No More Poppies

Posted in Biographical, History, Politics with tags , , , , on November 9, 2019 by telescoper

Over the years I have written quite a few pieces on this blog, around the time of Remembrance Sunday, about the wearing of a poppy, the last being in 2016. I have worn a poppy at this time of year for most of my adult life, but in 2017 I decided to stop.

For one thing, there is no pressure to wear a poppy here in Ireland. Indeed, many Irish people see the poppy mainly as a symbol of British militarism and colonial oppression. At a concert to mark the Armistice last year I saw only a few audience members wearing a poppy, and most of them were the shamrock version commemorating the sacrifice of Irish soldiers during the Great War.

But I don’t think I’ve ever really been that susceptible to peer pressure, so that’s not the main reason for my not wearing a poppy. The main reason is that over the past couple of years the poppy has been appropriated by the likes of racist thug, career criminal and founder-member of the EDL, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (also known as Tommy Robinson):

I simply cannot bring myself to wear the same badge as this horrible racist gobshite, nor can I stand the hypocrisy of those politicians who make a show of wearing it while happily encouraging the rise of nationalism that caused all the suffering just a century ago. The message of the poppy is supposed to be `Lest We Forget’. I’m afraid far too many have already forgotten.

I have a lecture on Monday 11th November at 11am, when the traditional two minutes’ silence to mark the 1918 armistice is observed. Fortunately, lectures at Maynooth run from five past the hour until five to, so I will be able to observe this on my own before I start the lecture. But I won’t be wearing a poppy.

Is it disrespectful to the war dead to refuse to wear a poppy? No, of course it isn’t. What is disrespectful to them is to seek to reoeat the mistakes that led to wars in the first place.

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Back to Ireland

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on November 9, 2019 by telescoper

I’m back in a very cold and windy Maynooth after a trip to Newcastle (via London) for my Mam’s funeral. It went as well as could have been expected, though it was a difficult occasion for all concerned. It was nice to see such a good turnout, though, including several members of my family I haven’t seen for many years. The service was both simple and dignified (and entirely secular).

I’ve got a lot of things to catch up on after the few days I spent away so I don’t have time for a long post today. I did, however, want to put up a short message to express my gratitude to everyone who has contacted me privately to offer condolences and good wishes. All your messages mean a lot, so thank you all. That also goes for all the friends I met at the RAS Club on Friday evening, all of whom were very supportive.

Now, I have three examination papers and two problem sets to write by Monday, five lectures to prepare for next week, and a lengthy review article about the Hubble constant to finish by Friday so I’d best get on with it. Moping about isn’t going to help.

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Bridget Riley at the Hayward Gallery

Posted in Art with tags , on November 8, 2019 by telescoper

Circumstances require me to travel back to Dublin via London today, so I took the opportunity to spend an hour or so at the wonderful Bridget Riley retrospective at the Hayward Gallery. The exhibition is on until January 26th and I recommend it very enthusiastically.

I took a few pictures, but none of them give an adequate impression of the experience of seeing them in the flesh.

These three deceptively simple compositions made from coloured stripes play with the eye’s colour perception, seeming to change in texture and hue as the observer changes position or viewing angle.

The “rhomboid” pictures like this one November use changes in colour to disrupt the brain’s interpretation of the two-dimensional nature of the painting. The rhombi seem to rise and fall, the surface buckling as a result.

From the black and white collection this is Movement in Squares which uses simple changes in shape to imply depth, but also creates a visual instalibity to the perception is not of a static image.

This (Drift 2) generates a twisting effect on that makes you feel quite dizzy!

This one from 2017 is untitled and is simultaneously the least successful to be photographed and one of the most successful to view in person. It is very large – about 4 metres by 2 metres – and the circles filled with colour seem to jump about in your field of vision with every slight change of eyeline!

There are many more treats to experience in this exhibition which is highly recommended.

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A Musical Memory: Mabel’s Dream

Posted in Biographical, Jazz with tags , , , , , on November 7, 2019 by telescoper

So that’s that. The funeral is over. We all said our goodbyes, and there many tears.

My Mam chose the music for her funeral a long time ago, and the piece that was playing as we arrived in the West Chapel of the West Road Crematorium was one that I wrote about about a decade ago, so I thought I’d indulge myself by posting here the version we heard today.

Years ago my Mam told me that she heard the tune Mabel’s Dream played on the piano by a friend of the family by the name of Johnny Handle. Best known as a folk musician (and founder member of a well-known band called The High Level Ranters) he is also a music teacher and musicologist with a wide range of interests in music. I read somewhere that this lovely tune was originally written by Jelly Roll Morton and performed by him on solo piano, but by far the most famous recording of Mabel’s Dream was made by King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band in Chicago in 1923. This was the band that the young Louis Armstrong belonged to before going on to make the classic Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, one of which I posted a bit ago. It’s interesting how different the earlier band sounds: with two cornets (King Oliver and Louis Armstrong), clarinet (Johnny Dodds), and trombone (Honore Dutrey) playing together virtually all the time except for short improvised solo breaks. King Oliver usually played lead cornet, at least in their earlier recordings, with Louis Armstrong playing a decorative counterpoint around him rather like a clarinettist might. Later on, they swapped leads freely and completely intuitively producing a sound that was entirely unique.

The ensemble playing is intricate, but the band had no written music, preferring to work exclusively from “head” arrangements. Their music is consistently delightful to listen to, with a succession of marchy themes that makes it impossible not to want to tap your feet when you listen to them.

