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2024 in Retrospect

Posted in Barcelona, Biographical, Cardiff, Maynooth with tags , , , , , on December 31, 2024 by telescoper 
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

T. S. Eliot, from Little Gidding, the last of the Four Quartets.

I wasn’t really planning on posting a retrospective of the year 2024, but the rain is pouring down outside so I’ve decided to use up a bit of time before going out in the hope that the rain stops.

The past year has been very busy with significant life events. One particular highlight has to be a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime trip to Sydney in February. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to visit Australia again, but if I do I’ll take it! Shortly after returning from that trip I went back to Barcelona until the summer, leaving briefly for visits to Rome (Euclid Consortium Meeting), Valencia (Department Colloquium), Newcastle (to do a PhD examination) and Oxford (to give the inaugural Pride talk at the Department of Physics).

Unfortunately, at that point my laptop gave up the ghost so I had to come back to Maynooth a little earlier than planned to salvage what was on it and get a new one. And so ended my sabbatical. I’d like to take the opportunity again to thank everyone at the Universities of Barcelona and Sydney for making me feel so welcome and, of course, to Maynooth for granting me a full-year sabbatical in the first place.

As well as giving me some time for my own research, the year saw significant progress with the Open Journal of Astrophysics, both in terms of numbers of papers published (120 in 2024) but also some much-needed work on automation and an increase in the size of the Editorial Board. It’s hard to predict what will happen in 2025, but I’m glad that a significant number of members of the astrophysics community seem to be regarding OJAp as a viable avenue for communicating their results.

I will also mention – for those that care – that the Open Journal of Astrophysics is now listed in Scopus, but all the numbers they have published about the journal are inaccurate. I have spent months trying to get them to correct the figures but, although they have admitted errors, they have failed to do so. My next step will be to take legal action against Scopus (which is based in The Netherlands) under the Dutch Civil Code.

The big event workwise at Maynooth was the merger of the Departments of Theoretical Physics and Experimental Physics into a single Department of Physics. So far this has been largely paper exercise. What will result from it in the long term remains to be seen. I was given two new modules to teach last Semester and have another new one next Semester (as well as one I’ve done before). Although this made for a heavy workload, it wasn’t as bad as what happened after the only other sabbatical I’ve had in my career. I got a one Semester sabbatical when I was at Nottingham, but the Department simply moved my first-semester teaching to the second semester in addition to what had already been allocated for the second, so I had a double teaching load when I got back!

There has been a significant change in my personal circumstances too. During 2024 I finally completed the sale of my former home in Pontcanna, Cardiff. I had intended to do this years ago, but the pandemic and subsequent workload issues made it difficult to travel and sort this matter out. In the meantime bought my house in Maynooth with a mortage so I owned two properties, one of which was empty for much of the time. After much stopping and starting, and being badly let down by more than one prospective buyer, the Cardiff house is now sold. I now feel much less delocalised. I also felt very rich when the proceeds hit my bank account, but only briefly. I used a big chunk to pay off my mortgage and put the rest into fixed-term investments for retirement.

Anyway, writing about Sydney reminded me that there are parts of the world in which it is 2025 already, so let me end with a “Happy New Year” and a few interesting numerological facts about the number 2025:

P.S. It’s still raining.

P.P.S. Athbhliain faoi shéan agus faoi mhaise daoibh! 

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Jimmy Carter in Newcastle (1977)

Posted in Biographical, History, R.I.P., Television with tags , , , on December 30, 2024 by telescoper

The news of the death at the age of 100 of former US President Jimmy Carter reminded me of a day way back when I was still at school. It was Friday, May 6th, 1977 and I was at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne. I remember that morning it was announced at Assembly that Carter would be visiting the city and giving a speech outside the Civic Centre, which was less than 10 minutes’ walk from the School. I think some senior boys were allowed to go an see him, but as a mere third-former I went to a class and the occasion largely passed me by.

One thing I do remember is a classmate after Assembly saying “Thank God he didn’t visit Sunderland instead…” – Carter visited Newcastle on his way to Washington (the ancestral home of George Washington), which is nearer to Sunderland than Newcastle. I suppose the reason was that Newcastle has an airport, whereas Sunderland hasn’t.

The other thing I remember was the TV coverage on Look North when I got home, which showed the start of President Carter’s speech with his famous “Howay the Lads!”

R.I.P. Jimmy Carter (1924-2024)

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Donate to Wikipedia!

