Since I’ve established a little bit of a horror theme for this week, I think it’s a good idea to continue with this clip of the definitive portrayal of a vampire, i.e. the Count von Count from Sesame Street. I should reassure you all that, although this blog is X-rated, being censored, this particular post is entirely suitable for viewing at work…
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The Count (Censored)
Posted in Television with tags Sesame Street, The Count on August 22, 2012 by telescoperTinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Posted in Television with tags Bill Haydon, Percy Alleline, Roy Bland, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Toby Esterhase on May 7, 2012 by telescoperWell it’s a Bank Holiday (hooray!) so naturally it’s raining (boo!). Nice to have a lie-in on a Monday morning for a change, but will probably spend the afternoon working anyway. We’ve just finished formal teaching term, and now we have a “Guided Study Week” of revision lectures etc before examinations start next week.
By way of a diversion I thought I’d mention that on my recent trip to South Africa I got a chance the see the film version of John le Carré’s superb novel Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy. It was much as I’d expected, actually. Well acted and directed in itself, but rather difficult to enjoy if you’ve either read the book or seen the seven-part 1979 BBC TV dramatisation which, centred around a flawlessly understated performance by Alec Guinness as George Smiley, is surely one of the finest TV drama series ever made, although the sequel Smiley’s People is perhaps even better.
The point is that the original plot by John le Carré is just too complicated to fit in the usual duration of a feature film, so if one knows the full story one can’t fail but be conscious of the alterations and huge chunks completely missing from the movie. Nevertheless, given the constraints, it’s a good film in its own right. I’m glad I watched it, though that was mainly because it reminded me how good the TV version was.
Incidentally, parts of the film were apparently shot at Imperial College. I didn’t actually spot this when watching it, but was told about it afterwards.
Anyway I found this clip on Youtube of the very start of the TV series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy , a scene placed before the opening titles rolled. Although it doesn’t correspond to anything in the book, I think it epitomizes what was so good about the television version. It features the four characters who belong to the Witchraft “Magic Circle” responsible for running Source Merlin, a Soviet agent who is supposed to be working as double-agent for British Intelligence (called “The Circus” because of its headquarters in Cambridge Circus). Of course it turns out everything is actually the other way round, and Source Merlin is Moscow Centre’s contact with a mole inside the Circus (codename “Gerald”) who is handing over British secrets. Gerald must be one of the four who have regular contact with Source Merlin, but which one?
I think this scene is brilliant because nobody says a word for most of it, but it immediately establishes the different characters of the respective protagonists. The pompous and punctilious pipe-smoking Percy Alleline (“Tinker”) brings a huge dossier of papers to the meeting, evidently enjoying his role as Head Boy. Flamboyant Bill Haydon (“Tailor”) displays his studied eccentricity by bringing only a cup of tea, with the saucer on top, and a biscuit. Haydon’s expression as Percy starts the meeting is priceless. Dishevelled chain-smoking Roy Bland (“Soldier”) seems entirely preoccupied with other things. Snappily dressed Toby Esterhase (“Poor Man”) betrays his status as a junior member of the club by arriving early – no doubt to impress – and closing the door that Haydon carelessly left open.
Follow @telescoperStargazing (virtually) Live
Posted in Television, The Universe and Stuff with tags Andrew Pontzen, BBC, Cosmology, galaxy formation, Oxford English Dictionary, simulation, Stargazing Live on January 18, 2012 by telescoperI hope you’ve all been tuning in to the BBC’s astronomy jamboree Stargazing Live. There have been two episodes so far, with one last one to follow tonight, plus a huge range of activities across the country (including Wales) giving members of the public the chance to look at the sky through telescopes. The programmes and other activities have been getting an excellent response, especially from the younger generation, which is excellent news for the future of astronomy.
