Annoyances

Overcrowding library reading rooms

The TimesOnline has this story about the overcrowding at the famed British Library Reading Room. The main problem is that there are too few places for all those who want to be there. Unfortunately the complaints about lazy students wanting to “hang out” and therefore occupying places for “better” people misses the importance of the story. For example parts like this:

Although there are 1,480 seats in the library, the author Christopher Hawtree was last week forced to perch on a windowsill … Lady Antonia said: “I had to queue for 20 minutes to get in, in freezing weather. Then I queued to leave my coat for 20 minutes [at the compulsory check-in]. Then half an hour to get my books and another 15 minutes to get my coat. I’m told it’s due to students having access now. Why can’t they go to their university libraries?”

Make most people feel like shouting: get a life, you can afford it!

But the reality of the problem is that access to reading rooms (at any library) should be kept within limits so that those there can actually get work done. Overcrowding affects service and makes access pointless.

So why overcrowd the reading rooms? Is it because of a genuine egalitarian urge? Maybe, but I suspect the truth is in the final sentence of the article:

…that the library’s directors received performance bonuses depending on the number of visits.

Posted on by mklang

Camera License

Not long ago in a recent awareness campaign the London police managed to link photography to terrorism.

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This was silly enough and would only really have two effects – either it is ignored or it creates panic. But even worse is the example when a policeman asked a person taking photographs whether he has a license to do so…

The BBC reports that Phil Smith was taking pictures in a public place and was challenged by a police officer who asked if he had a licence for the camera.

After explaining he didn’t need one, he was taken down a side-street for a formal “stop and search”, then asked to delete the photos and ordered not take any more. So he slunk home with his camera.

Obviously the policeman was wrong but the considering the strange climate of fear and paranoia coupled with the official power of the police the potential for abuse is great indeed.

Posted on by mklang

Aweful truth: The real cost of green

While much of the world suffers from lack of food, malnutrition and occasional starvation the rest of us seem not to have noticed. Via Monbiot I became aware of a terrible little fact:

The World Bank points out that “the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol … could feed one person for a year”   (World Bank, 2008. Biofuels: The Promise and the Risks)

Something worth sharing…

Posted on by mklang

Parallel Production Sucks

Despite being totally aware of the consequences I am now stuck (again) with the job of writing several things in parallel. In the next two weeks I need to finish my open access report for Lund, two book chapters and a licensing booklet. The actual content is not the problem – what is the problem is despite all efforts to the contrary deadlines have a tendency to expand and contract to finally collect themselves in nasty little clusters that force the whole writing process into an attempt to beat text from the dead mind of the writer.

So how does this happen and can it be avoided? To answer the last question first: Of course it can be avoided. The simple trick is to only do one thing at a time. The cost of this approach will be to radically diminish my writing output. So this does not feel like an option.

The first question (why?) is more complex. It can be attributed to bad planning but this is only part of the truth. For many years I would explain my deadline stress with the words bad planning but I have come to realize that this is not the whole truth. No matter how good my planning is life has a way of throwing small surprises (not all pleasant) dates change, new tasks are assigned and often unrealistic work loads lead to delays.

The results of these insights should maybe be to attempt to change – but how can you change the unforeseen? How much planning must be included for that which you cannot know? And in the end isn’t it all a waste of time? After all:

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans – John Lennon

Posted on by mklang

Involuntary Detox

Warning this is just me venting my frustration….

Right. Entering my fourth week without broadband at home. Let me assure everyone this is not a voluntary state of affairs. It all began with me being silly enough to want to move to a better apartment. The move went very well but then the broadband company struck. For reasons which are not really clear to me the technician needs to talk to me. Unfortunately I had registered my old mobile number so I missed the call. Naturally this means that the technician could not call me again for the next two weeks. After several calls to my provider I now have a new date in the middle in this week for the installation of broadband. But this naturally depends on the call from the technician.

Three weeks without broadband has not improved my general mood or enabled me to develop a greater enjoyment of analog technologies. For those of you who think that you will read more if you had less access to broadband this theory – in my involuntary experiment – failed miserably. I read more when I have broadband.

Now I tend to collect lots of broadband related tasks and take them to work. Then attempt to remember what it was I was hoping to do when I had a decent internet connection. Bloody annoying. It’s not that I miss anything in particular it’s just the general basic luxury of having access to a technology upon which I depend heavily.

Posted on by mklang

Moan, moan, moan

Still no broadband at home and the next two weeks are going to be supremely hectic. Today I returned from Norway and gave a lecture, tomorrow I am off to Gävle to interview librarians and discuss Open Access. On Wednesday I am interviewing in Göteborg on Thursday I am going to Halmstad to interview and on Friday I am lecturing in Göteborg.

The next week is a presentation at a Stockholm lecture, Tuesday is a meeting in Lund, Wednesday is Umeå. Thursday & Friday are lecturing in Göteborg. All the while I will be working on a report, a book chapter, and completing a short book.

