There was a bit of a blow here last night. Indeed we had a clap of thunder at 0530hrs and it's still whistling out there in the dark, but the roof is still on. I was down on the beach at Annestown Co Waterford on Saturday. It was ten days since I was last there and it was striking what a change had been wrought by the storms that marched in succession across the country over the holiday season. Indeed, when I was last there on 24 Dec 2013, the storm surge on-shore was so strong that even at low tide I couldn't walk round the headland to the East of the beach. On Saturday (04 Jan14) it was like a giant hoover had sucked almost all the sand off the beach exposing a series of rocky outcrops running out to sea. I mentioned this to a woman who was gazing at the same scene and we agreed that the sand would be back in a month or so.
Oíche na Gaoithe Móire as they call it in Irish was the most severe storm experienced on the island of Ireland since meteorological memories were ever written down. It blew the stuffing out of the northern half of the island on the night of 6th Jan 1839 - 155 years ago. Epiphany is known hereabouts as Nollaig na mBan Women's Christmas and many people thought that the end of the world was at hand as their hay-ricks disappeared in fritters into the next county. It was certainly a serious setback as the winter had months to go and the hay was essential for feeding stock. Indeed such a catastrophe was probably as serious in an almost cashless rural economy as the cases where families had hidden their ready money in the thatch of their cabins and lost the roof to the storm. A peculiar sucession of weather events - a cold snap with snow followed by a rapid rise in air-temperature as a depression moved in from the Atlantic- led to the development a deluge of horizontal rain travelling at more than 150km/h. When Met Eireann issues another 'yellow alert', as we've heard over the last several days, by all means take what precautions you can or feel you have to. But also reflect that what's coming through is in the ha'penny place compared to The Night of the Big Wind.
It was so striking and memorable, that in 1909, when the first non-contributory pension was introduced in the United Kingdom, the key question for illiterate applicants for this dole was "How big were you on the Night of the Big Wind?". If you could remember that event, you were definitely over 70 and so eligible. So long as you asked for it, were of good character, not a drunkard or accused of "habitual failure to work", and had an annual income of less than 30 guineas. You got 5s; which is 60d (old pennies) or a quarter of a £ sterling. Even in those days it was not very much.
Monday, 6 January 2014
Sunday, 5 January 2014
When is a planet?
Today marks the 9th anniversary of the discovery of Eris, which may be the solar system's tenth planet, but only if you recognise Pluto as a (ninth) planet. Most people don't. If you believe in the ability to accurately measure the diameter of an object that is 100 times more distant from the sun than we are and one pixel wide, then Eris is 2330km across - essentially the same as Pluto. It was found on 5th Jan 2005 by comparing sequential images taken of deep space and looking for dots that moved. The team that made the discovery was led by Mike Brown from the CalTech Palomar Observatory; they were consciously hunting for TNOs (Trans Neptunian Objects) to better understand what's happening at the very edge of the solar system. Interestingly the actual images were taken on 21st October 2003 but weren't found in the backlog until 15 months later and not announced until 6 months after that. It's easier to obtain astronomical data than it is to make sense of it, a statement which is true of DNA sequence data of which we have oceans.
You have to store this raw data somewhere until you get round to processing it, and the Palomar team left it on the web-server. Their web-server was connected to the internet and so was available to anyone who knew where to look and what to look for. Meanwhile in July 2005 Pablo Santos Sanz a student at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain was analysing their backlog of photographs and discovered the trace of another object on pictures taken in March 2003. He checked the interweb to see if anyone else had reported his slowly moving dot and came across a note about them, or something close to them, from Mike Brown. Some judicious googling pulled up the logs from Palomar, so Santos and his boss hurried their report into the Minor Planet Centre to establish priority. A collaborator of theirs in Mallorca found their dot as far back as 1955 in digitised images from Palomar.
