Storm Lorenzo passed over Maynooth during the night bringing with it a lot of rain but at least the winds were not too fierce. At least I assume they were not too fierce because I slept through the whole thing. I tend to sleep well with a bottle of fine wine inside me.
This morning as I walked into work it was still raining but other than that fairly peaceful. Maynooth University Library Cat was on post despite the rain although he was looking a bit bedraggled and his food dishes were filled with water. He must have had a rough night, as I’m not sure his box provided must protection. Unfortunately this was one morning when I didn’t have any treats for him in my pocket so I hope some other nice person gives him something to eat!
It was calm and rather mild this morning as I walked into work, although the news on the radio this morning was filled with news about the rapidly approaching Storm Lorenzo. Lorenzo is a huge storm and was only downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm when it was about 500km from the Irish coast so it could be even more serious than Storm Ophelia, which caused chaos a couple of years ago.
This is how the storm looked in the early hours of this morning:
And this is the projection for later today. The prevailing wind right now is westerly, but this will veer to south-westerly as the storm moves along its (roughly) north-easterly path:
Here is an infra-red image taken this morning showing the outer belts of cloud already over Ireland.
Quite a few events have been called off in anticipation of the arrival of Storm Lorenzo this evening, with heavy rain and gale force winds forecast across the country. There are signs, however, that the low pressure region at the heart of the storm is filling more rapidly than expected, so it might not be as severe as feared, although there remains a significant risk of localized flooding and wind damage, especially in the West. I plan to sit it out at home this evening with a glass or two of wine for company…
As you may know, together with Fiona Morley of Maynooth University Library, last week I contributed to this `webinar’:
If you missed the event itself then you can follow the link here to access a full recording of the webinar. You can also find a quick summary of the goings-on here.
And if all this weren’t exciting enough, here are the slides I used for my bit.
The rain is pouring down here in Maynooth, but this isn’t the only place to have had inclement weather today:
The picture above shows the scene this morning at Chester-le-Street in County Durham where the County Championship Division 2 match between Durham and Glamorgan was taking place. Or rather, wasn’t taking place. The game was abandoned this morning owing to a the cumulative effect of heavy rain over the last few days that allowed only 86 overs to be bowled in total over the four days.
This match being declared a draw, Glamorgan finish the season in 4th place on 167 points, missing out on promotion to Division 1 but having performed much better than last season. They were top of the table early on, but the loss of the excellent Marnus Labuschagne to Ashes duty for Australia proved a big blow and they fell back in the second half of the season. Anyway, at least they’ll probably win a few games next season, while they would undoubtedly struggle in Division 1. Lancashire finish top of the Division 2 table by a country mile, while Northants and Gloucester also go up.
I always thing of the last day of the County Championship as the end of summer. This year most of the final round of games has been hit by the weather so it’s a rather damp ending. This is also the first year in a while in which I haven’t seen any live cricket. Still, there’s always next year.
That’s basically all I have time to write about today as I’ve been running around all day – including popping into the library to give the webinar I mentioned yesterday. Moreover, at 6pm local time all the power in the building is going off and we’re to be turfed out while some repair work is done. I’ll shortly have to go round checking all the computers are switched off.
The Autumnal Equinox (in the Northern hemisphere) took place today (Monday 23rd September 2019) at 8.50am in Ireland.
People sometimes ask me how one can define the `equinox’ so precisely when surely it just refers to a day on which day and night are of equal length, implying that it’s a day not a specific time? The answer is that the equinox is defined by a specific event, the event in question being when the plane defined by Earth’s equator passes through the centre of the Sun’s disk (or, if you prefer, when the centre of the Sun passes through the plane defined by Earth’s equator). Day and night are not necessarily exactly equal on the equinox, but they’re the closest they get. From now on days in the Northern hemisphere will be shorter than nights and they’ll get shorter until the Winter Solstice.
For many people the autumnal equinox is taken to be the end of summer, though there is a saying around these parts that `Summer is Summer to Michaelmas Day’ (which does not happen until September 29th). Nevertheless it is the first day of teaching term and the start of the last round of this years matches in English cricket’s County Championship. The end of the cricket season is the end of summer as far as I’m concerned, though I haven’t seen any matches in person this year.
