'tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show
This city is a cloud-fancier's paradise. The lady wears, not one veil, but several; today's low, misty clouds were a palimpsest on higher ones like a filleted fishbone, with a side order of the strange, eerily smooth saucer-shapes that look like foggy UFOs. Yesterday it was almost, but not quite, raining at sunset, so the soft, rainy clouds were all just above the rooftops and lit with pink; for about ten minutes the city gave me an incredible double rainbow superimposed on the sunset colours. Honestly, if an artist did it they'd be shot on grounds of kitsch.
I had an annoying day. It is a horribly characteristic aspect of my Beloved Institution's culture that I have, since 10am, been busy running through a centimetre-thick printout of end-of-year results, manually deciding, by scribbled green comment and the sweat of my none-too-mathematical brow, which dear little students have achieved the correct number of courses to progress to next year. In nine cases out of ten this is a purely numerical thing: count number of courses; check that compulsory introductory course was passed in first year; code CON for continued, or REF for booting out, or REP for cautionary butt-kicking before allowing to proceed. An imbecile piece of coding would allow a brain-damaged computer to do it automatically, in a fraction of the time, far more infallibly, and without the redundancy. (My eight-hour shift is being shadowed by two other academics working on the same lists; we'll compare tomorrow to catch errors). I cannot understand why a university of this size cannot automate these procedures. The amount of person-hours, factored against the average qualifications of the people concerned, constitutes an obscene waste of time by highly educated people who don't actually do this kind of clerical work that efficiently, because, guess what? we're not trained for it. *hiss, spit, rant*
I have also been reading Barthes, who is, for the first time in my academic career, making sense; alarmingly so, to the point where the implications are ramifying out across the thesis and suggesting all sorts of exciting new connections I could make throughout. (The muffled "crump" noise is my head exploding at the mere thought). Barthes also, it transpires, applies somewhat interestingly to High Fidelity, the John Cusack movie I just watched on TV. Endearing little film, full of cool music, geeks and bad relationship choices. I grok. I also mutter darkly about langue, and parole, and the complete lack of neturality of the utterance. Then I go to bed.
I had an annoying day. It is a horribly characteristic aspect of my Beloved Institution's culture that I have, since 10am, been busy running through a centimetre-thick printout of end-of-year results, manually deciding, by scribbled green comment and the sweat of my none-too-mathematical brow, which dear little students have achieved the correct number of courses to progress to next year. In nine cases out of ten this is a purely numerical thing: count number of courses; check that compulsory introductory course was passed in first year; code CON for continued, or REF for booting out, or REP for cautionary butt-kicking before allowing to proceed. An imbecile piece of coding would allow a brain-damaged computer to do it automatically, in a fraction of the time, far more infallibly, and without the redundancy. (My eight-hour shift is being shadowed by two other academics working on the same lists; we'll compare tomorrow to catch errors). I cannot understand why a university of this size cannot automate these procedures. The amount of person-hours, factored against the average qualifications of the people concerned, constitutes an obscene waste of time by highly educated people who don't actually do this kind of clerical work that efficiently, because, guess what? we're not trained for it. *hiss, spit, rant*
I have also been reading Barthes, who is, for the first time in my academic career, making sense; alarmingly so, to the point where the implications are ramifying out across the thesis and suggesting all sorts of exciting new connections I could make throughout. (The muffled "crump" noise is my head exploding at the mere thought). Barthes also, it transpires, applies somewhat interestingly to High Fidelity, the John Cusack movie I just watched on TV. Endearing little film, full of cool music, geeks and bad relationship choices. I grok. I also mutter darkly about langue, and parole, and the complete lack of neturality of the utterance. Then I go to bed.