Posted in Biographical with tags , on December 26, 2024 by telescoper

It seems that Donald Trump’s owner, Elon Musk, does not approve of Wikipedia. Apparently he particularly dislikes the fact that the organizers are dedicated to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion whereas white supremacists like Musk prefer prefer Monotony, Unfairness and Exclusion of everyone who is not like them. I would imagine if he were in charge it would turn into another Conservapedia. Anything that Musk hates has to be worth supporting so today I made a donation to Wikipedia, which is a non-profit organization.

I don’t remember the launch of Wikipedia in January 2001, but I do recall when students started using Wikipedia links in project reports and the like. Unfortunately, at the beginning, many of the articles on scientific topics were very poor – often laughably so – and I discouraged students from using them. Now, over twenty years and the efforts of many volunteer editors later, they are generally very good. I now encourage students to use Wikipedia as a resource, but I still discourage them from including references to it in formal reports. The best way to use it is to get an overview but then dig down into the references which most articles lists.

I find Wikipedia an excellent resource for things outside science of course, especially music, and link to articles there very often from this blog.

Somewhere along the line somebody even set up a Wikipedia page about me. It began as “just a stub” but has been updated from time to time. I don’t know who set it up or who has updated it. I just looked and it still says I am Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Royal Astronomical Society, when I resigned from both organizations earlier this year. I’ve edited a few articles there myself, actually, mostly on cosmology but also on jazz. Some of my blog posts are linked from there too but it would seem inappropriate for me to edit my own Wikipedia page.

Anyway, if you’re a fan of Wikipedia and/or despise Elon Musk then please consider making a donation.

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Nearly there…

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on December 19, 2024 by telescoper

Today I completed the lectures for one of my modules, the one on Differential Equations and Transform Methods for Engineering students, and gave the penultimate lecture for Differential Equations and Complex Analysis for final-year Mathematical Physics students. Both were revision lectures. As campus has been very quiet for the last few days I didn’t expect many (if any) students to show up for either of these classes, but some did, although numbers were a long way down on the start of the year.

Campus is always quiet this close to the holiday, but this time there has been a bug going around which has led to a few more absences than usual among students. Some staff have been affected too. I had a mild dose of whatever it was earlier in the week but got over it relatively quickly.

Tomorrow, the last day of Semester 1, I have my last lecture of this term, followed by a couple of final-year project presentations. Then that’s it until 2025. I am already thinking about what to do tomorrow evening to mark the end of term. I haven’t reached any definite conclusions yet, but it will almost certainly involve wine. Then I suppose I’ll have to start my Christmas shopping which will include buying more wine.

I am a bit flush this week because I’ve finally received rebates of overpayment from OVO Energy and Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water relating to my former house in Cardiff. I sold this property months ago, after much tedious to-ing and fro-ing, but getting money back from utility companies is like getting blood out of a stone. OVO Energy were particularly bad, violating their statutory obligations. The offer3d me £60 additional payment in recognition of this but, although they eventually settled the bill, they never paid the compensation. It seems they just lied.

In contrast, and giving credit where it’s due, I am grateful to Cardiff City Council for paying back my overpaid Council Tax very promptly.

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Pride Soc

Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+ on December 11, 2024 by telescoper

(I’m not sure whether the above link will show properly, as I haven’t quite got the hang of this instant gramophone thing that young people use.)

It’s been a very busy day so I’ve just got time for a quick post to mention that this afternoon I gave a talk to Maynooth University’s Pride Society, which was a much less formal reprise of the talks I gave last month at Trinity College Dublin and at Oxford University in June. The talk was originally intended to mark LGBTQIA+ STEM Day on November 18th but it proved impossible to find a convenient time on that day or even near it. Anyway, it was nice talking to the students in this forum, and I would like to use the medium of this blog to say a bit “Thank You” for inviting me!

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Fourth Covid Booster

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19 with tags , , on December 3, 2024 by telescoper

Just for the record, today I had my 4th Covid-19 vaccination booster. As an Old, I get prompted by the HSE to get free Covid-19 boosters and winter ‘flu jabs so I booked an appointment at a local pharmacist, which is how they are done these days, which is much better than traipsing to City West or Punchestown. In fact I went into work this morning, and walked to the pharmacy and back. I didn’t have to wait long and the vaccination itself only took a matter of minutes.