Over the past week or two the new students have been going through various induction and orientation processes, but their first encounter with actual teaching will be tomorrow. I will be greeting our 94 new first-year Mathematical Physics students at 11am on their first day. I hope I don’t put too many off. Then I start the fourth-years off on Astrology and CosmeticsAstrophysics and Cosmology. That is assuming that I take the right notes to the right lectures.
Anyway, I think that’s enough rambling for now. I’ve got to finish getting my notes together for the next few days. Let me end by wishing the new and returning students at Maynooth all the best for the new academic year. That goes for all students everywhere too! Work hard, and enjoy your studies, but don’t forget to enjoy life on the way!
I thought I’d do a quick round-up of my little trip around cultural and historic Dublin yesterday after being stood down from duty at the Higher Options fair at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). I have to say it was wonderful to see so many people out and about in the City’s beautiful parks and public spaces enjoying the September sunshine as I walked around.
The RDS is in the Ballsbridge area in of Dublin, to the East of the City. My route into town from there took me along Northumberland Road, where I took this picture outside Number 25:
A little further along I went across Mount Street Bridge, passing this memorial.
If you want to know more about the significance of these memorials to the events of the Easter Rising in 1916, see my post here.
My main intention during my afternoon off was to visit the National Gallery of Ireland which is situated on one side of Merrion Square. I have to say that this was even better than I’d expected, and I’m sure to visit again many times in the future. The ground floor is dominated by the work of Irish artists from about 1660 to 1965, together with European Art from 1835 to 1965. You will find works by Monet and Picasso in this section, which has much to savour. Among the Irish artists represented in this show is Jack B. Yeats (brother of poet W.B. Yeats), an extremely interesting artist in his own right.
The highlights for me, however, were found on the 3rd floor which displays examples of European Art from the early Renaissance (c. 1300) to the Enlightenment. One of the interesting things about this collection is that it is arranged thematically rather than by artist (or nationality thereof). There is, for example, an entire room of paintings inspired and influenced by Caravaggio, all of them with an intensely dramatic use of light and shadow. The gallery is worth it just for that room, but there are also fascinating juxtapositions of religious paintings from the renaissance with icons and altarpieces from the Byzantine and Russian orthodox traditions from the same period.
Elsewhere in the collection there are notable works by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Perugino as well as a number of British works by, for example, Gainsborough and Reynolds.
The work that really stopped me in my tracks, however, was this:
This is St Francis Receiving The Stigmata by El Greco. I knew about this painting but had no idea it was in Dublin. Seeing it close up is a revelation: the swirling brushstrokes give it an extraordinary texture that makes it hard to bring the image completely into focus. The hypnotic feel that results is a brilliant depiction of a man undergoing a kind of ecstatic vision. This work has an unbelievably powerful effect on the viewer (or at least on this one).
After a break for a sit down and a cup of coffee I visited the Natural History Museum (which is practically next door to the National Gallery). This is a surprisingly old-fashioned affair, with hundreds of stuffed animals and birds crammed into two large rooms:
It reminded me a lot of visits to the Hancock Museum in Newcastle when I was a kid. It’s interesting, but more than a little creepy and would make an excellent setting for a horror story!
After adjourning to a pub for a pint of Guinness the final stop of the day was the National Concert Hall for yesterday’s Culture Night concert. On the way there I saw a big queue of people trying to get into one of the many free events around Dublin. It turns out this Culture Night was the grand opening of the Museum of Literature Ireland, which is situated in Newman House on the South Side of St Stephen’s Green. There’s another one to put on my list of places to visit.
The Culture Night concert was by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin. The opening piece, Kinah, was a composition by the conductor himself and is a sort of memorial to his parents, both of whom were classical musicians, one a violinist and the other a cellist, and together they formed half of the famous Hollywood String Quartet. It was a new piece for me, and I found it very moving indeed. After that there was a bit of reorganization on stage to make way for the Steinway on which the brilliant Xiayin Wang played the Piano Concerto by Samuel Barber, which consists of two fast and furious movements either side of a beautifully lyrical slower movement. This must be a ferociously difficult piece to play – especially the last movement which is at a breakneck pace in 5/8 time – requiring not only dexterity but physical strength. It was a wonderful performance by Xiayin Wang, who rounded off the first half with an encore in the form of a transcription of George Gershwin’s song The Man I Love.
