Toby Young excluded from Beard of Winter shortlist

Posted in Beards, Politics on January 4, 2018 by telescoper

The campaign against Toby Young gathers strength…..

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Beard Liberation Front

Media Release

4th January

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Toby Young excluded from Beard of Winter shortlist

The Beard Liberation Front the informal network of beard wearers has said that self-styled ‘right-wing maverick’ Toby Young has been excluded from the Beard of Winter shortlist due to be unveiled on 14th January.

The campaigners say that the BLF has investigated whether Young has faced pogonophobic discrimination, after New Year criticisms of his appointment as an official Universities regulator.

The finding was that, on the contrary, Toby Young, and particularly his social media presence, has brought the hirsute into disrepute

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the coveted Beard of Winter Award, the first of four seasonal Awards, invariably has a diverse shortlist, for example Prince Harry is certain to feature, but Toby Young is a beard too far.

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Planes, Trains and Quaternions

Posted in Biographical, History, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , , , , , , , on January 4, 2018 by telescoper

Well, here I am in Maynooth for the first time in 2018. I flew over from Cardiff yesterday. The flight was rather bumpy owing to the strong winds following Storm Eleanor, and it was rather chilly waiting for the bus to Maynooth from Dublin Airport; nevertheless I got to my flat safely and on time and found everything in order after the Christmas break.

This morning I had to make a trip by train to Dublin city  to keep an appointment at the Intreo Centre in Parnell Street, which is about 15 minutes walk from Dublin Connolly train station. I bought an Adult Day Return which costs the princely sum of €8.80. Trains, stations and track in Ireland are maintained and operated by Irish Rail (Iarnród Éireann), which is publicly owned. Just saying.

The distance between Maynooth and Dublin about 25 km, which takes about 40 minutes on the local stopping train or about 25 minutes on the longer distance trains which run nonstop from Maynooth to Dublin. As it happens I took one of the fast trains this morning, which arrived on schedule, as did the return journey on a commuter train. My first experience of the Irish railway system was therefore rather positive.

I had thought of having a bit of a wander around the city on my way to Parnell Street but it was raining and very cold so I headed straight there. I arrived about 20 minutes ahead of my scheduled appointment, but was seen straight away.

The reason for the interview was to acquire a Personal Public Services Number (PPSN), which is the equivalent of the National Insurance Number we have in the United Kingdom. This number is needed to be registered properly on the tax and benefit system in Ireland and is the key to access a host of public services, the electoral roll, and so on. You have to present yourself in person to get a PPSN, presumably to reduce the opportunity for fraud, and I was told the interview would take 15 minutes. In fact, it only took about 5 minutes and at the end a photograph was taken to go on the ID card that is issued with the number on it.

So there I was, all finished before I was even due to start. The staff were very friendly and it all seems rather easy. Fingers crossed that the letter informing me of my number will arrive soon. It should take a week or so, so I’m told. After that I should be able to access as many personal services as I want whenever I want them. (Are you sure you have the right idea? Ed.)

For  the return trip  to Maynooth I got one of the slower commuter trains, stopping at intermediate stations and running right next to the Royal Canal, which runs from Dublin for 90 miles through  Counties Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Westmeath before entering County Longford, where it joins the River Shannon. One of the intermediate stations along the route next to the canal is Broombridge, the name of which stirred a distant memory.

A quick application of Google reminded me that the town of Broombridge is the site of the bridge (Broom Bridge) beside which William Rowan Hamilton first wrote down the fundamental result of quaternions (on 16th October 1843). Apparently he was walking from Dunsink Observatory into town 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 on 16th October each year by an annual Hamilton Walk. I look forward to reporting from the 2018 walk in due course!

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

 

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Hypocrisy Illustrated

Posted in Politics with tags , , , on January 3, 2018 by telescoper

The playwright Alan Bennett recently said that “England excels at one thing…hypocrisy”. If you needed any evidence that he was right, take a look at these results from a 2014 COMRES survey:

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The Old Year’s Blog Statistics

Posted in Biographical on January 2, 2018 by telescoper

I’ve been back in the office (in Cardiff) today, where I’ve got through quite a lot of work – as well as doing my tax return at lunchtime – owing to the fact that there’s nobody else here. I’m about to go home and try to figure out which assortment of bins to put out but before doing that I thought I’d do a quick blog about the blog.

