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Hondootedly John Cole…

Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags , , , on May 30, 2019 by telescoper

I mentioned that Pat Kenny mistakenly called me `John Cole’ at the start of my interview on NewsTalk Radio a couple of days ago. He admitted that he was thinking of the late and much lamented BBC Political Editor of that name. John Cole was born in Belfast and his voice was frequently heard in pieces to camera as he talked about the great issues of the day. This sparked Private Eye to run a piece in almost every issue, mocking his strong Ulster accent, entitled John Cole writes. Here’s an example, from Issue No. 641:

This one is fairly topical as it is on the subject of the 1986 Divorce Referendum in Ireland which was on whether to remove the constitutional ban on divorce. That vote failed, but the vote held on Friday went completely in the other direction with 82% in favour of removing the ban.

 

 

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Winners and Losers

Posted in Biographical, Crosswords, Politics with tags , , on May 30, 2019 by telescoper

Hopefully the hecticity of the last week or so will now begin to die down and I can get on with the rest of my examination marking, which I hope to complete today.

Now to a couple of updates.

Yesterday I took delivery of the above book. Regular readers of this blog will probably not recall that I won the Financial Times Crosssword competition way back in February. The prize never arrived so I contacted them to ask what had happened. It must have got lost in the post, but they kindly sent a replacement which arrived promptly. The book is not a dictionary, but is about the story of the creation of one – the Oxford English Dictionary to be precise. I look forward to reading it!

The other matter to be updated concerns the Irish Elections to the European Parliament. The counting of these proved to be a slow process but watching the regular updates on the web as votes were transferred is actually rather fascinating. It’s surprisingly difficult to predict where second choice votes of eliminated candidates will end up. The Green Party seems rather `transfer-friendly’, for example, whereas Sinn Féin is not.

In my own constituency of Midlands-North-West it took thirteen rounds of counting to pick the four MEPs: one for Sinn Féin, two for Fine Gael and one strange but probably harmless Independent. The turnout was about 50%. I think Fianna Fáil made a tactical error by fielding two candidates: neither had enough first-preference votes to make the cut.

I was worried that the dreadful Peter Casey might sneak in in fourth place but he fell well short of the required transfers, though he still got a worryingly large number of votes. The Irish Media are making the same mistake pandering to him as they have done in the UK with Nigel Farage: he gets far more airtime than the other candidates despite being obviously unfit for office.

Elswhere, Dublin elected MEPs from the Green Party (1), Fine Gael (1) and Fianna Fáil (1) and one Independent standing under the banner of `Independents for Change’ (I4C). The incumbent Sinn Féin candidate Lynn Boylan lost her seat. The 4th candidate here will only take a seat in the European Parliament if and when the United Kingdom leaves the EU.

As I write there’s a recount going on in Ireland South, but it looks like the winners will be Fine Gael (2), Fianna Fáil (1), I4C (1) and the fifth (who will only take up a seat after Brexit) will probably be from the Green Party. It looks like incumbent Sinn Féin MEP Liadh Ní Riada (and unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency) will lose her seat, but the count is very close: only a few hundred votes are in it, hence the recount. UPDATE: in fact there will be a full recount of the whole ballot, which could take weeks.

Overall it’s clear that the losers are Sinn Féin, who lost two MEPs (and also about half their councillors in the local elections). After appearing to improve their vote share in recent years this is a definite reverse for them. The party that gained the most is the Green Party, with (probably) two MEPs and a strong showing in Midlands-North-West. I wonder if they can keep this momentum going for a General Election?

Interestingly, unlike the rest of the `United’ Kingdom Northern Ireland uses the Single Transferable Vote system for European Elections too. There Sinn Féin came top of first preferences and won one seat, with another for the Alliance and one for the DUP. That’s two-to-one in favour of `Remain’.

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Talking and Marking

Posted in Biographical, Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on May 28, 2019 by telescoper

I’m taking a short break from my examination marking to have a cup of tea before I resume and make an attempt to finish it this evening. I’m late today because I had to go into Dublin to do an interview on NewsTalk Radio with a chap called Pat Kenny.

I was supposed to go on about 11.15 and was told to get to their HQ by 11am. I got there a bit earlier in fact and had to sit around a bit in the offices before going into the studio and then my bit was delayed because they wanted to play an audio recording of some bloke called Tony Blair pointing out, with devastating insight, that the United Kingdom is a very divided country.

