Today I took a trip out to Punchestown Racecourse for my second Covid-19 booster jab. The possibility of booking one of these opened up for my age group (55+) a few weeks ago and I booked one straightaway, but I was advised to postpone it because of a mystery ailment. That now having cleared up I decided to have it done today, ahead of the full start of teaching next week. In the meantime the booster process has been opened up to mere youngsters (50+) but it was easy to get an appointment.
As far as I know I have ever caught Covid-19, but I thought it wise not to take any chances with the new influx of students and the possibility of increased infection levels. My first booster was on 15th December 2021, so protection is likely to have waned considerably since then. As you can see, new cases have been falling recently in Ireland but the level of new infections (7-day average around 230 per day) is still quite high:
My previous jabs were at City West so I was a little surprised when I registered for my second booster that I was directed to Punchestown. It’s about the same distance from Maynooth to either venue, though, and when I got to the racecourse it was very quiet and I was in and out within half an hour (half of which was the 15 minute “recovery” period). The racecourse – used for steeplechases – is heaving at the time of the annual Punchestown Festival, but fortunately I didn’t have to dodge either crowds or horses, though it was raining heavily.
This time I had the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (“Comirnaty”), same as my two original shots; my first booster was of the Moderna (“SpikeVax”) variety.
I’ll be working from home this afternoon in case of problems (though I didn’t experience any serious issues with previous jabs). My next lecture is at 11am tomorrow (Friday) so I should be fine by then even if I experience any side-effects this afternoon.
Yesterday I gave my first lecture of the new academic year. It was the first lecture of the second-year Mathematical Methods module I’ve been teaching for several years now, and was about partial differentiation. Because of the late Leaving Certificate results this year, first-year students don’t officially start until next week but we have some doing my second module and most of them actually came to my first lecture. For most of the new arrivals this week is Welcome Week, with a variety of events – both social and administrative – to help them settle into student life before they start their education proper next week.
As often seems to be the case in late September, the weather is very nice today. The Welsh phrase Haf Bach Mihangel (Michael’s Little Summer) refers to this kind of spell. St Michael is also the origin of the term Michaelmas, which is the name of the Autumn term at Cambridge University. Michaelmas Day itself is on 29th September.
This all takes me back to when I myself left home to go to University in 1982, as thousands of fledgling students are doing in their turn right now.
I started my journey by getting on a train at Newcastle Central station with my bags of books and clothes. I said goodbye to my parents there. There was never any question of them taking me in the car all the way to Cambridge. It wasn’t practical and I wouldn’t have wanted them to do it anyway. After changing from the Inter City at Peterborough onto a local train, we trundled through the flatness of East Anglia until it reached Cambridge. The weather, at least in my memory, was exactly like today. It suddenly struck me this week that that was 40 years ago.
I don’t remember much about the actual journey on the train, but I must have felt a mixture of fear and excitement. Nobody in my family had ever been to University before, let alone to Cambridge. Come to think of it, nobody from my family has done so since either. I was a bit worried about whether the course I would take in Natural Sciences would turn out to be very difficult, but I think my main concern was how I would fit in generally.
I had been working between leaving school and starting my undergraduate course, so I had some money in the bank and I was also to receive a full grant. I wasn’t really that worried about cash. But I hadn’t come from a posh family and didn’t really know the form. I didn’t have much experience of life outside the North East either. I’d been to London only once before going to Cambridge, and had never been abroad.
I didn’t have any posh clothes, a deficiency I thought would immediately mark me as an outsider. I had always been grateful for having to wear a school uniform (which was bought with vouchers from the Council) because it meant that I dressed the same as the other kids at school, most of whom came from much wealthier families. But this turned out not to matter at all. Regardless of their family background, students were generally a mixture of shabby and fashionable, just like they are today. Physics students in particular didn’t even bother with the fashionable bit. Although I didn’t have a proper dinner jacket for the Matriculation Dinner, held for all the new undergraduates, nobody said anything about my dark suit which I was told would be acceptable as long as it was a “lounge suit”. Whatever that is.
