First Day Back

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , on January 3, 2023 by telescoper

So here we are, then, 3rd January 2023 and my first day back after the Christmas break. Maynooth University Campus has been largely deserted, though a few of my colleagues have been in today.

Quite a few people seem to have been down with various bugs over the holiday, including a few that have tested positive for Covid-19. We haven’t had information about actual case numbers since before Christmas but I expect a big increase when the figures are announced later this week. Hospitals are already under pressure here in Ireland so things could be quite difficult during the next few weeks.

My plans to do an in-person revision lecture were foiled by the fact that the teaching room I planned to use was locked so I adopted plan B which was to put up some lecture recordings to help the students with their revision ahead of the examination period which starts on Friday. That’s a bit early, really, as 6th January (being Epiphany) is still very much a part of the Christmas season for many people. I remember trying to arrange a meeting on January 6th years ago with a European collaboration only to be met with complete disbelief. At least the first examination for which I am responsible isn’t until Saturday.

For many of the students taking examinations in subjects I have been teaching, these will be the first University examinations and I’m sure many of them are a bit apprehensive, so I thought I’d pass on some advice.

  1. Try to get a good night’s sleep before the examination and arrive in plenty of time before the start. Spending all night cramming is unlikely to help you do well. Prepare well in advance so you’re relaxed when the time comes.
  2. Read the entire paper before starting to answer any questions. In particular, make sure you are aware of any supplementary information, formulae, etc, given in the rubric or at the end.
  3. Start off by tackling the question you are most confident about answering, even if it’s not Question 1. This will help settle any nerves. You’re under no obligation to answer the questions in the order they are asked.
  4. Don’t rush! Students often lose marks by making careless errors. Check all your numerical results on your calculator at least twice and – PLEASE – remember to put the units!
  5. Don’t panic! You’re not expected to answer everything perfectly. A first-class mark is anything over 70%, so don’t worry if there are bits you can’t do. If you get stuck on a part of a question, don’t waste too much time on it (especially if it’s just a few marks). Just leave it and move on. You can always come back to it later.

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Nolan, Moran and Schwa…

Posted in Biographical, Irish Language with tags , , on January 2, 2023 by telescoper

This Bank Holiday afternoon I’ve been pottering about at home and listening to The Full Score on RTÉ Lyric FM, which is presented by Liz Nolan. I like this programme because it consists of performances of full works rather than bits and pieces extracted from longer compositions (“bleeding chunks” as my music teacher at school used to call them). Unfortunately this programme is broadcast on weekday afternoons so I can’t listen to it often except when I’m off work.

The presenter’s surname Nolan made me reflect on how many Irish surnames end with –an. Other examples aside from Nolan include Regan, Keegan, Dolan, Coogan, Behan, Whelan and Moran. In Ireland these are all pronounced with a stress on the first syllable, as they are in English pronunciation, but curiously English people usually pronounce the last with a stress on the second syllable, i.e. Mor-AN. I’ve been pulled up for doing this on more than one occasion. Here in Ireland it’s not Mor-AN but MOR-an. A little googling suggests that the English version is influenced by the French name Morant rather than the original Gaelic Ó Móráin.

Anyway this line of thought took me to the realization that the vowel in an unstressed final syllable such as in Nolan is a very indistinct sound. You could almost put any vowel in there and get the same sound: “Nolan” could easily be transcribed as “Nolon” or “Nolun” etc if the second syllable is not stressed.

Then I realized that linguists, specifically those who study phonetics and phonology, have been there long before me. There is a name for the indistinct vowel sound in such cases: it is called schwa and is denoted by the character ə. Schwa sits right in the middle of the vowel chart. Produced when the lips and tongue are completely relaxed, it’s neither an open nor a closed vowel but something in between. It’s actually quite a common sound in English, though it’s taken me almost 60 years to discover its name! – and exists in many other languages too.

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New Year, Old Resolutions

Posted in Biographical on January 1, 2023 by telescoper

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

from Four Quartets, ‘Little Gidding’ by T. S. Eliot.

For the last three years I have been sharing a list of things I plan, to do in the New Year. Unfortunately it seems to have been pretty much the same list each time. Here it is again for completeness.

