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Notes for the Reader

Posted in Uncategorized on August 9, 2010 by telescoper

I’m going to be too busy to post much this week so I thought I’d take the opportunity to point out a couple of things for the benefit of regular readers, newcomers and occasional visitors to this blog.

First, about RSS Feeds. If you wish to subscribe to the whole blog via an RSS feed you will find it at

https://telescoper.wordpress.com/feed/

If you wish only to see posts in a particular category, you can do so via

https://telescoper.wordpress.com/category/categoryname/feed/

So if, for example, you only want to read the “Science Politics” items via RSS the feed is at

https://telescoper.wordpress.com/category/science-politics/feed/

A full list of categories, together with the number of posts so far published in each one, can be found on the home page. You can use this to browse my back catalogue, so to speak, although I should point out that I didn’t file that many of my earlier posts in categories and haven’t had time to go back through them and sort them out…

I also wanted to make some comments about comments. Please note what it says on my home page:

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 abusive will not be accepted.

You may use a nickname or anonymous handle on a comment, but I insist on a valid email address that identifies you (although the email address will not be visible to anyone but me). The system that operates on comments is that, if you haven’t posted before, your comment will be held until I have approved it. Comments are posted immediately from “approved” users but I reserve the right to moderate them if they turn out to be abusive. Serial offenders are put on a blacklist and their comments will be treated as spam.

Even if you are a regular commenter you may find that some comments don’t appear straight away. That is because I operate a spam filter – spam comments outnumber genuine ones by more than two-to-one – and it sometimes makes mistakes. If this happens it is probably because your comment contains several embedded URLs, which makes the spam filter suspicious. I usually manage to rescue comments blocked in this way, but it may take a while before your comment appears.

Let me point out that there is a separate RSS feed for comments at

https://telescoper.wordpress.com/comments/feed/

if you wish to follow discussion that way.

I realise that there isn’t really a convenient way to communicate suggestions for improvements or to ask general questions about the blog, so when I have a bit of time I’ll set up a permanent page to serve that purpose.

The Balding Version

Posted in Uncategorized with tags Clare Balding, human rights, lesbian, Press Complaints Commission, Sunday Times on July 31, 2010 by telescoper

Now that I’m back from a period of rest and recuperation I thought I’d try to get back into the swing of things by posting a few short items about things I found interesting in the papers. One item today caught my eye as it touches on a theme I’ve addressed before: Freedom of speech, and its limits.

This story concerns sports presenter Clare Balding who is apparently presenting a new TV series called Britain by Bike. I don’t know much about her or the new series, but it was reviewed last week in the Sunday Times by a person by the name of AA Gill who referred to her as

…the dyke on a bike, puffing up the nooks and crannies at the bottom end of the nation

Not very nice at all. I’m not linking to the original article (a) because it’s behind a paywall and (b) because I don’t want to send the Evil Empire of Murdoch any traffic. You can find the gist of it in a story at the Guardian.

I didn’t know that Clare Balding is a lesbian, but then there’s no reason why I should have thought about her sexuality as it’s not at all relevant to her job. Apparently she is quite open about and comfortable with her orientation, but the obviously pejorative reference to the word “dyke” got her understandably riled. She complained to the Sunday Times editor, a nasty piece of work called John Witherow, who replied

In my view some members of the gay community need to stop regarding themselves as having a special victim status and behave like any other sensible group that is accepted by society.Not having a privileged status means, of course, one must accept occasionally being the butt of jokes. A person’s sexuality should not give them a protected status.

Clare Balding was unhappy with the response, saying

This is not about me putting up with having the piss taken out of me, something I have been quite able to withstand, it is about you legitimising name calling. ‘Dyke’ is not shouted out in school playgrounds (or as I’ve had it at an airport) as a compliment, believe me..

She has now made the matter to the Press Complaints Commission under article 12 of its Editor’s Code of Practice, which states

The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.

There’s no denying that the word “dyke” is a pejorative term for a lesbian so one would imagine that this will be an open-and-shut case. Note also that the response from John Witherow explicitly refuses to accept the terms of article 12. Whether he likes it or not, sexual orientation is specifically protected in the Editor’s Code of Practice to which he is a signatory. John Witherow probably thinks so little of this code that he hasn’t even read it. If he is exonerated it will prove beyond any doubt that the Editor’s Code of Practice is simply a sham.