Taking a taxi from the station, I finally arrived at Magdalene College. I waited outside, a bundle of nerves, before entering the Porter’s Lodge and starting my life as a student. My name was found and ticked off and a key issued for my room in the Lutyen’s building. It turned out to be a large room, with a kind of screen that could be pulled across to divide the room into two, although I never actually used this contraption. There was a single bed and a kind of cupboard containing a sink and a mirror in the bit that could be hidden by the screen. The rest of the room contained a sofa, a table, a desk, and various chairs, all of them quite old but solidly made. Outside my room, on the landing, was the gyp room, a kind of small kitchen, where I was to make countless cups of tea over the following months, although I never actually cooked anything there.
I struggled in with my bags and sat on the bed. It wasn’t at all like I had imagined. I realised that no amount of imagining would ever really have prepared me for what was going to happen at University.
I stared at my luggage. I suddenly felt like I had landed in a strange foreign land where I didn’t know anyone, and couldn’t remember why I had gone there or what I was supposed to be doing. One thing I certainly didn’t think then was that 40 years on I’d still be wondering what I’m going to do when I leave University…
Last week I gave a couple of talks to new undergraduate students about courses in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics here at Maynooth. As happens from time to time, a student asked me if our programmes are accredited by the Institute of Physics. The short answer to this is ‘no’.
Before going further into this, I should probably explain what accreditation actually means. An accredited degree is one that counts as a professional qualification that enables the holder to pursue a career in a given discipline, usually as a practitioner of some sort. Obvious examples are medical degrees (which Maynooth does not offer), Engineering, Architecture, Law, Accounting and Psychology (for its clinical aspects). Most degree progammes at Maynooth and elsewhere are not accredited
You shouldn’t be concerned about the quality of a course just because it isn’t accredited – not all degree courses are. Accredited courses are only really necessary if there is a professional qualification in the industry you plan to work in – where they can help you to get ahead in your chosen career.
I’ll add for those who weren’t aware that the Institute of Physics covers the UK and Ireland.
Having a physics degree accredited by the IOP is not a professional requirement as it is in, say, Law or Engineering. Indeed, there is no job or career path in physics that requires a degree with IOP accreditation. If there were then nobody with a physics degree from outside the UK or Ireland would be eligible for it. IOP accreditation is also irrelevant for doing a Masters or PhD. Ask any one of a number of our graduates!
We have discussed IOP accreditation a number of times with the unanimous result that we should steer clear of this process. There are two main reasons why.
The first is that the IOP insists on there being a practical laboratory component of any courses it accredits, so it will not accredit a purely theoretical degree programme. There is, for example, a Theoretical Physics degree programme which is accredited, but students on this programme had to do laboratories in the first year. Here in Maynooth the Department of Experimental Physics has accreditation for programmes, including a Double Major in Experimental Physics and Another Subject. Consequently, if you do Experimental Physics and Mathematical Physics that combination is accredited. But if you do Mathematical Physics on its own or with another subject that will not be an accredited programme. So the first reason is that if we applied for IOP accreditation (which we have never done and have no intention of doing), we would not get it unless we required students to take Experimental Physics too, which would reduce the choice available to students.
As an aside I should mention that there is an alternative degree status offered by the IOP, namely recognised rather than accredited. A list of current recognised courses is here (PDF). This includes interdisciplinary programmes involving mathematics and physics. We could apply for this, I suppose, were it not for the second point.
The second point is that we think it would be a huge waste of effort, especially for a very small department like ours. While the accreditation process does provide some external oversight of course content and quality, one has to weigh up the small benefit against the extremely onerous bureaucratic burden it places on departments as well as imposing restrictions on progression rules and forcing an unjustifiable conformity on courses.
We in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University feel these negatives strongly outweigh any positives of accreditation, which we feel are in fact very hard to identify. There is no job or career path in physics that requires a degree with IOP accreditation. If there were then nobody with a physics degree from outside the UK or Ireland would be eligible. IOP accreditation is also irrelevant for doing a Masters or PhD. I repeat that we have never to my knowledge had any problem with lack of IOP accreditation being a barrier for any of our graduates.
That doesn’t mean there are no quality controls on our programmes. We go through regular institutional quality reviews that undertake a rigorous assessment of our courses, including interviewing students and staff. The panel on our last review included distinguished physicists from institutions outside Ireland and the UK. We obtained very high commendations for our courses through this process as well as some suggestions of things we might consider to improve things still further. I think such processes that validate our programmes are at least as rigorous as IOP accreditation and are significantly less Anglocentric.
