Bombay diary in one-liners from newspapers and road signs
An excerpt from an interview with Uma, a Maoist leader. My comments, if any, in []s.
Uma joined the rebels in 2003. CPI-Maoist hadn't been formed then. "I joined the People's War (PW) which later merged with MCC in 2004 to form CPI-Maoist," she said. She was given a new name, Uma. "I was plump. Anu (Akash's wife; Kishanji's companion) said I looked like Uma Bharti. So, she named me Uma."
Maoist leaders spotted her organizational skills. She was asked to mobilize tribals women at Jamboni and Dahijuri in West Midnapore. She also underwent three-month arms training at Jharkhand's Gorabandha forest. "First, we are taught with dummy weapons using tree branches. All recruits have to fire three bullets in their first session. Those who hit the target are picked for armed squads," she said.
In spite of guns and guerrilla warfare, the woman in her sometimes longs for simple pleasures like painting her nails or wearing earrings. But, she says, "We were not permitted to use even fragrant soaps, lest we get detected. Only Lifebuoy is used by cadres."
On the approach to the Worli Sealink, a big sign for ... Hotel Caves Inn!
On the Worli Sea Link, before the toll plaza, a gigantic sign says:
NO TWO WHEELERS, NO THREE WHEELERS and ... NO BULLOCK CARTS!
[Just in case you were wondering.]
Advertisement for new Bollywood film on BEST buses:
Warning! Flirting can be dangerous to health. Hello Darling. Premieres 27th August.
On the IIT campus, on the trail by Powai Lake, a warning sign says: No entry beyond this area from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Panther is being sighted frequently in this area. Violation of this order shall be seriously viewed.
[by the panther, presumably! Our penchant for the passive voice at its ambiguous best.]
These reflections were made in the context of the Brazilian Automatic Control Society, and its technical journal called Control and Automation. They are, however, in my opinion, relevant to the area of control theory (or any other scientific/technical area in (fast) developing countries (the fashionable word is BRIC). The arguments I make are based on the following hypotheses/complaints:
The vast majority of us, researchers in systems and control theory do not send our best papers to our national flagship journal.
Even if we did, we don't have a critical mass large/committed enough to get quality reviews for the submitted manuscripts within the country, taking into account that, as a rule, reviewers abroad are reluctant to spend time and effort in reviewing for an unknown foreign journal. (In the case of Brazil, there are language problems as well, because submissions are allowed in Portuguese and Spanish as well).
Given the problems mentioned in the previous items, it is also usually the case that national flagship journals are often forced to widen their scope in order to have enough articles per issue and end up losing a sharp focus on one particular area. In any case, articles published in national journals get very little readership, citations etc.
The best articles (the ones that get the awards and the most citations/readership) tend to be tutorials or surveys.
The evaluation systems in place at most Government institutions place much more value on research than on teaching. In fact, most of these institutions make no serious effort to evaluate teaching and there are usually no coveted Best Teacher Awards, even though many have Best PhD Thesis awards. Promotions in university careers are based almost exclusively on productivity in research, which is usually measured in terms of quantity and, sometimes using the somewhat dubious citation metrics, such as the h-index (which is undoubtedly good at detecting outliers, but may not be as good in classifying the majority in the middle). Other criteria, such as the relevance of the research being evaluated in a broader context (dare I say social, for example?) are not even discussed.
Given these five hypotheses (for the lack of a better word), and given the fact that teaching, in the sense of educating our successors, is crucially important, how can we start to change things?
Before I give my suggestion, there are a few more observations I'd like to make about scientific/technical journals. In my opinion, the current format of journals, as well as the current review process serve to destroy well-written articles. Specifically, even with electronic versions of all major journals available, most still impose severe (paper) page limitations on the authors. This means that any didactic material, considered too elementary, is usually removed from articles, in addition to reports on instructive mistakes and unsuccessful approaches, which are acknowledged to be almost as important as the reported correct approach. This process inevitably makes the final published product more difficult to read and certainly less didactic. As far as the review process is concerned, we are usually up against the perversity of anonymous reviewers. Let me justify this. Nowadays, with easy access to almost all the scientific output all over the world, journals have become recommended reading lists. Who recommends the articles in the list? The reviewers, of course. Would you read a novel recommended by an anonymous reviewer? Or, for that matter, would you watch a film recommended by someone you never heard of? I don't think so. I believe, therefore, that reviewers should identify themselves and not hide behind anonymity. This would have other benefits: it would lead to a drastic reduction in mean or flippant comments, comments that are not justifiable technically, as well as other aberrations that every one of us has come across in our careers. As for the objection that anonymity allows you to be critical of colleagues without losing their friendship, it seems to me that a colleague who is upset by well-founded technical criticism is not worthy of your friendship.
