Watch “Why the Universe is quite disappointing really – Introduction” on YouTube

Posted in The Universe and Stuff, YouTube on May 4, 2020 by telescoper

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Not the Euclid Consortium Meeting

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on May 4, 2020 by telescoper

It’s a bright sunny Bank Holiday Monday and I’m here in my flat in Maynooth taking a coffee break before resuming work from home.

Before the Covid-19 outbreak started I had imagined that I’d be spending this week (or at least most of it) in Sitges near Barcelona for the annual Euclid Consortium Meeting which was planned to take place there. That has understandably been cancelled and replaced with a virtual meeting. Yet more Zoom sessions beckon…

Over the past weeks my workload has increased enormously but I’ve tried to clear the decks a little so I can tune in to some of the sessions but I won’t be able to make them all or even most.

I hope the virtual meeting goes well. Euclid is due to be launched in 2022 so time is getting short and there is much preparatory work still to do.

Well, talking of work I better get back to it! The first plenary is not until this afternoon and I’ve lots to do before then.

I wonder if normality will have returned in time for there to be a Euclid Consortium Meeting next year?

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Testing YouTube

Posted in Biographical, mathematics, YouTube with tags , , on May 3, 2020 by telescoper

To do something a bit different during this Covid-19 lockdown I decided to set up my very own YouTube channel to which you may (or may not) wish to subscribe.

I’m new to this so I posted a short video to test how it works. It’s a little video explainer about Cramer’s Rule in linear algebra I made using Screencast-o-matic. I’ve done a lot of these over the past few weeks but they’re not what the channel is about: I posted this example is just to try out the system (mainly to see how long the upload would take).

I put this up yesterday and I’ve already amassed five subscribers so I’m well on the way to becoming a YouTube sensation. I may even become viral so please ensure that you practice social distancing while watching the videos.

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The Riddle of the Leaving Certificate

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on May 3, 2020 by telescoper

I’ve been studying the ‘Roadmap‘ outlining the gradual relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions that, all being well. will begin on May 18th. There are five phases of this process, each lasting three weeks. At any point the process can be stopped or reversed if the data suggest things are going wrong.

It’s quite consistent with how I imagined it might work when I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago:

As a physicist I see the change being rather like an adiabatic process, carried out in quasi-static fashion, in a series of reversible steps…

Some measure of social distancing will remain even after the completion of all five phases, and will probably stay in place until a vaccine for Covid-19 is available.

I first noted this in Phase 1:

Which suggests that some staff may be allowed onto campus. At my University (Maynooth), however, teaching will have finished by May 8th. By May 18th the exam period will have started but it is not obvious that the above can be interpreted as allowing staff into their offices to mark examinations and project assessments. Speaking for myself I would find that useful. I suppose we will find out fairly soon what it means.

On the whole the Roadmap seems to me quite reasonable. It is rather broadbrush in character, which is understandable, though that does mean many details need to be worked out. There is however one very surprising omission which leads to a serious contradiction and is causing considerable confusion.

According to the Roadmap, Irish schools will not reopen until Phase Five, which commences on August 10th, just in time for the start of the 2020/2021 academic year.

On the other hand it has already been announced that the School Leaving Certificate examinations (which start in June in a normal year) would commence on July 29th. Moreover the Education Minister has previously indicated that these examinations would only happen after two weeks of classroom teaching for students who have been having only remote teaching during the Lockdown.

If schools are not to reopen until August 10th then it is not possible for the Leaving Certificate to start on July 29th. Even if the classroom teaching bit is scrapped there won’t be anywhere for students to sit the examinations!

There’s no mention of the Leaving Certificate in the Roadmap which suggests that the Government hasn’t thought it through yet. It seems to me virtually certain that a u-turn is coming up and the Leaving Certificate is going to be cancelled after all. Students will probably welcome this outcome but I’m not sure what it would mean for this year’s University admissions!

On the other hand I am informed by a reliable source that the Government is adamant that the Leaving Certificate will go ahead on 29th July as planned. The question is how?

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The 5km Limit

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , , on May 2, 2020 by telescoper

Since the Covid-19 restrictions were imposed over a month ago I’ve been confined to within a 2km radius of my home.

Yesterday, however, the Taioseach Leo Varadkar announced that is being relaxed to a 5km limit. Eager to see what thrilling new horizons would unfold as a result of this announcement I checked on a phone app and found this:

Great. So now I can visit a little bit of Leixlip, a little bit of Celbridge, or an even smaller bit of Kilcock.

I can barely contain my excitement.

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Maynooth University Library Cat Update

Posted in Maynooth with tags on May 2, 2020 by telescoper

I’ve been quite worried about Maynooth University Library Cat as I haven’t laid eyes on him since before Easter, despite regular visits to his spot on campus on my daily exercise round. Initially I thought I was just turning up at the wrong time, but then when colleagues started to ask if I’d seen him I started to fret. It’s not unusual for cats to take it upon themselves to go walkabout and thus particular moggy certainly knows how to look after himself. Nevertheless I did fear that something bad might happened.

Anyway, I fear no more. Last night a colleague (Cathal McCauley) messaged me to inform me that our famous feline had returned, as large as life and no worse for wear. Here some of his pictures to prove it.

It’s just like a cat to reappear nonchalantly like that, as if he’d never been away. He seems as sleek and healthy as ever and continues to have a healthy appetite.

