Not Really Irish?

Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags , , , on October 23, 2019 by telescoper

I’m taking a quick break for coffee and remembered an article I saw in the Irish Times at the weekend about British immigrants in Ireland. Being one such myself I find a lot of it rings true. You can read the article here (I don’t think it’s behind a paywall). I think it’s well worth a look.

I found quite a few things in it resonate quite strongly with my experiences since I arrived here a couple of years ago. Top of these was the realization of just how ignorant I was about Irish history, thanks to the almost total neglect of this topic in British schools. Lack of education inevitably leads to lack of understanding and more often than not leads to prejudice and one finds a lot of that in the attitude of British people, even senior figures (many of them “educated” at Oxford) who are supposed to know better.

Another point I recognize is how many people ask me to explain Brexit, as if being British means that I should be able to do that. I don’t understand the madness that has descended on Britain but I feel it in my bones that the United Kingdom is headed for very dark times indeed.

I was also struck by the “Not Really Irish” tag, which I think about rather a lot. It’s not really just a question of whether or not you have Irish citizenship or an Irish passport, it’s about the extent to which you belong. I spent over fifty years living in England and Wales so I’m missing a huge amount of cultural background. I won’t ever be able to catch up so I don’t suppose I’ll ever feel `really Irish’. Of course people speak English here but I’m very conscious that I have a funny accent. I suppose that means I’ll always feel like a stranger in Ireland. If there is predominant attitude towards the British over here, however, in my experience it is one of sympathy rather than hostility. And the general friendliness of the locals means that this isn’t a bad place at all to be a stranger.

One final comment: it was mentioned in the Irish Times piece that there are a lot of British TV programmes on Irish television. I do not regard that as a positive at all! In fact I stopped watching UK television long before leaving the UK and have not started again since I moved here.

I wonder how different it feels to be an Irish person living in Britain right now? That might make for an interesting complementary article for a future edition of the Irish Times?

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Not the Open Journal of Astrophysics Impact Factor

Posted in Open Access with tags , , , on October 22, 2019 by telescoper

Yesterday evening, after I’d finished my day job, I was doing some work on the Open Journal of Astrophysics ahead of a talk I am due to give this afternoon as part of the current Research Week at Maynooth University. The main thing I was doing was checking on citations for the papers we have published so far, to be sure that the Crossref mechanism is working properly and the papers were appearing correctly on, e.g., the NASA/ADS system. There are one or two minor things that need correcting, but it’s basically doing fine.

In the course of all that I remembered that when I’ve been giving talks about the Open Journal project quite a few people have asked me about its Journal Impact Factor. My usual response is (a) to repeat the arguments why the impact factor is daft and (b) point out that we have to have been running continuously for at least two years to have an official impact factor so we don’t really have one.

For those of you who can’t be bothered to look up the definition of an impact factor , for a given year it is basically the sum of the citations in a given year for all papers published in the journal over the previous two-year period divided by the total number of papers published in that journal over the same period. It’s therefore the average citations per paper published in a two-year window. The impact factor for 2019 would be defined using citations to papers publish in 2017 and 2018, etc.

The Open Journal of Astrophysics didn’t publish any papers in 2017 and only one in 2018 so obviously we can’t define an official impact factor for 2019. However, since I was rummaging around with bibliometric data at the time I could work out the average number of citations per paper for the papers we have published so far in 2019. That number is:

I stress again that this is not the Impact Factor for the Open Journal but it is a rough indication of the citation impact of our papers. For reference (but obviously not comparison) the latest actual impact factors (2018, i.e. based on 2016 and 2017 numbers) for some leading astronomy journals are: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 5.23; Astrophysical Journal 5.58; and Astronomy and Astrophysics 6.21.

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Most Popular Programming Languages 1965-2019

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on October 21, 2019 by telescoper

I find this absolutely fascinating. I’ve programmed in Fortran, Pascal, Basic, Assembler, C, C++, Javascript and Python lived long enough to see quite the fashion for most of these languages come and go on a relatively short timescale. Perhaps it provides a salutary lesson for those who think their current Python codes will always be useful?

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On Zero-Hours Contracts

Posted in Maynooth, Politics with tags , , , , on October 20, 2019 by telescoper

In a week dominated by stupid things being said by stupid British politicians, one of the stupidest of all was the claim by Labour MP Caroline Flint that the European Union is to blame for the rise of zero-hours contracts. Caroline Flint is a Brexit supporter, of course, so she will not be interested in facts, but it is a fact that the European Union recently adopted a directive that protects workers’ rights and, in most cases, rules out zero-hours contracts. It’s up to the national governments to implement EU directives, something that the United Kingdom has yet to do and obviously will not do if and when Brexit happens and all employment protections go on the bonfire. As a Labour MP you would think Caroline Flint would care about this, but apparently not. She’s content to recite lies she hopes will curry favour with her leave-voting constituents and perpetuate her own political career at their expense.