So what am I trying to get at? I would like to suggest the creation of a Control and System Theory Webzine, which would only exist electronically and would have a strongly didactic focus. It would have, for example, a Wiki format, containing the article, commentary by designated and identified reviewers (in the style of blog posts) as well as commentaries and contributions by readers. By article and contribution I mean more than just the conventional written article or contribution. The community of researchers, students and professors would also be encouraged to submit videos (of an experiment or an inspiring classroom lecture), animations, code in Java, Scilab and so on. Reviews would be critical but constructive and all articles would be accepted and posted (subject, of course, to some minimal filtering to remove spam and offensive material) while awaiting reviews. A hit counter would be implemented for each kind of commentary (text commentary, video commentary, illustrative animation or code) and allow visitors to order articles by their choice of metric, in addition to the usual latent semantic indexing keyword search order. The homepage would, by default, display articles ordered by number of hits, which would mean, in particular, that articles that had been reviewed would appear before unreviewed contributions and more popular (highly accessed articles) would appear before the less popular ones.
At the end of an n-month period, a distributed and distinguished committee of editors would evaluate the 10 (100?) most hit (accessed) articles, in accordance with the various metrics and rank them using some multi-winner voting system. Such a system, properly implemented, would have several advantages. I'd like to mention two specifically. First, a ranking system that is based on the number of technically qualified hits and also on a distributed committee of editors makes good use of the tremendous power of distributed intelligence of the community, taking a leaf out of the book of the enormously successful social networks and Apple's systems of contributed apps for the iPod and so on. Secondly, we would have a way of saving the wisdom of good teachers and good teaching practices for posterity. In our current system, although good teachers exist and quite possibly outnumber the good researchers, there is very little recognition of the former and they often feel unrecognized, even though students acknowledge their importance and, very often, become researchers because of the fascination transmitted by good teachers.
Postscript: This is an edited and contextualized version of a polemic I wrote in Portuguese originally, about a year and a half ago, and posted on this blog early this year [2010]. In the intervening period, two important developments came to my attention. One is Cell Press' Article of the Future, which advertises itself as follows: "An online format that breaks free from the restraints of paper and allows each reader to create a personalized path through the article's content based on his or her own interests and needs." See http://beta.cell.com/index.php/2009/07/article-of-the-future/
Another development is the creation of Rejecta Mathematica, a real open access online journal publishing only papers that have been rejected from peer-reviewed journals in the mathematical sciences. See http://math.rejecta.org/
Further developments, hot off the Web
Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review [this from the super-traditional Shakespeare Quarterly] -- see
Here is a small excerpt: Clubby exclusiveness, sloppy editing and fraud have all marred peer review on occasion. Anonymity can help prevent personal bias, but it can also make reviewers less accountable; exclusiveness can help ensure quality control but can also narrow the range of feedback and participants. Open review more closely resembles Wikipedia behind the scenes, where anyone with an interest can post a comment. This open-door policy has made Wikipedia, on balance, a crucial reference resource. [I couldn't have said it better!]
Publish or post
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57613/
Small excerpt [to support my argument and exultantly say I told you so! Also more radical, but I am all for it.]
As the news release for LiquidPublication simply states: "Don't print it; post it." To disseminate the information, the program has a software platform that lets other scientists search for what's been posted, leave comments, link related works, and gather papers and information into their own personalized online journals -- all for free.
"I think it's exactly what is needed -- a paradigm shift," said peer-review critic David Kaplan of Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. "This is a different system that utilizes the unique characteristics of the web [to provide] a different way of looking at manuscripts [and] a different way of evaluating them."
The downfalls of the current scientific publishing scheme are no secret, and while many journals are aiming to better it (see The Scientist's feature in this month's issue), their efforts are relatively minor alterations to what many consider a fundamentally flawed system. Now, information engineer Fabio Casati of the University of Trento in Italy and his collaborators are suggesting science publishing try something entirely new, taking full advantage of the rapidly evolving Web 2.0 technology.
