A lot of these “occupation” pictures are going around on facebook, so I thought it would be fun to post those that encapsulate myself most accurately…
I’m not really an astronomer, but this is as close as I could get…
A few obvious inaccuracies in the next one but still pretty close to the truth!
The last one isn’t entirely accurate in my case – I’m more of a Port and Stilton type of chap…
And here’s one for the students…
Moaning about science politics, especially with regard to funding, is one of the recurring themes on this blog. The UK government administers science policy through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (better known as BIS). Unfortunately I can’t think of that name without harking back to the good old days of the Innovations Catalogue (shown left). I was shocked to discover that this met its demise as long ago as 2003 but in its time it was comedy gold. Packed full of palpably useless gadgets – who could possibly forget the vibrating fur-lined golf club cover? – it was all the more hysterical for that fact that it was clearly deadly serious. When I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue tried to lampoon the Innovations Catalogue, the results struggled to be as funny as the real thing, although I do remember Willie Rushton’s combined cigarette lighter and nasal hair remover…
It seems that the Innovations people made one big mistake that cost them their business: the stuff they sold was dirt cheap. Subsequent experience has taught us that if you want to persuade people to buy useless gadgets, you have to make them expensive. No tat sells like expensive tat…
Anyway, having thus established the theme of Innovation, let me now explore a variation. Websites.
Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a number of changes to websites I use. Last week I noticed that Twitter had been revamped. The first impression I got was that all my tweets were on the right hand side of the screen instead of the left. Not a drastic alteration, though as a man who is fully in touch with his inner Luddite I find even that level of change hard to cope with. More perturbingly I later saw that the button for searching for mentions of your username (for those of you who aren’t twits twats twerps tweeters, this was marked “@” because all twitter names begin with that character) is no longer labelled “mentions” but “connect”. Huh? Connect with what or whom? Likewise the “activity” tag is now called “discover”. Why it was decided to change the names from something descriptive to something non-descriptive is beyond me, but it’s probably what passes as “innovative” in the world of web designers.
I’ve got nothing against web designers in general, and I think some websites are absolutely wonderful in both content and style. This one, for example. However, there are some who seem to have been put together by people on a mission to the make the design so impenetrable that it’s impossible for anyone to find any content at all.
A major leap in this direction has recently been made by the BBC. A while ago they introduced a new home page, which has virtually no information on it, but lots of graphics. After vociferously negative responses from users of the BBC Website, i.e. the public, the person in charge responded by saying that the changes were needed in order to make the site more distinctive. I freely admit that it is distinctive, but its main distinction is that it is poor.
Now I’ll grant that page layout and style is a matter for personal taste so there will be others out there who like the new BBC Webshite. That’s fine. What’s less forgivable is that the quality of service has also deteriorated and that is an objective fact. Here’s an example.
On the old BBC website you could set your location, with the result that the homepage would give access to local news, local TV and radio listings, and so on. You also automatically got weather information for your chosen location. Now you can still set your location on the homepage, but if you click on the new “weather” page your location is automatically set to London. Every time you log on, and want to check the weather, you have to type in your location by hand. Unless you live in London, of course, which is presumably why the web hacks didn’t worry about this.
I’m no expert, but it shouldn’t have been beyond the wit of even the most lowly web designer to pass information about location from one page to another within the same site. But who cares about whether the service is better for the user, as long as it’s distinctive….
I suppose the point of this post – if there is one – is that we shouldn’t be too respectful towards innovation for innovation’s sake. Not all innovation is good.
You might think that adage applies also to what goes on in BIS, but I couldn’t possibly comment.
Follow @telescoperThe first couple of weeks of this term have been hectic, primarily because of our new-style Consolidated Astronomy Grant Proposal to the Science and Technology Facilities Council which has just gone in with a deadline of tomorrow, but also because I’ve just started teaching Nuclear Physics for the first time, a subject I know absolutely nothing about about which I am a little rusty. I’m only just keeping up with the lectures and problem sheets, and am glad the students are being patient. So far, anyway.
I had only just got back on schedule with this morning’s lecture when I find that tomorrow I have to give up part of the next one by advertising the National Student Survey and encouraging my third-year class of 85 or to participate; the NSS taking place over the next few weeks. Apparently the rate of return by Physics students is especially low and the University is keen that it should increase. For some reason I’ve been singled out as a suitable person to persuade our third years to provide their input and have been given a special powerpoint presentation to show to encourage all eligible students – i.e. students in their final year – to complete the survey, so I thought I’d share it here in order to spread the message as widely as possible. I’m not sure what fate awaits me if our rate of return doesn’t improve…
It doesn’t take long to complete – it’s all online – so I hope anyone reading this will take the time to respond. That’s not just for Cardiff Physics students – although I know a few of them do read this blog – but also for students elsewhere in the United Kingdom. If you don’t tell us what you think we don’t know what we could be doing better, so please fill it in. You know it makes sense.