The vaccination record is not as fancy as the one I got last year for my third booster last year, but it will have to do as a souvenir:

That makes six Covid-19 jabs altogether for me: the initial vaccination was in two stages, and I have since had four boosters. All but one of these have been Pfizer; the other was Moderna.

On previous occasions of this type I’ve always managed to arrange an afternoon free afterwards in case of any adverse reactions. Today, however, I went straight from the pharmacist to get a quick lunch and then had a two-hour lecture with the Engineers, which I survived. Once again, there are no serious ill-effects, apart from a slight discomfort at the injection site and a general feeling of tiredness. I think I’ll sleep well tonight!

P.S. Last night, as I usually do, I checked my calendar before I went to bed to make sure I was ready for all the items on the following day’s agenda, including the Covid-19 jab. When I slept, for some reason I had a funny dream that I had invented a new form of vaccine that could be administered via a cigarette!

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Seven Years in Maynooth!

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , on December 1, 2024 by telescoper
Maynooth University Library, home of the famous cat

As the count continues in the General Election in Ireland, the result of which seems likely to be the same old government, I am reminded that today is 1st December 2024, which means that it’s seven years to the day since I started work at Maynooth University. Despite the frustrations I’m still happy I made the move all that time ago.

One big change that has happened over the last year is that the Department of Theoretical Physics that I joined in 2017 no longer exists. It has now been subsumed into a new Department of Physics alongside the old Department of Experimental Physics. This is something that should have happened years ago, and should also have been handled in a better way. As it is, The Merger really just involved merging the two budgets with little thought given to how the new Department would function. As a result it still operates largely as two separate sub-Departments. Any benefits of the reorganization have therefore yet to accrue. The good side of this is that Senior Management seems to have lost interest in pushing us around, and it’s now up to the new Department to self-organize. I suppose in due course there will be changes, but in due course I will have retired.

When I wrote last year on the occasion of the sixth year of my appointment at Maynooth, I complained that the University had still not fulfilled the terms of my employment contract. With The Merger, members of the former Department of Theoretical Physics now have access to the technical support previously enjoyed by the Department of Experimental Physics so I suppose that particular ticket is closed. This blatant disregard for written contractual terms demonstrates, however, why I have so little trust in the University management. In that vein, it still concerns me that my contract says that I am employed by the Department of Theoretical Physics. Legally, does it matter that I am employed to work in an entity that doesn’t exist?

The thing I’m probably most proud of over the past seven years is, with the huge help of staff at Maynooth University Library, getting the Open Journal of Astrophysics off the ground and attracting some excellent papers. This year has seen yet more significant growth, with submissions and publications more than doubling this year, after an increase of a factor of three the year before. We’re still smaller than many of the mainstream astrophysics journals, but we’re still growing.

Anyway, I continue to enjoy the teaching, though doing two new modules in a term, plus an undergraduate project, plus supervising three PhD students, is quite a lot of work for an old man. That reminds me I have some correcting to do…

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Polling Day!

Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags , , , , on November 29, 2024 by telescoper

This morning I noticed that the Google Doodle was reminding me to vote, so I took a detour on the way to work and exercised my franchise. I don’t have much optimism about the outcome, as I think we’re likely to end up with the same old same old, but at least I’ve had my little say.

Regardless of the likely outcome, I do enjoy voting in person. I don’t understand people who can’t be bothered, especially when there is an electoral system such as Ireland’s that allows a spread of political opinions to be represented. In my constituency there is a spectrum from far left to far right, though those most likely to win are the place everyone now calls Centre, but which to me is on the right. The two main parties in Ireland are really just one party, the Property Party, and it has two right wings (called FF and FG).

The polling station at the Presentation Girls School wasn’t busy when I voted, and the staff there were very friendly and helpful. The ballot paper was quite big – it had to be to accommodate sixteen names and photographs. Fortunately the weather has turned mild again so turnout should be reasonable. Polls stay open until 10pm and counting doesn’t start until tomorrow. I’ve plenty of other things with which to occupy myself for the rest of the day, including some coursework to be graded, a lecture to give, and later this evening, a concert to attend.

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The Cuts in UK Higher Education

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff, Education, Maynooth, Politics with tags , , , , on November 28, 2024 by telescoper

Today friend of mine send me a message pointing out that in order to save money the University of Sussex is planning to make about 300 staff redundant; you can see an article about it in the Times Higher here. For the time being it seems the plan to make these savings via a voluntary severance scheme. I don’t know whether academic and administrative staff will be treated equally, either.

