Song of the Week: Misunderstood

In 1977, Pete Townshend of the Who and Ronnie Lane of Small Faces and the Faces put out an album called Rough Mix.  A collaboration between two seminal figures of 60s/70s rock, the album contains many gems, among them Keep Me Turning and Heart to Hang Onto.  (It was also reputed to be one of the most alcohol-soaked recording sessions in history.)  A lesser-known song from Pete has always appealed to me:  Misunderstood.  Here are some of the lyrics:

Just want to be misunderstood,
I want to be feared in my neighbourhood.
Just want to be a moody man,
Say things that nobody can understand.

I want to be obscure and oblique,
Inscrutable and vague,
So hard to pin down.
I want to leave open mouths when I speak,
Want people to cry when I put them down.

These words always made me think of my PhD advisor, who was really a fine guy, but he was absolutely unreadable and intimidated the hell out of everyone. Anyway, it's a good melody and the lyrics are very clever.  Give it a listen.

(By the way, travel will keep me for posting for a week or two.)

Movie Friday: The Hobbit--An Unexpected Journey

I saw Peter Jackson's new middle earth extravaganza last weekend, and found it to be a mixed bag at best.  On the plus side, Martin Freeman was very good as Bilbo Baggins, and Ian McKellen held his own as a slightly younger version of Gandalf than we saw 10 years ago.  On the other hand, the dwarves were mostly forgettable; quite a bit less compelling than most of the rest of the Fellowship of the Ring.  The decision to split a fairly brief book into three movies also clearly hurt the story, requiring a lot of filler and extensions of trivial episodes into lengthy set pieces.  Perhaps the most annoying thing for me was the ridiculous overkill when it came to cliffhangers (e.g., the storm giant battle, or the escape from the goblins).  It took all the worst excesses of Jackson's King Kong and amplified them further.  Finally, I saw it in 3D at 48 fps, and found the experience rather exhausting as opposed to entertaining.

Although it seems to be doing all right at the box office, the critical response has been lukewarm, at best.  Here's the trailer.

Song of the Week: The Waves

Wang Chung was a somewhat short-lived 80's band.  They had a brief period of prominence with hits like "Dance Hall Days" and "Everybody Have Fun Tonight."  Pretty light weight stuff, for the most part, for a band that had pretentions of philosophical significance.

Their second album, Points on a Curve, had a number of nice songs on it, including this one.  It's not deep, but I find listening to it very restful.  Give it a listen!

Movie Friday: Annie Hall

I recently caught most of Annie Hall on TV, and marvelled over what a great movie it still is.  Of course, it wrestles with many of Woody Allen's favorite themes:  love, Jewishness, New York, etc., but it also has some truly great lines.  There's the great bit with Marshal McLuhan, but one that I had forgotten about was the exchange during which Allen and Diane Keaton are discussing her wardrobe and she mentions that her tie had been a gift from "Grammy Hall."  Alvy's rejoinder:  "My grammy never gave gifts.  She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks."

Unbelievably, this movie does not hold a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  Some clown who likes Larry the Cable Guy gave it a lukewarm review.

Here's the opening, including my first exposure to the joke about the two women complaining about the lousy food and the small portions at a Catskills resort:

Song of the Week: Danny Boy

Famous Irish/Canadian tenor Colm Wilkinson recently performed in Sherwood Park.  Most noted for his work as the original Jean Valjean in Les Miserables as well as Phantom of the Opera, Wilkinson has a broad repertoire that includes modern music and classics.  One of his signature songs is the Irish ballad Danny Boy.  Set to the tune of Londonderry Air, this iconic song was actually written by an Englishman, Frederic Weatherly.

Wilkinson is a fantastically talented tenor, able to hit ridiculously high notes, as in Bring Him Home.  Here he is, singing Danny Boy a few years back.

Whither vs Colloquy

Once again, Jeremy has refused to publish a comment of mine.  This particular time, it concerned Kathleen Lowery's high and mighty criticisms of anonymous commenters.  It was not particularly personal, it simply (and correctly) identified her behaviour as that of an internet troll, clearly trying to provoke people in a comment thread.  I think Jeremy is oversensitive on this sort of thing, and with respect to moderation policy begins to resemble a certain other "blog" I was talking about earlier.

