Retroid Raving

As a long-time aficionado of the Weekly Mail Mail & Guardian, it was hard not to miss - in the Higher Learning supplement in today's issue - an article entitled "Research put on hold to fund World Cup", with reference to the National Research Foundation's lack of funding for an SA-Spain joint programme.

Now, this was the first time I have seen this in print - although I have heard it said a number of times with regard to why it is that the NRF has dismally failed recently in what one would assume to be their prime function: actually giving out money for research.

Devotees of this blog - yes, T_Ed, you and The Cow - will know that I have oft referred to our premier "pure" research funding agency - the NRF - as being an acronym for "Not Real Funding".

And now you know why.

Seriously, now: what with the fiasco around the "Blue Skies"  funding area, recently featured in the SAJSci (and here), where the NRF blithely redefined the mission statement for the Focus Area to mean ONLY original research proposals would be funded, one HAS to conclude that the agency is ineffectual, underfunded, and directionless.  From the M&G supplement:

Dr Therina Theron, senior director of research and innovation at Stellenbosch University [and formerly well known to UCT folk], captured a wider mood when she said that "although the academic community strongly supported the development associated with the World Cup, serious long-term damage" is envisaged if the already insufficient national investment in research is reduced even further as a result of any event.

"Scientific research and the building of highly skilled human capacity require a long-term and consistent approach. Any diversion of funding away from research, regardless of where the funds are diverted to, will result in a loss of highly skilled academic staff, a lack of ability to train adequate numbers of postgraduate students nationally and the reduced ability to effectively perform innovative research … It will take the South African research community many years to recover -- long after the euphoria of the World Cup event has passed," she said.

Although the South Africa-Spain joint science and technology research agreement is one of 30 similar projects managed by the NRF, the research community said the cancellation of this initiative was indicative of wide-ranging problems at the agency, which has the task of supporting and funding research organisations and their work.

These problems include a decline in real terms in the core funding received from the department of science and technology and a new funding strategy, which has diverted funding from general research to national priority areas. The funding crisis was highlighted in a recent article in the South African Journal of Science.

On an operational level the research community has raised concerns over the service levels of the NRF. These include a lack of well-trained staff at the NRF, inadequate processes in terms of peer reviewing of applications for funding, inadequate communication and ineffective management in the process.

The absence of a chief executive for seven months [he stayed in a hotel, then went back to his family in the USA] has also had a negative effect on the agency, meaning there are high expectations from the newly appointed head and previous vice-president, Dr Albert van Jaarsveld, to tackle the crisis.

Ja, boet...so add "leaderless" to the catalogue of woes.

There are real consequences to this buffoonery: one of the most important is that programmes which train students are being terminated, with all of the knock-on effects that this implies.

Like alienation from research for students who get cut loose.  Like the gatvol factor kicking in with unfunded researchers.

Let's hope there is a long and lasting economic benefit to SA from the 2010 World Cup - because there may well be a long and lasting research deficit to offset.

I'm a big fan of Scrabble, especially when there's no TV or only hand-held internet access - and I enjoy collecting those inadvertent sentences that crop up in a good densely-populated board.

You know: things like "seamen wee badly", or "nuns howl insane"?

But I have a recent example here that can only be a Message.  From Someone on a Higher Plane....

But WHICH Dean??!!  We should be told....

...is what my son had started saying to me recently - a bit too often, it seemed.  I wondered why - and then the daughter and the wife forced us into a holiday last week, and the familial blue bus took off into parts unknown....

To us, that is: I am sure the Karoo National Park, the N12 south from Beaufort West, the R328 and Swellendam are familar to many, but not to the family Rybicki-Williamson, and definitely not in winter.

Not that it was like winter, mind you: shorts and T-shirt weather most of the time - at least, until we had to drive into Cape Town yesterday, into the howling teeth of a gale-force north-wester, and lashing rain.

But I had chilled - big time; no work more complicated than quick emails (OK, I confess I took my phone), and nothing more intellectually taxing than Scrabble; the only things to worry about being whether or not we would see a rhino or a buffalo to round out our viewing.