Needless to say, la merda started to fly then. The Palomar people accused the Spaniards of ripping off their data, the Spaniards suggested that Palomar didn't know what they had in their war-chest. Things looked murky when the Spanish denied they had seen the Palomar logs, while the Palomar server logs showed that someone had viewed the data from an IP address owned by Sierra Nevada. And of course, each team had chosen a different name: Ataecina an Iberian goddess of the underworld or Huamea a Hawaian goddess strongly associated with Mauna Kea where there's another observatory. These names are decided by the IAU International Astronomical Union a quango which is top heavy with Americans, so you may guess which name was officially registered. While he was about it, Brown hurriedly announced his discovered of Eris and another smaller object called Makemake (a deity associated with Easter Island) at the same time. Makemake was discovered just after Easter 2005, hence it's name. I guess we can be grateful that Eris is named after a minor goddess of the classical Greek world: the Palomar team came within an ace of calling it Xena after a TV series.
You have to store this raw data somewhere until you get round to processing it, and the Palomar team left it on the web-server. Their web-server was connected to the internet and so was available to anyone who knew where to look and what to look for. Meanwhile in July 2005 Pablo Santos Sanz a student at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain was analysing their backlog of photographs and discovered the trace of another object on pictures taken in March 2003. He checked the interweb to see if anyone else had reported his slowly moving dot and came across a note about them, or something close to them, from Mike Brown. Some judicious googling pulled up the logs from Palomar, so Santos and his boss hurried their report into the Minor Planet Centre to establish priority. A collaborator of theirs in Mallorca found their dot as far back as 1955 in digitised images from Palomar.
Needless to say, la merda started to fly then. The Palomar people accused the Spaniards of ripping off their data, the Spaniards suggested that Palomar didn't know what they had in their war-chest. Things looked murky when the Spanish denied they had seen the Palomar logs, while the Palomar server logs showed that someone had viewed the data from an IP address owned by Sierra Nevada. And of course, each team had chosen a different name: Ataecina an Iberian goddess of the underworld or Huamea a Hawaian goddess strongly associated with Mauna Kea where there's another observatory. These names are decided by the IAU International Astronomical Union a quango which is top heavy with Americans, so you may guess which name was officially registered. While he was about it, Brown hurriedly announced his discovered of Eris and another smaller object called Makemake (a deity associated with Easter Island) at the same time. Makemake was discovered just after Easter 2005, hence it's name. I guess we can be grateful that Eris is named after a minor goddess of the classical Greek world: the Palomar team came within an ace of calling it Xena after a TV series.
Saturday, 4 January 2014
Lustig
We've had The Boy and his family a-visiting for the last tuthree days. They flew in this time rather than driving the car, so they have been down to short commons on stuff. My mother tells a story of us being stopped in the 1960s at the ferry-port by an Irish customs official who want to know the contents of that suitcase. When opened it exploded with what seemed to be dozens of gumboots - essential for Irish holidays but not what you'd bring if you're limited to hand-baggage only. Dau.II made up for some of the shortfall by sharing some of her stuffed teddies with the niece, which was kind and a nice change for The Wean.
Stuffed toys are in the news (well it's getting a bit olds now but I'll share the story anyway) at the moment. This tidbit hasn't made it on to the Wireless at RTE anyway, quite possible because the necessary language may shrivel the ears of the nice people who listen to RTE for their info about world affairs. ANNyway, it appears that IKEA has set up an outlet in Hong Kong that strange enclave of capitalism within the People's Republic of China. The richer members of the population can get a new kitchen, some meatballs and a cheese-grater just like ordinary folks in the West. Three cheers (one for the kitchen, one for the meatballs, one for the grater) for globalisation! One of the products in the IKEA lifestyle is a stuffed wolf which the Swedes call Lufsig. It comes with the wolf's lunch (aka LRRH's granny) which may dip the sales of the ould meatballs, hmmm? Not many people in Hong Kong are fluent in Swedish, so the catalogue transliterated Lufsig into Cantonese as "路姆西" ("Lo Mo Sai") and they hoped for modest HK sales of this alien cultural reference in the run-up to Christmas. In fact, the wolf leapt off the shelves and was sold out within three hours of IKEA opening it's doors on 8th December 2013. Why?