As a Fellow of the Institute of Physics who has taught in Physics Departments for over 20 years I have never understood why people think IOP accreditation is at all important. I know many physicists feel otherwise, however, and indeed most physics courses in the UK and Ireland do appear on the list. I would argue that this is largely for fear of appearing to be out of line rather than for any positive reason.
Anyway, feel free to air your own views through the box below!
Maynooth University is in the middle a consultation exercise involving the construction a new Strategic PlanEnvisioning Our Future for the period 2023-28. This is something higher education institutions do from time to time, and it usually involves dreaming up ways of spending money they haven’t got on things they don’t need. I’ve seen a few Strategic Plans in my time, but yet to see one that was worth the glossy paper it was expensively printed on. I can’t envision this one being any different,
You could dismiss the current Strategic Plan as merely an irrelevance but it is having a real effect, in that it has completed distracted the University management away from crucial operational matters, such as new appointments and fixing various failing systems. Moreover, it seems very likely, there being little chance of a substantial increase in government funding, that any new “initiatives” arising from the Strategic Plan will be paid for by further plundering already hard-pressed departmental budgets.
The other day I looked up “Strategy” in a dictionary and found
Noun: a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.
The biggest issue is not the plan of action bit, it’s the articulation of the aim and the interpretation of long-term as being “the next five years”. I know I am excessively old-fashioned but I think a university – especially a publicly funded one – should be aiming to be as good as possible at teaching and research. If we have to have a plan for the next five years, at a bare minimum it should involve increasing the investment in its existing departments and providing better teaching facilities. I don’t see either of those happening at all. We’ve got a new teaching building, but nothing has been done to improve any of the other teaching rooms on campus. It’s very dispiriting for front-line academic staff to appearance such neglect of what should be the core functions of the institution.
Anyway, now that I am no longer Head of Department and free of the requirement to attend pointless meeting after pointless meeting I am going to focus what remains of my energy on teaching and research, even if The Management does not deem these important.
Tomorrow (19th September) is the first week of teaching term for the 2022-23. Though new students don’t officially start until 26th September, some are already here and I have even spoken to them. Although we have had a very rough couple of years, our first-year numbers look healthy, which is a good point to be handing over the reins. I have two new PhD student and one Research Masters student arriving this academic year which should help me with my research plans.
Undergraduate science degrees and PhD degrees in Maynooth are typically of four years’ duration. I’ll be sixty during this academic year and over the last few weeks I have been doing a bit of strategic planning of my own. Although I can’t be made to retire until I’m 70, I think it will be a good time to go when the incoming UG & PG cohort finishes, i.e. four years from now. I love teaching and enjoy my research but there is a point at which one should step aside and make way for someone younger.
Assuming, that is, that: (a) I live that long; (b) I can sell my old house and pay off my mortgage; (c) my USS pension is not worthless by then; (d) I’m not sacked in the meantime for insubordination.
When I visited Cardiff recently one of the things I did was read the electricity and gas meters (and take photographs of both as proof of the accuracy of the readings. It was only when logged onto the SSE website to enter the numbers that I realised a bill had already been issued (on 1st September) for the amount above.
I know gas has got more expensive, but really…
The bill above is based on an ESTIMATED reading for three months in the summer for an empty house. The energy company know that the house is unoccupied but nevertheless chose to produce an estimate of the amount of gas used that is orders of magnitude higher than any amount I have ever used there, even when the house was occupied in the depths of winter. The reading I took shows that the amount of gas used since the last reading was minimal. I uploaded the reading as soon as I could but am yet to receive a corrected bill.
Why they have come up with such a ridiculous figure is beyond me, but it did make me glad that I don’t pay this bill by direct debit. If I did so I would have been charged automatically which would have emptied my bank account (and more) and caused all kinds of problem with payments for other services.
When I logged onto WordPress yesterday I received a message that it was the 14th anniversary of my registration with them, which is when I took my first step into the blogosphere; that was way back on 15th September 2008.
I actually wrote my first post on the day I registered but unfortunately I didn’t really know what I was doing on my first day at blogging – no change there, then – and I didn’t actually manage to figure out how to publish this earth-shattering piece. It was only after I’d written my second post that I realized that the first one wasn’t actually visible to the general public because I hadn’t pressed the right buttons, so the two appear in the wrong order in my archive.
