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March 2019

Totally up and down day in which I got loads done early on but then also felt truly terrible at various points this afternoon thanks to medication. Committed some crimes against music with an electric guitar this evening to compensate.

This week we came up against the most bureaucratically complex supplier arrangement for OLH yet. Org wants us to provide a government-signed document proving we DON'T have criminal records. Err, our government can barely function at the moment and do NOT provide this service!

We do hit this kind of challenge often and it takes LOADS of labour time to resolve. People who think it's easy to get customer arrangements in place for open access publishing when coordinating internationally have no idea, often, of the requirements/admin overhead.

Reading work about utopian and dystopian fiction about climate change while sitting in the garden in a t-shirt in March and feeling warm feels both utopian and dystopian.

Res Pro playbook today on grade inflation: If you are good enough to pass your driving test, you pass—and it is still respected as a qualification. Nobody would say that the value of the driving licence is devalued in years when a higher proportion of people pass.

Two gratuitous music purchases arrived today. One of the original Tici Taci releases on vinyl and another Duncan Gray release that comes with a handwritten note from The Guv, Andrew Weatherall.

So let me get this straight... We have an extension on Brexit until the 12th April if the vote that is held next Tuesday fails. Except we can't have a vote on Tuesday because it's been ruled out by the Speaker?

Oryx and Crake was the best novel I read this week (so far), but I was really not sold on the other two in the trilogy. Felt unnecessary to be honest.

"‘Terrible’: Tory despair over leadership deepens but May ploughs on" says the Guardian. Wonder why she "ploughs on"? Maybe it's because the Tory party didn't vote to get rid of her when it had the chance.

May to the public: "We asked you the question already and you gave us your answer."
Parliament to May: "You asked us the question already and we gave you your answer, twice."

Today I'm reading something I should have read a long time ago. Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood.

Well, that was pretty darned good.

Irony of ironies, I think I got an email from Nan Z Da when I had sepsis, in hospital, asking to see my data and all (which is coming out soon with the book). Her article has come out today... and guess where I am?

It's good that the latest vote in the House of Commons isn't legally binding because the referendum wasn't either.

A mixed morning... Had an article accepted just now, which was good news. The bad news is that I am now in neurophysiology, my least favourite diagnostic department, awaiting the doctor with the electric shock needles...

Neurophysiology feels like some throwback to a darker medical time. "I'm afraid we're going to have to test this by sending a load of electric shocks through your nerves." Worse when you know what's coming, too.

Fortunately, no new problems found.

Pleased to say that I'll be keynoting the Fordham University and Birkbeck, UoL International Symposium on Digital Scholarship on the 3rd-5th June. More details forthcoming soon... (Apologies, first tweet got the date wrong.)

I love the @ResFortnight 8am playbook

@ResFortnight "If you believe the tabloid rhetoric, there is a free speech crisis in UK universities and the blame lies squarely at the feet of snowflake students who are incapable of confronting opinions that differ from their own."

@ResFortnight "If you believe a Court of Appeal ruling, details of which were published on 8 March, there is indeed a free speech crisis in UK universities. However, it relates not to over-sensitive undergraduates but to the guidance on implementing...

@ResFortnight the Prevent duty given to universities by the government."

Today's 5am pulsed-on-steroids discovery: you can mount block device filesystems in Ubuntu and probably other distros via terminal without sudo/root using udisksctl mount -b /dev/blockdevice

It is good & right that the NHS feeds all inpatients. I did a count though & noted that my meals today came with just 2 portions of vegetables. Even if I chose all the veg available, it still wouldn't be the recommended 5. This doesn't seem ideal for recovery.

Because I can, I get myself fruit and salads from the shop... But surely there should be a way to give better nutrition to sick people who often can't help themselves in this way?

A very sad day. I am stuck in hospital still not feeling great and our lovely Mr Pig had total irreversible kidney failure and had to be put down.

I am afraid I will be slower to reply to emails over the next couple of days as I have been admitted to hospital and am quite unwell. Please bear with me.

Billing my life as a medical humanities project

Today's IFS report is extremely significant for UK HE. In modeling loan non-repayment it shows major distributional shifts in government investment in the sector that are likely to be politically unpalatable.

For example, it notes that deficit per tranche of creative arts students will rise from £25m to £1.2bn. Cost at Russell Group institutions per student has fallen by about £6k while cost per post-92 has risen by £2k. Engineering is £9k cheaper for gov w loans. CA, again, £6k more.

If a government was looking for an argument for differential fees, this equation of loan non-repayment with government HE investment is the report they've been needing. Logical extension of LEO but this one is going to haunt us.

IFS + ONS + Augur (the latter more likely to fizzle out) = problems

Every 15 minutes for the past 4 hours I've had an email from @tandfonline asking me to complete the SAME SURVEY. "Unsubscribe?"

Them: "Please attend our annual Editorial Board meeting."
Me: "I will do this as it is clearly my duty."

Them: "Then we're having a launch party at the Mail Rail underground postal network museum. Including riding the trains."
Me: "I AM THERE AND WILL BE STAYING ALL NIGHT."

Back of the envelope mulling over breakfast: with 1/10th of just UC's Elsevier spend in a single year, even if no other institutions participated, reckon we could run OLH for three years.

I'm being subjected to some competitive sewing TV show and my god what is this?

It seems to be a whole hour long too.

Also pleased to announce today that I have taken up the role of Strategic Lead in Digital Education at @BirkbeckUoL