Obiter dicta by Professor Gavin Brown AO

Fud and fed

2 August 2002

My favourite Larson cartoon stars an illiterate Machiavellian dog. Smiling, as only a dog can smile, he waits beside a washing machine which carries a crudely crayoned placard, 'FUD', and an unsuspecting but adventurous cat tiptoes towards this dispenser of food .

I have a very convex cat which lives for fud – a cat gently snoring and making strange ululations in its sleep as I catch a few moments from this year's AVCC (Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee) retreat, hosted by the University of Sydney. She and I met during the last national quality audit some eight years ago in Adelaide where she had been more or less adopted by the tenants of that university's industrial precinct. Feral, but upwardly mobile and named as successor to Fleur, Delice came home with me after a local council crackdown. For a week, she lived in terror under the fridge. Now she lives out of the fridge.

I have been with the AVCC for about the same period. Discussions, particularly at this time of National Review, are always complex and the individuality displayed would disgrace no cat. Indeed the old riddle applies: Why is a vice-chancellor like a supermarket trolley? No matter how firm your guiding hand, it still veers in unpredictable directions. Tolerance of fud is an occupational prerequisite. Indeed why is a vice-chancellor different from a supermarket trolley? You can cram more food in a vice-chancellor.

Fud, pronounced as in Elmer Fudd, is, by the way, a perfectly good Scottish word meaning rabbit's tail. I learned the English version 'scut' as I was being de-ethnicised in primary school. It was no doubt valuable to be trained to give away my native dialect but nothing could eradicate accent. That is why Hugh Durrant-Whyte caused me embarrassment a few years ago.

He knows nothing of what happened. In fact, I described with some institutional pride an invention of his. As a result I appeared in the transcript of a Federal Senate Enquiry talking with enthusiasm of the University of Sydney's underwater rowboat. Much as I would like to see a new sport at the Commonwealth Games, truth compels me to reveal that I tried to say robot.

Now I can congratulate Hugh on winning a prestigious Federation Fellowship for his work on the navigation of autonomous vehicles. The other Sydney winner in this round (we now have 5 of the national total of 26 awards) is Catherine Stampfl who returns from the US where she is a leader in surface science, having made important theoretical contributions in a field with applications to catalytic converters in automotive exhausts. We are delighted to welcome her success.