We haven’t had a RatS for a long time, and I’d basically given them up. A couple weeks ago, however, Matt Taibbi wrote a plaintive howl, which seems well worth sharing. Taibbi is one of only two writers/organisations that I pay to read, and one very few writers consistently principled, willing to write what he knows and only what he knows, and without ever seeking to play into tribalism. Taibbi’s howl-post is on the Trump-binary perversion of journalism. The post is public, and Taibbi of course encourages the sharing of his public posts. I hope, therefore, it is not overstepping the bounds to reproduce the post here: Taibbi is great, and people should subscribe to Taibbi’s Racket News. Continue reading “RatS 29: Matt Taibbi – On Escaping This Horrible Era”
Tag: politics
Escaping Device-Like Grip
There is something funny about the word “device”. It has vague meaning but, like “technology”, the word is used more to be vague than to be meaningful, to fess up to what is really going on. See Tom Lehrer for a black funny use of “device”. In any case, the Victorian Government has just taken a very good step in the management of “devices”. Continue reading “Escaping Device-Like Grip”
What the Fork, Corners?
As for the previous post, this one could be a witCH or a PoSWW, and, again, I’m not expecting anyone to bother. Last week, ABC’s Four Corners had a report, Campus Chaos, on the mad governance of Australia’s universities. The report was shit. Continue reading “What the Fork, Corners?”
A Tale Of Two Tomatoes
When Godwin’s Law Fails
Anyone who can watch America now and fail to hear the echoes of 1930s Germany is either entirely ignorant of history or is simply a demented fan of this creeping fascism. Continue reading “When Godwin’s Law Fails”
The Joy of Division
Some titles write themselves.
There’s no need for anyone to write about this idiotic story, of course. The hapless Sussan Ley, desperate for some lock-step backing from her army of goons and Gomers, sought to make an issue of Albo’s Joy Division t-shirt. The Liberals have been looking to play the antisemitism card at any half-opportunity, but pretty much no one thought of this as more than a confected micro-opportunity, and Ley just ended up looking silly(er). One notable nitwit bought Ley’s shtick, however, which is enough reason to post on it here. Continue reading “The Joy of Division”
Ben Carroll Screws it Up on Teaching Degrees
This is a bit old but I’m not sure it got the attention it deserved. At least the formal announcement last month slipped me by.
A few months ago, The Age had a thoroughly idiotic article, on Western Australian teachers “exploiting a loophole” to be able to teach in Victoria. The article concerned Western Australia’s 2014 decision to reintroduce one-year teaching degrees, thus reneging on a national agreement that postgrad teaching degrees be two years. Then, since the States have mutual recognition agreements on teaching degrees, it meant that these 1-year WA teachers were qualified to teach in Victoria. Continue reading “Ben Carroll Screws it Up on Teaching Degrees”
Two Cheers for Ben Carroll’s Laptop Whack
Last week, the Victorian Premier’s office issued a media release:
Parents To Save Money On Students’ Digital Devices
The Premier chose to bury the lede, presumably because she surmised that idiot parents care more about whether their kid’s laptop is free than whether the cursèd thing is corrupting the kid’s education. Whatever. The Premier’s release eventually got to the important stuff:
From 2027, primary schools will benefit from updated guidance to help set sensible limits on device use in the classroom. This will mean that primary schools will be required to limit digital device use to a maximum of 90 minutes per day for students in Years 3-6, and minimal device time for those in Prep to Year 2.
Of course that “90 minutes” should be zero minutes, and the “minimal device time” should be zero device time. And, the Premier offers not a word on the systemic corruption that these “devices” cause in secondary schools. Nonetheless, one must applaud this semi-sanity.
It seems very likely that this semi-sanity is due to Ben Carroll, the Victorian Minister for Education. I am never going to warm to Carroll. He is a useless stooge for ACARA and he threw Kylie White under the bus, leading to VCAA being in the hands of the current nitwit. I am never going to forgive Carroll for his cowardly treatment of White and for dooming VCAA to a new reign of arrogance and incompetence. But it has to be said that Carroll is generally a very good education minister. He is generally concerned about the right things and he is generally looking to do the right things about them.
