A story has been going round the blogosphere about "the biter bit": where a tech-savvy merkin turns the tables on a 'foreign gentleman' attempting to scam him out of $400. If you want to hear the original podcast, you'll need 50 minutes and a certain tolerance for commercial breaks. But the story was picked up by Ars Technica which a) will allow you to skim the scam details and save some time b) has embedded copies of some of the key photos that feature in the story. It's quite exciting in a technogeek sort of way, rather than a car-chase and abseiling sort of way, and nobody dies.
It reminded me of the old days when I was given a mighty server to store copies of Genbank the DNA database and software for accessing and analysing the sequences therein contained. The database seemed very large back then, partly because comms tech was so primitive. it has been doubling in size every 18 months since, so is now really big. 1994 was early days for the internet, the WWW was only a few years old and the dot.com bubble wasn't even thought of, let alone bursting a lot of youngster's dreams of riches; as it did in 2000. There was no point in storing all that data unless I was going to allow Irish researchers to access it. I would set up accounts for anyone whose boss was prepared to pay a nominal annual subscription. I was also expected to update the database every three months, which I did, but also to update the firmware of the operating system which I lacked the confidence to do with sufficient regularity. I adopted an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude which meant that most security updates languished off the operating system.
TCD's official Unix expert was a very helpful guy called Mike McGovern, who would hold my hand but couldn't actually do the work I was contracted for. One day I whined "How am I expected to do all this? I'm only a biologist". He curtly replied "I'm only a geographer", with the implication that I could do what he had to do, if I moaned less and did more - it was kindly meant.
In between database updates, I had time to learn about how Unix computers worked and pay some attention to checking who was using what software when. Although I was based in Trinity College Dublin, I was providing a National Bioinformatics service and got log-ins from IP addresses in other Irish universities; and because scientists travel, some traffic came in from abroad. I felt I was running a rather sophisticated cosmopolitan hub. One day, going through recent traffic, I noticed a log-in from an unrecognised address which I tracked down to an Internet Café on Dame Street about 300m outside the railings of TCD. Yes, there was a time before Wifi, laptops and smartphones. I called the café up to report possibly nefarious usage and their Sys$op got terribly excited because they had CCTV security cameras. If I told him the time and the IP#, he could get me a picture of the perp: Cybercrime Bust! Unfortunately, they only stored a few days of CCTV tapes and my event had just been over-written.
A few months later, I noticed a login from TCD - so far so normal - but from the user-name of a student I knew had graduated and moved abroad. That was peculiar, and more to the point it was happening even at that moment. I called Mike who identified IP# as a terminal in one of the Public Access Terminal PAC rooms in his building. We agreed to meet five minutes later in the corridor outside; then burst in and literally collared a second year CompSci student trying to find what Unix computers could do. The kid was ultimately disciplined in some way and I resolved to impose some password discipline on my users.
That was another interesting exercise. With a slightly guilty feeling, I acted as game-keeper turned poacher and hacked the encrypted passwords of all my users. This didn't require me to know any 20 digit prime numbers. There was a program you could download - Crack, was it called?, or Doom?: I can't recall. aNNyway, this program would encrypt a dictionary using your computer's password security software and see if any encrypted words matched strings found in the /etc/passwd file. It took a few hours to run and I flagged about 5% of my users as having failed this elementary test. I sent them all a message to up their game on the security front. I remember one case where the user had 'cleverly' reversed her surname, oblivious of the fact that it was now a normal but uncommon English language word. We were all super-naive w.r.t. computer security 20 years ago. My 5% trawl had just used a plain language hack-dictionary; with more time, it could have added l33t [prev] substitutions of 'one' for 'el'; 'zero' for 'oh' and outed a bunch more people. The current advice is not to use any word - even if gussied up with substitutions and special &$%# characters - strip the first letters off a phrase instead: nmtesirtd for nihilists or tbontbtitq for decision-makers.