Time to Declare Colloquy a Failed Experiment

It's been a while since I looked in on the U of A's Colloquy blog.  As predicted, it has degenerated into a stale, Pravda-like news feed for the University's current propaganda.  For each of the four December entries, there are zero comments.  I see this as a reflection of both the lack of true engagement in the happy-talk posts, and would-be commenters' prior experience with the ridiculous moderation practices of the people who run it.  It's probably time to retire this largely pointless activity, and focus the resources on something more productive.

Song of the Week: Cry Me a River

This week, let's do an oldie, Cry Me a River (not the Justin Timberlake song!).  It has been covered many times, but I especially like the Julie London version from 1955:

Julie's phrasing and smoky voice very nicely convey the sentiment of the lyrics.  The song played a significant role in the film V for Vendetta.  Here's the scene:

Song of the Week: 50 Mission Cap

Here's a fun song from one of Canada's best bands of the last 25 years:  The Tragically Hip.  Recounting in brief the strange story of the disappearance of Maple Leaf star Bill Barilko, it is one of the best songs on Fully Completely, a real masterpiece of an album.  Not much else to say, except "enjoy."

Movie Friday--On Saturday!

I finally saw Skyfall today.  Not a bad movie as entertainment, but hardly deep.  The Mendes effect seemed to be negligible, apart from fairly stylish direction.  There were a couple of surprises, which I will not discuss as they are legitimate spoilers.  But I will say, Javier Bardem was truly great, the best part of the movie for sure.  Of course, he won an Academy Award for No Country For Old Men, but he was equally great in so many other roles, ranging from a bad guy in Collateral to the main character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  Really, he is one of the most versatile actors working today.

Kids Today

So I'm in the locker room today and there are two chemical engineering students down the way bitching about some exam.  (I presume they were ChemE's because they were talking about conversion factors for barrels of oil and the Carnot cycle.)  It was painful to listen to them griping about the unfairness of the marks they lost, and it made me feel thankful that I don't have to teach whiny-ass titty babies like this on a regular basis.  I mean really:  one of them got a question marked down because his answer had 10 to the 6th instead of 10 to the 7th.  How long does this guy think he would keep his job if his calculation is off by an order of magnitude?

Slacking Again

No MOTW today, since I have not really watched anything over the last couple of weeks.  Still have hopes of seeing Skyfall, but for now I got nuthin.

The Superstar Fallacy

Wikipedia defines a fallacy as "an error in reasoning often due to a misconception or a presumption."  I believe that the federal government's ill-conceived Canada Excellence Research Chair program and the U of A's enthusiastic buy-in illustrate a fallacy.  The specific fallacy that I have in mind is known as "affirming the consequent."  In the case of the CERC program, it goes like this:  

•The best universities, such as Harvard, have many academic superstars on their faculties.

•U of A is given several CERCs from the federal government.

•U of A will become one of the world's top universities.

Of course, this argument makes the mistake of assuming that having academic superstars is the reason that a university such as Harvard is great.  A more compelling argument might be that Harvard being great is the reason why it is able to attract academic superstars.

This program is based on the idea that only established researchers from elsewhere can bestow "ambitious research programs" upon a university.  That's interesting when one looks at Alberta's Steacie Fellow awardees, or at a more senior level, the University Cup and the Kaplan Prize.  Most of these people have spent much or all of their academic careers here.  This indicates that it is possible to establish world-class programs by simply attracting excellent young researchers and providing them with a nurturing environment that permits success.

So, the CERC program throws money at a goal that could be met with patient building of academic research programs across Canada.  But our elites are not patient; they are looking for quick fixes.  Moreover, they are predisposed to favour situations that increase stratification, as that conforms to their world-views.  So they reallocate funds from proven programs to pay for boondoggles such as CERCs.

I bring this up because of yesterday's story in the Edmonton Journal about the abrupt departure of one of U of A's CERC recruits.  It's an embarrassment, and terrible PR for the University, regardless of Indira's efforts at spin control.  Think of the good those millions could have done, supporting excellent researchers who are already in Canada.  Programs like this, as well as the equally ill-conceived Banting Fellow and Vanier Award programs, are not only a waste of money, but a sure sign of a raging inferiority complex:  our own researchers are not worthy; let's bring in someone really good from elsewhere.

