On A Hippie Trail, Head Full of Zombie......

O.K, I've not posted much lately. This has been due to moving from the U.K. to Australia which has been a time consuming and absorbing process.

(If you're interested, I just started a bit of a blog about my experiences and impression of the place - its really just to remind friends and family that I'm not dead but you can look if you want to).

Just to prove I'm here, and au fait with the wildlife, I've included a picture I took of the country's fifth most dangerous snake, the woolly grey - deadly apparently. Anyway, it's only now that I'm starting to find the time, or the inclination, to start blogging again. So, I guess I'll be trying to post a little more frequently that once every three months.

I Am All the Daughters of My Father's House, And All the Brothers Too...

Earlier this week, I managed to land tickets to see an RSC performance of Twelfth Night in Stratford. As you would expect, it was really very good. I love theatre but I try not drone on about it too much in case I sound like an am-dram pseud. However, I wanted to comment on this production because it tried really hard to tinker with our notion of gender and to use intelligent gender-blind casting, and I thought it was all the better for it.

If you don't know the play, here are a few important details. Two identical twins, one female and one male, are ship wrecked in Ilyria and separated, each assuming the other drowned. The female, Viola, disguised as male and adopting the name Cesario, takes work in the court of the Duke Orsino, helping him to woo a Countess, Olivia, who continues to shun the Duke's advances. During this wooing, however, Olivia falls in love with Cesario, not knowing that it is a female, whilst Viola falls in love with the Duke Orsino. As a sub-plot, Olivia's drunken Uncle, Sir Toby Belch, is finagling money from a foolish Knight/Yeoman, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, by convincing him that there is a possibility of him wooing his niece. As the play is resolved, Viola's twin brother turns up and is married to Olivia, Cesario is revealed as Viola, and declares her adoration for her master, Orsino, who recognises his love for her and asks for marriage. There are other characters and twists, which I won't mention, but you should read it or watch it anyway - its very good.

So what about the questioning of gender in this play? Well, obviously, when first performed, males would have taken all the roles since women were not included in Elizabethan theatre. What since happened is that women have been cast as Viola and dressed as a man for the appropriate parts of the play - Dames Peggy Ashcroft and Judy Dench have both given notable performances of the role played this way. Other variations have included actresses playing both Viola and her twin brother, that is, cast as both male and male-impersonator. In a recent interesting version, the actor Mark Rylands played the part of the Countess Olivia - this is a female character, so obviously, there is some tradition of twisting and playing with gender and the traditions of gendered casting with this play.

O.K., so what about the performance I went to see? Well Viola was played by a man, Chris New. This was interesting in that it cast a nod back to the Elizabethan traditions, but also, I think, a knowing nod to Rylands performance, and questions about gender and image raised by the play generally. Further, and especially interesting, the characters of Sir Toby Belch, his side-kick Fabien, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, were performed by the actresses Marjorie Yates, Joanne Howarth, and Annabel Leventon. But, I don't think this particular production was simply saying "men can play women, and women can play men, lets be blind to gender on the stage". Rather, I think it was trying to suggest something else about our assuming gender as part of our societal roles, and how this can switch according to the roles we must play. For example, the same actors played maids to Olivia, and men-servants to Orsini. Anyway, looking at the programme afterwards I found this quote, which sort of confirmed my thoughts, from Judith Butler's "Imitation and Gender Insubordination":

"drag is not an imitation or a copy of some prior gender:... drag enacts the very structure of impersonation by which any gender is assumed. Drag is not the putting on of a gender that belongs properly to some other group... there is no "proper" gender, a gender proper to one sex rather than another, which is in some sense that sex's cultural property... Drag constitutes the mundane way in which genders are appropriated, theatricalised, worn, and done: it implies all gendering is a kind of impersonation and approximation"

I don't know if everyone came away from the play questioning what gender means, but it was really good to see something like this in a mainstream play by a mainstream company. Sadly, I think I've droned on about this enough to seem like an am-dram pseud, but I was impressed with it.

The Admirable Crighton .....


Over at The Brooks Blog, Thom points out that, thanks to some Government Intervention, Glasgow University is back involved with the Crighton Campus in Dumfries - although a years enrollment is lost. The Crighton Campus is a sort of "super campus" in the South of Scotland which has various Higher Education Institutions taking responsibility for various courses. The problem, from Glasgow's point of view, was that its Crighton Campus involvement (which started in 1999) was apparently running at a £800k a year deficit. The Scottish Funding Council apparently expressed some doubt about this, suggesting that the decision to withdraw had more to do with changes in the University's spending priorities. The SFC's minutes on Crighton are exempted from disclosure, so I can't confirm what came up in their discussion of Glasgow's proposed withdrawal. Anyway, its good news, of sorts, for the students down in Dumfries.