It was quite ridiculous what constituted necessities for a week away, though: a Nintendo DS Lite, four cell phones, Nikon D-60 and CoolPix, Sony digital video camera, laptop for photo downloads - and chargers for all of them, with a breadmaker.

Ah, well.  Maybe next time we'll go tenting, with just gas.  And maybe an inverter for the breadmaker.  And solar chargers for the phones....

Something that hit us hard in the 90s and early 2000s, in the HIV research community, was the continuing and obstinate HIV/AIDS denialism of those at the top of the government and of the ANC: the incredulity of the international scientific community at the failure of our purported leaders to accept what was by then established scientific fact extended to us, for not being able to convince them. 

Oh, we tried, though: colleagues and frinds of mine served - to no obvious avail - on Mbeki's set-up-to-fail advisory panel; I wrote an article for the Mail & Guardian - now inaccessible - out of sheer frustration and anger after a bemused Swedish scientist asked me "Why does your president not believe HIV causes AIDS?" after he had seen Mbeki on Swedish TV dismissing HIV as a problem; several of us got an open letter to Mbeki published in Nature in 2000, where we said:

"As long as Mr Mbeki is being advised by people with no credibility, we as South African scientists feel dangerously marginalized in the search for solutions to HIV/AIDS". 

We were not nearly as hard hit, however, as people with AIDS: two studies which calculated the excess deaths due to AIDS in South Africa alone due to the failure to roll out ARVs, came up with between 300 000 and 340 000 preventable mortalities.

Now a New Scientist article has exposed the continuing lunacy of the AIDS denialist movement: Johnny Steinberg, in the June 20th Issue, discusses how a small coterie of hard-line activists are still trying to influence the public and governments.  Steinberg covers the topic very well, and takes great care to debunk a series of popular myths, including "AIDS is not caused by HIV", "Antiretroviral drugs are poisons", "HIV tests are flawed", and "The lack of a widespread HIV epidemic is the west proves the orthodoxy is wrong".  I diffidently note that our very own (OK, my!) HIV information web site at UCT did much the same thing a few years back, but then, so did many others across the world. 

The points to be made are that there are still AIDS denialists; that they are pernicious and persuasive; they have done a great deal of damage, and they need to be combatted - and that this article is good ammunition in this fight.

Ed Rybicki

Let us sing in praise of Groupwise....

To what can I compare thee??

A bucket of s&*! comes to mind, but hold!  We can do better than that....

A clunky, fault-ridden, user-unfriendly, rubbish email client with limited functionality which serves merely to frustrate, rather than to actually serve!!!

Consider: I have now twice input a LOOOONG list of addresses - which one has to glean from OTHER Groupwise lists, rather than simply typing them in as actual addresses or sucking in a list, as one can do in applications like Outlook - as a new Group under Frequent Contacts in the Groupwise Address Book...only to see the F**$$%%% thing VANISH, TWICE!!

And this because - unlike Outlook - one cannot simply paste a list of email addresses, saved as a txt file, in the address line.

I could go on: I HATE the fact that one cannot save files from messages, then delete them as attachments (to save space) - which you can do in Outlook.  I HATE the to-me-clunky archiving options.  I HATE that I cannot import the gigabyte or so of archived Outlook mail I have, without losing all subfolders.

But enough of this: I have made a heroic effort to use this cr&*%y (=cruddy, actually B-) client.  I am seriously contemplating erasing all trace of it on any of the computers I have access to.

AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

Note added in proof (of uselessness):

I have found out, quite by accident, how one can add addresses to a list - which one can create via the create via the "Address Book" -> "New" options (IF you select "Frequent Contacts" or similar), BUT cannot save contacts into.

You simply open "Groupwise Address Book" and then click and drag the addresses you find there that are relevant to your list, to your new group.  Of course, this means you have to import address lists you make via another application, or create a new contact in your Groupwise Frequent COntacts group for every single entry that is NOT in an existing Groupwise list.

Instead of importing a txt file.  Ah, well.

One constantly finds oneself in situations where strangers are bitterly critical of our nation.  Consider just these examples:

• I am in a bookshop, where I see a whole row of different magazines, all with Jacob Zuma on the cover.  I marvel aloud at this, and someone next to me snorts, and says: "Welcome to the new South Africa, hey!", and stalks off.  I only meant "Look - how interesting!"
  
