The Blog About Fog

Discover the unfriendly skies

These are boom times for the airline industry and thank God too! After the recent corona pandemic scuttled any number of airline companies and forever left its mark on our meeting structures and travel habits, it was an open question whether or not the industry would ever recover or even be as relevant any longer.

Used without permission from https://www.reddit.com/r/shittymoviedetails/comments/vrdjwm/jurassic_park_1_1993_has_the_biggest_piece_of/ but if people are going to make endless memes of images like this, I see it as being fair game.

All the bankruptcies, fears, and futures, of course, turned out to be a bigger load of crap than Jeff Goldblum famously commented on in the original Jurassic Park movie. Take this quote for example:

Travel data company Cirium found that 43 commercial airlines have failed — completely ceased or suspended operations — in 2020 so far, compared to 46 in all of 2019 and 56 throughout 2018.
CNBC article “Over 40 airlines have failed so far this year — and more are set to come” from October 8th, 2020.

Sounds bad, doesn’t it? 43 so far and it’s only October! But wait a minute. October 8th was already a little more than three-quarters of the way through 2020. If you extrapolate those 43 bankruptcies over the course of the full (leap) year, it comes out to 56 (actually 55.8, but 0.8 of an airline can’t go bankrupt) or dead on the value from the very non-corona year of 2018. And, if you take an actual look through the data, you realize that many of these bankruptcies occurred either before or very early on in the pandemic, meaning that, like in the years before, most of these airlines were going to fail anyway. Corona simply kicked them to their rightful place on the curb that little bit sooner is all.

From 394th District Court of Texas - Live Stream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlPGPupdd8)

And, in the end, Zoom, Skype & Co. weren’t all that much of a threat to commercial flying either, despite some predictions that business traffic would never fly above 50% of pre-pandemic levels again. Instead, things were pretty much back to normal and then some by the Spring of 2022. And that’s perhaps not really surprising either for anyone who’s ever done a lot of virtual meetings.

But what has all this got to do with admin? Well, nothing really up to now, but please fasten your (hi-tech) seatbelts for takeoff.

The story is somewhat complicated. My wife and I are flying to Canada for vacation this summer, but whereas I’m starting out from Not-Bielefeld, she’s doing the same from Croatia. We arranged it, however, that we’d meet up in Frankfurt and take the same flight over to Canada and then return to Not-Bielefeld together. Because of the separate starting points, we had to buy the tickets individually (me through an online portal, her directly through an airline), even if we were on most of the same flights together. And, it worked!

Well, up until we had to make the seat reservations that is …

The internet has changed things a lot for the airline industry, particularly in being able to offer bad service in an impersonal fashion at the lowest price possible more efficiently than ever before. Up until a few years ago, I didn’t mind buying my tickets online. Although the foundation of that process is still in place today—I can still see exactly which flights are available and at what price—the pricing policies have changed dramatically. Before, the price used to include a reasonable amount of luggage and usually a seat too. Now, in an effort to show the absolute lowest prices possible, the ticket price barely gets you in the door of the plane. Anything beyond that, like seats or luggage, have become bookable extras.

(And, although I have no data beyond my own paranoia to back this up, I’m pretty sure that this whole system was dreamed up more for the convenience (read: bottom line) of the airlines than for us. Yes, the base ticket price probably is indeed cheaper, but the airlines undoubtedly more than make up the difference through the necessary “extras”. Although some passengers will save money through the new system, most probably won’t.)

In short, for a price, you now need to make your seat reservations ahead of time, which we reluctantly had to fork out for here seeing as how we’d kinda like to sit together for the eight plus hours and not just leave it all to chance.

The problem was the Frankfurt to Canada leg: presumably only one single plane, but code-shared between at least three airlines so that it’s not clear to anyone who’s flying the damn thing in the end. Now, although I booked my ticket through an online portal, I was able to make a seat reservation for this leg through LU. (As I’ve stressed before, the policy of this blog is to not name any names, so I’m using randomly assigned letters to represent the airlines involved to guarantee their anonymity.) My wife, who booked directly with AC, couldn’t. The AC website said that because the flight was being operated by EU, we needed to book her seat through them. The booking service for the EU website, however, forwarded us immediately to the LU website, which even more immediately informed us that no seat reservations were possible for this leg. Huh?

By Metropolitan Transportation Authority (https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/50091639296)

Ok, switch to Plan B: the phone and an actual human …

… even if they’re not in Germany.

First LU, who were the last and seemingly the most direct line in the chain. But who also informed me that only five seats in total were available for allocation for the flight, none of which were close to the seat that I had booked. When I told the customer-service agent that this could not be true because the whole back of the plane was available when I booked my seat a few minutes before (which according to their website was free of charge, but, according to my credit card, still somehow cost me 35 EUR), he got self-righteous and I got a long lecture about how it wasn’t LU’s fault, but EU’s. He then got really self-righteous when I asked him why I was able to book my reservation through LU and how it could exclusively be the fault of EU when they belong to the same parent company as LU. The call did not end well.