Whether the right to free speech should be bounded by law is a topic that has come up several times on this blog, including one very recent example and one rather older which has direct parallels with the Clare Balding complaint. I think it is right that this matter should be dealt with outside the law courts. Gill’s comment may be nasty but I don’t think such things should be regarded as criminal, unless they are clearly intended to harrass. If, for example, he’d screamed the word dyke through her letterbox, I think that would be a criminal matter.

However, the problem with voluntary “codes of conduct” such as this – including those that form part of certain employment contracts – is that they usually amount to nothing other than window-dressing, at least when it comes to sexual orientation. The word “dyke” is as offensive to a lesbian as the word “faggot” is to a gay man, but cases involving these words are rarely taken as seriously as those involving racial or gender-based terms. Can you imagine the outcry if AA Gill had used the word “nigger” or “paki” in a review?

Mentioning “sexual orientation” in a list isn’t the same as taking the related prejudice seriously or trying to something about it. The fact of the matter is that lesbians and gay men may be more accepted in society now than they were twenty years ago, but there are still many walks of life in which this is not the case. In fact, I think the depressing reality is that the vast majority of heterosexual people simply don’t like homosexual people and resent their apparent “acceptance”. You can argue about the rights and wrongs of “politically correct language”, but the problem it is trying to address in this case is very real and it is often the only thing that prevents overt abuse, as indeed it is with racist abuse.

Having said that, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Sunday Times gets away with this clear violation of the PCC code. It would just be another example of gross hypocrisy to add to the many that already demonstrate that political correctness is a very thin veneer. Far better, in my view, to dispense with the code of practice altogether if this happens than keep it there and openly flout it. At least then we’d all know where we really stand.

27 Comments »

Interlude

Posted in Uncategorized on July 24, 2010 by telescoper

Well, dear readers, the old batteries definitely need recharging so I’ve decided to take spot of annual leave during which I’ll be away from the blog. Accordingly, in the words of the old BBC continuity announcers, there will now follow a short intermission..

Back in a week. Toodle-pip!

PS. The suitably restful and very typical bit of 1950s “light” music accompanying this is called Pastoral Montage, and it was written by South African born composer Gideon Fagan.

4 Comments »

Spoof Positive?

Posted in Science Politics, Uncategorized with tags #SpoofJenks, Jon Butterworth on June 29, 2010 by telescoper

Only time for a brief post today, as I’m shortly off to London for some external examining in the East End.

It’s interesting that yesterday’s #SpoofJenks day generated so many contributions that the Guardian decided to get the main instigator, particle physicist Jon Butterworth, to write about it on their Science Blog. My own contribution of yesterday gets a mention there too.

I have to say I found the whole thing very amusing and wholeheartedly agree with Jon Butterworth (whose original spoof started it all off) when he explained that his primary aim was more to let off steam and less to try to persuade Simon Jenkins of the error of his ways. I felt the same way. Better to poke fun back than allow him to get to you.

I didn’t feel parody was necessary in Simon Jenkins’ case because his arguments are full of factual errors and non sequitur. In fact, it did occur to me that his piece might be deliberately ironic. Could one of the prime movers behind the Millennium Dome really be serious when he talks about the wastefulness of CERN? Perhaps he’s spoofed us all. But even that wouldn’t excuse his snide personal attack on Martin Rees.

Anyway, as you will have noticed, I just went for straight mockery and had a good half-an-hour of lunchtime fun writing it. A few people seem to have liked my piece, but at least one blogger found it “unpleasant”. You can’t win ’em all. For what it’s worth, I still think he deserved it.

In fact, I posted a considerably less vitriolic reaction to Jenkins article on Saturday, but trying to respond in rational terms was something I found very frustrating. Only a few hundred people read this blog so it’s pretty futile to try to take on a columnist from a national newspaper that’s read by hundreds of thousands. I’m not sure he’s listening anyway, as he’s written similar drivel countless times before. Far better, in my view, to join the collective piss-taking. At least it got the Guardian interested.

