Why, Retroid wonders, do people in this fine country of ours (yes, Cassandra, Retroid LIKES living here...B-) find it so necessary to spread the research funding monies around, to places where it probably won't get used well?
Consider the following article from the UK Times Higher Education Supplement, for which I am indebted to AJCann's Tweet stream:
And do you have a problem with that, asks Retroid? You notice, they even use that wonderful term "research led"?
And if you have a problem - why??
Really, and as Retroid has plaintively asked before, why should good South African research institutions effectively be punished for being good? Shouldn't some carrot be given, instead of the perpetual stick?
Might make a pleasant change. But porcines might become airborne sooner.
Retroid has just been watching the Olympics closing ceremony from Beijing (OK, Cassandra, via DsTV...B-) - and how could we ever think we could do something like that?? For that matter, will anyone else ever be able to??
I have seen the future, friends, and it is jaundiced...in the sense of being Chinese, rather than connoting anything like "showing or experiencing a state of disordered feeling or distorted judgment as through bitterness or melancholy", or other meanings you thought you knew.
Seriously, now: when a country can go from nowhere to second to first in medals tallies in three Olympics; when it can put on a show like it did; when the populace gets behind the effort as it did...reminds Retroid of that quip heard on a radio programme a while back on why Sah Theffrica would never be another Korea: largely because we had no Koreans.... Or, in the case of China, one+ billion people to push around, or the might and will to do so, or people who will listen.
And nor does anyone else - except maybe India.
The East is Red, brothers and sisters; we may have to get used to North, South and West becoming that way too, as the Chinese reassert their merely postponed superiority in coming years. Face it: the whole of western civilisation as we know/knew it may have been just a brief interlude in the Chinese peoples' continuous cultural and economic domination of our planet. Learn Mandarin now....
But Retroid saw some light too - other than the crimson glow from the East - in the presentation of London's attractions for the next extravaganza.
Chief among them, apparently, one James Page: yes, he of the eponymous quartet. Apparently other folk also think you cannot have too much of towed dirigibles. Viva! I say to them, viva!!
At least we'll still have some music to listen to as we March Forward Gloriously to a Chinese Future.
It is the east, and Max is the sun.... Apologies to W Szekspir; however, Retroid was sufficiently moved by yesterday's opening of Mr Price UCT coronation inauguration of our new VC, to perceive a glimmer of light through the gloom that is OUTM.
Cue appropriate image: thanks to the traffic in Little Mowbray this morning I was going back to the highway instead of escaping it, and caught this on the trusty PDA.
Quite appropriate, I thought: a luminous body trying bravely to overcome the all-encompassing, enveloping grey mist.
Which brings us on to the occasion: a beautiful warm evening - Retroid's partner dug him in the ribs for suggesting the hazy golden light was all due to pollution - with begowned academics scattered all over Jammie Steps. Someone in a plain red job made an idle remark about needing a guide book to identify the more exotic plumage - something along the lines of the Hasid Spotter's Guide you can get in Jerusalem, in fact, to help you identify the more exotic specimens.
And truly, there were some wonderful gowns on offer - with simply stunning hats to go with them. Mortar boards, soft floppy ones, things like bishop's mitres....
Never one to suffer hat envy - I boycotted the tea cosy I was offered in my PhD graduation - Retroid was nonetheless amused to feel a twinge of academic envy when it became evident that our orderly two lines of processioners who had formed up - obedient to The Hugh's urgings - early on, were in fact not only not the front-rankers, but were in fact the third ranked academics. There were mutters of "What did you have to do / who did you have to sleep with to get in that bunch, then??" I suggested we practice processing by marching into the tent in front of us and having a drink or two, and it nearly happened - but no, sense prevailed.
And we waited. And we waited some more. The marimba band was pretty good, mind, and I saw more than one trouser leg or skirt twitching in time to stuff ranging from "Mama Tembu's Wedding" to "Take Five". All the more so because we became their captive audience, given that we were right in front of them, and we were royally entertained.
Now although Retroid did in fact know the majority of folk nearest him, it was obvious that this occasion - unlike the discipline-segregated graduations - was truly one where those from NOJS and SOJS could mingle, on JS, pre-postmodernly and intertextually, as true comrades. A pity that this is so rare....
