only has he acknowledged a source, he has paraphrased it, possibly plagiarised it, engaged in "excessive intertextuality", and used some of the strange words the other guy did. Great word, that, intertextuality: however, almost completely meaning-free for us up here in the North. What IS intertextuality? How does one engage in it? Wikipedia thinks it is "...the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts", but also that it is possibly just "...a stylish way of talking about allusion and influence". But then, they also go on about poststructuralism.
The article goes even deeper into the kind of impenetrable jargon and logic found SOJS*: VftN found these gems towards the end.
"Mda argues that plagiarism is when a writer deceives and tries to pass on someone else's work as their own..." And later: "Mda also maintains that intertextuality is not peculiar to post-colonial African literature but is an international postmodern phenomenon, also found in music and art collages composed of images borrowed from other creators".
So it's OK to plagiarise when you quote someone? And interweave your vision with others in new creations? And there's that word "postmodern" again...VftN collectively does not understand this concept: surely postmodern is future? But that is by the way, and simply betrays our lack of modern (or possibly post-modern) literary and philosophical education.
But it seems the wheel of postmodernity turns on a 400-odd year cycle: the HoD of Engels at Uniwits says "...plagiarism has become very problematic in an age of increasing intertextuality...so if we want to assert it we should have very clear criteria. After all, in his own time, even Shakespeare was a great plagiarist". Good company, Bra Zakes, good company indeed...B-)
So when IS it plagiarism, VftN asks, plaintively?
When a student does it? If Turnitin picks up on it?
When is it OK to paraphrase, and when to intertextualise? Surely that's what we scientists from NOJS (and some South) do, when we write reviews? The Wikipedia article says "intertextuality makes each text a "mosaic of quotations"" - which is exactly what this blog posting is, with my last review (9000 words on plant-produced pharmaceuticals) hot on its heels as a set of interlinked and copiously referenced paraphrases.
So Bra Zakes - if I may call you that - I would tell the upstart from Harvard where to put himself. Continue, Bra Zakes, to use another's work as a reference point to construct wonderful intertextual postmodernist postcolonialist fantasies. Poststructurally and hypertextually, if this is possible.
We pre-postmodern illiterates will just sit back in awe, illumined by the bright and furious flashes of great intellectual discourse.
* SOJS = South of Jammie Steps. As much a geographical location as a state of mind.
[Raving
]
17 July, 2008 15:40
Everyone who knows VftN aka Retroid Raver, will know he/she is a great fan of the NRF.
Yes, the National Research Foundation and Retroid go back a long, long way.
They may not have much of a future, though, given the NRF's current and ongoing upheavals and reorganisations: "forward to the past", should be the slogan, as they bravely go back to what they used to do.
Linking funding to ratings...only, there are a pile of people embedded in funding cycles which will carry on - some of them - for the next four or so years. Meaning their new funding schemes will be VERY underfunded for about the same time....
We have been there before. When we were there, we wrote songs on the subject. So, as we are bravely going back, I will share them with you. We may as well have something to do when the funding runs dry.
Researcher Blues Redux:
Dwindle, dwindle little grant
How I wonder why you aren't
Like a dwarf star in the sky
First you fade, and then you die
Dwindle, dwindle little grant
How I wonder why you aren't....
And:
The NRF Funding Song
Oh, Lord, it's hard to keep working
When they won't fund you any which way
I can't stand to look in the mailbox
The news, it gets worse every day
I guess they're really in trouble
Either that, or they just don't like me
Oh, Lord, it's hard to keep working
But I guess I'm in good company....
(Apologies to Mac Davis)
If demand gets serious, or the funds start to run dry, Retroid will sell recordings of these and other tasteful offerings.
[Raving
]
16 July, 2008 12:56
I am indebted to EDUCBLOG for digital links to this subject matter, in the online version of the Weekly Mail Weekly Mail & Guardian Mail & Guardian Grail & Maudian: this is an article entitled "Poor performance rewarded with grants" by Primarashni Gower..
The article has this bold statement near the beginning:
"Top research universities are upset about being "penalised for overperforming" by a government subsidy system designed to help former technikons and historically black institutions to catch up on research capacity"
It goes on:
"Academics and officials at three of the country's leading universities say they are unhappy about the Education Department's allocation this year of R174-million in research development grants to several universities which did not meet their research targets in 2006.
The formula on which the development grant is based "has established a perverse incentive" and "rewards universities for performing poorly", said Professor Kit Vaughan, deputy dean of research at the University of Cape Town's (UCT) faculty of health sciences"
Aha! A Deputy Something who DOES something! How refreshing...B-) Which leads onto his scholarly article in the SA Journal of Science - sometimes referred to as "SA's Nature" (probably by its Editor), but more normally as "where you send it if you can't get it published outside SA" - which is stuffed with useful tables detailing alternative ways of distributing the largesse which is supposed to fund and incentivise research in SA.