  1. Go to more live concerts. Although I enjoy the radio and recordings, I far prefer to listen to live music at concerts. Attending such events helps also support the venues and musicians as without an audience both would die.
  2. See more of Ireland. I moved to Maynooth five years ago but, apart from one visit to Galway and one to Armagh, I still haven’t travelled much beyond the Dublin area. I must get around more, especially to the South.
  3. No more working weekends. I’ve been in the office for at least one day every weekend since I started at Maynooth. I did the same when I was at Sussex too, and seem to have relapsed. I have always had problems managing my own work/life balance but I realize it’s not setting a good example to younger folk to be getting it so obviously wrong. I’ll add not reading work emails at weekends to this.
  4. Be a better colleague. This is something I think one should always strive to be, but I have particular need to improve. I know that over the last five years or so things weighed very heavily on me behind the scenes and I ended up letting people down on too many occasions. I apologize for that and will try to do better in future.
  5. Read more books. I used to be a voracious reader of all kinds of books, both fiction and non-fiction, but I somehow got out of the habit. I now have a stack of unread works that I must try to read before the year is out!
  6. Finish more things! Not unrelated to No. 4 above, I have been very poor over the last few years at completing projects and writing papers. I need to clear the backlog and get on with some new things.
  7. Do more to promote Open Access publishing. I’m not surprised that the status quo in academic publishing is proving hard to dislodge, but I believe that change can be achieved if researchers take the initiative. I’m proud of what we have achieved so far at the Open Journal of Astrophysics but there’s much more to be done.

I achieved very few of these in 2020, 2021 or 2022. The pandemic made the first two impossible but at least I managed to get out to a few concerts in 2022 and plan to see more this year. The Irish National Astronomy Meeting in 2023 is in the fine city of Cork, and I’m looking forward to going there. Number 3 changed when we had to start working from home, which made it difficult to get away from work at all but since I moved into my house in August 2020 I at least have a study on which I can close the door. I haven’t improved much on the 4th one either, although the reasons for the past two years are different. Likewise with 5 and 6. I have done as much as I possibly can on 7 but it’s been a bit of a struggle getting papers turned around promptly. I think there are a lot of busy and/or tired people out there!

I didn’t cope with the stress and isolation of being a Head of Department during the Covid-19 era as well as I might have done. I don’t know whether it was the high levels of anxiety that sapped my energy or whether I’m just feeling the effects of age. Anyway I’m glad I completed my term in September last year, and have at least managed to complete a couple of papers since then. I hope to finish another in the following week or so.

Finally I should mention that the traffic to this blog was up a massive 4.5% in 2022 compared with 2021. Interestingly the most popular post of the year wasn’t either of the two about Chorizogate (here or here) but an old one I wrote in 2012 about the Shell House Raid which came back to life because of a film on Netflix.

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The Post of Christmas Past

Posted in Biographical on December 31, 2022 by telescoper

At long last, this year’s Christmas issue of Private Eye has made it to Ireland. Just two weeks late. Too late to enter the crossword competition, mind, but better late than never.

I shall read it this evening after my New Year’s Eve supper of roast rack of lamb and a bottle of Amarone della Valpolicella…

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Ireland and CERN

Posted in Maynooth, Politics, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on December 30, 2022 by telescoper

Not long ago I posted an item about Ireland’s potential membership of CERN. There seems to have been some progress at political levels in this direction. In Mid-December, the Seanad called for a detailed proposal for CERN membership to be drawn up. More recently still, Minister Simon Harris has indicated that he will bring such a proposal to Cabinet on the matter.

There’s an article in yesterday’s Irish Times by Cormac O’Raifeartaigh reviewing the situation.

As I understand things, if the Irish Government were to decide to take Ireland into CERN then it would first have to become an Associate Member, which would cost around €1.5 million per year. That’s a modest contribution, and the financial returns to Irish industry and universities are likely to far exceed that. This Associate member stage would last up to 5 years, and then to acquire full membership a joining fee of around €16.8 million would have to be paid, though that could be spread out over ten years, along with an annual contribution of around €13.5m.

While I support the idea of Ireland joining CERN I feel obliged to stress my concerns. The most important of these is that there seems to me to be a real danger that the Government would simply appropriate funding for CERN membership from within existing programmes leaving even less for other forms of scientific research. In order to reap the scientific reward of CERN membership the Government will have to invest the additional resources needed to exploit the access to facilities membership would provide. Without a related increase in research grant funding for basic science, the opportunity to raise the level of scientific activity in Ireland would be lost and science overall may end up worse off.

Ireland recently joined the European Southern Observatory (ESO), a decision which gave Irish astronomers access to some amazing telescopes. However, there is no sign at all of Irish funding agencies responding to this opportunity by increasing funding for academic time, postdocs and graduate students needed to do the actual science. In one respect ESO is very like CERN: the facilities do not themselves do the science. We need people to do that. CERN membership could turn out to be like a very expensive Christmas gift that looks very exciting until you open the box and find that the batteries are not included.

P.S. At least Cormac’s employers in Waterford have been quick off the mark in exploiting the potential of CERN by renaming their entire institution after it…

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R.I.P. Pelé

Posted in Football, R.I.P. with tags , on December 29, 2022 by telescoper

The sad news broke tonight that Edson Arantes do Nascimento, best known to the world as Pelé, has passed away at the age of 82. It’s never easy to come to terms with the loss of a sporting legend, especially one who was a boyhood hero, and news of his death brought back a flood of childhood memories. I am old enough to remember watching the great Brazilian team of the 1970 World Cup finals that included the likes of Jairzinho, Rivellino, and Carlos Alberto, to name but three, which I think was the finest collection of players ever to grace a football field. It says something for the stature of Pelé that he stood out even among that remarkable side. As well as being outrageously skilful, Pelé had a great footballing brain, which manifested itself as a wonderful positional sense and great tactical awareness. Although by no means a tall man – he was 5ft 8 – he was also superb in the air.