Update:  On the plus side, while Edmonton may be getting some bad publicity out of this, at least no one has (recently) labeled us the earth's rectum, a distinction that Windsor and Winnipeg cannot claim.

Late Song of the Week: The Rain Song

What can I say about The Rain Song that hasn't already been said?  One of the real landmarks in the storied career of Led Zeppelin:  in some ways as epic as Stairway to Heaven but without the fatigue that comes with decades of over-playing.  Robert Plant wrote some of his best lyrics here:  "This is the mystery of the quotient...upon us all a little rain must fall."  A complex and fascinating melody and chord progression, and sophisticated orchestration.  The song was used to great effect in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, in a scene near the end backstage at a Stillwater concert.

Here's a very nice live version by Page and Plant:

Movie of the Week: American Beauty

I'm hoping to see Skyfall this weekend.  In general, I have been happy with the Daniel Craig era of the James Bond films, but what really has me intrigued is the fact that Sam Mendes directed this latest one.  I consider him to be a talented an thought-provoking director.  Revolutionary Road was a little hard to take, though that was more about the subject matter than the way it was filmed. On the other hand, I really loved Road to Perdition.

Since I haven't seen Skyfall yet, I'll highlight a different Sam Mendes film, and one of my top ten all-time favourites, for sure:  American Beauty.  This was an extremely well-received film when it came out, and in my opinion deservedly so.  However, there seems to have been a certain amount of revisionism since then, and its Rotten Tomatoes score currently sits at only 88%.  I consider that to be a travesty--this movie has everything:  sharp writing, a great directorial debut, fantastic acting, an amazing score by Thomas Newman, and most of all, some really important messages.  I like to periodically view the final scene when I find myself in need of some perspective.  How can you not be affected by the things Kevin Spacey says:  "I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me...but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world.  Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, and my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst.  An then, I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life."

Here's that final scene:

Song of the Week: I Will Possess Your Heart

Sorry for the delay in posting.  I was beset with onerous deadlines and travel, and something had to give.  Now that things are settling down again, here is a song of the week.  I don't have too much to say about it, other than it is one of my favourites as a consequence of the long, droning intro that is found on the longer album version of the song.  Give it a chance!

Movie Friday: Argo

I saw Argo last weekend, and found it to be quite entertaining, though not especially deep.  It's a thriller based on historical events (though with a certain amount of license taken to ratchet up the tension and emphasize the role played by Tony Mendez at the expense of the Canadians and others).  Its current rating at Rotten Tomatoes is 96%, which is quite impressive.

What mainly struck me about this film was the sure hand shown by the director, Ben Affleck.  I've seen all three of his features, and while I was distinctly underwhelmed by The Town, I thought that both Argo and his debut, Gone Baby Gone were excellent.  (Interestingly, The Town holds a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 94%, though only 83% of the audience liked it, while Gone Baby Gone has a 94% rating with the critics and 84% with the audience--nearly identical.)  He has a bright future as a director.

Quickie Song of the Week: When the Shit Goes Down

Cypress Hill really were an amazing, groundbreaking crew in the late 80s/early 90s, with several just outstanding songs, such as How I Could Just Kill A Man or Insane in the Brain.  However, another great song from the triple-platinum Black Sunday (an album full of great songs such as Insane in the Brain) is When the Shit Goes Down.  I love to listen to this when I'm riled up about something; somehow it calms me down and even makes me laugh.

Give it a try:

Online Courses

Still no time for a SOW post, but wanted to mention this recent piece in CAUT Bulletin about the essential importance of in person interactions in higher education, something that is clearly missing from things like Coursera or Udacity.

This is something that we see time and again in our society:  a search for short-cuts and economies of scale, when sometimes we just have to acknowledge that certain things are labour-intensive if they're done right.  Like education.

Slacking

Light posting for the next week or so, due to a pressing deadline.  I will still try to come up with a SOW and MF, but no guarantees.

Movie Friday: My Dinner With Andre

There have been a few interesting snippets of news this week on campus, especially with respect to FGSR, as noted by Jeremy.  However, a lot of this is still in the hearsay stage, or to the extent there is something solid, it is at the level of a trial balloon with few details.  At some point, an actual proposal will be rolled out, and I might post on it then.  In the meantime, it's Friday.