And especially not for LU …

Fun fact: it seems like call centres (or at least those for LU) have difficulty ending the phone calls such that it’s usually up to the caller to hang up. I didn’t in this case, expecting that LU would. After about 10 seconds though, I heard the agent saying that the connection was still open and could I please hang up. Which I ignored. Another 20 seconds or so and the same request to which I gave the same response. Another 20 seconds later and I got put on hold. Then after about two minutes, the agent finally managed to drop the call on his end.

Second stop: EU because they were the ones to blame according to LU. Again, the same story about there only being five available seats. (Which I was starting to believe at this point because I don’t trust either EU or LU to be coordinated enough for it to be a well-rehearsed lie.) Same general answers as to how this could be the case (“dunno”, “not our fault”, and even “wasn’t trained for things like this”), but at least without the huffiness.

Last chance: AC. After all, they directly sold us my wife’s ticket and so must have some control over it, right? Wrong. Same five seats but with the explanation that this was a known problem when code-sharing with EU and that no one, not even EU, can allocate seats on their flights easily. Granted, another cop out, but at least not a mindless one. I actually got the feeling that the guy knew what he was talking about here, also because he mentioned that AC was working with EU to try and find a solution that he personally hoped would come very soon because he was tried of explaining this nonsense to the customers all the time.

But wait! Because then it got really, really stupid …

The very next day, I get an e-mail from LU saying that I need to call them back because of some problems with my reservations. The problem? Yup, that Frankfurt to Canada leg. Despite charging me 35 EUR for my free seat reservation and despite the LU website still showing me as having the seat reserved, the LU agent told me that it was really only a seat “preference” insofar as EU blocked the actual reservation. “Very sorry” and all but “Not our fault.” And what about the website and my 35 EUR? No answer to the former and the refund, like refunds to credit cards always seem to do, will take up to one to two weeks.

By fogBlgger. Distributed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Sigh …

But back to EU and their five available seats. Maybe now we could get a pair together???

By now, of course, you realize that the answer to that pipe dream was hahahahaha. Despite only an entire day having gone by and the flight not being for another three months, the five seats had vanished so that there was nothing left at all. Not for me, not for my wife. Probably not for the pilot either. (Part of this, however, was my fault. When I asked about my old seat “preference”, I was told that it was already booked by someone else, which the LU website confirmed to still be me.) After about a half hour of this, I finally asked to talk to a superior only to get put on hold for at least 25 minutes. It was pretty obvious that they were trying to get rid of me (remember, they don’t seem to be able to end the calls from their side), but didn’t calculate with me being stubborn.

Now, I say “at least” because at that point, I called up the call centre again, but in parallel from my landline to request that the first agent take me off hold and actually deal with the situation. No chance, of course, but the new agent was able to cancel my previous preference and reserve a seat for me in the row behind it. Forget five seats or no seats. For some mystical reason, the whole back of the plane was available to me again. (All to the tune of another 35 EUR on my credit card, but at least I had a real reservation again.) And for my wife? Nada. As in nada even on my lap, under the seat in front of me (which had been mine), or in one of the overhead bins.

And guess what? As soon as I got off the phone with EU and checked the LU website, the new seat reservation was already in place! Together with a unpaid bill for 35 EUR for this new seat reservation. Or, more likely, preference again. (Which it was. One week later and LU removed the preference together with another, paid reservation for another leg of the journey.)

It’s crazy. Think about it: would you trust an airline that can’t even allocate seats on its own plane (and (much) time on the phone has revealed that it physically is indeed an EU plane) to actually be able to fly the damn thing?

In the end, even the seat reservations (not preferences) that we could make online were, like the airline seats they’re associated with often are, a pain in the ass. For instance, to book my seats for the other legs of the journey, I had to go through two separate airlines to do it. Why? Why can’t it be like the tickets? When my wife and I bought our tickets, we each bought all the tickets for all the legs at once. There was no warning that we couldn’t purchase the tickets for some of the legs because they were with a different airline. Now, if the other airline can automatically get its money for the legs of the journey that it’s responsible for (which is by far the biggest chunk of the ticket price), it surely can also get the cash for the bums that are on those legs. Where’s the problem? The connectivity is there: as I said, as soon as I made the seat reservation with the one airline, it showed up for all the others as well.

But, as I was (repeatedly) told, it’s all down to the difference between code-sharing and interlining. Or perhaps, just perhaps, maybe a lack of will on the part of the airlines? The repeated message I heard after spending 25+ minutes on hold with EU made it abundantly clear that they were giving preference to customers that booked directly with them rather than with ones foisted upon them by their code-sharing partners. Although the message claimed that it was because of “technical restrictions”, it seems quite clear that someone ordered those “restrictions” to be put in place.

