Retroid Raving

In honour of UCT's Innovation evening:

The Inventor’s Song

Well, I’ve been an inventor, full many a year

Dreamed up six new vaccines, and a new kind of beer

Never earned me a cent, until out of the blue

Big Pharma came knockin’, and licenced stuff too

And it’s no, nay never

No nay never no more

Will I teach undergraduates

No never, no more

As down in the depths of our dark labs we slave

Commercialization is the new thing we crave

It’s no more the papers, or  reviews and such

For the life of a teacher don’t reward you much

And it’s no, nay never

No, nay never no more

Will I mark those exam scripts

No never, no more

So I say to you lecturers, and postdocs and folk

Forsake academia, for the money’s a joke

Throw down your lab coats, and walk out that door

And come work with me…wait, what was that?  The deal is no more??

And it’s no, nay never

No, nay never no more

Will I dream of great riches

No never, no more….

© Ed Rybicki, November 2011

Prompted by a real comment from an MSc student in a building in the North: "I must have been dazed and confused...", he said.

For Dave

Well, I've been dazed and confused for so long it's not true

Sweet little thesis, never bargained for you 

Lots of people talkin', few of them know

Idea of a thesis was created below....

The referees hurt ya, tell a bunch of lies

Make me run around correcting, how they criticise

Sweet little thesis, I know just where you been

Still love ya baby, but I gotta do you again.... 

Apologies to the Towed Dirigibles.... 

Slower than a speeding bullet!  Wetter than a Cape Town October!  Thicker than a Jammie Hall door!  It's...Chuck!!

No, not Norris, silly - Windsor.  Worst half of the now defunct Chuck & Di show, and would-be feminine sanitary product for the redoubtable Camilla.  Here to Be Green, at Mr Price Rosebank UCT.  Following in the footsteps of great-uncle Ted, and the Old Battleaxe herself, his old nan.

And you can see the picture gallery here!

If you want to.  Personally, I'd rather go browse a three-volume history of the PD Hahn building, but there's no accounting for taste - or "degustibus non disputandem est", as my learned grandmother was wont to say.  She also said unloading trains at gunpoint was hard, and so was having wolves chase you in your sleigh, so we didn't take much notice.

Viva, republicanism, viva!  Down, the reactionary and archaic hereditary chieftains of a defunct empire, down!  Next they'll be giving his old mum a doctorate....

Especially when cameras are rolling...

So you've had a hard commute, and the traffic was foul, and your son guilt tripped you the whole way in to work, and the deadlines are crowding in...then you look up at the sky, and remember your little sister saying "I used to think that seeing clouds like that meant that Heaven was behind them".

 And it's almost all right again.

Now here's a thing a Kollectiv could get its teeth into: a new book entitled "The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters", by one Benjamin Ginsberg of Johns Hopkins University in the USA.  This is reviewed in a recent Times Higher Education post, which also reports an interview with Ginsberg.

"Faculty members feeling besieged by, well, take your pick – increased scrutiny of their productivity and the relevance of their research, broadsides against tenure, attacks on their expertise and ability to collectively bargain, or their shrinking role in the affairs of their institutions – will no doubt find succour in a new book to be released next month.

In his polemic... Benjamin Ginsberg, David Bernstein professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, takes stock of what ails higher education and finds a single, unifying cause: the growth of administration.

Ginsberg bemoans the expansion over the past 30 years of what he calls “administrative blight”, as personified by what he characterises as an army of “deanlets” and “deanlings”. By virtue of their sheer number and their managerial rather than academic orientation, Ginsberg argues, these administrators have served to marginalise the faculty in carrying out tasks related to personnel and curriculum that once sat squarely in their domain."

 Any of this sounding familiar?  Heard any rumours of academic union-bashing circulating down in your bit of UCT Pty SA Ltd recently?

One of us distinctly remembers a now-retired academic who shall not be named (but he used to sing operatic arias loudly in the corridors of a depressingly ugly Stalinist Modern building on this campus) standing up in a Science Faculty Board meeting some years ago, and noting (just for minuting purposes) that the number of PASS staff had just for the first time exceeded the number of academics.

 We wonder what the ratio is now?

 Creeping corporatisation, comrades: that is the enemy!  And the luta continua with a vengeance.

Back in the unreconstructed 70s and 80s, some of us slightly more noncomformist not-quite-dissidents thought it might be fun to show up how ridiculous The Regime's censorship laws were - so we talked about trying to get a couple of songs banned.

One was Chris de Burgh's "Just Another Poor Boy".  The other was the Strawb's "The Man Who Called Himself Jesus". Obvously subversive, both of them: really,how could The Big J be a poor kid, or a misunderstood modern prophet??

We didn't follow through with it - it might have worked, but we actually liked the songs! - but one of us was reminded the other day when they bought a Strawbs compilation for some ridiculously low price, and there was that song again. 