I've already commented on several recent or upcoming films, so this week I'll once again visit the past for Movie Friday:  My Dinner With Andre.  Although it came out in the 1980's (and I remember reading reviews and watching Siskel and Ebert discuss it), I did not see this movie until the 1990's.  I remember being impressed, and have watched it again a couple of times...most recently this week.

Written by the two protagonists, actor and playright Wallace Shawn and theatre director Andre Gregory, and directed by Louis Malle, this movie was quite a departure from the usual fare, since it consisted almost entirely of a conversation held over dinner at a fancy restaurant.  Apparently, much of what was discussed is based on real experiences by Shawn and Gregory, both of whom are fascinating characters.  I've loved Wallace Shawn ever since he showed up as Diane Keaton's Svengali ex-husband in Manhattan.  Of course, arguably his most epic work was as Vizzini in The Princess Bride.  In fact, it's inconceivable that there could be a better performance out there.

Anyway, here's a nice clip from My Dinner With Andre:

Song of the Week: Pharaoh

Richard Thompson is a brilliant songwriter and performer, and I could easily select any of a dozen timeless classics to highlight.  (In particular, I just love 1952 Vincent Black Lighting.)  However, for this week's song, let's consider Pharaoh, a song nominally about ancient Egypt, but really an allegory for our modern plutocratic society.  Not much else to say--listen to the lyrics, enjoy the musicianship, and despair.

Sweet Science

Carbohydrate research Todd Lowary gets a nice write-up on the U of A news feed recognizing his Killam Annual Professor award.  Well done!

Movie Friday: Seven Psychopaths

Seven Psychopaths looks interesting, in a perhaps overly cute and self-conscious Tarantino fashion.  The director, Martin McDonagh, previously did In Bruges, an interesting piece starring Brendan Gleason and Colin Farrell as hitmen on the run after a botched job.  This one has Farrell in it again, but also Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken and Tom Waits.  Oh, and Woody Harrelson as a violent gangster trying to recover his dognapped Shih Tzu.

The overall Rotten Tomatoes score is 84%, though somewhat lower for the top critics.  However, if the world's most reliable reverse barometer Rex Reed doesn't like it, that's good enough for me:  it's gotta be good.

Here's the trailer:

Test

Access Copyright

Song of the Week: No Self Control

Trying to start a new tradition on this blog, and in honour of my obsessive snooping around in the blogosphere (and periodic posting of my own), I'll start with this Peter Gabriel classic from 1980.  So many great things about this song, and indeed the whole album:  fantastic, disturbing lyrics; that "gated drum" sound that was explicitly created for this album; and perhaps most of all, that hypnotic xylophone!

Sad Movie Friday: Grave of the Fireflies

I recently watched the 1988 Japanese anime film, Grave of the Fireflies.  This is a depiction of the fate of a young brother and sister in the waning days of the Second World War.  Their house is destroyed in a fire-bombing and they are orphaned, and then things go downhill from there.

This is an extremely depressing movie, but very well made.  Interestingly, the animation was done by Studio Ghibli, very soon after their inception.  It enjoys a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 96%, and this is certainly appropriate.  However, I caution anyone contemplating watching it to be prepared for a downerific evening.

Here's Roger Ebert talking at length about this film, and Japanese anime in general:

The McMaster Effect

I have been bemused for several years at the way McMaster seems to outperform Alberta in many university rankings.  The latest Times rankings are only the most recent.  Are they actually better, or is there some metric that is capturing something that they do and giving it more weighting than it deserves?

Access Copyright

I posted earlier in the summer on the U of A's apparent move towards settling with Access Copyright, at a very steep premium.  In the latest CAUT Bulletin, there is a short piece about the increasing isolation of Access Copyright in the face of continuing challenges by universities to their extortionate demands.  This caused me to search the U of A website to determine whether they have followed through with their plans to jump aboard the badly listing HMS Access Copyright, and found that there is nothing newer than the June Folio article that provoked my original post.  It's the usual information blackout that we have come to expect from this administration.  Does anyone know whether we are still committed to this highly questionable course of action?