Or, in the case of the present situation, prop up institutions who have not, do not and probably cannot, achieve anything like their expected outputs. Much like certain members of our current Cabinet, if the truth be told, but that situation may well change. This one may not.
In Gower's article, Vaughan is cited as saying that:
"...six universities (Walter Sisulu, Vaal, Venda, Limpopo, Durban and Mangosuthu) received more in developmental grants than in actual subsidies for their research output in 2005. The same applied to their 2006 output. If their performance were to improve their total research grant would decrease."
What a tangled web we weave, when we try research output to increase....
Another UCT luminary is also quoted:
"UCT's deputy vice-chancellor, professor Danie Visser, said last year the university asked the Education Department for a share in the developmental grants. "We argued that -- regardless of our national standing -- all South African universities face the reality of a rapidly ageing cohort of top researchers.
"If South Africa is to remain globally competitive it is vital that measures are adopted to enhance our international standing.""
A recent NRF survey has shown that indeed, the most productive researchers in the country are an aging cohort, and are mainly white and male: the NRF Strategic Plan 2015, in February 2008, goes as far as to cite as a weakness in its SWOT analysis (Table 1), the "Ageing, white male dominance of industrial and academic R&D". Meaning...what? That academics and/or research is seen by youngish folk as being a bad career option? Too true - even though I get frowned at deeply when I bring it up at Faculty Board, telling youngsters with a straight face that going into academia is a good career choice, is to lie to them. Barefacedly. The truth is that, with better career advice than we (the aging cohort) got, smart young folk are taking other options.
So what do we do about it? The simple fact of the matter is that we probably have too many tertiary institutions in this country anyway, and most of them should not in fact BE research institutions, even if they are kept on. Meaning they should not be incentivised to do something they may not be able to, however condescending that may sound, and the money that is presently being pumped into them without noticeable impact, should be channelled elsewhere.
There: said it. But so did the Grail article, so did Kit Vaughan (sort of), and so did Danie Visser.
Because there is another thing we need to take account of, apart from what to do about the aging WMs who publish - and that is the equally rapidly aging research infrastructure in this country. Simply put, if your toys are broken, you don't get to play much. And lots of our toys are either broken, or so old as to be on the verge of breaking, or so obsolete we can't play the same games as they do elsewhere.
And UCT does not have anything much to speak of in terms of a replacement plan...the NRF supposedly does, but only REALLY big-ticket items. Which leaves all those mouldering centrifuges; those doddering incubators; elderly and arthritic fridges...our Departments resemble museums rather than active research sites, only we don't curate as well.
But back to subsidies. Kit Vaughan wants these to be tied to NRF ratings at tertiary institutions, as he believes this would be the best measure of productivity and of potential to produce. The NRF has in fact - in its latest spastic throes of reorganisation - gone some way towards this as, in another great step backwards, they are again linking grants and ratings. However, as is its wont, the NRF tries to do the right thing, but falls short. So very, very short...in the grandly-titled "COMMUNIQUÉ 1 of 2008: FURTHER CLARITY ON THE PHASE IN OF SUPPORT FOR RATED RESEARCHERS", they state the following:
"Incentive funding for rated researchers ("Glue money")
As a consequence to the new NRF 2015 Vision and specifically in response to the 2007 HESA lead review of the NRF rating system, funding and rating will again be directly linked.
Flexible research funding will be provided to all rated researchers in the course of time. At present the level of support will be up to: A = R100 000 pa; B = R80 000 pa; C = R40 000 pa; P = R80 000 (matched 1:1 NRF: Institution); L = R40 000 pa (matched 1:1 NRF: Institution) and Y = R 40 000 (matched 1:1 NRF: Institution) for the duration of the rating."
Glue money = "[a] new flexible funding programme will ensure that rated researchers will never be without any financial support". R100 000 IF you're A-rated!! Wow! Support for a whole project for one person for a year, if you do wet science....!! If they don't need to eat, or have somewhere to live. Better than the proverbial klap through the face with a pap snoek (aka snoek-klap), but not a lot - and especially not if you do not HAVE the exalted A rating: C-ratees get only R40K, and there are a lot more of them around (even at UCT) than A-ratees. At current exchange rates, NOT much better than a snoek klap.
While our Deputy Dean from FSH likes NRF ratings as a measure, then, and again states his dislike of monies derived from
"...the ‘least publishable unit’ (worth R85 026), where there is a powerful perverse incentive that encourages South African researchers to publish as many papers as possible in the least demanding journals. Instead of encouraging publication in high-impact but demanding international journals with high rejection rates, researchers and their institutions are rewarded for short reports of dubious validity and value in fifth-rate journals."
Ja. Well. Um. Very simple way around that, though, isn't there? Discussed in the Monday Paper not so long ago,and in this very blog: just weight the offerings that attract the subsidy according to metrics like impact factor of the journal, for scientific publications, and/or relative standing of the journal in a given discipline. That would quickly disincentivise folk out for the quick subsidy buck, if UCT were ever to actually implement any scheme which monetarily rewarded publications...!! As it is, it has also been noted that as long as promotions are partially dependent on publications, only an idiot would saturate the 5th-level journals.