Maybe after all this Jenkins will actually engage in a dialogue with scientists instead of merely insulting them? Perhaps. But I’m not holding my breath.

15 Comments »

Please help Simon

Posted in Uncategorized with tags Simon Jenkins, The Guardian on June 28, 2010 by telescoper

This is Simon. He is 67 years old. Simon has had a tough time of it recently. He really needs your help. This is Simon’s story.

Simon was quite bright as a small child, but things started to go wrong for him early on in life. He was bullied at public school by a vicious gang of “nerds” who forced him to look at their calculations. Later, a terrifying incident with a pipette in a chemistry lesson left him emotionally scarred. He started to have paranoid delusions and nightmares about Men in White Coats. More recently he began to suffer hallucinations involving Mammoths. He suspects all scientists are after his money. His behaviour is obsessive. Every gadget fills him with terror. His actions are bizarre and unpredictable. He is no longer able to cope with everyday life and needs constant supervision.

Fortunately, Simon has a generous and loving friend called Alan (who edits a national newspaper). Alan noticed that Simon had severe problems and decided to care for him. Alan provided sheltered accommodation for Simon and created a job, so Simon could earn a basic living doing simple tasks, such as writing a column in The Guardian.

Sadly, however, things have recently started to go wrong. Simon’s behaviour has deteriorated even further. He has become increasingly incoherent. He is unable to write his column without repeating himself over and over again. Worse, he sometimes gets out of the padded cell secure unit office Alan has provided for him, wandering about the premises foaming at the mouth and raving about the Large Hadron Collider. This is embarrassing Alan and the other people he works with. Simon has also recently been found sticking pins in a wax effigy of Lord Rees.

To make matters worse, Alan’s business has started to fail. He is losing money and can no longer afford to pay for Simon’s upkeep. Alan has become depressed by his newspaper’s falling circulation and the stress of having to cope with looking after Simon. He is desperate for help.

Without your assistance, the future looks bleak for both Simon and Alan. Please send your contributions to Alan’s Personal Assistant:

Poppy Cock,
The Guardian,
Kings Place
90 York Way
London
N1 9GU

Please mark your envelope Get this Nutter off my Hands Appeal and make your cheques out to The Margaret Thatcher Home for the Bewildered (Maximum Security Divison). If you can’t afford to send money, any other gifts would be appreciated, especially crayons and colouring-in books (but not if they are about science).

Thank you for your help. Have a nice day. Unless you’re a scientist.

PS. You may find updates on the progress of this appeal on Twitter (look for #SpoofJenks).

William Waldegrave challenges journalists to explain Simon Jenkins to the general public
Martin Rees to blame for England’s World Cup exit, says Simon Jenkins
Brian Cox ate my Hamster
Nature Blog #SpoofJenks posts
Scientists Experiment with Simon Jenkins (at the Guardian website)

9 Comments »

Homeopathic A&E

Posted in Uncategorized with tags Homeopathy, That Mitchell & Webb Look on June 13, 2010 by telescoper

Just finished my last batch of exam marking and am off to do today’s Azed so no time for a proper blog but I couldn’t resist putting up this brilliant skit on homeopathic medicine, passed on to me by Anton.

I offer this as my contribution to homeopathy awareness week.

1 Comment »

I never promised you a rose garden…

Posted in Uncategorized on June 1, 2010 by telescoper

..but I’m nevertheless quite pleased with the way it’s turning out!

2 Comments »

iBores

Posted in Uncategorized with tags Apple, astronomy, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, Private Eye on May 26, 2010 by telescoper

I try my best to get on with my fellow human beings. I’m a sociable sort of chap, within reason. I’m pretty tolerant of other peoples’ opinions. I don’t expect other people to be interested in everything I am, and it doesn’t worry me too much if they turn out to be fascinated by things that I find bizarre or simply unininteresting. And since I’ve never been one to go with the crowd just for the sake of it, it doesn’t get me down if I’m left out when others enjoy something I find boring.

But there are a few things that sometimes make me feel like I was born on a different planet. Nothing drives home this feeling of alienation more than listening to people talk about Apple products, especially the dreaded Mac computers. Stephen Fry is the worst culprit, publically slavering over his Macs – I believe he owns several – to an extent that severely jeopardises his status as English National Treasure.