Economic Impact

Studies like this always make me a little nervous.  Yes, I agree that large research universities play a role in the economic development of the surrounding areas, and that such an impact can potentially be quantified.  My concern here is two-fold.  First, if the study is conducted by people at the university whose impact is being measured, and who therefore have an axe to grind, the credibility of the numbers can be called into question.  Second, should we really fall into the facile trap of packaging a university's value to the community in terms of tangible economic impact?  I would like to think that a strong public university that provides a rigorous education to its citizens is of great intrinsic value, regardless of its direct economic impact.

Movie Friday: Cabin In the Woods

I recently watched The Cabinin the Woods, having heard that it was something more than just a horror movie.  The fact that JossWheedon is associated with the project was definitely in its favor.  Anyone who calls back the stars of The Avengers just to film an after-the-credits gag showing them sitting around a table eating shawarma is OK by me.  And of course there’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, Firefly, etc., etc. 

Turns out Joss produced and co-wrote this with the director, Drew Goddard, and it definitely has his fingerprints all over it.  First of all, it’s really a deconstruction of the horror genre, with explicit attention paid to the clichéd archetypes (jock, slut, virgin, etc.), while adding some humorous counterpoint with the control room people—particularly BradleyWhitford (of The West Wing fame, not the Aerosmith guitarist) and Richard Jenkins, the latter being one of my all-time favorite character actors.  Stir in some thought-provoking material on society’s attitudes towards the young, torture porn, religion, and half a dozen other topics, and you have a fairly brilliant commentary on our modern entertainment-industrial complex.  It’s also hilarious.  See this movie if you have the chance.

Learn to Let Go

There's a lot of angst here about the current impasse regarding the new arena for the Oilers, with a not very hidden implied threat in the form of a trip by Katz group staff to Seattle just when they announce plans for a new arena.  One of the main sticking points seems to be a request for a $6M subsidy from the city even after all arena revenues are given to the Katz group, an apparent add-on that was not part of the original agreement.  I agree that it's odious behavior from someone who represented himself as an Edmonton booster when he acquired the Oilers.  But no one should be surprised when it plays out this way.  Professional sports franchise owners, with a few key exceptions, are billionaires used to operating in a climate in which every advantage must be seized.  Indeed, not exploiting every chance to squeeze that last drop out of the taxpayers probably seems immoral in a world where downsizing, outsourcing, and pension raiding are considered good business practices that are rewarded with higher stock prices.  For a timely reminder, one needs only look at the current officiating fiasco in the NFL.

So, in the current paradigm, one should assume that professional sports owners will behave like assholes, with no regard for the loyalty shown by longterm fans.  In the case of the Oilers, yes, this team is a civic institution whose loss would be a major blow to a city that has a lot of self esteem issues already.  But if people recognize this for what it is--unethical, manipulative tactics designed to maximize annual profit and the overall value of the franchise--maybe they can find it in themselves to assign a little less significance to the question of whether or not a team happens to be using their city's name.  And if it relocates, most people will probably find that life goes on just fine.

Running Behind Movie Friday: Looper

Incredibly hectic week, with no let-up in sight.  Still, it wouldn't be complete without Movie Friday.  This week, I want to highlight Looper, a very interesting sounding sci-fi movie with (once again) Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  It was very well-received at TIFF, and is currently running at 96% at Rotten Tomatoes.  The writier/director, Rian Johnson, previously did Brick, another Gordon-Levitt vehicle that I have commented on previously.

The description of this film also vaguely reminds me of the ultra-indie Primer, a truly messed up time travel movie.  I recommend it, but with the proviso that it will confuse and upset you.

Dreddful: Movie Friday

Here's a cheesy looking movie that I will probably have to go see:

I never saw the first Judge Dredd, in part because I was consciously avoiding Stallone's ouevre by that time,* and in part due to its awful reviews.  But this one looks much more promising.  I've been a fan of Karl Urban for a while--he was especially amusing in Star Trek and RED.  In this film, he seems to be channeling a sort of post-apocalyptic Clint Eastwood.  (Question:  was Eastwood ever in any sort of science fiction film?  Not that I can remember...)

