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#ShutDownSTEM & #ShutDownAcademia
Posted in Politics on June 10, 2020 by telescoperD-Day 76 Years On.
Posted in History, Politics with tags Antifascists, D-Day, Normandy on June 6, 2020 by telescoper
Just a reminder that it was 76 years ago today, on June 6th 1944, that antifascists began landing on the beaches of Normandy.
Follow @telescoperWelcome to Pride Month 2020!
Posted in Covid-19, LGBTQ+, Politics on June 1, 2020 by telescoper
Once again it’s time for a month of LGBTQ Pride.
Although the main Dublin Pride event has been cancelled this year because of the Covid-19 outbreak, there are still a number of virtual events going on.
Thus year more than any other Pride gives us an important opportunity to express solidarity to all grieving and fighting for a better world in the face of monstrous injustices such as the murder of George Floyd.
That includes those of us who are white and gay acknowledging that systematic racism exists and that by keeping quiet and doing nothing we are, however unintentionally, complicit in it.
This Violation
Posted in Film, Politics with tags Dominic Cummings, Fintan O'Toole, Mark Cousins, Politics on May 31, 2020 by telescoperA typically perceptive and powerful piece in the Guardian by Fintan O’Toole about dignity, violation and the Dominic Cummings has been turned into a short film by Mark Cousins. It features a hundred people, from all walks of life, each reading a line of it to camera. It’s very well worth watching.
Follow @telescoperAn Open Letter from Irish Scientists
Posted in Politics, Science Politics on May 25, 2020 by telescoperJust a quick post to pass on the news of an Open Letter from Irish Scientists (and other academics) that is doing the rounds. The letter begins:
Five years ago over 1,000 Irish scientists wrote to government urging a rebalancing of funding toward basic research. Basic discovery research is exactly the type that produces the scientists, skills and serendipitous solutions we need when faced with an unexpected challenge like COVID-19. Half a decade on from that letter little has changed for the better. The crisis in Irish research has deepened and risks becoming fatal if not addressed. To avoid another decade of drift that the nation cannot afford we the undersigned believe Ireland needs to establish a dedicated cabinet-level Department for Higher Education & Research. We fear the country will pay the price in future crises and miss opportunities for innovation if government doesn’t recommit to proper investment and attention for higher education and research urgently.
You can read the rest of it here where, if you are so minded, you can also sign it (as I have done; I’m Number 307).
Arrogant and Offensive
Posted in Politics with tags Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, UK Civil Service on May 24, 2020 by telescoper
This extraordinary tweet (now deleted) was posted by the official UK Civil Service account after the Prime Minister’s shameful attempt to defend the obvious wrongdoing of his boss, the unelected official Dominic Cummings. It was only live for about ten minutes but was very widely circulated, as the stats show.
Whoever posted the tweet has obviously now lost their job, but it had to be said and I applaud them.
The Cummings affair demonstrates even more clearly that the UK Government considers itself above the rule of law. People need to wake up, quickly.
More immediately, Boris Johnson has just thrown the UK’s response to Covid-19 in the bin. If the rules don’t apply to Cummings why should anyone else obey them?
Calculating the UK COVID Alert Level
Posted in Covid-19, mathematics, Politics with tags Boris Johnson, COVID Alert Level, Covid-19, feckin eejit on May 11, 2020 by telescoper
I didn’t watch yesterday’s broadcast by the UK’s Clown-in-Chief Bozo Johnson but I gather that he delivered an address that was every bit as coherent and lucid as one might have expected.
I for one am delighted that at last there is some clarity in the UK Government’s position and that they have applied the necessary level of mathematical rigour to their treatment of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Catching up on these pronouncements via Twitter I was impressed to see, for example, to see this precise formulation of the calculation required to establish the COVID Alert Level.
Let me take you through a detailed calculation using this important formula.
As far as I know the best estimate of the basic reproduction number R in the UK is around 0.8.
As of this morning (11th May) the number of confirmed Covid-19 infections in the UK is 219,183.
Applying the formula I obtain a value
COVID Alert Level = 219183.8
That seems a big number. I thought it should only go up to 11. Have I slipped up somewhere?