Very underrated band, the Strawbs: always instrumentally and melodically superb, even when the lyrics sometimes sucked - and when they were good, they were very, very good.  While they are mostly remembered now for their satirical "State of the Union"- which, we will remind you, is the unofficial song of our very own Academic Workers Union - they were much more than that.  Which is the subject of another rave, another time.

For we are here, we in the Kollectiv, to carry on a long tradition of modifying the lyrics of others - given that we have no talent whatever in writing actual new songs - honouring another Big J.

Take it away, comrades....

The Man Who Called Himself Julius*

He came into the shop and looked me straight between the eyes
And said "You know I'm Julius", and I must have looked surprised
Because he said "You bloody agent, you mulungu don't understand"
And his six bodyguards lifted up their guns.

He was the man who called himself Julius.

For a minute I was speechless, then I looked into his face
With sufficient fat deposits for the total human race
And I said "You must be joking" but he slowly shook his head
And said "That's what you all say, you might as well be dead".

He was the man who called himself Julius.

He asked me if I knew a business he could nationalise
I said "Well, try A**a bank, that would give them a surprise"
And I was trying to be serious but he didn't seem impressed
He said "You think I'm crazy, you're just like all the press".

He was the man who called himself Julius.

I was really quite embarrassed, he was looking so sincere
So I said "I close the shop soon, won't you come and have a
beer"
Then he asked me if I meant it and he smiled a funny smile
And he said he'd prefer a tender, but he hung around a while.

He was the man who called himself Julius.

On the way he stopped to pat little children's heads
And he taught them one line slogans to say as they went off to their beds
But mostly they were frightened and they looked at him wide eyed
And when he said his name was Julius, one girl even cried.

He was the man who called himself Julius.

In the pub I asked him if he'd tried to see Anglo
And he said although he'd asked about it, it really wouldn't go
Then he said he thought he'd better leave, he had some work to do
He said he'd come and nationalise me in about a week or two.

He was the man who called himself Julius.

Well after he had gone I thought of what he'd said
And all his funny actions they kept running through my head
And when I felt my mind was drowning in a sea of blood
It seemed his pint of Chivas had turned into toxic mud

He was the man who called himself Julius.
He was the man who called himself Julius.

* = link to the actual song

I notice Mr Price's Rondebosch branch (aka our VC) has the following to say, according to our UCT home page, concerning rushing into tertiary education:

"Vice-chancellor Dr Max Price dissuaded learners from jumping straight into the "hardest-to-get-into" careers, such as engineering and medicine, at university, advising them to choose generic degrees first in order to be "well-rounded and better educated" professionals.

Speaking from experience (he first studied medicine, and then a BA degree), Price described it as "illogic and irrational" to think that being good at maths makes students a natural fit to such careers. He placed responsibility for that misperception at the door of the country's higher education system, which he believes is doing a disservice to the youth and the economy.

Most 17-year-olds don't know for sure what they want in life, Price said, and should rather spend the first three years at university studying for general degrees, while using that time to explore further options."

 Ummmm...yes, well, that might be a little hard to do, here at UCT Co SA Pty Ltd, given our rather high fees.  And pretty hard to do anywhere, for the bulk of first-time entrants, given that dicking about for three years while you decide what you want to do, will not go down well with whomever is funding said dicking.

And isn't that the "liberal arts degree" so beloved of Those Who Tell Us We are Philistines?  I notice that the example is not very good; doing a medical degree THEN a touchy-feely humanities/arts degree is not quite the same as the converse, is it?  Might mean you have a lot more money to go do the second, for a start!

Kids, don't listen to Uncle Max: unless your parents / funders are as liberal as the degree you wish to take while you defer actually working for anything like a profession, and have enough money to support your self-indulgency, you are on a hiding to nothing. 

Which is what you may end up with.

And after that previous pathetic neo-classical outpouring from a Retroid Komponent more in touch with his/her touchy-feely artistic side, we have an altogether more classy piece for you this am:

 And through the window in the wall
Come streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning

Thank you, messrs Gilmour, Wright, Mason and...the other guy.

[Hey, I didn't think "Shining City" was that bad!]  (Yes, well you probably liked Kahlil Gibran and The Carpenters too)  {Children, children...degustibus non disputandum est, but that piece was seriously off} [And so Led Zeppelin is the height of good taste??]  {Damn, is that thing on....??  And were we speaking out lou....}

Behold!  I see a shining city upon a hill
All girt about with cloud - yet bathed in golden light
As if from heav'n above
What wondrous sight is this, on a winter's dawn!

Yes, the old alma mater can look pretty good when the sun shines on it.  Until you get close up, that is...B-)

"The machine of a dream
Such a clean machine
With the processor a pumpin'
And the screen all agleam...."

Apologies to Queen

OK, it's not a car - although I like that quite a lot too. No, it is - and I would have cut my throat rather than say this two years ago - a product of Apple Inc.  Specifically, the big phone that isn't: I speak of the iPad, naturally.

