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The Wellness of Being

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth, Mental Health with tags , , on April 14, 2022 by telescoper

So we’ve arrived at the Easter weekend. No work tomorrow, Good Friday, or on Easter Monday. I’ve put my out-of-office autoreply on and I’m taking a break from work for four days in an attempt to recharge the batteries before the examination and marking season. I only have two papers to correct this year, but because my Computational Physics class larger than it has been for a few years so I have quite a lot of projects to assess too. The deadline for those is in May, as are the examinations.

Today while finishing off a few things before the break – including the last Computational Physics lab test – I noticed an email from Human Resources, announcing that May 2022 is “Employee Wellbeing Month”. Among other delights we are promised a “wide range of wellbeing workshops that will run throughout May” which most of us teaching staff will be far too busy to attend.

And don’t get me started on making us come in for an Open Day on the May Bank Holiday weekend…

I wonder if there’s any empirical evidence at all that wellbeing workshops and whatnot do anything at all to alleviate work-related stress? I suspect not. It seems to me that they’re just a way of telling academic staff that they’d better get used to it because no attempt will ever be made to deal with the real causes of burnout: lack of resources, staff shortages, ever-increasing workloads, and the suffocating influence of remote and unsympathetic management.

This week though I learnt a far better way to experience feelings of wellbeing. Yesterday evening, for the first time in ages, I went to a pub for drinks with some current and former postgrads and colleagues (and partners thereof) from the Department of Theoretical Physics. Unlike, for example, Cardiff (where visits to the pubs with colleagues were a regular occurrence for me) I hadn’t really socialised with folks from Maynooth University even before the lockdown put paid to the possibility entirely. Last night was actually an initiative by some of our PhD students, and I’m very grateful to them for organizing it!

I’d been to the pub – McMahon‘s on Main Street – a few times before so when invited to go along it seemed like having a couple of pints there might be a good way of trying to shake off the agoraphobia. The evening turned out to be ideal for that purpose – the pub had enough people in it to have atmosphere but not so many that it was heaving. I went with the intention of staying an hour or two, but ending up leaving at midnight.

I hope this sort of thing becomes a regular feature from now on. Going to the pub with some friends now and then is far more likely to improve my state of mind than any number of wellness seminars. Although slightly hungover this morning I was in a very good mood, at least until my computer decided to embark on a Windows Update that took over an hour to complete…

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A Term for Exhaustion

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on April 13, 2022 by telescoper

Today I gave Lecture 20 in my final-year module on Advanced Electromagnetism which was about dipole radiation. That means I have four lectures remaining. All I have left to cover is the interaction between electromagnetic fields and waves and various types of medium, which means I’m more-or-less on track. Next week is the Easter vacation for the students so my next lecture won’t be for about a fortnight.

I’m looking forward to the Easter break, which actually starts on Friday. Surprisingly Good Friday isn’t actually a Bank Holiday in Ireland, though Easter Monday is, but the University is closed on that day. I don’t have any lectures on Fridays this term anyway so it doesn’t make any difference to me. My last teaching session before the break is tomorrow after, a two-hour Computational Physics Lab session.

This term has been both exhausting and dispiriting. Student attendance at lectures and tutorials has fallen to very low levels: I’m getting only about 30-40%. I discussed some of the possible reasons for low engagement here. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the May Examinations as a result of this lack of participation, but at least we get a break before we have to confront that.

There are other issues weighing me down too, but it’s probably best I don’t write about them here. Suffice to say that I’m very tired and frustrated and I don’t think a week off will do much to change that. On the bright side my term as Head of Department is due to end on August 31st 2022, just 140 days from now…

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Accommodation Not Wanted

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on April 6, 2022 by telescoper

A month ago I posted an item about the fact that I had offered the spare room in my house as accommodation for a refugee from the War in Ukraine. Over 20,000 refugees have now arrived in Ireland but I have just been told that the accommodation I offered is not suitable. That’s mainly because the greatest need is for homes suitable for families with children rather than single persons; I only have one room and it doesn’t have en suite facilities. Also most of the refugees are female and the assessors would probably be nervous about placing a woman in a house with a strange man like me.

I feel slightly less bad about this than I might have done before reading that only about 40-50% of the accommodation pledged to the Irish Red Cross has been assessed as suitable.

I also note that a number of host families are finding the job of providing accommodation to often traumatized people very difficult and many refugees have been returned to processing centres because the hosts are unable to cope. I might well have ended up feeling the same.

Anyway, at least I offered. I would have felt bad if I hadn’t. Now I’ll just have to try to find some other way to help…

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A Bird in the House

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on April 5, 2022 by telescoper

I’m told that in some cultures it is believed that a bird flying into your house is a sign of impending death. I hope that isn’t true because I’ve been having regular avian visitations recently.