Because the day before, in the fine democratic tradition of egging our leaders, someone had heaved their Lustig at Leung Chun-ying the chief executive of the HK puppet state, whose nick-name in some circles is Wolf. The news went viral and it became a statement of freedom from oppression to own your own ammunition. In the fall-out it transpired that if you looked at "路姆西" sideways in Cantonese it could be read as a homophone for "mother's vulva". And the act of throwing Lustig at Leung CY was to call him a m*th*rf*ck*r. Which suggests that the language of political abuse has come down a few notches from the old Maoist days when he would have been a "lick-spittle communist paper-tiger".
We won't explain to The Wean yet that (teddy) bear is a homophone for bare (naked) fnnnarr ho ho ho woot woot.
Stuffed toys are in the news (well it's getting a bit olds now but I'll share the story anyway) at the moment. This tidbit hasn't made it on to the Wireless at RTE anyway, quite possible because the necessary language may shrivel the ears of the nice people who listen to RTE for their info about world affairs. ANNyway, it appears that IKEA has set up an outlet in Hong Kong that strange enclave of capitalism within the People's Republic of China. The richer members of the population can get a new kitchen, some meatballs and a cheese-grater just like ordinary folks in the West. Three cheers (one for the kitchen, one for the meatballs, one for the grater) for globalisation! One of the products in the IKEA lifestyle is a stuffed wolf which the Swedes call Lufsig. It comes with the wolf's lunch (aka LRRH's granny) which may dip the sales of the ould meatballs, hmmm? Not many people in Hong Kong are fluent in Swedish, so the catalogue transliterated Lufsig into Cantonese as "路姆西" ("Lo Mo Sai") and they hoped for modest HK sales of this alien cultural reference in the run-up to Christmas. In fact, the wolf leapt off the shelves and was sold out within three hours of IKEA opening it's doors on 8th December 2013. Why?
Because the day before, in the fine democratic tradition of egging our leaders, someone had heaved their Lustig at Leung Chun-ying the chief executive of the HK puppet state, whose nick-name in some circles is Wolf. The news went viral and it became a statement of freedom from oppression to own your own ammunition. In the fall-out it transpired that if you looked at "路姆西" sideways in Cantonese it could be read as a homophone for "mother's vulva". And the act of throwing Lustig at Leung CY was to call him a m*th*rf*ck*r. Which suggests that the language of political abuse has come down a few notches from the old Maoist days when he would have been a "lick-spittle communist paper-tiger".
We won't explain to The Wean yet that (teddy) bear is a homophone for bare (naked) fnnnarr ho ho ho woot woot.
Friday, 3 January 2014
Spineless in the Face of Privilege
I've been working at The Institute for a year now, but for the previous 20+ years, I worked in two of the top Irish Universities, occasionally doing so at the same time. I held various titles and had a few job descriptions but was never a Lecturer. Nevertheless, I did teach undergraduates when called upon to do so by my line manager. Earlier in this century, I was asked to give a three session course in how to read DNA. Where and how the string of . . .ATTCCCGGGA. . . made sense to the biological machinery and induced transcription, splicing, translation. That was fun and at the end of it most of the students had begun to internalise Willie Taylor's Venn Diagram. But you can't just learn stuff in modern universities, you have to be assessed in it. So at the end of the session, I gave out a quiz to see what the students had learned and marked it out of 20. Nobody failed and only a few people got 100%, so it was discriminatory but not punitive.
The following week, I was visited in my lair by one of the brighter students in the class who thought that her 13/20 (65%) should really be 14/20 (first class honours material). The answer she had given to one question was formally wrong although, if you looked at it with squinty-eyes, a case could be made for it. This young woman was the daughter of two professors, as well as being symmetrical and persistent. Instead of accepting my explanation of why her answer was wrong-wrong-almost-right, she argued that it was right enough to deserve the extra mark. Uncle Bob advised her that she could/should choose her battlefields better, that she was being annoying, that it didn't matter with me, but that she should be careful not to make a habit of mark-grubbing. I also pointed out that one extra mark on a fragment of a module would be invisible in the sea of marks that she would accumulate over the whole year. But she persisted (bzzzzzzzz) in making her case, so eventually (I had my real work to do and this had taken 20 minutes) I gave her the extra mark and she went away. I realised immediately that I had been bullied. But at least she hadn't flushed my head down the t'ilets, so I wasn't both devastated in my self-esteem and wet. It took me longer to twig that the young woman's obsession was to obtain first class marks across the board. I blame the parents for allowing their child to develop a self-view that depended on external validation. Quite sad, really.