From https://www.wallpaperflare.com/white-airliner-stairs-on-runway-white-airplane-portable-stairs-during-daytime-wallpaper-wjylz

People love to complain about Ryanair and their money-grabbing antics. But at least the system works there. Instead, looks like the pandemic missed out on a few choice candidates for bankruptcy here …

BCD 09.04.2023 (Easter Sunday edition)

If, unlike me, you’ve ever wondered what day Easter Sunday will fall on in some given year, you could look at a calendar. Or you could ask Google.

Or you could quickly work it out for yourself using this simple calculation for our bonehead calculation of the day (BCD):

Divide x (= the desired year of the Gregorian calendar) by 19 to get a quotient (which we ignore) and a remainder A. This is the year’s position in the 19-year lunar cycle. (A + 1 is the year’s golden number.)
Divide x by 100 to get a quotient B and a remainder C.
Divide B by 4 to get a quotient D and a remainder E.
Divide 8B + 13 by 25 to get a quotient G and a remainder (which we ignore).
Divide 19A + B – D – G + 15 by 30 to get a quotient (which we ignore) and a remainder H. (The year’s epact is 23 – H when H is less than 24 and 53 – H otherwise.)
Divide A + 11H by 319 to get a quotient M and a remainder (which we ignore).
Divide C by 4 to get a quotient J and a remainder K.
Divide 2E + 2J – K – H + M + 32 by 7 to get a quotient (which we ignore) and a remainder L.
Divide H – M + L + 90 by 25 to get a quotient N and a remainder (which we ignore).
Divide H – M + L + N + 19 by 32 to get a quotient (which we ignore) and a remainder P. Easter Sunday is the Pth day of the Nth month (N can be either 3 for March or 4 for April). The year’s dominical letter can be found by dividing 2E + 2J – K by 7 and taking the remainder. A remainder of 0 is equivalent to the letter A, 1 is equivalent to B, and so on).

(The following figure is the same thing, I think, or at least does the same thing, just for the more visually inclined.)

By Michael Hartley (https://www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com/support-files/easter-date-worksheet.pdf)

Really??? Who came up with this? And how?!

Wouldn’t just choosing some date and running with it, say maybe two days after the date that most scholars agree that Jesus was crucified, be simpler?

Good Friday Disagreements

With lots of spare time this weekend because Easter means that everything here in Not-Bielefeld is either closed or illegal (including, of course, public viewing of the morally questionable 1974 Japanese anime production of Heidi, Girl of the Alps), my thoughts wandered back to the question of why Jesus seems to die on a different day each year. As it turns out, Good Friday this year does indeed fall on one of the two days when most scholars agree that he was crucified on (April 7th, the other being April 3rd) and I got to wondering how often that this was the case.

A quick bit of reading (AKA “research”) revealed even more quickly just how complicated the whole timing of Easter thing actually is. (As well as how many only vaguely relevant but still damn interesting rabbit holes Google can lead you down sometimes.) Most people know Easter as being the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox (but actually, if inaccurately, fixed as March 21st). Or something vaguely like that. But, even after you wrap your brain around that definition to figure it out, it’s still only the end approximation of a long, drawn-out process designed to essentially standardize a variable date, in part by reducing its dependency on the Hebrew calendar (which seems to be even more complex). Despite the definition, Easter actually has nothing to do with a real full moon officially, which could cause it to occur on different days in the same year depending on where you are on the Earth. Instead, the Paschal computus formula developed by the Church to calculate Easter each year, the earliest known forms of which go back to at least 222 AD, uses a Paschal full moon, the 14th day of a lunar month. (The modern version of the formula uses golden numbers and epacts, both derived from the lunar cycle and is so complex, you wonder how anyone ever came up with it. Or how they could justify getting away from the Hebrew calendar on the grounds of simplicity in the first place.)

All so much simpler and directer than just using the actual day that Jesus died, now isn’t it?

(Perhaps a step in the right direction is an actual standing, but unenforced 1928 English law, last reaffirmed in 1999, that fixes Easter Sunday as the Sunday following the second Saturday in April. As such, Easter would still wobble, but only between April 9th and April 15th, making it much more of a typical British fix than a German one.)

Formulas but not full moons aside, the problem with the timing of Easter is just that: it is determined in part by the moon, the timekeeping functions of which are, at best, limited to delimiting how long a month is. (But realistically “at worst” because it does a pretty crummy job at it for most months. It also doesn’t help that the length of the lunar cycle itself varies by nearly two days depending on your frame of reference, the moon’s (sidereal) vs. your’s (synodic). (The latter is also true for the length of the year, but the difference there is only about 20 minutes, which for me is close enough to the annoying academic quarter that it too should simply be ignored.) As such, Good Friday can fall anywhere between March 20th and April 23rd in any given Gregorian year.

But I got to wondering how often it fell on any given day in that 35-day period and, in particular, on those two days when most scholars agree that Jesus actually died?

