Retroid Raving

So UCT - pardon, this is its OU^TM persona, wethinks - has got itself into a bit of a jam concerning student numbers, as a result of the changed (we make no value judgements here...) secondary educational system learner evaluation and the unexpectedly high results, has it??

As in - a flood of people coming in, with the same to happen next year...and having to sit on the floor in lecture theatres, or not to get in at all, despite our now having the highest fees in the land.

I know what I'd [in a collective sense] be saying if I were an irate parent footing the bill, for my offspring not to be being educated in the manner to which I'd thought he/she was entitled, me having parted with all that moolah and all - and it would have the words "rip-off" and "unacceptable" and "Stellenbosch" in it.

So what, pray, is OU^TM planning on doing about it?  Why, Mr Price is saying things like we need to grow to where the DoE thinks we should be - something about 24 000 students and up - and Deans and the like are muttering about doubling up lectures, having lectures and practicals at night so as to fit everyone in...because OU^TM isn't going to suddenly find a whole lot more venues, is it?  And they're probably not thinking of building any nice big ones, either, given the creeping managerialism that has overtaken this once academic institution and its obsession with cost-saving, so extra lectures and prac/tutorial sessions are probably the way it's going to go.

But has anyone given thought, down there in the Belly of the Beast, to what this will do to academic staff workloads?  Because surely, as much as we aren't suddenly going to get more venues, we are also not going to get a sudden influx of new staff, either.

And that will mean...having to come in in the evenings.  Having considerably increased lecture loads.  Having to have practical sessions, in the wet and dry sciences and engineering, at night - with all of the technical staff required for health and safety backup there as well.

Has OU^TM considered, possibly, that all this will drastically affect research productivity, given those that lead this will now increasingly be occupied doing the other thing?   Have they also - and perhaps more importantly for the bottom line - considered that this will require changes to conditions of service in their contracts for all concerned? 

Aye, there's the rub...for it may occur to some of us who will shoulder the increased workload, that lo, we are now unionised - and that the Academic and Staff Unions may have more than a little to say about this, if we urge them.

Interesting times ahead, comrades - for that is what we Union folk call one another - interesting times....

And as all good Union folk should know, we sing in solidarity with one another at meetings: so for our cybermeeting, the Retroid collective offers you something from their shared (and dim and distant past).

Slightly amended for these modern times, and our situation - The Strawbs' "Part of the Union".

Part Of The Union

by Ford/Hudson (amended, with apologies)

Now I'm a union man
Amazed at what I am
I say what I think
That [OU^TM] stinks
Yes, I'm a union man.

When we meet in the [Jammie] hall
I'll be voting with them all
With a hell of a shout
It's out! Brothers, out!
And the rise of [OU^TM]'s fall.

Oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union
You don't get me, I'm part of the union
You don't get me, I'm part of the union
Till the day I die, till the day I die.

As a union man I'm wise
To the lies of the [Bremner] spies
And I don't get fooled
By the [OU^TM] rules
'Cause I always read between the lines.

....

Before the union did appear
My life was half as clear
Now I've got the power
To the working hour
And every other day of the year.

So though I'm a working man
I can ruin [OU^TM]'s plan
Though I'm not too hard
The sight of my card
Makes me some kind of superman.

Oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union
You don't get me, I'm part of the union
You don't get me, I'm part of the union
Till the day I die, till the day I die....B-)

...to paraphrase Pascal.  Or maybe it was Neil Diamond...?  No, that was "I am, I said".  Anyway, it's not often the retroidal collective gets to wax philosophical on religion (without getting rabid), so we shall attempt to straighten up and get serious.

Now serious bloggers, like Richard Grant over there at Nature Blogs, have written on the nature of faith, and how scientists don't understand science, nor the religious, theology - and done a damn good job.  So if you want debate and reasoned, detailed arguments from an accomplished scientist, go there.

And now for ours...

Andy Coghlan, writing in the New Scientist of 14th March 2009, reports that "Our sophisticated minds gave us religion".  In his words:

"THAT a complex mind is required for religion may explain why faith is unique to humans. Now brain scans support this idea, revealing that the parts of the brain that process religious belief are those that evolved most recently and give us sophisticated cognition.

These regions include ones involved in our theory of mind. We share this ability to recognise that other people have intentions and thoughts independent of our own with only a few other species, including chimpanzees. Other regions involved in religious thought are ones used for language and metaphor."

Right, that's pretty straightforward, then: we invented deities because we are capable of envisaging minds outside of and separate from our own - and we put them in charge of us because, like all good primates, we are still afraid of the dark. 