This is grim news. I worked at Sussex from 2013 until 2016 when I resigned my post as Head of School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. I took that decision largely for personal reasons but there were professional reasons too. From 2013 the University had embarked on an ambitious growth plan based on buoyant student numbers and the fee income generated thereby. Staff numbers grew too, to cope with the increased demand for teaching. Unfortunately the management was unable to match this with real improvements in infrastructure, largely due to the disastrous outsourcing of campus estates and services. Many promises made to me as Head of School by Senior Management were broken. I wasn’t the only Head of School to compain of this, either. Although things were still going relatively well when I left in 2016, and I was optimistic for the future of the School then, there were severe risks to its financial stability if student recruitment dived. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened. Falling student numbers – especially from overseas – left the institution very vulnerable, especially since the fee per student did not change. That problem was exacerbated by a burst of inflation. AlthoughIt has clearly been a very difficult time for the University of Sussex, largely due to national and international forces beyond its control, but exacerbated by ineffective, and at times incompetent, institutional management. It should be said also that many University leaders enthusiastically embraced the fees-based system that has led their institutions where they are now, though most of them have now departed and left others to carry the can.

It worries me that Maynooth University is also trying to grow very quickly, without adequate investment in infrastructure especially teaching. It isn’t increasing the number of academic staff much either, preferring to hire more and more managers; yet another such position was advertised this week. I don’t know whether Maynooth’s financial trajectory will follow that of Sussex. The funding environment is very different in Ireland compared to the UK, so it may not. It is clear that the enviroment for education and research here is being steadily degraded by the current leadership.

Anyway, when I saw the announcement about Sussex, I checked other Universities I’ve worked in over the years. There’s a list here. It seems that while there are particular factors at play at Sussex, there are similar difficulties across the Board. Cardiff University has a deficit of £35 million and the VC has refused to rule out compulsory redundancies there. I’m not sure how this is all affecting the School of Physics & Astronomy. Nottingham University, where I worked from 1999 to 2007, has deficit of £30 million, in response to which it has opened a voluntary severance scheme, introduced hiring freezes, cut non-pay budgets, and refused to renew 500 fixed-term contracts.

There certainly are cold winds blowing across the University landscape in the United Kingdom, and there is no sign of any respite. This is just the start.

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Machine-based Censorship

Posted in Biographical with tags , , , , , , , on November 25, 2024 by telescoper

A very noticeable manifestation of the rise of so-called Artificial Intelligence has been the use of AI bots in censoring posts. The most recent example of this I’ve seen was on Saturday when I wrote a post about the general election candidates for my constituency, Kildare North. As usual when I write an article here it gets posted automatically on a variety of other platforms, including LinkedIn. However, Saturday’s post was blocked:

The powers that be did not tell me which of the “Professional Community Policies” that post might have violated so I looked through them all and couldn’t find any plausible reason for blocking that post. I can only assume some defect in the algorithm deployed by LinkedIn had been triggered wrongly. Unfortunately, all this is run by machine so there is no possibility of appeal.

I’ve noticed quite a few bizarre things like this over the past few weeks. The worst offender when it comes to random censorship is Meta (which runs Facebook, Instagram and Threads). I have been posting content automatically on Meta platforms, Facebook and Threads. Recently, however, Meta’s AI algorithm has gone berserk. A couple of weeks ago it blocked this post (about the Edgeworth family) on the grounds that it violated rules concerning “nudity or sexual activity”. Heaven knows how it decided that; you can read the post yourself. I defy you to find any nudity or sexual activity, or reference thereto, or link to any post that mentions such things, anywhere in it!

When I appealed the decision I got this.

Truly bizarre.

More recently, it blocked this post (one of my regular weekly updates for OJAp) on the grounds that it was identified as spam. I can see the need for an automatic screening given the huge volume of posts, but the problem is that my facebook feed is full of actual spam that gets through these filters while innocent posts get blocked. In other words the algorithm is crap. If you ask for a review of the decision, all Meta does is run the algorithm again – with the same results, which is a waste of time.

The algorithm that screens comments on this blog for spam has also been playing up, with some comments from regular contributors being tagged as spam.

None of these is in itself of any consequence to me personally, not least because I’m not trying to run a business using these platforms. However, such AI engines are being deployed nowadays in a huge range of contexts primarily in order to save money. No doubt such processes do save money, but if they are based on poorly constructed algorithms – which they seem to be – the consequences could be dire. Imagine the horror of a health service based on poorly trained AI…

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