Using data from Robert Harry van Gent (and there are many, many other such webpages; seems I’m not alone in my weird thoughts …), I plotted just how often Good Friday has occurred on any given day from 1583 to 3000 AD. (The odd starting year is because it’s the year after the Gregorian calendar was mandated into use by Pope Gregory XIII. And, yes, I realize that all the data and all the formulas are for Easter Sunday, not Good Friday. I just see the latter as having temporal, if not logical, priority. Hard to have a resurrection without a crucifixion after all. Just add two to all the dates if you disagree.) Immediate hindsight told me that this should all be a non-issue. All things being equal, each of those 35 days have just under a 3% chance of being Good Friday.

But, of course, all things are not equal …

For starters, the first and last weeks get progressively shortchanged for similar, but different reasons related to boundary effects. For Easter to occur in the first week, the (Paschal) full moon and the equinox have to line up just right or else the Easter bunny thinks it’s a groundhog and snoozes toward the middle of the window. By contrast, the last week has to hope that Easter hasn’t already gotten a better offer beforehand.

But, even when you get past the boundary areas, Good Friday still hops around a good amount to play favourites (e.g., April 3rd, but not April 7th). Again, all things here being equal (no boundaries anymore …), Good Friday should fall on each day about 48 times, but its real distribution is instead surprisingly large, ranging from 36 to 63 times per given day. It must be said, however, that these 1418 years are only a small sample that are absolutely nothing compared to the total of 5 700 000 years (and not just “about 5 700 000” but exactly 5 700 000) before the whole cycle starts up again.

And even in that complete, quasicrystallic Easter cycle (thanks again for the data, Robert), although the thin red dashed line has flattened out a lot, there’s still quite some bounce left in it that shows a curious periodicity of two to three days??? (For those more curious than this periodicity, April 3rd is riding the top of its local wave and April 7th the bottom, with my compromise of April 5th being a really well-behaved compromise by being right in the middle.) But then the last mini-cycle before the boundary disappears in favour of building to a unique mini-spike of 23 000 extra times for April 17th, 29 days (or pretty dead on one (synodic) lunar cycle) after the spring equinox starting off the whole exercise.

Umm, right …

I think I learned something, although not necessarily the answer to what I was asking this weekend. And, although the timing of Easter has the fingerprints of admin all over it, there’s not really much admin being talked about here today. (Sorry about that.) I guess it could count as a bonehead calculation of the day (BCD), but even that’s stretching it. (Ok, I stretched it.) Maybe spare time on my side isn’t necessarily such a good thing after all …

BCD 03.04.2023

With increasing political polarization marching seemingly uncontested across the globe, it was time for some good news on the political front and CNN, as well as many other news outlets, promptly delivered.

This is a victory for local democracy.

Finally! After being under threat for so long and from so many different corners, democracy got the well deserved victory it so badly needed. Unfortunately, to fully appreciate why this is my bonehead comment of the day, more of the quote is needed for context.

By Inès Dieleman (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anne_Hidalgo,_février_2014_(cropped).jpg)

On September 1, there will be no more rental scooters in Paris. … This is a victory for local democracy.
Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris

Don’t get me wrong, I hate the things (or at least the myopic morons on them) as much as anyone else. But, getting rid of e-scooters counts as a victory for democracy? May 8th, 1945 was a victory, even locally in Paris. If only the ancients Greeks could see what has become of the form of politics that they named and popularized. Odds are that they’d be shouting something other than “εὕρηκα!“

Admittedly, the results of the referendum were undisputedly overwhelming, with nearly 90% of the votes cast saying to ditch the things. The problem, however, is that the turnout was even more undisputedly underwhelming, with only 7.46% of the registered voters in Paris (or a mere 103 000 out of 1.38 million people) actually being bothered enough to cast a vote. Sounds much more like the victory belonged to apathy than it did to anything else.

Then again, this is Paris. I suppose that any political process that doesn’t involve the burning of cars (or e-scooters) must count as a victory of some sort …

AdminGPT

You know that it had to be done, right?

With all the excitement, coverage, and concern about AI these days, I was simply curious if ChatGPT could do a better job at admin than real admin types could. (And by “better”, I mean better for us as the end users. After all, the real point of admin is to take work off our hands, not shove their work into ours.)

Trivial? Well, maybe … (But then Google also reveals that I’m not the first to come up with the term “AdminGPT”.)

Author and rights unknown. Please contact me if this image belongs to you.

I know that a lot more people are a lot more concerned about how, for example, students will use AI to cheat on their essays and the like. But, let’s be realistic about this. First, and most importantly, this kind of cheating will seriously reduce the number of excruciatingly awful term papers I have to suffer through each year. And, if you think about it, essays and term papers are the ultimate in open-book exams anyway. What’s to prevent the students from already cheating on them? You can buy these things online or have someone else write it for you for a fee. Hell, the whole expectation on our side is for some form of cheating insofar as the students should be recycling a bunch of other people’s ideas in the process. Is getting AI to do the research for this really that much different than asking Google or Wikipedia (or, from my golden, analog years, an encyclopaedia) for help? Quicker, faster, more efficient, and less effort, no question. But fundamentally different? Dunno …

So, with ChatGPT already showing to me that it could do a damn good job writing a sarcastic blog entry about admin (and good enough that I was duly impressed / unduly jealous as well as that my wife was fooled by it), I wanted to see how good it was at actually doing admin instead of just taking potshots at it. In particular how good is it at creating forms, an abomination against the laws of nature that I might have already griped about numerous times elsewhere in this blog?