  
  
  
• I am in an Airbus, waiting to disembark, when the captain announces that we are waiting on a bus, as the ground services had not located a driver.  A passenger behind me laughs bitterly, and says "They better get that right before 2010!"  I tell him about once having to wait over an hour in a plane on the runway at JFK because they couldn't find the stairs, but he seems unmollified, despite us having to wait less than 10 minutes.

And then, and then....  My son's school - Pinelands High, since you asked - does "District Six: The Musical" for their annual drama presentation, and it is a wild success: all the kids in the rainbow cast were fantastic (OK, mine was in it...B-), the choreography and sets were outstanding; people had tears in their eyes afterwards, and I heard someone say "I grew up there!  It was like that!!"

And again in an Airbus: yesterday, attempting to land in a wild, wet and windy Cape Town after at least one go-round, after several before him had failed - our brave SAA captain sets down, and heartfelt applause ensues.  Good will (and relief) abounds.

Good things happen.  We need to take note of them, and remind others.

Or bugger off....

...though we might wish it otherwise.  The bit about "rides", we mean.  From the VC's office this morning:

" The parties, having participated in the internal disciplinary process and having due regard to the complex nature of the matters that gave rise to the enquiry, have reached a mutual agreement to annul the disciplinary enquiry and abandon all charges brought against Dr Ngobeni.”
In acknowledgment of the complexity of this matter, the hardship that it must have caused the parties involved, I wish to apologise for any inconvenience caused, particularly to Dr Ngobeni. Having satisfactorily resolved the matters, Dr Ngobeni has expressed his wish to leave UCT to pursue other interests and we wish him all the very best in his future endeavours." 

An altogether unsatisfactory ending to an altogether unpalatable soap opera.  Ah, well: just like Star Wars, then!  "Ride" well, Obi-Wan!

Given that Retroid is not known to go much TO Jammie Steps, let alone south of them. it is not surprising we missed this (for which we thank an eagle-eyed mathematician):

So yes, the intrepid Field Marshal IS still remembered on UCT Upper Campus.  And the layers of meaning and symbolism go even deeper than suspected.  Ante-pre-post-modernist, almost!

OK, so these are not actual statues or sculptures, but it was too dark on Thursday last - at 11 am - to photograph "All in the Family", so you get what I like to call "inadvertent art" this week.

I had long marvelled at the bravery of this institution in having not one, but many little monuments to a late Afrika Korps and Wehrmacht luminary.  Delightfully seditious, I thought, and a bit naughty: those open-topped, chipped stone-covered concrete cylinders scattered about University Avenue, each neatly labelled "ROMMEL", and obviously in memoriam of the Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel.  And the fact that one could use them as refuse containers, too: at once a utilitarian and a profoundly deep statement on the rubbish-bin of history to which he has been consigned.

These nondescript beige bins are long gone; however, in their place I was pleased to notice these:

Just as beige, but striking in their arrangement: purportedly for more efficient recycling (divided into paper, plastic, bottles, etc.), but "Inadvertent Art" nonetheless - for several reasons.

First, the simple yet profound mathematical statement their lids make: two-dimensional geometric forms (square, oblong, equilaterial triangle, circle), juxtaposed like words in a brief yet highly meaningful message to an alien civilisation (quite appropriate for University Avenue, some SoJS might say, but no matter).  Second, their mute messaging to those who use them every day: "we are more than receptacles, we have meaning"!  Third, the fact that they are placed opposite the venerable Maths Block, on University Avenue: escapees from the stuffy halls of academe, into the world at large.

I call them "Acting Mathematica", and endeavour to use them every day.  So should we all: such repetition may even bring reward, much as spinning a Buddhist prayer wheel does.  It certainly wouldn't hurt.

The next most obscure major sculpture / outdoors artwork at UCT is the Darth Vader statue, hidden in the corner of a bleak and otherwise featureless courtyard on the north side of the Julius Malema Hall - sorry; forgot it hadn't been officially renamed yet; Jammie Hall!