Over time, this classic type of polyphonic Jazz- derived from its New Orleans roots – gradually morphed into musical form dominated by much simpler arrangements and a succession of virtuoso solos. This change was also reflected in the differing fortunes of Louis Armstrong and King Oliver. The former went on to become an international celebrity, while the latter lost all his savings when his bank went bust during the Wall Street Crash.

Considering the relatively brief time that they played together, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong made an astonishingly large number of astonishingly beautiful records, including this one which I’m posting here to show that as well as many other things my Mam had great taste in Jazz.

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The University Strikes are Back!

Posted in Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on November 6, 2019 by telescoper

I noticed that a recent ballot of members of the University and College Union (UCU) has delivered a mandate for industrial action across 60 UK universities. Eight days of strikes will start later this month: they will last from November 25th until December 4th. The cause of the dispute is twofold: (1) the long-running saga of the Universities pension scheme (about which there were strikes in 2018); and (2) over pay, equality, workloads and the ever-increasing casualisation of lecturing and other work.

Among the institutions to have voted for strike action are my previous employers Cardiff, Sussex and Nottingham.
It seems to have taken a long time to count the votes in the case of Sussex UCU, but the result was a large majority in favour of action. It remains to be seen what the impact of these strikes will be, but they could affect a very large number of students. Nobody likes going on strike but the UK higher education system is a very poor state right now, and many of my former colleagues feel that they have no alternative.

Anyway, the real purpose of this short post is simply to express solidarity with those taking industrial action. It it set to be a big struggle, but I wish everyone taking part all the best on the picket lines!

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The Cosmic Web in Maynooth

Posted in Books, Talks and Reviews, Talks and Reviews, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 5, 2019 by telescoper

Next week (10th to 17th November) in Ireland is Science Week and this will be celebrated by a number of events here in Maynooth, among which is a talk by yours truly on 15th November:

Here is a short description:

How can we map the distribution of galaxies over thousands of millions of light years? What does the Universe look like on these scales? How did get to look like that? And how do we know?This talk will explain how astronomers and cosmologists have come together over the past couple of decades to make huge surveys of the Universe, revealing the existence of a complex but beautiful `Cosmic Web’ with vast chains of galaxies strung out around immense dark voids. These observational breakthroughs have been mirrored by advances in theory and computer simulation that allow us to understand how this amazing structure was born 14 billion years ago in the Big Bang and has been growing and evolving ever since. Free and open to TY, 5th and 6th year students, this talk will be of particular interest in those interested astronomy, space, physics and the Universe itself!

It is on in the morning to make it possible for school students to attend and the talk is adapted to this audience, so it won’t be the same as the one I gave in Dublin last week. The timing seems to have worked because the lecture theatre has over 200 seats in it but is already almost full. There are still a few places available so if you’re in the area you can book here.

 

 

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First Light at the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on November 4, 2019 by telescoper

While I was away last week there was quite a lot of press coverage (e.g. here) about the new Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, which has just seen first light. I didn’t have time to mention this until now, and in any case  I have little to add to the coverage that has already appeared, but it does give me the excuse to post this nice video – which features quite a few people I actually know! – to describe  the huge galaxy survey that DESI will perform. It’s hard to believe that when I started in the field in 1985 the largest such survey, which took several years to compile, had only a few thousand galaxies in it. The DESI instrument will be able to determine spectra of more sources than that in a single pointing of the telescope that lasts about 20 minutes. Overall it should determine redshifts of over 35 million galaxies! Vorsprung durch Technik.

 

 

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Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child – Archie Shepp & Horace Parlan

Posted in Jazz with tags , on November 3, 2019 by telescoper

 

 

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In Memoriam

Posted in Biographical on November 2, 2019 by telescoper

This is going to be a very short post, but also a very difficult one to write. My Mam has passed away, having lost her struggle against Alzheimer’s Disease. Mercifully at least the end was peaceful and she’s now at rest. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam.

This is a picture of us in happier times taken just outside the Brighton Centre just after I received my doctorate from Sussex University in 1989.

Can that really have been 30 years ago?

The first I knew about her final illness was at the end of 2015 when I visited for Christmas and noticed how much her memory and behavior had changed. Shortly after that came the official diagnosis. Her condition deteriorated rapidly thereafter as dementia cruelly took hold and about eighteen months ago, being virtually completely incapacitated, she had to move into a care home. Fortunately she seemed relatively happy there. In the end it was pneumonia that took her, but at least she slipped away gently.

During the years of her illness I have never written about it here because I couldn’t find the words. Now I have to admit that when I heard the news that Mam had died my first reaction was a sort of relief that her torments were over. That was quickly overtaken by a sense of guilt (a) that I had felt like that and (b) that I hadn’t been there enough or done enough to help. Now I just feel numb, unable really to take it in. I keep hoping for some sort of catharsis, but it doesn’t happen.

My Mam’s illness was one of the causes of stress that led to my decision to step down from my role as Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Sussex University back in 2016. I had a notion that moving to a part-time job I might be able to help look after Mam, but I found the whole situation too painful and other things got in the way. I wasn’t strong enough to contribute anything significant and the burden fell on the shoulders of others. Now I’ll never be able to put that right.

I have to reorganize quite a few things next week so I can attend the funeral in Newcastle, so I’ll occupy myself doing that.

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The Cosmic Web at DIAS

Posted in Books, Talks and Reviews, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 1, 2019 by telescoper

Yesterday evening found me at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, complete with scary Hallowe’en beard, to give a talk.

Picture Credit: Prof. Luke Drury

It was a nice friendly audience and we had a lot of interesting discussions afterwards. As usual on such occasions I’ve put up the slides in case anyone wants to see them:

After the talk I headed back to Maynooth. It was a very rainy night, but at least some of the fireworks were going off despite the potential for damp squibs.

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