The task? Create a work-safety assessment form asking about the specific hazards and specific precautions against corona in a university workplace setting.

The result? Et voilà …

Have you received training on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in your workplace?
- Yes
- No
If yes, please check any of the following topics you were trained on:
- Proper hand hygiene
- Proper cough and sneeze etiquette
- Proper use of masks or face coverings
- Physical distancing measures
- Identifying symptoms of COVID-19
- Reporting procedures for suspected or confirmed cases
- Other (please specify):
Have you been provided with the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect yourself from COVID-19 exposure in your workplace?
- Yes
- No
If yes, please specify the PPE that you require:
Have you received training on how to properly use and maintain your PPE for COVID-19 safety?
- Yes
- No
Have you been informed of the policies and procedures for reporting COVID-19 symptoms or exposure in your workplace?
- Yes
- No
If yes, please describe the policies and procedures:
Have you been informed about the potential risks of COVID-19 in your workplace?
- Yes
- No
If yes, please check any of the following that apply:
- Close contact with individuals who may be infected
- Exposure to contaminated surfaces or objects
- Inadequate ventilation or air circulation
- Poor physical distancing measures
- Inadequate cleaning and disinfection practices
- Other (please specify):
Are there any areas in your workplace where physical distancing measures are difficult to maintain?
- Yes
- No
If yes, please specify the areas:
Are there any areas in your workplace where mask or face covering usage is difficult to maintain?
- Yes
- No
If yes, please specify the areas:
Have you observed any unsafe practices or conditions related to COVID-19 safety in your workplace?
- Yes
- No
If yes, please describe the unsafe practices or conditions:
Have you reported any unsafe practices or conditions related to COVID-19 safety to your supervisor?
- Yes
- No
If yes, were the concerns addressed promptly?
- Yes
- No
- N/A
Have you been provided with the necessary resources to maintain proper hygiene and cleanliness in your workspace?
- Yes
- No
If yes, please specify the resources:
Have you been provided with any accommodations or alternative work arrangements to reduce your risk of COVID-19 exposure in your workplace (e.g. working from home, adjusted work schedules)?
- Yes
- No
If yes, please describe the accommodations or alternative work arrangements:
Have you received any communication regarding COVID-19 safety measures and updates from your employer?
- Yes
- No
If yes, please specify the type of communication and frequency:
Is there anything else you would like to share about COVID-19 safety measures in your workplace?

Thank you for taking the time to complete this form. Your responses will be used to evaluate COVID-19 hazards in the workplace and ensure that appropriate measures are taken to ensure the safety and well-being of all employees.

Now that’s pretty darn good, if not one heckuva lot more polite than the forms I’m used to filling out from the University of Not-Bielefeld. Getting thanked to fill out a form?! I always feel like the forms I’m filling out are more threatening than anything. And not just threatening in the direct sense of it simply being a form, but also with the more than implicit hint of “do this or else”. Granted, and despite some specific topics arguably being missing, the ChatGPT form is still a little longish, but we are talking admin here.

However, by comparison, the first version of the equivalent form from the University of Not-Bielefeld was nine pages long, complete with exclamation marks and surprise reverse checkboxes where suddenly “yes”, the default and correct answer for the last half page, meant “wrong answer”.

The real beauty of the ChatGPT form though and the reason why the University of Not-Bielefeld form was nine pages long comes down to a difference in perspective about who should be doing most of the admin work. As you can see, the ChatGPT form uses a lot of free-text fields, which are highly flexible but make it more difficult to pigeonhole the answers. In other words, someone has to read these answers and respond accordingly. By contrast, the university form (as well as its evil brethren) tended to be more rigid through being more specific. More pre-specified scenarios and so less post-specified thinking.

I can understand this, but only to a point. After all, the job description of admin has to include admin, shouldn’t it? It can’t really be a big surprise to anyone thinking about admin as a career that some paperwork might be involved sometimes. (The surprise instead to me is that anyone seriously thinks about it as a career choice.) My point is simply that they should be letting us do our work by not doing theirs …

BCD 08.03.2023

Over the last decade of so, the University of Not-Bielefeld has increasingly targeted international students in a bid to become a more global player on the university scene. One “crucial” step in this direction over the past two years or so is having e-mails from central admin (including the President’s Office) in two languages: German and what DeepL assures admin is the English translation of it.

The problem here is that admin types tend not to be bilingual, at least not with English as the second language, so they just run with the translation without checking it. There are, of course, some interesting constructions that DeepL thinks up for itself, but it generally does a good job. However, there are also some obvious, additional, non-DeepL typos that a quick proofread would catch.