Thursday, 7 September 2017
Wednesday, 6 September 2017
Books for the people
If we had more traffic up our lane, I'd set up a book exchange outside the gate and hope that the hill-walkers didn't fill it with the lunch-wrappings as they came past off the uplands. The Cheekpoint Book Exchange, on another lane to nowhere in particular, was crushed by a falling tree-branch and hasn't been re-instated. I've just heard about another books-to-outdoorsy-people project called Street Books [R with right-on appropriate technology delivery system] which was set up in Portland Oregon.They don't talk about homelessness in Oregon but there are "people who live outside" as if it is a life-style choice. Whatever you call them, getting to charge the phone is a task and a laptop is a lot to schlep about if you can't leave it somewhere safe. But a book? That's pretty robust to the wet, can fit in a pocket, and can be replaced if lost. Started in 2011 by Laura Moulton as a three-month Art Project, Street Books has acquired legs . . . or rather wheels; because the branch libraries run out from head-office each day on customized tricycles [see R with a big smile]. A bit like Rockfield Ice-Cream created by an entrepreneurial alumnus of The Institute, but more healthy: mens sana beats corpore sumo. I like the idea of Street Books and the customers look like they're delighted.
Another eye-opener about the chronicle of Street Books is that their clients look so normal. "people who live outside" are no longer crusty folk with alcohol or mental problems or refugees: they are citizens like you and me or my daughters who just can't afford to live inside because of the invidious distortions of the housing 'market'. A home isn't primarily an investment and there really should be enough to go round in Portland or in Ireland or wherever it is that you live.
There's another positive aspect to reading - or listening on the wireless - that you have to make your own pictures. With a book you can put it down to savour the moment, integrate it into your own experience to enrich your life. You build your own sunset rather than having it thrust upon you by the cinematographer's vision. That integration enriches and empowers - must be good for morale. So let's get more books Out There - in book exchanges, bicycle libraries or book-bags for the merchant marine. Here's an interesting story about library books being carried into remotest Appalachia on the back of a mule in the 1930s - intrepid.
Another eye-opener about the chronicle of Street Books is that their clients look so normal. "people who live outside" are no longer crusty folk with alcohol or mental problems or refugees: they are citizens like you and me or my daughters who just can't afford to live inside because of the invidious distortions of the housing 'market'. A home isn't primarily an investment and there really should be enough to go round in Portland or in Ireland or wherever it is that you live.
There's another positive aspect to reading - or listening on the wireless - that you have to make your own pictures. With a book you can put it down to savour the moment, integrate it into your own experience to enrich your life. You build your own sunset rather than having it thrust upon you by the cinematographer's vision. That integration enriches and empowers - must be good for morale. So let's get more books Out There - in book exchanges, bicycle libraries or book-bags for the merchant marine. Here's an interesting story about library books being carried into remotest Appalachia on the back of a mule in the 1930s - intrepid.
Tuesday, 5 September 2017
Ferry McMaudeFace
Do you remember the iconoclastic fun that the Brits had last year when asked to name a new Research vessel and nearly everyone signed on to RRS Boaty McBoatFace [R source knowyourmeme.com]. Seems it wasn't wholly original to ex-BBC presenter James Hand: a 2012 Adopt-a-bird naming competition threw up Hooty McOwlFace. NERC, the enviromental research council, with enough gravitas to sink any ship, demurred and named it RRS David Attenborough, after the cuddly voice behind the BBC's nature stories. It was be a travesty to call them documentaries because in editting down 5.7 years of footage to 8 or 11 or 6 episodes an awful lot of reality gets left on the cutting room floor. Give Attenborough a superficial anthropomorphic script and slather on stirring music and cute sound-effects and you have - scientifically - nothing. Other suggestions were RSS Cap'n Birdeye, RRS Not the Titanic and RSS Usain Boat . . . har har. The NERC did offer a democratic consolation prize by naming the RSS Attenborough's yellow robot submersible Boaty MacBoatface.
Irish Ferries, one of only two companies (the other is Stena) which allow people to escape from Ireland without flying, is building a new RORO megaferry [bloboprev of hazards of the RORO model] to cope with the traffic. Perhaps foolishly - do they think the Irish have a smaller capacity for irony than our neighbours? - they are inviting The Public to help them name the new boat.