Of course, there is another myth concerning this monument: that it is in fact a depiction of the "spirit of Table Mountain", called by its apparently more ethnically-sound name,  named "To Hoerikwaggo".

 This is of course a mere fancy: anyone seeing the tarnished, brooding hulk will immediately know that this just HAS to be the Sith Lord Darth Vader; as with our previous offering, its placement - apparently a deliberate attempt to hide it in an obscure and dreary location - is a clever use of context to emphasise the air of banishment and neglect.  Even more cunning is the use of loose bricks and builder's sand on the base of the figure to hammer home the casual abuse of a once-mighty potentate; how He has been forgotten in our popular culture, and used as a table.

And yet, and yet....  Still he stands, darkly brooding; still he looms over one who ventures close, so that a shiver runs up one's spine, and one looks around, involuntarily.

 For we remember: always two Sith there are....

UCT has a long tradition of parking statuary and other amorphous lumps of scrap around its various campuses, with very little explanation of what they are, or why they are there.

 They also have a habit of putting these things in some of the most obscure locations possible, where they are very well hidden from casual view, and it is generally highly difficult to see them properly.  It's almost as if a committee tasked with where to put large and concretey or metal objects donated by well-meaning but artistically challenged donors, has had a series of competitions on where to hide the latest monstrosity - and they have done a good job.

The View From the North has decided to expose these artworks to public scrutiny along with some invented narrative, given that there is generally nothing written on or anywhere near said objects to enlighten one as to what it signifies, who it commemorates or dignifies, or why UCT got lumbered with it.

Our first candidate is "The Blind Watchmaker".  This offering is cunningly placed below street level in front of the main entrance to the John Day Zoology Building: it is posed against a backdrop of a big windows fronting a dark foyer, which means it is seldom properly visible.  Its position in the small courtyard also means it is effectively impossible to see it properly from any direction except from directly in front and above.

It commemorates the book of the same name by the legendary Richard Dawkins, and symbolises the tortuous and essentially random evolutionary development of all organisms on this planet, by juxtaposing apparently unrelated modules to make an ungainly, aesthetically unpleasing whole.  Just as evolution does.  Situating it in what is essentially a hole, isolated from the stream of campus life is a masterstroke, as it adds a layer of complexity depicting isolated evolutionary niches to the imagery that would have been impossible otherwise.

Unkind folk have been heard to say it is just an anchor from a tramp steamer which has had some junk welded onto it, but their opinion is worth what you paid for it.

Talk about serendipitous Web trawling...there I was checking out a now-defunct RSS feed from a deli.cio.us feed from my web-teaching-by-remote colleague Alan J Cann at U Leicester, when I saw a link to a story with the taster "The impact of OA is significantly greater in the developing world than it is in first world countries"...which links to a story published in Science entitled "Open access and global participation" by James A Evans and Jacob Reimer, which basically says:

  ...and the original will show you South Africa very firmly over there on the left, with the considerable impact of OA publishing crew, namely Chile, Bulgaria and Mexico.

Which is all the more reason, added to what I already pointed out, to support Open Access publishing from our institution.

Isn't it??

In the absence of any regularity from Transplant_Ed, who seems to be neglecting his Friday duty, and because it is a HORRIBLE day outside, I give you - A View Of the North.  Taken not three days ago, as the sun rose golden.

Coming soon: an irreverent and unauthorised Guide to UCT Statuary and Monuments.  Every Friday.  Watch this space...!  Meet "Darth Vader".  Fear "The Blind Watchmaker".  Disapprove of "All in the Family".  Wonder at the point of "PG Windows".

You know, one would think - given the idealism at UCT, and the strong support for Open Access models of pretty much everything - that we as an institution would be members of one of the biggest worldwide initiatives for open access scholarly publication.

I refer, of course, to the BMC or BioMed Central family of journals: as an Editor of one of these, I get regular communications such as this, below.