They suggest making research -- including formal manuscripts, datasets, presentation slides, and other presentations -- available through the web without any sort of traditional peer-review process. That research would then be searchable and citable by the rest of the scientific community at no cost.
Last update (26th August): Even the Bombay Police are on the web to encourage feedback!
For those who have never heard this term, it is a charming relic of our colonial days, when some major-domo was supposed to serve his masters tea in bed. In today's egalitarian India, the concept has survived after a fashion, and, in government guest houses and such, still represents the height of luxury. The idea behind bed tea is to be gently woken up with a refreshing cuppa and the morning newspapers. In the IIT guest house in which I am, bed tea, along with the morning newspapers, has survived and is going strong. But there have been some small changes. You are, in fact, woken up by a buzzer, which sounds like a macaw being inexpertly assassinated with an electric drill. And then served a cup of tea so sweet that you could easily go into a diabetic coma as you imbibe it. All this at 6:30 a.m., like clockwork. I'm not complaining: I still think the whole idea is quite charming and write these lines in order to make some humble suggestions for improvement. Mute the buzzer, let the benighted guest add his own sugar. And oh yes, while I'm about it, India's premier technological institution could easily make reliable, Skype-enabled Internet available to its guests: it's perfectly reasonable to not have international dialling available in the guest house rooms, but most guests, specially the foreign ones, might like to talk to their nearanddearlovedones, as the expression goes. If bed tea needs to be axed in order to make this possible, so be it -- I noticed that each room has an electric kettle and teacups, so all that's needed are tea bags and sachets of sugar and coffee.
Written in Thrissur under the influence of severe jet lag, Kerala masala chicken, a round of Mindflex in Sunnyvale and an overdose of TED videos.
Name: MISCRE
Executive summary: As you sit and daydream, or just think, this wi-fi nanoimplant will read the signals in your image forming cortex, access all your image databases (cellphone, Laptop, Picasa, etc), retrieve the most relevant images and play a slide/video-show for you, SCREened in your MInd's eye (aka visual cortex). Animation, seguing, cartoonization and other image-processing effects will be available as add-on apps priced separately. The killer amongst the killers will be an app that will allow you, via a Pranav Mistry (SixthSense)-type headband, to "project your innermost images" on a wall near you. The catch is that, like Mindflex, you will have to learn how to turn this app on and exercise parental "control" on what it shows!
Technology: It's all here already, but if you want a new flashy name, you could call it neuroimag(in)ing.
Caveat: With all this global body search imaging technology around, you will have to watch out for MISCREants.
La chose essentielle, c’était que Serre à chaque fois sentait fortement la riche substance derrière un énoncé qui, de but em blanc, ne m’aurait sans doute fait ni chaud ni froid – et qu’il arrivait à “faire passer” cette perception d’une substance riche, tangible, mystérieuse – cette perception qui est en même temps désir de connaître cette substance, d’y pénétrer.—Recoltes et Semailles, page 556.
These words were written by Alexandre Grothendieck, the brilliant French mathematican, about his colleague Jean-Pierre Serre, whom he called a “detonator”, one who provided a spark that set the fuse burning for an explosion of ideas.
I find these words and the term detonator particularly apposite of our beloved colleague Maurice Bazin, taken so suddenly from us, because they describe his insatiable curiosity and desire to get to the bottom of things, to understand and “feel” things, whether about science, society or his fellow human beings. And it was never idle curiosity, but rather one with the intention of demystifying, reducing to the lowest common and comprehensible denominator, always maintaining rigor and rationality and involving everyone around him to discover together.
Maurice was always closing the gap between ideology and praxis, in his personal life as well as in the lives of people he came in contact with, determinedly following a path of mutual dialogue and inspiration. He taught us to be obstinate in order to achieve intellectual goals, but also to be flexible when practicality demanded it. He was never one to avoid dirtying his hands or shirk hard work, whether physical or mental. Whitewashing walls in the Espaço Ciência Viva hangar, doing carpentry to make exhibits, discussing the finer points of ethnomathematics and then going and living it in a tribe near São Gabriel da Cachoeira: all this he took in his stride, never hesitating to plunge in headfirst. Generosity with his time and affection also marked Maurice out as a very special individual.
We are bereft but privileged to have had the chance to be illuminated by someone so warm and human and yet so rational and rigorous, a mix that we will always miss and spend our lives trying to emulate.
