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September 2013

I'd forgotten how silly that novel is. Hawk Eye disguises himself as a bear & the otherwise hyper-sensitive native Americans are clueless.

This week I'm looking forward to teaching John Barth and Peter Osborne on Theory and its afterlife. Also doing Last of the Mohicans.

I appreciate the critique of rights discourses as much as your next critical theorist, but that is dire. Blatant desire to crush. #tories

As UN states definitive human contribution to warming, Osborne says Britain should not place heavy environmental burden on energy firms.

Back from Bergen where I spoke on open access immediately after the Norwegian education minister (Kunnskapsminister). Also sat next to her.

I also had a great chat with somebody from the Bergen Wittgenstein archive. Their journal is embargoed OA, which is a very good start.

Love how video circulating is called "forget Samsung & Apple". As though people believe that tech. superiority is the reason for dominance.

If I hadn't felt so migrainous all weekend, I would have ventured out this evening to see Tony Joe White. Prepping for Norway instead.

Marking this afternoon and did a lengthy YouTube detour via Led Zeppelin. I eventually ended up at the ElectronicBlues subreddit...

Brighton people: friend searching for job in ESOL or health assessment. If you know of orgs to whom she could apply, I'd be grateful.

Things confirmed to and/or learned by me today: #1 @ajaxlogos is a really smart guy. #2 there's a great pizza place on Exmouth market.

It is a total scam that the Copyright Licensing Agency’s rules for academic scanning stipulate that only the latest edition may be used.

However, please include a little cover note/context! Helps to distinguish from corporate spam type efforts & I'm more likely to promote.

Few employers would pay you to create a product and then allow you to sell the output for personal advantage. Totally odd logic.

Think he's got this wrong. It already /is/ treated differently. Those of us with jobs are paid to do research /and/ are allowed to sell.

Author asked rhetorically why academic labour should, in this case, very treated differently to other forms. Ie right to compensation.

Just read a post asking why academics should have to lose the ability to profit from selling books, either through OA or bulk licensing.

“@catmacOA 55% of DOAJ journals don’t have DOIs ... 41% not yet interested in archiving as they don’t have resources #COASP” < a big problem

Just noticed that, awesomely, Wordpress refers to its licensing conditions as "Freedoms". Given that it's GPL, that's 100% right.

One of the parts of book-writing that worries me most is the acknowledgements. Who are my unknown unknowns?(that will haunt me)

Can't wait to teach Lost in the Funhouse: Experimental American Literary Fiction Since the Sixties. And our MA in C21 Lit. Theory.

I'd also like to take the opportunity today to reaffirm my opposition to the death penalty in all cases, no matter how abhorrent the crime.

I know that @PynchonInPublic will be pleased. Bleeding Edge has mention of an inscribed "web of symbols" in a bar bathroom a la Lot 49.

Today has started with Underworld (music), will progress to Pynchon (novel) and then to @elebelfiore (critical university stuff). Not bad,

So far, Bleeding Edge v good. Enjoyed the bitching about window.open javascript popups and Pynchon's fabrication of Arabic leet #31337

But if they want a "functional market" & note that current publishing choices not driven by price, then need to expose researchers to costs.

"‘No civilized system of justice should have to depend on such flimsy evidence, quite possibly tainted by dishonesty or overzealousness"...

Found some time for a couple of hacks on OAButton. The bookmarklet now has a "report" link & can, if next pull request accepted, be closed.

You gotta laugh at operator 4G logic. Price it high because "there's no demand". Use low uptake as evidence for the fact there's no demand.

Hmm. Except, NSA also claim to be able to exploit "indigenous" cryptographic systems... "Non-commerical crypto infosec system"

Wonder if open source components are vulnerable? Presumably not, they are, rather, just inserting flawed implementations into products.

That can be problematic for early career researchers who want to submit to assessment exercises. You'd think 3 years later you'd be safe.

I have another book chapter submitted in 2010 that still isn't out. Edited collections /are/ important for Hums., but they are so slow.

Oh, by the way, it /is/ a very fine and well-produced book, BUT, that book chapter I just tweeted... I submitted it in 2010.

Gathering from the responses of others, there may be an edited collection of Pynchon essays in today's post. Going home just got even better

Phew, just written a big lecture section on C. Perkins Gilman and (lack of) intersectionality. Looking forward to this one.

Just to play devil's advocate: couldn't some of the wealthy institutions criticizing UoL for selling folios help the lib. out financially?

If anyone based in Brighton can recommend a (wo)man with a van, please let me know. Friend has been let down by her movers for tomorrow.

The Penguin Press trailer for the new Pynchon novel, Bleeding Edge, is too terrible to post. Don't know what they were thinking.

If you want a computer literate society, people have to be able to dig around to see how software works. You can't do that if it's closed.

What Osborne doesn't get is that entrepreneurship broke ComSci teaching. The Gates-Jobs paradigm of "closed" fosters simple consumerism.

I almost nodded at one sentence in George Osborne's article on ComSci teaching in schools. Then frowned as it went on to "entrepreneurs".

Radio 4 doing a good job this afternoon with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning dramatisation and now Seamus Heaney recordings.