Once upon a time, in the good old days, WordPress used to publish the annual statistical summary page for its bloggers, but it discontinued that practice last year so now I’ll just write my own brief summary based on the data available via the usual dashboard. First, however, a picture:

Now, for those interested I got about 413K hits this year, just over 1100 a day, with about 212K unique views. That’s up a bit since last year, probably because I’ve posted more (442 articles this year, including reblogs). The two most popular posts were about the Bullying Scandal in Zurich and on the rumours surrounding a gravitational waves from a source in NGC 4993 (proved later to be true).

In 2017 there were 2610 comments on this blog, up about 10% on last year. No prizes for guessing who wrote the most comments.

Altogether since this blog started in 2008 to the end of 2017, it has been viewed 3,371,843 times by a total of 1,094,975 unique visitors (though, obviously, all my visitors are unique). I passed 3 million reads and 1 million visitors during the course of last year.

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Love in the Asylum

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

A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds

Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds

Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.

She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies

She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.

And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.

by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

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Passport to Nowhere

Posted in Biographical, Politics on January 1, 2018 by telescoper

This is a picture of one of my old expired passports. It is, in fact, the first I ever had. It was issued to me in 1986, when I was 23 years old and a PhD student; I needed it to travel to a conference in France. It expired in 1996 (hence the docking of the top right corner) whereupon I had it replaced by a much better made Burgundy one.

I had never travelled abroad before 1986. I’m not from a wealthy family and we never had any holidays outside the UK. Given that,  I’m grateful that I ended up in a career that allowed me to travel quite widely,  within in the European Union and beyond.

I’m guessing that most of the people celebrating the imminent “return of the blue passport” recently announced by the Government never actually had one of these old-style passports, as they weren’t the colour of the ones UK citizens will have to carry after Brexit which will be Navy Blue, a tone much lighter than the blue of old passport, which is almost black.

This is, to me, just another example of the absurd hankering after an imagined past that never was that characterizes Brexit Britain.

Anyway, the colour of the next UK passport is of no real concern to me. Whatever its design it will not allow UK citizens to live and work freely within the European Union, so it will be of considerable less value than the existing ones.

Fortunately (for me, at least) I won’t be needing a British passport much longer and will have no need to renew mine for the downgraded version that will be mandatory after 2019. In fact when I get my Irish passport the first thing I’ll do is throw the old British one in the bin.

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New Year’s Eve Post

Posted in Crosswords on December 31, 2017 by telescoper

Well, this year has been rounded off nicely with a win in the Everyman Crossword Competition:

In due course I’ll be distributing largesse in the form of a new set of dictionaries like these..


Other than that, it’s chucking it down here in Cardiff so the rest of New Year’s Eve will involve me staying in, drinking a cocktail or two, eating steak and chips with a nice bottle of Amarone, and doing today’s  Azed puzzle.

Let me just take this opportunity to wish you all out there a happy, peaceful, and prosperous 2018!

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The Society for Failed Astronauts 

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on December 30, 2017 by telescoper

Attempting to reacclimatise after a whole week  incommunicado one of the first things I noticed was the newly published New Year’s Honours List.

Among those receiving an honour this time round is Helen Sharman who has been made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (whatever that is). 

Helen Sharman became the first British astronaut in 1991 when she took a turn in the Mir space station as a result of Project Juno.

I’m not a fan of the honours system (to say the least), but Helen Sharman’s achievement is well worth celebrating, so heartiest congratulations to her! 

I remember being asked to chair a public talk by Helen Sharman many years ago at which I absent-mindedly introduced her as Helen Shapiro. I wanted the ground to swallow me up after that gaffe but she was very charming about it and took it in good spirit.

Anyway, the selection of potential astronauts for Project Juno began in 1989, with newspaper and radio adverts. About 13,000 people applied. In fact, to let you all in on a secret, I was one.

