Retroid Raving

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 OU^TM, 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 OU^TM) 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:

1. A DVC of Research who has done research
2. Some serious fund-raising for new equipment for our failing scientific and technical infrastructure
3. A new, bold head-hunting strategy to kickstart cutting-edge research
4. A Graduate School, where good researchers can concentrate on postgraduate teaching - so that "research led" is not just an empty OU^TM brand-building slogan
5. 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.

I have mentioned this before, but sometimes ya just have to crank that volume knob...and let the sound wash out over you (and possibly the neighbourhood) in an overpowering wave.

Like the James Page Quartet - two strings, one percussion and voice - performing their timeless masterwork Opus #2.  Was stereo sound really so new in 1969, that we marvelled so at the way the sound shifted across speakers?  I remember it being novel - and such a pleasure to revisit, sitting between my laaaarge speakers, in the new hifi unit, with my eyes closed.

Totally oblivious to all but the sweet vocals and accompaniment....

"You been coolin'
And baby, I've been droolin'
All the good times, baby, I've been misusin'-a/Oh
A-way, way down inside
I'm gonna give ya my love/Ah
I'm gonna give ya every inch of my love/Ah
I'm gonna give you my love/Ah
Yes, alright, let's go/Ah"

Did I REALLY listen to that in 1969, and not understand what it meant?  And this:

"Squeeze me, babe, 'till the juice runs down my leg
Do, squeeze, squeeze me, baby, until the juice runs down my leg
The wayyou squeeze my lemon-a
I'm gonna fall right outta bed, 'ed, 'ed, bed, yeah..."

I think I only woke up to what THAT was about in the last ten years...I suppose I was only 14 when I heard them the first time, and it was the awesome sound, rather than the lyrics, that captivated me...Led Zeppelin burst in on me (and everyone) with the subtlety of a cruise missile coming into a Baghdad bunker - and I think my hearing loss dates back to about then.  Them, and Deep Purple (Black Knight, you need to cue up "Smoke on the Water" and "Space Truckin'" right about now...B-).

But it's in the last ten or so years, when I have seriously got into blues, that I have realised just how good, and how novel, some of those early heavy rock outfits were - and how blues-influenced.  In fact, you can go back to Cream, Taste, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and even the Stones, and pick up an astonishing amount of very good blues: the live "Stray Cat Blues" off the Stones' "Get Yer Ya-Yas Out" has to be one of the nastiest blues tracks I have ever heard; Tull does a very passable "My Sunday Feeling"; Cream's "Crossroads" is the stuff of legend; and Rory Gallagher...suffice it to say that "Bullfrog Blues" is another one to blow your brains out with when the synapses need scouring.

"Well did you ever wake up
With them bullfrogs on your mind"
Well did you ever wake up
With them Bullfrogs on your mind?
You had to sit there laughin'
Laughin' just to keep from crying."

Sublime...!  You know, "Retroid Raving" actually gets its name from "Retroid Rock", which I presented on UCT Radio as a weekly two-hour classic rock show, between 1995 and 1996 - which is when I woke up to the blues background for most of the 70s rock that I grew up with.  And played a LOT of it...some of which survives as a collection of 60-120 minute MP3s entitled "Dinosaurs Live!", if anyone's interested.

Think I'll go and submerge my brain with some more dirigible....

Retroid could not help but notice - it's at the top of the UCT home page today - an article entitled "Research blossoms in VC's eight-year tenure".  Part of it says:

"Research has blossomed at this university and it could not have flourished if not led by a VC who cares very much about research," Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Danie Visser said of outgoing Vice-Chancellor, Professor Njabulo S Ndebele.

He was speaking at Wednesday night's event to celebrate UCT's research endeavour.

Yes.  Well.  Um.  Apart from the fact that Retroid could not BE there due to a myriad of child-transporting duties, and the fact that said backward-trending individual LIKES the outgoing VC...I think a statement like that might have left a somewhat sour taste.  I could refer you to the "research bled" raves - now several in number - or simply ask: how, exactly, did he and his team lead research to blossom (implying it had not flowered previously)?  UCT - as opposed to OU^TM - has always been one of the premier research institutions in this country; has this changed?  Have we improved more than Tukkies, or Wits - and by what criteria?  A certain former DVC was more famous for NOT listening to researchers than the other thing; I can think of a number of very worthy thrusts / themes / hopeful monsters that withered away, not for lack of interest at ground level, but because the top level did not engage.  Things like biotechnology.  Bioinformatics.  Structural biology....

Anyone seeing a trend here?

Ah, well.  As a poor footsoldier in the Accountant-led African-Class World University (ALACWU; nice punny bit of onomatopoeia there...B-), mine is not to reason why.  Mine is just to get research money...and give it for the greater glory of OU^TM.

"Black voices have already been raised in the defence of Hlophe. The Black Lawyers' Association, apparently responding to calls for Hlophe to be suspended pending the outcome of the commission's deliberations, emphasised that Hlophe was entitled to the presumption of innocence until found guilty.

Its stand was reinforced by an open letter to the judges of the constitutional court from Paul Ngobeni, the deputy registrar of legal services at the University of Cape Town.

He argued that the complaint should have been made by the individual judges whom Hlophe allegedly tried to influence and that the complaints should have been registered discreetly by the judges concerned and not "orchestrated" through the media as a joint complaint of the constitutional court as a single entity.

He also contended that the constitutional court had, thereby, violated the "common law adage that no man should be a judge in his own cause"."

By Patrick Laurence

Well, well, well: the Absent Registrar raises his head - to again defend what appears rapidly to be becoming the indefensible....  In his official capacity?  If not, did he say so?  And does he in fact HAVE an official capacity, given that we were told things would be clearer after February, and they are most certainly not?  Is the man in evidence in any official capacity at OU^TM?

