Following hard on the heels of Tuesday’s news, here is an announcement of three (new, permanent) jobs in Astronomy at the University of Sussex. Full details are in the above link, but the gist is that applications are invited for 3 permanent, full-time faculty positions within the Astronomy Centre.
The 8 existing faculty have research interests that span the observation, modelling/simulation and theory of extragalactic astronomy and cosmology. We are seeking talented and ambitious colleagues whose research interests complement and extend our current activity.
This advertisement will in due course appear elsewhere, e.g. in the November AAS Jobs Register.
I’ll be interested to see how many people apply as a result of seeing this here announcement, so if you do fill in an application form be sure to answer the question “Where did you see this post advertised” with “In the Dark”!
It was a last-minute decision to go and hear The Academy of St Martin in the Fields as I’ve been too busy these days to do much forward planning of non-work activities. However, when I saw that Beethoven’s First Symphony was on the menu I decided to go for it and even persuaded a couple of friends, Ed and Haley, to come along.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 was the work that opened the concert, in fact, with music director Joshua Bell conducting from a seated position and playing violin at the same time; at times the expansive gestures he made with his bow threatened to put someone’s eye out.
Perhaps the orchestra hadn’t really warmed up but I found the performance of Beethoven’s First Symphony rather flat. It’s a piece I really love – especially the last movement, which has all the ebullience of a young man making his way in a world that’s rich in possibilities, as well as paying affectionate homage to his predecessors (especially in this case Haydn and Mozart). In last night’s concert, however, I thought the wind instruments (especially the horns) lacked bite and focus and a great deal of the exuberant energy of the last movement was lost.
Next piece up was new to me, the Scottish Fantasy by Max Bruch. For this, Joshua Bell stood centre stage while he played the violin role (beautifully, in fact). Based on a series of Scottish folk songs, this work is pretty (in a slightly mushy way). Not really my cup of tea but I did enjoy Joshua Bell’s poised and expressive violin playing. The orchestra, with a beefed up brass section, played this one better too.
After the interval we had Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 (“Scottish”), with Joshua Bell back in eye-threatening mode, in place among the first violins. I’ve always had a soft spot for Mendelssohn because his music always seems so beautifully crafted. Some find him a bit twee and cosy, but the Scottish Symphony is a fine work that takes the listener on a long and dramatic journey through a varied musical landscape. I thought last night’s performance was very fine indeed. When I leave Cardiff I’ll certainly miss having so many opportunities to hear world-class music live!
When we emerged from St David’s Hall, it was bucketing down so we made for a local restaurant for a late supper, a glass or two of wine, and a large amount of departmental gossip. By the time we’d finished chatting and drinking, the rain had gone and I had a pleasant walk home without getting drenched. I’ll miss the Cardiff rain too. Sort of.
Well, after what seems like ages the news is now official. I’ve been appointed Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex. I’ll be taking up my new job on 1st February 2013. I was actually offered the job back in September and decided pretty quickly to accept it, but there have been quite a few things to sort out before the news could be made public. Anyway, yesterday the University of Sussex decided it was time to make a formal announcement, and there we are.
As I am quoted as saying in the press release it will definitely be a wrench to leave Cardiff. I’ve really enjoyed living and working here for the last five years or so, and will miss the staff and the students of the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University. I’m especially grateful for the help and support I received during the difficulties I experienced this summer. However, I felt the position at Sussex represented an exciting opportunity to make a fresh start which would offer new and exciting challenges and which I couldn’t afford to turn down. It means a lot that my Cardiff colleagues – particularly the Head of School, Walter Gear – have accepted my decision in such good spirit, and are doing everything possible to smooth the transition.
As it also explains in the official news item, I’m not exactly a stranger to Sussex. I did my DPhil there (from 1985-88) and stayed on for a couple of years as a PDRA (1988-90). That was a long time ago, of course. In fact, in those days I was a member of a School called “MAPS” (Mathematics and Physics). I’ve been back to Sussex on numerous occasions over the past twenty-odd years, usually discovering that some reorganisation had happened – Maths separated from Physics, changes of building, and so on. Now, ironically, I’ll return to a School that, on paper at any rate, looks very similar to the old MAPS and is even back in the same building! Plus ça change.
