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COUNCIL ON HIGHER EDUCATION -- CONSULTATION ON FUNDING CONTINUES
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A discussion paper on a proposed new funding formula for Townsend was released today by the Townsend Council on Higher Eductaion. The paper outlines principles already determined in consultation with universities, and focuses discussion on details of how these principles can best be met through a new formula.

Council chair Gung Chen explained that the goal is to develop a fair funding formula that responds to changes in student enrolments, programs and universities, while providing incentives to encourage excellence and innovation in both university programming and research.

“The current funding formula is outdated, based on decisions made almost 10 years ago,” Gung Chen said. “Since then, enrolments have chaged, universities have changed, times have changed. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the funding formula, and it’s time to catch up.”




Somethin seems a little off to me, here. But I can’t quite put my finger on it.




The proposed formula is built upon five key principles: equity; policy sensitivity; stability and predictability; public accountability; and transparency. The principles of public accountability and transparency mean universities, students and taxpayers can more easily and logically understand how university funding is allocated, and see for themselves that public tax dollarsare being well-spent.

Equity is linked to the number of students enrolled in a university and the cost of the programs they take. This would be relected in the formula through a ‘weighted enrolment grant’. A minimum-maximum enrolment range or corridor should be set for each university at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Universities could enrol additional students, but would only receive government funding for the number of students within this range.

The number of students would be multiplied by the cost of the programs they take. To determine program costs, programs are categorized into ‘bins’ based on a number of factors including: special facilities from laboratories to music studios; equipment costs; the need for technical and specialized support staff; and average faculty salaries.

Equity changes are proposed for international student fees. Currently, universities equally share additional fees paid by all international students. It is proposed that each university keep the fees paid by its international students to reward the increased effort being undertaken by universities in international marketing.

Universities would receive grants to encourage high-quality research capability. Government would also provide innovation and change, and public policy priorities. This supports the principle of policy sensitivity, which enables government to direct resources to its highest priorities. Restricted grants would continue to be available for alterations, renovations, and library and other equipment.
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Hmm... Anyway, where are they now?
“... falliblist: for all beliefs it is possible that any single belief could be false...”

Peirce was an early advocate of falliblism. WTF? Can that spelling possibly be right, Maro? For Davidson, truth does not equal coherence. But the principle of charity entails that we have to have people who are coherent believers.
A lot of life is just putting in time here and there. Is it May? Is it June? I keep mistaking this time for June. It feels like June. You have to be careful when you are writing in public. People are liable to get disconcerted.
If the principle of charity works then it is not possible for all of our beliefs to be false (most should be true). Error makes sense only against a background of true belief. True beliefs are essential to interpretation, though there’s always some possibility of error. Successful communication entails mainly true beliefs held by someone. You have to assume that a believer holds true beliefs in order to allow for communication at all.
Oops, somehow we got on to de next presenter without me noticin: Michael Lockwood is gonna tell us all bout The Enigma of Science. Very exciting indeed.
“Every physical system has its associated state space. This is an abstract space, the dimensionality of which depends on the number of degrees of freedom, and the elements of which -the points or vectors of which it is composed- denote possible states of the system.”
Hmm... Not too bad so far. I wonder what Foucault would say to all of this.
“The last few decades, in particular, have seen striking advances in our understanding of how ordered complexity can arise spontaneously in systems maintained (as are living organisms) far from thermodynamic equilibrium.”
Why is everyone so big on complexity? I don’t get it. Not all de secrets o’d’universe are hidden in complexity. Some o’dem are actually quite simple. ha ha ha.
“The thought, here, is that the whole conceptual edifice that we bring to bear on the external world -from common-sense conceptions, at one end, to the dizzying heights of theoretical physics, at the other- is essentially formal. It is structure without explicit content: a lattice of abstract causal relations between postulated variables, which makes contact with direct experience only at the periphery, where conscious states and events are hypothetically linked into the structure.”
Ooooooh, fascinating. I had no idea, said the robot. ha ha ha. Yeah, right. What about Ned Block, sucker?! Oh, if only I could retort. Maro, where’s dat fucking paper! We gotta find it! I think it’s under ‘B’. QUICK! Before the moment has passed! “Chapter 2: Can the Mind Change the World?” Is that it? Lets see... Page 29? “Later (Putnam, 1967), he argued in favor of the identity on the grounds that it was more plausible to suppose mental states are functional states (as he then called them) than that they are behavioral or physical states.” Yes, yes, get to the punctum already. Ohh yeah, I love dis part:

Putnam was my teacher during both my undergraduate and graduate days, and I fear I have absorbed his ambivalence toward functionalism. My teacher has had a habit of changing his mind, but never has he done so within a single essay, and so in this chapter I have surpassed him. My chapter starts out as an argument for functionalism, but it ends up suggesting an argument against it.

