John Longley's Informatics Lecturer Song

From my colleague, John Longley, a treat. 

‘Informatics Lecturer Song’ 

(Based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Major General song’) 

John Longley 

I am the very model of an Informatics lecturer,
For educating students you will never find a betterer.
I teach them asymptotics with a rigour that’s impeccable,
I’ll show them how to make their proofs mechanically checkable.
On parsing algorithms I can hold it with the best of them,
With LL(1) and CYK and Earley and the rest of them.
I’ll teach them all the levels of the Chomsky hierarchy…
With a nod towards that Natural Language Processing malarkey.

I’ll summarize the history of the concept of a function,
And I’ll tell them why their Haskell code is ‘really an adjunction’.
In matters mathematical and logical, etcetera,
I am the very model of an Informatics lecturer.

For matters of foundations I’m a genuine fanaticker:
I know by heart the axioms of Principia Mathematica,
I’m quite au fait with Carnap and with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus,
And I’ll dazzle you with Curry, Church and Turing combinators.
I’ll present a proof by Gödel with an algebraic seasoning,
I’ll instantly detect a step of non-constructive reasoning.
I’ll tell if you’re a formalist or logicist or Platonist…
For I’ll classify your topos by the kinds of objects that exist.

I’ll scale the heights of cardinals from Mahlo to extendible,
I’ll find your favourite ordinals and stick them in an n-tuple.
In matters philosophical, conceptual, etcetera,
I am the very essence of an Informatics lecturer.

And right now I’m getting started on my personal computer,
I’ve discovered how to get it talking to the Wifi router.
In Internet and World Wide Web I’ve sometimes had my finger dipped,
And once I wrote a line of code in HTML/Javascript.
[Sigh.] I know I have a way to go to catch up with my students,
But I try to face each lecture with a dash of common prudence.
When it comes to modern tech: if there’s a way to get it wrong, I do!
But that seems to be forgiven if I ply them with a song or two.

So… although my present IT skills are rather rudimentary,
And my knowledge of computing stops around the nineteenth century,
Still, with help from all my colleagues and my audience, etcetera…
I’ll be the very model of an Informatics lecturer.

Time to say goodbye to our heroes?

Lindy Elkins-Tanton describes and disputes the "hero" model of academia, and suggests a model instead organised around teams focused on big questions. Thanks to Jan de Muijnck-Hughes for the pointer.

Reorienting our focus from the hero model’s “big people” to the consideration of big questions will address many of the challenges plaguing universities today: incremental, derivative, low-risk science; faltering funding; relentless focus on quantity of publication; irreproducible research; ongoing complaints of harassment; lack of diversity; an atmosphere that leaves students struggling with mental health; and (despite enormous funding outlays) an inadequately trained workforce in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.

Brexit: The cost to Tech and the cost to Universities

Two articles by computer security researcher Ross Anderson.

• Brexit and technology: How network effects will damage UK IT industry
• Brexit will cost Cambridge University £100M a year

A UK that makes up 1% of world population and 3% of world GDP has little influence on IT markets; a post-Brexit Britain would have even less. Most software markets have been global for decades.
The EU has real clout though. From the viewpoint of Silicon Valley, Brussels is the world’s privacy regulator, since Washington doesn’t care and nobody else is big enough to matter.
Brussels also calls the shots on competition policy. The reason you get offered a randomised choice of default browser when switching on a new Windows PC in Europe is that the EU competition authorities insisted on it. This was punishment for Microsoft using its desktop monopoly to trash Netscape – which was an offence in the US too, but the Bush administration couldn’t be bothered to prosecute it.
If you want someone to police the side-effects of network effects and globalisation, the European Commission is just about the only sheriff in town.

But in the long term the biggest problem may not just be money.
Great universities thrive by drawing the best and the brightest from round the world, to be our students, to be our research staff, and to be our academics. Most of our new hires are foreign.
We already have a hard time competing with America for the best people. What will happen if Britain votes to leave Europe following a campaign of xenophobia – which has spilled over into outright racism?
This is not just about money; it's about who we are, and also about what other people perceive us to be.
Even if Remain wins on Thursday, we've all been damaged. If it goes the other way, the world may conclude that Britain is no longer the best place to send your kids, or to build one of your research labs.