Ulysses, Wilde, Swift. We’ve got some of Ireland’s biggest literary names in our fleet. Now is your chance to become part of a great tradition, and help us find an Irish literary inspired name for our new ship. Be in with a chance to Win Free Travel for life with us. And 20 other great prizes too!
The current fleet names are all a bit iffy
If the Venn diagram intersection of Literary & Irish & Women & Dead is a bit thin, let's dump the literary. STEM needs crack at being honoured in the boat-naming business, after all. So here's my submission:
MV Maude Delap
My submitted reason: You've done mythic men, gay men, grumpy men and enough Arts Block. Time for STEM! MD was a great woman in science, at home on the sea too! http://url.ie/11xbl. The link cites The 2013 Blob on this great, forgotten, autodidactic marine biologist who worked the foreshore of Valentia Island and the seas about it. That name suggests a decorating theme of jellyfish in the lounges and bars of the new ferry. Kathleen "Kildare's Own" Lonsdale is better know but has no maritime connexion.
Irish Ferries, one of only two companies (the other is Stena) which allow people to escape from Ireland without flying, is building a new RORO megaferry [bloboprev of hazards of the RORO model] to cope with the traffic. Perhaps foolishly - do they think the Irish have a smaller capacity for irony than our neighbours? - they are inviting The Public to help them name the new boat.
Ulysses, Wilde, Swift. We’ve got some of Ireland’s biggest literary names in our fleet. Now is your chance to become part of a great tradition, and help us find an Irish literary inspired name for our new ship. Be in with a chance to Win Free Travel for life with us. And 20 other great prizes too!
The current fleet names are all a bit iffy
- Isle of Inishmore - one of the Aran Islands; replaced Isle of Inishturk 20 years ago: that leaves Tory Island or the Saltees.
- Ulysses - a book by James Joyce, true, but also a wily and murderous fellow from Ithaca who spend an interminable time getting to his destination. What next MV [Waiting for] Godot
- Oscar Wilde - another bloke, albeit one now ticking the gay inclusion box.
- Jonathan Swift - another bloke! this is admittedly quite clever because the J.Swift is their high-speed half-the-crossing-time catamaran. But you could hardly pick a grumpier, more sardonic or misanthropic bloke from the Irish literary pantheon.
If the Venn diagram intersection of Literary & Irish & Women & Dead is a bit thin, let's dump the literary. STEM needs crack at being honoured in the boat-naming business, after all. So here's my submission:
MV Maude Delap
My submitted reason: You've done mythic men, gay men, grumpy men and enough Arts Block. Time for STEM! MD was a great woman in science, at home on the sea too! http://url.ie/11xbl. The link cites The 2013 Blob on this great, forgotten, autodidactic marine biologist who worked the foreshore of Valentia Island and the seas about it. That name suggests a decorating theme of jellyfish in the lounges and bars of the new ferry. Kathleen "Kildare's Own" Lonsdale is better know but has no maritime connexion.
Please feel free to have a punt and row in behind this one:
it will get a profile for Irish Women in Science.
Monday, 4 September 2017
Worse things than dying
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head,
and when I woke up in my hospital bed,
And saw what it had done, well I wished I was dead.
Never knew there was worse things than dyin'.
For I'll go no more waltzing Matilda,
all around the green bush far and free
To hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs-
no more waltzing Matilda for me.