Such was the inauspicious beginning of this “shitty wordpress blog”!
If you’re interested in statistics then, as of 9.00am Irish Summer Time today, I have published 6060 blog posts posts and have received a total of 4.99 million hits; I expect to pass the 5M mark sometime next week. The largest number of hits I have received in a single day is still 8,864 (at the peak of the BICEP2 controversy).
The last 14 years have been eventful, to say the least, both personally and professionally. I started blogging not long after I’d moved into my house in Pontcanna, Cardiff. Since then I moved to Sussex, then back to Cardiff, and then to Ireland. The last couple of years have been dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Scientifically we’ve seen the discovery of the Higgs Boson and gravitational waves, both of which resulted in Nobel Prizes, as did the studies of high-redshift supernovae. The Planck mission mission was launched, did its stuff, and came to a conclusion in this time too. Most recently we have had the launch of JWST and have started to see the first science results. Science at least has moved forward, even many other things have not.
I learned yesterday from Keith Flett’s blog that the new King of England appears to have had a bit of problem with his writing equipment. It must be difficult to face such a severe challenge at such an early stage of his reign but I’m sure he’ll sort it out, or perhaps his servants will.
As a result of this important news I was thinking that I must be very old-fashioned in continuing to use fountain pens. I have four different pens like that, three for everyday use, and one for “best” i.e. mainly for signing important letters. Although I don’t have a blotter, I do fill my pens with ink from a bottle rather than from cartridges. I have noticed, however, that it is rather difficult to buy bottles of ink these days so I tend to buy several bottles at a time. Another issue is that not all forms of paper are suitable for writing on with a fountain pen. I use this as an excuse to buy quite posh notebooks. In particular, fountain pens are useless for doing crosswords as the ink spreads into an illegible smudge on the paper,
You might think I’m an old fuddy-duddy for using such pens rather than biros or even doing everything using a word processor but old habits die hard. When I was at school my handwriting was very bad so a teacher suggested I start using a fountain pen in order to improve it. That didn’t work, but I got into the habit of using that sort of pen and I’ve never broken it (though I have broken many nibs).
I use a keyboard when writing documents nowadays but whenever I have to do calculations, I write out the complete thing (with equations), when I’ve checked it, using a fountain pen. After that I type them up using LaTex. The chaotic scribbles I produce during the actual process of calculating are usually done in pencil or biro, but the final version to go in my notebook is written out with actual ink.
Another example is when I am preparing to give a lecture. Although we have printed notes – like a textbook – I never lecture directly from them. I think a lecture should have a coherent structure to it so I always write out what I want to say with a beginning, middle and end. Writing it out longhand means it enters my mind far better than just reading from the notes.
On reflection, I think these approaches are extensions of the technique for taking lecture notes I used as an undergraduate student. Another teacher at school spent one lesson teaching us all how to write very quickly without looking at the paper. Doing that means you don’t waste time moving your head to and fro between paper and screen or blackboard.
Of course, the notes I produced using this method weren’t exactly aesthetically pleasing, but my handwriting is awful at the best of times so that didn’t make much difference to me. I always wrote my notes up more neatly after the lecture anyway, using a fountain pen. But the great advantage was that I could write down everything in real time without this interfering with my ability to listen to what the lecturer was saying.
An alternative to this approach is to learn shorthand, or invent your own form of abbreviated language. This approach is, however, unlikely to help you take down mathematical equations quickly.
My experience nowadays is that many students simply aren’t used to taking notes like this – I suppose because they get given so many powerpoint presentations or other kinds of handout – so they struggle to cope with the old-fashioned chalk-and-talk style of teaching that some lecturers still prefer (and which actually works very well in mathematically-based disciplines). That’s probably because they get much less practice at school than my generation did. Most of my school education was done via the blackboard..
Even if I hand out copies of slides or other notes, I always encourage my students to make their own independent set of notes, as completely as possible. I don’t mean by copying down what they see on the screen and what they may have on paper already, but by trying to write down what I say as I say it. I don’t think many take that advice, which means much of the spoken illustrations and explanations I give don’t find their way into any long term record of the lecture.
And if the lecturer just reads out the printed notes, adding nothing by way of illustration or explanation, then the audience is bound to get bored very quickly.
