The Cerebral Mum

And it will be in 8 minutes. In fact it will be over before I finish this post. I feel a long, long rant coming on about University IT. University bureaucracy? Well, it is what it’s always been and that is fine. I know how to work my way around that and find out what I need to know, when I need to know it. But now they’re all high tech, it’s a monster.

It was bad enough that the other day in the computer lab on campus I had to enter my password at least 8 times within the space of half an hour, all to do the most simple things. Could they not have a system that, you know, functions? Nooooo. You have to sign in for the computer, for the library, for the timetables, for the online studies units, for your enrolments, for your email… And so on and so on.

It. is. totally. fucked.

In better news, I am actually able to do a full time study load this semester. (Did I tell you that already?) I didn’t think that I would be able to, because of time considerations and Cas, but I can do a unit wholly online and I think that rocks. In fact, it’s a course requirement that I complete at least one unit online before I graduate. Just so they know I can use a computer.

So I’m signed up for a 2nd year history subject (I guess IT doesn’t care that I’m a freshman), Great Debates: Unfinished Business of The Past. Woo-hoo! Except…

The software they are using would have to be the most obstructive, inefficient, unintelligent software I have ever seen: Blackboard

It. is. totally. fucked.

It has modules and reading materials and links to other reading materials and it has discussion forums to take the place of tutorials.

Let’s just take a look at the wonderful user interface it has for the “forums”.

To read a post/thread you click. That’s fine. But it then opens up in a fucking popup window. Um, why? Now, I think the popup is senseless enough to call it bad design (and no, you cannot centre or right click to force it to open in a tab instead) but just to make it even more ridiculous, once you have closed the tiny box you have laboriously scrolled though (and no, it does not “remember” that you have adjusted the popup size), the page you are returning to refreshes!

WTF? If you’re going to use a popup or lightbox, isn’t the whole point so that you can view the detail without navigating away from or reloading the main page?

Now, I understand that they want to keep the unread/read up to date. They have, of course, gone about that in an entirely stupid way but perhaps they had good intentions. However, there is a little green star in my sidebar menu (which, incidentally, doesn’t resize or scroll well enough for me to see the full tree-directory) that is supposed to tell me when there is something new to see. And it does. All the time. Even when there is nothing new to see.

Oh, this post could go on and on and on… You get the picture. Just envisage the most basic functions taking a least 4 extra processes to achieve and you’ve got Blackboard.

I’m going to stop, because that is just one microscopic portion of what is wrong with this program and I could write a thesis. But before I do… My favourite fucked function?

There’s a button that says “accessibility”. I thought I’d give that a try, hoping they had something more functional for users with disabilities. Wanna know where that took me? To the Blackboard site and a page that says how considerate they’ve been about colour contrast. In a teeny weeny font.

It. is. totally. Blackboard.

(Btw, I’m going to be managing all my study notes etc on WordPress so my subdomain is now running a separate blog for that, Plato’s Sandbox. If you’re bored…)

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It died some time yesterday in the afternoon.

Which was fine.

Who has that much time for internet things when your son scatters the entire contents of every cupboard in the house to the four corners of the universe faster than you can put it back again? A tin of baked beans by the toilet door? I can live with that. Plastic containers jammed under the sofa? I can live with that. I can even live with being unable to find a matching pair of shoes. But when Caspar goes to bed…

I want my internet!

No internet.

Big Sis’ and my computers are networked. There is a hub and a cable modem in her room. I have nothing to do with them. I turn the computer on in the morning and the whole world is there waiting for me, probably as bleary eyed as I am. Sometimes Big Sis turns her computer on after mine and has to reset things to get the connection working properly at her end. It involves pulling out a plug and then putting it back in. No drama. She just waits until whatever page I’m opening is loaded and it is done in a flash.

Last night, I unplugged and replugged and shut down, and rebooted - her computer, my computer - in a variety of orders for about an hour and still the world was silent.

I. Was. Not. Happy.

Big Sis was out for dinner but I called her anyway and that’s when I discovered the awful truth. There was nothing I could do to fix it: The phone was dead too.

I turned the television on. I turned it off. I sat down at the computer to do disconnected things. I got up again. I paced. I did 3 Sudokus. I sat down at the computer again. After calling from the neighbours line to see what was going on, I knew there was a serviceman somewhere fixing something. It’s possible that some of the intervals between me checking the line were as long as fifteen minutes, but not likely.