After a bit of a delay  for that and a commercial break we finally got going nearer to 11.30. The subject of the interview was, of course, the Einstein-Eddington-Eclipse-Extravaganza taking place tomorrow. Pat Kenny introduced me as `John Coles from Maynooth University’, obviously thinking of John Cole, the former BBC political correspondent. Remember him? Anyway, I corrected him it and it went reasonably well from then on.

Unfortunately I’ve got a bit of a cold so I’ve been coughing and spluttering a bit and was a bit worried I would sneeze into the microphone but got through it reasonably well. I’ve done one or two bits of radio before, including an encounter with John Humphreys on BBC Radio 4, which that was about the anniversary of the publication of Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time.

Anyway after this morning’s interview was finished I was asked if I minded recording a little video about the topic I’d been talking about so I went with a nice young man into a very small  but very brightly lit room. I think it will probably look like a hostage video, but I’ll post it here if and when I find it. I gather they will put it up somewhere tomorrow, along with a podcast of the Pat Kenny show.

Now back to the marking.

 

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Exercising the Franchise

Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags , , on May 24, 2019 by telescoper

First thing this morning I cast my vote in Maynooth, the polling station for which is in the Presentation Girls School, a Catholic Primary School. It wasn’t amazingly busy inside but there was a steady flow of people coming through. There were 8 desks dishing out ballot papers, more desks than you usually get at a polling station in the UK. There were three ballot papers, one for the European Parliament, one for the Local Council, and one for the Constitutional Referendum.

Anyway, Polling Card in hand I eventually found the right desk. Having done my homework last night I ranked all 17 candidates for the European Parliament Elections and all 9 for the Local Council Elections, copying my preferences from a piece of paper I had taken with me. The Single Transferable Vote system must making counting quite a lengthy process so it will take some time before the results are known.

At least I got to vote, which many EU citizens in the UK were unable to do. There’s a major scandal brewing about what looks like deliberate disenfranchisement. These things shouldn’t happen in a democracy, but apparently in the United Kingdom they do.

I had a very busy morning after arriving at the Department so I’ve just discovered that Theresa May has resigned. Part of me is delighted as I thought she was callous and mean-spirited as well as being useless. Apparently she cried when she read out her resignation statement. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to burst out laughing.

The feeling of happiness that the current PM is leaving is however tempered by the very high probability that whoever replaces her will be even worse…

So I’m now heading off to Dublin again for the second session of IQF 2019 after which I’ll be going to the Gaiety Theatre for a performance of the Magic Flute, an Opera about Particle Physics.

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Irish Quantum Foundations and Other Matters

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on May 23, 2019 by telescoper

So here I am then, at Irish Quantum Foundations (IQF) 2019 which is being held in the Hamilton Building (shown above), and hosted by the School of Mathematics of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, which is sometimes known as Trinity College, Dublin for short.

I got here a bit later than I originally planned as some last-minute things came up this morning to do with next week’s events. I’ll have to skip tomorrow morning too, for similar reasons. When I did get going this morning I had to stand all the way from Maynooth to Connolly because the train was packed. At least it was reasonably on time though.

Anyway, the schedule of IQF 2019 is rather varied and I’m looking forward to the parts of it that I can attend.

Among the things I have been dealing with to do with next week are  submitting the final version of pedagogical piece about the Eclipse Expeditions of 2019 which should be published very soon in Contemporary Physics (at least in the online version) and writing a short piece for RTÉ Brainstorm (which will appear on Monday 27th May), and sorting out an appearance on Newstalk Radio next week. How I’ll get time to finish my exam marking in the middle of all this I don’t know!

 

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The Week Ahead

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff, Maynooth, Opera, The Universe and Stuff on May 20, 2019 by telescoper

Well, my little jaunt back to Wales is almost over and I’ll soon be heading back to Maynooth for a very busy rest of the week.

The two examinations I’ve set this term are tomorrow (Engineering Maths) and Wednesday (Computational Physics). I’ll try to make a start on the marking as soon as I get my hands on the scripts, but on Thursday and Friday there is the annual Irish Quantum Foundations meeting, which this year is being hosted by Trinity College Dublin. I gave a talk at the same event last year, but this time I’m just in the audience.

Some time on Friday I have to cast my vote in the elections to the Local Council and European Parliament being held in Ireland. There is also a referendum to do with changing the law on divorce.

And after all that, on Friday evening, I’ll be paying my first ever visit to the famous Gaiety Theatre in Dublin for my first ever experience of Irish National Opera.

