Monday, February 27, 2012
A mercy killing for the lecturing “profession”
A prefatory comment; it is worth re-iterating what this blog is and is
not about. It is my view that lecturers in Ireland are in general
grossly overpaid and under worked. Moreover, the unions have prevented
their getting proper feedback from the only authority that matters ;
the students. The result is that the standards in the “profession” in
Ireland are abysmal, and it is a burden on the taxpayer. The simple
mechanism of allowing student feedback would resolve much of these
issues.
However, the worse scenario would have been to allow university managements ride roughshod over academics. In 2002, we faced a perfect storm;
- rampant university managements determined to destroy academic freedom and tenure, as in Britain
- supine/corrupt unions
- a state that made absolutely clear that it was not going to exert any jurisdiction over the universities, and invoked the absurd “autonomous statutory responsibilities “phrase to justify its irresponsibility in the face of clear evidence of criminality by university managements
This had to be fought, and we won. Yet the major significance may not be in the universities themselves, as it is clear that education is moving irrevocably to the internet, but in the curtailment of state power. The “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ trick could have been extended to state-sponsored nursing homes (and indeed there was palpable movement in that direction until Primetime and Dr. Des O'Neill got involved), and indeed any area scheduled for incipient privatization wherein standards of accountability were to be lowered to zero to make it attractive to so-called “investors” (aka cronies). I confess that I found this impulse to be redolent of absolute evil.
So here are 3 vignettes and a scenario;
1.Two weekends ago, my band drove the 350 + miles to LA from SF. We then drove the 120 miles to San Diego, and back to SF. The band included one of the best jazz singers in the world, and a flautist who is a rising star in world music. We did all this travelling for 2 gigs and a workshop.
2.I had stopped at my local guitar store to buy strings the day before. The very helpful shop assistant also had a gig in LA; he drove all the way SF-LA and back within 24 hours, and lost money on the project. This is the kind of life that awaits academics, if they continue to fail to organize outside the aegis of state-sponsored miasma like SIPTU.
3.In 1985, Liam O Faolain of Carlow VEC told me to sign on for 3 weeks between contracts. I did not want to, have not done so since, and in any case the social welfare department told me that “lecturing” is too narrow a job description to merit being seen as sincerely searching for work. So if you get sacked you can't get pay-related as management do not pay the proper stamps, nor can you go on the dole. The social welfare department may have been ahead of its time, if as ever for the wrong reasons
4.One of the few professions that have not changed in a millennium – apart from the related ones of lawyer and priest – is that of lecturer. Whereas a coachman of 2 hundred years ago would be bewildered by a car, a mediaeval lecturer put in a modern classroom would know to head straight to the podium and let his mouth loose.
What has happened over the past year – with udacity.com, MITX, and coursera.org at the forefront – is that the worm finally has turned. Students are so used to socializing at home from their computer that the draw of the lecture hall is no longer compelling. Thrun and others have developed interactive mechanisms that sustain interest and assess. While neither Gutenberg nor film finished the lecturing “profession”, it is clear that a very few courses will dominate academia, done by a few superstar lecturers, just as mechanical reproduction resulted in a very few superstar popstars and a newly impoverished class of journeyman musicians.
Those who like teaching and researching will continue to do so, and will naturally draw students if they are talented, just as talented musicians have found ways to survive in the face of a deluge of Pop Idol, X-factor, and rap. However, the lecturing “profession” is a dead man walking. What we need to focus on is putting pressure on the state so that it doesn't emphasize and fund garbage in academia as things irrevocably change as the Irish state has funded garbage (like Jedward, Westlife etc) in music, while stealing from quality musicians through mechanisms like Enterprise Ireland's trade stands.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph D Stanford 27 u Feabhra 2012
1 u Marta This is what student evaluations look like from Stanford - my first time teaching the course. I think the next time we'll be in the high fours;
PPS 5 u Marta - a brief note on a historic day, the day that DCU and other crimes against scholarship and the Irish nation finally became redundant. DCU has maintained a tradition of abusing students in various ways - taking in 300 into a class proven only capable of 70, bullying them and bribing them while there, as well as setting up useless programs like the postmodern "Bachelhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifor's in teaching and learning" that qualified graduates in a sublime irony for - Nothing. It was able to get away with this not only because of state criminality but also a reputation for churning out graduates in computing and engineering with technical skills to go with the scars of the abuse they suffered (rather like the industrial schools of yore)
Today MIT went into competition with DCU on DCU's technical strong point, and there will be only one winner;
The lab for the circuits and electronics course
MIT, through Medialab, stole from the Irish taxpayer; this is appropriate compensation. It also seems to this writer that Stanford has told to hold off on its rival offering (CS 101) as MIT and Stanford divvy up the world's talented students. Stanford are currently deliberately holding back several courses that coursera.org has prepared.
Let's make it clear; tertiary education needs this competition and absolute academic freedom with respect for students will be a sine qua non. In 3 years or so, there will be the usual BS govt inquiry into what went wrong with DCU, and the criminals involved will be safely at home with their grotesquely large pensions - if the Germans allow them. Welcome to Ireland
However, the worse scenario would have been to allow university managements ride roughshod over academics. In 2002, we faced a perfect storm;
- rampant university managements determined to destroy academic freedom and tenure, as in Britain
- supine/corrupt unions
- a state that made absolutely clear that it was not going to exert any jurisdiction over the universities, and invoked the absurd “autonomous statutory responsibilities “phrase to justify its irresponsibility in the face of clear evidence of criminality by university managements
This had to be fought, and we won. Yet the major significance may not be in the universities themselves, as it is clear that education is moving irrevocably to the internet, but in the curtailment of state power. The “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ trick could have been extended to state-sponsored nursing homes (and indeed there was palpable movement in that direction until Primetime and Dr. Des O'Neill got involved), and indeed any area scheduled for incipient privatization wherein standards of accountability were to be lowered to zero to make it attractive to so-called “investors” (aka cronies). I confess that I found this impulse to be redolent of absolute evil.
So here are 3 vignettes and a scenario;
1.Two weekends ago, my band drove the 350 + miles to LA from SF. We then drove the 120 miles to San Diego, and back to SF. The band included one of the best jazz singers in the world, and a flautist who is a rising star in world music. We did all this travelling for 2 gigs and a workshop.
2.I had stopped at my local guitar store to buy strings the day before. The very helpful shop assistant also had a gig in LA; he drove all the way SF-LA and back within 24 hours, and lost money on the project. This is the kind of life that awaits academics, if they continue to fail to organize outside the aegis of state-sponsored miasma like SIPTU.
3.In 1985, Liam O Faolain of Carlow VEC told me to sign on for 3 weeks between contracts. I did not want to, have not done so since, and in any case the social welfare department told me that “lecturing” is too narrow a job description to merit being seen as sincerely searching for work. So if you get sacked you can't get pay-related as management do not pay the proper stamps, nor can you go on the dole. The social welfare department may have been ahead of its time, if as ever for the wrong reasons
4.One of the few professions that have not changed in a millennium – apart from the related ones of lawyer and priest – is that of lecturer. Whereas a coachman of 2 hundred years ago would be bewildered by a car, a mediaeval lecturer put in a modern classroom would know to head straight to the podium and let his mouth loose.
What has happened over the past year – with udacity.com, MITX, and coursera.org at the forefront – is that the worm finally has turned. Students are so used to socializing at home from their computer that the draw of the lecture hall is no longer compelling. Thrun and others have developed interactive mechanisms that sustain interest and assess. While neither Gutenberg nor film finished the lecturing “profession”, it is clear that a very few courses will dominate academia, done by a few superstar lecturers, just as mechanical reproduction resulted in a very few superstar popstars and a newly impoverished class of journeyman musicians.
Those who like teaching and researching will continue to do so, and will naturally draw students if they are talented, just as talented musicians have found ways to survive in the face of a deluge of Pop Idol, X-factor, and rap. However, the lecturing “profession” is a dead man walking. What we need to focus on is putting pressure on the state so that it doesn't emphasize and fund garbage in academia as things irrevocably change as the Irish state has funded garbage (like Jedward, Westlife etc) in music, while stealing from quality musicians through mechanisms like Enterprise Ireland's trade stands.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph D Stanford 27 u Feabhra 2012
1 u Marta This is what student evaluations look like from Stanford - my first time teaching the course. I think the next time we'll be in the high fours;
PPS 5 u Marta - a brief note on a historic day, the day that DCU and other crimes against scholarship and the Irish nation finally became redundant. DCU has maintained a tradition of abusing students in various ways - taking in 300 into a class proven only capable of 70, bullying them and bribing them while there, as well as setting up useless programs like the postmodern "Bachelhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifor's in teaching and learning" that qualified graduates in a sublime irony for - Nothing. It was able to get away with this not only because of state criminality but also a reputation for churning out graduates in computing and engineering with technical skills to go with the scars of the abuse they suffered (rather like the industrial schools of yore)
Today MIT went into competition with DCU on DCU's technical strong point, and there will be only one winner;
The lab for the circuits and electronics course
MIT, through Medialab, stole from the Irish taxpayer; this is appropriate compensation. It also seems to this writer that Stanford has told to hold off on its rival offering (CS 101) as MIT and Stanford divvy up the world's talented students. Stanford are currently deliberately holding back several courses that coursera.org has prepared.
