Archive for June, 2024

Newer Entries »

Voting Matters

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth, Politics with tags , , on June 7, 2024 by telescoper
Straffan Road, Maynooth

I’m briefly back in Maynooth in order to cast my vote in the Local and European Parliament Elections being held today, which I did earlier this morning. Both elections are held under Proportional Representation (Single Transferable Vote) which seems to me a very sensible system. One ranks the candidates in order of preference; you can rank all the candidates or just some. In the system employed here in Ireland, votes are progressively reallocated in various rounds until one ends up with the top n candidates to fill the n available seats. The STV system involves a quota for automatic election which is N/(m+1) + 1 votes, where N is the number of valid ballots cast and m is the number of seats in the constituency.  To see why this is the case consider a four-seat constituency, where the quota would be 20% of the votes cast plus one. No more than four candidates can reach this level so anyone managing to get that many vote is automatically elected. Surplus votes from candidates exceeding quota, as well as those of eliminated candidates, are reallocated to lower-preference candidates in this process.

The Local Elections involve filling 40 seats on Kildare County Council, with five councillors representing Maynooth. The nine candidates are listed here, in case you’re interested. Some of the councillors applying for re-election have been diligent in dealing with local issues over the last five years and have in my opinion earned a vote. Other have only appeared since the election notice was given.

For the European Parliament Elections things are a bit more complicated. For the purposes of the EU elections Ireland is divided into three constituencies: Dublin, Ireland South and Midlands North West. I am in the latter, which elects four MEPs. There were 17 candidates for 4 MEPs in this constituency in 2019 but there are 27 this time round, for 5 MEPs, listed here. A sizeable fraction of these are sundry far-right loons, anti-vaxers, and general dickheads, whom I hope will be eliminated. The long list of candidates, however, means that it will take some time to complete the counting for the European elections, which won’t even start until Sunday. The Local election count will start tomorrow morning, and is expected to be completed by Sunday.

2 Comments »

Hintze Lecture

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 6, 2024 by telescoper

With an hour or so to waste in Heathrow Airport I thought I’d just mention that yesterday I attended the 27th Hintze Lecture on the topic of Understanding supernova explosions with sophisticated computer simulations delivered by Prof. Adam Burrows (in the very same lecture theatre in which I gave my lecture the day before). I was also on the guest list  for a subsequent dinner in Christ Church College, which was very nice. Thanks to Stephen Smartt for that!

Anyway, I’m now on my way to Dublin (and then Maynooth) so I can vote in tomorrow’s Local and European Parliament elections before returning to Barcelona early next week after a (hopefully) restful weekend…

Leave a comment »

That was the Pride Lecture that was…

Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+ with tags , , , , on June 5, 2024 by telescoper

I gave my talk yesterday as planned. I think it went quite well, although it did involve a few things I’ve never spoken about in public before, so it wasn’t exactly an easy talk to give. I guess about 60 or 70 people attended, mostly from Astrophysics. There was then a drinks reception and then I adjourned with organizer Jake Taylor and a couple of others to the King’s Arms for a few beers and a bite to eat.

I was a little bit worried ahead of the talk because I came down with some sort of bug over the weekend which gave me a sore throat and a bad cough. Fortunately, though, that passed quickly and I got through the lecture OK although I probably sounded a little hoarse.

Anyway, a big thank you to everyone in the Department who helped organize this event, and who looked after me so nicely before and after!

Some pictures were taken. Here is a selection:

Leave a comment »

A Day Out in Oxford

Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+ with tags , , , on June 4, 2024 by telescoper
Radcliffe Camera and Protest
Not Sure
Bodleian Library
All Souls

So here I am, among the dreaming spires of Oxford, although I’m not sure whether they are actually dreaming or just asleep. I had a short walk around before heading to the Physics Department this morning to put the finishing touches to my talk for this afternoon. It was nice to see the Pride Progress flags flying over Lincoln College on the way.

Site icon
A Day Out in Oxford

I haven’t had the opportunity to spend much time in Oxford so I’m looking forward to having a look around over the next day or two.

P.S. It’s my birthday today…

5 Comments »

Pride Lecture in Oxford

Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+ with tags , , , on June 3, 2024 by telescoper

While en route to Oxford I thought I’d do a quick post about the purpose of my visit there, namely to give the inaugural Pride Lecture at the Department of Physics. I’m looking forward to it, and spending a couple of days as a guest of All Souls College. Here’s the promo for the lecture:

This is a public event. I’ve no idea how many people will be there, but I’ll find out tomorrow I suppose!

Let me take this opportunity to wish all of you a very happy Pride Month (which started on Saturday). With its origins as a commemoration of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, Pride remains both a celebration and protest. It’s more necessary than ever now, especially because of the sustained abuse being aimed at trans people from all quarters, from those in political power to those sad losers who have nothing better to do that spend all day tweeting their bigotry on social media.

Anyway, as well as a celebration and a protest, Pride is an opportunity for us all to show solidarity against those who seek to divide us.