And the band played waltzing Matilda sung by Eric Bogle
That's all 75+ years ago but there are many dirty little wars going on across the world. I don't think you can stop war by pretending that it doesn't happen any more; even by looking at it, as I do from my sofa, from far far away. I know a few people who signed up for the military:
- one had a tour of duty in the Azores checking the quality of the local milk for the USAF;
- another joined the Irish Defense Forces because there were no jobs in Enniscorthy in the 1970s - the closest he came to war was being accidentally nearby when an IRA bomb went off on Talbot St, Dublin;
- and one chap of my daughters' age joined the Irish army because he really like playing in big bands.
in order to do that, I've had to educate myself: but there's a lot I don't know. Until yesterday, for example, I was ignorant of the difference between anti-personnel mines APMs and anti-personnel improvised explosive devices AP-IEDs. Princess Di and many others campaigned with such high-profile fervour against APMs that the Ottawa Treaty was signed and ratified in December 1997 by Canada, Ireland and Mauritius; followed rapidly or eventually by another 159 sovereign states. 34 countries contrive to reconcile their membership of the UN with a failure to sign up to Ottawa. This ragamuffin motley crew, who presumably are either making, selling or using APMs, include China, Egypt, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the USA - check your country here.
Be careful what you wish for, though. Static charges detonated remotely i.e. mines, have clear utility in the math of war. That's why so many APMs were bought and distributed with such abandon across fields and roads in the Third World. APMs manufactured by recognised munitions firms with high standards of reliability and quality control may be expensive but they are unlikely to blow your own chaps up. Indeed, APMs were designed to disable rather than kill the opposition because a live and writhing casualty ties up more resources than a corpse. If Ottawa destroys the quality market, or if you could never afford it, then you have to make you own kit aka IEDs. These are much less likely to be safe, reliable and uniform in effect. In their campaigns against the status quo ante in North Ireland and a brighter united future for Ireland, the Provisional IRA carried out a sustained campaign of violence against the British establishment. In the 30 years between 1970 and 2001, the Provos relied extensively on IEDs and managed to kill 160 of their own people because they really weren't great at the precision engineering required.
My pal Mac saw it as his duty to volunteer his surgical skills for the Canadian Army serving with The Coalition in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's been out there again recently cleaning up the bloody mess that is left in the wake of a war-party. In such circumstances the medical effectives do the best they can for each presenting patient, of course, but in this case they've also gone the extra mile to gather some data on the extent and nature of the injuries [OpenBMJ paper PDF]. They do this so that first responders are better informed and can apply first aid to the places which are more likely to have been injured: to enhance best practice.
From the data, don't worry too much about neck-bracing your IED casualties (currently standard practice); please spend more time on stablising the pelvis and preventing bleeding, which cannot be dealt with by tourniquet, from the bottom. Apply a tourniquet if there is any limb left even if it's not bleeding now because when blood pressure picks up it may start bleeding then. Mac's team only looked at a cohort of 100 IED casualties but they compared their findings to earlier studies of APM damage.
Summary, AP-IEDs are much worse than APMs: they kill more people, they amputate more limbs and they deliver more contaminated soil to the peritoneal cavity. War is hell. But some aspects are more hellish than others. IEDs are crude, horrible in their effects, and indiscriminate in their victims. There's got to be a better way.
"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing
because you can only do little"
because you can only do little"
Sydney Smith
Sunday, 3 September 2017
Sunday again
Last week I said I was fed up with going round and round in circles on youtube. Here's an analysis of the site which clothes that feeling of dissatisfaction with an explanation: YouTube has been playing with what's left of my mind to deliver more of it to advertisers. At least when you finish a book, you can put it down and pick up something else . . . and now for something completely different. The hotter and more effective Youtube algorithm invites you, insidiously, to bide a wee while and have a bit more of similar stuff. We are being massaged towards predictable homogeneity. Like Ulysses passing the island of the Sirens, I'm going to ask some pals to tie me to the mast so I don't dive into a treacherous sea of similarity.
But videos are sooo enticing. Picking up a book is hard work, clicking a button to watch something unfold before your eyes - so much easier. Here's nice teaching tool for practical physics: sit in a hot-tub in your knickers and ask: how much warmer will the water get if I heat a 20kg lump of iron red-hot and dump it in the tub? Yes, I think I'll get out of the tub before I try. You can calculate this from the specific heat of iron and water, the temperature difference and the relative masses but that's mere book-l'arning. I think that's a pretty good gedankenexperiment for our 1st students at The Institute.