For instance, thanks to corona, we supervisors now have the option to register all the Bachelor and Master theses for our students online. (Not really online online in the form of a form, but just e-mailing the form to the Examination Office, probably because they still have to print it out on their end. But, hey, it’s still a step up towards the modern world.) The confirmation-form-e-mail (remove one hyphen around “form” as you see fit), for which someone on their end has to type in the relevant details (so hush hush on the webform before they realize that it shoves even more of their work our way, k?), starts off great in German, not so great in English:

German: Sehr geehrter Herr fogBlogger,

English: Dearfogblogger,

We’ll forget about Sehr geehrter translating out literally as “most honoured” because no one outside of a spam mail would say that in English (so plus points to DeepL), but somehow not only my gender but also a fairly important piece of punctuation has been lost in translation. And this for months now without anyone noticing (or in my case complaining).

Ah yes, bonehead confirmation of the day it seems …

BCD 07.03.2023

Those of you out there who, like me, are too cheap to pay to remove the ads from their mobile apps know all about this: the commercials for other apps that “challenge” your ego by saying (without any data, evidence, science, or apparently conscience) that “only 5% of people can solve this” or by showing that getting so far in the game means that you have a “brain age” or IQ of some randomly generated number.

Indeed some appeal to intelligence (or lack thereof) seems to be the common ingredient to many of these ads. Ridiculously easy problems are never solved in the puzzle apps and jackpots are always won in the betting apps.

But, I just was confronted with the best one of all time, making for the bonehead commercial of the day …

This ad assured me that only left-brained thinkers could solve the puzzle (some 3D tower block-removal game). Now, if we assume that the notion of being left- versus right-brained is not hair-brained and if we subscribe to the theory that lateralization of brain function does determine (or at least is strongly correlated with) handedness, then only a mere 90% of the world’s population can solve this game. Doesn’t sound like too much of a challenge anymore now does it, especially because all those analytical left-brained types already figured all this out. (Me, being right-brained, am still stuck at “Oooh! Pretty graphics …”)

Admittedly, there are a lot of assumptions being made in my “analysis”, with most of them being debatable at best, but 90% is still a far cry from the stereotypical 5% that was claimed in a previous version of the ad.

Say, you don’t think the ad company might be making all this up, do you?

Easter charade

The longer I think about it, the more convinced I become that Easter originated as an invention by historical admin types to “improve” our life quality.

Think about it …

We’re talking about one of the most important religious celebrations / holidays of the year (except perhaps in North America where John Oliver summed Easter up best by referring to it as “shitty Christmas”) and we can’t even figure out when it is. Depending on, of all things, the moon, Easter can fall anywhere between March 22nd and April 25th in any given year.

Modified from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_old_gravestone_in_Ettrick_Parish_Churchyard_-_geograph.org.uk_-_907846.jpg by Walter Baxter

(This relatively large timespan makes Jesus Christ fairly unusual among famous historical figures. For many such figures, we know the day on which they died (because they had become famous by then), but often don’t know when they were born (because they weren’t yet). Take Shakespeare for example. Assuming that he was not Francis Bacon (or anyone else other than Shakespeare), we know that he died on April 23rd, 1616. But, the most we know about the other side of the life of arguably the greatest writer in the English language is that he was baptized on April 26th, 1564. Another good example is William of Ockham, who died on April 9th, 1347. The most parsimonious thing that we can say about his birth, however, is that he was probably born in 1287 and probably in the British village of Ockham. (My all-time personal favourite though is Plato. According to Wikipedia, he was born sometime between 428 and 423 BC (either that or it was one hell of a labour for his poor mother), but died more politely, if still unusually slowly, from 348 to 347 BC. (Seneca helpfully claims that Plato died on his birthday, but unhelpfully doesn’t happen to mention what day that might have been.))

But with Jesus, it’s the exact opposite. We know precisely on which day and at what time he was born, but he dies on a different day from one year to the next. Huh?)

Anyway. Now where was I?

By Porsupah Ree (https://www.flickr.com/photos/porsupah/4979282739/in/photostream/)

For me personally, whether holiday or celebration, I simply find Easter to be a logistical nightmare because it hops around more than the bunny it’s come to be associated with. Some years, I can ignore Easter entirely and just enjoy the four-day long weekend it brings. (Sort of. Throughout Germany, there is a ban on dancing on Good Friday. Like Easter itself, there is no standard here and the ban can be as short as part of Good Friday only (Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg) or extend all the way from 4 AM on Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday) to 4 PM on Easter Sunday (Rhineland-Palatinate). I can sort of understand this. The crucifixion of the son of God is not really an occasion for partying, now is it? What I can’t understand is why it’s largely restricted to dancing (meaning that going to a bar and getting drunk is probably ok or at least legal), why only Hamburg also extends the ban to moving house, and why the government has to legislate what in the end amounts to religious decorum. If you feel that dancing on Good Friday is inappropriate, then simply don’t dance. You really don’t need the government to back you up on this.) But, when Easter falls mid (to late) like it does this year, it can hop its the way into the start of teaching for the German summer semester, which is fixed for the middle of April.