Tom Lehrer
He was 97, so one can hardly object to his innings being over, but it is very sad. I don’t have anything to add, but one must write something.
Tom Lehrer was great, of course, and famously was trained as a mathematician. I never met Lehrer, although he was a very good friend of Bob Osserman, one of my (great) supervisory guys at Stanford. Osserman and Lehrer were students together at Harvard and they remained lifelong friends; Lehrer gave a rare, later years performance, at Osserman’s 80th birthday party, which would have been in 2006. (There used to be available a clunky video of the performance but it seems to have disappeared.) Osserman once told me that he had a cassette with an unrecorded maths song by Lehrer. Lehrer, however, was apparently very nervous about bootlegs, and I never got to borrow the cassette. Damn.
Nicky Nicks Off
Last month, it was announced that Nicola Phillips, Provost at the University of Melbourne, was to become Vice Chancellor of Adelaide University. Unimelb’s fond farewell noted,
During her time at the University of Melbourne, Professor Phillips demonstrated her deep dedication to the University, extending across her leadership of academic strategy and innovation, widening participation, and the many dimensions of culture change that she has championed and resolutely pursued in matters of equity, inclusion and conduct.
Nicky was also really good at sacking people.
We considered Phillips early this year, when writing about the unfair dismissal of Aleks Owczarek, a professor of mathematics at Unimelb. Our focus then was more on the Dean of Science, Moira O’Bryan’s, nasty emails to the Mathematics Department. But it was Phillips who waxed lyrical and hypocritically about “power imbalance”, and it was Phillips who wielded the axe, decreeing that Owczarek should be dismissed, a decree subsequently overturned at the Fair Work Commission.*
A Unimelb colleague has recently alerted us to two more FYC cases involving the University of Melbourne and, in particular, Phillips. One case, still in the FYC works, involves the dismissal of a marketing professor, for “nastiness” or “screaming” or something. With the professor’s appeal against dismissal still in play and with no real details to go on, we’ll leave it be; for news reports, see here and here (M,P).
The second case, involving an engineering professor, is in ways similar in factual basis to the Owczarek thing. Also, as with Owczarek, it was Phillips’ decision to dismiss the professor and, as with Owczarek, Phillips’ decision was subsequently overturned by the Fair Work Commission, with the order that the professor be reinstated.
The engineering case seems to us significantly more egregious than Owczarek’s egregious dismissal, but we won’t go into details.** There appear to be two stark conclusions, however, from the FWC judgments on the two cases:
1) The dismissal laws, as instantiated in the the Fair Work Act and the University’s of Melbourne’s Appropriate Workplace Behaviour Policy, provides the University with broad license to be vicious;
2) The University of Melbourne has been significantly more vicious than the broad viciousness to which they were legally entitled.
Anyway, Nicky is now off to Adelaide University. What “dimensions of culture” does Nicky have planned? Will Nicky instigate there the same culture of “equity, inclusion and conduct” that she championed at Melbourne? As it happens, there is no need. It is no great surprise that Adelaide has already proven itself very accomplished at throwing their academics under a bus in the pursuit of absurdity. But, Nicky will fit right in.
Good bye, Nicky, and good luck. To Adelaide.
*) True to form, the University of Melbourne has apparently appealed FWC’s Owczarek decision. The University is, of course, blind to the hypocrisy of whining about an “abuse of power” while wielding their massive institutional and financial power in continuing to pursue the matter.
**) For those who want to get a sense of the engineering case, the following paragraphs of the FWC decision are of particular note: 1, 2, 7, 16, 21, 27-28, 43, 51, 58-60, 66. Our sense after a semi-close reading is that DP Colman’s decision in the engineering case is more confused and less convincing than DP Bell’s in the Owczarek case. DP Colman also seems colder, less concerned and thus less understanding of the almost inevitable clumsiness of adult relationships. Nonetheless, DP Colman did not ignore the fundamental harshness of the University’s conduct, which formed the basis of his ruling.