But this is all out of our hands, anyway. Any system that rewards mediocre institutions for being mediocre, must have at its heart a political will that is unlikely to be bent by arguments which, in the end, are elitist.
And do you have a problem with that, askes Retroid? But alas, many do, and they control how government money flows.
So it goes. And goes. And goes.
[Raving
]
14 July, 2008 14:12
Don't you all - you avid readers of the ramblings of View from the North, aka Retroid - feel the need in your not-quite-the-Monday Paper, for a series of detailed descriptions of " A Day in the Life" of prominent Bremnerians?
Something warm and fuzzy, that will help us from WOTH (=west of the highway) to better understand Life on the Other Side.
And - I know! - let's start with...the Deputy Registrar?!
Surely that would be a fascinating profile to kick off with? Replete, as it would be, with thrilling accounts of his scholarly writings, of his involvements in high-level academic doings and to-ings and fro-ings...of his service to our little community.
Come, let us call for it with a clarion voice!
[Raving
]
08 July, 2008 18:34
You know that joke about two psychiatrists? Where the one says to other:
"You know, I had a terrible Freudian slip the other night - I meant to say "Darling, pass the salt", but it came out as "You bitch! You ruined my life..."
I had one of those this morning - only more so. I saw the Claremont / Rondebosch "People's Post" on the kitchen table this morning - you know, the poor man's Tatler? - and I could have sworn the headline read:
"Public must wait for police state".
What?? I thought to myself; they're promising us one now?? So it's not just reading-your-email and check-your-bank-account bills in Parliament , we really are going to get a police state??
Only it actually read "Public must wait for police stats".
Well, that's all right then, I thought. Panic over.
But it's not all right, is it?
Why do people think the US and UK are the Lands of the Free? Because one has more cops per person than we have people selling you things at traffic lights; one has more cameras per person than anywhere else on planet Terra.... I remember seeing armed Cornell campus police in full-blown police cruisers in rural Ithaca, New York; they used to trap on the nearby interstate highway by radar, gatsometer, camera and by plane. In the UK they fine you for not cutting your lawn.
How should the slogan go: possibly, "A well-policed citizenry is a free citizenry!"? Till you get like Switzerland: "Everything which is not forbiddden, is compulsory!!" And liking it....
Ja nee, boet.... I don't want to (a) see the stats, (b) end up as one - or (c) live in the UK or the USA.
But I could enjoy not worrying about whether or not my kids can walk around the neighbourhood without getting mugged.
[Raving
]
02 July, 2008 12:07
The New Mr Price: opening at a University near you.
From the UCT Home Page this am:
"Dr Max Price started his tenure as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town on 1 July. He is the university's ninth Vice-Chancellor..."
...and my fifth...damn, have I been here that long?? Richard Luyt, Stuart Saunders, Mamphela Ramphele, Njabulo Ndebele.... I suppose I have, then! And several Deans of Science - Jack de Wet, Robin Cherry, Cliff Moran, Daya Reddy - as well, not to mention HoDs. I may have even outlasted Martin No. 1 - and that took some doing, given that he lasted 17 years as DVC.
But does anyone else feel we are on the threshold of a genuinely new era in the history of OUTM, or is it just me?
Consider: when else in the history of this institution has a new VC had the luxury of appointing pretty much the whole panel of DVCs? Fare thee well, all you Martins; goodbye, Cheryl. Not at any time in the last 28 years of my experience has any incoming executive had such a clean slate - and what will he do with it, we wonder?
I have to selfishly say that I am pleased to have someone with a medico-scientific background in the executive again: it's been a while since the WWW days (no, not the Web: WWW=what Wieland wants), and biological disciplines are important enough at UCT (and at OUTM) that they really should have representation at the highest level. Especially seeing as we don't have a biological Dean.
But that may mean nothing: Max Price was at pains, in his Senate presentation during the appointment process, to stress the importance of all that goes on SOJS (South of Jammie Steps - where there is postmodern dialectic); he also laid strong claim to being a "transformation candidate". Meaning he may feel he has to show bias towards the Humanities, who knows?
But it doesn't hurt, even in this cynical modern era, to compile a non-denominational gender-neutral solstice festival gift list - even if there's as much chance of it (a) being read, (b) being acted on, as lists to the plump red-suited guy.
So what we would REALLY like from the new Mr Price is the following:
- A DVC of Research who has done research
- Some serious fund-raising for new equipment for our failing scientific and technical infrastructure
- A new, bold head-hunting strategy to kickstart cutting-edge research
- A Graduate School, where good researchers can concentrate on postgraduate teaching - so that "research led" is not just an empty OUTM brand-building slogan
- A new teaching paradigm, where education trumps learning.
We can but ask, after all. And while we wait - in hope - I may just have a little Cream with that.