BUT... let me put my two-peneth in, and be aware, I don't know the ins and outs of all this, because I can't get hold of detailed financial breakdowns, (and I'm not sure I'd trawl through them if I could) so this is subjective.


The Principal of Glasgow, Muir Russell, is the same guy who oversaw the Scottish Parliament fiasco where a £40 million budget turned into a £400 million overspend. I don't know if Russell is held responsible by the Frazer Inquiry (to which he gave evidence), I suspect not, but lots of people seemed to think he should have the lion's share of responsibility. Russell became Principal at Glasgow in 2003 and seems to have been employed to do a bit of a hatchet job there. It was announced in 2005 that the University was in need of a £7million to £10million efficiency drive and various cuts would have to take place in order for the University to fit something which was mysteriously referred to as its "Future Shape". There was a hire freeze on new posts (but not replacements), some cut backs on courses, and crucially, 220 or so voluntary (but from what I saw they really did do some leaning on people) redundancies (these posts were non-replaceable too I seem recall). This turned out to be especially controversial for a couple of reasons: 1) Muir Russell was reported to have elected to have a 15% pay rise on top of his already £200k+ p.a. wage and 2) Some of the redundancies packages included gagging orders.


What's this got to do with the Crighton debacle? Well, not much except that Muir Russell does not seem to have been a good thing for Glasgow, and the Crighton debacle looks like just another instance of crying money worries when what's really happening is a realignment of funds (I don't mean embezzlement, just a desire to put University money into something perceived to be more research dynamic and likely to bring in big research grants, rather than something teaching led).

On a related point, when I was at Glasgow, I used to give lectures to main campus students, which were simultaneously live video linked to students down at Crighton. They were always a really nice bunch, and I used to think they got a bit of raw deal from Glasgow's end (not just because they had to watch me). It felt like letting the poor kids watch our lectures from over the fence - and then charging them for it. From what I could see, they weren't getting much bang for their buck. Granted, they had some excellent dedicated lecturers/tutors down at Crighton, but how Glasgow University could turn up an £800k loss with so much "non-dedicated" teaching (for want of a better term) is beyond me.

In Australia .......

Because, when the people in Sydney who approve medicals finally get round to approving my medical, I'm off to work in Australia, I have shown more of an interest in the place of late. One thing that particularly interests me is the treatment of Aborigines and Aboriginal culture. Any way, amongst the various things I've read and looked at, I thought this was well presented, and so thought I'd share.

Philosophical Magic

These guys are a bunch of magicians from Glasgow. They're called The G.E. Moore Shift Organisation. They all great magicians, and as the name suggests, they are a philosophical bunch. Indeed, I've seen the guy in the middle do a Gettier Case card trick. Brilliant!

Check them out here.

(HT: Emma Gordon).

$100 Lap-Top Project ....



Maybe I'm naive and there is really some horrible, evil purpose behind the $100 Lap Top project, but they've revealed some design details, and I think it looks ace. The idea is that children in the developing world should not be barred from access to technology as a result of their poverty. The One Lap Top per Child Foundation is a non-profit project with 11 or so companies involved, including Google, Red Hat, and Intel (who were initially accused of trying to scupper the project by marketing cheap lap-tops, but have recently come on board).

Of course, a £50 lap-top is still mind bogglingly expensive when, according to save the children, 600 Million children live in less than a dollar a day. But, the project aims to sell them to Governments who then distribute them amongst their school children. Uruguay, Libya, Thailand, Brazil and others are all on board so far.

Anyway, the OLPC website is here, but most important, a nice summary of the lap-top's design features is here.

The Boondocks


I really like the Boondocks. I like the fact that not long after 9/11, Huey Freeman, the main character, is shown calling a hot-line to report Ronald Reagan for finding terrorism. Aaron McGruder, its creator doesn't do it anymore, but he did sign a deal to have it made into a cartoon series. Which is why I'm posting. You can find some episodes here. I particularly recommend "The Story of Gangstalicious", especially when he gets shot on stage whilst performing his single "I Got Shot".