*Update:  To be fair, one of my guilty pleasures is Demolition Man.  That movie never fails to make me laugh.  And it actually has a decent score on Rotten Tomatoes.

UVa Presidential Coup

Via Jeremy, here is an excellent article on the debacle last summer involving the removal and reinstatement of the University of Virginia's President.  The explanation for the inexplicable actions of the Board of Visitors comes down to the usual one:  incompetent or evil?  This article suggests incompetence was the problem.

Online University Courses

A little over a month ago, there was a bit of a brouhaha on Jeremy's blog about the new Science Dean's blog post regarding online delivery of university course content.  This morning, CBC had an hour-long program on the topic that was quite informative and thought-provoking.  I recommend listening to it.

U of A In the News

Congratulations to Biochemistry's Joel Weiner and his student Matthew Solomonson for their PNAS paper on pyranopterin cofactors in molybdenum-containing proteins.

Movie Friday: Cloud Atlas

Not a lot to talk about this week, despite the start of classes.  So, let's turn to an upcoming film that I am very excited about, Cloud Atlas:

This movie, which premiers at TIFF, is based on the acclaimed book by David Mitchell, which I am currently reading.  It's interesting to note that he considered it unfilmable when he finished it, but he, too, is very excited about this adaptation.

Finally, I am interested to see what the Wachowskis can come up with.  Their output has been sporadic since V for Vendetta, consisting mainly of the inexplicable Speed Racer.  But based on the trailer, I think this has a lot of potential.

Movie Friday: The Dark Knight Rises

After 7 weeks, The Dark Knight Rises is still in the box office top five, a fairly impressive run.  Furthermore, Rotten Tomatoes says it has a 92% favorability rating among the audience (87% with critics).  I saw it during the first weekend, and I was underwhelmed.  Perhaps I was expecting too much, after the first two films, which were excellent.  Also, I have high regard for Tom Hardy, who played the main antagonist, Bane.  But Bane was something of a mixed bag (see below).

Part of the problem is a plot with some serious holes in it.  Having all of NYC's cops march into the sewers was a highly improbable scenario.  Also, a rather severe twist near the end seemed a bit gratuitous.  Finally, the need to rework Bane's voice to make it more understandable left him sounding (according to my son) like a cross between an English butler Darth Vader and the Monopoly Guy.  Listen for yourself:

Colloquy Breaks Its Long Silence

...with two canned posts from the Acting Provost regarding new administrative appointments.  Exciting!

More with Less?

The U of A's website tells us that a record number of students will be here this fall.  This coincides with a net decrease in the University's operating budget.  I wonder how students are going to rate their educational experience in the periodic surveys by Maclean's and others.  I can only assume that we will see more and more massive lecture sections, especially in core faculties such as Science and Arts, which should serve to reinforce the overall "factory feedlot" vibe that we give so many of our entering students.  Well done.

What's Wrong With Toronto

...that they would find this guy acceptable as their mayor:

Colloquy Watch

Now four weeks and counting.

Movie Friday

I'm hoping to see Premium Rush soon.  I'm a big Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan.  (Two great recent performances were The Dark Knight Rises and 50/50, but I was especially impressed with the weird high school-noir Brick.)  The movie also stars Michael Shannon, a terrific, underrated actor who was fantastic in Take Shelter.

On the nostalgia side, I watched a big chunk of The Thin Red Line on TV this week.  What a great film.  Terrence Mallick has made only five movies in his career, but every one of them is risk-taking and engrossing.

WISEST

So I see that WISEST is celebrating its 30th anniversary.  It seems that the core mission still seems to be encouraging girls to consider going into science and engineering...though I'm not sure that encouragement is really necessary in some disciplines.  Certainly the undergraduate classes that I teach are more than 50% female, and I would estimate that about half of our entering graduate class is female as well.  Of course, other disciplines (physics, perhaps?  engineering?) may still have some ground to make up, but I feel that the appropriateness of this gender-specific program to certain fields has largely ended.

I am more interested in this stated objective:

Although we have been pursuing our goals since 1982 and representation of women in science, engineering and technology is most definitely on the rise, a gender balance at decision-making and leadership levels still needs to be reached.