After the wine break interval came the main course in the form of the Symphony No. 4 in E Minor by Johannes Brahms. This is of course a much more familiar work than the previous two, but I really like concerts that mix unfamiliar material with the standard concert repertoire. It also gave me the chance to persevere with Brahms as my friends keep telling me to. It’s not that I don’t like Brahms, it’s just that I don’t find that he moves me as much as many other composers and so many people rave about him that I think I must be missing something. The 4th Symphony is a very fine work, and was performed beautifully last night under the direction of Leonard Slatkin (conducting, incidentally, without a score), but I couldn’t stop myself thinking how much like Beethoven it sounds. That’s not meant to be derogatory, by the way.
But you don’t need to take my word for it. You can listen to (and watch) the whole concert here:
Anyway, after the applause had died down I headed out towards Pearse Station for the train back to Maynooth. I was a bit tired after a very full day and wanted to get the 10.08 train so I didn’t stop to watch any of the numerous musical and artistic events I passed on the way, including an intriguing installation involving images projected onto one of the buildings to the side of St Stephen’s Green. I made it to the station with 5 minutes to spare and discovered that, because it was Culture Night, the train home was free!
So here I am at the RDS in Dublin for the final day of Higher Options which is a sort of trade fair for Irish Universities, other tertiary education institutions and related organisations.
It’s my first trip to one of these events and I was a bit taken aback by the crowds when I arrived. I’m not very good in unfamiliar situations where there a lots of people moving around me.
Fortunately I soon found the Maynooth stand, which was fairly conspicuous:
Once I found the sanctuary where I was supposed to be it was all fine. There was a constant stream of people coming to talk to us until about 1pm, when it started to quieten.
Just as well really as we had run out of the relevant literature!
Now I’m a free agent and it’s a lovely afternoon so I’m going to wander around Dublin this afternoon until this evening’s concert at the National Concert Hall. My excuses for not going back to Maynooth are (a) that I didn’t fancy going back just to come into Dublin later this evening and (b) that this is the last day before teaching starts next week, and therefore my last chance of a bit of rest and recreation before term!
Update: there was, apparently, an incident outside the RDS while I was inside, but I wasn’t aware of it at all and only found out about it after I left.
In gratitude for Maynooth University’s recent rise in the Times Higher League Tables reported yesterday, the authorities have made appropriate offerings to the deity responsible for this good fortune:
I notice also that Maynooth University Library Cat is clearly the inspiration for this visualisation of an inspiralling system, though I’m not sure what amplitude of gravitational waves this event would produce.
All of which means that I’m about to go home for an evening’s relaxation before spending tomorrow in Dublin…
Last week saw the publication of the Times Higher World University Rankings which have once again predictably generated a great deal of sound and fury while signifying nothing very important. I can’t be bothered to repeat my previous criticisms of these league tables (though I will point you to a very good rant here) but I will make a couple of comments on the reaction to them here in Ireland.
First let me mention (for what it’s worth) that Maynooth University has risen from the band covering 351st-400th place to that covering 301st to 350th place. That means that Maynooth went up by anything from 1 place to 99 places. That’s two consecutive years of rises for NUIM.
(I’ll add without further comment that I arrived here two years ago…)
The Irish Media have not paid much attention to this (or to the improvement in standing of NUI Galway) but have instead been preoccupied with the fact that the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, known as Trinity College Dublin for short, has fallen by 44 places to 164th place; see, for example, here. Now there’s no question in my mind that Irish universities need an injection of income – especially in science subjects – in order to improve standards of education and research, but I don’t really understand the obsession with Trinity College. It’s a fine institution, of course, but sometimes it’s almost as if the press think that’s the only University in Ireland…
In response to its declining fortunes Trinity College has claimed that Ireland needs a `Rankings Strategy’. No it doesn’t. It needs something far more radical – a higher education strategy. The current government doesn’t have one
Anyway, given the rate of Maynooth’s rise and Trinity’s fall it is a straightforward undoubtedly scientifically valid extrapolation to predict that in two or three years time, Maynooth will have overtaken Trinity in the World Rankings anyway!
