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July 2016

Nothing makes my Friday evening like OLH signups! My analysis clearly shows that library acquisitions meetings in the US are on a Friday...

Stern just a set of recommendations for now; challenges re. ECRs + temp contracts will probably be worked out in implementation.

Suspect that Stern moves the "point of gaming" to the contract stage. But unis can't take too many off res. contracts or will get less QR.

Seems a bit unfair for institutions housing Ph.D. students to be able to take their outputs, given fee structures(!)

There's a problem with the Stern output portability stuff... What about Ph.D. students/ECRs who build a profile in order to get hired?

I like Harvey's line: if you're building housing for foreign investment instead of for people to live in, you get different kinds of cities.

Susan Buck-Morss noting the necessarily partial knowledge paths that we must pursue even if we crave systematicity #birkbeck

Harvey's insistence on a useful critical theory an interesting twist given the origins of the term in Horkheimer #birkbeck

Harvey points out that the crash of 07-08 not (just) a financial crash but an urban event. Originated in housing. #birkbeck

David Harvey on using Marx for practical understanding of housing crises and his trans-application of critical-theoretical ideas.

Esther Leslie kicking off with observations on the relations of critical theory to Benjamin's constant state of emergency and crises.

Looking forward to this afternoon's stellar panel at Birkbeck. S Zizek, S Buck-Morss, D Harvey and E Leslie. Chaired by Jacqueline Rose.

It's also interesting that the anxiety sometimes seems to be that everyone will be forced to do the new thing...

But the second it's e.g. stylometry people say things like: "well, so what that we can know about quantified aspects of literary style?"

All study of aesthetics ends in a "so what" that can only justify it unto itself. It is knowledge about art, after all.

Also, the whole "the sector has £Xbn surplus, it's just grabbing cash". Except that with Brexit it's spent in 1.5 years to cover EU funding.

I don't see newspapers clamouring to put front pages out that slam *above*-inflation rises in energy rates etc.

As they do badly in TEF, they lose income & reputation. Then they have to lose staff. Then they go bust. Then the new alt-providers swoop.

But the thing to worry about with TEF isn't the rise. It's the cutting of how much institutions that fare badly can charge.

There's no recognition that tuition fees are needed so that universities can employ people (b/c gov won't tax), not just as a punishment.

OK, so did these newspapers expect that, as inflation rises, universities would just perpetually stay at the 2011 level?

I've never agreed with tuition fees, but the popular press coverage of TEF is dire. "TUITION FEES TO TO RISE ABOVE £9K", for example.

Teaser screenshot of our @openlibhums translation tool (work in progress) @elotroalex @dennistenen @the_blochian

And I've just clicked "go" to start the next round of OLH Library Board votes for journal admissions! Exciting times.

Anyway, forthcoming piece is on different versions of the novel & the publishing processes that led to different texts appearing worldwide.

Truth is, I'm not sure I even like Cloud Atlas, but something about it keeps drawing me back. Particularly its stylometric signatures.

My article on Cloud Atlas went into production today. I feel thoroughly peer reviewed but will be glad to share this with the world.

I've written to my MP @joanryanEnfield to ask her to please attend and vote against the dire HE bill on Tuesday. I hope others will too.

A little anxious around movement of HE to education since unclear what position for research. Glad Javid is off though.

This week v. good for OLH. Thanks to a Canadian consortial group for renewing & on Friday, we work on the next round of journal admissions!

Urgh. Was debating whether it was a better idea to work at home today. Got halfway to Birkbeck and all trains cancelled.

Giving a keynote at the Electronic Visualization and the Arts Pre-Conference Symposium today... Hope to see some of you there!

This week was the best yet since my stroke. Every day has been pretty much normal, I've started exercising & the fatigue is so much better.

Only bug we have left is that if you fire an event from within a DOM object that is overwritten, JS execution halts.

Today I wrote the code for our translation app that takes the contents of a hypothes.is annotation and replaces the text in the DOM with it.

No second reading of the HE bill next week in parliament. Only a few days left to get it in. via @Wonkhe

In other news, pleased with how the work on the translation tool for @openlibhums is going. A good day of building today.

Since my stroke I've had odd type of memory loss. First time I try to remember a number, I can't. Once I've looked it up, it's back though.

That said, a decade is both a long time but also gone in the blink of an eye. Clear that early warnings not taken seriously, though.

Then, a decade later, in 2013, there's a rush to claim that it's all moving too quickly because nothing was done for a decade.

I've been reading back through past House of Commons Sci/Tech sessions. Amazing that open access is considered a "live issue" in 2003 by MRC

Dear Elsevier, stop spamming me to take your survey, regardless of the fact that I "have published research in scholarly journals".

Now escaping politics, twitter and all by learning the Baker Street solo on my sax. The neighbours will thank me, I'm sure.

Did my first gym session since I had a stroke. A world away from previous levels of fitness doing a short light cycle but it's a start.

Just revisited that 2013 piece by Michael Gove headed "I refuse to surrender to the Marxist teachers hell-bent on destroying our schools".

Dorothy has to come back because Aunt Em can't afford to put on mourning and still pay mortgage. #FutureHums

I wonder what the role of "high theory" is in @sarahchurchwell's take... Has a scientistic bent to name but has undone hums #futurehums

Yes. Afraid I agree w/ @sarahchurchwell; our politicians often have hums degrees. The "critical thinking" line is not strong. #futurehums

Challenge w/ current system, though: last time I submitted article in accessible language, reviewers blasted it for being casual #futurehums

I quite like @sarahchurchwell here on access in the sense of language & readability (in symbiosis with my work on OA) #futurehums

Palgrave justify double dipping/no offsetting around sustainability. Even though they have the highest book processing charge. #futurehums

"Why didn't the people on the other side have a plan for how to fulfil our promises?", asked Boris, slurringly.

Sounds easy, but I was just reading some of our documents. HEFCE & its functions mentioned often in responsibilities of governors etc.

Besides rewrites, complex documents then require committees to ratify, possibly legal filings etc. Not even considered as a cost by BIS.

Overhead in labour time that new UK "HE architecture" creates is huge. Move HEFCE and every institution has to rewrite governance statutes.

Helen Pleasance gives alternative title to her paper "what it means to know too much about Myra Hindley" (!) #trucrifi16

Now Martin King is looking at masculinity in the Red Riding Quartet and the way in which policing is shaped by time and space. #trucrifi16

First up at #trucrifi16 is Het Phillips speaking about true crime and modernism. Currently charting the use of small detail.

Still, I'll then have an enjoyable day chairing the author panel at the @birkbeck_eh True Crime Fictions event. Can't wait!

Sadist in the hospital admin block booked me in for a 7.30am MRI scan at hospital on the other side of London.