Meanwhile, here in Ireland, the Oireachtas recently passed legislation making zero-hours contracts unlawful in Ireland `in most circumstances’. There’s a nice summary of the effects of the new law here.

I probably don’t need to spell it out but I rather think that the existence of this law and Ireland’s membership of the European Union comprehensively refutes Caroline Flint’s claim. Zero-hours are on the rise in the UK because of it’s own Government, not because of the European Union. I can think of dozens of other things that the EU gets the blame for that are actually the fault of the idiots in Westminster. Perhaps after Brexit British politicians will no longer be able to use the EU as a scapegoat for things they themselves mess up, though something makes me think they will continue to try and that the gullible public may actually believe them.

Anyway, the legal changes around zero-hours contracts in Ireland have had a significant impact in higher education, where many people – often (but not always) graduate students – are employed on casual part-time arrangements to run small group teaching sessions (i.e tutorials), demonstrate in laboratories, mark coursework and so on. The contracts on which such people have been employed have hitherto often been of the zero-hours type that is now unlawful.

As a response to this change in the law, here in Maynooth we have changed the contracts we issue to casual teaching staff, introducing clearer terms and conditions of employment as well as giving clearer indications of hours to be worked. In particular there is now a new category of employment designed for graduate students who are doing teaching, with terms and conditions that reflect their special status. All this required quite an effort at the start of teaching term this year to adapt to the new arrangements in time for the first teaching sessions. I only started as Head of Department on 1st September, and teaching started on 23rd, so this all caused quite a few headaches for me personally as I tried to get to grips with the new system. Fortunately, in the end, the transition actually went relatively smoothly and we have now settled into a steady state.

Of course it wasn’t the existence of graduate student teachers that precipitated the change in the law in Ireland. There are far worse offenders than universities in the use of exploitative employment contracts. Nevertheless but I am glad that the change has happened. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, according to UCU figures, around 46% of universities use staff on zero-hours contracts to deliver teaching.

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A Letter to Donald Tusk

Posted in Politics with tags , on October 20, 2019 by telescoper

We all now know that, last night, the UK Government sent not one or two but three letters to President of the Council of the European Union, Donald Tusk. These were not the only items of correspondence delivered to Mr Tusk last night. In fact, as an In The Dark exclusive, I can now reveal the contents of yet another letter, this one written by a Mrs Trellis of North Wales:

Dear Mr Trump Tusk,

I have heard that Boris Johnson does not want an extension.

If you have one spare please could I have it?

I promise to make good use of it as my kitchen is really very small.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Trellis.

 

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A Strange Day

Posted in Politics, Rugby with tags , , , , on October 19, 2019 by telescoper

Being in Maynooth getting some work done this afternoon, I wasn’t in London for today’s People’s Vote March, which seems to have been a big one. So big, in fact, that even the BBC felt compelled to mention it. Well done to everyone who took part!

Inside the House of Commons, Members of Parliament voted for an Amendment, the upshot of which is that the Government is now required to seek an extension of the October 31st deadline for leaving the European Union to allow Boris Johnson’s so-called `deal’ with the European Union and the associated legislation to be properly scrutinized.

The `deal’ finalized with the EU last week is a remarkable achievement, in that it is even stupider than the already extremely stupid deal negotiated by Theresa May. The one good thing about it is that it is a big step on the road to a United Ireland, which I personally hope I live long enough to enjoy. Loyalists – especially the Democratic Unionist Party – don’t see things the same way of course. The latter party’s public humiliation by Johnson in was a huge gamble that backfired spectacularly on him ,as their ten votes in favour of the Letwin Amendment led to the Government’s defeat, which lost by 322 to 308.

And then there’s Scotland which, like Northern Ireland, voted to remain in the European Union in the referendum that seemed to take place decades ago. While special customs arrangements to facilitate frictionless trade have been proposed for NI, there’s nothing at all in the Withdrawal Agreement for Scotland. In fact Scotland isn’t mentioned once in the text. Faced with such contemptuous treatment from Westminster, the likelihood of Scottish independence must now be greater than at any point in recent memory.

