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December 2014

Graun piece says FB shouldn't apologise for year in review. Argues that if you upload pics of someone who dies you deserve to be reminded.

I've concluded that we can't make ethical claims for our work based just on theory. The world is going to hell & won't fix itself.

Much humanities discourse generates strong leftist (in non-technical sense) theory. What assessable (for centre-right) praxis might result?

Theory, in all forms, is important. Academics are encouraged to write it, in various forms. Is "impact", though, an assessment of praxis?

"since the Association is
dependent on the income from its publications ... Open Access to academic publications poses a
serious threat"

More seriously, I thought Paddington was a lovely film. Capaldi great as the man who votes fascism without thinking it through.

Perverse thought: REF is upside down. If we want to bring the quality of all universities up, we need to invest in weaker institutions.

Cameron praises "giving, sharing and taking care of others". I thought we were all for letting migrants drown when I last looked.

STEM allowed to stay safe in short run. That is, until industry decide that it's too "monopolistic" for them to get state funding.

Rewatched Lord of the Rings. Aside from being overly long & keen on monarchy, noticed all the heroes are white. Most of the villains aren't.

If computer refuses to run disloyal software, it violates own principle of loyalty. If user must choose, then computer can be disloyal.

Some of this seems to be about hardware & some, like remote attestability, software. In this case, who decides whether software is disloyal?

Interesting new essay from Stallman there. Some contradictions though? What if the user orders the computer to run a "disloyal" program?

Things I did not know before: one of the originally suggested names for the Open University was "The University of the Air".

"Britain's burden", "helping the UK to project soft power", "must get over [...] post-colonial guilt", "importing/exporting students".

Also, disclosure claims that VC of a UK university "does not work for any company or organisation that would benefit from this article".

"Financial Conduct Authority says conduct of Blackrock MD fell short of standards expected in the City". £43k fraud nowhere near enough.

Rival ads for extra runways at Heathrow & Gatwick. Not even selling something in present. Advertising for political influence on future.

The reason there's no "dislike" on Facebook: "liking" is not a signal to other users, it's to FB. They already have a "hide this" option.

"Lord West says UK agents may have been present during waterboarding – but there is no need for new inquiry". Oh, that's OK then.

After all, if they want to make it an age split (it isn't - know many older people who pursued PhDs), then people starting now have fees.

Dodgy proxy measure of PhD for competence aside, wonder if that tribunal will consider whether it actually discriminates against the young.

Reconciles panic over APCs with not only a solution but also an analogy and a counter-rationale to classical economics/competition.

Thinking in terms of risk pools now seems to me very important. Wish I had more of that in the book but it's only become my focus recently.

"Is the digital medium pushing journalism/the media towards superficiality?", asks Radio 4. Have they looked at the print media recently?

Another interesting diff between monograph sale & journal subs: you know what books you're buying unless big deal but not which articles.

The only thing scarier than remotely reconfiguring network interfaces is remotely reinstalling GRUB. sudo reboot. #phew

3. One of the roles of LIS and the library should be to teach researchers how to distinguish based on more than these proxy measures.

More on "predatory journals": 1. who is actually surprised that anyone can put up a website or print pages and call it a "journal"?

Among the things I don't love: ezproxy urls in article/book bibliographies. Couldn't publishers strip these out as a value-adding activity?

Another good example of why publish doesn't mean "make public". Things that are in "print" and public can be re-published. @michaelbhaskar

News. Racism. The brutality of the British state forcing the poor to food banks. The risk of accidental nuclear strikes. Police violence.

Every time I write a webapp I'm impressed with Django, up to a point. All the basics are really easy but complexity soon mounts.

LRT: thank you to @JoVanEvery to reminding me of today's National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada.

Things I didn't know: Belgian PhD students get a very competitive salary to make it financially appealing. Want to retain best students.

But now I'm extremely sad reading my feed. Police literally getting away with murder, again. Peaceful protesters being attacked.