Miskatonic University Press

At Carveth’s Marina on Stoney Lake in Ontario there’s a sign up where they keep track of the day when the ice is completely out of the lake. (Being in central Ontario the lake freezes over completely in the winter.) The data is also available on their web site. I got curious about it and wondered if I could see any patterns.

I set up an Org file where I would use R. First, the raw data as a table:

#+NAME: tbl_raw_dates
|       date |
|------------|
| 1935-04-10 |
| 1936-04-27 |
| 1943-04-25 |
| 1945-03-28 |
| 1956-05-03 |
| 1957-04-17 |
| 1958-04-16 |
| 1959-04-23 |
| 1960-04-22 |
| 1961-04-28 |
| 1963-04-16 |
| 1964-04-19 |
| 1965-05-01 |
| 1968-04-08 |
| 1969-04-18 |
| 1970-04-27 |
| 1971-04-28 |
| 1972-05-03 |
| 1973-04-09 |
| 1974-04-20 |
| 1975-04-28 |
| 1976-04-12 |
| 1977-04-13 |
| 1978-05-01 |
| 1979-04-19 |
| 1980-04-11 |
| 1981-04-04 |
| 1982-04-25 |
| 1983-04-14 |
| 1984-04-16 |
| 1985-04-18 |
| 1986-04-07 |
| 1987-04-08 |
| 1988-04-09 |
| 1989-04-23 |
| 1990-04-20 |
| 1991-04-10 |
| 1992-04-28 |
| 1993-04-23 |
| 1994-04-20 |
| 1995-04-06 |
| 1996-04-24 |
| 1997-04-24 |
| 1998-04-07 |
| 1999-04-07 |
| 2000-03-28 |
| 2001-04-17 |
| 2002-04-14 |
| 2003-04-21 |
| 2004-04-19 |
| 2005-04-19 |
| 2006-04-12 |
| 2007-04-19 |
| 2008-04-18 |
| 2009-04-05 |
| 2010-04-02 |
| 2011-04-14 |
| 2012-03-24 |
| 2013-04-19 |
| 2014-04-25 |
| 2015-04-18 |
| 2016-03-31 |
| 2017-04-08 |
| 2018-04-25 |

Then I have an R source block that sets up the R session I’m going to use (I name all R sessions I use from Org as R:something):

#+begin_src R :session R:ice :results silent :var raw_dates=tbl_raw_dates
library(dplyr)
library(lubridate)
library(ggplot2)
library(ggridges)
#+end_src

The next block loads the raw data, forces the dates to be known as dates instead of just text, adds a new column for just the year, adds a num_days column that is the number of days since the start of the year (I don’t want to work with dates like “19 April,” which are clumsy, and leap years throw things off), adds a column for the decade the year is in, and then drops everything from before 1960.

#+begin_src R :session R:ice :results silent
ice_out <- raw_dates %>%
    mutate(date = as.Date(date)) %>%
    mutate(year = year(date)) %>%
    mutate(num_days = yday(date)) %>%
    mutate(decade = 10 * ( year %/% 10)) %>%
    filter(year >= 1960)
#+end_src

Flipping over the the R:ice session, I can check that the ice_out data frame looks how I want:

ℝ> head(ice_out)
        date year num_days decade
1 1960-04-22 1960      113   1960
2 1961-04-28 1961      118   1960
3 1963-04-16 1963      106   1960
4 1964-04-19 1964      110   1960
5 1965-05-01 1965      121   1960
6 1968-04-08 1968       99   1960

Next, a chart showing, for each year, how many days it takes for the ice to go out. I add a best-fit line with the lm model (here’s a nice full explanation).

#+begin_src R :session R:ice :results graphics :file carveths-days-to-ice-out.png :width 600 :height 400
ggplot(ice_out, aes(x = year, y = num_days)) + geom_line() + geom_smooth(method = "lm") + labs(title = "Stoney Lake: days to ice out", x = "", y = "Days from start of year")
#+end_src

Visually there’s a definite downward trend there: the ice is going out earlier. I assume this is caused by climate change. Statistically, is there anything really going on here?

