Staying Awake vs. Holding a Wake

'Levels of Proofreading
... Intermediate II: Duties of Beginner and Intermediate I plus typeface identification and type specifications' (Laura Killen Anderson, Handbook for Proofreading, Lincolnwood, Ill.: NTC Business Books, p.4).

Hopefully any colleges teaching proofreading at this exhibition were not involved in teaching the exhibitor's publicity department.

Bristol University

... said it had introduced "disappointment training" for admissions officers to help them cope with distraught teenagers.

Perhaps this could be expanded beyond clearing, extending the training to cover students at all stages of the "student experience" across the entire HE sector. Heaven forbid anyone should spontaneously make sense of life's disappointments on their own.

Michael Jackson and the Half-Baked Prints

As a journalism tutor, I seldom want to see publications closing down. After all, they could well employ my graduates. Conversely, fewer newspapers and magazines might - and only might - deter vocationally minded applicants from signing up for a course.

I'm not unsympathetic to fears that magazines are becoming obselete: why be locked into a monthly production cycle when the internet helps you to keep up with changing events? Accordingly, I will forgive the August 2009 issue of Red for this: "If ever proof was needed that they don't make pop stars like they used to, then the frenzy over Michael Jackson's 50-show residency at London's O2 Arena is it ... If you're lucky enough to have tickets, get ready for a show that will go down in history" (p.109). Quite.

In all fairness to Red, it went to press before certain recent events. The same excuses for crappy content can't be used by wfm - note the trendy lower case - house rag of Waltham Forest council. Public funds are used to promote the local authority's interminable campaign against anti-social behaviour. The 6 July issue revels in an ASBO issued to Mr Minghua Wang, who will be prosecuted if found "having in his possession more than two DVDs or CDs in any public place in Greater London within the M25 perimeter" (p.4). No more boxed sets for you, sonny! Of course, the legal quibble that carrying three or more DVDs is NOT an offence can be overcome by attaching criminal penalties to same act. This is nothing to celebrate, and the council bringing The Men They Couldn't Hang - but presumably could still ASBO - to town does not excuse its ad-hoc lawmaking.

The good news is that this story appeared in the final issue of wfm. The bad news is that this miserable greentop tabloid will be replaced with "Waltham Forest News" from tomorrow - retro font, and probably more of the same authoritarian content.

Secular atrium

I don't think I'm airing too much dirty laundry in public to say that an email with the above subject line was circulated at my work today, inviting over 30 replies and touching on a number of the issues that correspond to the labels used for my current blog entry. (If this all sounds a bit cryptic, it's because of some of the emails propose a follow-up public event that should be more useful than (yet more) off-the-cuff blog remarks from me: that's what Twitter is for.)

That said, I was struck by the fact it was a long time before anyone even mentioned the suspension of one of our own by the University after he spoke to the media regarding the upcoming G20 protests. Priorities, people.

When junk food + social science = junk social science

Neighbours. Everybody needs good neighbours. Despite the geographical proximity, union-busting Epping Forest College is NOT a good neighbour.

Across the way, the war on fried chicken continues. No casualty figures yet, but the latest wheeze is a blatant piece of advocacy research (of the sort carried out by Barnardos that my colleague Brendan O'Neill exposed recently). The "hot food takeaways in Waltham Forest" questionnaire has two neutral questions about the role of the council in planning applications. Then come three kickers: Do you agree or disagree that planning applications for hot food takeaway shops in Waltham Forest should be managed to:

• resist proposals that would cause an unacceptable risk of crime and antisocial behaviour?


• ensure that they don't have an unacceptable impact on road safety?


• ensure that they have good systems in place to deal with smells and waste?

In other words, three out of five questions invite respondents to side with the council in expanding its planning permission powers around a dietary social policy objective. Who is going to answer in ways that encourage more crime, traffic collisions and filth in the streets? Setting up the questionnaire this way means that the "research" can be used to rubber stamp an existing decision -- expressed in council leader Clyde Loakes' "war on fried chicken" that was declared well before the December closing date for survey returns.

You'll du it our way, or not at all

Formally speaking, many UAE universities are clustered in a free zone.

Knowledge Village indeed. New filtering techniques pursued by local ISP du mean that, for instance, the academic journal Genders online is now blocked, the content not being consistent with the moral, cultural and social values of the UAE, apparently. Like the odd custodial arrangements for gender studies textbooks, local web filtering points to the need for academic freedom in the Arabian Gulf.

And freedom more generally.

Bear with me, I'm the new moral guardian

In my February blog entry, I reminisce briefly about being comparatively slim in 1983. Over on Facebook, my profile has attracted some fanmail about my current build: "nothing wrong with being chunky mate, I've always liked men who are chunky. Bald is very attractive too, but the biggest turn-on in that pic is to see just how hairy you are - lovely!" and "your [sic] just such a handsome man with a stunning furry body :)" Using a bare minimum of gym time, it seems I have made the transition to being a UK bear.

Which in a roundabout way brings me to comment on a current role for academics, that of protecting students from themselves. Picture the scene: on arrival at a new teaching post, I was given a new responsibility. Mine to keep under lock and key, to be let out to third year students in connection with dissertation research only, are ... four academic tomes on the history of sexuality. Is this the Closed University, with a "do not feed the bears" policy?