Let's make it clear; tertiary education needs this competition and absolute academic freedom with respect for students will be a sine qua non. In 3 years or so, there will be the usual BS govt inquiry into what went wrong with DCU, and the criminals involved will be safely at home with their grotesquely large pensions - if the Germans allow them. Welcome to Ireland
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Irish “studies” and British “intelligence”
Last year, Kerby Miller and Niall Meehan published a remarkable article
claiming that a historian of “Irish studies” may have been a British
intelligence plant;
Make it open-source please!
Remarkably, the historian in question Raymond Raymond (shades of Major major, sirhan sirhan etc – maybe the spooks ARE as lazy as we think), published widely, spoke to the Old Dublin Society, and so on;
Next - the internet?
Perhaps due to having too much time on my hands, I’ve developed an interest in Irish studies. Berkeley is one of the least Irish towns in the USA, and UC Berkeley flies in the odd revisionist every now and then as its contribution to the subject (Stanford's contribution here is even slighter, with the "Irish" lectures held in the notorious Hoover institute). Had the narratives they came up with in their tendentious screeds been in the slightest bit plausible, I would have returned back to my normal diet of biophysics. However, not only were their lectures nonsense; they often came with a creation myth of how they got diverted into Irish studies (Jane Ohlmeyer) , an apology that they knew nothing about the area and were just looking for a radical anti-nationalist theme (Emilie Pine), or - most remarkably – a plea from the editor of Cambridge UP’s Irish section, Ray Ryan, NOT to buy CUP’s books as they were too expensive and “You don’t need them”.
Then a quick look at the Amer congress of Irish studies website indicates that the principal officers come from fifth-rate universities, get awards mainly from ACIS, and publish on the “British isles”
Spot the Irish person
The coup de grace is the Boston College story, wherein this bastion of Jesuit inscrutability initially declined to defend academic freedom after a request from British Intelligence was issued via the US state department for videos of IRA members made under the curatorship of Ed Moloney.
Forgive me - might be paranoia due to an agent of the "Irish" state dropping summonses to an illegal meeting in the door of my private home late on a Friday night - but I see a pattern.
Sean O Nuallain Ph.D.
Stanford University 23 u Feabhra 2012;
PS 27 u Feabhra The only Irish person in the "spot" quiz was of course at DCU. So is the only Irish name I can attest on the recent Wikilieaks Stratfor list, an expert on "terrorism" at DCU;
Maura Conway
Let's remember - that's her DCU e-mail, not personal one, that she uses for spook activity
And take a look at the company she keep on the list from SAIC etc;
Is Ireland neutral?
Shutting down DCU, and replacing it as its forebear the NIHE was replaced, is an urgent matter
I always felt that this blog was being spied on.
Make it open-source please!
Remarkably, the historian in question Raymond Raymond (shades of Major major, sirhan sirhan etc – maybe the spooks ARE as lazy as we think), published widely, spoke to the Old Dublin Society, and so on;
Next - the internet?
Perhaps due to having too much time on my hands, I’ve developed an interest in Irish studies. Berkeley is one of the least Irish towns in the USA, and UC Berkeley flies in the odd revisionist every now and then as its contribution to the subject (Stanford's contribution here is even slighter, with the "Irish" lectures held in the notorious Hoover institute). Had the narratives they came up with in their tendentious screeds been in the slightest bit plausible, I would have returned back to my normal diet of biophysics. However, not only were their lectures nonsense; they often came with a creation myth of how they got diverted into Irish studies (Jane Ohlmeyer) , an apology that they knew nothing about the area and were just looking for a radical anti-nationalist theme (Emilie Pine), or - most remarkably – a plea from the editor of Cambridge UP’s Irish section, Ray Ryan, NOT to buy CUP’s books as they were too expensive and “You don’t need them”.
Then a quick look at the Amer congress of Irish studies website indicates that the principal officers come from fifth-rate universities, get awards mainly from ACIS, and publish on the “British isles”
Spot the Irish person
The coup de grace is the Boston College story, wherein this bastion of Jesuit inscrutability initially declined to defend academic freedom after a request from British Intelligence was issued via the US state department for videos of IRA members made under the curatorship of Ed Moloney.
Forgive me - might be paranoia due to an agent of the "Irish" state dropping summonses to an illegal meeting in the door of my private home late on a Friday night - but I see a pattern.
Sean O Nuallain Ph.D.
Stanford University 23 u Feabhra 2012;
PS 27 u Feabhra The only Irish person in the "spot" quiz was of course at DCU. So is the only Irish name I can attest on the recent Wikilieaks Stratfor list, an expert on "terrorism" at DCU;
Maura Conway
Let's remember - that's her DCU e-mail, not personal one, that she uses for spook activity
And take a look at the company she keep on the list from SAIC etc;
Is Ireland neutral?
Shutting down DCU, and replacing it as its forebear the NIHE was replaced, is an urgent matter
I always felt that this blog was being spied on.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Open letter to Ministers of Education and Justice
(A prefatory remark; there has been extensive correspondence between me
and the government since 2005, and parliamentary questions before that.
The state is well aware of DCU's criminality; its tactic has been to
find a way to land these crimes on innocent, productive individuals.
This is consistent with its new ploy of landing private debt on the
taxpayer. Readers can do an FOI to find the correspondence as ref number
1101818.
I apologize if at any point I have shown weakness dealing with these criminals. I worry about my daughters' and my partner's future if they manage to bankrupt me, as is clearly their wish by continuing to appeal)
Subject: circuit court O Nuallain vs DCU
Here is a brief account of DCU illegality in our case;
1995; illegal contracts issued by DCU, eventually to hundreds of staff. Since they are portrayed as a “comprehensive agreement” on which the union was not even consulted, the signatures were lifted from a previous document of fully a decade before IE 1985. The contracts get rid of tenure and academic freedom, and this is the main reason the taxpayer has been on the hook for many millions in legal fees as DCU tries to assert these provisions.
1997; The universities act calls for new disciplinary procedures, in consultation with the union. More illegality; the SIPTU rep Carmel Hogan reports at best being informed, never consulted. Where is the discipline for DCU management?
2000; A “draconian” disciplinary procedure is rejected by DCU governing authority
2001; It is re-presented to DCU governing authority with a new clause which, as Justice Clarke was to point out in 2007, allowed summary dismissal. It was drawn up by John O'Dwyer of Arthur Cox with a rather gushing endorsement by Tom Mallon, and has since been thrown out at the High Court and Supreme Court. So where is the discipline for Cox/Mallon?
Feb 2002; A group of my students is offered extra marks in their exam to give evidence against me. When they refuse, they are severely punished with inferior marks to their previous academic record, and refusal to enter graduate school despite still having the 2-1 grades in three instances. When this is brought up in the Dail, Padraic Mellett of the HEA invents the wholly spurious term “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ to describe the lack of accountability to the Dail of the universities. This has no role whatsoever in the act. Where is the discipline for Mellett?
June 2002; An attempt is made to use this procedure on me, wholly illegally as my contract dated before 1997. As I was also taking a grievance procedure in accordance with my contract, DCU management had agreed NOT to start disciplinary proceedings until the very serious matters in the grievance procedure were heard. Again, where is the discipline for DCU management?
June 2002-June 2009 Cox and Mallon repeatedly cancel and defer the hearings, and get Kate O'Mahony of the EAT to rescind the High court proceedings drawn up by Minister Shatter's firm to replace the grievance procedure. Where is the discipline for O'Mahony?
And so on..........yet I am not prepared to settle this matter, given the deadly serious threat to academic freedom involved , despite being terribly busy at Stanford – whose new online course offerings make DCU doomed in any case - and am prepared to go to the circuit court provided;
1.We can call Cox/Mallon, O'Mahony, Mellett (and perhaps Ronnie Ryan, who seems to have swallowed Mellett's line), and DCU management to give evidence
2.The judge considers reinstating the High Court action
3.Minister Quinn appoints a visitor, as the law requires should have been done in 2002 when this first came to light
4.In that case, I suggest Mid April to mid-May
Dr O Nuallain
----- Original Message -----
From: "Minister for Education & Skills"
To: "Sean O'Nuallain"
Sent: Friday, February 3, 2012 7:35:47 AM
Subject: RE: 110818
Dr. Sean O'Nuallain
%$%$@Stanford.Edu
PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER ON ALL CORRESPONDENCE
Our Ref: 1101818
Dear Dr. O'Nuallain
Thank you for your recent email regarding DCU.
Your correspondence will be brought to the Minister's attention as soon
as possible.
Yours sincerely
Ronnie Ryan
Private Secretary
___________________________________________
Sean O Nuallain Ph.D.