I think that our university generally does pretty well in promoting women at the top--our President, Senior VP (Finance), VP (University Relations) and countless AVPs are women.  But returning to the parochial issue of my own department, I would like to see more women among the tenured faculty.  Of course, with a de facto hiring freeze, there is not much opportunity to address this problem...  But, I wonder if WISEST has sufficient resources to assist in the identification and recruitment of top female job candidates to science and engineering departments?  Sending high school girls into a lab for 6 weeks in the summer makes for some nice feel-good stories, but it's not really doing much to change the underlying culture.

Colloquy

Jeez, I thought I was an intermittent poster--Colloquy hasn't put anything up since a July 27 "mythbusting" post on the changes at Lister Hall.  That's three weeks of silence.  The difference is, people are presumably being paid, as part of their job, to keep that "blog" up to date, whereas I do this purely for my own amusement.

We're Number (101-150)!

Latest ARWU rankings place U of A in that exciting cohort, along with University of Montreal.  Unsurprisingly, Toronto, UBC and McGill all appear in the top 100.  More surprising is the appearance of McMaster (#92).  Are they really better than Alberta?

The Ever-Increasing Administration

Here is an excellent piece in the Washington Monthly on the growing share of university budgets being eaten up by administration, condensed from Benjamin Ginsberg's book.  Here is a key quote from early in the article:

Alas, today’s full-time professional administrators tend to view management as an end in and of itself. Most have no faculty experience, and even those who have spent time in a classroom or laboratory often hope to make administration their life’s work and have no plan to return to teaching. For many of these career managers, promoting teaching and research is less important than expanding their own administrative domains. Under their supervision, the means have become the end.

The article also notes how administrative spending has grew over the period from 1947-1995:

During this same time period, stated in constant dollars, overall university spending increased 148 percent. Instructional spending increased only 128 percent, 20 points less than the overall rate of spending increase. Administrative spending, though, increased by a whopping 235 percent.

There is also a nice discussion on the odious but ubiquitous "strategic plans" that are periodically promulgated by administrations as part of their make-work program, and the complete lack of oversight by boards of trustees of the lavish spending and compensation for presidents and other upper administrators.

Most infuriating were the apparently common behaviour of offering bonuses and salary increases to top administrators at universities facing budget freezes and layoffs, something we here can relate to:

In a similar vein, in February 2009, the president of the University of Vermont defended the bonuses paid to the school’s twenty-one top administrators against the backdrop of layoffs, job freezes, and program cuts at the university. The university president, Daniel Fogel, asserted that administrative bonuses were based on the principles of “extra pay for extra duties” and “pay for performance.” The president rejected a faculty member’s assertion that paying bonuses to administrators when the school faced an enormous budget deficit seemed similar to the sort of greed recently manifested by the corporate executives who paid themselves bonuses with government bailout money. Fogel said he shared the outrage of those upset at corporate greed, but maintained there was a “world of difference” between the UVM administrative bonuses and bonuses paid to corporate executives. He did not specify what that world might be.

The piece ends with a few suggestions for how to get this problem under control.  I highly recommend reading it.

(h/t Freddie deBoer)

Egotism, Egocentrism, and Victimology

As he periodically does, Jeremy has decided to be offended by something he has read, in this case an article in the Edmonton Journal about the new Dean of Science that makes mention of "egotistical" professors--something that is not attributed to Jonathan Schaeffer, but which one may choose to believe was discussed with the reporter.

Several commenters (including yours truly) have tried to make the point that a certain amount of egotism comes with the territory in pursuing an academic career.  Jeremy is having none of it, and considers it to be "...judgemental and offensive, and quite uncalled for."  While I do acknowledge that we in the university community should be vigilant about how we are being portrayed, I consider this to be almost beneath notice in a time of static budgets and clear movements towards diminishing our roles in education (e.g., e-classes) along with our compensation opportunities.

In other words, how about choosing some more significant things to be offended by?

Weird

I thought I had posted a couple of days ago on this Maclean's article about the latest QS University Rankings.  Yet the post does not seem to be there, so I must have inadvertently deleted it.  Anyway, long story short, the article is about how Canadian universities fared, and one point they make is that U of A is the only one to appear in the top 200 for all 29 disciplines.