Several weeks later, my gaffer told me to go listen to some presentations by the undergraduates. She, the boss, had a more important meeting off-site and I was to delegate for her. It was all quite work-a-day, mostly watching the backs of student heads as they read off Powerpoint slides. But one of the talks was stunning in its professionalism, clarity and precision: the kind of talk that would impress you if it came from a late-stage post-graduate student. It was, of course, the girl of the extra mark. So she's smart but I wouldn't give her a job until she's grasped the math that (13/20)/5000 is insignificantly different from (14/20)/5000.
This all happened several years ago and I'd forgotten all about it until I read recently about grade-inflation in Ivy League colleges in America. The article by Allison Schrager explained why she gave privileged young thrusters extra marks because she couldn't stand the whining. "Anything less than an A- would result in endless emails, crying during office hours, or calls from parents. One student once cornered me and said: 'I hope you’re happy you’ve destroyed my chance at Goldman and ruined my life.' ”. Been there, done that.
The following week, I was visited in my lair by one of the brighter students in the class who thought that her 13/20 (65%) should really be 14/20 (first class honours material). The answer she had given to one question was formally wrong although, if you looked at it with squinty-eyes, a case could be made for it. This young woman was the daughter of two professors, as well as being symmetrical and persistent. Instead of accepting my explanation of why her answer was wrong-wrong-almost-right, she argued that it was right enough to deserve the extra mark. Uncle Bob advised her that she could/should choose her battlefields better, that she was being annoying, that it didn't matter with me, but that she should be careful not to make a habit of mark-grubbing. I also pointed out that one extra mark on a fragment of a module would be invisible in the sea of marks that she would accumulate over the whole year. But she persisted (bzzzzzzzz) in making her case, so eventually (I had my real work to do and this had taken 20 minutes) I gave her the extra mark and she went away. I realised immediately that I had been bullied. But at least she hadn't flushed my head down the t'ilets, so I wasn't both devastated in my self-esteem and wet. It took me longer to twig that the young woman's obsession was to obtain first class marks across the board. I blame the parents for allowing their child to develop a self-view that depended on external validation. Quite sad, really.
Several weeks later, my gaffer told me to go listen to some presentations by the undergraduates. She, the boss, had a more important meeting off-site and I was to delegate for her. It was all quite work-a-day, mostly watching the backs of student heads as they read off Powerpoint slides. But one of the talks was stunning in its professionalism, clarity and precision: the kind of talk that would impress you if it came from a late-stage post-graduate student. It was, of course, the girl of the extra mark. So she's smart but I wouldn't give her a job until she's grasped the math that (13/20)/5000 is insignificantly different from (14/20)/5000.
This all happened several years ago and I'd forgotten all about it until I read recently about grade-inflation in Ivy League colleges in America. The article by Allison Schrager explained why she gave privileged young thrusters extra marks because she couldn't stand the whining. "Anything less than an A- would result in endless emails, crying during office hours, or calls from parents. One student once cornered me and said: 'I hope you’re happy you’ve destroyed my chance at Goldman and ruined my life.' ”. Been there, done that.
