Long and Short Goodbyes

Posted in Biographical with tags , on August 2, 2018 by telescoper

This morning I discovered that my email account at Cardiff University has been disabled. Obviously the IT Services folk there don’t hang about when somebody leaves! I did get a couple of warnings that this was going to happen, but didn’t expect it quite so soon.

The withdrawal of access to IT services at Cardiff seems a bit abrupt, but I suppose that’s just the policy these days. My employment there has terminated so I don’t think it’s unreasonable that they shut down my email.I guess they just don’t go in for long goodbyes!

Anyway, I know I haven’t always been very good at replying to email recently, but if you email me at Cardiff from now on then I really can’t reply. I can’t even read your message!

This also reminds me that it’s been two years since I left my job as Head of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Sussex University. I’ve only been back to Brighton once since I left that position. I thought I might have a bit more time to visit there after moving onto a part-time contract at Cardiff, but that didn’t happen.

I was very tearful on my last day at Sussex, and can remember vividly how I felt walking down the steps from the Pevensey building for the last time. Still, it’s not a good idea to look back too often.The old School is in good hands, and I’m sure is going from strength to strength.

One great thing that has happened since I left Sussex is that the University has become an official partner of Brighton & Hove Pride, which is taking place this weekend. Best wishes to everyone taking part in the parade and associated festivities!

The two years since then have not turned out at all the way I planned when I left MPS: I had a three-year part-time contract at Cardiff, after which I planned to retire (in Cardiff). Now, two years on, I’m not retired nor am I in Cardiff, but living and working in another country.

Life is weird.

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On His Queerness

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on August 2, 2018 by telescoper

When I was young and wanted to see the sights,
They told me: ‘Cast an eye over the Roman Camp
If you care to.
But plan to spend most of your day at the Aquarium –
Because, after all, the Aquarium –
Well, I mean to say, the Aquarium –
Till you’ve seen the Aquarium you ain’t seen nothing.’

So I cast my eye over
The Roman Camp –
And that old Roman Camp,
That old, old Roman Camp
Got me
Interested.

So that now, near closing-time,
I find that I still know nothing –
And am still not even sorry that I know nothing –
About fish.

by Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986)

 

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Blog Endings

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on August 1, 2018 by telescoper

I was surprised and disappointed to learn via Twitter that the Guardian is to shut down its science blog network.

I have no idea why the powers that be at the Grauniad took this decision and I’m not sure any of the blog authors know why, either. Does anyone out there know the reason?

Whatever the grounds it’s a shame, because the various blogs on the network have generated a lot of interesting posts and related discussion over the years.

I toyed with the idea of applying to join the Guardian Science Blog Network way back in the summer of 2012, but nothing came of it so I just carried on here. The one real attraction of doing a Guardian blog was that I would have made a bit of money out of blogging, but the downside would probably have been feeling obliged to concentrate on science topics rather than whatever random stuff comes into my mind, which is what I do now. Anyway, whatever the reason I don’t regret keeping In The Dark going as an independent blog even if I have never made a penny out of it.

Next month (September 2018) will see the tenth anniversary of the first post on In The Dark. They say that all good things come to an end, on which basis this blog should probably carry on forever, but maybe a decade is long enough. On the hand it’s become a habit now, and I’m not sure I could stop even if I wanted to!

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R.I.P. Bernard Hepton (1925-2018)

Posted in Television with tags , , , , on July 31, 2018 by telescoper

I was saddened last night to hear of the death, at the age of 92, of the fine actor Bernard Hepton. As soon as I heard of his death I immediately thought of his role as Toby Esterhase in the TV series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People. Although Bernard Hepton was a very versatile actor who had an outstanding career in the theatre, television, and film, I think it will always be in his role as Toby Esterhase that I will remember him. In honour of his memory, therefore, I thought I’d post this wonderful scene from the TV series Smiley’s People, which I think is marvelously well acted.