I won’t be leaving Cardiff immediately, of course. I’m still an employee of Cardiff University and will do my best to carry out my duties until the end of January. That means I’ll carry on lecturing as normal, and will be around to mark the examinations after Christmas. I also have two PhD students and three final-year projects students, and will be travelling back to Cardiff regularly to ensure they continue get as much supervision as they need even after the (formal) end of my employment here. I’ll also be continuing to collaborate with folks in Cardiff (and elsewhere) on, e.g., the Herschel ATLAS survey.
The position of Head of MPS at Sussex only became available because of the untimely death of the previous Head of School, David Axon, in April this year, so I’m fully aware that the circumstances that have given me such a wonderful opportunity have also brought much sadness to David’s colleagues and loved ones. I only hope that I can build on the many excellent things he did during his time at Sussex, and so eventually earn the respect and acceptance of the School.
Many of my colleagues at Cardiff have expressed sadness that I’ll be leaving. But just as there are exciting developments in the pipeline at Sussex, so are there different but equally exciting things in store at Cardiff. In no way will my departure have a negative impact on the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University. Quite the contrary, in fact. There will now be a bit more headroom in the budget that I’m sure will help bring at least some of the School’s plans to fruition.
And anyway, as I said previously, I’m not going just yet. I’ll probably keep the house in Cardiff until the spring (at the earliest) so I’ll be back here regularly, especially when it’s Opera season. And having branches in both Brighton and Cardiff for a while might even give me an excuse to have two 50th birthday celebrations next year!
Twenty-five years ago I was living in Brighton as a graduate student at the University of Sussex. On October 16th 1987 (a Friday) I woke up to find the electricity had been cut off. Without breakfast I struggled out to find the street lined with fallen trees, smashed cars and houses with broken windows. This was the Great Storm of 1987 which, according to weather forecaster Michael Fish, was “not a hurricane” and I had slept through the whole thing…
Here’s the infamous weather forecast broadcast on the Thursday evening
and here is the BBC News from the following day:
I’m sure my readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers) will be anxious to share their recollections of that wild and windy night through the comments box!
Yesterday evening I went to a meeting of local Pontcanna residents for an update about the plans to build a supermarket on King’s Road. The developer, a Mr Voyle, has tried before but had his planning application rejected. He’s back again with a revised application that states that the Co-op want to put a supermarket on the site.
However, this is where the plot thickens. Last night’s meeting was attended by a senior member of the Co-op’s management, who stated categorically that they had no interest in the site and were unaware until a few days ago that their name was being used in the planning application.
You can draw your own inferences about what this developer is up to.
Anyway, the proposed development will cause a huge increase in traffic in an already heavily congested area, so I’ll be sending my objections in writing to the Council, just as soon as I can find my green biro. It’ll also be interesting to see what steps the Co-op take concerning the developer’s misrepresentation of their involvement…
As anticipated, despite having their proposals recommended for rejection last time and OVERWHELMING PUBLIC CRITICISM OF THE PLANS the developers have DISREGARDED LOCALS’ CONCERNS and resubmitted plans for a supermarket on the Pontcanna Pine/Dairy site.
Please attend the meeting to discuss revised scheme and decide on action: 7pm, Monday 15 October, St Catherine’s Church Hall, Kings Road. We will also place petitions in local shops and kindly request that you write letters again – the deadline for letters/emails is October 22 2012.
The application for a store at Pontcanna Pine/The Dairy has been submitted again as expected – pretty much the same as before, with a large retail unit on the ground floor and 8 2-bed flats in the two storeys above. There is gated parking for 10 cars – 1 for each flat, 1 for disabled customers and 1 for the store manager – NONE FOR CUSTOMERS.
It’s been a while since I updated my photo on this site, so this afternoon I asked a friend of mine to take a picture. It turned out to be more appropriate for In the Dark than I’d expected…
I discovered by accident the other day that the classic Miles Davis composition All Blues has found its way onto the GCSE Music syllabus. I think that’s wonderful. In fact here’s a recording of the track, produced and distributed as “set work” for that purpose:
I never took any qualifications in music at School – although I did get music lessons, I didn’t find them at all inspiring and it took me years to develop a taste for anything other than Jazz, which I knew about mainly from home, because my father was a (part-time) Jazz drummer. There wasn’t much mention of Jazz at School from teachers, and none of my friends were into it, so it became a very private passion, although I’m glad to say it never faded.