I close with another quote from Grothendieck, that Maurice would have appreciated: Et toute science, quand nous l’entendons non comme un instrument de pouvoir et de domination, mais comme aventure de connaisance de notre espèce à travers les âges, n’est autre chose que cette harmonie, plus ou moins vaste et plus ou moins riche d’une époque à l’autre, qui se déploie au cours des générations et des siècles, par le délicat contrepoint de tous les thèmes apparus tour à tour, comme appelés du néant – Récoltes et Semailles, page P20.
Viva Ciência, Viva o Espaço de onde Maurice agora nos espia, com aquele olhar maroto.
As reflexões do título foram feitas no contexto da Sociedade Brasileira de Automática, da área de controle e automação e da revista Controle e Automação da SBA, e estão baseadas nas seguintes hipóteses/querelas:
1. A maioria de nós, pesquisadores das áreas de controle e automação, não envia os melhores trabalhos para esta revista.
2. Mesmo que enviasse, não temos massa crítica para conseguir revisões de alta qualidade para tais artigos no Brasil, levando em consideração que a participação de revisores estrangeiros está limitada por vários motivos [nem todos os artigos são escritos em inglês, a revista ainda não tem fama suficiente para atrair mão de obra voluntária, ainda mais estrangeira, etc.]
3. Ao longo dos anos, a revista vai perdendo o foco: hoje publica muitos artigos de outras áreas (potência, eletrônica de potência etc.) que têm pouco ou nada a ver com a missão original evocado pelo título da revista. Mesmo com essa abrangência mais ampla, artigos publicados nela recebem pouquíssimas citações (44 citações ao todo, para todos os anos e todos os artigos, desde que pertence à base SCIELO, utilizando a ferramenta de SCIELO. 36 dessas citações são oriundos de artigos da própria revista).
4. Os melhores artigos (pelo menos os premiados) geralmente são surveys e/ou didáticos.
5. As universidades federais, e a própria CAPES (cuja missão é avaliar Educação e Ensino) valorizam o quesito pesquisa muito mais do que o quesito ensino. Como prova disso, podem-se citar muitos fatos. Vou me contentar com apenas dois. A maioria das universidades federais não possui avaliação séria do ensino, não premia bom ensino (embora haja premiação das melhores teses). A progressão na carreira universitária é baseada maciçamente na produtividade em pesquisa; quanto ao ensino, há uma simulação de que está sendo levado em consideração, mas sabe-se que na realidade, não há mecanismos para fazê-lo.
Dadas essas hipóteses, e o gosto que temos pelo ensino (pessoalmente, pelo menos!), a pergunta que se coloca é a seguinte: como podemos agir para melhorar o quadro desenhado acima?
Antes de entrar no mérito desta questão, queria colocar mais algumas observações sobre revistas técnicas e científicas. Em minha opinião, os formatos atuais das revistas bem como o processo atual de revisão estragam bons artigos. Especificamente, mesmo com versões eletrônicas de quase todas as revistas importantes, parece que limitações de papel ainda são impostas aos autores. As seqüelas disso são retiradas de material didático [considerado elementar], supressão de abordagens e exemplos que não dão certo, etc. [muitas vezes quase tão importantes quanto os que dão certo]: processos que tornam o artigo menos compreensível e certamente menos didático. Quanto ao processo de revisão, deparamos com a perversidade de revisores anônimos. Justifico minha escolha de palavras. Hoje, com o acesso fácil a quase toda a produção científica do mundo, uma revista se tornou nada mais do que uma lista de leitura indicada. Indicada por quem? Os revisores, é claro. Leríamos um romance cuja contracapa traz recomendações anônimas, por melhores que fossem? Creio que não. Creio, portanto, que os revisores devem se identificar. Isto traria outros benefícios. Por exemplo, levaria a uma redução drástica de comentários levianos, mal-justificados ou simplesmente mal-educados, que, certamente, todos nos recebemos algumas vezes nas nossas carreiras.
