Taking a stroll around Maynooth this afternoon I came across a little bit of local history that I thought I would share. On the appropriately name Pound Lane, right next to the stream that used to run past an ancient mill where there is now a shopping centre, there is a small enclosure called the Maynooth Pound, marked with this sign:
If you can’t read the sign it explains that this is the only surviving example of a type of pound which used to be common all over Ireland. Stray animals were brought here to be fed and watered before being reunited with their owners (for a small fee).
The walls are of interesting dry stone construction and have survived the passage of time rather well; they were built in 1822, although the Pound itself is a bit older.
The interior of the Pound was virtually derelict until quite recently but has been tidied up and is now a pleasant place to sit down and perhaps feed the birds. The old mill was famous for its crows, of which there are still a great many in Maynooth although they tend now to congregate on the playing fields near the Royal Canal.
In the picture, the mill stream is to the right of the shot and you can see the roof of the Manor Mill shopping centre to the upper right.
Contrary to claims about the irrelevance of philosophy for science, I argue that philosophy has had, and still has, far more influence on physics than is commonly assumed. I maintain that the current anti-philosophical ideology has had damaging effects on the fertility of science. I also suggest that recent important empirical results, such as the detection of the Higgs particle and gravitational waves, and the failure to detect supersymmetry where many expected to find it, question the validity of certain philosophical assumptions common among theoretical physicists, inviting us to engage in a clearer philosophical reflection on scientific method.
I don’t know why this track just came into my head but while it’s there I thought I’d share it. It’s from a rightly renowned album by Chick Corea and Gary Burton recorded at a live concert in Zurich in 1979, but this number just features Gary Burton on the vibes. I bought this album on vinyl when it first came out and was completely gobsmacked by the miraculous nature of Gary Burton’s four-mallet vibraphone playing, especially on this track. In a subsequent interview on the radio I heard Burton dismiss his extraordinary technical accomplishment, explaining that the mallets are really just like fingers and it is no harder than playing the piano. I think his modesty is misplaced, as fingers bend but mallets don’t. Or do they?
Well, it’s another lovely day here in Maynooth and it feels even nicer that now that I’ve finished the stack of examination and project marking I had to do relating to the Computational Physics module I’ve been teaching for the past term.
I was feeling a bit guilty that I only just got the marks ready before today’s deadline, but it turns out that mine is far from being the last set to go into the database.
Tomorrow we have an internal meeting to discuss all the examination results and then on Tuesday next week we have the full formal meeting of the Exam Board complete with visiting External Examiner. It’s always a busy period preparing for these meetings as not only does everything have to be marked, but also all the marks need to be checked and double-checked, and various statistics produced ready for the forthcoming meetings. We take all these things very seriously because they’re so important.
I’m not sure students appreciate how much goes on behind the scenes at this time of year, but in this period they are finished with their academic work and probably out and about enjoying the sunshine. They were cooped up indoors sitting their examinations just a few days ago while we staff were in a state of comparative relaxation, and now it’s our turn to suffer.
Anyway, it’s at busy times of the year that we rely heavily on the efforts not only of administrative staff, without whom the whole business of examinations would grind to a halt. We rely on them all round the year, in fact, but their contribution is particularly obvious during exam season.
As it happens the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University will soon be losing an invaluable member of administrative staff who is retiring in a month or so. We have an advertisement already out for a (full-time) Executive Assistant with a deadline of 17th June to provide us with a replacement as soon as possible.
Anyway, Monday 4th June is a Bank Holiday in Ireland. It’s the equivalent holiday to the Late Spring Holiday in the UK (which is always on the last Monday of May), but here in the Emerald Isle it is always the first Monday in June. This year it happens to be on my birthday! So after the ordeal of tomorrow’s pre-Board meeting I have a long weekend to relax before the official meeting on Tuesday. I’m not sure if the fine weather will last, but I intend to do a bit of sightseeing if it does.
A few days ago I came across the following video, and I thought I’d share it here for two reasons. The first reason is that you might find it surprising, possibly amusing and possibly also bit scary. Keep your eye on the cross in the centre of the screen and observe what happens to the faces either side:
Most people who I’ve shown this to report peculiar distortions of the (familiar) faces either side. This phenomenon is clearly related to the limitations of peripheral vision.
