Boxing Day on Cresswell Beach, Northumberland
Posted in Uncategorized on December 26, 2019 by telescoperTLS Editor Stig Abell & TV’s Rylan Clark-Neal head to head in final battle for Beard of the Year votes
Posted in Uncategorized on December 23, 2019 by telescoperAs last year’s joint* winner I feel I should remain neutral. I will say however that the Times Literary Supplement has an excellent crossword.
*I enjoyed the joint enormously.
Beard Liberation Front
23rd December
contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
TLS Editor Stig Abell & TV’s Rylan Clark-Neal head to head in final battle for Beard of the Year votes
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said with the Beard of the Year 2019 vote closing at midnight on Christmas Eve it has become a battle of the beards between Times Literary Supplement Editor Stig Abell and Strictly It Takes Two and Supermarket Sweep host Rylan Clark-Neal
The winner is announced on December 28th following an Electoral College review of the poll leaders. This has become necessary in recent years because of bot activity on the poll.
The criteria for Beard of the Year is as follows:
The Award is NOT about people who grow beards in their bedrooms and post pictures of them on the internet
The Award IS about people with consistent…
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A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day – John Donne
Posted in Uncategorized with tags A Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day, John Donne, Poem, Poetry on December 22, 2019 by telescoper‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world’s whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.
All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown’d the whole world, us two; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.
But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.
by John Donne (1572-1631).
P. S. St Lucy’s Day (13th December) used to coincide with the shortest day of the year before adoption of the Gregorian Calendar. Donne’s poem was published posthumously in 1633, but is thought to have been written in 1627 the year in which both his patron Lucy Countess of Bedford and his fifth child, Lucy, then aged 18, died.
Follow @telescoperThe Winter Solstice 2019
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags Analemma, Dublin, Equation of Time, Mean Time, Sunrise, Sunset, Winter Solstice on December 21, 2019 by telescoperThe winter solstice in the Northern hemisphere happens tomorrow, Sunday 22nd December 2019, at 04.19 Irish Time (04.19 UTC). Among other things, this means that tomorrow is the shortest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. Days will get steadily longer from now until the Summer Solstice next June. In fact, the interval between sunrise and sunset tomorrow will be a whole second longer tomorrow than it is today. Yippee!
This does not mean that sunrise will happen earlier tomorrow than it did this morning, however. Actually, sunrise will carry on getting later until the new year. This is because there is a difference between mean solar time (measured by clocks) and apparent solar time (defined by the position of the Sun in the sky), so that a solar day does not always last exactly 24 hours. A description of apparent and mean time was given by Nevil Maskelyne in the Nautical Almanac for 1767:
Apparent Time is that deduced immediately from the Sun, whether from the Observation of his passing the Meridian, or from his observed Rising or Setting. This Time is different from that shewn by Clocks and Watches well regulated at Land, which is called equated or mean Time.
The discrepancy between mean time and apparent time arises because of the Earth’s axial tilt and the fact that it travels around the Sun in an elliptical orbit in which its orbital speed varies with time of year (being faster at perihelion than at aphelion).
In fact if you plot the position of the Sun in the sky at a fixed time each day from a fixed location on the Earth you get a thing called an analemma, which is a sort of figure-of-eight shape whose shape depends on the observer’s latitude. Here’s a photographic version taken in Edmonton, with photographs of the Sun’s position taken from the same position at the same time on different days over the course of a year:
The winter solstice is the lowermost point on this curve and the summer solstice is at the top. The north–south component of the analemma is the Sun’s declination, and the east–west component is the so-called equation of time which quantifies the difference between mean solar time and apparent solar time. This curve can be used to calculate the earliest and/or latest sunrise and/or sunset.
Using a more rapid calculational tool (Google), I found a table of the local mean times of sunrise and sunset for Dublin around the 2019 winter solstice. This shows that tomorrow is indeed the shortest day (with a time between sunrise and sunset of 7 hours 29 minutes and 58 seconds). The table also shows that sunset already started occurring later in the day before the winter solstice, and sunrise will continue to happen later for a few days after the solstice, notwithstanding the fact that the interval between sunrise and sunset gets longer from today onwards.
I hope this clarifies the situation.
Follow @telescoper2019: A Summary of the Year
Posted in Politics on December 20, 2019 by telescoper
Nollaig Shona
Posted in Maynooth on December 19, 2019 by telescoper
Well, workwise, that’s me just about done for the year 2019.
I received the `official’ Christmas card shown above from the President of the Maynooth University, Professor Philip Nolan, earlier this week so I thought I’d share the picture as a Christmas card to my readers (both of them). The phrase on the card means `Happy Christmas’ (though, as the Welsh `Nadolig Llawen’, the Happy comes after the Christmas). Sometimes you find the phrase Nollaig Shona Duit which means `Happy Christmas to you’.
There’s quite a similarity between the Irish word for Christmas, Nollaig, and the Welsh word Nadolig. That’s not surprising because we are talking about two Celtic languages. But are both related in some way to Noel?
Follow @telescoperEnd of Teaching for 2019
Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth on December 18, 2019 by telescoperSo it’s 6pm on Wednesday 18th December and I’ve just given my 24th and last Astrophysics & Cosmology lecture for the term at Maynooth University. Earlier this afternoon I gave my 36th and last first-year Mechanics & Special Relativity module so that’s over for the year too. That makes 60 lectures for the semester.