BioMed Central Institutional Members Update

The following institutions have taken out full BioMed Central membership, allowing their researchers to publish in any of BioMed Central's journals without directly paying any article processing charge: [my emphasis]

Instituto Aragones de Ciencias de la Salud, Zaragoza, Spain
Agenzia di Sanita Pubblica, Rome, Italy
Biology Centre ASCR, Institute of Plant Molecular Biology, Branišovská, Czech Republic

Researchers from the following institutions are now entitled to a discounted article processing as these organisations have taken out BioMed Central's Supporter Membership:

Roma Tre Universita, Rome, Italy
Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York, United States
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, United States
Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Gran Canaria, Spain
Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, United States

A full list of all BioMed Central Member Institutes is available from the BioMed Central website.

 Going to this web site reveals...that not ONE South African institution is a member, and nor are we as UCT apparently a "supporter member" either.

It's not as if the charges are that onerous, either: supporter membership would cost us something like R90 000.00 per year, for a 15% rebate on publication charges, and full membership would cost as much as the page charges are per year, with a loyalty discount.  From the web site:

Prepay Membership enables an organization to cover the whole cost of publishing for their investigators when publishing in our open access journals. No additional fees will be paid by individual authors. This is an advance payment system whereby customers pay upfront for accepted articles authored by their investigators to be processed and published. Upon publication, the full Article-Processing-Charge (APC) for the journal in question, minus a loyalty discount, will be deducted from the account.

Now UCT staff and students are increasingly publishing in these journals, some of which are now quite prestigious, and many of which are rapidly increasing in impact factors: in fact, 39 articles were published last year that had Author Affiliation = University of Cape Town, including 4 from my group.

If one considers that it costs ~R10 000 to publish a decent article in a BMC journal, that is ~R400 000 worth of publications.  This may sound a lot - but if each of these brings in ~R90 000 in subsidy from DoE, UCT would be paying out only 1/9th of direct income, without even considering the loyalty discount.

Really, really, UCT, we need to consider such expenditure as being very well worth it: publication in electronic open access journals is very much a growing phenomenon, and would showcase our works better than any other medium.  The trouble is, given the paucity of hard science and other research funding in SA, R10K / pop represents a substantial portion of most people's research budgets - so it is simply not going to happen.

A Research-Led Afropolitan University (ReLeAfroUni?) would make it happen...wouldn't it??

How interesting it was - given the View From the North's deep interest in the doings and screwings dontings of the NRF (aka the Not Real Funding Agency) - to see a circular from Prof Danie Visser this am, to "The Research Community at UCT".

This addresses, inter alia, the "...major policy-shift ...by announcing that henceforth rating and funding would once again be linked..."; the fact that "...the Treasury allocation was much lower than anticipated, which meant that many rated researchers were left in the lurch"; the funding disjunction between lurching into their new direction and fulfilling old obligations - and the problems with the online system. 

But we digress: while we commend Prof Visser on telling Dr. Albert S. van Jaarsveld (Acting President) UCT's frustrations with the Not Real Funding Agency, the problem is in fact SA-global.  That is, the agency is sick, underfunded, and under-competent.  Indeed, in the newest issue of the venerable South African Journal of Science - it's apron strings to the NRF now throughly severed - the new Editor, Michael Cherry, and two correspondents lay into the NRF in fine style.  And I can't link to it, because - despite being a member of the ASSAf and receiving free print copies, I cannot get the online version...!!

But the fundamental thing that is said is this:

"New researchers, rated for the first time, and more established ones-whose cycles are beginning, but who do not fall into the rating categories above-are left high and dry, unless they are successful in being allocated funds from the Blues Skies programme, which has only R7 million to disburse this year.

...Is it surprising that government appears to be denying the NRF additional funding, as it has shown that it is incapable of administering the funds it already has in a judicious manner?  The problem is that South Africa's research enterprise will be diminished, not just in terms of graduate students not trained, but as researchers who are denied funding opportunities - particularly young researchers, who are worst affected by the NRF's ill-conceived strategy - join the exodus to greener pastures abroad.

The NRF board, now chaired by Belinda Bozzoli of the University of the Witwatersand, should waste no more time appointing a new president, as the organisation appears to have been in limbo since the departure of its former president Khotso Mokhele in 2006. The incumbent needs to appoint a management team mative enough to look beyond the tired practices of the past in seeking a new modus operandi for funding research in South Africa."

Amen, brother Mike, amen....