Something Wiki This Way Comes

Not long ago I blogged an anecdote illustrating the unreliability of Wikipedia as a research tool (18 October). I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or not, but within five days user 86.136.176.158, apparently a London-based BT Broadband customer, nipped onto the page about me and "associated" me with an organisation that was disbanded in 1997. (My weekly TV and radio appearances in summer 2005 were also cut from "frequent" to "some", although with hindsight, given the mindlessness of most of the radio slots, I would have settled for "some".)

The user history shows an hour spent online toying with a fleeting obsession, suggesting a pound sterling wasted on "research" in a London internet cafe. But then at close to 2 a.m., up go six factoids, suggesting both personal knowledge to do with left-leaning greens in higher education such as Derek Wall (if they are correct), and a home broadband connection. Hence the following cyber-footprint (most recent changes first):

02:01, 24 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Institute of Education‎ (→Notable people) (top)
01:59, 24 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Denis Smalley‎ (top)
01:58, 24 October 2007 (hist) (diff) City University, London‎ (→Academics)
01:57, 24 October 2007 (hist) (diff) City University, London‎
01:56, 24 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Goldsmiths, University of London‎
01:54, 24 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Derek Wall‎ (→Political Career) (top)
21:51, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Entryism‎ (→In the United Kingdom)
21:51, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Front organization‎ (→See also)
21:50, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Front organization‎ (→See also)
21:50, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Front organization‎ (→See also)
21:50, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Entryism‎ (→See also)
21:49, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Entryism‎ (→See also)
21:36, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) James Heartfield‎
21:36, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) James Heartfield‎
21:35, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) James Heartfield‎
21:12, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Fiona Fox (UK press officer)‎ (top)
21:11, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Claire Fox‎ (→Criticism)
21:08, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Living Marxism‎ (→George Monbiot and the 'LobbyWatch Network')
21:07, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Brendan O’Neill‎
21:04, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Brendan O’Neill‎
21:04, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Brendan O’Neill‎
21:00, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Graham Barnfield‎
20:59, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Graham Barnfield‎
20:58, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Living Marxism‎ (→See also)
20:57, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Living Marxism‎ (→George Monbiot and the 'LobbyWatch Network')
20:51, 23 October 2007 (hist) (diff) Graham Barnfield‎

Why beat a three-hour retreat from, err, repeating information in the public domain, Woodward? Scared of missing the 10-minute freeview on the Adult Channel? Trying to catch last orders, unaware of Britain's relaxed licensing laws? Get a life or at least go to bed...

Once again the blogosphere/wikiworld is shown to be a great place for avoiding important issues. Next thing someone will have grammar-flame drama queen Oliver Kamm bang to rights, for calling Flight KAL 858 Flight 857, or some other such breakthrough ...

Looking Daggers

There are times when I miss teaching, so it's good to see an article of mine being used to teach film in Lexington, Kentucky. Ahh, film school, I'm almost tempted to enroll myself...

The League of the Just ...

The weekend is closing in and individual summer holidays are starting or ending. Various last-minute headaches are passed onto my desk, from people who are either on the brink of going away or recently returning to an overflowing inbox (and not just from Facebook notifications).

One of the few sensible observations in Theodore Dalrymple's otherwise dismal book Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass is the way felons use the word "just" to minimise the seriousness of their crimes, as in "it was just a poxy fractured skull".

Countless people in the modern workplace deploy the same technique, as in "would you mind just having a quick look at this before close of play today?" Before long even purists like myself are doing it too, just prior to requesting something absurdly inconvenient.

There's no justice, there's just "just".

Church of the Poisoned Mind

The text below is reproduced from an email looking for volunteers to help turn higher education into a branch of the entertainment industry. Enough reality TV already.

The Charlotte Church show is looking for outgoing lecturers to take part in a feature on the second series of her popular Friday night Channel 4 show. The idea is called 'Charlotte In My Ear' as I said on the phone, Ideally we are looking for a lecturer of quite an academic subject to take part.

Charlotte would be hidden in a room somewhere at the university and would have a direct link to the lecturer via an earpiece and she would basically be telling the lecturer what to say and do throughout a lecture. This would be a hidden camera shoot, the lecturer would obviously be in on it but the students would not be in the know. At the end of the lecture Charlotte would come in and reveal to the students what has been happening. we would then need to get their individual permission to use their footage of them. (i.e. we would not use someone's image without their permission.) We would not make the lecturer say or do anything untoward. It's really just a but of light-hearted fun, it's really about changing people's preconceptions of what a lecturer would normally do. Obviously we wouldn't expect the lecturer to anything he/ she didn't want to. Also we would be giving an incentive for the lecturer to take part, for example a donation towards a field trip etc...This is to be negotiated.

We would only need an hour of your lecturers time and we would endeavour to set up the cameras out of hours, so as to keep any disruption to a minimum. The first series of The Charlotte Church Show regularly received 2 Million viewers so is great publicity for the university. It would be great if you could put forward anyone that might be interested at your earliest convenience. I would hope to come and meet any willing lecturers over the next week or two. We are looking to film this at some point over the next 4 weeks.

(spelling and punctuation in the original.)