In the R session we can find out more about that linear regression by setting it up and then asking it to explain itself.

ℝ> ice_model <- lm(ice_out$num_days ~ ice_out$year)
ℝ> ice_model

Call:
lm(formula = ice_out$num_days ~ ice_out$year)

Coefficients:
 (Intercept)  ice_out$year
    481.7245       -0.1885

ℝ> summary(ice_model)

Call:
lm(formula = ice_out$num_days ~ ice_out$year)

Residuals:
     Min       1Q   Median       3Q      Max
-18.4424  -6.5977   0.4311   6.6667  14.0172

Coefficients:
              Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
(Intercept)  481.72452  135.67877   3.550 0.000806 ***
ice_out$year  -0.18851    0.06817  -2.765 0.007765 **
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 8.425 on 54 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.124,	Adjusted R-squared:  0.1078
F-statistic: 7.647 on 1 and 54 DF,  p-value: 0.007765

It’s saying this is a statistically valid model (the Pr values are small), but the R-squared measures (the coefficients of determination) are very low: about 10% of the num_days value is explained by the year.

The model is saying the line shown represents y = -0.18851*x + 481.72452. Over a range of 10 years that means the line changes by 1.8851 downwards, and -1.8851 is pretty close to -2.0, so I think of that as saying “every decade the ice goes out, more or less, almost two days earlier.” (The 481 is the intercept on the y axis, and it’s large because we’re working with contemporary years like 2015; if you subtract 1960 from the years the intercept gets much smaller but the slope of the line stays the same.)

The data does not fit close to the line, as we can see. From one year to the next the ice could go out 25 days earlier or 25 days later. As to the variance, here’s the standard deviation of the number of days to ice out over each decade:

ℝ> ice_out%>% group_by(decade) %>% mutate(std_dev = sd(num_days)) %>% select(decade, std_dev) %>% distinct
# A tibble: 6 x 2
# Groups:   decade [6]
  decade std_dev
   <dbl>   <dbl>
1   1960    7.43
2   1970    8.60
3   1980    6.92
4   1990    8.70
5   2000    7.52
6   2010   11.1

Seems like this decade the variation in when the ice goes out is greater. That fits with the idea of climate change bringing out greater variability in weather, but of course this is just a guess here.

Back on Org, here’s a histogram of num_days:

#+begin_src R :session R:ice :results graphics :file carveths-days-histogram.png :width 600 :height 400
ggplot(ice_out, aes(num_days)) + geom_bar(binwidth = 5)
#+end_src

That got me wondering how that changed over the decades.

#+begin_src R :session R:ice :results graphics :file carveths-days-histogram-by-decade.png :width 600 :height 400
ggplot(ice_out, aes(num_days)) + geom_bar(binwidth = 5) + facet_grid(decade ~ .)
#+end_src

And then I realized that finally I had a chance to try out the ggridges library I’d heard of, because it can do just what I did, and much more, and make it look much nicer.

#+begin_src R :session R:ice :results graphics :file carveths-days-ridges-by-decade.png :width 600 :height 400
ggplot(ice_out, aes(x = num_days, y = decade, group = decade)) + geom_density_ridges(rel_min_height = 0.01, size = 0.25) + theme_ridges() + scale_y_reverse() + labs(title = "Stoney Lake: days to ice out", y = "", x = "Days from start of year")
#+end_src

It certainly looks like things are creeping leftward: there is more > 120 at the top than the bottom, and look how there is more < 80 recently.

Now, bear in mind I’m not a climate scientist and I’m not a statistician, and all I had was a range of dates and I made a linear model and a histogram. There are many factors determining when the ice goes out: one must be the daily temperatures, and historical data on that is available from Environment Canada, but I’m not going to get into that. I have no information about when the lake froze in the first place (anecdotally, it’s later), or how thick the ice is (anecdotally, thinner; I don’t think people drive pickup trucks full of lumber over the ice any more).

Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to say that on average, more or less, since the 1960s the ice is going out almost two days earlier every decade.

For more about this, see Drew Monkman’s presentations on climate change in the Kawarthas (that’s the lake system that Stoney is in).

I enjoy following Massimo Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic blog—he’s a fine writer on the subject (I have also learned a lot from hearing him talk about the philosophy of science)—and recently discovered he does a short but frequent podcast called Stoic Meditations.

Each episode is under three minutes long. Pigliucci gives a reading of a line or two from one of the ancient Stoics, then discusses it briefly. It’s short and to the point, but leaves you with much to think about for the day.

I wanted to watch The Kingdom: How Fungi Made Our World, a CBC documentary shown a little while ago on The Nature of Things. The page didn’t look right and the video wouldn’t load, which I knew would be due to my use of NoScript. When I went to temporarily allow something to make it work (the video is being embedded from YouTube), I didn’t expect this:

(The default is to not allow Javascript to run.)

It’s a sad situation when the CBC has that many trackers running on its viewers.

Meanwhile, the documentary is easily available right on YouTube, where only Google is watching you, and there are ways around that.

I just finished David Graeber’s new book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, which grew out of his 2013 article On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant. It’s wonderful: insightful, thoughtful, thought-provoking and entertaining. Here’s a quote from chapter five, “Why Are Bullshit Jobs Proliferating?” where he’s talking about Benjamin Ginsberg’s The Fall of the Faculty (also worth reading):

Back in the 1950s or 1960s, one could still say that universities were one of the few European institutions left that had survived more or less intact from the Middle Ages. Crucially, they were still run on the old medieval principle that only those involved in a certain form of production—whether this be the production of stonework or the leather gloves or mathematical equations—had the right to organize their own affairs; indeed that they were also the only people qualified to do so. Universities were basically craft guilds run for and by scholars, and their most important business was considered to be producing scholarship, their second-most, training new generations of scholars. True, since the nineteenth century, universities had maintained a kind of gentleman’s pact with government, that they would also train civil servants (and later, corporate bureaucrats) in exchange for otherwise being largely left alone. But since the eighties, Ginsberg argues, university administrators have effectively staged a coup. They wrested control of the university from the faculty and oriented the institution itself toward entirely different purposes. It is now commonplace for major universities to put out “strategic vision documents” that barely mention scholarship or teaching but go on at length about “the student experience,” “research excellence” (getting grants), collaboration with business or government, and so forth.

I quote this because I see this where I work, at York University. The updates and reports from the university president sound like a CEO reporting on a business. However, the book will be enjoyed by anyone working (or not) in any sector. Highly recommended, even though it is missing an index.

Everything Graeber writes is worth reading. I very much enjoyed Anthropology and the Rise of the Professional-Managerial Class (open access):

Many of the internal changes within anthropology as a discipline—particularly the “postmodern turn” of the 1980s—can only be understood in the context of broader changes in the class composition of the societies in which university departments exist, and, in particular, the role of the university in the reproduction of a professional-managerial class that has come to displace any working-class elements in what pass for mainstream “left” political parties. Reflexivity, and what I call “vulgar Foucauldianism,” while dressed up as activism, seem instead to represent above all the consciousness of this class. In its place, the essay proposes a politics combining support for social movements and a prefigurative politics in the academic sphere.

I’m working my way through all my Philip K. Dick books in chronological order. Right now I’m on Now Wait for Last Year (1966), which I have in the second Library of America PKD set. I don’t think it’s one of his best, but it’s very PKD. (The last one I read was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which I hadn’t read in over almost thirty years. It’s excellent.)

A couple of quotes. In the first, Dr. Eric Sweetscent is with the family of the very old and very rich, Virgil Ackerman, including his great-grandniece Phyllis:

Phyllis, halting on the stair, waiting for him, said, “Have an affair with me, doctor.”

Inwardly he quailed, felt hot, felt terror, felt excitement, felt hope, felt hopelessness, felt guilt, felt eagerness.