Stanford University 20u Feabhra 2012
PS 23 u Feabhra 2012;
(This too can be found under 1101818)
Of course, the revised stature of 2001, with a new line explicitly defining "tenure" as whatever notice of dismissal exists in the contract - which was put there during the Pronddzunski era, and almost certainly at his behest - has been "superseded" after repeatedly being thrown out of court. Yet the superseding statute is flawed in exactly the same way, and will be thrown out for the same reasons;
http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2011/01/dcus-new-illegal-statute.html
Check the last page of the cited document
So we have the same routine ahead of us; an attempt will be made to use this statute on some hapless employee, and it will be thrown out at the high Court. Isn't it about time that some of the wholly unqualified management that O'Hare and Pronzynski imposed on us were sacked - and prosecuted if it can be proven that this was not an honest mistake. Few believe it is an honest mistake, like the fraud using the signature of Pat Cullen, who had left DCU 5 years before, on the 1995 contracts.
I apologize if at any point I have shown weakness dealing with these criminals. I worry about my daughters' and my partner's future if they manage to bankrupt me, as is clearly their wish by continuing to appeal)
Subject: circuit court O Nuallain vs DCU
Here is a brief account of DCU illegality in our case;
1995; illegal contracts issued by DCU, eventually to hundreds of staff. Since they are portrayed as a “comprehensive agreement” on which the union was not even consulted, the signatures were lifted from a previous document of fully a decade before IE 1985. The contracts get rid of tenure and academic freedom, and this is the main reason the taxpayer has been on the hook for many millions in legal fees as DCU tries to assert these provisions.
1997; The universities act calls for new disciplinary procedures, in consultation with the union. More illegality; the SIPTU rep Carmel Hogan reports at best being informed, never consulted. Where is the discipline for DCU management?
2000; A “draconian” disciplinary procedure is rejected by DCU governing authority
2001; It is re-presented to DCU governing authority with a new clause which, as Justice Clarke was to point out in 2007, allowed summary dismissal. It was drawn up by John O'Dwyer of Arthur Cox with a rather gushing endorsement by Tom Mallon, and has since been thrown out at the High Court and Supreme Court. So where is the discipline for Cox/Mallon?
Feb 2002; A group of my students is offered extra marks in their exam to give evidence against me. When they refuse, they are severely punished with inferior marks to their previous academic record, and refusal to enter graduate school despite still having the 2-1 grades in three instances. When this is brought up in the Dail, Padraic Mellett of the HEA invents the wholly spurious term “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ to describe the lack of accountability to the Dail of the universities. This has no role whatsoever in the act. Where is the discipline for Mellett?
June 2002; An attempt is made to use this procedure on me, wholly illegally as my contract dated before 1997. As I was also taking a grievance procedure in accordance with my contract, DCU management had agreed NOT to start disciplinary proceedings until the very serious matters in the grievance procedure were heard. Again, where is the discipline for DCU management?
June 2002-June 2009 Cox and Mallon repeatedly cancel and defer the hearings, and get Kate O'Mahony of the EAT to rescind the High court proceedings drawn up by Minister Shatter's firm to replace the grievance procedure. Where is the discipline for O'Mahony?
And so on..........yet I am not prepared to settle this matter, given the deadly serious threat to academic freedom involved , despite being terribly busy at Stanford – whose new online course offerings make DCU doomed in any case - and am prepared to go to the circuit court provided;
1.We can call Cox/Mallon, O'Mahony, Mellett (and perhaps Ronnie Ryan, who seems to have swallowed Mellett's line), and DCU management to give evidence
2.The judge considers reinstating the High Court action
3.Minister Quinn appoints a visitor, as the law requires should have been done in 2002 when this first came to light
4.In that case, I suggest Mid April to mid-May
Dr O Nuallain
----- Original Message -----
From: "Minister for Education & Skills"
To: "Sean O'Nuallain"
Sent: Friday, February 3, 2012 7:35:47 AM
Subject: RE: 110818
Dr. Sean O'Nuallain
%$%$@Stanford.Edu
PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER ON ALL CORRESPONDENCE
Our Ref: 1101818
Dear Dr. O'Nuallain
Thank you for your recent email regarding DCU.
Your correspondence will be brought to the Minister's attention as soon
as possible.
Yours sincerely
Ronnie Ryan
Private Secretary
___________________________________________
Sean O Nuallain Ph.D.
Stanford University 20u Feabhra 2012
PS 23 u Feabhra 2012;
(This too can be found under 1101818)
Of course, the revised stature of 2001, with a new line explicitly defining "tenure" as whatever notice of dismissal exists in the contract - which was put there during the Pronddzunski era, and almost certainly at his behest - has been "superseded" after repeatedly being thrown out of court. Yet the superseding statute is flawed in exactly the same way, and will be thrown out for the same reasons;
http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2011/01/dcus-new-illegal-statute.html
Check the last page of the cited document
So we have the same routine ahead of us; an attempt will be made to use this statute on some hapless employee, and it will be thrown out at the high Court. Isn't it about time that some of the wholly unqualified management that O'Hare and Pronzynski imposed on us were sacked - and prosecuted if it can be proven that this was not an honest mistake. Few believe it is an honest mistake, like the fraud using the signature of Pat Cullen, who had left DCU 5 years before, on the 1995 contracts.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Ruairi Quinn - it's over! Stop wasting our money!
I met Ruairi Quinn in Ryan 's in Sandymount when the Medialab Europe
issue was still current and - to his credit – he had asked questions
in the Dail about it. I was the person who gave the critical interview
to David Armstrong of the Wall Street Journal which convinced him to run
that scathing article on July 6, 2001, in which I was quoted at length.
That includes my description of Medialab Europe; "as horrendous a scam
as I have actually seen" Unfortunately, I was young and naive then, and
now have seen Anglo et al.
Nonetheless, Medialab Europe was the scam that destroyed the Irish software industry - as it was meant to, because the goal was to have software run directly from the PM's office, the dept responsible for Medialab, and Denis O'Brien had pushed it there at private meetings with Negroponte and DeBert. Don't even think of suing me, Denis - you know what I'm talking about!
Essentially, I had found out that MIT was going to use Dublin as a dumping-ground for any staff who had been refused tenure and so there was to be NO academic recognition by MIT of what was going on in Dublin. Moreover, I had seen a contract between MIT Medialab and Denis O'Brien's buddy, Mark Roden, for rental of premises in Dublin. Ironically, I had played on the same rugby team as Roden, so am happy to be a class traitor. The contract was signed personally by Nicholas Negroponte, who had just lost his shirt in the dot com bomb. It states that as head of MIT Medialab, he could pay the rent. Nice, my son.
For the record, it is my view that what we have seen in Ireland since 2008 resembles the early days of the civil war - the "phony war" period before hostilities broke out. During that period, the Dublin self-appointed “elite” accumulated money and other resources, in conjunction with the Brits. When fighting broke out, as described by Frank O'Connor, a very confused situation ensued, and it is clear that the overwhelming majority of activists were on the anti-treaty side. Only the accumulation of resources, and help from a colonial force, ensured that the ancestors of fine Gael prevailed. The current issue of "History Ireland" reiterates the fact that the civil war arose to a large extent because the republican side was not prepared to allow a general election to happen while the threat of invasion still hung over the country. In 1929, Churchill released Vol 4 of his memoirs, confirming that he had threatened Collins with the imminent threat of invasion through all this period.
They even brought an 86-year-old German lady over last year to check that they could block off major cities in Ireland , if needs be, in the event that anyone might take a potshot at her.
Ironically, Iceland – which broke all the rules of international finance – has now been rated again as investment grade. I believe that what is essentially happening in Ireland is precisely the same as 1921-1923. A bunch of neoliberal morons and criminals in Dublin are deliberately burning through money exacted with threat of state force by tax to pay off “bondholders”who – it is clear – neither deserved nor expected to get paid. That impoverishes those of us native Irish who want to create an independent successful country.
Now for the BS about “technological universities”. We were through this with the NIHE's in the 1980's, but it is a practiced scam, with many worthies writing nonsense. There is no need whatsoever for another university in Ireland; in fact, the current ones will not survive in their present form. My read of the Stanford/MITX situation was basically correct - Andrew Ng and Sebastian Thrun divvied it up in Stanford, and MITX starts on March 5 with collusion from Stanford;
Interim list of free and world-class technological courses
Note that MIT are awarding "MITX pilot certificates" for completion of the course, which is - free! This is in contrast to signatures by the individual lecturers at Stanford, and heralds a new and very different world. Put very gently, these are already worth considerably more than anything coming from Carlow IT, regardless of how much “technological universities” lipstick you put on this particular pig.
Ruairi – it's over! Have enough sense to pull the plug on this crap about “technological universities” as they will not last a nanosecond in this new environment; move on, and we can ensure Ireland capitalizes on this shift, easily as consequential as Gutenberg. I know that this blog is widely read, and know also that your senior civil servants keep you in the dark as they strut their macho Doheny and Nesbitt's stuff. Hopefully, I will not have to resort again to getting the widow of a Labor TD to phone you to make a change that should have been done a decade previously to make DCU comply with the law.
