I stumbled across this abstract painting (acrylic on canvas) by the artist Victoria Kloch and thought I’d share it this autumn night. Do check out her website. There’s lots more interesting stuff on it!
Hip Replacement
Posted in Uncategorized on November 19, 2018 by telescoper
A Good Deal of Brexit
Posted in Uncategorized on November 18, 2018 by telescoperThe Irish media were full of Brexit last week, as are the British newspapers this weekend. The prospect of Theresa May’s daft (Shurely ‘draft’? Ed. ) deal being agreed caused a brief spasm of optimism in the currency markets during which the pound soared to the dizzying heights of €1.15 but when it became apparent what a dog’s breakfast the deal is, the £ came right back down again:
Notice that the BBC website article grabbed above (which was published on Thursday evening, 15th November) bears no relation to the reality revealed by the actual data. No change there then.
Anyway, regular readers of this blog will know that I’ve long considered it inevitable that the UK will depart the EU without a formal agreement having been put in place. The last couple of weeks have only strengthened my belief.
Given this, my only hope is that there is another period of false hope during which the pound rises just long enough for me to get a ‘Good Deal’ allowing me to move my savings to Ireland at a decent exchange rate. I missed the blip on Wednesday. I hope there’s another…
Follow @telescoperFlyBe in a Mess
Posted in Biographical, Cardiff with tags Cardiff, Cardiff Airport, Dublin, FlyBe on November 17, 2018 by telescoper
Having to return to Cardiff for the weekend, on Tuesday I booked a ticket with FlyBe for a flight from Dublin as I have done on many previous occasions.
Yesterday I tried to check in online to get my boarding pass beforehand (which speeds things up a lot if you have only hand luggage) but the system failed. I contacted Flybe and they said I’d have to check in at the airport. When I arrived at Dublin airport this morning I found the staff at the check-in desk unable to check anyone for the Cardiff in because the passenger list had not be generated, evidently as a result of the same computer glitch.
I waited. About an hour passed and a large queue grew. Fortunately I was near the front as, anticipating issues, I was sure to get to the airport in good time. Eventually the staff resorted to an older, manual, system and I was checked in. The plane was delayed taking off but I got to Cardiff about 10am.
Today’s mess was entirely self-inflicted as it transpires that it was an error arising from an update to their computer system. That sort of thing won’t do FlyBe any favours. The airline is currently up for sale as it is steadily losing money. These are difficult enough times for the air travel industry, without antagonising customers with displays of sheer incompetence. There were very many disgruntled passengers in the line behind me who won’t be using Flybe again.
To be fair, though, I have used this airline quite a lot in the past year and have had few reasons to complain.
I hope Flybe doesn’t go bust, as the livelihoods of many workers are at stake. But finding a buyer a few months before Brexit might not be easy. The consequences for Cardiff Airport would in that case be very serious, as this piece explains.
For myself, I’m just relieved that I longer have to commute weekly between Cardiff and Dublin as I did earlier this year, as Flybe is the only airline operating on that route.
Follow @telescoperWomen-only Professorships in Ireland
Posted in Education, Politics with tags academia, gender, gender discrimination, ireland, women-only professorships on November 16, 2018 by telescoperEarlier this week the Irish Government made an announcement that has ruffled a few feathers: it aims to create a number of new senior positions at Professor level in Irish Universities that are open only to female candidates. I don’t know the details of how this scheme will work, but I understand that the positions will be targeted at subject (and perhaps geographical) areas in which there is a demonstrable gender imbalance and the scheme will cost about €6M.
Reactions to this among people I know have been very varied, so it seems a good topic on which to have a simplistically binary poll:
For the record, I should state that I am broadly in favour of the idea, but I’d like to know more about how these positions will be allocated to institutions, how they will be advertised and how the recruitment will be done. I’ll also add that my main worry about this initiative is that it might distract attention away from the need for Irish higher education institutions to have much better promotion procedures; see, e.g. here. There are plenty of female lecturers in Irish universities, but they seem to face ridiculous difficulties getting promoted to Professorships.
Follow @telescoper
The Dublin Castle Scandal (1884) and “The Unspeakable Crime”
Posted in History, LGBTQ+ with tags Dublin Castle Scandal, lgbt-history on November 16, 2018 by telescoperThis is quite a lengthy blog post but it gives an absolutely fascinating insight in a story of the underground gay subculture of Dublin in the 1880s…
The Dublin Castle homosexual scandal of 1884 is a complex story. It involves more than a dozen characters that were introduced over a series of separate criminal trials. All sections of society were involved. The upper echelons of serving police detectives, eminent civil servants and British Army captains. Aspirational middle-class bank clerks and Trinity college graduates. Right down to the semi-blind brothel-keepers and young male prostitutes who were described as “persons of the lowest class of life”. All of these men were accused in newspapers and in court of having same-sex physical relationships. Irish society was shocked.
My main interest is in one specific aspect of the scandal – the backgrounds and post-prison lives of three men who were convicted of running homosexual brothels in the city in 1884.
But before that, a very brief background.
Tim Healy (Irish Nationalist MP) accused two high-ranking British establishment figures, of being homosexual in the United…
View original post 1,599 more words
What are we going to do now?