He said, “You have the most perfect teeth known to man.”

A couple of chapters later Eric’s wife Kathy Sweetscent is one of five people who get together to take a new drug, JJ-180, a “tempogogic” drug that interferes with your sense of time:

For tonight’s mysterious undertaking Kathy had arrived naked from the waist up, except, of course, for her nipples. They had been—not gilded in the strictest sense—but rather treated with a coating of living matter, sentient, a Martian life form, so that each possessed a consciousness. Hence each nipple responded in an alert fashion to everything going on.

After they take it, one of them says all the others have disappeared. Someone goes over to touch him and his hand goes right through the man’s shoulder. Classic PKD.

Monday will be day 78 of the 2018 York University strike. CUPE 3903 walked out in March (see Labour Update for the Employer’s side). I’m not on strike, because I’m in YUFA, but it’s a grim situation, and of those of us left on campus, pretty much everyone is some combination of frustrated, stressed and angry. Any undergrad who had classes suspended, or was hoping to take a summer course that now doesn’t exist, is surely all three.

When it’s over, among the many problems that needs fixing is the governance crisis (or jurisdictional question, depending on your point of view) about the relation between the Senate and the Board of Governors. Many Senators (me included; I am one of two representing librarians and archivists) think the Board is not respecting the boundaries of the bicameral governance structure set out in the York University Act, 1965, where basically the Senate oversees academic matters and the Board oversees the operations and business side of things.

This whole issue is very complex, and I’m going to stick here to just one part of it: a letter written by Rick Waugh, the chair of the Board of Governors, to Lesley Beagrie, the chair of Senate.

The strike began on 01 March. On 08 March there was an emergency Senate meeting where a motion to suspend all classes was ruled out of order. The chair was challenged but this was defeated, 54–53, so the motion did not come to a vote. That led to this motion at the Senate meeting on 22 March:

That Senate hereby expresses its view that Senate, in conjunction with Senate Executive, has the authority to direct and determine that classes be suspended on the basis of academic integrity.

This was made by two Senators who wanted it to have meaningful force (though they did not intend classes would be suspended—the time for that had passed), but Senate Executive made it a hortative motion, which means it is just a matter of opinion and has absolutely no effect. (“Hortative motions express Senate’s opinion on matters lying outside its jurisdiction,” say The Senate of York University Rules, Procedures and Guidelines.) It passed. The majority of Senate, I think, assert that Senate actually does have the authority to suspend classes for reasons of academic integrity, but because the motion was brought to the floor as hortative, now it’s questionable. (I admire the skill with which this was done.)

Buried at the end of the 26 April 2018 agenda package are the minutes from that meeting, which say:

With the knowledge that Senate would be discussing a motion on this question, the Chair had contacted the Board Chair who communicated his view that the Board’s responsibilities for the conduct, business and affairs of the University includes decisions with respect to continuing or not classes and other University activities in the strike.

This letter became the object of curiosity for many people who wanted to know exactly what the chair of the Board had said. It was not released.

I was one of the curious, so I followed York’s access to information procedures and made a request under FIPPA, Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

• 28 March: I emailed the University Secretary and General Counsel (that’s one person) to ask for it. “At the 22 March 2018 Senate meeting Senator Beagrie (chair of Senate) mentioned a communication from Senator Waugh (chair of the Board of Governors). I request a copy of that communication, and any other communications between those two parties, dated from 29 February 2018 (two weeks before the current CUPE 3903 strike began) onwards, that are related to the Senate’s role in academic governance during this disruption, either a) about planning Senate and Senate Executive’s actions regarding a potential disruption or b) their actions when the strike began and the Senate Policy on the Academic Implications of Disruptions or Cessations of University Business Due to Labour Disputes or Other Causes came into effect.”
• On 02 April, Correspondence from the Chair, Board of Governors, April 2, 2018 was made public. It seemed pretty clear to me that with all the hubbub people reckoned they’d better make a letter public, if not the letter.
• By 05 April I hadn’t heard anything back, so I put in the same request on paper using the official form. The Information, Privacy and Copyright Office had 30 days to respond.
• 03 May: They said three documents met my criteria. It would cost $9.30 for me to get them. I sent a cheque.
• 17 May: The documents were sent. In fact, the director arranged for someone to walk them over to me, because for some reason campus mail never delivered the letter of acknowledgement I should have received first off, and took eight days to deliver the list of matching records, so who knows how long the actual documents would have taken.