And of his travails with the law in the Great Satan??  I note a very interesting couple of comments to one of my posts on the subject: link here if your're interested.  And not even from pigment-disadvantaged Seffricans....

In case y'all thought it was a fluke, here is the same class on another exam entirely.

And yes, again I told them what they would be getting - see "Will it be in the exams?"

Same result.

Frequency vs mark; pretty much a normal distribution - with some outlier clever guys.  And a couple of others...passmark was 15.

Horses, water, leading...some listen, some don't, and some just muddle through.  Bless 'em all...B-)

1. Give pre-practical class. Tell students what practical test question will be
2. Do practical. Reiterate that you will ask them x and y
3. See students.  Tell them yes, that is what you will ask
4. Set test. Ask x and y
5. Mark test: OK, should be out of 8, but let's pretend it’s 16…haven't cracked Excel yet! 

MORAL: It doesn’t matter whether you tell or what you tell them, the result is that some will fail, some will do well – and most will just do OK.

Students: gotta love them.

Because you certainly can't shoot them.

You know, there I was, all happy with myself: I'd done a ten-year rolling upgrade on all my 2nd and 3rd year teaching material on the Web; I'd put together a linear version of everything as a singel Web page so they didn't have to skip about too much; I'd even PDFised a version so they could download and print it easily - with the same progression as I'd used in my lectures, and no extraneous material included.  I more or less told them what the questions would be - it's OK, Hugh, I do it every year, and the distribution of marks is still normal, and people still fail - and I sat back, secure that I had done my job and possibly enlivened the learning experience as well.

Then the students started to trickle in.  Holding old exam papers.  Papers set when there were more lectures in the course I teach.  When more material used to be included, now shifted to 3rd year.  Asking "How do we answer this question?".

"It's OK, I didn't teach that, you don't need to learn it", I said to the first batch.  "If it's not in the revision notes, you don't need to learn it", I said to the second.  "Did I teach that this year?" I asked the third - dangerous question, that; they may not know the answer as they may not have been there.  No answer from that lot - so I took pity, and said: "No, it's not in this exam".

By the fourth, I was fixing them with a steely gaze, and saying "Show that section to me in the revision notes".  They, of course, didn't have them.  I showed them the lack of same section on my computer.  They looked bemused.  They tried again: "But didn't you teach that?"  I said: "Show me in your notes".  They didn't have a set with them.  I said "It's fine, it's not in the exam".  Still looking bewildered, they left.

Fortunately, they write tonight.  I'm still wondering if someone, convinced I should have asked the question they will have spotted, will try and work the learned answer in for another question.

As I have said before: I hate exams.

From a recent newspaper article:

"Top universities are being pressured to lower their entry requirements because secondary schools are failing to produce enough academically brilliant pupils....  The government has given less money to, but set more targets for, the universities in what amounts to an attack on their academic freedom, xxx claimed yesterday.

"It does nobody any good to think that you can deal with the problems of secondary education by lowering standards in our universities," he said. "Of course universities have to be as open to talent as possible but there continue to be real challenges in secondary education.""

Sound familiar?  The heavy hand of Ms Pandor, you think?

You'd be wrong: that was the Chancellor of Oxford University in the UK, at a fund-raising occasion at Oxfordbridgeshire recently.  Again, the marvels of modern technology: got via a TinyURL link from a Twitter post, from my Esteemed Master in Viral Professional Development, AJ Cann.

The article goes on:

"Oxford was launching a £1.25bn fundraising drive to boost its student support, facilities and academic recruitment in a bid to rival the US Ivy League universities such as Harvard and Yale."

Woooo...that would be ZAR14 000 000 000.00 or so.  Don't we have alumni?  Like - ooh, let me see now - Donny Gordon, for one?  How professional a fund-raising team do WE have?  Not ZAR14x10exp9 worth, that's for sure...what DO we target?  I recall it to be somewhere in the ZAR10exp7 range or so - what has happened with that?  Do we even HAVE a halfway decent endowment?  Us, the accountant-led African-class world University?

Time the OU^TM brand got out there and did some work, chaps...!

* = 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.  Everything takes longer and costs more - and the quality goes down.

A very disturbing story today: a non-South African African who works in our group was in Shoprite-Checkers in Mowbray today, with his wife, doing their regular grocery shop.  The till operator spoke to him in isiXhosa, and he asked her to speak in English as he could not understand what she was saying.

Instead of doing so, she spoke loudly in isiXhosa across him to her colleague on another till, with the word "makwerekwere" prominent in the dialogue.

This exchange went on until the manager interevened, asking what the problem was.  Our colleague's wife said "They are more interested in talking about makwerekwere than serving us".  The manager instructed the till operator to serve them, then, as they were leaving, was seen to call the till operator into his office, presumably to tell her off.

This is blatant xenophobia in action - and not 2 km from two UCT campuses, in the heart of the southern suburbs.

Personally I think this warrants a communication to Shoprite-Checkers head office: one, to commend the manager; two, to demand that their staff be instructed to smile and greet EVERYONE who comes to be served, regardless of what they look or sound like.

We are ALL makwerekwere - or we should be prepared to be.

You know, we did a head count at our lab meeting yesterday: two Namibians, three Zimbabweans, a former Zambian...oh, and four South Africans.  Another lab meeting today: same former Zambian, a Brit-Zimbabwean-South African, a Mozambican, a Ugandan, a German and a Pakistani, ONE South African - and a missing Kenyan.

Not that it matters, but that is nine Caucasian descendants, five ethnic Africans (one a South African) and two Asian-origin folk - yet only the "black" folk were directly affected by the xenophobia.

Very, very sad.