Death in the UK
Posted in Covid-19, Politics with tags Coronavirus, Covid-19, Financial Times on April 22, 2020 by telescoperI couldn’t resist the temptation to do a short post drawing attention to an article in the Financial Times that points out that, based on an analysis of data from the Office of National Statistics, the number of Covid-19 related deaths in the UK is probably around 41,000 which is more than twice the official figure. Unusually for the FT the article is not behind a paywall so I recommend you read it.
Here you can see a couple of figures from the FT piece:
There are three main reasons why the official figures are misleading, namely that Covid-19 deaths reported each day by the UK authorities exclude:
Your reminder that the Covid-19 deaths reported each day by the UK authorities exclude:
- those who died of Covid-19 without ever being tested;
- those who died of Covid-19 who were tested but whose result was a false negative;
- those who died of Covid-19 outside hospitals whether they were tested or not.
Whenever I have pointed this out on Twitter (which I have done several times) I have attracted comments to the effect of “So what? Every country does the same” which is untrue. Several other countries (both large and small), including Ireland, include deaths outside hospital. Not all countries have such a shambolic policy on testing either, so not all countries leave people to die alone in their own homes without being tested. And, above all, not all countries have a Government consisting entirely of people whose incompetence is surpassed only by their dishonesty.
I’m not saying that it’s easy to communicate reliable data during a rapidly evolving pandemic. The Irish authorities are struggling to keep their figures accurate and up to date. The result is that the information available to the public is sometimes a bit confusing.
For example, a couple of days ago there was a significant upward spike in the reported deaths (red curve, about a factor two increase):
Whether this is an artefact of counting having been delayed over the weekend or a real increase, I don’t know. In any case the deaths reported each day did not necessarily occur in the previous 24 hours and may have been several days earlier. This makes the plot difficult to interpret
What I am saying is that the UK government could easily be more honest about the Covid-19 situation in the UK if it wanted to. Given that the shambles is of its own creation, and that lying is a way of life for its Ministers, it has no incentive to do anything other than obfuscate.
Lockdown Prolonged, Leaving Certificate Postponed
Posted in Education, Politics with tags Covid-19, ireland, Leaving Certificate, University on April 10, 2020 by telescoperI’ve just listened to the latest update on the Covid-19 situation in Ireland. One entirely predictable announcement made this afternoon was that the current restrictions on movement will continue until Tuesday May 5th at the earliest. Monday May 4th is a Bank Holiday in Ireland.
I would personally be surprised if the measures now in place were eased before June, actually, but it seems sensible to wait and see if the situation improves before making a decision on further extensions.
(Incidentally, I am keeping track of the Covid-19 numbers in Ireland on a page here.)
Another announcement made today is likely to be more controversial: that this year’s School Leaving Certificate examinations, due to start on June 3rd, will postponed until “late July or early August”.
Among many other things, this will cause those of us involved in University teaching quite a few problems to solve. A lot of thinking caps will be getting dusted off right now!
On the normal cycle, Leaving Certificate results are available in mid-August and successful students begin their University courses in mid-September.
Assuming that there is a delay of two months in sitting the exams and no time can be made up in the marking and moderation process, we’re looking at students not being able to start their courses until mid-November, just a few weeks before the normal end of the First Semester. I have heard suggestions that new students could start in October but these have not included any explanation of how to speed up the process enough to make this possible.
It seems possible to me that, because starting in November would create more problems than it would solve, new students might actually have to defer entry until January, which means in turn that their Second Semester would have to take place during the period June-August. That, in turn, will require staff to abandon any plans for summer research activity and, for some science disciplines, will involve labs being kept open when they are usually closed for upgrades.
Presumably the proposal will be that returning students will follow the usual academic year timetable, but there’s a problem there too if students have to repeat modules from the 1st year which are to be taught on a different calendar.
I’m sure that none of these problems are insoluble but I’m equally sure that the powers that be haven’t really thought about them. Ireland’s current Government does not give the impression of being that interested in universities or the staff who work in them. In recent weeks lecturers have worked exceptionally hard to switch to online teaching and assessment only to have these efforts conspicuously ignored in a recent statement by the Minister for Higher Education Mary Mitchell O’connor. No doubt the Government will again just take it for granted that we’ll sort things out on their behalf.
In the Dark 