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Stanford
17u Feabhra 2012
PS 18 u Feabhra Two further points;
1. I actually worked both at Carlow IT and DCU. While the former is a provincial and incompetently-run technical college, the second is something evil in the extreme. Fortunately, my time at the NRC, Canada, Berkeley and Stanford now exceeds that at DCU and CIT. This blog has been, inter alia, a commentary on crime at DCU. For Carlow IT, it is worth noting that a cousin of a recent FF minister for education (whose father is a Papal Knight) was at one stage sharing a course with me.
He described himself as "the ultimate in control" in the subject - to the students. At exam time, he decided to come good on this. To Carlow IT's credit, marking was anonymous in that the students were asked only to supply ID numbers, not names. Paddy decided to make them submit photocopies of their IDs with their scripts
Many failed in the exam for no good reason. I had tried to warn the external examiners; one of the, brother of a "Simon" senator and later the academic head of UL, called me into a meeting with my boss before the exam board. He threatened me with a formal complaint to the dept of education
So I sued him, and he backed down. At the exam board, I found that the external examiners had been negligent, in that they had not looked at the project work. One of the, Wallis Ewart, was an extern at DCU for many years. The results were withheld, as the students were given time to find their project work. Five of the students who previously had failed now passed. The head of science, Sean Cawley, behaved with great fairness throughout this process; I leave it up to the reader to determine whether this should be a university.
This does not compare with my favorite DCU story. In the early 1990's I had a very good group of postgraduate students to accompany the highly successful undergraduate degree programme and annual international conference I had started . One of the students started a relationship with an English colleague of mine. While I was in Canada, he appointed himself internal examiner for her dissertation; and indeed he clearly examined her internally as they had a kid a few years later. Though urged by the registrar to put a complaint in writing, which would have stopped her graduation, I declined. She could have had an excellent academic career,and I did not want to stop it.
While lurid, this story hardly compares to DCU's greatest hit; the 300 computer students who had about the same pass rate as the survival rate of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. They also entered college in 1999 thinking they were to do the acclaimed computer applications degree, and were then diverted into different programmes than that on the CAO booklet. 91 passed in summer 2001; we fought hard, to no avail, to get more passed, and to get the numbers reduced. I think it very important that they know that we cared for them.
2. Whence this “technological universities” garbage? Simply put, it's because there are about 200k in the Irish public "service" who have nothing to do all day. Of the 1/3 of a million paid for by the taxpayer - and soon by the sale of Coillte etc - only 125k or so deal directly with the public. Ironically, many of these are taking early retirement this month.
The other 200k produce and debate strategies - on a good day - leak them to the press, and the Minister has to respond. Thus Medialab, SFI, “technological universities” (and wait for the argument that this implies the others are not technological), Bertiebowl, PPARS, and all the other truly mad projects that emerge from pissing competitions in Dublin 2.
We can safely lose the 200k, and the minimum 20 billion euro they cost us annually.
PPS 226u Feabhra
Coursera - involving most of the Stanford courses - has erected an IP wall and is no loner creative commons. The MIT offerings may remain truly open. The IP wall is very possibly a step on the way to a pay wall;
Read the small print
Nonetheless, Medialab Europe was the scam that destroyed the Irish software industry - as it was meant to, because the goal was to have software run directly from the PM's office, the dept responsible for Medialab, and Denis O'Brien had pushed it there at private meetings with Negroponte and DeBert. Don't even think of suing me, Denis - you know what I'm talking about!
Essentially, I had found out that MIT was going to use Dublin as a dumping-ground for any staff who had been refused tenure and so there was to be NO academic recognition by MIT of what was going on in Dublin. Moreover, I had seen a contract between MIT Medialab and Denis O'Brien's buddy, Mark Roden, for rental of premises in Dublin. Ironically, I had played on the same rugby team as Roden, so am happy to be a class traitor. The contract was signed personally by Nicholas Negroponte, who had just lost his shirt in the dot com bomb. It states that as head of MIT Medialab, he could pay the rent. Nice, my son.
For the record, it is my view that what we have seen in Ireland since 2008 resembles the early days of the civil war - the "phony war" period before hostilities broke out. During that period, the Dublin self-appointed “elite” accumulated money and other resources, in conjunction with the Brits. When fighting broke out, as described by Frank O'Connor, a very confused situation ensued, and it is clear that the overwhelming majority of activists were on the anti-treaty side. Only the accumulation of resources, and help from a colonial force, ensured that the ancestors of fine Gael prevailed. The current issue of "History Ireland" reiterates the fact that the civil war arose to a large extent because the republican side was not prepared to allow a general election to happen while the threat of invasion still hung over the country. In 1929, Churchill released Vol 4 of his memoirs, confirming that he had threatened Collins with the imminent threat of invasion through all this period.
They even brought an 86-year-old German lady over last year to check that they could block off major cities in Ireland , if needs be, in the event that anyone might take a potshot at her.
Ironically, Iceland – which broke all the rules of international finance – has now been rated again as investment grade. I believe that what is essentially happening in Ireland is precisely the same as 1921-1923. A bunch of neoliberal morons and criminals in Dublin are deliberately burning through money exacted with threat of state force by tax to pay off “bondholders”who – it is clear – neither deserved nor expected to get paid. That impoverishes those of us native Irish who want to create an independent successful country.
Now for the BS about “technological universities”. We were through this with the NIHE's in the 1980's, but it is a practiced scam, with many worthies writing nonsense. There is no need whatsoever for another university in Ireland; in fact, the current ones will not survive in their present form. My read of the Stanford/MITX situation was basically correct - Andrew Ng and Sebastian Thrun divvied it up in Stanford, and MITX starts on March 5 with collusion from Stanford;
Interim list of free and world-class technological courses
Note that MIT are awarding "MITX pilot certificates" for completion of the course, which is - free! This is in contrast to signatures by the individual lecturers at Stanford, and heralds a new and very different world. Put very gently, these are already worth considerably more than anything coming from Carlow IT, regardless of how much “technological universities” lipstick you put on this particular pig.
Ruairi – it's over! Have enough sense to pull the plug on this crap about “technological universities” as they will not last a nanosecond in this new environment; move on, and we can ensure Ireland capitalizes on this shift, easily as consequential as Gutenberg. I know that this blog is widely read, and know also that your senior civil servants keep you in the dark as they strut their macho Doheny and Nesbitt's stuff. Hopefully, I will not have to resort again to getting the widow of a Labor TD to phone you to make a change that should have been done a decade previously to make DCU comply with the law.
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Stanford
17u Feabhra 2012
PS 18 u Feabhra Two further points;
1. I actually worked both at Carlow IT and DCU. While the former is a provincial and incompetently-run technical college, the second is something evil in the extreme. Fortunately, my time at the NRC, Canada, Berkeley and Stanford now exceeds that at DCU and CIT. This blog has been, inter alia, a commentary on crime at DCU. For Carlow IT, it is worth noting that a cousin of a recent FF minister for education (whose father is a Papal Knight) was at one stage sharing a course with me.
He described himself as "the ultimate in control" in the subject - to the students. At exam time, he decided to come good on this. To Carlow IT's credit, marking was anonymous in that the students were asked only to supply ID numbers, not names. Paddy decided to make them submit photocopies of their IDs with their scripts
Many failed in the exam for no good reason. I had tried to warn the external examiners; one of the, brother of a "Simon" senator and later the academic head of UL, called me into a meeting with my boss before the exam board. He threatened me with a formal complaint to the dept of education
So I sued him, and he backed down. At the exam board, I found that the external examiners had been negligent, in that they had not looked at the project work. One of the, Wallis Ewart, was an extern at DCU for many years. The results were withheld, as the students were given time to find their project work. Five of the students who previously had failed now passed. The head of science, Sean Cawley, behaved with great fairness throughout this process; I leave it up to the reader to determine whether this should be a university.
This does not compare with my favorite DCU story. In the early 1990's I had a very good group of postgraduate students to accompany the highly successful undergraduate degree programme and annual international conference I had started . One of the students started a relationship with an English colleague of mine. While I was in Canada, he appointed himself internal examiner for her dissertation; and indeed he clearly examined her internally as they had a kid a few years later. Though urged by the registrar to put a complaint in writing, which would have stopped her graduation, I declined. She could have had an excellent academic career,and I did not want to stop it.
While lurid, this story hardly compares to DCU's greatest hit; the 300 computer students who had about the same pass rate as the survival rate of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. They also entered college in 1999 thinking they were to do the acclaimed computer applications degree, and were then diverted into different programmes than that on the CAO booklet. 91 passed in summer 2001; we fought hard, to no avail, to get more passed, and to get the numbers reduced. I think it very important that they know that we cared for them.