The Apple fraternity is particularly prominent in Astronomy. Go to an astronomy conference and you’re likely to find gaggles of them drooling over each other’s laptops and notebooks. You’re also likely to be sitting in the audience twiddling your thumbs for ages while one of the speakers fiddles about trying to get their computer to work with the data projector. If that happens, you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s a Mac that’s to blame.

Macs are brilliant, you hear their owners say. Well, perhaps they are almost as good as real computers, except you need to bring special adaptors to connect them to anything at all, you won’t be able to use the internet, the software isn’t compatible with this that and the other, they’re roughly twice the price of a PC with equivalent (or better) capabilities, and the hard disk is almost certain to seize after about a year. But so what if they don’t work as well as a proper machine? If you have one, you have a passport to Nerd Nirvana. In the kingdom of the geeks, it’s the geek with a Mac that is king.

I hope you’ll forgive me for not jumping aboard the Mac Bandwagon (Applecart?). I just don’t get it. Otherwise intelligent people have tried to convert me and succeeded only in scaring me. It’s the glazed eyes and puerile obsessiveness that does it. A Mac must come with some sort of brainwashing device that makes owners blind to its obvious limitations. I hope there’s a cure, otherwise the MacZombies will take over the world.

It’s not just Macs, of course, but all the gadgets prefixed by the dreaded “i”: iPod, iPhone, iPad, iNeedaweewee and iDunnowhat.

I do have an iPod, in fact. It’s fine. No better and no worse than an ordinary MP3 player, of course, but perfectly OK for its purpose. Apart from the earphones, which are deliberately manufactured to be entirely useless so you have to go and buy proper ones straight away.

Incidentally, I never never got around to filing a patent for my invention, the uPod. This is a similar device to an iPod, but the wearer of the earphones experiences perfect silence while the uPod broadcasts an annoying tinny racket to everyone within a 10-metre radius. It is designed for use in the quiet coach on a train.

The software you have to use with an iPod is quite another thing. I’m thoroughly sick of iTunes, which I believe to be controlled by aliens with the intention of destroying the Earth. It keeps taking over my computer and insisting that it is it and nothing else that should control all my media files. Moreover, update your iTunes with care. You can’t undo the upgrade and the likelihood is your new software won’t be compatible with your old iPod. An evil trick to make you buy new hardware. Shame on you, Apple.

A Crapple Device

On the other hand, I don’t have an iPhone and have no intention of getting one. I know people who have them and show me all the “apps” they have on it. Fine. I hope there’s an app for finding a job after you get sacked for playing with your iPhone all the time instead of doing your work. Give me my Blackberry over your iPhone, anytime.

And as for the iPad, there are only two problems with it. It’s too small for a doorstop and too big for a paperweight.

You’re probably wondering what caused me to vent my spleen about the evil empire of Crapple. Up until today I’ve kept quiet about my feelings lest I appear a bit weird. Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m the very epitome of normality. But today I read something that has put me in touch with my inner Luddite and given me the inner strength to stand up and speak out against the obvious threat to our civilisation caused by these Apple gizmos and the people they control.

Today’s excellent new issue of Private Eye has a new cartoon strip – called iBores – which takes a brave stand against the Menace of the Mac. It’s a must-read for all Mac addicts, and just may save the human race from Apple oblivion. The fightback starts today.

53 Comments »

The Club Guest

Posted in Uncategorized with tags astronomy, RAS Club, Royal Astronomy Society on May 15, 2010 by telescoper

Yesterday I went, as I do from time to time, to the Royal Astronomical Society’s monthly meeting and thence to the RAS Club for dinner. This was the last such meeting before the summer hiatus – they resume in October – and also incorporated the Society’s Annual General Meeting at which new officers are elected, amongst them the new President. Andy Fabian was the outgoing President, having completed his two-year tour of duty, and he was replaced by Roger Davies.