The second reason for posting this is much more personal and relates to my struggles over the years with a form of panic disorder (which I’ve blogged about before, e.g., here). The term `panic disorder’ has a very broad definition, so that different individuals experience different forms of panic attacks and they can also take very different forms for the same individual. For me, a “typical” panic episode begins with a generalised feeling of apprehension or dread. Sometimes that’s as far as it goes. However, more often, there follows a period of increasingly heightened awareness of things moving in my peripheral vision that I can’t keep track of, accompanied by auditory and visual hallucinations. I’ve tried to explain the latter in conversations with friends and colleagues and usually when I do so I describe how the faces of people around me become distorted in a grotesque and terrifying way. When that happens I usually run as fast as I can in whatever direction I can to get away.
On top of the effect of these attacks themselves, there is also the frustration, when they are over, of not really understanding what had happened. What is happening in my brain when a panic episode begins? What is going on with my peripheral vision when it goes awry like it does? Why do some particular places or circumstances trigger an attack but other, apparently similar, ones don’t?
When I first saw the above video it struck me immediately that it might contain a big clue about these episodes, as the facial distortions that appear there are very similar to what I experience. Perhaps what goes wrong is that peripheral vision takes over from central vision, i.e. a kind of opposite of tunnel vision, as a result of some malfunction in the way my brain deals with peripheral data.
Most of the time we just discard data from outside our line-of-sight unless it’s something extremely dramatic and disturbing (whether good or bad); presumably we can’t process everything across our entire field of view so we usually filter out observations coming from the edges. What seems to happen with me is that something interferes with this filtering process so that almost everything gets flagged with a danger signal. My response to these is to look about manically trying to establish whether the threat is real before, usually, just getting out of there as quickly as I can when it becomes overwhelming.
Obviously, this isn’t a complete answer to any of the many questions I’ve asked myself about this but somehow seeing the effect in the video makes me feel more comfortable with what happens because at least I can see that others can experience a similar phenomenon, even if in very different circumstances.
P.S. I should say that although about two years ago I quit the medication I was taking to control them, I haven’t had any of these psychotic episodes since then. Reducing stress by leaving my job at Sussex was almost certainly a contributing factor.
I flew back from Cardiff to Dublin this morning in order to attend a conference called Irish Quantum Foundations which is taking place today and tomorrow on the All Hallow’s Campus of Dublin City University, in Drumcondra (Dublin). I usually take the Hopper bus directly to Maynooth from Dublin Airport but today involved a different journey, via the ordinary No. 16 Dublin Bus.Anyway, I got here on time.
I’m speaking just after lunch so I’m not sure how much time I will have to blog about the meeting, but I couldn’t resist posting this little video related to a talk by Emmanuel Fort which demonstrates a purely classical form of wave-particle duality:
I’ll post further comments about talks if and when I get the time!
Evening update: two public talks, the first being by renowned physicist and blogger, Sabine Hossenfelder:
The talk ended with a plug for Sabine’s book, which is out soon.
After a short break we had a second public lecture by Nobel Physics Laureate (2016), Duncan Haldane.
Yesterday I travelled to London (on a very slow train, diverted because of engineering work) in order to watch the third day’s play of the First Test between England and Pakistan at Lord’s.
The above picture was taken from my seat on the top level of the recently refurbished Warner Stand, looking towards the Mound Stand.
Pakistan were well on top going into the third day, having dismissed England for just 184 in their first innings. They started Day 3 on 350 for 8 and added just 13 to their overnight score before Mohammad Abbas was out, at which point the innings closed; Babar Azam had retired hurt the previous day, struck on the arm, and was unable to resume.
England came out to vat, and their performance mirrored the first innings – wickets fell to a mixture of good deliveries and poor shots. Bairstow, for example, was bowled by a beautiful delivery from Amir that nipped back off the seam and Stoneman got one from the legspinner Shadab Khan that turned and kept low. Stokes on the other hand played a weak shot to a nothing ball and was caught at short midwicket.