Vox asserts that climate change will make for wetter tropical cyclones. It's the physics innit? No surprises in Houston!
But videos are sooo enticing. Picking up a book is hard work, clicking a button to watch something unfold before your eyes - so much easier. Here's nice teaching tool for practical physics: sit in a hot-tub in your knickers and ask: how much warmer will the water get if I heat a 20kg lump of iron red-hot and dump it in the tub? Yes, I think I'll get out of the tub before I try. You can calculate this from the specific heat of iron and water, the temperature difference and the relative masses but that's mere book-l'arning. I think that's a pretty good gedankenexperiment for our 1st students at The Institute.
Vox asserts that climate change will make for wetter tropical cyclones. It's the physics innit? No surprises in Houston!
Here's a big truck driver playing with Tonka toys to show how to reverse a train of trailers aka a B-double [real-life picture R] into a loading dock. Here's some real world trucker magic. For these people their rig is an extension of their hands. When we moved into our ruined farmhouse 20 years ago, we had a builder in to make it habitable. The Celtic tiger boom was barely audible in 1996, so everyone was learning their draft. The boss builder had two sons 12 and 14 years old who came to work with Dad during their mid-term break from school. They amused themselves backing the firm's jeep and trailer through the gate into the yard with a tight 90 degree turn. We had a car and trailer and I could also do this manoeuvre. . . slowly and with enormous mental effort, "if I put my left hand down the back of the car will turn thus and the trailer will turn so". The boys just did it with competence amounting to élan, because they were two good pairs of hands. Practice makes perfect, I guess or at least make confident.
What is happiness? Where is home? Surprising answers from Martin Hart [L having Xmas dinner under the railway bridge on Westland Row] in talking to photographer Donal Moloney. A bit of back story. They got to be good enough pals for Martin to come the next year to dinner in Donal's studio. Christmas dinner with the telly. We have a shocking problem with homelessness in Ireland, especially in Dublin which is beyond the ideology or the spine of government to sort out. I am glad to see that the Dublin Library Service helps out to the extent of providing somewhere warm and dry to spend part of the day.
Here [R border is red line between NI=top-right and RoI=bot-left] is a screen-shot of a BBC-filmlet showing showing just how discordant the county borders are with modern infrastructural features. A longer wordier BBC piece on the same matter. Here the border cuts through the living room of a 19thC farmhouse. The film drones [it has now become a transitive verb!] a car zooming from Clones to Cavan. Because of a huge jink in the border, the driver has to enter Northern Ireland [=UK] twice making four [4!] border crossings in 10km. The Blob has considered the consequences of similar border-fun in Baarle [BE-NL] and Cooch Behar [IN] with Rangpur [BD]. It will all be fine, if Brexit would either a) go away or b) be achieved with a civilised BeNeLux sense of tolerance and accommodation. Actually, the Norway-Sweden border would do [pics] at Morokulien.
Finally, from the other end of the Republic, today Waterford meet Galway in the All Ireland Hurling finals this afternoon. Waterford, city and county is decked out in an absurd amount of blue&white flags and bunting. Despite Waterford's 10:0 record of wins going back to 1938, the bookies are backing Galway: "Galway win: 1/2 Waterford win: 9/4 Draw: 9/1". Nevertheless I have on my blue-and-white underpants of power:
Here [R border is red line between NI=top-right and RoI=bot-left] is a screen-shot of a BBC-filmlet showing showing just how discordant the county borders are with modern infrastructural features. A longer wordier BBC piece on the same matter. Here the border cuts through the living room of a 19thC farmhouse. The film drones [it has now become a transitive verb!] a car zooming from Clones to Cavan. Because of a huge jink in the border, the driver has to enter Northern Ireland [=UK] twice making four [4!] border crossings in 10km. The Blob has considered the consequences of similar border-fun in Baarle [BE-NL] and Cooch Behar [IN] with Rangpur [BD]. It will all be fine, if Brexit would either a) go away or b) be achieved with a civilised BeNeLux sense of tolerance and accommodation. Actually, the Norway-Sweden border would do [pics] at Morokulien.