The response contained three documents. First there was a brief email (dated 16 March, six days before the Senate meeting) from the chair of Senate (Beagrie) to the chair of the Board (Waugh) asking for the Board’s perspective on the hortative motion given above and other motions about suspending classes that had been passed at faculty councils. Then there were two letters from Waugh: the original mentioned at the Senate meeting and the later public one.

The original is redacted in two places. It looks like each blacked-out piece is covering a full paragraph. I was given a page with all the possible reasons why things can be redacted, and three points were cited:

13(1) Advice to Government: A head may refused to disclose a record where the disclosure would reveal advice or recommendations of a public servant, any other person employed in the service of an institution or a consultant retained by an institution.

18(1) Economic and other interests of Ontario. A head may refuse to disclose a record that contains:

(e) positions, plans, procedures, criteria or instructions to be applied to any negotiations carried on or to be carried on by or on behalf of an institution of the Government of Ontario

(g) information including the proposed plans, policies or projects of an institution where the disclosure could reasonably be expected to result in premature disclosure of a pending policy decision or undue financial benefit or loss to a person.

Here is a paragraph by paragraph, line by line, comparison of the two letters: 20 March 2018 (the original) and 02 April 2018 (the public one). Where there is a difference in the second letter, that line is on a grey background.

Of course I want to know what was blacked out, but of what we can see that was cut for the second letter, this is the most damning regarding the governance crisis: “The mere fact that the decision to continue classes may affect the educational experience of students and faculty does not convert that decision into one concerning academic policy, or academic integrity, within the jurisdiction of the Senate.”

It’s also interesting to see how they watered down “Oversight and accountability for the conduct and operation of the University rest with the Board of Governors” (which leaves no role for Senate) and “I would be interested in discussing with you some feasible options for ensuring that, now and in future, the respective roles of Board and Senate are respected and decisions to keep the university open in a strike are effectively implemented.”

Later, at the 10 April 2018 Senate Executive meeting:

The Chair advised members that the Chair of the Board had accepted a proposed process to develop preliminary advice on the mandate, composition and timelines of a group that would take up the authority question. It was reiterated that this advice would be subject to the approval of the governing bodies.

This was the subject of much heated discussion at the 26 April Senate meeting (held in a large classroom, because the Senate chambers are occupied by protesting students), where this motion eventually passed:

Senate instructs Senate Executive that in regards to establishing a process for reviewing the authority and role of Senate during labour disruptions, forming a body to conduct such a review, as well as deriving conclusions and decisions, Senate Executive, shall, as per Senate procedures, bring any recommendation to Senate for approval.

The synopsis of that meeting (see the minutes for more detail) adds, “It is anticipated that recommendations on a process will be taken up by Senate and the Board in the coming months.”

The governance crisis is dormant right now—the whole campus is deathly quiet, while the Employer and CUPE 3903 sling open letters back and forth—but it will come back when the strike is over, and I think it’s going to get heated.

(If you have any comments about this, please send them to my work email address, <wdenton@yorku.ca>.)

Listening to Art 03.01 went up today. It’s a field recording of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away.

Each volume contains twelve issues. I have plans for some recordings later in this volume that will be different from anything before, and fate willing they will turn out.

Anyone interested in listening to recordings of “silence” won’t want to miss Episode 4, Silence Special of the Young Quaker Podcast. It’s about half an hour of a group of Quakers in Nottingham (in the United Kingdom) at a Meeting for Worship, where they “gather together in silence but anyone present can speak if strongly moved to.” At this meeting, no one was strongly moved.