Da’s’o awesome. Anyway, carrying on: “intentional content, that is, what is shared by the belief that grass grows and the desire that grass grows, the that grass grows that both states are directed toward.” Hey, I coulda totally written somethin on dis’hit re: Burge. I remember... I remember... in class one time. When we read this piece... Everyone jumped on Ned Block’s notion of ‘intentional content’, but there was really no reason too. They just did it because it was the weakest point in the piece. What a fuckin shame. Poor Ned Block. “The question at hand is whether the sciences of the mind preclude intentional content from causal relevance to behavior.” And I remember dat when I asked to use Ned Block for my essay topic, the prof shut me down. It seemed really unfair, as though Ned Block wasn’t fashionable enough or trendy enough for me to write on. Real fuckin shame, dat. Real fuckin shame. Der’s actually nothin wrong wid his ‘intentional content’, at least, not in de way dat he uses it in dis chapter. He just needs a little more explanation, da’s all. Oh, here’s de best part. He words dis in a way dat no one else has, in my humble opinion. “the processors in the head are not sensitive to content, so how could content have any effect on the outputs or changes of state of the system of processors?” Isn dat great, Maro? “And if content can’t affect the operation of this system of processors, how could it play any role in producing behavior?” I’m so glad I remembered dis’hit. I have to admit dat when Ned Block gets goin wid all his qualia shit I’m fuckin bored to tears, but dis really hits de nail exactly on d’head.



Whoa, Maro, frickin Gung Chen is frickin adjournin de meetin already. Where to now? Well, maybe I’ll jus go home an go to sleep for a change. I’m done worn out.

contrary to contradict another one. be polite, be true, become opera live to contradict another one pretty damned important too. sleeping, the good stuff. I think that alotta the time I get confused about why people are telling me certain things.

how am i goin to make it right?

Pounding and smashing, even the desire to kill, may be expressed. Self-organization is related to the tendency of the parent or sibling or perhaps the entire chaotic system to spontaneously enter states in which surprising and potentially useful properties arise either through play or through direct verbalization. This concept is revolutionizing: I’m finally locating some confidence in myself. The brain may be bumped, suddenly and unpredictably, from one conscious state to another by the escalating -Holy shit! That chick is interviewing for my job. “University types... We’ll see what happens.” She knows there’s still one candidate. But they’ll never find anyone who can move and shake like this! activation of one of its many neuronal subsystems.

unknown territory. I know that a path can be made. So, to get to a point dat is out of dis world maybe I just have to confirm a path. I wonder how I do that. I’ve started to see things differently lately. They seem much more contingent, or arbitrary or somethin.

Movement and action takes a certain amount of time or continuity. How do we do this? How do we account for this? Back to Libet. “There is no experimental evidence against the possibility that the control process may appear without prior unconscious processes (that specifically develop it).” I can’t remember what it was about Grice that I liked, a good feelin to be sure. But he sometimes did good deeds amid a throng of bad ones; he stole with furious rapacity, and gave liberally; intrepid in action, rather mild in company, debauched at table, gay in debauchery, and above all full of frankness. ... but are you aware that in Paris there have already been some serious experiments relating to the possibility of the insane by means of the simple influence of logical reasoning? When I looked up at the building, I got scarred. Looked more like a castle than a school - bars on the windows and an iron gate on the front door. Above the door, the words in the stone read: ANTIDEPRESSANTS MAY INCREASE THE RISK OF SUICIDAL THOUGHTS OR ACTIONS IN CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS. Behind the school there were more trees in rows. I came round the corner, and my eyes saw something they didn’t know what to tell me it was. They were people -women, I think-

