Archive for June, 2018

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Back to Cardiff again..

Posted in Cardiff, Maynooth with tags , on June 6, 2018 by telescoper

So here I am again, back in sunny Cardiff (if a bit later than planned). My flight from Dublin was supposed to depart at 8.35, but didn’t go until over an hour later. The delay was allegedly caused by a lightning strike last night that required the plane to be checked before take-off. Although they must have known about this mishap for some time, FlyBe didn’t bother to tell us anything about the reason for the delay or how long it would be. This was the scene at the (unstaffed) departure gate at about 9.15am. The lack of communication or any form of customer service compounds the irritation caused by such delays.

Anyway, once airborne, it was a pleasant flight. Here are two pictures just after taking off from Dublin Airport, with a view up to Malahide in the North.

And here are a few more flying over Wales about 10 minutes before landing.

We landed about 85 minutes late in Cardiff, but it’s lovely weather here so I’m not as grumpy as I might have been. Now, to work.

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A Mini-Introduction To Information Theory

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 5, 2018 by telescoper

The last link to an arXiv paper I posted here seems to have proved rather popular so here’s another that I think is well worth reading, this time by Ed Witten:

This article consists of a very short introduction to classical and quantum information theory. Basic properties of the classical Shannon entropy and the quantum von Neumann entropy are described, along with related concepts such as classical and quantum relative entropy, conditional entropy, and mutual information. A few more detailed topics are considered in the quantum case.

It’s not really `very short’ as it is nearly 40 pages long, but it does tackle a very big topic so I won’t quibble about that. You can download a PDF of the full paper here.

As always, comments are welcome through the comments box.

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Lá Saoire i mí Mheitheamh

Posted in Biographical, History, Maynooth, Uncategorized with tags , , , on June 4, 2018 by telescoper

So here I am, in Maynooth, on my birthday. I’ve made such an impression here in Ireland since I arrived that they’ve declared this day a national holiday so I’ve got the day off.

The June Bank Holiday (Lá Saoire i mí Mheitheamh) in Ireland is actually the equivalent of last week’s late May Bank Holiday in the UK, in that both have their origin in the old festival of Whitsuntide (or Pentecost) which falls on the 7th Sunday after Easter. Because the date of Easter moves around in the calendar so does Whit Sunday, but it is usually in late May or early June. When the authorities decided to fix a statutory holiday at this time of year, presumably to reduce administrative difficulties, the UK went for late May and Ireland for early June. Whit Sunday was actually on 20th May this year.

Incidentally, when I was a lad, ‘Whit Week’ was always referred to as ‘Race Week’. Geordie Ridley’s famous music hall song The Blaydon Races begins “I went to Blaydon Races, ’twas on the 9th of June, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty Two on a summer’s afternoon…”. Easter Sunday fell on 20th April in 1862, so Whit Sunday was on 8th June. After raucous scenes at the Blaydon Races, they were scrapped and replaced with a Temperance Festival on the Town Moor in Newcastle which evolved into one of the largest open-air funfairs in Europe, The Hoppings.

Anyway, with this birthday, I have now reached the minimum retirement age in the UK university pension scheme, so I could start drawing my pension when I leave Cardiff University next month. For a time I was planning to do that, but Ireland has given me a new lease of life, so to speak, so thoughts of retirement have receded.

Today also represents a short hiatus before our formal Exam Board meeting tomorrow, then I’ll be back in Cardiff for exam business there. And next week I’ll be in neither Cardiff nor Maynooth…

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Ode to Tayto

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on June 3, 2018 by telescoper

One of the deep cultural differences I have discovered between Ireland and the United Kingdom lies in the arena of potato crisps.

Here the crisp of choice for the discerning consumer is the Tayto, a brand I have not seen elsewhere (though apparently it is also made under licence in Northern Ireland). So familiar is the name Tayto over here that people use it to refer to any kind of crisp, in much the same way that in the UK you might use ‘Hoover’ to refer to any kind of vacuum cleaner.

If you don’t believe that a humble potato crisp can be a cultural phenomenon then note that there is even a Tayto Park which is only 30 minutes from Dublin but which, regrettably, I have not yet visited.

Tayto’s crisps have been around since 1954 and the manufacturer is credited with inventing the method of production of flavoured potato crisps. Tayto has the right, therefore, to call itself the original potato crisp.

Naturally, while in Ireland I try to buy locally produced items whenever possible, so I have sampled Tayto crisps on a number of occasions. They come in a relatively narrow range of flavours, but the Cheese & Onion variety is definitely nicer than, e. g. Walkers.

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The Maynooth Pound

Posted in History, Maynooth with tags , , on June 2, 2018 by telescoper

Taking a stroll around Maynooth this afternoon I came across a little bit of local history that I thought I would share. On the appropriately name Pound Lane, right next to the stream that used to run past an ancient mill where there is now a shopping centre, there is a small enclosure called the Maynooth Pound, marked with this sign:

If you can’t read the sign it explains that this is the only surviving example of a type of pound which used to be common all over Ireland. Stray animals were brought here to be fed and watered before being reunited with their owners (for a small fee).

The walls are of interesting dry stone construction and have survived the passage of time rather well; they were built in 1822, although the Pound itself is a bit older.

The interior of the Pound was virtually derelict until quite recently but has been tidied up and is now a pleasant place to sit down and perhaps feed the birds. The old mill was famous for its crows, of which there are still a great many in Maynooth although they tend now to congregate on the playing fields near the Royal Canal.

In the picture, the mill stream is to the right of the shot and you can see the roof of the Manor Mill shopping centre to the upper right.

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Does Physics need Philosophy (and vice versa)?

Posted in mathematics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on June 1, 2018 by telescoper

There’s a new paper on the arXiv by Carlo Rovelli entitled Physics Needs Philosophy. Philosophy Needs Physics. Here is the abstract:

Contrary to claims about the irrelevance of philosophy for science, I argue that philosophy has had, and still has, far more influence on physics than is commonly assumed. I maintain that the current anti-philosophical ideology has had damaging effects on the fertility of science. I also suggest that recent important empirical results, such as the detection of the Higgs particle and gravitational waves, and the failure to detect supersymmetry where many expected to find it, question the validity of certain philosophical assumptions common among theoretical physicists, inviting us to engage in a clearer philosophical reflection on scientific method.

Read and discuss.

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