Is it done yet? Is it done yet?

It was all to no avail.

Now this would seem like the perfect opportunity to tidy up all the files cluttering my desktop - both the electronic one and the physical one - and to sort through all the folders called “To Be Sorted” without distractions. I did a little of that. I even read through some of my feeds (I’d just installed a new desktop feedreader that day) and wrote half a post in my text editor. But I wanted my distractions!

At 12:30am, I gave up and went to bed.

With my Sudoku.

Note: Because I’ve migrated all my feeds to a new reader I’m way behind in my reading so if any of you are missing me, I’m slowly catching up. I’m hoping the new program will make everything a bit more manageable anyway. Soon, you might be sick of seeing my name on your blogs. xx cm

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I fumed for quite a while last night after hearing on a television news teaser that people were angry about children being used at the rally held in Melbourne yesterday protesting John Howard’s industrial relations law, WorkChoices.

Firstly, who the hell is angry? I’ve waited all day to see these supposedly outraged responses reported by reputable news outlets or discussed in the Australian blogosphere. I haven’t been surprised by the dead silence.

Why? Because no one of any consequence thinks the children were being used and the only person that’s angry is me.

I’m angry that news media are more interested in manufacturing false controversy than reportage. I’m angry that network producers think viewers are so empty-headed that all news has to be sexed-up in order for us to tune in. I’m angry that network producers are so empty-headed they don’t realise there are more important things - things already sexed-up and volatile - happening in the world and that, even if we did need to be teased into watching, they could just tell the truth.

Sure, “hundreds of children, many dressed in construction hats and anti-WorkChoices T-shirts, marched with their parents” but who in their right mind would have a problem with that? Parents include their children in their lives. They are supposed to. They are supposed to teach their children right from wrong, as they see it. They are supposed to teach them not to scratch or hit or bite, supposed to teach them patience and kindness and respect.

They are supposed to teach them to respect themselves, to know themselves, to be strong in themselves and to stand up for what they believe in. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together realises that seeing your parents do just that can only be a good example for a child.

Whether we agree with those parents or not.

Australia is an apathetic country politically. A good proportion of the population has no idea how the government works and doesn’t care much about it anyway. They’ve given up. Sam de Brito over at All Men Are Liars summed up the usual approach of an Australian to politics recently. His advice when confronted with a discussion about the Federal election? “Change the subject“.

I couldn’t disagree more. Parents should talk about politics and religion and whatever else is important in the societies they live in. Parents create those societies: They are part of them. And parents should talk about all of those things with their kids. Their kids live in those societies as well: They inherit those societies. Parents have a responsibility to do this.

Whether we agree with them or not.

Personally, I don’t have a lot of faith in this system we have called “democracy”. The idea that citizens have a voice which is responded to by the elected officials who supposedly serve them is obviously ludicrous. It just doesn’t work that way and Australians know it. That’s why politicians are always near the bottom of our list of the people we trust.

But that doesn’t mean Australian society doesn’t have democratic values and it doesn’t excuse “democratic” media when they abuse those values. That lie told on television last night is particularly egregious considering that people are dying in Burma right now for doing the same thing those children were able to do.

And I’m still fuming.

The rally might not have been a very sexy event - it wasn’t particularly large, nothing new was said, and there were no tight shots of half a dozen people in a scuffle to be had so it couldn’t be described as a violent protest - but I remember as a child watching a man stand in front of a tank.

News is important even when it’s not sexy. And politics is important even when it’s futile. The only people using those children yesterday was that commercial broadcaster, which seems to think news can be manipulated as though it were a reality TV show. That’s not news: It’s disinfotainment.

And that’s not good enough.

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The 11th assignment from 30 poems in 30 days: Courting controversy…

“Read a poet you don’t like. Try to figure out what they do that upsets you and determine whether or not this assessment is fair. Try to think of ways that you would approach the same subject matter using your style. Write a poem that addresses some of the same subject / style / tone of the poet you dislike but do it in your own style.”

I am breaking my tradition and writing about this poem before you get to read it. The poet I chose is Robert Frost, whom I loathe and detest with a violent passion. I have heard him referred to as ambiguous but I find his work overly simplistic, transparent and smarmy. Dainty, lily-livered pop-psychology with no real sensitivity, abusing what can truly be seen through nature just to make himself appear insightful. Truly, he makes me vomit a little in my mouth.