After Argentina’s win in the recent World Cup in Qatar many people were quick to dub Lionel Messi the greatest footballer of all time. With no disrespect to Messi, I think the greatest player of all time is unquestionably Pelé, not least because he had far less protection from referees at the time than modern players do. Pelé may have played his football in a very different era, but his influence on the game was, and remains, incalculable. He was a legend.

R.I.P. Pelé (1940-2022)

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Post-Christmas Post

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , on December 29, 2022 by telescoper

Today is (apparently) 29th December and this morning I actually got some post. Most of it was sent in the first week of December but has taken about three weeks to get here. Among other things I got: the pension statement I was waiting for (dated 2nd December), a cheque for 40 quid for winning the Times Literary Supplement Crossword Prize (posted 8th December), and a royalty statement from OUP dated, somewhat surprisingly, December 23rd. I still haven’t received the Christmas edition of Private Eye though.

I took a walk this afternoon and was quite surprised on the way to see the Maynooth Airport Hopper bus. This has been suspended since the onset of the pandemic way back in 2020 but now I find it has recently resumed. That will make it much easier to get to and from Dublin Airport if I ever have to do that. I used this service very frequently when I had to commute between Cardiff and Maynooth and don’t know how I would have coped without it. It’s good to see things gradually returning.

The bug I picked up before Christmas is still present but more of an inconvenience than anything more serious. I’ve done no fewer than ten antigen tests and never got a positive result so I’m pretty confident it’s not Covid-19. I haven’t posted anything on this blog for a few days but interestingly I’ve still been getting over 500 reads a day over the Christmas period.

I usually update my Covid-19 figures every week but no data have been recently since 20th December. Testing numbers will be pretty much meaningless because of the Christmas holiday but I’d expect to see a rise in infection levels as we head into the New Year. There are signs that Covid-19 cases are rising steeply once more – there are currently over 700 people in hospital in Ireland with Covid-19 – but I doubt we’re going to see any further lockdown measures heading into the new term.

That reminds me that I foolishly offered to do a couple of revision lectures ahead of my 2nd year Vector Calculus examination (which takes place on January 7th). The first of these will be on 3rd January which doesn’t give me much time to think about what to do. In view of my continuing low-level lurgy I think to minimize the chances of infecting anyone I think I’ll just go in, do my lectures, and come home again.

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Merry Christmas to Physics Students Everywhere!

Posted in Uncategorized on December 25, 2022 by telescoper

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Swingin’ Them Jingle Bells

Posted in Uncategorized on December 24, 2022 by telescoper

Well, it’s been a miserable Christmas Eve with heavy showers of sleet and God knows what else nearly all afternoon. Nevertheless I’m determined to make an attempt to get into the Christmas spirit for tomorrow. If Fats Waller can’t do help me achieve that, nobody can. Here’s his classic version of Jingle Bells on which the general atmosphere of hilarity and inspired chaos allows his superb musicianship to shine all the more brightly. Few ever managed to play Harlem Stride piano as well as Fats Waller, and he’s on top form in the opening choruses of this record.

 

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Cut off at Christmas

Posted in Biographical on December 23, 2022 by telescoper

I don’t think I’ve ever had a less indulgent pre-Christmas week than this year. I have more-or-less recovered from whatever it was that afflicted me, except that whenever I go out into the cold I seem to start coughing again so I haven’t been out much. I decided to lay off the booze until I felt fully back to normal, with the result that I haven’t had any alcoholic drinks at all for over a week. I have also been eating very little and nothing at all of a festive richness for which I have no appetite. I will however have a proper Christmas dinner, even if I have to force myself.

Pottering around in the garden the other day I was a bit sad to find a dead bird in the garden, a young starling. I’ve tried hard to keep my feathered friends going through the cold weather, by putting out various kinds of food in an assortment of feeders, but this one alas didn’t make it.

The weather is much milder than last week (when it was positively Baltic) though we have had sleet and fog today. There is still a steady stream of birds looking for food, among them a robin that actually manages to perch on the feeder to eat. I’ve never seen a robin succeed in doing that before. The robins usual stay at ground level and collect bits that fall from on high.

Normally I get quite a few items of post at Christmas from the UK, but not this year. The postal strikes have put paid to that. Among other things I was hoping to have a go at the usual bumper Christmas Private Eye crossword, but my subscription copy has not arrived. Lots of other things haven’t arrived either, including some financial documents that will tell me when I can afford to retire. I suppose that calculation will just have to wait.

Quite a lot of Open Journal business for 2022 is still pending but it seems authors, referees and editors have now all pulled down the shutters for the break. I guess all that will have to wait until the New Year too…

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