Then at last the off, and we third-rankers processed in a dignified manner, in our appointed lines, up the steps, to pass from marimba rhythms into the far more formal "Gaudeamus" being rendered by a mass choir.
Retroid thought that this particular archaic Latin offering had been benched in recent times: he recalls one particularly entertaining moment in Senate a while ago when someone expressed the wish to have something played that was more appropriate for an accountant-led African class world research-led world class African University. Like "Shosholoza, possibly? And how many verses does that thing have?? It lasted the whole procession, with only one age-challenged person in front of Retroid in the expensive seats bravely mouthing her way through nearly all of it.
While we're on the subject of music, Retroid has to admit suffering through the later excerpt from Mozart's "Don Giovanni": like the former offering, incomprehensible except to the initiated. I can think of many more appropriate musical interludes. Like Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim's "Mannenburg", heard by Retroid in that very venue in 1974.
And in the expensive seats up front, who else but The Arch, Cape Town and UCT's own Godzille - and Trevor's Manual of Fiscal Rectitude.
I looked with interest on the stage for Obi-Wan, but the Absent Registrar was not obvious. Mind you, Retroid has little idea what the alleged functionary looks like, given his habit of labouring deep under some rock in Bremner, emerging only to defend the indefensible from time to time.
The Archie Mafeje segment was touching: Retroid had no idea that OUTM had in fact snubbed him in the 1990s - but then, no-one tells us up North anything.
The meat of the occasion, and the cause for the light in the east, was Max Price's address to the UCT congregation. If you weren't there, you can read it in here; suffice it to say for the details that Retroid's partner remarked that it was the same speech he gave in Senate while job-hunting, only longer - which at least means he's consistent, and that he's thought about it since.
One novel idea was the one concerning the creation of Pro-Vice Chancellor posts, to manage certain key research thrusts at UCT (given that OUTM is a business and does no research, it does not come into this). Retroid was especially interested in the identification of HIV/AIDS and TB as a key area, as this is not a thousand km from what he and friends do. However, as a taxonomist, he is also a little bothered by the dependency of the chain of command upon the Chancellor. You know, Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellor (which seems a slight on those worthies, given they do have jobs, and do not only deputise) - and now Pro-Vice Chancellor. Retroid would like to suggest the following as a reductio ad absurdam:
Chancellor: as is
VC: Semi-Chancellor
DVC: Hemi-Semi-Chancellor
Pro-VC: Demi-Hemi-Semi-Chancellor
Or just title them something different entirely: like Chancellor, Principal, Vice Principals and Research Deans??
But we digress. The vision of the new Semi-Chancellor is that we - as an African University - should be the place where others come to learn of Africa. He also sees a revitalisation of research, and not only in the niche areas where we underfunded African researchers crawl, in order to have something novel to publish on. Viva! we say to this, viva!
As the Hon Naledi Hall Pandor MP ANC said, we are in for interesting times with Max Price.
Bring them on....
Folks in both the academic teaching and library / archiving spheres: is anyone aware of any concerted effort to put the theses published at UCT on the Web, or to otherwise publish them electronically?
I ask this because (a) our very own Gray Area has just put up a post which relates to this, (b) I have commented on it saying I think it is a great idea, (c) I am frequently asked by outsiders for information from theses written by my students which they otherwise could have got via a UCT resource server.
I have a personal collection of MSc and PhD theses which I would very much like to see being accessible from the outside - for that matter, I have a treasure trove of Honours project write-ups which presently either only gather dust, or are read only by other Honours students as templates for their dissertations. I have been thinking of putting them all up as PDFs accessible via my home page - however, if there is an official initiative, I am sure it would be a better idea to have them centrally epublished.
And yes thank you, the Rybicki family is safely back from a family wedding in Scotland, where it rained. Then it rained some more. When that had finished, sure enough, it began raining again. When you thought "This MUST clear sometime, surely?", so it did - only to rain again. I have photographs of Edinburgh in the rain. I have photos of Stirling after one bout of rain, and just before another. Summer?? Don't make me laugh....
Ed Rybicki