The NSS have also given me a boomerang. I think it’s meant to symbolize a high rate of return. Or something. I may attempt to throw it in tomorrow’s lecture, although I’m not sure that’s allowed on Health and Safety grounds. At least it will provide a bit of light entertainment before I launch into the deep joy that is the semi-empirical mass formula.
P.S. Coincidentally, there’s a nice a typically snarky piece about the NSS by Laurie Taylor in a recent Times Higher.
Follow @telescoperI’m a big fan of the Square Kilometre Array, a proposed new radio telescope that will revolutionize our understanding of many aspects of astrophysics.
I’m somewhat less keen on the intense lobbying being carried out on behalf of Australian astronomers in advance of the decision whether to site it in Australia or South Africa. The campaign is being orchestrated by a PR organization called Ogilvy and Mather who are making full use of social media to promote the Australian case.
Last week I was invited by email to attend a “webinar” (whatever that is) about the SKA, an invitation that I quietly ignored. Today I got a follow-up email from a person described as a “Digital Analyst” offering me the chance to “interview Dr Brian Boyle or Dr Lisa Harvey Smith”. They also sent me the following “infographic” (i.e. a picture) showing the case for siting the SKA in Australia, which they thought would be of interest to “my blog readers”.
Well, you can call me old-fashioned but I think there’s something a bit distasteful about engaging a glorified ad agency to lobby on behalf of one party in a discussion that should be resolved on purely scientific grounds. I wonder how much it cost, for a start, but I’d also have hoped scientists would be above that sort of thing anyway. Sign of the times, I suppose.
Anyway, even if the digital analysts at Ogilvy will be happy that I’ve shown their infographic, perhaps they might now realize that spin can work in two different ways…
Follow @telescoperI’m not really into all this St Valentine’s Day nonsense (meaning: “I never get any cards”), but at least it provides me with an excuse to post three versions of the great Rogers & Hart ballad My Funny Valentine.
The first is by the great Miles Davis Quintet featuring Miles Davis on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter bass and Tony Williams on drums. This was recorded live in Milan on October 11th 1964. There’s a slight distortion in the sound in the form of a pre-echo, which is a bit eery, but I still think it’s a marvellous performance.
And if Miles Davis isn’t your cup of tea, here is something completely different. It’s by Julie London, but very late in her career in 1981 when she was 55. Her voice was much smoother in her heyday in the 1960s, but I love the smokey sound of this very characterful rendition. By ear I’d say the bass player on this is Ray Brown and the guitar is Barney Kessel, both of whom (like Julie London herself) are no longer with us.
Last one up is a miracle of joint improvisation between the great Bill Evans on piano and Jim Hall on guitar, the sort of music that mere mortals can only dream of…
Follow @telescoperOnly time for a quickie today, as I have a busy afternoon in store at a meeting in the Graduate College (zzz…). Today there has been a press conference in Bologna about latest results from the ESA experiment, Planck. Here’s a picture taken at the press conference by roving reporter astrophysicist Mike Peel.
I gave a talk in that room once, actually, although there weren’t any press people there on that occasion.
Although it will be some time still before the full cosmological results from Planck are released to the public (and researchers outside the Planck Consortium), the press conference covered a number of new and interesting discoveries, particularly about our own Galaxy. You can read about them at the ESA Planck website here and on the UK Planck site (hosted at Cardiff University) here.
Among the results are beautiful maps of microwave emission from cold molecular gas (e.g. carbon monoxide) from sources inside the Milky Way:
Planck wasn’t specifically designed to detect CO emission, but it’s part of the “foreground” radiation that must be understood and modelled on the way to extracting cosmological information from the results.
Another exciting item is the Galactic Haze that emanates from the central regions of the Milky Way, which you can see in this picture poking out from behind the “mask” that is used to blank out emission from the Galactic Plane (i.e. the disk of our Galaxy).
The origin of this haze, which appears to be consistent with synchrotron radiation but with quite a hard spectrum, is not known and is the topic of much discussion in the astrophysics community.
For more information, see the main Planck site or, with more technical details, here.