Working in a School of Physics & Astronomy makes one realise just how much public interest there is in astronomy, not just among schoolkids but in the numerous amateur astronomical societies, the members of which actually know the night sky better than many professionals! Most of us astronomers and astrophysicists are regularly asked to give public lectures and Cardiff in particular runs a host of other outreach activities related to our astronomy research. Our colleagues in mainstream physics subjects such as condensed matter physics don’t get the same level of direct public interest – I don’t think there are any amateur semiconductor physics clubs in the UK! – but many students attracted into universities by astronomy do turn to other branches of physics when they get here, because something else catches their imagination.
But important though that role is, let’s not forget that astronomy isn’t just about outreach. It’s actually real science, making real discoveries about the way our universe works. It’s worth doing in its own right as well as being good for other branches of physics.
Anyway, being a theoretical astrophysicist I usually feel a bit left out of these stargazing actitivies because I don’t really know one end of a telescope from the other. The other day I jokingly asked whether Stargazing Live was ever going to include a theory component…
Last night’s episode actually did, in the form of a discussion of a numerical simulation of galaxy formation between the presenters and young Dr Andrew Pontzen from Oxford University. He even made a little video about the simulation, sort of virtual reality rendition of the formation of the Milky Way, as shown on the telly:
Apparently, making this required 300,000 CPU hours on 300 processors and it is based on 16 Terabytes of raw data. Phew!
It’s a very impressive simulation, but the use of the word simulation in this context always makes me smile. Being a crossword nut I spend far too much time looking in dictionaries but one often finds quite amusing things there. This is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines SIMULATION:
1.
a. The action or practice of simulating, with intent to deceive; false pretence, deceitful profession.
b. Tendency to assume a form resembling that of something else; unconscious imitation.
2. A false assumption or display, a surface resemblance or imitation, of something.
3. The technique of imitating the behaviour of some situation or process (whether economic, military, mechanical, etc.) by means of a suitably analogous situation or apparatus, esp. for the purpose of study or personnel training.
It’s only the third entry that gives the intended meaning. This is worth bearing in mind if you prefer old-fashioned analytical theory!
In football, of course, you can get sent off for simulation…
Follow @telescoperJust a closer walk with thee
Posted in Music, Television, The Universe and Stuff with tags Just a closer walk with thee, New Orleans, Steve Rawlings, Treme on January 12, 2012 by telescoperI saw this clip a few days ago, and had it in mind to post it at an appropriate time. Unfortunately when I got home today I learned some news that makes today seem all too appropriate. A distinguished and respected colleague, Prof. Steve Rawlings, of Oxford University was found dead last night. This is shocking and desperately sad news. I have no idea what happened but apparently the Oxfordshire police have arrested a 49-year old man on suspicion of murder. No doubt more information will emerge in due course.
The connection between this sombre piece of news and the clip I intended to post should become obvious when I tell you that it depicts a funeral. Indeed the music featured, the hymn or spiritual Just a Closer Walk with Thee, was the main music chosen for the service when my father died, just over four years ago. It’s a lovely old traditional tune that often plays a central role in New Orleans style funerals, as shown here, and is a melody that, for me, has a deep associattion with loss and bereavement.
The clip is taken from the US TV series Treme. I haven’t seen Treme -if it has been shown on UK TV I missed it – but it’s set in New Orleans in the aftermath of the near destruction of the city by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Not knowing anything about the TV series I only watched the clip because of the music, but I was mightily impressed by the way the scene was photographed and how careful the producers had been in getting the details just right, because a funeral in New Orleans is unlike any other.
The sashes, parasols, and exaggerated, swaying slow march seen in the film are in some sense almost comical, but they are also at the same time solemn and immensely dignified. Defiant, even. I don’t think it’s just because I am a jazz fan that I find this video so moving. Perhaps it’s really because, faced with the awesome finality of death, every action we take in life is comical anyway, just as every word is ultimately banal. However, if a farce is what it’s going to be, let’s just make sure it’s done the way we like it – especially at the end.