It was also revealed at this meeting that next year’s National Astronomy Meeting would be in Llandudno. Usually this event is organized by a university and is held in a university town. This year it was in Glasgow, for example. However, the University of Sheffield has pulled out of organizing the 2011 NAM and no other was willing to take on the considerable task of organizing it at such short notice. It was therefore decided to break with tradition and hold the event not on a university campus but at a holiday resort. I’ve never been to Llandudno, but I think it could be great for us astronomers here in Wales to have the Principality host NAM. I suspect, however, that it wasn’t regional politics, but economics, that held sway in reaching the decision. Llandudno is perhaps a bit cheaper than most English seaside towns. I can already hear some of my English colleagues starting to whinge about how difficult it will be to get there, but we’ll see. I just hope I can persuade them to hold it outside Cardiff’s teaching term otherwise I won’t be able to go even if it is in Wales.

It was interesting to learn about all these developments, and the subsequent Open Meeting was not without interest either. We had talks about volcanic ash (topical, that one), martian meteorites, high-altitude balloon flights and stellar disks. A mixed bag of talks, but all of them very enjoyable.

However, this meeting turned out to be remarkable for a completely different reason. At the end of one of the lectures in the open meeting, a strange woman entered the lecture theatre, walked down the aisle and took a seat in the front row. In fact she first tried to sit in Roger Davies’ seat – he was standing in order to supervise the question-and-answers at the end of the talk – but he asked her to move. Finding a free seat a bit further along, she removed her hat and proceeded to brush her hair ostentatiously. As the other talks went on she appeared to pay very little attention to them, preferring instead to look around the room. I had never seen her before, but open meetings like this often attract visitors and in any case acting a bit strangely is by no means inconsistent with being an astronomer.

The Mystery Guest

After the meeting closed I went for a glass of wine to Burlington House and then to the Athenaeum. There was quite a crowd there and as usual we all had a glass of wine before sitting down. It was only when we started to eat that I realised that this mysterious lady (left) was actually sitting at another table. Since the RAS Club is for members (and their guests) only, I assumed she was with one of the invited speakers at the meeting who, as is usual in such cases, had been invited to the club afterwards as a club guest.

I thought nothing more about this until I saw the Club Treasurer, Margaret Penston, looking a bit agitated, go to her table and ask The Mystery Guest a question. I couldn’t hear what. Our visitor then stood up, announced she had to be going and left quickly before anyone could do anything about it. It turned out she wasn’t anyone’s guest at all, but had just latched onto a group of people leaving for the club, each of whom assumed one of the others knew her. It being England, nobody asked her who she was or what she was doing there. I have no idea who she was or why she had decided to attach herself to the RAS Club that evening.

All this was hilarious enough but, after she’d gone, it emerged that she had paid for her dinner by “borrowing” money from a genuine club guest, an American astronomer who happened to be sitting next to her and to whom she had introduced herself as the “Contessa” of something or other. Our American friend may have thought it was all an elaborate practical joke, but he was clearly completely dumbfounded by the episode. The Club had a whip round to pay him back the money he had lent her.

On top of all this, some other members of the Club then pointed out that she had done something similar on at least three previous occasions, in locations ranging from Paris to London. Why none of her previous victims had identified her yesterday and drawn attention to her past history I have no idea. If they had she would have been removed earlier.

If the relatively small gathering we had on Friday could furnish three previous examples of this kind of behaviour, then it seems likely that it’s part of a pattern. However, it doesn’t seem likely that she makes her living doing this sort of thing because she’s only “borrowed” amounts from £5 to £70. Perhaps astronomers aren’t the best choice of target.

I wonder if anyone reading this blog recognizes her and can shed light on her curious behaviour?

13 Comments »

Nobody’s fault but mine

Posted in Jazz, Uncategorized with tags Nina Simone on May 2, 2010 by telescoper

It being a rainy bank holiday weekend, I’ve been working, although I didn’t start until I’d done the Sunday crosswords and watched the football on the telly. Now it’s too late to post anything substantial, so I’ll resort to something from my back catalogue of bookmarked masterpieces from Youtube. This is a wonderful bluesy gospelly piece by the late great Nina Simone, a rare example in my opinion of a cover version being better than the original (in this case by Blind Willie Johnson).

Incidentally, I wonder if either of my regular readers can think of cover versions better than the original? Jeff Buckley’s intensely moving version of Leonard Cohen’s great song Hallelujah springs to mind, but I’d be interested to hear other suggestions…

4 Comments »

In the Dark