Pension cuts - respond to USS

The UCU has lain down its placards and ended the strike to avoid cuts to pensions. Our one remaining hope is for members to make their outrage known in the USS consultation exercise, which ends 22 May 2015. I hope everyone with a USS pension will respond. Suggested responses from UCU Left and UCU are linked; please comment below, especially to list other suggested responses.

Universities UK argue that the reductions are necessary to avoid a deficit, but their claim has been widely criticised. A group of prominent statisticians point out Universities UK inflated the deficit by assuming a buoyant economy when predicting future salaries but assuming a recession when predicting investment returns.

In 2011, Universities UK imposed vastly reduced pensions on new hires. Old hires who pay into the pension fund for forty years receive a pension of one-half their final salary; new hires who do the same receive a pension of one-half their average salary. Basing pensions on average rather than final salary may be sensible, but to do so with no little or no adjustment in multiplier suggests employers used this as an excuse to slip in a large cut; new hires receive about 2/3 the benefits received by old hires. All staff also suffered other cuts to pensions: additional caps and less good adjustment for inflation. At the time, it was predicted that within a few years old hires would be moved to the inferior scheme for new hires, and that is what has now come to pass.

Like many in USS, employees and employers alike, I am concerned that the changes will make UK academia a less attractive option for potential scholars.

Will Snowden be Glasgow University's next Rector?

From the Glasgow Herald. Spotted by Mitch Wand.

Chris Cassells, a member of the "Elect Snowden as Rector" campaign at Glasgow University, said a Snowden victory would be a gesture against surveillance culture
"Having Edward Snowden as rector would give us a megaphone with which we can project our views to a global audience particularly on the issue of state surveillance and the very valid and welcome role of whistleblowers in a democracy," explained the PhD student, 27.
"I think he has done a great service to citizens across the world in exposing the corrupt and immoral practises of the NSA and our very own GCHQ.
"Studying at the university is dependent on the free exchange of information and freedom of speech, and I think Snowden's revelations hit to the heart of that."

American Studies Association joins academic boycott of Israel

Jews for Justice for Palestinians reports that on 16 December 2013, the American Studies Association voted, 66% to 33%, to join a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Students support strike

Will Hutton, writing in the Guardian, described the situation succinctly: 

The real wages of academics have fallen by 13% since 2008, one of the largest sustained wage cuts any profession has suffered since the Second World War. 

University administrators offer 1% and refuse to negotiate. Faculty struck on 31 October and a second strike is called for 3 December.  As usual, our students put the case more eloquently than our union (the UCU, University and College Union). The leadership of EUSA (Edinburgh University Student Association) write:

Tensions are high within the University, as the second day of strike action draws nearer and many continue to work to rule. At such times we may hear the oft-quoted: “For the sake of students, don’t go on strike!”
We write on behalf of EUSA and our 32,000 members, to actively encourage you to take strike action. In the short term this will indeed affect our education, but the long term benefits are significantly vaster.
It is critical that students and staff struggle collectively. Not only to ensure that the sector continues to attract the highest calibre of people, but also so staff are able to focus on the job – not worrying about the rocketing cost of living. Needless to say, colleagues at the start of their career are hardest hit, including the thousands of EUSA’s postgraduate members who help teach.
The demands are reasonable, and the more effective the action now the sooner we can get back to the reason we’re all here – education.
It is for this reason that EUSA’s academic reps, who aren’t exactly our most radical bunch, have voted overwhelmingly in favour of actively supporting the on-going strike action. This decision has been met with broad approval from across the student body. Dozens of our reps and countless other students were out on the picket lines at 7am the other week, and have vowed to be there next time.We are actively encouraging our members not to cross the picket lines and to study from home.Education continues to be progressively marketised, fees continue to rise, power continues to shift away from ordinary staff and into the hands of the overpaid in Old College. At times like these it is vital that the university acts as a community and reasserts its stake over the corporate body. We do this by working together, and recognising that our struggles are in common.
So again, we implore you, on behalf of your students, not to undermine the strike. And hopefully we'll be seeing you on the picket lines!
In solidarity,Hugh, Nadia, Alex and KirstyThe EUSA Sabbatical Team

The photo above shows me picketing the Informatics Forum, surrounded by students during a previous strike in 2011.