There was a certain professor there who died not so long ago, a serious scientist who believed that such a treatment was possible. If I say that Mirj is selfish because he refuses to become well, then what does that make me? The risk may be greater during the first few months that patients take this medicine. Be sure that the benefits of using this medicine outweigh the risks. Recording thoughts in language. “It’s very freeing”, apparently, instead of in anger or hurtful actions. They only ever hurt themselves. Maybe we’re all jus dancing all the time. Maybe those people are staring at me. Maybe they’re’adin my thoughts before I get to them. Maybe they’re passin them on to me. They think I’m copyin them down. They’re interrupting. They want me to move my existence. Well, that’s not going to happen any time soon, because I am an automatic weapon. I’m fully loaded and I’m ready to go. His basic idea was that there is nothing particularly wrong with the organism of the insane person, and that insanity is, as it were, a logical error, an error of judgement, a mistaken view of things. ADDITIONAL MONITORING OF YOUR DOSE OR CONDITION may be needed if you are taking certain diet medicines (such as phentermine), linezolid, lithium, metoclopramide, nefazodone reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) (such as duloxetine), 5-HT1 receptor agonists (such as sumatriptan), tramadol, trazodone, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDs) (such as ibuprofen), diuretics (such as furosemde or hydrochlorothiazide), cimetidine, ketoconazole, cyproheptadine, aripiprazole, haloperidol, phenothiazines (such as chlorpromazine or thiorridazine), or reperidone. He would refute the arguments of his patient step by step and, would you believe it, it’s said he achieved results that way! But in view of the fact that he accompanied this treatment with cold baths, those results should, of course, be viewed with some scepticism... All but four patients were right-handed according to the Edinburgh Inventory. Vision was normal or corrected to normal. Patients’ mean IQ, as estimated by the score at the Raven Progressive Matirices PM47, was 91.7. Short-term memory span was 6.4 and 3.5, forward and backwards, respectively. Language comprehension, as assessed by the Token Test was good (mean score 33.2/36). “Ha,” said I to myself, “it seems that there are some people who grow there,” and, as my mind was so stupefied with grief, I only conceived ideas as in a dream. Suddenly the van changed its course and I saw the towers of Notre-Dame in the distance, blue and half hidden in the smoke of Paris. At once my ideas changed from Beatrice to Notre-Dame. “Those who will be on the tower with the flag will see my execution well,” said I to myself smiling stupidly. They’re interrupting. Want me to move my chair, my body (my existence?). Well, it’s not going to happen.

“No physician’s prescriptions, no medicine seemed of the slightest benefit as a cure for this disease.”

Nice way to start de fuckin day: lecture from de little ol’building manager. Moses gonna get an earful bout dis one. Of course, he’s right bout some things. But at least I got myself a good sleep der. Might as well go down to de Field, get an early start to my day.

“... symbolic gift means more than you initially believe... an extended period of calm...”

“We stayed at my place...”

“That’s really close to Crystal Ball... So fast-paced...”

“Wasn what I thought it would be.”

“Tell him to get his money back... of course, he doesn’t have his...”

“Where you grow an... thought bubbles and you can tell the story... That’s what the next level is: the story-telling language.”

“It’s...”

“Been watching movies and... Get up and go out to watch a movie.”

“Hmm?”

“I can’t get it.”

“So you’re talking about a platform...”

“The representation of story... individuals that you can meet... it’s like a toy box... computers can’t tell a story... If you could build a story... a system... the book is a story... exactly... modern... there’s... anyway, so seven different tribes... gives you all these different kinda classes...”

Fuck. Pretty hard for me not to take some o’dat shit personally. Gawd. Maybe I’ll just move on to somethin else.

“Do not confuse it with those chance dynamite outbreaks from Russia, which are really the outbreaks of the oppressed, if mistaken, men.”

“The main mass of their supporters are merely anarchists; that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed human happiness.”

“They believe that all the evil results of human crime are the results of the system that has called it crime.”

“They do not believe that the crime creates the punishment.”

“They believe that the punishment has created the crime.”

Now, da’s’omethin dat interests me.

“We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals.”

“For similar reasons, Lewis praises certain African carvings.”

“You are not sufficiently democratic, but you were right when you said just now that our ordinary treatment of the poor criminal was a pretty brutal business.”

Lewis: “Under such conditions, the personality becomes a bullet-like lump; its emotions are clean, clear-cut; its art is hard, dense, packed with compressed energy.”

“You seem to equate the primitive artist’s isolating withdrawal from the ‘vagueness of space,’ with the Vorticist’s ‘egotistic hardening’ and withdrawal from the diluting effects of ‘Life’.”

“I tell you I am sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate.”

Lewis again: “Primitive art reveals a personality contracted into itself from fear of dissolving in the vagueness of space.”

“Do you mean that there is really as much connection between crime and the modern intellect as all that?”

“Primitivism and modernism, savagery and art, meet in the Vortex.”

Lewis:”In that frame of mind, I conclude my rejection and belittling of ‘Life’ with an affirmation of hardness, energy, and violence of the Vortex.”

“We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal.”

“Our Vortex is fed up with your dispersals, reasonable chicken-men.”

“Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them.”

“Our Vortex is proud of its polished sides.”

“They accept the essential idea of man; they merely seek it wrongly.”

“Our Vortex will not hear of anything but its disastrous polished dance.”

“Thieves respect property.”