One of the commenters on Youtube put it thus:
it aint my time yet .but when it is thats the way i wanna go home
Amen to that. I don’t think Steve Rawlings was a jazz fan, but this is the best way I can think of to pay my respects.
Follow @telescoperHolmes for the Bewildered
Posted in Literature, Television with tags BBC Television, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on January 9, 2012 by telescoperBeing back to work full-time, now that the new teaching term has started, I find myself in a position to do quick lunchtime blog post while I eat my sandwich. I was going to blog about this topic last week, but thought I’d wait a week in case anything happened to change my negative opinion on this issue. I’m aware that I’m in a small minority and didn’t want to expose myself to public disapproval without due care and attention. Well, last night my opinion certainly changed, only it got even more negative. So now I’m going to take a deep breath, gird my loins, and state for the record my honestly-held opinion that the new BBC TV Series Sherlock is complete and utter tripe.
It’s not that I object to the idea of placing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s great stories in a contemporary setting. Not at all. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most memorable creations in all of fiction and the plots – at least most of them – are so well constructed that the stories should be translatable into a contemporary setting quite easily. There have been so many “traditional” versions of Sherlock Holmes that I welcome the attempt to do something different with the character.
Neither is it that I object to Sherlock Holmes being played for laughs. The character does indeed possess a great deal of comic potential, which a number of other interpretations have exploited with a greater or lesser degree of success.
What has happened in this series, however, is that the original plots have been butchered to the point where they make no sense at all. Instead we just have a series of thinly related comedy sketches, with only feeble attempts to link them to a viable mystery story, like a duff combination of the worst bits of Jonathan Creek and The Fast Show.
Last night’s puerile Hound of the Baskervilles was especially dire in this respect. The original story – a full-length novel rather than a short story – is a genuinely intriguing mystery-thriller, laced with undertones of the supernatural, and full of memorable characters, including of course the fearsome Hound itself.
For reasons best known to themselves Forced to squeeze it into one hour, the producers of last night’s version of this classic tale abandoned most of the original plot and introduced a load of silly nonsense about werewolves and hallucinogenic fog and the CIA. The Holmes-Watson double-act was quite amusing – and some of the dialogue very witty – but the plot was so thin it just reminded me of Abbott and Costello meet the Wolfman and other such films I watched when I was a kid. I thought the first episode – A Scandal in Belgravia – was bad enough, but last night’s episode was truly excruciating. I won’t be watching any more.
It’s a mystery to me why so many people seem to think this tosh is so good, but then I’m used to being in a minority of one. Perhaps if you watch a lot of TV your expectations are lowered so much by the constant stream of drivel that anything that even tries to be original – which Sherlock admittedly does – sends you into raptures?
No, dear critics, I don’t think Sherlock is “great TV” at all. In fact I think it’s dreadful.
There. I’ve said it.
Follow @telescoperA Quite Interesting Approach to Refereeing
Posted in Television with tags astronomy, Cosmology, grant applications, QI, refereeing, Stephen Fry on January 4, 2012 by telescoperLast night I was struggling to compose a clue for the latest Azed Crossword competition (No. 2065) so I gave up and switched on the TV. I ended up watching an episode of QI, a popular entertainment programme in the form of a panel game, hosted by Lord Stephen of Fry. The title stands, I think, for Quite Interesting, rather than the active principle found in chinese medicine, which is an extremely useful word to know in Scrabble if you have a Q and no U.
Anyway, one of the features of said television programme is that if guests answer a question not only incorrectly but also in a manner that’s predictable, stale or hackneyed, in such a way that it matches a pre-prepared list of such responses, then a claxon sounds and a penalty of ten points is applied. If you want to hear the claxon…
These forfeits are so frequently applied that it is by no means uncommon for the winner of the quiz to have a net score which is negative.
Anyway, watching this it occurred to me that it suggests a quite interesting way of livening up the business of refereeing grant applications, especially since in these difficult times a good outcome of an application to renew a geant might well be minus two PDRAs!