It started last week when, after a spell of lovely sunny days, the weather suddenly took a turn for the worse. One day I went outside to put some rubbish in the bin. I left the patio doors from the kitchen/diner to the garden open for just a few minutes and closed them when I got back in. It was a few minutes later that I heard a flapping sound and looked up to see a robin trying to get out through one of the windows by my kitchen sink. It must have sneaked in while I was preoccupied, presumably because it was a lot warmer inside than out. It must have had the house under surveillance to have managed to get in during such a narrow window of opportunity.

I was a bit worried for the robin’s safety as I have seen birds get into a panic when they find themselves indoors and I thought it might do itself an injury. It was a regular event at my junior school years ago for a sparrow to get in and fly around in a panic before teacher managed to open a window and shoo it out. More recently I remember a pigeon somehow contrived to fall down the chimney in my house in Nottingham, emerging flapping and fluttering and scattering soot everywhere. It was very difficult to get that one to leave as it was completely disoriented. My cat nearly caught it a couple of times before it finally escaped.

Anyway, the robin situation wasn’t anything like that. Although I thought my reappearance in the kitchen might spook it, it seemed to recognize me as the human person who provides food. It just hopped onto the top of the open door leading from the kitchen to the hall and stared at me. I went slowly back to the patio doors, opened them both and stood aside. After sizing up the necessary flight path, the robin made a perfectly orderly exit. Robins seem harder to frighten than some other birds.

Since then the robin has been a regular visitor to the house, entering whenever the doors are open and leaving when it has had enough. It’s been inside more-or-less every day for a week (but not today).Once it helped itself to some leftovers in a pan on the hob but most visits have just taken the form of a general inspection: poking around in the shelves, checking out the furniture, and so on. I should try to take a photograph of it, but I’ve never yet had a camera to hand during a visit. I suppose the robin is now quite comfortable coming into my house and may become a regular guest. I don’t mind, although I hope it minimizes the amount of guano it deposits.

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In The Dark Mode

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on April 4, 2022 by telescoper

One of the many spoof posts that appeared on arXiv on April Fool’s Day was one about Dark Mode:

You will note that In The Dark has been using a kind of Dark Mode for over 13 years. The style is actually called Black Letterhead and I picked from among the available themes when I first started blogging because it seemed to me to match the title. This theme has actually been “retired” but still seems to work and I don’t feel any urge to change it.

A few people over the years have complained that the white text on black background is quite hard to read, but only a few. If you don’t like it you can easily change the colour via your web browser settings, of course. I think Dark Mode works better with a sans serif font, by the way.

I actually find it easier to read than black on white, actually, consistent with the fact that I find a chalkboard easier to read than a whiteboard which is why I have one in my study:

Although the paper was intended to be a joke, it does make some interesting points and is well worth reading!

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Census Day

Posted in Bad Statistics, Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on April 3, 2022 by telescoper

Today is April 3rd 2022 which means that it’s Census Day here in Ireland; I’ve just finished filling in the form, which is 24 pages long but it turns out lots of the pages are duplicates for use in homes with multiple occupancy, and others don’t apply to me at all, so in fact I only had to complete 8 pages and it didn’t take all that long.

The Census should have taken place last year but was postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Apparently the corresponding 2021 census in the UK went ahead, though I wasn’t at, and couldn’t get to, the property I still own in Wales so couldn’t participate. Although I was initially threatened with a fine, the UK Census people seem to have given up trying to chase me. I blogged about the previous census in Wales in 2011 here.

On the holiday after St Patrick’s Day I was at home when I noticed a card had been pushed through my letterbox while I was still in the house. It was from a ‘Census Enumerator’ who said he had tried to deliver the form but I was out. I wasn’t out and he hadn’t rung the doorbell. More importantly he hadn’t simply put the census form through the letterbox. In the UK the census forms are just sent out in the post. This little episode didn’t inspire me with confidence. Anyway, the bloke came back a week later and gave me the form. He also asked me for some personal information such as my phone number, which I naturally refused to give him. Apparently he has to collect the form in person too, which seems daft to me. Why can’t people just send their census returns back in the post?

On the last page there is a so-called ‘time capsule’ in which to leave information for historians to read 100 years from now. All I could think of to write was any historians reading this in 2122 would probably think that it was absurd to be doing this wasteful paper-based census when the digital age started some time ago, so I just said for the record that I was one of the people who thought that in 2022…

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Rory O’Neill aka Panti Bliss

Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+, Maynooth, Politics with tags , , , on April 2, 2022 by telescoper

Yesterday I attended an event at the Maynooth Students Union featuring Rory O’Neill, an LGBT+ rights activist who strongly involved in the campaign for Equal Marriage leading up to the referendum of 2015. Rory is perhaps better known in his drag persona, Panti Bliss. Rory left Panti at home for this event but it was extremely interesting and enjoyable – and a bit sweary! – to hear him talk about his life and experiences, especially why he became an activist and how he started out as a drag performer.

