Ah, collective syllabus design. Contrary to the popular adage, a camel is a _fish_ designed by a committee.

Idiots: well maybe modern medicine is Bad Actually I mean who can say really? People who can say really:

I dunno, maybe we could all try _not_ boosting the doubt-manufacturing industry by circulating that Farage clip as though it were a gotcha rather than part of a sustained campaign to undermine the concept of expertise? Just a thought.

Just found myself referencing the hero of a Czech space opera in response to a student question about game theory. Now tempted to see if I can work the giant homicidal space geckos from the same series into the module somehow.

Things you notice while mentally reviewing old maps in the middle of the night: Moir Street, named for the notoriously verbose city councillor James Moir, sits directly opposite the ancient street called Spoutmouth. I think I've detected a bit of sly late-Victorian shade.

Passed a sticker just now advertising the Communist Party of Wales, which is a new one round here. I suspect the communism would irritate me, but I'm interested in their expansionist notion of Wales. Yr Hen Ogledd, but make it an SSR?

I have just emerged from a meeting during which I think a Faculty document got shorter rather than longer. I may need a stiff drink to recover from the shock.

Test run today. 13 people present; 11 managed to record their attendance using the Shiny. A having-to-fix-it-manually rate of about 15% is definitely above the threshold at which the Shiny becomes the opposite of a labour-saving device.

Not really keeping up with the news, but isn't this the day when some of the worst people on Earth expect to be carried away by raptors?

I love the fact that the reaction of primary-school-aged Glasgow weans, faced with the news that there was a terrifying bogle haunting the cemetery, was "let's tool up and go completely Buffy on him".

*looks out upon a world drowning in noise, contempt for knowledge, and weird storms of histrionic groupthink*: yes, I see your problem here; definitely not enough neurotypicals

Back in the day this was called Molar Philosophy.

🎵 Mediaeval prayerbook on display The final Monday of September! But when this tune begins to play Inside your head, please do remember...

Of course, certain dogs with smaller vocabularies rely on the fact that they can just lie there and if the object is really important somebody will bring it to them eventually. www.scientificamerican.com/article/dogs...

I'm sure lots of people today left their notes for the first lecture of the module in their office and realised this when they got to the classroom and had to wing it for an entire hour, didn't they? There are lots of us, aren't there? Thousands, probably. OK, maybe hundreds. Right? ... right?

For perhaps the first time ever, I'm having to update the slides for a first-year lecture because the state of knowledge has changed since I gave it a year ago. I don't know what it says about my teaching that the point that needs to be updated is the radiocarbon date of the Bakhshali manuscript.

On the plus side, I have just met a plump and very friendly collie called Jess in the Necropolis. A day that contains a very friendly collie is not an entirely wasted day.

"Hi teaching staff! With zero days' notice we are completely changing the way we record attendance in classes. Here are some instructions for setting up the VLE. They don't work but we're sure you'll somehow figure out how to do it. (This is to reduce workload.)"

As ever, Brexit was the enabling device for the current crisis and for everything that is being proposed by that ghastly smirking fleshpuppet and his masters. (Corollary: any twerp who enabled Brexit or thought you could redeem it with "jobs first" deserves only to be ignored.)

In admissions news, I now have a successful applicant objecting because the official acceptance letter does not, in their view, look sufficiently like an acceptance letter. I don't know exactly what they expected, but I blame the Problematic Wizard Books.

It was an early autumn morning with cold light, so I am obliged to post a picture of this view. I don't make the rules.

Spending my evening trying to understand a municipal stushie from the 1850s involving claims of incompetence, corruption, and crypto-Jacobitism, much of which is conducted in the 1850s equivalent of subtweets. Anyone despairing at the state of local politics: at least they haven't got any worse.

Breaking: the leaders of the Solipsism Party have played down rumours of a split after allegations that neither believes in the other. "The party is united," they said in separately issued statements, "and will go forward as one."