My argument, then, is that regardless of what technology the lecturer uses, whether he/she gives out printed notes or not, then if the students can’t take notes accurately and efficiently then lecturing is a complete waste of time. In fact for the modules I’m doing this term I don’t intend to hand out lecture notes at all during the lectures, although I do post lecture summaries and answers to the exercises online after they’ve been done.
As a further study aid, most lectures at my previous institutions (Sussex University and Cardiff University) are recorded and made available to students to view shortly after the event. I have seen no evidence that availability of recorded lectures lowers the attendance at lectures. It appears that students use the recordings for revision and/or to clarify points raised in the notes they have taken, and if anything the recordings allow the students to get greater value from lectures rather than persuading them that there’s no need to attend them. Unfortunately we don’t have lecture capture at Maynooth, and a recent policy decision at high level is basically to ban lecture recordings here. I think that is regrettable to say the least, but since we don’t have proper equipment we can’t do it anyway so there’s nothing I can do.
I do like lecturing, because I like talking about physics and astronomy, but as I’ve got older I’ve become less convinced that lectures play a useful role in actually teaching anything. I think we should use lectures more sparingly, relying more on problem-based learning to instill proper understanding. When we do give lectures, they should focus much more on stimulating interest by being entertaining and thought-provoking. They should not be for the routine transmission of information, which is far too often the default.
As a matter of fact don’t think I ever learned very much about physics from lectures – I found problem-based learning far more effective – but I’m nevertheless glad I learned out how to take notes the way I did because I find it useful in all kinds of situations. Effective note-taking is definitely a transferable skill, but it’s also in danger of becoming a dying art. If we’re going to carry on using lectures, we old fogeys need to stop assuming that students learnt it the way we did and start teaching it as a skill.
Last night I made it to the National Concert Hall in Dublin for the opening concert of the season for the National Symphony Orchestra directed by Chief Conductor Jaime Martín. It’s been three years since the last full season of these weekly concerts so let’s hope we get a complete set this time.
The programme for last night’s concert comprised two works by Austrian composers, Alban Berg‘s Violin Concerto (with soloist Simone Lamsma) and Gustav Mahler‘s Fifth Symphony. Each of these great pieces in its own way explores a vast emotional landscape and together they made for a compelling and moving performance.
Berg’s Violin Concerto, composed in 1935, is dedicated “to the memory of an Angel”, namely Manon Gropius, who died of polio at the age of just 18. She was the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius (Alma Mahler’s second husband, whom she married four years after Mahler’s death).
The work is divided into two movements, each of which is in two parts. It is often described as a completely atonal (serialist) piece but it’s is composed in such a way that the twelve tones are sometimes grouped in such a way as to suggest an underlying tonality. Emotionally the piece ranges from the poignant to the fiery. Anyone who has experienced grief will recognize the sense of rage that at times bursts through. In other passages, though, the music has an austere beauty that is completely compelling.
After the wine break we had Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. This work is best known for the 4th movement Adagietto but I’ve always felt that section fits rather uncomfortably with the rest of the composition. That’s not to say that I dislike the Adagietto, which I think is one of the most beautiful movements in all music, and regularly makes me shed a tear. I just think it’s a bit of a detour from the rest of the work. I suppose one should think of it as a restful interlude before the journey reaches its climax in the 5th movement Rondo which was played with electrifying passion last night.
Like the Berg piece, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony veers across a vast emotional landscape. The conductor Bruno Walter described it as “passionate, wild, pathetic, buoyant, solemn, tender, full of the sentiments of which the human heat is capable, but still ‘only’ music”. Although by no means an atonal work, there isn’t really a clear tonal signature: at least five different keys are used and there are passages in which the key is ambiguous.
The first movement begins with a funeral march, introduced with a solo trumpet statement like a fanfare, followed by lyrical passages from the strings. The second movement is extremely tempestuous, contrasting moods of melancholy and frenzy, with the trumpet theme from the first movement returning. The third movement, a long Scherzo, is unexpectedly playful, with two thematic forms bouncing off each other. Then there’s the soulful longing of the Adagietto, beautifully played last night to a rapt audience and the joyful finale in an unambiguously major key.
Overall this was a superb concert, with the large orchestral forces marshalled superbly by Jaime Martín. I have to mention the brass section in particular, who were brilliant. It wasn’t a full house, which is a shame for the season’s curtain-raiser, but those who were there clearly enjoyed it enormously.