One of the things I remember very well was how he has spent time in countries where homosexuality is still unlawful talking to young LGBT+ people who a lack of hope that life can get better. He countered that Irish society even just a couple of decades ago was deeply homophobic and is now much more inclusive towards LGBT+ people. It’s not perfect, of course, but it’s a heck of a lot better than it was. Ireland proves that things do get better.

Although I’m a bit older than Rory, didn’t grow up in Ireland, and have had a very different career, much of his story did nevertheless resonate with me. I’ve said a number of times on this blog that if someone had told me back in 1988 (when the infamous Section 28 was brought in by the Thatcher Government to attack a community already reeling from the effects of AIDS) that in 25 times there would be equal marriage in the UK I simply would not have believed them. Rory said something very similar yesterday.

Anyway, although there wasn’t a huge turnout for the event yesterday I’m very glad I attended and am grateful for the Maynooth Access Programme for organizing it. The event also gives me an excuse to post this clip of Panti Bliss giving a brilliant (and now famous) speech at the Abbey Theatre in 2014.

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Maynooth University Library Cat Update

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on March 29, 2022 by telescoper

The recent spell of good weather has given Maynooth University Library Cat plenty of opportunities to laze around in the sunshine. I saw him on two occasions yesterday, separated by about 90 minutes, and he didn’t seem to have moved at all in that interval. I suppose he’s conserving energy, no doubt for some nefarious nocturnal purpose.

Unfortunately the weather seems to be about to change, with overnight rain forecast tonight and much colder temperatures from tomorrow. Maybe this will provoke our resident feline to adopt such extreme measures as retreating into his box, or perhaps even moving about occasionally to stay warm.

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Physics in a diverse world…

Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+, Maynooth with tags , , , , on March 25, 2022 by telescoper

Regular observers of the arXiv will have noticed a recent deluge avalanche of papers from the recent Snowmass Community Planning Exercise. There are many excellent reports although they came out all in a flurry which has made it difficult to keep on top of them.

An example that I missed was one that appeared in the Physics Education section of arXiv that arose from a talk by theoretical physicist Howard Georgi given at the KITP Conference: Snowmass Theory Frontier on Feb. 23, 2022. The paper, entitled Physics in a diverse world or A Spherical Cow* Model of Physics Talent, doesn’t have an abstract but is quite short and is well worth reading. You can download it here.

Here is a short extract with which I agree fully the philosophy of which I have tried very hard to follow ever since I got my first Professorship in 1998 (though not always with the cooperation of all colleagues, and sometimes, in the past, against the opposition of a few):

If your career is established and you are not making an explicit and continual effort to encourage, mentor, and support all young physicists, to create a welcoming climate in your department, and to promote the hiring of diverse faculty members, you are part of the problem.

I’m hoping next week to be able to pass on some exciting news in this regard about Maynooth University.

I wrote some of my own thoughts from the point of view of LGBT+ diversity here but much of what I said in that context is of wider relevance.

But that brings us to the question of why we should care about whether LGBT students might be deterred from becoming scientists. This is much the same issue as to why we should worry that there are so few female physics students. The obvious answer is based on notions of fairness: we should do everything we can to ensure that people have equal opportunity to advance their career in whatever direction appeals to them. But I’m painfully aware that there are some people for whom arguments based on fairness simply don’t wash. For them there’s another argument that may work better. As scientists whose goal is – or should be – the advancement of knowledge, the message is that we should strive as hard as possible to recruit the brightest and most creative brains into our subject. That means ensuring that the pool from which we recruit is as large and as diverse as possible. The best student drawn from such a pool is likely to be better than the best student from a smaller and more restricted one.

Big companies haven’t become gay-friendly employers in recent years out of a sudden urge for altruism. They’ve done it because they know that they’d otherwise be discouraging many excellent potential employees from joining them. It’s exactly the same for research

*This is an allusion to the old joke for the tendency of scientists – especially theoretical physicists – to adopt highly simplified models of complex phenomena.

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Blog Life

Posted in Biographical, Film, History with tags , , on March 23, 2022 by telescoper

It has been a very strange past few weeks on the blog with much higher levels of traffic than usual (though it is now reverting to more normal levels). Initially I assumed that this abnormal activity was generated by a certain person sniffing around old posts looking for things to complain about, but further investigation revealed that wasn’t the case at all.

In fact, a large fraction of the increase was generated by a post I wrote about a decade ago about Operation Carthage, a British air raid on March 21st 1945 aimed at destroying the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen.

The reason for the sudden increase in interest in this particular post is that a new film about the tragic events of that day, The Shadow of My Eye, has been on Netflix this month and this has apparently spurred people to google the subject, some of them finding my old post as a consequence. I haven’t seen the film so won’t comment on it myself, although there are some recent comments on the old post from people about it.

Talking about comments, I should remind my readers that I do have a policy which is published on the front page of this site. The statement of this policy includes

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.

If people make it necessary for me to ban them from posting comments, then all their previous comments will automatically be moved offline. I don’t take this step very often, but I make no apology for doing so when a person’s behaviour justifies it.

I hope this clarifies the situation.

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