From a display of icons for Doors Open Day. This is a copy of a recently written icon (by John Coleman for the Retreats Association, hallowed 2018) of the woman at the well. Such an unexpected conversation; so much disapproving beardedness in the background. www.retreats.org.uk/icon

For context, the natural sciences are already at a low baseline, e.g. the Guardian lists 44 institutions offering physics degrees, vs 95 for history and 108 for English. I'm not sure most humanities folk realise how much science has already been squeezed. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Bluesky awfulness-reduction feature: whenever someone types a phrase like "our nation" or "this country", a wee prompt box pops up and won't let them post until they clarify where they're talking about.

On duty again at St Ninian's Pollokshields for Doors Open Day, if any fans of high-Victorian ecclesiastical adornment are passing by. (Bring your own fruit.)

"But what if, no, hear me out, right; what if _all_ our degrees were PPE?"

Me: Because you have applied so late, an October 2025 start is no longer feasible. Applicant: No problem! I would also be happy to start in September 2025.

A couple more images from "Glasgow Our City" (1948/1957), the final chapter of which is basically the Bruce Plan For Kids. One question: if there are going to be autogyros everywhere, why do they need all those roads?

Peter Kyle, who followed his degree with a doctorate and then became an aid worker, says that the point of going to university is to start a business. I wonder if he could look his younger self in the face.

@glasgowcoa.bsky.social, had you seen this depiction of the big man before? (W. G. Beaton, "Glasgow Our City", Corporation Education Department 1948/1957)

The Maybe If He's Reading About It He'll Shut Up For A Bit Fund has received further donations. This one was published by the Corporation Education Department in 1935.

For some reason this has taken off again over on Mastodon, and maybe people here are also in need of a tufted duckling practising going plop.

* Please see my chapter "Problematising everything" in the edited volume "Why Human Beings May Not Have Joy" (Smug University Press, 2025)

A couple of buskers on Buchanan Street just now with a horn violin and an accordion, playing a faintly Balkan-infused version of "Bella Ciao". The world is various and that is fun.

OK, I'm going to say it: given the other connotations of "elite" and the rising tide of populism, I think it's irresponsible for the Sutton Trust to title a report "Elitist Britain", however well-intentioned it might be. Titles like that have a way of landing as The You-Know-Whos Are Out To Get You.

I don't think they should have abolished the Not Proven verdict. I think they should have declared that it now had a status that was equivalent to having been abolished, but with a lingering suspicion that it still existed.

Please appreciate this Very Good Potato.

The Paper With That Reviewer has now been resubmitted. I honestly no longer have a view on whether the paper is quite good or very bad indeed, but it is time for that to be somebody else's problem.

I need one of these for... educational purposes. (Also for chairing meetings and engaging with AI vendors.)

Much else aside: in this scenario the lecturer is still doing all the marking: all the LLM is doing is reading the rubric back to the student with added piffle. How easily impressed does someone have to be to think that the LLM is adding anything whatsoever?

Yes, O Colleague Who Is Off On A Jolly At This Time Of All Possible Times Of Year, I am perfectly happy to answer a series of questions from a graduate student whom you can't be bothered to supervise. I am paid to run around after you like the wee man with the big shovel in the elephant house.

Giving the first-years their talk about academic honesty this morning, and I blame @naomiwv.bsky.social for the fact that my mental soundtrack for the occasion is the Pet Shop Boys' "It's A Sin".

Police would like to speak to a Señor Dalí who was seen in the vicinity.

Last repost: there are lots of ways of putting stitches into the world where it is torn. We need folk doing all of them; repair what you can reach.

I hope you keep writing and researching and publishing, even if it’s about distant and abstruse topics. It’s not stupid, it’s beautiful, because it’s a testament to the curiosity and care they’re trying to eradicate.

At the stage of editing where I could have written "Godzilla is balancing tomatoes on his nose in Cumbernauld" in the middle of a paragraph, and I could re-read the paragraph a dozen more times without noticing.

Trying to respond to That Reviewer, I have just written "I feel that one needs to be cautious in generalising from pre-school children to professional mathematicians, even though they undoubtedly have some behaviours in common".