I found that weak tea, since inspection of the actual disciplinary rankings show that only one program (Pharmacy) received an actual unique ranking (25; well done!).  All of the others were in the 50-100, 101-150 or 151-200 generic cohorts.  In fact, it appears that well over half are in the 101-200 group, which really does not seem to be a very elite group, looking at the other institutions there.

I'm not sure I understand their methodology.  It seems to include contributions from three categories, academic reputation, employer reputation, and citations per faculty member.  The categories are weighted differently for different disciplines.  To be candid, even after re-reading the descriptions, I'm not sure how one distinguishes between "academic reputation," and "employer reputation."  However, I can imagine that the U of A's overall standing (rated 100 in the latest QS survey) is not providing the sort of "halo effect" that departments at places like U of T (23), McGill (17) and UBC (51) can expect.  Indeed, in my own discipline, we are ranked in the 101-150 group, whereas McGill's corresponding program is in the top 50--even though it is widely felt in Canada that U of A's program in this particular field is in the top 3 in the country, whereas McGill's is maybe in the top 10, but not one of the elite ones.  In other words, I guess I'm saying that the U of A's mediocre reputation as a university is probably dragging down some very good programs in these subject rankings, because of the way they are computed.

Giving Zeroes for No Work

The Lynden Dorval situation continues to show up in the news.  My own sentiments are firmly with the teacher in this case, but this post is more to do with the underlying educational theory that led to the no-zero policy.  If I understand it correctly, the reason for this policy is that failing to complete work should be treated as a behavioural failing rather than an academic one, so an academic sanction should not be applied.  I'm not sure I buy this argument, but what I am wondering is whether this sort of philosophy is followed at the university level.  Do people at U of A give students indefinite opportunities to complete assignments or take exams?

Swing Low

Hard to imagine something like this happening here.

Compare and Contrast

University of Alberta.

One of our alleged peer institutions.

Five More Years

Congratulations to Carl A. on his reappointment to a third term as Provost.  Although a polarizing figure, I think he has accomplished a lot of positive things for the University, much more so than the President.  On the other hand, this reappointment was about as surprising as the outcome of a North Korean election.  Nevertheless, I wish him the best, and I hope he enjoys the 1-year leave that he has certainly earned over the last 10 years.

Hilarious

Crooked Timber has a great summary of the Sullivan mess at UVirginia, in the form of an updated Declaration of Independence:

Charlottesville, June 19th, 2012The More or Less Unanimous Declaration of the Board of VisitorsWhen in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for a Board to dissolve the administrative bands which have connected a President with a University, and to assume for themselves the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and the Bond Market entitle them, it is best to do it secretly, quickly, and in the middle of the night.

However, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation, especially when one is unexpectedly faced with large, angry crowds on the Lawn at two o’clock in the morning and a quite stupendous media shitstorm thereafter...

Kudos to Kieran Healy, and of course...read the whole thing!

What Happened?

Lots of things IRL have stymied my ability to keep up with this blog.  Now that we're into summer, I want to dwell a bit on the recent vote held by AASUA.  A highly flawed proposal that included minimal COLA increases for the next two years plus faculty participation in an ill-defined "Renaissance Committee" that seems destined to help cause the extinction of the professor as we know it was passed by a 59% to 41% vote.  What is pathetic is that only 29% of eligible voters did so.  If people cannot exert themselves to get involved enough to vote online, I guess we deserve whatever is done to us.

The Stupid...

...it hurts.

Here is a remarkably dim post on Macleans OnCampus by Josh Dehaas.  Go read it, and think about how ill-informed it is.

3M

Congratulations to Alberta's 4 3M Teaching Fellows (out of a total of 10 nationwide).

Mandated Teaching of Creationism

Here's a post by PZ Myers describing attempts by Missouri legislators to pass a law defining intelligent design as accepted science, and then requiring that it be taught alongside evolution.  Lysenkoists everywhere would be proud.  Well done comrades, well done!

Here We Go Again

This article indicates that the Harper government is planning major federal budget cuts.  Given the general anti-science stance of the PMO, I think we can safely assume that NSERC and CIHR will take a hit, during a period when researchers are already facing reduced grant sizes AND lower success rates.  It would be hard to manage a better job of driving Canada out of the research business than these clowns are doing.