Man, dey gettin so heated-up today. Oh shit, Randt’s comin along. Hope he don’t fuck it up. I can tell already. He gonna fuck it up, soon as he opens his big fat mouth. I might as well jus walk away, cuz dis whole simulation’s gonna go to hell now. Goddammit Randt. Why’s it so easy for you to fuck my shit up. Every single fuckin time. Goddammit.

Randt: “Granted it could always be a scam. Ain’t no people in the world who ain up for some kinda scam. Believe you me. But that don’t entail that there wasn some sorta truth to the proposition. That don’t entail that there wasn somethin real that they were pickin up. Miniscule alterations that you never noticed yerself, but were takin place none the less. “

Lewis proclaims, “The Vorticist does not suck up to Life. He lets Life know its place in a Vorticist Universe! He uses life for his brothel so that he can keep himself pure for non-life, that is Art.”

“Art, then becomes the contrasting force to Life.”

“Take Joe, for instance. Totally stuck in the eighties. He puts everyone into categories and gets so caught up in them that he totally forgets about people, like what real people are like. He's that whole Ringwald movie series all rolled into one. And the truth is, people just aren't like that anymore. Maybe its the drug movement, maybe it’s post-modern ecclecticism. Call it what you will, but the distinctions between different types of people have broken down.”

First I’m gonna try some classic Goffman (1961) on dis’ucker: “Staff members’ energy waxes and wanes. These involvement cycles occur when a staff member becomes close to some inmates, retreats, then builds warm relationships again.”

“No, I don get it.”

“Like, there are times when I really like the patients and I really want to work with them and help them. And then there are times when I get completely fed up with all of their crap. Don’t you get that?”

“...”

“When they are discouraged or despondent, they work in a listless, perfunctory, and routine way. Some make an effort to disguise their discouragement, but others do not.”

Randt is jus lookin at me kinda sideways, like he’s supposin dat dis a trick question or somethin, “I jus don’t think it’s the best time to be talkin bout that sorta thing, y’know, like when we’re actually surrounded by ‘the patients’. Y’know, like, we’re in the FIELD right now, man.”

Yeah, I guess he’s probly right bout that one. Somehow dat jus didn’t occur to me. I dunno why. Maybe i’s cuz I turned Maro off, or somethin. Thing is dat I don really get any other chance to talk to Randt. I only see him in de FIELD an sometimes at d’occasional Board Meetin. What am I s’posed to do, get’im to make an appointment?

“Some o’de patients ask to switch counselors when dey have conflicts wid’individual to whom dey bin assigned.”

“What is this about, man? You know I don’t get any patients assigned to me.”

Randt jus goes back to his usual shit, now.

“Take Joe, for instance. Totally stuck in the eighties. He puts everyone into categories and gets so caught up in them that he totally forgets about people, like what real people are like. He's that whole Ringwald movie series all rolled into one. And the truth is, people just aren't like that anymore. Maybe its the drug movement, maybe it’s post-modern ecclecticism. Call it what you will, but the distinctions between different types of people have broken down.”

Ok, so maybe I’ll try some Leibniz, den, “I know what you sayin, Nominal Definition: consists of de numeration o’the marks o’requisites which are sufficient to distinguish a thing from all others.”

I got de feelin he ain gonna like dat one too much.

“You can jus fuck right off. You don even kno’what you talkin bout. See ya later, sucker.”

Guess I’m on my own, now. De patients’till goin on.

“Even Time dissolves in the presence of Art. Life is the Past and the Future, the Present is Art.”

Man, where’d’ey boil up dis bile o’shit from? I’m gonna reply wid some real quality, “It is its time because it puts in the present, just as each acting subject is his time, that is, a presence that puts in the present whatever is related to it.”

Haa ha. Take that. Got that one from good old Henry Corbin.

Lewis insists, “There is no Present - there is a Past and Future, and there is Art.”

Dat is’uch bullshit. Might as well be talkin to Randt. I’ll try some more Corbin, but I don’t’hink i’s gonna get me anywhere. “It is likewise to reduce real time to abstract physical time, to the essentially quantitative time which is that of the objectivity of mundane calendars from which the signs that gave a sacred qualification to every present have disappeared.”

“For the sake of Art artists must reject society; for, in society, men ‘overlap’ and ‘intersect’, and promiscuity is normal.”

“But promiscuity is normal.”

“Artists must undergo a course of egotistic hardening before they can produce hard outside art.”

Dis d’art dat Lewis admires most. I oughtta be referrin dis guy to JoseF.

“Woodcuts are disciplined, blunt, thick and brutal.”

Or maybe I could get’im to meet up wid a student somehow. Maybe I should just enroll’im in one o’JoseF’s classes.