Thursday, 2 January 2014
Danny Battle has Bottle
In the same week that I'm citing Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell, I'd like to give a bit of a puff to a new book by a new author Tom Kelly: Danny Battle and the Book of Shangri-La. I was out talent-spotting last year and tribbed brilliant games designers, and musicians who come from Planet Zorg. Tom Kelly doesn't come from off-planet but he's written a great global adventure (think Raiders of the Lost Ark) for the yoof market. It's got a bit of a treasure hunt in it and I love treasure hunts. But that's not the only reason. I was given the ms to read a few months ago and noted that the protagonist Danny at one point is reading Skullduggery Pleasant a book I had to cast aside in disgust after the 3rd gross illiteracy in the first 4 pages. Danny Battle is not going to annoy you in that way and I thought that, while it was fantasy, it was internally consistent and didn't jerk the reader around by pulling a deus (or a butler) ex machina to paste over a hole in the plot. It reads a little like Eoin Colfer if you follow Artemis Fowl.
I recommend it, particularly if you know a reading teenager of either sex. I suspect that Danny at ?14? is rather fanciable to young gells - he's funny, sassy, adventurous and clever with his hands (no I didn't mean that way). There are enough fast cars and other kit to amuse the chaps.
You can download the kindle edition (all that's available at the moment) from Amazon for the ludicrously low price of £3.00 and pennies: here's the buy-it link http://url.ie/l6dm
I recommend it, particularly if you know a reading teenager of either sex. I suspect that Danny at ?14? is rather fanciable to young gells - he's funny, sassy, adventurous and clever with his hands (no I didn't mean that way). There are enough fast cars and other kit to amuse the chaps.
You can download the kindle edition (all that's available at the moment) from Amazon for the ludicrously low price of £3.00 and pennies: here's the buy-it link http://url.ie/l6dm
Wednesday, 1 January 2014
Crossword: the answer
On the solstice, to celebrate a centenary of crosswords, I devised one myself. Didn't get much feedback, certainly nobody claimed a prize of a Chambers English Dictionary and a case of champagne. The Boy worked out all but two, so I can't have disappeared entirely up my own orifice in making up the clues. At the time I promised an answer on New Year's Day and begob but I almost forgot. So here are the answers. Editor's decision is final, closing date passed, now leave me - I have a case of champagne to get through.
01ac. 1781 Planet 01dn. Closed
a Uranus d unopened
04ac. Primary virtue 02dn. Unspecified place
a kindness d anywhere
09ac. 8/9 water 03dn. Extraterrestrial
a oxygen d unearthly
10ac. One going forward 05dn. 940 Lenok submarine
a advancer d india
12ac. R-O-R' group 06dn. Sturm und
a ether d drang
13ac. Our 4th closest relly 07dn. Joe Kraus 1994 startup
a orangutan d excite
15ac. Our day will come! 08dn. S (aa)
a TAL (Tiocfaidh ár lá) d serine
16ac. The only home we have 11dn. Phoenician deity
a earth d moloch
17ac. Sinaasappel.nl 14dn. ENSG00000100503
a orange d NIN
22ac. The universe of Cthulu 18dn. 42
a mythos d answer
24ac. Salts of gout 19dn. from GAG or GAA
a urate d glutamate
27ac. Khmer temple 20dn. palpable, material
a wat d tangible
28ac. Radio reflecting layer 21dn. El Asturiano
a heaviside d fernando
31ac. Found by Wm Ramsey 23dn. Tashkent
a argon d TAS
32ac. Remembered 25dn. diff. between proton/neutron
a recalled d charge
33ac. C 26dn. Sharp medical journal
a carbon d lancet
34ac. American hormone 29dn. Cosy for inuit
a estrogen (not oestrogen) d igloo
35ac. Shipworm 30dn. Wife of Leo IV
a teredo d Irene
01ac. 1781 Planet 01dn. Closed
a Uranus d unopened
04ac. Primary virtue 02dn. Unspecified place
a kindness d anywhere
09ac. 8/9 water 03dn. Extraterrestrial
a oxygen d unearthly
10ac. One going forward 05dn. 940 Lenok submarine
a advancer d india
12ac. R-O-R' group 06dn. Sturm und
a ether d drang
13ac. Our 4th closest relly 07dn. Joe Kraus 1994 startup
a orangutan d excite
15ac. Our day will come! 08dn. S (aa)
a TAL (Tiocfaidh ár lá) d serine
16ac. The only home we have 11dn. Phoenician deity
a earth d moloch
17ac. Sinaasappel.nl 14dn. ENSG00000100503
a orange d NIN
22ac. The universe of Cthulu 18dn. 42
a mythos d answer
24ac. Salts of gout 19dn. from GAG or GAA
a urate d glutamate
27ac. Khmer temple 20dn. palpable, material
a wat d tangible
28ac. Radio reflecting layer 21dn. El Asturiano
a heaviside d fernando
31ac. Found by Wm Ramsey 23dn. Tashkent
a argon d TAS
32ac. Remembered 25dn. diff. between proton/neutron
a recalled d charge
33ac. C 26dn. Sharp medical journal
a carbon d lancet
34ac. American hormone 29dn. Cosy for inuit
a estrogen (not oestrogen) d igloo
35ac. Shipworm 30dn. Wife of Leo IV
a teredo d Irene
Brecht in the Mountains
It's 2014 - a New Year.