I find these twelve week semesters very tiring (even with a week-long break in the middle). I assume the students do too. Numbers in class certainly dropped off this week, but overall I’ve been very happy with the level of engagement of the students, especially the first years. Although it’s a lot of work putting on a big course for the first time, I do enjoy teaching very much indeed. I have found few things in life more rewarding than teaching students who want to learn and physics students here in Maynooth do seem to be highly motivated. The exams for both modules are in January so I’ll find out in the New Year if anyone actually learnt anything!
This morning somebody suggested that would be my last teaching for the decade. Of course that is incorrect. The current decade ends on 31st December 2020, not 31st December 2019, just as the millennium started on 1st January 2001 not 1st January 2000. I’m glad a fellow blogger has taken the trouble to point the reason: there is no Year Zero.
Earlier today we had presentations from our final-year project students, which were very good. As usual on such occasions I find myself thinking how much better current generations of students are at that than mine was!
I don’t mind admitting that I’m not inconsiderably knackered at this moment and will be heading home for a bite to eat and a glass or several of wine. Tomorrow I have a few things to do before heading off for the Christmas break, after which regular blogging will be suspended for a time.
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The ties that bind..
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Donald Trump, Footsocks, Headhats, Legtrousers, Neckties, Ties on December 17, 2019 by telescoperThe other day I saw a post on Facebook from an American friend which referred to the wearing of a `necktie’. I’ve always been confused by this word, largely because I’m not aware of many other examples of words combining an item of clothing with where it is worn on the body. As far as I am aware neither `headhat’ nor `footsock’ nor `legtrousers’ is a word. Presumably the prefix `neck-‘ is added to `tie’ in order to specify where the tie is to be worn, either because the wearer might not otherwise know or because there are different kinds of tie to be worn elsewhere on the body as is the case, for example, with `cockring’.
But where else would one wear a tie other than around one’s neck?
Thinking about this problem led me to the related issue of why (hopefully) soon-to-be-former President of the United States of America, Donald Trump wears such long (neck)ties:
I believe I have an answer to both puzzles. Trump wears an extra-long tie because it’s actually a bellytie, meant to be worn around the waist to keep the legtrousers from falling down. It needs to be extra long because Donald Trump is excessively corpulent. Obviously he only puts his bellytie around his neck when in public, and has some other arrangement to keep his legtrousers up in that situation. I suspect he might wear suspenders.
You may find this all a bit trivial but I post it here for the benefit of British readers whose country will soon be forced to grovel at Trump’s feet for the luxury of being allowed to import chlorinated chicken from America and to be charged higher prices for prescription medicine. You will need to learn the proper vocabulary pronto if you want to fit in with the new order of things.
Follow @telescoperChange in Northern Ireland
Posted in History, Politics with tags ireland, Politics, Sinn Fein on December 17, 2019 by telescoperOne of the potentially most significant outcomes of the 2019 General Election, but one barely mentioned in the English media, was what happened in Northern Ireland. For the first time ever, a majority of the MPs elected in the six counties were nationalist. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) gained two seats to add to the seven of Sinn Féin (including a significant gain in Belfast North) while the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) lost two to finish with eight. The remaining seat went to the Alliance, originally a moderate unionist party but now basically a liberal centrist (and anti-Brexit) party.
Here’s how the electoral map of Northern Ireland changed:
Sinn Féin seats are dark green, DUP orange, SDLP light green and Alliance yellow.
In terms of the popular vote, the DUP+UUP got 42.3% whereas SDLP+ Sinn Féin got 37.7. Both SF and DUP lost vote share compared to 2017 (by 6.7% and 5.4% respectively) at the expense of the Alliance (up 8.8%) and SDLP (up 3.1%).
Incremental differences, perhaps, but significant nonetheless – especially as Brexit hasn’t yet happened. After Brexit there will be a border in the Irish Sea, which will bring the end of partition one step closer. The probability of seeing a United Ireland in my lifetime has definitely increased.
It was no surprise to see the hashtag `#UnityPlan’ trending on Twitter immediately after the election. Irish unification will only happen if there is a public vote and a majority on both sides of the border agree. For that vote to be fair it is vital that there is a definite plan on how to proceed in the event that the vote is in favour, so the public know what they are voting for. The Irish should not make the mistake that Britain did over Brexit.
For many unionists religion was the primary reason for wanting to remain in the United Kingdom at the time of partition in 1921: Protestants felt that their identity would be threatened if they were made to join the Catholic South. Maybe they were right to feel nervous, as the original constitution of the Irish Free State enshrined “the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church”. But the section including that phrase was deltd from the Constitution way back in 1973 and the Roman Church has far less influence in the Republic than it did. Ireland is now an open and progressive country, so I hope those fears have receded.
Just to confuse matters even further I should mention that my Grandfather, the one born in Belfast, to whom I owe my Irish citizenship, was a protestant republican…
Those in the North who wish to keep their British passports should be able to do so in a United Ireland, just as those of us who were born in Britain but now live in Ireland can keep ours. I’ll be keeping mine, at least until it expires…
P.S. It is worth mentioning (primarily for British friends) that there are three counties in Ireland that belong to the province of Ulster but are not part of Northern Ireland as it was formed after partition: these are Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal. The northernmost point of Donegal, Malin Head, is actually the northernmost point on the island of Ireland.
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In the Dark 