When Root was out for 68, with the score on 110 for 6, an innings defeat looked inevitable but there then followed a fine century partnership between Jos Buttler and Debutant spinner Dom Bess. I don’t rate Buttler as a Test player and his selection (as a batsman to play at No. 7) was an admission that the higher order was likely to fail, which of course it did. However to give credit where it is due he and Bess played very well, taking England to 235 for 6, adding 125 between them, avoiding an innings defeat and giving England a lead of 56.
It was a good performance from the 7th wicket pair, but England would need at least another 100 runs to have any chance of winning.
England’s batting frailties and later recovery notwithstanding, it was a fine performance in the field from Pakistan who I thought were very impressive.
On Day 4 the England batting collapsed as it had in the first innings: the last four wickets fell for just 7 runs, leaving Pakistan a target 64 to win, which they duly rattled off on less than an hour for the loss of just one wicket.
Well played Pakistan, and congratulations on a thoroughly well deserved victory!
England’s poor performance against this Pakistan team certainly puts that of Ireland a couple of weeks ago into perspective!
Posted in Uncategorized on May 26, 2018 by telescoper
It’s a yes in the referendum to repeal the 8th amendment – by a landslide!
Congratulations to everyone who campaigned so hard for a ‘yes’ vote!
The margin of the result (about 2:1 in favour of Repeal) confounds the opinion polls which suggested a much closer result. It seems to me that what happened was that most of the ‘Don’t Knows’ in those poll actually went with ‘Yes’.
I’m currently waiting for the last couple of scripts from my Physics of the Early Universe examination to arrive so I can begin the task of marking them. The examination was yesterday morning, and it’s now Friday afternoon, so I don’t know why it takes so long for the scripts to find their way to the examiner, especially when marking is on such a tight schedule. I’m away next week (in Ireland) so if I don’t get papers by this afternoon they won’t be marked until I return. The missing two are from students sitting in alternative venues, but I don’t see why that means they take over 24 hours to get to the marker.
(By the way, `script’ refers to what the student writes (usually in a special answer book), as opposed to the `paper’ which is the list of questions to be answered or problems to be solved in the script.)
Anyway, while I’m waiting for the missing scripts to arrive I thought I’d mention that here in the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University we have a system whereby students can get access to their marked examination scripts. This access is limited, and for the purpose of getting feedback on where they went wrong, not for trying to argue for extra marks. The students can’t take the scripts away, nor can they make a copy, but the can take notes which will hopefully help them in future assessments. There’s a similar provision in place in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University, where I will be relocating full-time in July, based around a so-called `Consultation Day’.
When I was Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Sussex University I tried to introduce such a system there, but it was met with some resistance from staff who thought this would not only cause a big increase in workload and but also lead to difficulties with students demanding their marks be increased. That has never been the experience here at Cardiff: only a handful take up the opportunity and those that do are told quite clearly that the mark cannot be changed. Last year I had only one student who asked to go through their script. I was happy to oblige and we had a friendly and (I think) productive meeting.
If I had my way we would actually give all students their marked examination scripts back as a matter of routine. The fact that we don’t is no doubt one reason for relatively poor performance in student satisfaction surveys about assessment and feedback. Obviously examination scripts have to go through a pretty strict quality assurance process involving the whole paraphernalia of examination boards (including external examiners), so the scripts can’t be given back immediately but once that process is complete there doesn’t seem to me any reason why we shouldn’t give their work, together with any feedback written on it, back to the students in its entirety.
I have heard some people argue that under the provisions of the Data Protection Act students have a legal right to see what’s written on the scripts – as that constitutes part of their student record – but that’s not my point here. My point is purely educational, based on the benefit to the student’s learning experience.
Anyway, I don’t know how widespread the practice is of giving examination scripts back to students so let me conduct a totally unscientific poll. Obviously most of my readers are in physics and astronomy, but I invite anyone in any academic discipline to vote:
And, of course, if you have any further comments to make please feel free to make them through the box below!
The views presented here are personal and not necessarily those of my employer (or anyone else for that matter).
Feel free to comment on any of the posts on this blog but comments may be moderated; anonymous comments and any considered by me to be vexatious and/or abusive and/or defamatory will not be accepted. I do not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with the opinions or statements of any information or other content in the comments on this site and do not in any way guarantee their accuracy or reliability.
In the Dark 