It’s quite easy to come up with a list of tedious clichés that you’re likely to find in a cosmology application, e.g. “We have now entered an era of precision cosmology…”, “Generic inflationary scenario”, “inspired by string theory”, “assuming a linear bias”, etc etc. From now on I’m going to press the buzzer every time I read such a phrase and subtract the resulting penalty from the score assigned to the proposal.
However, it would be unfair to apply this idea just to cosmology proposals. In order to make it more generally applicable, perhaps my loyal readers might suggest, through the Comments Box, similarly worn out, trite or banal terms appropriate to their own specialism?
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Great Expectations
Posted in Film, Literature, Television with tags Charles Dickens, David Lean, Douglas Booth, film, Great Expectations on December 29, 2011 by telescoperI don’t make a secret of the fact that I don’t watch TV, and didn’t really do so over the Christmas holiday. However, I did catch the new BBC adapation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations which I think is one of the greatest novels in all literature. I wasn’t that keen to watch it, after seeing several pointless modern films of the story that didn’t do justice either to the original novel or to the marvellous 1946 film directed by David Lean, which I think is one of the greatest movies ever made. It’s not that I think people shouldn’t do remakes of classic stories – great novels can bear many different versions – it’s just that they’re often done with neither wit nor imagination and the end result can be so obviously inferior that one wonders why it was ever released. The recent remake of the perfect Ealing Comedy The Ladykillers, for example, was such total crap from start to finish it made me want to beat the director over the head with a blunt instrument.
In the end, though, I was persuaded to watch it and was very impressed indeed with the new version. Douglas Booth, who plays the teenage Pip, as well as being an extraordinarily handsome young man, is also a fine actor. The young Pip’s encounter with the convict Magwitch (played by Ray Winstone) in Episode 1 was every bit as memorable as the older film, but I’ve decided to put the latter up here to encourage those who haven’t been fortunate enough to see the classic version.
I’m interested in suggestions of best and worst remakes….so feel free to add yours through the comments box.
Follow @telescoperThe Last Words of Sherlock Holmes
Posted in Literature, Television with tags Jeremy Brett, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Cardboard Box on December 16, 2011 by telescoperBeing bombarded with advertising for a new Sherlock Holmes film I thought I’d remind myself of the greatest Holmes of all, Jeremy Brett. I have a complete collection on DVD of all the episodes produced by Granada TV between 1984 and 1994. I chose a couple at random to watch last night and it turned out that the pair included the very last one in the last series, based on the dark and disturbing story The Adventure of the Cardboard Box from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
Brett was gravely ill during the filming of the last series, largely owing to side-effects of the medication he had to take to deal with a severe depressive illness which plagued him for most of his life. It didn’t help that he had become almost obsessive about the character of Holmes, putting all his energy into doing the best possible job. It obviously took a lot out of him. He looks so much older in the last series than in the first, although it was only ten years after he made the first episodes. Jeremy Brett passed away in 1995, just a year after the last episode was filmed, but his Sherlock Holmes will live forever.
The last words spoken by Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes are at the end (from 8.55 onwards) of the following clip, a piece of film so poignant that I find it almost unbearable to watch.
Follow @telescoperWhat is the meaning of it, Watson? What is the object of this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must have a purpose, or our universe has no meaning, and that is unthinkable. But what purpose? That is humanity’s great problem, to which reason so far, has no answer.
Einstein and your Gas Bill
Posted in History, Television, The Universe and Stuff with tags Albert Einstein, calorific value, dimensional analysis, Edward Enfield, Fritz Hasenohrl, Watchdog on October 11, 2011 by telescoperTaking refuge in my office this lunchtime for a sandwich and a cup of coffee I turned to the latest edition of Physics World and came across an funny little story about a physicist (who is completely new to me) with the splendid name of Fritz Hasenöhrl.