The poem I chose was A Minor Bird and I veered slightly off the assignment by writing something of an invective rather than approaching the subject matter in a different way.

I do not need
to speak of birds
I can say the word
Depression.

I can say
I hate
the imitation of my sorrow
by a mynah at my window
or echoed in a song
in minor key.

I don’t need
pastoral devices
to disguise
my inner turmoil.

Fences do not make
good poets
Just say the word
Depression.

As I said over at The Writer’s Resource… If Robert Frost could be framed, he would be a motivational poster.

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In my reading yesterday I came across guest blogger, Edrei Zahari (Kamigoroshi), at Lorelle on Wordpress and his article Bringing Personal Blogging To Light. I liked what he had to say, and the way he said it, so I wandered over to his blog, Footsteps in the Mirror to read more.

What I discovered at Footsteps was that Kamigoroshi had brains for lunch.

There, on the page, was this luscious close-up: One tiny lamb’s brain in a pool of creamy sauce with a golden crust broken open to expose all that glorious succulence inside. It made my mouth water.

And it made me wonder, yet again, about people who are squeamish when it comes to food.

There are some things in this world that I cannot wrap my head around. There are some things that simply do not compute. I acknowledge the truth of their existence, but their existence is more baffling to me than the question, “Why are we here?”

What is it that makes a pig’s trotter repugnant to someone tucking in to a bacon double cheeseburger?

Why can’t a person who loves fish eat it when it’s “looking at them”?

Now vegetarianism, I get. It has an internal logic. It’s coherent. Not liking a particular food, I get. Genetics play a role in the configuration of our taste receptors, and the types of food favoured by our cultures influence us even in utero. But “not liking” a food you’ve never tasted? That, I do not get.

In fact, it gets my goat.

Ignoring the fact that what people don’t eat has no bearing on my life, picky eaters are not, in general, my sort of people. They’re simply perverse. To explain why fully I would have to rewrite Being and Nothingness but let’s just say I consider it an act of Bad Faith.

Besides, they’re exceedingly tedious to dine with.

Luckily for my obscure, particular prejudice, Caspar eats everything put in front of him. Whether it’s herrings in mustard sauce for breakfast or a fingerful of salmon roe when I’ve grabbed some Japanese take-away, he’ll always try it. And if it surprises him, he’ll try it again.

I really didn’t think that someone nine months old would try wasabi twice.

But here’s hoping he stays this way.

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Well, not exactly no words. After research from the University of Washington was published in a Journal of Pediatrics article [1] on August 8, Bob Iger, the President and CEO of The Walt Disney Company which owns Baby Einstein had quite a few words to say.

He said, amongst other things, that UW’s press release was “deliberately misleading, irresponsible and derogatory”. [2]

And what did this “irresponsible” press release say? That baby DVDs, such as those from Baby Einstein, may actually hinder an infant’s development rather than help it. That for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants up to the age of sixteen months understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them. Rather than provoking me to anger, like Iger, my response to this news was identical to those of many bloggers and many parents around the world: “Well, Duh…”

It’s common sense (I feel confident in saying this as apparently only 49% of us think these DVDs will make our bundles of joy more intelligent) that a baby will learn more language from some good, old-fashioned human interaction than they will from watching screensavers with a little Mozart playing in the background. Indeed, on one of my more arrogant days while I was pregnant I could be heard in the baby department saying over-loudly that a child of a parent who buys Baby Einstein obviously has some genetic disadvantages when it comes to their IQ anyway.

But let’s be honest. Most of us know watching television is a mind-numbing exercise - that’s why we do it. And most of us know that the only benefit of an infant sitting in front of the box for fifteen minutes is that we get to have a quiet cup of coffee. If we spend the bulk of our time playing and talking and reading we won’t “bias the child toward visual-dominance at the expense of listening/language dominance in their later life”, as one leading pioneer in brain plasticity puts it, and no lasting harm will be done.

So why the furious demand for a retraction of a press release stating the obvious?

Baby Einstein specifically states that their products “are not designed to make babies smarter”[3] but their sales are pretty dependent on those 49% of people who, lacking common sense, think that they do. I know it, and they know it, and the US Federal Trade Commission might soon have something to say about it too, which is why more than a week later they are still baying at the moon.

So here is the crux of what I have to say to you, Bob Iger…

Do those six to eight words missing from our babies’ vocabularies happen to include “deliberately misleading”? Because those two seem pretty crucial when it comes understanding what Baby Einstein is all about.

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