As it happens, last night was the first of five concerts by Garth Brooks (who he? Ed) at Croke Park. The train from Maynooth unto Dublin earlier in the evening was absolutely crammed with people (many in cowboy hats) going there and the train back was similarly full with people leaving. Fortunately I was only slightly delayed getting home by the congestion, though I think there were seriously issues with later trains. There is another concert by him next Friday, when there is another concert at the NCH so fingers crossed that my travel to and from that isn’t too badly affected either…
Just a quick note in the manner of a journal entry to mark the fact that Queen Elizabeth II passed away this afternoon at the age of 96.
I was actually sitting on a plane about to take off for Dublin when the news filtered through. The Irish bloke next to me who knew I was born in England as we had been chatting, asked what happens next – what procedure would be followed to install the next Monarch, King Charles III. I told him that The Queen had been The Queen since before I was born, and had reigned all my life until now, so I had never experienced such an event and had no idea at all what comes next!
All I know is that the funeral of Queen Elizabeth will not happen for another ten days, but King Charles becomes King immediately. I’m not sorry to have made it back to Ireland today. I think I would have found the media coverage in the UK very tedious indeed.
It’s strange to imagine there being a King Charles instead of Queen Elizabeth. I suppose football crowds will henceforth be singing “God Save The King” instead of “God Save The Queen”, although I bet they’ll continue to do it just as tunelessly regardless of the change of words.
Queen Elizabeth was the longest-reigning British monarch by a margin of about 7 years over Queen Victoria. If you reckon history as a succession of Kings and Queens like we were taught to at school then today is a historic day. I can’t help wondering though how many more British monarchs there will be…
Six months ago when Russia invaded Ukraine there was considerable debate about the practicality of sanctions on Putin’s regime. The discussion largely centered around whether economic sanctions would be effective and whether they would harm the nations imposing them more than they would Putin. At the time it seemed to me this was the wrong way of looking about it. The main issue as far as I was concerned was not their likely efficacy, but the ethical and moral dimension of doing business with a warmongering state. A similar issue came up frequently in the 1980s over South Africa, for example. The issue was not for me whether not buying South African oranges would end apartheid; it was about whether I personally felt morally comfortable with doing business with a racist state. Russia is not the only country or entity nowadays with whom I would feel very uncomfortable being involved, but it is one.
Ethical considerations are however often compromised by practical issues. A complete ban on Russian oil and gas imports would cause devastation in the short term, for example, so Western sanctions on Putin have concentrated elsewhere.
Individuals also make ethical decisions about what products they buy, which employers they work for, which countries they visit, and so on. These are of course private matters but people have a right to voice their opinions and argue their case.
At least an individual can decide their own position with unanimity. It’s somewhat more complicated in an organization or group as there are likely to be dissenting views. Nevertheless, I think it is good to have these discussions out in the open. That’s what should happen in a free society and in a well-run organization.
You may nor may not agree with the blog post by Arthur Loureiro about Elon Musk and SpaceX that was published here last week, but I think it raises a similar question: with whom do you feel comfortable doing business?
I suspect that I’m not alone in agreeing with Arthur’s discomfort about Elon Musk. As a matter of fact I think he’s a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Many people no doubt also felt moral discomfort at the prospect of Euclid being launched on a Soyuz spacecraft. In the end the decision will probably be based on pragmatism rather than ethics, but I think it was right for Arthur to raise the issue publicly and I am glad to have been able to make his views public via this website. There are limits and we need to discuss where those limits lie.
P.S. I am glad that the Euclid Consortium has stated aims to be as diverse and inclusive as possible. I am also aware that there are members of the Consortium who disagree with its EDI policies. I’ve observed in many organizations that those who disfavour diversity and inclusion often complain about having diversity “forced upon them”. I shall refrain from commenting further.
The views presented here are personal and not necessarily those of my employer (or anyone else for that matter).
Feel free to comment on any of the posts on this blog but comments may be moderated; anonymous comments and any considered by me to be vexatious and/or abusive and/or defamatory will not be accepted. I do not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with the opinions or statements of any information or other content in the comments on this site and do not in any way guarantee their accuracy or reliability.
In the Dark 