The news story relates to a paper on the arXiv, part of the abstract of which I’ve copied below:
In 1904 Austrian physicist Fritz Hasenohrl (1874-1915) examined blackbody radiation in a reflecting cavity. By calculating the work necessary to keep the cavity moving at a constant velocity against the radiation pressure he concluded that to a moving observer the energy of the radiation would appear to increase by an amount
, which in early 1905 he corrected to
…
Since I’ve been doing a bit of dimensional analysis with first-year students, I’m a bit surprised that the authors of this paper read so much into the fact that Hasenöhrl’s formula bears a superficial resemblance to Einstein’s most famous formula 
Expressing energy in terms of the basic dimensions mass 
Anyway, all this suddenly reminded me of a day long ago when I appeared on peak-time television in the consumer affairs programme Watchdog, explaining – or, rather, attempting to explain – the physics behind the way gas bills are calculated. Apparently someone had written in to the programme asking why it was that they weren’t just being charged for the volume of gas that had flowed through their meter, but that the cost involved a complicated calculation involving something called the calorific value of the gas.
The answer is fairly obvious, actually. The idea is that to make competition fairer between different forms of energy (particularly gas and electricity) the bills should be for the amount of energy you have used rather than the amount of gas. Since the source of fuel varies from day to day so does its chemical composition and hence the amount of energy that can be extracted from it when it is burned. Gas companies therefore monitor the calorific value, using it to convert the amount of gas you have used into an amount of energy.
On the programme I was confronted by the curmudgeonly Edward Enfield (father of comedian Harry Enfield) who took the line that it was all unnecessarily complicated and that the bill should just be for the amount of gas used, rather in the same way that petrol is sold. When I tried to explain that the way it was done was really fairer, because it was really the energy that mattered, it quickly became obvious that he didn’t really understand what energy was or how it was defined. He didn’t even get the difference between energy and power. I suspect that goes for many members of the general public.
It was all a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I enjoyed the sparring. Eventually he came out with a question about why energy was given by 
My brief career on BBC1 was over.
Follow @telescoperNo Cox please, we’re British…
Posted in Television, The Universe and Stuff with tags astronomy, Brian Cox, Britain, Cosmology, galaxies, rubbish, stars, Wonders of the Universe on March 29, 2011 by telescoperThe final episode of the BBC television series Wonders of the Universe was broadcast this weekend. Apparently it’s been incredibly popular, winning huge plaudits for its presenter Brian Cox, and perhaps inspiring the next generation of budding cosmologists the way Carl Sagan did thirty-odd years ago with his series Cosmos.
Grumpy old cosmologists (i.e. people like myself) who have watched it are a bit baffled by the peculiar choices of location – seemingly chosen simply in order to be expensive, without any relevance to the topic being discussed – the intrusive (and rather ghastly) music, and the personality cult generated by the constant focus on the dreamy-eyed presenter. But of course the series wasn’t made for people like us, so we’ve got no right to complain. If he does a great job getting the younger generation interested in science, then that’s enough for me. I can always watch Miss Marple on the other side instead.
But walking into work this morning I suddenly realised the real reason why I don’t really like Wonders of the Universe. It’s got nothing to do with the things I mentioned above. It’s because it’s just not British enough.
I’m not saying that Brian Cox isn’t British. Obviously he is. Although I do quibble with him being labelled as a “northerner”. Actually, he’s from Manchester. The North is in fact that part of England that extends southwards from the Scottish border to the Tyne. The Midlands start with Gateshead and include Yorkshire, Manchester and Liverpool and all those places whose inhabitants wish they were from the North, but aren’t really hard enough.
Anyway, I just put that bit in to inform non-British readers of this blog about the facts of UK geography. It’s not really relevant to the main point of the piece.
The problem with Wonders of the Universe is betrayed by its title. The word “wonders” suggests that the Universe is wonder-ful, or even, in a word which has cropped up in the series a few times, “awesome”. No authentic British person, and certainly not one who’s forty-something, would ever use the word “awesome” without being paid a lot of money to do so. It just doesn’t ring true.