2. Whence this “technological universities” garbage? Simply put, it's because there are about 200k in the Irish public "service" who have nothing to do all day. Of the 1/3 of a million paid for by the taxpayer - and soon by the sale of Coillte etc - only 125k or so deal directly with the public. Ironically, many of these are taking early retirement this month.
The other 200k produce and debate strategies - on a good day - leak them to the press, and the Minister has to respond. Thus Medialab, SFI, “technological universities” (and wait for the argument that this implies the others are not technological), Bertiebowl, PPARS, and all the other truly mad projects that emerge from pissing competitions in Dublin 2.
We can safely lose the 200k, and the minimum 20 billion euro they cost us annually.
PPS 226u Feabhra
Coursera - involving most of the Stanford courses - has erected an IP wall and is no loner creative commons. The MIT offerings may remain truly open. The IP wall is very possibly a step on the way to a pay wall;
Read the small print
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Call for papers; “Ireland in crisis” conference, Berkeley, July 10 and 11 2012
The Organizing and academic committees of the conference “Ireland in crisis” welcome submissions for
Ireland in crisis? - analyses and proposed solutions
Date/Time; July 10 and 11 2012 8-30 am to 5pm
The location is the home room international house at UC Berkeley;
http://ihouse.berkeley.edu/
International house, Berkeley - direct link
Please distribute to anyone who might be interested
Organizing committee
Sean O Nuallain (CSLI, Stanford University) (Conference chair)
Liliane Koziol (program director, International house at UC Berkeley
Academic committee
Peter Glazer (Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley)
Mary Power (New Mexico
Jacqui Fulmer
Sean O Nuallain (CSLI, Stanford University)
Peter M. Toner Professor Emeritus The University of New Brunswick
Alison Harvey Core Humanities ProgramUniversity of Nevada, Reno
Virginia Morris (B.A. Radcliffe), Celtic Arts Center, LA
Gabriel Rosenstock
Confirmed plenary speakers/performers
Peter Glazer (Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley)
Mary Power (New Mexico
Jacqui Fulmer
Sean O Nuallain (CSLI, Stanford University)
Alison Harvey Core Humanities ProgramUniversity of Nevada, Reno
Virginia Morris (B.A. Radcliffe), Celtic Arts Center, LA
Gabriel Rosenstock
Melanie O’Reilly
Format
Plenaries will be interspersed with ample time for discussion with relatively “light touch” moderation.
Schedule for submission;
Abstracts are to be submitted to contuirt2012@gmail.com
Mar 21, 2012; Deadline for submission of (max 2000 words) abstracts. They will be assessed by an appropriate program committee
April 9. 2012; Notification of acceptance
There is absolutely no Irish state or corporate involvement in this conference, and best principles of academic freedom will be upheld. The conference chair has a good record of getting conference proceedings published.
Speakers will be added as time progresses.
Registration
Fees will be payable by cheque on the day. We currently envisage a registration fee of $100 with $50 discount for the unwaged. No-one will be turned away for lack of funds. Ihouse has on-site inexpensive meals, and participants can buy tickets for these at the site.
Prologue: Ireland in crisis? - analyses and proposed solutions
While the economic crash in 2008 Ireland was both foreseeable and not untypical for that historical year, there are many indications that recovery this time will be both more difficult and more multi-faceted than its 1990's equivalent. A related issue is the dearth of real analysis that characterises Irish studies, which allowed the absurdities of the so-called “Celtic tiger” period to reach vertiginous heights. This conference can perhaps begin to address at least the latter issue.
Unlike the case in the 1980's, this economic crash has occurred at a time of fracture in the major national narratives. It may be the case that Irish people have had difficulty adjusting themselves to living in a state that is the result of imposed borders, versus an island that is unequivocally their home. Simultaneously, it is perhaps true that the Irish state has perfected a totalising corporatism that has replaced Roman Catholicism with neoliberalism as its dogma. What is certainly arguable is that the cultural output of the Irish, exemplified in popular music, has never been of worse quality in the history of the state, and perhaps indeed before the state came into being.
A second major difference from the 1980's crash is the vastly different economic context, both at the macro and micro levels. At the former level, the country has signed on to a set of EU agreements that restrict its ability to govern, both in fiscal and monetary terms. At the latter level, the transaction cost of simple commercial activity in Ireland has grown enormously, due both to vastly higher costs for infrastructure and labour and the incursions by the state into civil society that have made Ireland the most regulated country in the world. Paradoxically, these incursions have been accompanied by a dearth of real corporate enforcement, resulting in the rest of the world losing faith in the now surely doomed Irish stock market.
Finally, the fact that EMI was compelled to sue the Irish state to get it to conform to EU copyright law did not surprise many of those working in area that need to protect intellectual property. The dearth of corporate enforcement is attested by the assignment of a laughably small team of investigators to the Anglo-Irish bank investigation, a tiny investment in cleaning up one of the greatest financial scandals in recent world history, and one that the head of the commercial court in Ireland has frequently criticized. In fact, may one ask whether we are living through the aftermath of a fortunately incomplete coup, one devised to destroy ancient and well-functioning aspects of civil society while placing power and money irrevocably in a very few hands?
Papers are of course welcome which disagree with any or all of the above propositions
Four themes
Theme 1: Theater and other performing arts.
A panel discussion will begin this section. It will comprise (inter alia);
Virginia Morris, Director of “An claidheamh soluis” in LA, which was founded by one of James Connolly's granchildren
(Associate) Prof. Peter Glazer, Theater and Performing arts UC Berkeley, writer and director of musical theater
Jacqui Fulmer
It will be noted that Ireland's only recent original off-Broadway success was tiny rough Magic's “Improbable frequency”, a musical tinged with science and espionage, and peopled by such untypical visitors to Ireland as Schroedinger and John Betjeman, both active in their wildly different ways in WW2 Dublin. By contrast, the huge budget of “Grania” succeeded only in acting as life-support in prolonging the run. Has the lode of the “Celtic Twilight” finally been over-mined? Or was the Grania mistake precisely the opposite; that of bringing in the non-Irish writers of Les Miserables? Papers might address this kind of theme, extending it to prose and poetry, along these lines, inter alia;
- Corporatism in music; how far is IMRO to blame for the dearth in new Irish music? How destructive has its unique enclosure of the commons, involving assignment of musicians' copyrights, actually been? Or are there other, better reasons?
- The starring role of the foul-mouthed gangster in Irish fiction and film
- Are 40,000 native speakers sufficient to keep An Gaeilge alive?
Theme 2: Metaphysics and Myth in Joyce
Speakers include Mary Jane Power
While the workaday implications of Bloom's peregrinations have been worked
perhaps to death, more fundamental themes are perhaps discernible in
Joyce. For example, the attack on coloniality may be perceived as being
mediated through an attack on space and time itself, particularly after
the “Nighttown” episode. On a more prosaic level, the occasional
cartographic inaccuracies in Ulysses may perhaps be a reaction to the
ordinance survey.
Yet the attack in Joyce's last two great works may be more fundamental
still. The Citizen in “cyclops” is secure in his identity as coextensive
to, and identical with, the island of Ireland. After Nighttown, it can
perhaps be argued that this distinction of subject and object will no
longer be possible. In fact, a new way of experiencing Ireland is being
proposed; one that counters classical western epistemological tenets. And
so, the Bhagavad gita is evoked in lined like “I am the dreamery creamery
butter”
Yet many will recognise this as referring also to the song of Amergin. So
was Joseph Campbell correct in finding tantric echoes in the Wake? Or is
the material linking Joyce to the medieval Gaelic sagas mere fantasy?
Papers are invited which
Explore the above, even in disagreement
Contextualise their argument in terms of anomie in modern Ireland
Theme 3 Politics, technology, and the economy
Speakers include Sean O Nuallain
Topics include;
- Civil society and the state in Ireland; for example, do trade unions really exist in the public sector there?
- Unilateral interpretation of the Good Friday agreement by the British government, and its aftermath
- The economization of life in Ireland; neoliberalism as the new dogma, with attendant sacrifice of political capital if reality contradicts its precepts. An example would be the health charges for pensioners.
- The destruction of the native technology industry, and the attempt to supersede it with the failed Medialab and Science Foundation adventures.
- The destruction of the island narrative; the strange case of the Tara/M3 motorway, and the ascent of historical revisionism to state dogma
- The attack on academic tenure and the attempt in the Supreme court by both DCU and UCC to introduce summary dismissal, without cause, of all academics
- Ireland as Delaware in Europe; from Intel to rendition flights
- Is political violence inevitable within the 26-county state, starting perhaps from the student fee protests or the North Mayo/ Shell oil situation?
- The obsession with paying back bondholders. Is it impossible for Ireland to relaunch its own currency?