(No, I’m not going to take any bets on that.)
Turning away from the exercise in numerological flummery that is the Times Higher League Tables, let me pass on some numbers that are actually meaningful. The week before term with not everyone yet registered, the number of students taking Mathematical Physics in the first year at Maynooth has increased by 31% since last year and the number on our fast-track Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (TP&M) programme has increased threefold. These increases are very pleasing. Although lectures proper don’t start until next week, I did an introductory session with the TP&M students this morning. It was very nice to be able to welcome them to Maynooth for what I hope will be an enjoyable time at Ireland’s soon-to-be top University!
Yesterday at the end of a busy week I finally got round to booking a ticket for next Friday’s Culture Night performance at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. That will be my first concert of the new season and I’m looking forward to it. Among other things, it gives me the chance to persevere with Brahms…
Since I first arrived in Ireland nearly two years ago, I searched through the available radio stations for one that I could listen to and it didn’t take me long to settle on RTÉ lyric fm, which has been a regular source of edification, relaxation and stress relief for me. I fear its loss tremendously. I’m not the only one. If you’re on Twitter, take a look at the hashtag #savelyricfm.
I listen to the jovial Marty Whelan in the morning before work, and when I get home in the evenings I enjoy John Kelly’s Mystery Train followed by Bernard Clarke’s The Blue of the Night on weekdays and Ellen Cranitch’s The Purple Vespertine at the weekends. All these programmes have intriguingly eclectic playlists, from classical to jazz and beyond, and presenters who clearly know and love the music. It’s not just a music channel, of course. RTÉ lyric fm covers culture and the arts generally, and is the only channel run by RTÉ – which is meant to be a public service broadcaster – that has this area as its province. It would be a crying shame as well as an abdication of its cultural responsibility if all this were lost to save the paltry amount of money required to keep the station going. I’ll do anything I can to save RTÉ lyric fm. For me it really is one of the very best things about Ireland.
I might add that I stopped watching television many years ago and don’t have a TV set. I’m even less inclined to get one now that I’m in Ireland as the schedules are dominated by the kind of crappy programmes I didn’t watch when I lived in Britain and have even less reason to watch now. The radio, on the other hand, in something I enjoy a lot.
Another item that was doing the rounds last week was the publication of the annual Times Higher Education World Rankings. I’ll save a proper rant about the stupidity and dishonesty of these league tables for another occasion, but one thing that has preoccupied the media here about the results is that Irish universities have done rather badly: Trinity College, for example, has fallen 44 places since last year. While I don’t trust these tables much, together with Ireland’s very poor showing in the recent ERC grant round, they do paint a consistent picture of a higher education system that is struggling with with the consequences of years of chronic underfunding.
(I’ll add that Maynooth University bucked the trend a bit, rising from the band covering 351st-400th place to that covering 301st to 350th place. That means that Maynooth went up by anything from 1 place to 99 places. There can be little doubt who is responsible for this…)
For me these stories are both consequences of the prevailing political culture in Ireland, which is a form of neoliberalism that deems neither culture nor public service nor education to be things of value in themselves and therefore just leaves them to dwindle through lack of care. The only think that matters is the cycle of production and consumption. Culture is irrelevant.
While the Irish economy is booming – at least in terms of GDP growth – the proceeds of this growth go to a relatively small number of rich individuals and multinational corporations while most people don’t see any benefit at all, either in their own salaries, or in investment in the public services. Austerity for everyone except the rich has been the policy for the last decade in Ireland as it has in the United Kingdom and the consequences are plain for all to see, in the arts, in the universities and in the lives of ordinary people.
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.
Storm Lorenzo passed over Maynooth during the night bringing with it a lot of rain but at least the winds were not too fierce. At least I assume they were not too fierce because I slept through the whole thing. I tend to sleep well with a bottle of fine wine inside me.
In the Dark 