For instance, the first day of classes this year falls on Easter Monday, except that that’s a holiday in Germany, so it doesn’t and gets pushed back onto the Tuesday. The week before that, when we usually hold all the organizational meetings for the different classes, are the provincial Easter holidays so those meetings kind of fall flat too and have to be done during the course instead.

Ok. Annoying but not really a nightmare. The latter only starts because of some knock-on effects that chew away even more teaching time. Probably unbeknownst to most North Americans, there are more than a few additional, associated holidays starting 40 days after Easter: Ascension Day, Whit Monday, and Corpus Christi. As such, exactly when they occur depends on when Easter falls in that year; however, they all fall squarely in the summer semester regardless of what Easter decides to do.

By dronepicr (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bollerwagen_Kohlfahrt_Vatertag_%2833476920736%29.jpg)

The beauty of Ascension Day (or Jesus Skydrive if you translate the German Christi Himmelfahrt literally) and Corpus Christi is that they always fall on Thursdays, meaning that they tend to take out the following Fridays too because one can never have enough Easter-related, four-day long weekends. On top of this, Ascension Day in Germany doubles up as Father’s Day, with many people, fathers or otherwise, completely forgetting the religious significance of the day and instead using the opportunity to get ripe royally ripped and making the subsequent long weekend more or less predestined, if not a necessity. Although it has nothing to do with Easter, add in the first of May (May Day; same principle as Father’s Day, just boozier) and the chaos is more or less complete.

Although I’ve learned to avoid holding classes on Thursdays or Fridays in the summer semester, my Monday course takes a very variable beating from year to year. Best-case scenario is Whit Monday unavoidably chewing away one class. This year, however, Easter Monday and May Day come on top of that. Missing just three classes might not sound like a lot, but that’s a little more than one-fifth of the 14 that there are in total. That’s quite a chunk of material to not be covering and makes it difficult to ensure that the course is consistent from year to year.

As it turns out, most of this is completely unnecessary because Jesus does indeed conform to most famous historical figures insofar as the date of his death has been pretty well nailed down to either April 7th, 30 AD or April 3rd, 33 AD (unsurprisingly, both Fridays) and probably at about 3 PM. Instead, much less is agreed upon about the time of his birth. The consensus of most scholars is that he was born sometime between 6 BC and 4 BC, but the exact date, the month, and even the season remain contested.

So, despite the latter uncertainty, let’s agree to keep Christmas as it is and split the difference and fix Easter as April 5th of each year. Or even the Friday closest to the 5th. It’s still late enough to wreak havoc with my teaching, but at least it’s consistent havoc and I see that as a step up.

Going through the motions: conspiring while hiring

At the end of last year, my lab manager went into extended, part-time maternity leave for all of 2023 so that I needed to find a temporary replacement for her for the afternoons. The historical, first step in such cases was always to ask around the department to see if there was someone else who was qualified and on a part-time contract and wanted to stock up for a short time.

And you know what? It all worked out pretty damn good in most cases. The search was simplified and both sides knew pretty much what they were getting (or getting themselves into), part of which was a person who was already in the building and knew all the twisted ropes that this particular department and university had on offer. And, don’t forget, we’re talking about a part-time, temporary position here and so weren’t really doing a great injustice to anyone on the outside.

However, after having found just such a person in our department, I was told that the position, despite being part-time and temporary, still had to be advertised officially to maintain accountability. The University of Not-Bielefeld is, after all, a public institution that is funded by public money (but is, strangely enough, still private property) and the taxpayer has the right to know that their money is being used responsibly. Exactly like when public money is used to bail out private businesses because their unaccountable actions mean that they aren’t making enough profit anymore.

Anyway …

In Act I, I had to form an official hiring committee so I quickly tapped three people from my working group, which is about the minimum number I could get away with. Additionally included as observers on this committee, however, were one member each from the departmental office, the faculty’s equal-opportunities office, the university’s employee council, and, potentially, the university’s equal-opportunities office.

By Yan Krukau (https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-having-an-argument-with-a-woman-7640493/)

Now this is not to imply that the equal-opportunities offices of the faculty and the university don’t communicate with or trust one another. They just target different minorities is all: women at the faculty level and persons with disabilities at the university one. (I have no idea what politically-correct terminology has against adjectives. Seriously! Beside the extra, convoluting syllables, what is the honest-to-goodness difference between “disabled person” and “person with disabilities”? If anything, the latter implies that the person has more than one disability. And why are adjectives only outlawed for minorities? For instance, no one would ever refer to me, a white male, as a person with underpigmentation and heterozygous sex chromosomes. Seems to me that adjectives should sue for discrimination here …)

At least the university office admits their narrower scope because German name for the officer in charge (SchwerbehindertenbeauftragterIn) clearly indicates the focus on people with disabilities. This isn’t the case for the faculty’s Gleichstellung office, the name of which literally translates out to “equal opportunity” (which is also the English translation that the university uses), but the practical remit of which doesn’t extend beyond women.