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The Tenth Anniversary of the Herschel/Planck Launch

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on May 14, 2019 by telescoper

A little birdie told me (via a tweet) that today is the 10th anniversary of the launch of the ESA Planck and Herschel satellite missions. Can it really be so long ago?

Anyway, both were superbly successful and both involved many friends and former colleagues from Cardiff and elsewhere, so I thought I’d reblog this post which I wrote on the day of the launch (on May 14 2009)….

telescoper's avatarIn the Dark

The Big Day has finally arrived!

I’ve managed to submit my paper to the journal and the ArXiv before the little shindig we’ve been planning for the Planck and Herschel launch gets under way at 1pm. Business as usual so far, though.

Strangely, I haven’t managed to get nervous yet, although I have to say  there are many anxious faces around the department. I just keep telling people how much simpler their life is going to be if it all goes wrong, without all that messy and unnecessarily complicated data to deal with. It bothers me sometimes that I don’t often get nervous expect when watching sport. Mind you, being  a Newcastle United supporter probably makes me more nervous more often than most people.

Anyway, at times like this a  stiff upper lip is obviously called for. Anyone who cracks now is clearly not officer material. There’ll be plenty of…

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Dreaming and Screaming

Posted in Biographical with tags , on May 10, 2019 by telescoper

A few weeks ago I had a very bad dream and, unlike most dreams I have, I didn’t forget it immediately afterwards. In fact I keep thinking about it, although it hasn’t recurred. I’m not sure why I decided to share it here, but here goes..

In the dream I am giving a lecture using a blackboard in a lecture theatre to a group of students. The lecture theatre isn’t a specific room that I remember and the students in the audience are not people that I recognise at all.

Anyway, I’m busy talking when the door at one side of the front of the theatre opens to reveal not the standard corridor that you would expect alongside a lecture theatre a university building but a very long corridor leading off into the distance.

I pay little attention and carry on lecturing. A few moments later I look out along the corridor where, off in the distance, there is a very dark object. It’s very far aware and I can make out no details. I turn my attention back to the lecture.

This happens several times, and each time the shape is closer to the doorway to the lecture theatre. It remains indistinct in shape. No arms or legs or head, just a sort of black blob. It is not sharply delineated around the ages nor does it suggest any sense of depth. It’s like someone has painted something a very dense black into the air. It’s not obvious even how it moves as it does not appear to be on the ground and seems still every time I look at it, but each time I look away and look back it has moved closer. I am getting more and more frightened.

Eventually the shape is in the doorway, about to enter the room, and I’m now completely terrified. I look at the audience in the lecture theatre and they have all gone away. There’s just me and the thing.

As I watch, the thing enters the room. At this point I decide to run away, but I can’t move. I try again but I’m rooted to the spot. I scream, but I can make no sound. The thing moves closer. And closer.

Eventually, with the thing just a few feet away, my attempts to scream succeed. I screech at the top of voice.

At this point I woke up with a start. I’m pretty sure that I really did scream in my sleep and it was that noise that woke me up. I hope I didn’t wake up my neighbours! My heart was pounding and I was sweating. There being no possibility of going back to sleep, I got up and had a glass of water. It was about 4am. I didn’t sleep any more that night.

I’m by no means an expert in the interpretation of dreams but on the occasions when I can remember what I’ve dreamed about it always seems to be a weird juxtaposition of things I’ve experienced in the previous day or two.

My interpretation of this sort of thing is that during a dream the sleeping brain is sifting through recent experiences and relating them to others, including recent events and things lodged in long-term memory. If I’m right, then this kind of dream is basically a by-product of the workings of a sort of subconscious filing system.

There are other kinds of dream, of course, and they don’t always fit into this pattern. In my experience the majority don’t make any sense at all, so I won’t say any more about that class. I don’t know how many people have regular recurrent dreams, but I do; these are of two types. The first is a standard `anxiety’ dream. I could be sitting in an orchestra on the stage of a concert hall, or some similar situation. I have a musical instrument in my hands and am dressed for the part, like all the other musicians. It is shortly before the performance is due to start. The problem is that I don’t actually know how to play the instrument. Time is ticking away and I’m soon to be found out. How do I escape?

The second type of recurrent dream is harder to fathom. I’ve moved around quite a lot during my career. In this kind of dream I’m supposed to be back in one of the places I used to live, but it’s curiously different from what it was like in reality. One example involved me being back in my old flat in Bethnal Green. Exploring the place I took a nice walk through the French windows and into the garden. Trouble is, the flat didn’t actually have French windows or a garden. How could it? It wasn’t even on the ground floor…

Anyway it seems obvious that the black thing in the corridor represents some sort of anxiety, a kind of variation of the type I mentioned above, but I’m intrigued by the fact that it had no discernible form. It was just a pool of blackness. It wouldn’t have made a very impressive monster in a horror film, but it was certainly terrifying.