Follow @telescoperToday was the day for the first home game of the RBS Six Nations for Wales, so Cardiff was absolutely buzzing with that special atmosphere that only rugby and an influx of 80,000 people into a city with a population of 325,00 can bring. I was out and about earlier on but had to watch the game on TV as I lack the wherewithal to get tickets for occasions of such immensity. Wales were red-hot favourites for this game, and won comfortably enough in the end against Scotland although the game was closer than the 27-13 scoreline might suggest; Scotland had a try incorrectly disallowed, which might have made all the difference. The Scots fans also played their part, some of them camping out in the park near my house in the freezing cold for two nights before today’s game, and offered a fine rendition of Flower of Scotland before the kick-off. But there’s something special about the Welsh National Anthem on days like this. I’m glad they’ve dispensed with the professional pop singers that they’ve sometimes used to lead the singing. Wales is a nation that doesn’t need to pay people to sing for it…
Follow @telescoperLike many people I’ve just received my gas and electricity bills. Unlike many, I can actually afford to pay them. My little terraced house is actually pretty easy to keep warm, even in the very cold weather we’ve had recently. I’m helped in that by the next door neighbours, who seem to have their heating on all the time thus warming one side of the house for me. I do occasionally put a few logs in the fireplace and treat myself to the comfort of the resulting blaze, but that’s not really necessary to keep warm, just me being a bit bourgeois.
Coincidentally, the Independent recently ran an interesting article about fuel poverty and the inflated profits being made by the energy utilities in the United Kingdom. The two are obviously connected, and it seems quite clear to me that the primary mechanism by which the public are being exploited is through the infamous ratchet. When wholesale fuel prices go up the regulator Ofgen allows the utilities to increase their retail energy prices accordingly. When the wholesale price comes down again, the retail price remains high and Ofgen does nothing. Next time wholesale prices rise, retail prices go up again, and so on. Prices to customers increase monotonically, with the inevitable result that the poor get squeezed and the companies’ profit spiral upwards.
There’s talk of the regulator getting tougher with the bastards companies concerned, but there’s been talk of that for ages. Nothing of any consequence ever happens. Meanwhile, vulnerable people, especially the elderly poor, die in the cold. It’s yet another sickening example of the grossly distorted priorities of the world we live in.
I don’t claim to have an answer to all forms of capitalist exploitation, but reading my gas bill did give me an idea to help with this particular one. In common with many customers, my gas bill (from SWALEC in my case) is constructed in two parts: “standard energy” (which is quite expensive) and “discounted energy” (which is much cheaper, little over half the cost per kiloWatt-hour of the standard tariff). The way this works is the first 1000 kWh or so one uses are charged at the standard rate, then the additional energy consumption is charged at the discount rate.
This pricing system seems pretty normal, but it suddenly struck me when I got my bill as being completely the wrong way around. If one instead were charged the discounted rate initially and the higher rate for the excess, that would (a) benefit the poor, who presumably live in smaller houses than the rich and therefore use less energy to heat them, and (b) discourage profligate energy use beyond the switch-over point. Such a pricing system would give each user an “allowance” of cheaper energy, but charge them at a higher rate if they exceed it.
Inverting the tariff system in this way would both help the most vulnerable and provide a real incentive for heavy users of energy to increase their efficiency. No point, though, in expecting the cartel of privatised energy suppliers to do something like that off their own bat. They’re doing very nicely out of the status quo and have no reason to change it. Dead pensioners don’t have much effect on their profits.
P.S. It also occurs to me that the £200 winter fuel payment currently paid by the government would be more efficiently targetted if it were passed on directly by energy utilities in the form of free energy to its elderly customers. I’d even make the case that they should pay it out of their own profits…
Follow @telescoper‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’
The others nod, pretending not to know.
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
He leaves them reading and begins to climb,
Goading his ghost into the howling snow;
He is just going outside and may be some time.
The tent recedes beneath its crust of rime
And frostbite is replaced by vertigo:
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
Need we consider it some sort of crime,
This numb self-sacrifice of the weakest? No,
He is just going outside and may be some time
In fact, for ever. Solitary enzyme,
Though the night yield no glimmer there will glow,
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
by Derek Mahon (b. 1941).
Follow @telescoperNo time for a post of my own this morning, as I’m off to the department to help with a UCAS admissions visit day. I’ll take the opportunity, therefore, to point you towards mathematician Tim Gowers’ excellent blog for an update on the Elsevier boycott (and related issues) that I posted about a while ago.
P.S. At times like this I’m so grateful WordPress brought the “reblog” option back, although I’m not sure I like the new format…
A group of mathematicians have been putting together a statement that explains some of the background to, and reasons for, the Elsevier boycott. This statement, which has been signed by 34 mathematicians (we are confident that many more would be happy to endorse it, but we had to stop somewhere), is now ready for release. If you are interested in reading it, then click here.
View original post 440 more words