What he’s been up to for the past few weeks I don’t know. Perhaps that’s just as well…

A relevant factor is the weather. It hadn’t rained much here in Maynooth until a couple of days ago when it poured down. I suspect he has been sleeping al fresco somewhere but returned to his box when he needed somewhere dry. It’s just a theory of course.

The main thing is that he’s back and seems in good shape. I’ll see if he’s still around when I drop by this afternoon.

Update: Sunday 3rd May. I didn’t see him yesterday but made up for that just now.

I can confirm he looks very healthy and has a good appetite, though he did not seem best pleased when he saw a dog nearby.

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Mayday!

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , on May 1, 2020 by telescoper

Today, 1st May, Beltane (Bealtaine in Irish) is an old Celtic festival that marks the mid-point between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. It’s one of the so-called Cross-Quarter Days that lie exactly halfway between the equinoxes and solstices. These ancient festivals have been moved so that they take place earlier in the modern calendar than the astronomical events that represent their origin: the halfway point between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice is actually next week…

Anyway, let me offer a hearty ‘Lá Bealtaine sona daoibh‘!

Today is also the day that the Irish Government decides whether to extend the restrictions arising from the Covid-19 outbreak due to end on May 5th (May 4th is a Bank Holiday). All the signs are that they will and indeed that they should.

We are told that the decision will be based on five measures.

The ‘criteria’ being quoted are:

  1. the progress of the disease;
  2. healthcare capacity & resilience;
  3. testing & contact tracing capacity;
  4. ability to shield & care for at-risk groups;
  5. the risk of secondary morbidity & mortality due to the restrictions themselves.

These aren’t really criteria of course as they don’t set a standard by which performance will be measured. My own amateurish attempts to keep track of the data show that while new cases are falling slowly (the value of the R-number is in the range 0.5-0.8) the rate of deaths remains roughly constant:

If you look at the world data on Covid-19 you will see that it’s a global phenomenon that the timescale for the spread to decrease is much longer than that for the initial increase. That means that loosening control too early will simply precipitate another rapid spread which in turn will require another lengthy lockdown.

The rate of hospital and ICU admissions is not falling significantly either. This may be because over the past weeks an increasing number of infections have occurred in care homes among elderly patients who are much more vulnerable to serious illness than the general population.

I can’t see any evidence from this that would support an argument for starting to end the lockdown anytime soon, and that’s before considering the other points. Testing, for example, is definitely not yet up to speed.

When it first started I told my colleagues that it wouldn’t start to unwind until June and I’m sticking with that.

It’s worrying though that there are signs that some individuals are taking it upon themselves to relax the restrictions. There is definitely more traffic (both vehicular and pedestrian) than there was a few weeks ago here in Maynooth. The question arises that if the lockdown is extended will it just become less effective as more people flout it? I think if it is going to be extended the Gardaí will have to get much tougher.

Although I’m very worried by the prospect of things dragging on I do at least get the impression that the Irish Government is doing its best not only to deal with Covid-19 but also to be honest about the situation, to the extent of owning up to its failures. The situation is very different on the other side of the Irish Sea, where the daily UK Government briefings are transparent only in their abject dishonesty.

UPDATE: to nobody’s great surprise the current restrictions will stay in place until 18th May, after which there will be a phased relaxation. For more details see here.

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#PoetryDayIRL: ‘When You Are Old’, by William Butler Yeats

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on April 30, 2020 by telescoper

One more for Ireland’s National Poetry Day. I couldn’t resist posting one by William Butler Yeats (known to his friends as ‘WB’)

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

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#PoetryDayIRL: ‘Dublin’, by Louis MacNeice

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , , on April 30, 2020 by telescoper

Here is another poem for Ireland’s National Poetry Day. This one is called Dublin and it was written by Louis MacNeice.

Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals –
O’Connell, Grattan, Moore –
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.

This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades –
The catcalls and the pain,
The glamour of her squalor,
The bravado of her talk.

The lights jig in the river
With a concertina movement
And the sun comes up in the morning
Like barley-sugar on the water
And the mist on the Wicklow hills
Is close, as close
As the peasantry were to the landlord,
As the Irish to the Anglo-Irish,
As the killer is close one moment
To the man he kills,
Or as the moment itself
Is close to the next moment.

She is not an Irish town
And she is not English,
Historic with guns and vermin
And the cold renown
Of a fragment of Church latin,
Of an oratorical phrase.
But oh the days are soft,
Soft enough to forget
The lesson better learnt,
The bullet on the wet
Streets, the crooked deal,
The steel behind the laugh,
The Four Courts burnt.

Fort of the Dane,
Garrison of the Saxon,
Augustan capital
Of a Gaelic nation,
Appropriating all
The alien brought,
You give me time for thought
And by a juggler’s trick
You poise the toppling hour –
O greyness run to flower,
Grey stone, grey water,
And brick upon grey brick.

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#PoetryDayIRL: ‘Quarantine’, by Eavan Boland

Posted in History, Poetry with tags , , on April 30, 2020 by telescoper

It is a remarkable fact that when the poet Eavan Boland passed away a couple of days ago, the sad news of her passing led the main TV bulletin here in Ireland. I struggle to think of another country where the death of a poet would be deemed so important.

Anyway, today is National Poetry Day in Ireland so I decided to post a poem by Eavan Boland as a tribute on this day. This is Quarantine a moving contemplation of the tragedy of the Great Hunger.

In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking — they were both walking — north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

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