That makes 2676 kilometers mainly on trains and the first leaves in six hours. Its time to switch of and go to bed.

Posted on by mklang

Hamster work

Spent the morning doing hamster work – it’s the handling of emails and administrative tasks each so small that they do not really require much thought but taken collectively they can destroy any attempt to carry out real work (writing, researching etc). It’s called hamster work because after a day carrying it out you go home without having produced anything. It feels much like a hamster must feel after running in the treadmill. Lots of movement but no distance.

Photo: Cholate Loving Hamster by Steve_C (CC BY-NC-ND)

After two hours of attempting to empty my inbox, it now contains 92 essential emails (from the original 224). It isn’t fun discovering things have been forgotten but now at least I am (almost) on top of my email again.

By the way have you read Knuth on email? Here is a short quote:

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don’t have time for such study.

 

Posted on by mklang

Function creep and systems abuse

In recent news a US pilot accidentally shot his gun in the cockpit of the plane. Since 9/11 pilots have been given guns to increase safety and this is the first time a gun from this program has been discharged (ABC News). Using this as an example Obsessed writes a very clear argument about the flaws inherent in arming pilots.

We can assume that a trained pilot, when facing piloty thingies, will act like a trained pilot. WE CANNOT ASSUME THAT A TRAINED PILOT WILL ACT LIKE A TRAINED LION-TAMER WHEN FACING A WILD LION.

The example also shows that once installed, any social or technical system has the potential to fail. All the right intentions were present in the arguments to supply pilots with guns and, I will venture a guess that the pilot really regrets the incident. Despite all these regrets and good intentions the pilot is to blame for the shot and will most probably be seriously punished.

But what about those who advocated and argued for the system itself? They will most probably be able to swear themselves free from legal, social and moral responsibility by blaming all the results on the pilot. This is not an untypical response from those who create and regulate systems. But it is also a way of shirking responsibility. Those who create and regulate systems must become more aware of the effects of their decisions and not be allowed to hide behind good intentions. The side effects enabled by the system – in this case the gun being shot at the wrong time – must be factored into the decision.

This is not the same as requiring that systems builders prepare for every impossible situation but only that they be required to take into account the added risks entailed by system abuse. Stated simply, the pilot would not have been able to discharge a gun in the cockpit if there was no gun in the cockpit.

Posted on by mklang

Treat them like crap

Explaining the inner workings of the university to outsiders is complicated enough my family and friends don’t get what the university is, or how it works and often enough the comments that I have “stayed” in university are flung at me as if this is a simple, cosy sinecure. Ignore the fact that we have an incredible series of qualifications (both formal and informal), ignore the fact that we have internal politics, real budgets, tough evaluations and working conditions which do not match our salaries – no other group works for free as much as we do – ignore all that. Just remember that universities can, and do, treat many of their valued workers like shit.

Purse Lips and Square Jaw blogged an excerpt from Marc Bousquet’s new book How The University Works (the introduction in pdf)

Degree in hand, loans coming due…the degree holder asks a question to which the system has no answer: If I have been a splendid teacher and scholar while nondegreed for the past ten years, why am I suddenly unsuitable? Nearly all of the administrative responses to the degree holder can already be understood as responses to waste: flush it, ship it to the provinces, recycle it through another industry, keep it away from the fresh meat.

Several of my friends have written their PhDs and are still struggling to get fixed jobs in academia despite several years of teaching and research experience. Martin over at Aardvarcheology has written his experiences at getting hired within academia.

Read more over at Bousquet’s How The University Works Blog and Tiziana Terranova and Marc Bousquet, Recomposing the University, Mute Magazine, 2004

Posted on by mklang

Do you own your library?

After having packed most of my books into boxes, physically transported them to their new home and placed them haphazardly in the bookshelves to await the slower and more pleasurable task of re-arranging my books I feel a strong sense of ownership, property and belonging. My books are part of who I am. Their physical appearance and their content are telltale clues to the identity of their owner.

I have previously written against the e-book but there is a specific issue which is important to point out. Cory Doctorow has written a short note entitled In the age of ebooks, you don’t own your library. The note points out the tendency of e-books to limit the rights previously held by the book reader. Today when buying files for the e-book reader the transaction is often termed as a license and may (this needs to be tested in the courts) limit the ways in which we can buy, sell, borrow and copy our books. In the worst case scenario licenses such as these will spell the end of borrowing books from friends and become another nail in the coffin of the second hand bookstore. Cory writes:

It’s funny that in the name of protecting “intellectual property,” big media companies are willing to do such violence to the idea of real property — arguing that since everything we own, from our t-shirts to our cars to our ebooks, embody someone’s copyright, patent and trademark, that we’re basically just tenant farmers, living on the land of our gracious masters who’ve seen fit to give us a lease on our homes.

The physical property we own will be dependent upon our behavior towards the content we require to fill it. Television requires the shows and we must pay the cable company, computers require software and we must license it, e-books will require us to subscribe to the rules of those who own the content.

Unless we stick to the old fashioned paper versions of course…

Posted on by mklang