Newest thoughts →

May 2016

#bookhour not a deep insight, but it was interesting that this section also featured typographical changes in spacing.

#bookhour #q1 well, all plots move deathward, according to White Noise... I also found the dialogue more Ratner's Star than Point Omega.

If we leave the EU, I bet we'll see a rise of rhetoric that we have been "freed" from having to go along with Europe on OA.

Now the EU has a massive drive towards OA because of the Netherlands presidency, which clearly empowers the UK gov's stance on OA.

For years, some publishers have argued that OA in the UK wasn't viable because our small island was "going it alone".

Nervous about the EU referendum for many many reasons, but in the world of open access, there's an interesting irony...

Hmm. Had a tougher day today with lots of fatigue. But I did prepare a talk for the DARTS5 conference in Totnes on Thursday.

Need to do a thorough sweep through to check that the underlying metadata is good in all instances, but basic check seems to be working!

Bit nervous that this update is forcing me on to Windows 10. Which I fear will destroy my bootloader & main Linux setup. Oh great.

So how can you know their expertise to assess when what/how you are assessing hasn't been decided? Or perhaps the consultation is a sham.

Great how TEF assessment panel members are to be appointed before the technical consultation closing date.

Good friends commissioned a portrait of our Guinea Pigs as a birthday present for me and it's brilliant!

You know, "directing", meaning "giving feedback", "correcting", and "improving" what students do. Or, as we might call it: teaching.

The new GCSE drama specification in the UK says teachers are not to "direct" their students' performances, which only now make up 20% anyway

Right, back to work. But no, latest Thunderbird has a bug blocking me from setting a security exception, so spend 1/2 an hour fixing.

"Also, competition and markets authority says there must be competition and markets in higher education. Over which we must have authority."

"Against almost all responses, we're damn well doing this anyway. And we can measure you even if it's dodgy. And there must be competition."

Favourite part of the White Paper: the bit where it talks in approving terms of how it's doing what majority of responses said on one point.

Went to the book launch for Lesley Thompson's latest over at Kew Bookshop this evening. Spotted @DrBlacklock on the shelf!

Ah, and the old classic: employment rates to measure teaching quality. Because this won't cause grade inflation. Nope. Not a chance.

I also see that they haven't backed down on their truly dodgy teaching proxy measures. Such as employers choosing to sponsor some courses.

White Paper's mask really slips when it talks about drop outs of students "who were not capable of benefiting from higher education".

This will explain why I have started to feel a lot better in recent weeks. Still a way to go but basically I'm healing well!

Turns out that my head is rewiring its vasculature and now has blood flowing through both carotids again. Amazing result.

"Other university league tables focus on research scores. We don’t, because they are not important to students." - Guardian. They should be.

Of course, very hard to choose who and what to fund. Many researchers fear for academic freedom & some publishers cry 'market'.

APCs are a symptom. Assumes that researchers will select based on some kind of price sensitivity. This makes volume crucial for publisher.

Problem is often funding infrastructure off temporary research grants. Gives no security to infrastructure. As @gbilder & @CameronNeylon say

Thinking about the way that preserved objects act as signposts in imagined dystopian futures to lost epistemic frames/use contexts.

Today I have been writing about metadata-like objects in Emily St. John Mandel's _Station Eleven_. Metadata-aesthetics book up to 40k words.

While Elsevier buys SSRN to achieve full-stack dominance, spending your time building open platforms in unis makes you neoliberal apparently

"All plots tend to move deathward" DeLillo wrote in _White Noise_. 2/3rds through _Zero K_ & it looks to move cryogenically resurrectionward

Apparently it's very common to have disturbed sleep patterns following a stroke. But really? 5am on a Saturday. Totally awake. Doh.

Nobody said publishers don't do things that should be paid for. We just said some of them are greedy. Like over a $1bn profit greedy.

Tough choice this evening: read the deadly dull but dangerous White Paper or the exciting work of my Ph.D. students? Going to treat myself.

Easiest solution: become more like existing institutions and target more conventional demographics. Not good.

Recent "reforms" to HE haven't resulted in more diverse "market". They've forced institutions that specialised to become more conventional.

#HEWhitePaper says that relocation of QR to UKRI (the new single body) "is critical to achieving greater strategic coordination" #armslength

Jo Johnson has a lot of primary legislation to get through parliament for the HE White Paper plans. Is there time?

Tomorrow is grim HE White Paper day! Oh joy! And my stereo amplifier has just blown up! What a time to be alive.

But also warns that by 2001 the FBI and Scotland Yard may have stylometric profiles of all citizens. Who knows whether they do...

Now relaxing by reading the excellent 1982 book, The Computation of Style, which writes w great enthusiasm of the development of computers.

This morning's fun: CT angio scans. On a Saturday AM! Checking what my useless blood vessels are up to. #SevenDayNHSisHereAlready

Particularly enjoyed @printjournalism's paper on c19 advertising and it's non-digitization at #bbkdigifutures. Wanted to hear more on this.

Basically, the frequency of words like "the" and "a" are different enough between sections of the novel to tell them apart computationally.

Stats + lit fact of the evening: classic delta of words that occur in all sections of Cloud Atlas are enough to differentiate the sections.

Oh dear. Think I just read the most libertarian techno-fetishist piece ever. A Slashdot article about replacing government with computers.

More and more, the EU referendum is just so clearly Conservative party factional in-fighting dressed as a crucial democratic issue.

It's this kind of thinking that brings me back again and again to thinking about labour as core concern in education and open access.

Stuff on the commodity-form of monetarily free goods because of their interrelation with exchanged labour power is important.

Never liked Radiohead's music, but I do like their style. Site called W.A.S.T.E and new album on Pynchon's birthday.

Seems BBC site is only taking one constituency into account: Bexley and Bromley: Goldsmith 51.6%, Khan 25.5%

BBC seems to be saying Goldsmith has won London mayoral election with over 50%. Guardian says count is 44% to Khan.

When peer-review works constructively in my discipline (I mean 2,000 word generous reports from both readers) being an editor isn't so bad.

I think of @samplereality's bots of conviction. I think of @elotroalex & @dennistenen's various projects. And hundreds more.

And I think - isn't that a good thing? To allow people access? To learn about histories of literature? To try to make tech help?

And then I think of DH projects to make work accessible to people who can't afford it. Of editions that trace complex publishing histories.

I think social theory and radical lit etc can empower people. I like it. But it's hardly liberating the world from within universities.

"Of course, it does resist commodification, though", you cry. Yes, except the tuition fees and the price of buying the research.

My fave line from the "critiquing the critique" piece is about how writing radical interpretations of lit hasn't brought down late capital.

Whenever the words "X is not art" appear in a Guardian headline, the byline will be Jonathan Jones.

Today I checked the metadata on 200 or so back content import articles for @openlibhums. Exciting project! More soon...