I just signed off on the old year at a mountain pass in Armenia. There an army of Greeks was going home. An hour later, I was reading about another mountain pass across which an old man and a boy are going into exile. They are stopped by a customs official because the pass is the border to the kingdom and asked if they have anything to declare. Not a lot is the answer because the ox which travels with them is only really able to manage the weight of the old chap and a tuthree blankets. But the boy also affirms that the old man was a teacher. Of what? calls forth a strange answer:
Doch der Mann in einer heitren Regung
Fragte noch: "Hat er was rausgekriegt?"
Sprach der Knabe: "Daß das weiche Wasser in Bewegung
Mit der Zeit den harten Stein besiegt.
Du verstehst, das Harte unterliegt."
Fragte noch: "Hat er was rausgekriegt?"
Sprach der Knabe: "Daß das weiche Wasser in Bewegung
Mit der Zeit den harten Stein besiegt.
Du verstehst, das Harte unterliegt."
As Bertolt Brecht renders the story in his "Legende
von der Entstehung des Buches Tao Te King auf dem Weg des Laotse in die Emigration" or Legend of the Origin of the Book Tao Te Ching on Lao-Tsu's Road into Exile: then the man, in cheerful disposition//asked again: `how did he make out, pray?'//said the boy: `he learnt how quite soft water, by attrition//over the years will grind strong rocks away.//in other words, that hardness must lose the day.'. Read the rest of the poem with rhyming English parallel-text translation here. But the short story is that the old sage Lao Tsu is induced by the official to stay a few days and write down what he has learned in a long life. After a week, a manuscript containing 81 aphorisms had been created. This was left with the official and the old man and his disciple continued downhill into the unknown. #59 starts: "For regulating the human condition and rendering proper service to the heavenly, there is nothing like moderation . . .". Ah So!
And Ah Dang! because I can see that I'm going to have to spend some time this year reading the rest with some care and attention. There's a double synchronicity here, because Lao Tsu may have been a contemporary of Xenophon's although most claim that he lived a couple of centries earlier. Aurel Stein, whom we've met before, excavating a cave in Central Asia, found a number of copies of the Tao Te Ching. The earliest known copies of the manscript.date from about the time of the Xenophon's Anabasis. The tradition that Lao Tsu was a contemporary of Confucius may have arisen to give parity of esteem to these two Eastern philosophers. Xenophon's teacher Socrates was probably a contemporary of the Buddha. All these people give us a clue about the big question over which we have some control: how to live.
And Ah Dang! because I can see that I'm going to have to spend some time this year reading the rest with some care and attention. There's a double synchronicity here, because Lao Tsu may have been a contemporary of Xenophon's although most claim that he lived a couple of centries earlier. Aurel Stein, whom we've met before, excavating a cave in Central Asia, found a number of copies of the Tao Te Ching. The earliest known copies of the manscript.date from about the time of the Xenophon's Anabasis. The tradition that Lao Tsu was a contemporary of Confucius may have arisen to give parity of esteem to these two Eastern philosophers. Xenophon's teacher Socrates was probably a contemporary of the Buddha. All these people give us a clue about the big question over which we have some control: how to live.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)