Theme 4 Ireland’s Fanon? – Terrence MacSwiney and intellectual freedom
Speakers include Melanie O’Reilly
As conceived of by Terrence Macswiney, Intellectual freedom is neither more not less than the right to live life by one’s own lights. Therefore, academic freedom is a consequence, an assent in the academy to a practise that affects the larger society. This conference theme deals with how Intellectual freedom is being violated in Ireland, with consequences ranging from the very increase in the suicide rate for which the Iar-Taoiseach expressed a preference to a restriction of the cultural commons with a coarsening of Irish culture
Papers are invited that deal with (inter alia);
1. The incursions into academic freedom by both the British and Irish governments, acting at times in unison. The Boston college/McIntyre case, with such interlocutors with the IRA as Ed Moloney, and Eamon McCann surely next on the firing line (perhaps literally); the botched attempt to extend Britain’s recission of academic tenure to Ireland
2. The suspected infiltration of the American congress of Irish Studies by British intelligence; the attested (by O Snodaigh’s Dail question) preference of the Irish department of foreign affairs for using Irish taxpayers’ money for British studies revisionism rather than Irish culture
3. The application of EU law, and - when not directly applicable – interpretations of EU directives to strengthen the hand of the Dublin oligarchy by massive handovers of Irish taxpayers’ money to “bondholders” (several of which did not expect to be repaid in full), and the constraining of Irish civil society
4. The destruction of the native software and music industries in favor of mediocre foreign imports by Irish state bodies; the real story of corporation tax and law in Ireland
5. The fact that tiny Ireland has 3 of the top 20 biggest law firms in the EU is already problematic; what are the consequences of the state’s readiness to use them against its citizens for civil cases?
Sean O Nuallain PhD Stanford
Valentine's 2012
PS Immediately this was sent out to an INTERNAL Stanford list, someone leaked it to the consul general for the Western USA. I got the following e-mail from the moderator of the list;
"Hey Sean,
Your last email to the Irish Society caight the attention of the Irish consulate, who contacted me. They wanted to call me, I think they thought the email was from the Irish Society directly, rather than from a member on the list. They haven't called me yet, but I just wanted to let you know they were 'interested'."
Ireland in crisis? - analyses and proposed solutions
Date/Time; July 10 and 11 2012 8-30 am to 5pm
The location is the home room international house at UC Berkeley;
http://ihouse.berkeley.edu/
International house, Berkeley - direct link
Please distribute to anyone who might be interested
Organizing committee
Sean O Nuallain (CSLI, Stanford University) (Conference chair)
Liliane Koziol (program director, International house at UC Berkeley
Academic committee
Peter Glazer (Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley)
Mary Power (New Mexico
Jacqui Fulmer
Sean O Nuallain (CSLI, Stanford University)
Peter M. Toner Professor Emeritus The University of New Brunswick
Alison Harvey Core Humanities ProgramUniversity of Nevada, Reno
Virginia Morris (B.A. Radcliffe), Celtic Arts Center, LA
Gabriel Rosenstock
Confirmed plenary speakers/performers
Peter Glazer (Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley)
Mary Power (New Mexico
Jacqui Fulmer
Sean O Nuallain (CSLI, Stanford University)
Alison Harvey Core Humanities ProgramUniversity of Nevada, Reno
Virginia Morris (B.A. Radcliffe), Celtic Arts Center, LA
Gabriel Rosenstock
Melanie O’Reilly
Format
Plenaries will be interspersed with ample time for discussion with relatively “light touch” moderation.
Schedule for submission;
Abstracts are to be submitted to contuirt2012@gmail.com
Mar 21, 2012; Deadline for submission of (max 2000 words) abstracts. They will be assessed by an appropriate program committee
April 9. 2012; Notification of acceptance
There is absolutely no Irish state or corporate involvement in this conference, and best principles of academic freedom will be upheld. The conference chair has a good record of getting conference proceedings published.
Speakers will be added as time progresses.
Registration
Fees will be payable by cheque on the day. We currently envisage a registration fee of $100 with $50 discount for the unwaged. No-one will be turned away for lack of funds. Ihouse has on-site inexpensive meals, and participants can buy tickets for these at the site.
Prologue: Ireland in crisis? - analyses and proposed solutions
While the economic crash in 2008 Ireland was both foreseeable and not untypical for that historical year, there are many indications that recovery this time will be both more difficult and more multi-faceted than its 1990's equivalent. A related issue is the dearth of real analysis that characterises Irish studies, which allowed the absurdities of the so-called “Celtic tiger” period to reach vertiginous heights. This conference can perhaps begin to address at least the latter issue.
Unlike the case in the 1980's, this economic crash has occurred at a time of fracture in the major national narratives. It may be the case that Irish people have had difficulty adjusting themselves to living in a state that is the result of imposed borders, versus an island that is unequivocally their home. Simultaneously, it is perhaps true that the Irish state has perfected a totalising corporatism that has replaced Roman Catholicism with neoliberalism as its dogma. What is certainly arguable is that the cultural output of the Irish, exemplified in popular music, has never been of worse quality in the history of the state, and perhaps indeed before the state came into being.
A second major difference from the 1980's crash is the vastly different economic context, both at the macro and micro levels. At the former level, the country has signed on to a set of EU agreements that restrict its ability to govern, both in fiscal and monetary terms. At the latter level, the transaction cost of simple commercial activity in Ireland has grown enormously, due both to vastly higher costs for infrastructure and labour and the incursions by the state into civil society that have made Ireland the most regulated country in the world. Paradoxically, these incursions have been accompanied by a dearth of real corporate enforcement, resulting in the rest of the world losing faith in the now surely doomed Irish stock market.
Finally, the fact that EMI was compelled to sue the Irish state to get it to conform to EU copyright law did not surprise many of those working in area that need to protect intellectual property. The dearth of corporate enforcement is attested by the assignment of a laughably small team of investigators to the Anglo-Irish bank investigation, a tiny investment in cleaning up one of the greatest financial scandals in recent world history, and one that the head of the commercial court in Ireland has frequently criticized. In fact, may one ask whether we are living through the aftermath of a fortunately incomplete coup, one devised to destroy ancient and well-functioning aspects of civil society while placing power and money irrevocably in a very few hands?
Papers are of course welcome which disagree with any or all of the above propositions
Four themes
Theme 1: Theater and other performing arts.
A panel discussion will begin this section. It will comprise (inter alia);
Virginia Morris, Director of “An claidheamh soluis” in LA, which was founded by one of James Connolly's granchildren
(Associate) Prof. Peter Glazer, Theater and Performing arts UC Berkeley, writer and director of musical theater
Jacqui Fulmer
It will be noted that Ireland's only recent original off-Broadway success was tiny rough Magic's “Improbable frequency”, a musical tinged with science and espionage, and peopled by such untypical visitors to Ireland as Schroedinger and John Betjeman, both active in their wildly different ways in WW2 Dublin. By contrast, the huge budget of “Grania” succeeded only in acting as life-support in prolonging the run. Has the lode of the “Celtic Twilight” finally been over-mined? Or was the Grania mistake precisely the opposite; that of bringing in the non-Irish writers of Les Miserables? Papers might address this kind of theme, extending it to prose and poetry, along these lines, inter alia;
- Corporatism in music; how far is IMRO to blame for the dearth in new Irish music? How destructive has its unique enclosure of the commons, involving assignment of musicians' copyrights, actually been? Or are there other, better reasons?
- The starring role of the foul-mouthed gangster in Irish fiction and film
- Are 40,000 native speakers sufficient to keep An Gaeilge alive?
Theme 2: Metaphysics and Myth in Joyce
Speakers include Mary Jane Power
While the workaday implications of Bloom's peregrinations have been worked
perhaps to death, more fundamental themes are perhaps discernible in
Joyce. For example, the attack on coloniality may be perceived as being
mediated through an attack on space and time itself, particularly after
the “Nighttown” episode. On a more prosaic level, the occasional
cartographic inaccuracies in Ulysses may perhaps be a reaction to the
ordinance survey.
Yet the attack in Joyce's last two great works may be more fundamental
still. The Citizen in “cyclops” is secure in his identity as coextensive
to, and identical with, the island of Ireland. After Nighttown, it can
perhaps be argued that this distinction of subject and object will no
longer be possible. In fact, a new way of experiencing Ireland is being
proposed; one that counters classical western epistemological tenets. And
so, the Bhagavad gita is evoked in lined like “I am the dreamery creamery
butter”
Yet many will recognise this as referring also to the song of Amergin. So
was Joseph Campbell correct in finding tantric echoes in the Wake? Or is
the material linking Joyce to the medieval Gaelic sagas mere fantasy?
Papers are invited which
Explore the above, even in disagreement
Contextualise their argument in terms of anomie in modern Ireland
Theme 3 Politics, technology, and the economy
Speakers include Sean O Nuallain
Topics include;
- Civil society and the state in Ireland; for example, do trade unions really exist in the public sector there?
- Unilateral interpretation of the Good Friday agreement by the British government, and its aftermath
- The economization of life in Ireland; neoliberalism as the new dogma, with attendant sacrifice of political capital if reality contradicts its precepts. An example would be the health charges for pensioners.