Just to set the scene, the series (based on the novel of the same name by John Le Carré) is set a few years after Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Intelligence officer George Smiley (Alec Guinnness) is in retirement, as is his former colleague Toby Esterhase (Bernard Hepton) who has adopted the identity of a dodgy art dealer. Smiley is called back into action when a former agent by the name of Vladimir is murdered on Hampstead Heath en route to an appointment with British Intelligence (aka “The Circus”). Smiley is told to find out what happened and hush it up, but a combination of detective work and intuition leads him to the realization that he may, at last, have stumbled upon a way of bringing down his opposite number in Soviet Intelligence, the enigmatic Karla.

This scene, wherein Smiley and Esterhase meet up for the first time since they parted company with the Circus marks the point where Smiley decides to ignore his instructions to bury the case and embark on one final operation in the hope that he can at last locate Karla’s Achilles Heel. To find out more, you’ll have to watch the series, which unfolds slowly, but brilliantly…

 

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Quark Confinement and Excursion

Posted in Biographical, History, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on July 31, 2018 by telescoper

Today’s the day that many folks here in Maynooth have been looking forward to for many months. It’s the start of the XIIIth Quark Confinement Conference. This is the latest in a series of biennial meetings:

Inaugurated in 1994 in Como, Italy, this series of conferences has become an important forum for scientists working on strong interactions, stimulating exchanges among theorists and experimentalists as well as across related fields.

The aim of the conference is to bring together people working on strong interactions from different approaches, ranging from lattice QCD to perturbative QCD, from models of the QCD vacuum to QCD phenomenology and experiments, from effective theories to physics beyond the Standard Model.

The scope of the conference also includes the interface between QCD, nuclear physics and astrophysics, and the wider landscape of strongly coupled physics. In particular, the conference will focus on the fruitful interactions and mutual benefits between QCD and the physics of condensed matter and strongly correlated systems·

A conference of over 300 people is a major undertaking for a small place like Maynooth and I hope it all goes well.The participants will start arriving today, and the conference will carry on over the weekend and into Monday (which is actually a Bank Holiday in Ireland, Lá Saoire i mí Lúnasa). Yesterday the organisers were putting the finishing touches to all the arrangements, including putting a team of elves PhD students to work in the Department of Theoretical Physics packing the conference goody bags:

I’m not really involved in this meeting, as it’s not really on my subject, though I plan to drop in on some of the talks. I have, however, volunteered to go along as a kind of escort (so to speak) with one of the excursions on Saturday. I’ll be going with group C, which is doing a tour of the Boyne Valley, taking in the prehistoric tomb complex at Knowth. I only found out yesterday that the local organisers were short of a `responsible adult’ to go with this group but I was delighted to be asked to step in, as the prehistory of this part of Ireland has become a fascination for me since I arrived here. The Knowth complex is probably not as ancient as the perhaps more famous Newgrange site, but the whole area of the Boyne valley is incredibly rich in neolithic remains that connect directly to Ireland’s mythic past. I hope that (a) I manage to shake off the cold I’ve been struggling with since last week before Saturday, (b) the weather’s reasonable and (c) I remember to take my good camera!

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The Old Stoic – by Emily Jane Brontë

Posted in Literature, Poetry with tags , , , on July 30, 2018 by telescoper

Today, 30th July 2018, is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Emily Jane Brontë. There are many items celebrating her life in circulation on this day, most of them concentrating on her most famous work, her only novel Wuthering Heights, published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell in 1847. But Emily Brontë was also a fine poet, as indeed were her sisters Anne and Charlotte, so I thought I’d post a poem by her here. Much of her poetry is dominated by images of death and suffering, and her own health was affected by the harsh conditions in which she lived; she died of tuberculosis at the at the age of just 30.

Riches I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, “Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!”

Yes, as my swift days near their goal:
‘Tis all that I implore;
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.

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A Tribute to Fanny Blankers-Koen

Posted in Sport with tags , on July 30, 2018 by telescoper

I was reminded yesterday that it was on 29th July 1948 that the Olympic Games began in London after a gap of 12 years since the previous Olympics owing to the Second World War. That gives me the excuse to do a little post in tribute to one of the greatest athletes of all time.