I reckon it doesn’t do to be too impressed by anything on TV these days (especially if its accompanied by awful music), but there is a particularly good reason for not being taken in by all this talk about “Wonders”, and that is that the Universe is basically a load of rubbish.
Take this thing, for example.
It’s a galaxy (the Andromeda Nebula, M31, to be precise). We live in a similar article, in fact. Of course it looks quite pretty on the surface, but when you look at them with a physicist’s eye galaxies are really not all they’re cracked up to be.
We live in a relatively crowded part of our galaxy on a small planet orbiting a fairly insignificant star called the Sun. Now you’ve got me started on the Sun. I know it supplies the Earth with all its energy, but it does so pretty badly, all things considered. The Sun only radiates a fraction of a milliwatt per kilogram. That’s hopeless! Pound for pound, a human being radiates more than a thousand times as much. All in all, stars are drastically overrated: bloated, wasteful, inefficient and not even slightly awesome. They’re only noticeable because they’re big. And we all know that size shouldn’t really matter.
But even in what purports to be an interesting neighbourhood of our Galaxy, the nearest star is 4.5 light years from the Sun. To get that in perspective, imagine the Sun is the size of a golfball. On the same scale, where is the nearest star?
The answer to that will probably surprise you, as it does my students when I give this example in lectures. The answer is, in fact, on the order of a thousand kilometres away. That’s the distance from Cardiff to, say, Munich. What a dull landscape our Galaxy possesses. In between one little golf ball in Wales and another one in Germany there’s nothing of any interest at all, just a featureless incomprehensible void not worthy of the most perfunctory second thought; it’s usually called France.
So galaxies aren’t dazzlingly beautiful jewels of the heavens. They’re flimsy, insubstantial things more like the cheap tat you can find on QVC. What’s worse is that they’re also full of a grubby mixture of soot and dust. Indeed, some are so filthy that you can hardly see any stars at all. Somebody needs to give the Universe a good clean. I suppose you just can’t get the help these days.
And then there’s the Big Bang. Well, I don’t need to go on about that because I’ve already posted about it. Suffice to say that the Big Bang wasn’t anywhere near as Big as you’ve been led to believe. The volume was between about 115 and 120 decibels. Quite loud, but many rock concerts are louder. Very disappointing. If I’d been in charge I would have put on something much more spectacular.
In any case the Big Bang happened a very long time ago. The Universe is now a cold and desolate place, lit by a few feeble stars and warmed only by the fading glow of the heat given off when it was all so much younger and more exciting. It’s as if we inhabit a shabby downmarket retirement home, warmed only by the feeble radiation given off by a puny electric fire as we occupy ourselves as best we can until Armageddon comes.
No, the Universe isn’t wonderful at all. In fact, it’s basically a bit crummy. It’s only superficially impressive because it’s quite large, and it doesn’t do to be impressed by things just because they are large. That would be vulgar.
Digression: I just remembered a story about a loudmouthed Texan who owned a big ranch and who was visiting the English countryside on holiday. Chatting to locals in the village pub he boasted that it took him several days to drive around his ranch. A farmer replied “Yes. I used to have a car like that.”
We British just don’t like showy things. It’s in our genes. We’re fundamentally a rather drab and dowdy race. We don’t really enjoy being astonished either. We prefer things we can find fault with over things that intimidate us with their splendour. We’re much more likely to tut disapprovingly than stare open-mouthed in amazement at something that seems pointlessly ostentatious. If pushed, we might even write a letter of complaint to the Council.
Ultimately, however, the fact is that whatever we think about it, we’re stuck with it. Just like the trains, the government and the weather. Nothing we can do about it, so we might as well just soldier on. That’s the British way.
So you can rest assured that none of this Wonders of the Universe stuff will distract us for long from getting on with the important things in life, such as watching Coronation Street.
Professor Brian Cox is 43.
In the Dark 