- The destruction of the native technology industry, and the attempt to supersede it with the failed Medialab and Science Foundation adventures.
- The destruction of the island narrative; the strange case of the Tara/M3 motorway, and the ascent of historical revisionism to state dogma
- The attack on academic tenure and the attempt in the Supreme court by both DCU and UCC to introduce summary dismissal, without cause, of all academics
- Ireland as Delaware in Europe; from Intel to rendition flights
- Is political violence inevitable within the 26-county state, starting perhaps from the student fee protests or the North Mayo/ Shell oil situation?
- The obsession with paying back bondholders. Is it impossible for Ireland to relaunch its own currency?
Theme 4 Ireland’s Fanon? – Terrence MacSwiney and intellectual freedom
Speakers include Melanie O’Reilly
As conceived of by Terrence Macswiney, Intellectual freedom is neither more not less than the right to live life by one’s own lights. Therefore, academic freedom is a consequence, an assent in the academy to a practise that affects the larger society. This conference theme deals with how Intellectual freedom is being violated in Ireland, with consequences ranging from the very increase in the suicide rate for which the Iar-Taoiseach expressed a preference to a restriction of the cultural commons with a coarsening of Irish culture
Papers are invited that deal with (inter alia);
1. The incursions into academic freedom by both the British and Irish governments, acting at times in unison. The Boston college/McIntyre case, with such interlocutors with the IRA as Ed Moloney, and Eamon McCann surely next on the firing line (perhaps literally); the botched attempt to extend Britain’s recission of academic tenure to Ireland
2. The suspected infiltration of the American congress of Irish Studies by British intelligence; the attested (by O Snodaigh’s Dail question) preference of the Irish department of foreign affairs for using Irish taxpayers’ money for British studies revisionism rather than Irish culture
3. The application of EU law, and - when not directly applicable – interpretations of EU directives to strengthen the hand of the Dublin oligarchy by massive handovers of Irish taxpayers’ money to “bondholders” (several of which did not expect to be repaid in full), and the constraining of Irish civil society
4. The destruction of the native software and music industries in favor of mediocre foreign imports by Irish state bodies; the real story of corporation tax and law in Ireland
5. The fact that tiny Ireland has 3 of the top 20 biggest law firms in the EU is already problematic; what are the consequences of the state’s readiness to use them against its citizens for civil cases?
Sean O Nuallain PhD Stanford
Valentine's 2012
PS Immediately this was sent out to an INTERNAL Stanford list, someone leaked it to the consul general for the Western USA. I got the following e-mail from the moderator of the list;
"Hey Sean,
Your last email to the Irish Society caight the attention of the Irish consulate, who contacted me. They wanted to call me, I think they thought the email was from the Irish Society directly, rather than from a member on the list. They haven't called me yet, but I just wanted to let you know they were 'interested'."
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Quantum coherence in neurons; ours is the only biologically realistic model
(Bealtaine 2012 - 2 papers accepted on theme below for quantum effects in biology 2012 http://www.quebs.org/index.html
Whether we get to give them is a logistics issue)
“Sir “Roger Penrose, along with “Baroness “Greenfield, are the two pre-eminent consciousness researchers in Britain. Note the status the Brits give their own
I and my fellow humble citizen Clareman Dr Tom Doris have just scooped them. In keeping with traditional practise, I am announcing it on this blog, and will in due course get it published – this time on an open-source medium. But for the scum at DCU – and the Minister has been kept abreast of their nefariousness - this would have been out several years ago.
Tom and I did the first math model of a neuron that showed how it could do computational tasks in a biologically realistic context using waves. It was first presented at an academic conference in Stanford in 2004, having been birthed in my lab in Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland;
http://bcats.stanford.edu/previous_bcats/bcats04/html/nuallain.html
What we hypothesized is that the gap junctions between dendrites allowed quantum effects even at room temperature. The Penrose model depends on properties of tubulin that Reimer has shown are impossible to the point of absurdity. All we need for our model to work is quantum superposition at room temperature in biological systems and this has been established for photosynthesis;
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.2911.pdf
So consciousness may indeed be a quantum phenomenon supervenient on dendritic connections.
Up the banner! (obscure hurling chant)
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Stanford
5u Feabhra 2012
Proposed abstract;
Single neurons; classical and quantum
Ours (2004) was the first work to show how single neurons could realistically perform processing of sensory data expressed simply as spectral such data. This work has since been corroborated by, for example, Tiago et al. (2010). Essentially, we argued that subthreshold oscillations of the neuron allowed groups of neurons to “own” part of the spectrum. That can be conceived of using only classical physics
Since our original work, quantum coherence at physiological temperatures has been demonstrated for biological systems in photosynthesis at the 3nm level characteristic of gap junctions in neurons. This finding converges with a controversy about quantum effects in neurons related to consciousness. While, in related work, we question the assumption in the later that “phase coherence” has in fact been demonstrated in the brain, there is a long-attested corpus of observations suggestive of entropically minimal states several times a second there.
We therefore speculate that gap junctions might allow a quantum superposition of states of the membrane potential of each neuron to be communicated to thousands of others. This will lead to entanglement of a scale that would allow the Fourier decomposition we envisage for the classical case be extended to a quantum description.
Tiago et al (2010) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5999/1671
Whether we get to give them is a logistics issue)
“Sir “Roger Penrose, along with “Baroness “Greenfield, are the two pre-eminent consciousness researchers in Britain. Note the status the Brits give their own
I and my fellow humble citizen Clareman Dr Tom Doris have just scooped them. In keeping with traditional practise, I am announcing it on this blog, and will in due course get it published – this time on an open-source medium. But for the scum at DCU – and the Minister has been kept abreast of their nefariousness - this would have been out several years ago.
Tom and I did the first math model of a neuron that showed how it could do computational tasks in a biologically realistic context using waves. It was first presented at an academic conference in Stanford in 2004, having been birthed in my lab in Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland;
http://bcats.stanford.edu/previous_bcats/bcats04/html/nuallain.html
What we hypothesized is that the gap junctions between dendrites allowed quantum effects even at room temperature. The Penrose model depends on properties of tubulin that Reimer has shown are impossible to the point of absurdity. All we need for our model to work is quantum superposition at room temperature in biological systems and this has been established for photosynthesis;
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.2911.pdf
So consciousness may indeed be a quantum phenomenon supervenient on dendritic connections.
Up the banner! (obscure hurling chant)
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Stanford
5u Feabhra 2012
Proposed abstract;
Single neurons; classical and quantum
Ours (2004) was the first work to show how single neurons could realistically perform processing of sensory data expressed simply as spectral such data. This work has since been corroborated by, for example, Tiago et al. (2010). Essentially, we argued that subthreshold oscillations of the neuron allowed groups of neurons to “own” part of the spectrum. That can be conceived of using only classical physics
Since our original work, quantum coherence at physiological temperatures has been demonstrated for biological systems in photosynthesis at the 3nm level characteristic of gap junctions in neurons. This finding converges with a controversy about quantum effects in neurons related to consciousness. While, in related work, we question the assumption in the later that “phase coherence” has in fact been demonstrated in the brain, there is a long-attested corpus of observations suggestive of entropically minimal states several times a second there.
We therefore speculate that gap junctions might allow a quantum superposition of states of the membrane potential of each neuron to be communicated to thousands of others. This will lead to entanglement of a scale that would allow the Fourier decomposition we envisage for the classical case be extended to a quantum description.
Tiago et al (2010) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5999/1671
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Of citations and impact factors
The truth is finally coming out, as signaled in this blog for several
years now – academia is structured in a way guaranteed to foster
clinging to outdated paradigms and trendiness, and leave a large bill
for the taxpayer in the process. Moreover, this system is visibly
falling apart, not least because of the “Bridge too far” lobbying by
Elsevier in the USA to curtail taxpayers' free access to the research
they have already paid for at least twice (through academic salaries and
research grants). Elsevier seems to believe in “Third time lucky”.
And now here comes the catch; surely a state is in self-destruct mode as it encourages academics, particularly those in a technological area, to seek “high impact” for their discoveries? Excuse me, but surely the idea is to exploit the discovery for the benefit of the taxpayer who paid for it – which means getting a jump start on your competitors by CONCEALING what you've done until you can productize it instead of rushing to tell everyone about it? Anyone who's worked in a real tech firm will confirm that there levels of secrecy obtain that make “omerta” sound like an invite to spill the beans. This is so much standard practice that the smarter firms like Google have a culture of revealing just enough to allow them academic publicity for what they're doing while not giving anything away to their competitors. For example, the latest Google Maps reveals just enough of the vector map output that you know its provenance, but CANNOT piece it together for your own use – and indeed much of the source is licensed by Google from providers who would not be happy with Google were they to open-source everything. In turn, G employees go around and give academic presentations, enlisting the seal of the confessional when certain questions are asked (BTW, I do not think public universities should allow this on their premises)
Secondly, academics are beginning to reveal that they are pressurized to cite papers irrelevant to what they're doing, all as part of gaming the system to increase “impact factors”. Peer-review is essentially nonsense, unless the reviewers will disclose their name. All this is now documented. So what is the solution? It is simple – the state needs to withdraw from many aspects of the process of knowledge accumulation and dissemination, and allow academics develop their own web-based systems. The state needs to stop subsidizing scams like Elsevier, Springer and so on, who in turn need to develop new business models or go, unlamented, the way of the dinosaur.