The London games saw the emergence of legendary Dutch athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won no less than four gold medals: 100m, 200m, 80m hurdles and 4 ×100m relay. She probably would have won the Long Jump too, as she held the World Record in that event at the time, but was only allowed to compete in four events. Her achievements are made all the more remarkable by the fact that she was 30 years old – an age many would have thought was past the prime for an athlete – and she was also the mother of two children.

Fanny Blankers-Koen became a household name to my parents’ generation, and the inspiration to countless aspiring athletes. I remember my Mum talking about her when I was little, and what I remember from that is that she was regarded as exceptionally tall – in fact she was 5′ 9″ – which helped reinforce the impression among many British people that Dutch people were all giants!

Anyway, here is a little video with some clips of her in action. She won the 200m by miles!

Fanny Blankers-Koen passed away in 2004, at the age of 85, but her legend will live on.

 

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From the Spam Folder..

Posted in Uncategorized on July 29, 2018 by telescoper

Being a bit under the weather today, and not feeling feeling any inspiration to write an actual blog post, I thought I’d do a bit of tidying up, including emptying the spam comments folder, which had over a thousand items in it. Several of the comments that didn’t make it through the filter were from the chap who wrote this one, which features an impressive segue from the condemnation of gay sex to the value of the Hubble constant.

I haven’t read the “book” mentioned at the end of this comment. I wonder if it gives the units in which the Hubble constant is 70.98047? I ask because as far as I know neither the kilometre nor the Megaparsec were used in the New Testament.

P. S. My spam filter has now blogged over 2,000,000 comments on this blog; just over 30,000 have been published.

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Hurling Today

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on July 28, 2018 by telescoper

This afternoon I had my first experience of watching hurling. I have seen clips of action before, but never a whole game. What a game to start with!

I didn’t actually get to Croke Park to see Galway versus Clare in the All-Ireland Senior Championship Semi-Final but I did the next best thing, which is to watch it in a pub with a few pints of Guinness and a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable crowd.

If you’ve never seen hurling before then the first thing that strikes you is the phenomenal speed at which the game is played. The sliotar (ball) can travel from one end of the pitch to the other in a second and the players have to be extremely fit. Brave too. This is definitely not a game for faint hearts!

Anyway, the game started at 5pm and for the first 15 minutes or so Galway were all over Clare, scoring a goal and 7 points to Clare’s solitary point. It looked like being a very one-sided game, but gradually Clare clawed their way back, so that at half time it was Galway 1-10 to Clare 0-9, a lead of 4 (a goal is worth three points).

The second half saw the Clare fightback continue, and at full time it was level scoring, 1-23 to 0-26. Extra time followed, during which Clare scored a goal, but it ended 1-30 versus 1-30. There will be a replay.

It was raining heavily at the end and both teams looked exhausted but it was immensely exciting to watch, even if it did make me late getting home for dinner.

UPDATE: The second semi-final (on Sunday) was also a cracker that also went to extra time. It finished Limerick 3-32 Cork 2-31. Limerick will play whoever wins the replay of the above match.

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The Lunar Eclipse

Posted in Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on July 27, 2018 by telescoper

Just a reminder that there will be lunar eclipse tonight. The so-called `blood Moon’ will be visible across Ireland and the United Kingdom (as well as much of the rest of world tonight) although there is rain forecast, and its very overcast as I write this, so it’s possible that all I from Maynooth will see is clouds. That’s a shame as this will be the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century, lasting one hour, 42 minutes and 57 seconds.

Observers in Ireland will not be able to see the start of the eclipse as the moon will still be below the horizon when the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon. However, in the Dublin area it will be seen (clouds permitting) from 9.30pm to 10.15pm low in the sky to the South East. Then from 10.15pm to 11.20pm, the moon will be seen coming out of Earth’s shadow. The partial eclipse will last around four hours. Oh, and you should be able to see Mars which will be very bright tonight, down a bit and to the left from the Moon.

The photograph above is of a lunar eclipse taken earlier this year, on 31st January. Lunar eclipses tend to be seen in pairs, like low comedians.

Update:

P.S. It’s worth also giving advanced notice that next year, on March 29th 2019, there will be a total eclipse of the United Kingdom visible from Ireland and all the rest of the world…

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