Aonde quero chegar? Quero sugerir a criação de uma “magazine” da revista Controle e Automação, que teria existência apenas eletrônica, com forte foco didático. Seria no formato Wiki, contendo o artigo, os comentários e contribuições dos revisores, assim como as contribuições e comentários dos leitores (que incluiriam texto, imagens, áudio, vídeo, código [em MATLAB, Scilab, Java, you name it]). Poderíamos imaginar um contador de “hits” relevantes (isso teria que ter a intervenção de um ou mais editores), e no final do ano, os 10 artigos mais acessados e que receberam mais contribuições relevantes da comunidade receberiam o grande prêmio CAPES de ENSINO, com conseqüências positivas para a avaliação do departamento/programa que abriga o(s) autor(es). O acesso seria gratuito, mas potenciais autores e leitores teriam que se cadastrar (login e senha). Seriam aceitos artigos didáticos, notas que sugerem como abordar um assunto em sala de aula (um vídeo de uma aula sobre um determinado assunto, por exemplo, no formato YouTube). Enfim, our imagination is the limit! Eu imaginaria o dia em que esse magazine engoliria a eminência parda (revista atual)...
Em tom mais sério, vejo algumas vantagens. Enquanto sabemos que há falta de revisores qualificados para assuntos mais técnicos de pesquisa, temos plena consciência de que há muitos docentes que possuem excelente didática, geram ótimo material didático que se perde quando se aposentam, e que, em geral, estes docentes se sentem pouco prestigiados pelo sistema vigente. Ou seja, temos massa crítica de sobra, e, mais ainda, uma massa cinzenta nesta área que quer mostrar seu valor e, atualmente, não possui instrumentos para isso.
Para finalizar, se esta proposta funcionasse, poderíamos imaginar um futuro no qual a CAPES avaliaria apenas ensino, usando mecanismos como esse, ao passo que o CNPq faria o que ele já faz, avalia pesquisa. Como um programa é um conjunto de docentes que são avaliados em relação aos quesitos de pesquisa e ensino, só restaria discutir como agregar os dados individuais de ensino (CAPES) e de pesquisa (CNPq) dos membros de um programa para gerar uma avaliação completa do conjunto. Radical? Muito distante? Pode ser, mas creio que vale a pena pensar em começar, ainda que fosse com um passo inicial pequeno.
First I’d like to register the fact that, even though I seem to have fallen for the half-century mystique by choosing this day to write on, I don’t really think that 50 years of life on this earth is worth such a big deal. Some reasons that I could give for this follow.
Given that my life expectancy, based on both maternal and paternal relatives and immediate family, is around 90 years, the half way mark is around 45 and not 50. Then again, I don’t think that there is much to celebrate at a half way mark, whether it’s at 45 or 50, since you have just completed the better half of your life. Your powers, both physical and intellectual, have now been on the wane for quite some time, and, as the mathematician Hardy pointed out, you are now at the age when you can start writing books, since innovative research is no longer a real option.
Although I still have most of my teeth, and all my hair, which is salt and pepper, with the salt winning handsomely, signs of wear and tear are everywhere. My children’s friends all call me “coroa” and “tio” (geezer and uncle, respectively, if not respectfully) and, recently, reflecting my new status, even “vovô” (grandfather). I am ten kilos heavier than I should be and my knees hurt after a week of running that is intended to shake off the circumferential excess adipose tissue.
So what should I celebrate? Perhaps the fact that I’m still alive and that, despite all manner of maintenance, plumbing, hardware and software problems that will undoubtedly arise, I will eventually have plenty of leisure time to do all sorts of interesting things.
Optimistic interlude: Perhaps a good retirement occupation for me, even a dream occupation, would be to become a culture jockey for some kind of multimedia “site” which has a music section where I can podcast my current “world” music favorites, a documentary & film site which is also mainly on an exotic axis, a mathematical “gems” corner to show Proofs from The Book, and various other tabs to showcase poetry, linguistics, literature. Finally, an e-library, which embodies the motto “Borrow what you want, forever”, but also has a drop-box where borrowers can contribute their favorites, in any form and where I can go and curate the “droppings”. All this to be seamlessly and shamelessly (i.e., no copyright hassles) integrated into something that ensnares an unsuspecting surfer who rides into this “site” to at least tarry awhile and contribute some gems. End of interlude.
Maybe I should also celebrate the fact that, so far, I have been luckier than many of my counterparts and contemporaries, although, given the large variability in their luck quotas, this is not saying very much.
In any case, I hope to have convinced you that, except for the privileged few who rise above the sea of mediocrity that engulfs us all (myself included as engulfee!), there is really not much to celebrate at 50. Perhaps the picture changes at 70 or 80, but I don’t really believe this.