A keen long-distance runner in those days, I was physically fit enough to be in contention. I could also provide evidence of an ability to learn languages, chiefly through a knowledge of Latin and French from O-level. I passed the initial selection but, predictably, was later rejected after failing the psychological tests.

I noticed that Helen Sharman and I were born just a few days apart (in 1963) and it occurred to me that there must be quite a few people out there, of a similar vintage, perhaps some of them readers of this blog, who were among the 13,000 who, like myself, failed to become astronauts. 

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who applied to Project Juno to find out what they ended up doing. I know one or two university professors after being rejected by Project Juno, but there must be some among the 13,000 who did something useful with their lives! Please let me know through the comments box.

Perhaps we could form a (not very exclusive) club? How about the Rejected Astronaut Society? No. the initials ‘RAS’ are taken…

I know. The Society for Failed Astronauts! 

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Off for Christmas!

Posted in Biographical on December 23, 2017 by telescoper

Well, as of now I’m offline as well as off-duty, off piste, off the beaten track, off-centre, offhand, off the wagon, off my face, off my head, off colour, off limits and off topic until after Christmas.

That means there won’t be any more blog posts, tweets, Facebook, emails or phone calls until next week at the earliest.

I’d just like to wish you all the compliments of the season and hope you have a peaceful and enjoyable holiday.

Nadolig Llawen!

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The Fable of Mabel

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , , on December 22, 2017 by telescoper

Now, as a special Christmas treat, I present for you one of my all-time favourite pieces of music. It was recorded by Serge Chaloff Octet in Boston, in September 1954 and I’ve loved it ever since I first heard it on The Best of Jazz, the radio show that was presented by Humphrey Lyttelton for many years on Radio 2, way back in the 1980s. Humph had eclectic musical tastes and I am forever in his debt for introducing me to relatively obscure pieces such as this which have given me so much pleasure over the years. I can see I’m not the only WordPress blogger who loves this track too!

The lineup for this track is Serge Chaloff (baritone sax) Herb Pomeroy (trumpet) Gene DiStachio (trombone) Charlie Mariano (also saxophone) Varty Haritounian (trumpet) Dick Twardzik (piano) Ray Oliveri (bass) and Jimmy Zitano (drums). Serge Chaloff was a famously dissolute and chaotic character, who struggled to control a serious narcotics habit, but he was a marvellously accomplished player of the huge and unwieldy baritone sax. Chaloff plays beautifully on this track but the star is the amazingly innovative pianist and composer Dick Twardzik, who wrote the piece. Had he not died so young (in 1955, of a heroin overdose, on tour in Paris with Chet Baker, at the age of just 24) he would have become a household name in Jazz.

Twardzik had this to say about The Fable of Mabel on the sleevenote:

The Fable of Mabel was introduced to jazz circles in 1951-52 by the Serge Chaloff Quartet. Audiences found this satirical jazz legend a welcome respite from standard night club fare. In this legend, Mabel is depicted as a woman who loves men, music and her silver saxophone that played counterpoint (her own invention which proved impractical). The work is divided into three movements: first, New Orleans; second Classical; and third, Not Too Sad An Ending. The soulful baritone solo Serge Chaloff traces Mabel’s humble beginnings working railroad cars in New Orleans to her emergence as a practising crusader for the cause of Jazz. During her Paris days on the Jazz Houseboat, her struggle for self-expression is symbolized by an unusual saxophone duet Charlie Mariano and Varty Haritrounian. Mabel always said she wanted to go out blowing. She did.

This piece is radically different from the mixture of bop tunes and standards that provided the bulk of the repertoire for Chaloff’s band in the 1950s and it provides a superb example of how the musical revolution pioneered by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk et al. opened the doors and ushered in a wave of creativity that fanned out in all kinds of unexpected directions. I love The Fable of Mabel for its quirkiness, the virtuosity of the playing, and for the edgy, Noir-ish atmosphere that it generates. Incidentally, it’s interesting that most of the musicians on this track are of Eastern European extraction, as were many of the leading lights of Film Noir. I always felt this track would make a perfect soundtrack for such a film.

If ever got asked to go on one of those radio programmes where you have to pick your favourite pieces of music, this would definitely be among my selections. I hope you enjoy it too!

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