Posted in Politics, Television with tags BrExit, Spike Milligan on November 15, 2018 by telescoperOn this tumultuous day in British politics, this blog is proud to be able to show exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of the Cabinet discussions at Number 10 Downing Street:
Follow @telescoperGravitational Wave Controversy Updates
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags Advanced LIGO, arXiv:1811.04071, Danish paper, LIGO Scientific Collaboration on November 14, 2018 by telescoperFollowing my recent post about the claims and counter-claims concerning the detection (or otherwise) of gravitational waves, I have a couple of updates.
First, a few days ago there appeared a paper on the arXiv by Nielsen et al with the abstract (which I’ve slightly edited for formatting reasons):
We use the Pearson cross-correlation statistic proposed by Liu & Jackson (2016), and employed by Creswell et al. (2017), to look for statistically significant correlations between the LIGO Hanford and Livingston detectors at the time of the binary black hole merger GW150914. We compute this statistic for the calibrated strain data released by LIGO, using both the residuals provided by LIGO and using our own subtraction of a maximum-likelihood waveform that is constructed to model binary black hole mergers in general relativity. To assign a significance to the values obtained, we calculate the cross-correlation of both simulated Gaussian noise and data from the LIGO detectors at times during which no detection of gravitational waves has been claimed. We find that after subtracting the maximum likelihood waveform there are no statistically significant correlations between the residuals of the two detectors at the time of GW150914.
The four authors of this paper are, I believe, either present or former members of the LIGO Collaboration
Meanwhile, the NBI group behind the Cresswell et al. paper challenged by the above paper has issued a statement which you can read here. The group re-iterate points made in the New Scientist article discussed in my recent post. Although the Nielsen et al. paper is not explicitly mentioned in the NBI statement but I’m given to understand that the Danish group does not agree with the conclusions in that paper.
The story continues.
Follow @telescoperMoving Memories
Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags Beeston, Nottingham, Nottingham University, School of Physics & Astronomy on November 13, 2018 by telescoperYesterday evening I suddenly realized that today would be the anniversary of a significant milestone in my life. It was 20 years ago today (on 13th November 1998) that I moved from London to Beeston in Nottingham prior to starting as Professor of Astrophysics at Nottingham University on 1st January 1999. That means I’ve been a Professor for almost twenty years!
I remember it was Friday 13th November 1998 when I took possession of the house I’d bought in Marlborough Road. I picked that particular day to complete the purchase (and sale of my flat in Bethnal Green) because a removals firm offered me a very cheap deal: normally nobody wants to move house on Friday 13th, so they were happy when I turned out not to be superstitious. The move worked out very smoothly, in fact.
This picture taken in the Beeston residence that very day. You can see one of the removal men in the background:
I was still working at Queen Mary until the end of December 1998 so I had to commute to London and back for over a month after relocating, which wasn’t ideal, but bearable knowing that it wasn’t going to last forever, and that from the New Year I would be able to walk into work on the Nottingham University campus rather than trekking by train to London.
I did think leaving London would be a wrench, and that I would probably end up going back frequently to spend time with my old friends and visit regular haunts, but that didn’t really happen, and after living outside the Capital for a while I lost all inclination to ever return. Living in London is great fun when you’re young, but loses its attraction when you’re getting on a bit. That’s what I found, anyway.
It was exciting starting the new job in Nottingham. There wasn’t an Astronomy group as such prior to January 1999, but with the formation of a new group the School of Physics became the School of Physics & Astronomy, and the influx of astronomers helped the School both to expand its research portfolio and become more attractive to students. It was hard work helping to build that from scratch, but I’m glad that it worked out well. It is good to see the Astronomy group and indeed the whole School continuing to prosper, although some of my former colleagues there have now retired.
I moved to Cardiff in 2007 and eventually sold the Beeston house in 2008, after a long delay due to the Credit Crunch, and bought a house in Pontcanna which I still own.
It’s strange to think all that happened 20 years ago. I’ve just finished giving a lecture to our second-year students, most of whom weren’t even born in 1998! And I certainly never imagined back then than in twenty years I’d be living in Ireland!
Follow @telescoperR.I.P. James Stirling (1953-2018)
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, James Stirling, Particle Physics, University of Cambridge on November 12, 2018 by telescoper
I’m sorry that this blog is once again the bearer of bad news, but it is my sad duty to pass on the news that distinguished particle physicist James Stirling (pictured above) passed away yesterday at the age of 65.
Professor James Stirling was one of the leading lights of the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology in Durham (of which he was the first Director) and subsequently became Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy and Head of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. More recently he was Provost of Imperial College, a post from which he stepped down earlier this year. He was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1999, and awarded a CBE in the New Years Honours List in 2006.
As well as being an eminent physicist, with over 300 publications to his name including fundamental contributions to the field of hadronic interactions and perturbative QCD, Professor Stirling also gave great service to the research community, by serving on numerous important committees, including the Science Board of the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
Not being a particle physicist myself I didn’t know James as a close colleague, but I met him on several occasions during visits to Durham. Most recently, he was the external member of the appointment panel when I was interviewed for the post of Head of School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex. It says a lot for his personality that what I expected to be a fierce grilling when he led the questions on my research, turned out to he a friendly (yet challenging) discussion of some of my publications which he had clearly read extremely carefully.
James Stirling was held in extremely high regard by the scientific community and he’ll be greatly missed.I send my deepest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.
R.I.P. Professor James Stirling (1953-2018)
Follow @telescoper
In the Dark 