Anyway, Johnson is presumably now back at home in Downing Street with his crayons,writing a letter to the European Union asking for an extension as the law requires him. Or will he? Will he instead do what he usually does and try to bluster his way out of trouble? Will he end up going to prison for contempt of court? Or perhaps he’ll just go and die quietly in a ditch somewhere?

UPDATE: In an astonishing act of petulance, the UK Prime Minister sent not just one but three letters. The first – an unsigned photocopy of the letter contained in the Benn Act. It’s a wonder he didn’t wipe his bottom on it for further effect. The second letter was a covering note from the UK Ambassador to the EU explaining what the first letter was for, and the third was a rambling and incoherent missive from Bozo himself trying to explain in poor grammar why he didn’t think it was a good idea to grant an extension. If Johnson had been planning to make himself like a complete imbecile he could hardly have done a better job. Meanwhile Donald Tusk did exactly the right thing and took the first letter as a request for an extension. Johnson’s pathetic bluster had no effect on the EU, but in any case that was all for Tory party consumption anyway. Stupidity goes down very well with the Conservative Party these days.

P.S. For diary purposes I’ll note that today in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals, England beat Australia 40-16 while New Zealand beat Ireland 46-14. That means my accumulator bet is still on…

P.P.S.  Wales beat France by the narrowest of margins (an elbow) and South Africa beat hosts Japan in the other two quarter-finals, bringing my quad bet home in style.  Who will win the competition overall? I’ll go for New Zealand, but I’m not going to bet on it. Always quit while you’re ahead.

 

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Uri Caine’s Mahler

Posted in Music with tags , , , on October 18, 2019 by telescoper

And now for something completely different. I have recently been listening a lot to a fascinating album Urlicht by jazz pianist and bandleader Uri Caine in which he re-imagines the music of Gustav Mahler with a small band to wonderful effect. The music he produces is not only influenced by jazz but full of references to klezmer music and (to my ears at least) redolent of the music of the Weimar era. I confidently predict that many Mahler fans will absolutely hate this, with its pared-down arrangements and roughness around the edges, but I find it very refreshing. Anyway, you can decide for yourself whether you like it or not. This is Uri Caine’s take on the Funeral March from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5:

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Ten Years on Twitter

Posted in Biographical with tags , on October 17, 2019 by telescoper

This morning, a certain social media site pointed out to me that it is ten years to the day since I started using it.

My experiences of Twitter haven’t been anything like as bad as some people I know have reported. I think that’s probably because I’m quite liberal with the ‘block’ facility when it comes to bots and trolls and sundry other tediously offensive types. I have found that the positives have definitely outweighed the negatives over the last decade, and I count myself lucky to have encountered some very lovely people on Twitter, some of whom I have eventually met in the real world.

I don’t have a huge following on Twitter, but I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I do appreciate those who do read my tweets and hope that they find at least some of them interesting or amusing!

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Gravitational Lensing, Cosmological Distances and the Hubble Constant

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on October 17, 2019 by telescoper

To continue the ongoing Hubble constant theme, there is an interesting paper on the arXiv by Shajib et al. about determining a distance to a gravitational lens system; I grabbed the above pretty picture from the paper.

The abstract is:

 

You can click on this to make it bigger. You will see that this approach gives a `high’ value of H0 ≈ 74.2, consistent with local stellar distances measures, rather than with the `cosmological’ value which comes in around H0 ≈ 67 or so. It’s also consistent with the value derived from other gravitational lens studies discussed here.

Here’s my ongoing poll on the Hubble constant, with

 

 

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Happy Birthday, Quaternions!

Posted in History, mathematics with tags , , , , on October 16, 2019 by telescoper

Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865)

Today, October 16th, is Hamilton day! It was on this day 176 years ago, in 1843, that  William Rowan Hamilton first wrote down the fundamental result of quaternions. Apparently he was walking from his residence at Dunsink Observatory into Dublin when he had a sudden flash of inspiration  and wrote the result down on the spot, now marked by a plaque:

 

Picture Credit: Brian Dolan

This episode  is commemorated by an annual Hamilton Walk. Sadly,  Broombridge (Droichead Broome) is near the bridge (Broom Bridge) where Hamilton had his Eureka moment and it is on the main commuter line from Maynooth into Dublin. This is ironic because Quaternion algebra does not commute. (Geddit?)

Although it is quite easy to reach Broombridge from Maynooth, I sadly can’t attend the walk this year because I’m teaching this afternoon.

P.S. Maynooth is also home to the Hamilton Institute which promotes and facilitates research links between mathematics and other fields.

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