You want to hire disproportionately more women? That’s cool. Women have been on the short end of the academic stick (and many others) for far too long. Just call it what it is. (And please don’t call it “positive discrimination”, which is simply moronic because it’s needlessly oxymoronic. Discrimination is negative. Period. So don’t try to be clever and try to make it something positive especially when other, better, and more direct phrases for it like “equal opportunity” or “affirmative action” already exist. Imagine the outcry if you tried the same trick with the word “racism” (which is actually just a subset of discrimination, BTW) …) For instance, our departmental office, which has been 100% female for about a decade now, once had to fight with the faculty “Gleichstellung” office to have a phrase included for an open, secretarial position they had that men, the minority gender in this case, were specifically encouraged to apply. And the “Gleichstellung” officer? Has to be female according to the University’s (almost definitely illegal) regulations and is elected at a meeting to which only women can attend. Gleichstellung has never looked so ungleich before …

And then comes Act II …

From https://www.hippopx.com/en/snowflakes-snow-winter-christmas-nuremberg-christmas-buden-human-343722

The position was then advertised through the personnel department on the university’s web pages and, after all was said and done, there was one whole applicant: the same woman I had head-hunted a few weeks earlier and had informed about the advertisement. Everyone else seems to have somehow overlooked the ad despite it running for an entire two weeks (the official minimum) from December 14th to 28th. Curious …

And then came the motions in Act III …

First a meeting to decide on a shortlist (and if one isn’t a short list then I don’t know what is), then another meeting where the candidate was interviewed by the committee, and finally a meeting where the committee made a recommendation of who to hire. And then the obligatory paperwork: minutes of each of the “meetings”, a form indicating the “Gleichstellung” measures, and finally a form to hire the preferred candidate. Annoyingly, most of these forms asked for the exact same information such that they could have been combined into one with copies sent around as needed. More curiously, although all the forms allowed the applicants for the position to be non-binary, the same was not true for members of the hiring committee who had to be either male or female. And this on the “Gleichstellung” form of all things! So non-binary people apparently either have to choose their gender upon being hired by the University of Not-Bielefeld or don’t get to sit on any hiring committees.

By gerlos (https://www.flickr.com/photos/gerlos/3119891607)

In the end, the one lingering question to this three-act charade is where the much ballyhooed accountability was. There was a lot of talk—and a lot more bureaucracy—but little to no real action.

Let’s be honest: the result with all the “accountability” was exactly the same as the one I would have gotten otherwise. Both the hiring committee and the advertisement (especially the timing of it) were just this side of illegitimate. And all the other control mechanisms were largely no-shows as well. I’ll give the university equal-opportunity office a pass here because there were no candidates with disabilities so their input wasn’t needed. The same goes for the departmental office, which had actually done their work already in letting me know beforehand what the legal requirements for the process were. But, the faculty “Gleichstellung” office politely jumped ship before anything got rolling and I only ever heard back from the employee council twice, both times saying on short notice that they wouldn’t be able to attend the meetings where the important decisions (making the shortlist and who to hire) were being made. For the employee council they at least admitted that it was because of a shortage of Homo-sapiens power and the same was probably true for the faculty “Gleichstellung” office as well.

By Mike Souza (https://www.flickr.com/photos/zombiesquirrels/3393620267)

But if you’re going to make other people jump through hoops for you, then at least have the decency to be there in person to hold the damn hoops and not just reserve the right to veto any decision afterwards that you could’ve actively been a part of beforehand.

If you can’t, then maybe those hoops weren’t all that important in the first place now were they?

BCD 31.01.2023

When I first came up with the acronym BCD (bonehead comment of the day), I never realized that it would be so versatile. Or at least the C in it. Today, it again revolves not so much around a comment as it does a command.

Yesterday evening, the University of Not-Bielefeld followed the provincial decree to downgrade the obligation to wear a medical mask inside its buildings to a recommendation as of February 2nd. Although this has happened far later than most anywhere else in Germany, I don’t have a problem with this, having always been on the more cautious side of corona. No, rather than the arguably late timing of it all, it was the inarguably weird timing of the implementation that had me wondering.

For instance, why not repeal it immediately instead of three days in the future? Do we all need to somehow prepare ourselves mentally for this or something? Does corona get even less dangerous in those three days? And will we still get thrown off the campus for trespassing (no joke!) if we get caught without a mask on until then?

By Anthony Quintano (https://www.flickr.com/photos/quintanomedia/51858294578)

And then there’s the odd date: Thursday, February 2nd. Not the start or end of a week or even of a month for that matter. (Although it is technically the end of the workweek for many here in the University given how empty the place is on Fridays.) Could it have something to do with Groundhog Day perhaps? You know, letting the bottom of your face finally emerge from its “burrow” to predict when the pandemic might end?

One thing is certain though. I’m really curious to see what many of the faces actually look like compared to how my mind has been filling in the details over the past three years …