Now, would any psychoanalysts out there like to interpret this for me?

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With Strings Attached?

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on May 6, 2019 by telescoper

Image Credit: Flickr user Trailfan.

I was flicking through various posts on the interwebs this morning while I was having my breakfast and came across one that nearly made me choke on my muesli. What it’s like to be a theoretical physicist is a piece in Stanford University news. In it I found the following quote:

String theory feels like a little superpower that I have, this physical intuition that enables me to make connections and have insights into things that by rights I should not be able to say anything interesting about.

I’ve tried many times to read that in a way that doesn’t come across as arrogant, but I’m afraid I’ve failed – especially because (speaking as a physicist) I don’t think string theory has so far given us any profound insights into physics at all.

Now I’m mindful of the fact that many mathematicians think string theory is great. I’ve had it pointed out to me that it has a really big influence on for example geometry, especially non-commutative geometry, and even some number theory research in the past 30 years. It has even inspired work that has led to Fields medals. That’s all very well and good, but it’s not physics. It’s mathematics.

Of course physicists have long relied on mathematics for the formulation of theoretical ideas. Riemannian geometry was `just’ mathematics before its ideas began to be used in the formulation of the general theory of relativity, a theory that has since been subjected to numerous experimental tests. It may be the case that string theory will at some point provide us with predictions that enable it to be tested in the way that general relativity did. But it hasn’t done that yet and until it does it is not a scientifically valid physical theory.

I remember a quote from Alfred North Whitehead that I put in my PhD DPhil thesis many years ago. I wasn’t thinking of string theory at the time, but it seems relevant:

There is no more common error that to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.

My problem is not with string theory itself but with the fact that so many string theorists have become so attached to it that it has become a universe in its own right, with very little to do with the natural universe which is – or at least used to be – the subject of theoretical physics. I find it quite alarming, actually, that in the world outside academia you will find many people who think theoretical physics and string theory are more-or-less synonymous.

The most disturbing manifestation of this tendency is the lack of interest shown by some exponents of string theory in the issue of whether or not it is testable. By this I don’t mean whether we have the technology at the moment to test it (which we clearly don’t). Many predictions of the standard model of particle physics had to wait decades before accelerators got big enough to reach the required energies. The question is whether string theory can be testable in principle, and surely this is something any physicist worthy of the name should consider to be of fundamental importance?

P.S. This rant reminded me of the time I got severely told off by a very senior British physicist (who shall remain nameless) when I was quoted in Physics World as saying that I thought that in a hundred years time string theory would be of more interest to sociologists than physicists…

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Bealtaine and a Vicennial

Posted in Biographical, Music with tags , , , on May 1, 2019 by telescoper

This morning I found that today is called Beltane (Lá Bealtaine in Irish) an old Celtic festival that marks the mid-point between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. According to my calculations that should be May 6th, but that’s close enough I suppose. Anyway, let me offer a hearty `Lá Bealtaine sona daoibh‘!

Today is also the twentieth anniversary of the first broadcast by RTE Lyric FM which first went on air on May 1st 1999. Since I moved to Ireland in 2017 I’ve been a regular listener to Lyric FM in the mornings and evenings. I particularly enjoy the eclectic mix of music played by John Kelly on Mystery Train followed by Bernard Clarke on The Blue of the Night during the week. Both are very knowledgeable presenters who are happy to play rare and unusual music and to respond to inquiries about the music played. Bernard Clarke has even played a couple of requests of mine, both of them jazz records. During the late evenings at the weekend I listen to Ellen Cranitch whose show Vespertine is `a night-time voyage, crossing time and space to share a selection of classical, jazz, roots and contemporary music’. You never quite know what’s coming up next on any of these programmes.

Anyway, there’s a big gala concert happening tonight at the National Concert Hall in Dublin by way of a vicennial celebration. I didn’t get my act together to buy a ticket, but I’ll be listening on my wireless at home. Possibly with a glass or several of wine.

When Lyric FM was launched on 1st May 1999 I had recently moved out of London to Nottingham where I had my first Professorship. Since then I moved to Cardiff, then to Sussex, back to Cardiff, and then to Maynooth. I bet quite a lot has happened to the radio station too!

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