Finally, from the other end of the Republic, today Waterford meet Galway in the All Ireland Hurling finals this afternoon. Waterford, city and county is decked out in an absurd amount of blue&white flags and bunting. Despite Waterford's 10:0 record of wins going back to 1938, the bookies are backing Galway: "Galway win: 1/2 Waterford win: 9/4 Draw: 9/1". Nevertheless I have on my blue-and-white underpants of power:
Up the Déise
Saturday, 2 September 2017
The Elephant
I have a friend who lives in deepest rural Ireland but chooses to get all his News through Al-Jazeera rather than trusting the standard TLAs in the field ABC BBC CBC CBS Fox NBC RTE. I suffer the News on RTE [which is disproportionately about car-crashes and empty promises from politicians] rather than seek it out and I'm not going to make an extra effort to get the Qatari view on whatever-you're-having-yourself. Nevertheless, I do occasionally get to view a story through Al-Jaz such as the recent collision of USS John S Cain, an invisible USN destroyer, and an oil tanker, in the super busy waters off Singapore.
The side bar took me to a cartoon summary of a 2015 interview of Sir Ken Robinson. I've had occasion to mention Ken Robinson, the radical education guru on The Blob before. And if you haven't seen his laconic and inspiring TED talks, then you should stop reading this Now and go forthwith there [2007] and "as I was saying" [2010] and there-abouts [2013]. I could leave it there . . . if I had confidence that you'd spend the next 90 minutes watching yer man Robinson.
Although I've seen those vids multiple times, I didn't realise that Robinson contracted polio aged 4 [in 1954 the year I was born], when polio was scything through the Western World. That bright fast and nimble small child wasn't going to play soccer for his local club after that; so he had to walk (eventually) a different path. In the Al-Jaz piece he talks about interviewing fellow Liverpudlian Paul McCartney which was recorded in his book The Elephant. It instantly brought to mind the old parable of the blind-men and the elephant: who variously think the beast is a wall, a fan, a snake, a rope, a tree-trunk, and a spear. All on a superficial assessment with less-than-perfect instruments.
I thought that The Elephant was a great name for a book about shoe-horning people into bins which only partially describe them. Like all of Robinson's pals in the School for the Physically Handicapped who were generally dismissed as, well, handicapped. Whereas young Ken recognised them as funny or kind or good at maths: he wasn't going to tolerate them or himself being written off as that pore crippled chil'. But it turned out that I had misheard. His 2010 book, which inter alia asks McCartney how he got where he finished up, is called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything; which you can get quite cheap on Amazon.
Robinson's fundamental problem with education is that every child, every person, is different but we spend a huge proportion of the budget for schools dulling down the differences to generate a more uniform product. The minor problem is that we only value what we can measure and so another large chunk of money goes towards devising, administering and collating tests of achievement, especially in the 3 Rs: reading, writing and 'rithmetic. Being great at soccer or Grand Theft Auto or cutting hair or soldering electronics or making cup-cakes or fixing lawn-mowers is, if not utterly irrelevant in school, of marginal importance at best. That's a shame and failing to nurture these handy talents costs the state fantastical amounts of money later in missed opportunities and remedial work with the disaffected. The unwillingness to consider a revolution in education is the elephant in the room. There, I knew there was an elephant hereabouts - I could smell his greyness.
The side bar took me to a cartoon summary of a 2015 interview of Sir Ken Robinson. I've had occasion to mention Ken Robinson, the radical education guru on The Blob before. And if you haven't seen his laconic and inspiring TED talks, then you should stop reading this Now and go forthwith there [2007] and "as I was saying" [2010] and there-abouts [2013]. I could leave it there . . . if I had confidence that you'd spend the next 90 minutes watching yer man Robinson.