Anyway, what little I know about music I picked up by studying on my own, and trying to figure out what was going on by listening to records. All Blues is a really interesting composition to unpick in this way, as it tells you a lot about how Jazz was evolving in the late 1950s (it was released in 1959). Musicians like Miles Davis were experimenting with ways of breaking away from the standard approach to Jazz improvisation based on chord progressions, and one of the routes that developed was modal Jazz. All Blues is particularly interesting because it teeters on the edge between the old approach and the new; it’s clearly based on the traditional 12-bar blues progression but diverges from it in several respects.
A standard blues progression in G might go like this (although there are many variations):
|G|G|G|G|
|C|C|G|G|
|D|C|G|G|
It’s based on just three chords: the tonic (in this case G): the sub-dominant IV (C) and the dominant V (D); the V-IV-I progression in the last four bars is usually called the turnaround.
While the addition of a major 7th note to the basic triad G isn’t unusual, the two G minor 7th chords are more interesting, because they involve adding a blue note (a flattened third) to the basic chord . But it’s in the last four bars that the harmonies move dramatically away from the standard turnaround. Chromatic chords are included and the usual resolution back to G is subtly changed by the addition of a 6th note (E) to the basic G chord (GBD) at the end; that trick became a bit of a trademark for Jazz of this period.
However, it’s the two F chords that represent the strongest connection with modal harmony. The scale of G major involves F-sharp, so the F is a flattened note (a flattened VIIth). In fact, all the Fs in the piece are natural rather than sharp. For this reason you could argue that this is a piece not played in the key of G major but in the corresponding Mixolydian mode (the white notes on the piano from G to G).
So it’s a blues that’s not quite a blues, but is (appropriately enough) Kind of Blue. There’s so much going on harmonically that the fact that it’s played in 6/8 rhythm (rather than the more usual 4/4 for the Blues) seems almost irrelevant.
Those are just the bare bones, but the improvisations of Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane et al. breath life into them and create a living Jazz masterpiece. Although it seems like a complicated tune, apparently what happened at the recording session was that Miles Davis talked the band through the piece, they played it once to get a feel for it, and then recorded the entire track that was released on the album, in one go.
I must have listened to All Blues a thousand times, and I’ve never tired of it. The thing is, though, I could say the same thing about all the other tracks on the album Kind of Blue, about which Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote
Kind of Blue isn’t merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it’s an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence. Why does Kind of Blue posses such a mystique? Perhaps because this music never flaunts its genius… It’s the pinnacle of modal jazz — tonality and solos build from the overall key, not chord changes, giving the music a subtly shifting quality… It may be a stretch to say that if you don’t like Kind of Blue, you don’t like jazz — but it’s hard to imagine it as anything other than a cornerstone of any jazz collection.
I’m a bit slow to get started this morning, since I didn’t get home until the wee small hours after a trip to the Royal Astronomical Society yesterday, followed by a pleasantly tipsy dinner at the Athenaeum with the RAS Club. Anyhow, one of the highlights of the meeting was a presentation by Prof. Gerald Roberts from Birkbeck on Marsquakes: evidence from rolled boulder populations, Cerberus Fossae, Mars. The talk was based on a recent paper of his (unfortunately behind a paywall), which is about trying to reconstruct the origin and behaviour of “Marsquakes” using evidence from the trails made by rolling boulders, dislodged by seismic activity or vulcanism. Here is a sample picture showing the kind of trails he’s using – the resolution is such that one pixel is only 20cm!
There are enough trails to allow a statistical analysis of their distribution in space and in terms of size (which can be inferred from the width of the trail). I had some questions about the analysis, but I haven’t been able to read the paper in detail yet so I won’t comment on that until I’ve done so, but the thing I remember most from the talk were these remarkable pictures of what a rolling boulder can do on Earth. They were taken after the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011.
A large boulder was dislodged from the top of the hill behind the house in the second picture. It didn’t just roll, but bounced down the slope (see the large furrow in the first picture; similar bouncing trajectories can be seen in the picture from Mars), smashed straight through the house, exited the other side and came to rest on a road. Yikes.
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In the Dark 