Now we come to the F word; Fraud. The current system of truth-finding and communication in academia is tailor-made to foster corruption and abuse as it has layer upon layer of secrecy and lack of accountability. Here are urls for four major scandals in the past 3 years, followed in each case by direct links for those pressed for time ;
http://climategate.tv/tag/keith-briffa/
so-called Climategate
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/103/12/916.extract
The Duke drug test scandal
http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2010/08/what_hurts_harvard_about_the_h.php
The Harvard Hauser affair
http://www.edvul.com/voodoocorr.php
The unmasking of a long-standing neuroscience fraud
In each case, an attempt was made to soften the blow by issuing anodyne reports; in fact, had a bunch of stockbrokers behaved like any of the above researchers, they would have received healthy jail sentences (over 50 convictions in the USA for insider trading in the same period). What is happening?
Frankly, it looks like we have overwhelming numbers of researchers chasing too few facts. It is 2012; by this tine in the 20th century, we had Planck, Einstein, quantum mechanics and almost all of relativity. The argument is being made, with some cogency, that the low-hanging fruit in science has all been picked; in the 17th century, all Galileo, Leibniz and Newton needed were telescopes and new math techniques to puish science further than CERN even aspires to do. The neuroscientists mentioned above claimed to have found brain spots for “awe” (and, closely related, “God”)and so on; Hauser sought evolutionary explanations for morality. Expect much more of this over-reaching as science struggles with masses of data, and allows its logical structure slacken to the point that “dark” matter/energy, “non-coding” parts of the genome and so on are acceptable.
The state's solution is to create a new layer of clueless bureaucrats in order to keep control - preferably female, so that you can sued for harassment if you dare to criticize them;
http://www.stanford.edu/~vcs/
It's all just stats, stupid!
Full disclosure; I have never cared whether my own work got published in “high impact” journals, as book chapters, or whatever. I was always focused on getting it out there; the result is that 100% of my research in my own field has been published, often in peer-reviewed media. Whether anyone references it now or not is irrelevant to me; I chose this form of life precisely because its expression is to some extent protected from evanescence.
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Stanford
4u Feabhra 2012
PS As should be increasingly clear as this is the 100th post, this blog is engaged with academic tenure for two main reasons; firstly, to protect scholarship through assertion of academic freedom, and in so doing return the process of education away from the administration to the scholars (students and teachers); secondly, because at a more fundamental level the attempted management coup at DCU presaged a very dark incursion by the state into our lives. Lecturers at universities in Ireland have had their tenure saved mainly because of myself and Paul Cahill, and at the cost to two careers that had started brilliantly. Following our cases, both UCD and TCD stepped into line on the issue; DCU is any case finished, and its continued illegality on this matter is not surprising.
And now here comes the catch; surely a state is in self-destruct mode as it encourages academics, particularly those in a technological area, to seek “high impact” for their discoveries? Excuse me, but surely the idea is to exploit the discovery for the benefit of the taxpayer who paid for it – which means getting a jump start on your competitors by CONCEALING what you've done until you can productize it instead of rushing to tell everyone about it? Anyone who's worked in a real tech firm will confirm that there levels of secrecy obtain that make “omerta” sound like an invite to spill the beans. This is so much standard practice that the smarter firms like Google have a culture of revealing just enough to allow them academic publicity for what they're doing while not giving anything away to their competitors. For example, the latest Google Maps reveals just enough of the vector map output that you know its provenance, but CANNOT piece it together for your own use – and indeed much of the source is licensed by Google from providers who would not be happy with Google were they to open-source everything. In turn, G employees go around and give academic presentations, enlisting the seal of the confessional when certain questions are asked (BTW, I do not think public universities should allow this on their premises)
Secondly, academics are beginning to reveal that they are pressurized to cite papers irrelevant to what they're doing, all as part of gaming the system to increase “impact factors”. Peer-review is essentially nonsense, unless the reviewers will disclose their name. All this is now documented. So what is the solution? It is simple – the state needs to withdraw from many aspects of the process of knowledge accumulation and dissemination, and allow academics develop their own web-based systems. The state needs to stop subsidizing scams like Elsevier, Springer and so on, who in turn need to develop new business models or go, unlamented, the way of the dinosaur.
Now we come to the F word; Fraud. The current system of truth-finding and communication in academia is tailor-made to foster corruption and abuse as it has layer upon layer of secrecy and lack of accountability. Here are urls for four major scandals in the past 3 years, followed in each case by direct links for those pressed for time ;
http://climategate.tv/tag/keith-briffa/
so-called Climategate
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/103/12/916.extract
The Duke drug test scandal
http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2010/08/what_hurts_harvard_about_the_h.php
The Harvard Hauser affair
http://www.edvul.com/voodoocorr.php
The unmasking of a long-standing neuroscience fraud
In each case, an attempt was made to soften the blow by issuing anodyne reports; in fact, had a bunch of stockbrokers behaved like any of the above researchers, they would have received healthy jail sentences (over 50 convictions in the USA for insider trading in the same period). What is happening?
Frankly, it looks like we have overwhelming numbers of researchers chasing too few facts. It is 2012; by this tine in the 20th century, we had Planck, Einstein, quantum mechanics and almost all of relativity. The argument is being made, with some cogency, that the low-hanging fruit in science has all been picked; in the 17th century, all Galileo, Leibniz and Newton needed were telescopes and new math techniques to puish science further than CERN even aspires to do. The neuroscientists mentioned above claimed to have found brain spots for “awe” (and, closely related, “God”)and so on; Hauser sought evolutionary explanations for morality. Expect much more of this over-reaching as science struggles with masses of data, and allows its logical structure slacken to the point that “dark” matter/energy, “non-coding” parts of the genome and so on are acceptable.
The state's solution is to create a new layer of clueless bureaucrats in order to keep control - preferably female, so that you can sued for harassment if you dare to criticize them;
http://www.stanford.edu/~vcs/
It's all just stats, stupid!
Full disclosure; I have never cared whether my own work got published in “high impact” journals, as book chapters, or whatever. I was always focused on getting it out there; the result is that 100% of my research in my own field has been published, often in peer-reviewed media. Whether anyone references it now or not is irrelevant to me; I chose this form of life precisely because its expression is to some extent protected from evanescence.
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Stanford
4u Feabhra 2012
PS As should be increasingly clear as this is the 100th post, this blog is engaged with academic tenure for two main reasons; firstly, to protect scholarship through assertion of academic freedom, and in so doing return the process of education away from the administration to the scholars (students and teachers); secondly, because at a more fundamental level the attempted management coup at DCU presaged a very dark incursion by the state into our lives. Lecturers at universities in Ireland have had their tenure saved mainly because of myself and Paul Cahill, and at the cost to two careers that had started brilliantly. Following our cases, both UCD and TCD stepped into line on the issue; DCU is any case finished, and its continued illegality on this matter is not surprising.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
DCU: why no responsible parent should send their kids there (II)
"“I was studying IT in DCU. They might as well call the place Celtic Tiger Institute of Technology in my experience. The whole Dept. was overflowing with money and very little ability. All of the research students/tutors were from China without a word of English between them, the staff was an unhealthy mix of feckless old dimwits who'd been around since the place was Albert College and and feckless young dimwits, most of whom didn't even have PhDs. Nobody had any interest in teaching. Every time I went to the library they said I had fines, there were no visiting lecturers, no extra-curricular intellectual activity whatsoever actually. I really can't say enough bad things about the place. The whole place had the cut of a large secondary school.
II
I'm sure lots of people have a good time there, having never experienced any other universities, but academicly and administratively it is a pygmy. I scheduled a meeting with the Professor to discuss a project that I felt I had gotten an unfair grade in and he asked me to meet him to talk about it in the corridor while he was walking somewhere else. Lectures would be routinely cancelled without any notice or explanation, the course start date was put back ten days and none of the students were informed, one of my projects was "lost" and it was presumed I had just never bothered to submit it. As I said earlier, none of the tutors could speak English, none of the labs were cleared for classes, on more than one occasion I had to ask an unruly gang of undergraduate nippers to leave the room myself, while there was a "lecture" in progress. In my experience the whole place was just a shambles from top to bottom.
Even outside of all that there was just constantly a feeling that the place was trying to extort money out of me. You had to buy a "membership" to be allowed entry to the campus bar, I was refused entry one lunchtime because I didn't have ID, even though I was a 25 year old graduate student of the Institution. An enormous amount of things were stolen from me on campus. As I said, there was no intellectual culture in the place whatsoever, the library is poor. Avoid it. “
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Stanford
2u Feabhra 2012