Though many LGBTQIA+ people in many countries – even those that claim to be more liberal – still face discrimination, hostility and violence, Pride Month always reminds me of how far we’ve come in the past 50 years ago. As I get older, I find I have become more and more protective towards younger LGBTQIA+ people. I don’t want them to have to put up with the crap that I did when I was their age.

Here’s a picture of the Pride Progress flag I took outside the John Hume Building at Maynooth a couple of years ago. I hope it’s there again this year, although I won’t be in Maynooth to see it!

Update: arrived in All Souls College…

Leave a comment »

Flying Visit(s)

Posted in Biographical, Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , on June 2, 2024 by telescoper

So here I am, not in Barcelona. On Thursday night I flew to the fine city of Newcastle upon Tyne to act as external examiner for a PhD candidate. Since I knew I would be arriving quite late I stayed in a hotel near Newcastle Airport. It was just as well I did so because, it being Ryanair, I arrived even later than expected. On Friday morning I took the Metro from the Airport to Haymarket and spent the morning in the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics at Newcastle University ahead of the viva voce examination.

The PhD candidate was Alex Gough (pictured right, after the examination, with supervisor Cora Uhlemann). Cora being German we were treated to the tradition of successful PhD candidates having to wear a elaborate hat, after the examination (fortunately not during it). Some champagne was consumed, followed by dinner at a nice Indian restaurant on Clayton Street.

For those of you not familiar with how the PhD system works in the UK, it involves doing research into a particular topic and then writing up what you’ve done in a thesis. The thesis is a substantial piece of work, often in the region of 100,000 words (200 pages or so), which is then assessed by two examiners (one internal to the university at which the research was done, and one external). They read copies of the thesis and then the candidate has to defend it in an oral examination, which was what happened on Friday, after which they make a recommendation to the university about whether the degree should be awarded.

There aren’t many rules for how a viva voce examination should be conducted or how long it should last, but the can be as short as, say, 2 hours and can be as long as 5 hours or more. The examiners usually ask a mixture of questions, some about the details of the work presented and some about the general background. The unpredictable content of a viva voce examination makes it very difficult to prepare for, and it can be difficult and stressful for the candidate (as well as just tiring, as it can drag on for a long time). However, call me old-fashioned but I think if you’re going to get to call youself Doctor of Philosophy you should expect to have to work for it. Some might disagree.

Obviously I can’t give details of what went on in the examination except that it was quite long primarily because the thesis was very interesting and gave us lots to discuss. At the end internal examiner Danielle Leonard and I agreed to recommend the award of a PhD. In Newcastle as in other UK universities, the examiners simply make a recommendation to a higher authority (e.g. Board of Graduate Studies) to formally award the degree, but they almost always endorse the recommendation. I’ve never been sure exactly when a successful candidate is allowed to call themselves “Doctor”, actually, but congratulations to Dr Gough!

Anyway, the celebratory dinner ended just after Women’s International football match between England and France (which France won) had finished at St James’ Park and the Metro was consequently crammed full, but I got back to the hotel at a reasonable hour. Thank you to everyone in the group, especially Cora and Ian Moss, for being so friendly and making me feel so welcome during this brief visit.

Tomorrow I shall be heading to the part of not-Barcelona known as Oxford, where I believe there is a University of some sort, to give a lecture about which I’ll post more tomorrow.

2 Comments »

R.I.P. Jasper Wall

Posted in R.I.P., The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on June 1, 2024 by telescoper

I have been asked to use the medium of this blog to pass on the sad news of the passing of Jasper Wall (left) who died on 28th March at White Rock, British Columbia, Canada.

Jasper Wall (who was Canadian by birth) began his career in Radio Astronomy in Toronto with Alan Yen. This included building a 320-MHz receiver, and carrying out absolute background measurements using a pyramidal horn. He subsequently chose Australia to continue his research, working on a receiver for Parkes Radio Telescope at CSIRO where he and John Bolton began a sky survey at hitherto unprecedented high frequency of 2.7 GHz. Wall’s survey discovered the extensive ‘flat-spectrum’ quasar population, the key to the relativistic beaming model of radio sources. His research at Parkes lasted over eight years and the statistical results of this work strongly favoured a “Big Bang” universe rather than the “Steady State” preferred by John Bolton, Fred Hoyle and Tommy Gold.

Wall was also part of the team which in 1969 brought the Apollo 11 moon landing via the Parkes Radio Telescope to an estimated 650 million TV viewers world wide. In 1974-1978 he was a member of Martin Ryle’s group at the MRAO Cambridge UK, continuing his research in active galaxy systems at both radio and optical wavelengths, plus submm and X-ray observations. He taught statistics to astronomy students at Cambridge, leading to his 2003 book with co-author Charles Jenkins, Practical Statistics for Astronomers.

Later on in his career, he became more involved in science administration. Joining the Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1979 as Head of Astrophysics and Astrometry Division, he continued research in optical and radio astronomy. In 1986 he became Director of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on La Palma for four years, and then Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory from 1995 until its closure in 1998. He was a Professor at Oxford University from 1998 to 2002, after which he retired, returned to Canada and took up an emeritus position at the University of British Columbia, where he continued to teach and supervise students.

Leave a comment »

Newer Entries »