<Drool mode ON>Consider its lines: simple and clean; no clutter of controls...just understated side buttons, and a rim of surround around - The Screen, where everything happens.<Drool mode partially OFF>

Seriously, now - what's not to love??  Light as a leather folder that one might normally tote around; battery power to die for; endless games plenty of serious business applications, like...like...ah yes, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, the Nature reader - and, if you go out and buy them, adapters to allow VGA, HDMI and DVI output to projectors or big screens.

Yes, it's a seriously nice toy - but mine has faithfully bonged 15 minutes before every meeting for two months now, after effortlessly syncing with my Google Calendar, and then allowed me to type notes in meeting after meeting with a virtual keyboard.  Which I can then email around, or save as PDFs, DOC or Pages format.  I go to journal clubs with the paper in electronic format; I can pull documents out of the cloud via Dropbox to show people in meetings....

You can also play downloaded movies, and do Ginger Bakeresque drum solos on Finger Drums, and I am learning how to do soulful lead guitar breaks on the hard rock guitar option in Garage Band - and even to do the opening bit from "Whiter Shade of Pale" on a church organ.

But my point is - this is a seriously good management tool: it beats PDAs into a cocked hat; it is FAR more convenient to drag around than any net- or notebook; it combines calendar and diary and notetaking and presentation tools with a slimline tablet that is big enough to read things on - and does them well enough for you to want to.  Oh, and you can share someone's Kindle account and download a ton of novels for your overseas trip as well.  Overseas institutions are looking at not only giving senior management one each, but in some cases (eg: University of Adelaide) are giving their entire first year Science curriculum intake iPads - as long as they stay enrolled.  Retention figures are up!

So resistance is futile, comrades - the revolution is here.  I have been assimilated...B-)

The Vatican has just put us straight: no more shilly-shallying about; The Big G likes GM.

So:

The X1th Commandment

Thou shalt genetically modify
crop plants henceforth

- Pontifical Academy of Sciences
March 2011

And the year has started with a bang, we went to Korea, and the temperature got below -10, saw a lot of Buddhist temples and did some science and took a lot of photos and wrote bad haiku....

Bamboo leaves, growing
Green, in the snow.  Brown-leaved tree:
Juxtaposition

Deep breath - hold for five seconds.  Say "Frak it" or something similar.  Practice breathing kata.

So - hello, all, and we're back!  At work and at UCT; the 30th year on the job - and how do you feel, you ask?

Yes, fine, don't worry about it - and to business!

An element of the Kollectiv went walking on main campus today, from the Uttermost North, to the Uttermost South - fruit-themed laptop in bag (yes, we have gone to the Dark Side), memory stick in side pocket, intent on Higher Things.

And noticed - trees, that have somehow grown, all unnoticed.  Freshers and -ettes, thronging the pavements.  Many, many freshers and -ettes...yea, and their name was Legion, for they were many.  Many, many...young, clean-limbed (well, mostly), not wearing a hell of a lot - not a lot changes, does it??

How many can we take, you wonder?  Because we have gone from 5 900-odd in 1974 (trust us, some of us were there) to 25 000-odd now.  Without a commensurate increase in infrastructure, we will note: OK, they've paved the not-quite Paradise that was the back of Jammie, where were the bushes someone sat in once to smoke a certain herb while waiting to gatecrash a Dollar Brand concert (hey, I was 19! - says the offending one); there's the odd new building (very odd, in the case of the Leslies) - but not 4x the structures.

And not 4x the lecturing staff either, we'll be bound.

To cap it all, there's now the awful rumour that certain folk (aka Mr Price Rondebosch) are talking wildly of increasing numbers to 34 000 or so.

 How the FRAK are they going to do that??  There's no longer the possibility of taking over UWC and shipping all the touchy-feely Humanities students out there; they're now a successful and quite large Uni in their own right - so unless we build another campus, there's nowhere to PUT all the extra bodies!

Unless - and here the speculation becomes seriously dark - they plan to try to make the UCT lecturing staff teach outside of the 1-5 + Meridian + afternoon slot lecturing times...and double up on lectures....  Could they do that??

Well, yes - in a word.  The Beast that is Bremner can do just about anything - unless we say "no".

Our Cairo moment is almost upon us, comrades: we really, really need to say "no". 

Loudly.

The View From the North Kollectiv

I have a new version of what NRF stands for - that would be:

No?!  Re-rating??  F@£$%^!!!

For the following reasons: I share with you my open letter to the NRF rating section.

 Addenda:

Received in mailbox: Supportdesk@nrf.ac.za
From: ed.rybicki@gmail.com
Message:
Programme : 2011 Rating Application
Reference : EV2010100200001
Name : EDWARD
Surname : RYBICKI
Email : ed.rybicki@gmail.com
ID Number : 5503225194081

Description :I spent a long, long time trying to get my Best research outputs of last 8 yrs sorted out this afternoon - then tonight, I access the page to get NO entries at all and this message: Error Loading Browser, Please Call Your System Administrator Cannot Execute SQL Command: Argument data type text is invalid for argument 1 of left function. What the HELL is going on??

Calling Page : /Submission/Evaluation/

Dear User
You have been logged out of the NRF-Online system.
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Kindly login again.