"[The researchers] asked 40 monotheistic believers whether they agreed with statements relating to three core elements of belief: whether God intervenes in the world; how to interpret God's emotional state; and how to relate to abstract doctrinal teachings or imagery. The researchers scanned the believers' brains as they answered.

While considering the first two statements, volunteers relied on areas such as the lateral frontal lobe and frontal gyri, which are required for a theory of mind. For the doctrinal statements, they used areas devoted to linguistics, decoding metaphor and recalling images...."

This last is especially interesting to us: conceiving of a god requires a theory of mind; interpreting its teachings [as revealed to the enlightened, obviously] requires decoding of metaphors and interpretation of imagery.  An appreciation of fiction, perhaps...?

Going to the source, in the very august Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, we find one Dimitrios Kapogiannis et al. saying the following:

"We propose an integrative cognitive neuroscience framework for understanding the cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief. Our analysis reveals 3 principle [sic]psychological dimensions of religious belief (God's perceived level of involvement, God's perceived emotion, and doctrinal/experiential religious knowledge), which functional MRI localizes within networks processing Theory of Mind regarding intent and emotion, abstract semantics, and imagery. Our results are unique in demonstrating that specific components of religious belief are mediated by well-known brain networks, and support contemporary psychological theories that ground religious belief within evolutionary adaptive cognitive functions."

Powerful stuff...which is why we take perverse delight in seeing the [obviously deliberate] spelling mistake.  But we draw your attention to the bolded bit at the end - and we leave you [sorry!] with the obvious development of our theme at the beginning, which is:

You think - therefore I am....

...and when He is angry, his juices run hot, and flame bursts forth upon his flanks and sides...and helicopters bustle to and fro, like insects in front of His face.

And He maketh us late for work.

* = a deliberate corruption of the term "Hoerikwagga", meaning the mountain that rises out of the sea

...not to blog - that is the question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the main to suffer
The slurs and arrows of outrageous colleagues
Or to take to arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing, end them?

'Tis a consumnation devoutly to be wished
But illegal, alas....
Who would suffer fools politely
And grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after this job,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No colleague returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Although UWC is looking good around now.

Ah, well.  Red wine and pharmaceuticals - that's the ticket.

...so here I am in Pretoria - again - assessing projects - again - musing of Life, the Universe, and my place in it.  Central, T_Ed, central....

But there we were, descending into ORT Int, when suddenly the downward incline becomes an upward, engines that were quiet now scream, and off we go past the runway and over Jozi.  Only a few seemed to notice, but we were not much calmed by the bland announcement a little later that: "Well, this is the co-pilot folks, and we apologise for making you late, but we have just executed a missed landing, and we'll be circling for a little while, before...".

The announcment faded into white noise within my head.  What is a "missed landing"??  Did they aim at the ground and miss??  Was there something in the way?  Was it possible - as someone behind me muttered darkly - "...the wheels wouldn't come down!"?

We landed, eventually - VERY fast, with much bouncing.  Faulty flaps, maybe...?  But it was cause for thought.  What for / where to / why?  And to PRETORIA??

Puts things in perspective rather - and I'm not sure I like the prespective.  Of what I do, and sometimes, where I do it.

Ah, well.  Nothing some pharmaceuticals, or possibly red wine, won't cure.

Retroid Raving got a mention in this week's Varsity - albeit a sentence in a longer article on UCT blogging - but as Paris Hilton might say, hey, any publicity's good publicity!  Or she might not, but anyway, the point is made.

But you have to wonder - about Varsity, I mean; ANYONE who wonders about Paris Hilton (unless they think it's the hotel) is a few points shy of an actual IQ - why even the mighty Gooogle can't find Varsity online.  Down for restructuring, Wikip(a)edia says; unfindable any other way.

Sort of quaint, actually: a lot like the typesetting and the layout; reminiscent of the retroidal (collective) youth here at UCT...before the days of OU^TM....  Mind you, it doesn't seem to get down here to the North very reliably; all the more reason to get digital, folks!!

And aside from the excellent blogging article (Oligarcy [sic] is there; so too HumBlog and Thinking for a Thought, and our very own Call Me Cassandra), there is all sorts of worthy content.  Political stuff.  Sax Appeal stuff. Personal stuff.  Wonderful typos, like "The Rag Committee also sold boerewors roles..."...oh, how rich is that??  What contextual depth; how the use of a simple pun unlocks societal stereotypes.  Quite postmodernist in its complexity.

Or a simple spelling mistake, but hey, this is UCT....