Although I've seen those vids multiple times, I didn't realise that Robinson contracted polio aged 4 [in 1954 the year I was born], when polio was scything through the Western World. That bright fast and nimble small child wasn't going to play soccer for his local club after that; so he had to walk (eventually) a different path. In the Al-Jaz piece he talks about interviewing fellow Liverpudlian Paul McCartney which was recorded in his book The Elephant. It instantly brought to mind the old parable of the blind-men and the elephant: who variously think the beast is a wall, a fan, a snake, a rope, a tree-trunk, and a spear. All on a superficial assessment with less-than-perfect instruments.
I thought that The Elephant was a great name for a book about shoe-horning people into bins which only partially describe them. Like all of Robinson's pals in the School for the Physically Handicapped who were generally dismissed as, well, handicapped. Whereas young Ken recognised them as funny or kind or good at maths: he wasn't going to tolerate them or himself being written off as that pore crippled chil'. But it turned out that I had misheard. His 2010 book, which inter alia asks McCartney how he got where he finished up, is called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything; which you can get quite cheap on Amazon.
Robinson's fundamental problem with education is that every child, every person, is different but we spend a huge proportion of the budget for schools dulling down the differences to generate a more uniform product. The minor problem is that we only value what we can measure and so another large chunk of money goes towards devising, administering and collating tests of achievement, especially in the 3 Rs: reading, writing and 'rithmetic. Being great at soccer or Grand Theft Auto or cutting hair or soldering electronics or making cup-cakes or fixing lawn-mowers is, if not utterly irrelevant in school, of marginal importance at best. That's a shame and failing to nurture these handy talents costs the state fantastical amounts of money later in missed opportunities and remedial work with the disaffected. The unwillingness to consider a revolution in education is the elephant in the room. There, I knew there was an elephant hereabouts - I could smell his greyness.
Friday, 1 September 2017
Resi[artist]dence
When we shifted our stuff down the country 20 years ago we still had many friends-and-relations in Dublin. We got into the habit of having a knees-up round about the Summer Solstice, which is close enough to my birthday and inviting friends down from The Smoke. With what seems, in hindsight, outrageous chutzpah we often put these city sophisticates to work on the farm. The old Irish concept meitheal is 'many hands make light work'. One year we had a blitz on the back garden and a couple of years later everyone had to help carry the steel hoops of our enormous polytunnel 300m up the lane. We sourced a butcher who would leave his own ideas of pork-butchery aside and give us a whole pork shoulder [about 10kg] which barely fitted into our domestic oven to be slow roasted for 20 hours. Pretty good days.
At least two fruitful relationships were struck up in our yard during these events. I have a thing about women-in-science and tend to concentrate my scientific biogs to that half of humanity. If my friend Kieran was a woman, I'd write about how, over plates of pulled pork, it transpired that the immunological basis of a genetic genome wide association study in cattle was bloody daft not in step with current immunology research. But Kieran, bloke and The Effective in that wrong-headed study, was put back on the rails, acquired an extra mentor and is now a successful scientist equally at home in the two disciplines. K & I, mainly K, later put together the proposal that secured Mentor of the Year for our boss.
Meanwhile under the ash tree, a hot young-than-me Lecturer in TCD Zoology Department, let's call her Paula, was talking to a neighbour of ours starting out as a found-art artist. The latter, let's call her Cathy, was born in NZ the other side of the world and had acquired a primary degree in microbiology, so a) could understand the language of science but b) brought a different tool-kit to the table.
Within a year (things take a long walk through bureaucratic treacle especially if they are different / unexpected / cross-disciplinary / interesting) Cathy was installed as Artist in Residence in the Zoology Department. She started talking to final year developmental biology students but eventually got into dialogue with all the academic staff, even the old buffers, about their work. Cathy created a number of pieces out of these exchanges; but more important, the scientists took up a brush or a camera to look at their own practice with more shiny eyes. The picture [R] 'unwanted genes on a DNA spiral' is prior art from Cathy's portfolio; prior in the sense that she created it before her AiR gig. I like this ephemeral piece very much. She has captured the delicate folds and subtle colours of the reproductive parts of some plants that we treat as weeds because they grow in inconvenient places, secured them to spruce Picea abies twigs and suspended them in the fresh air for a few minutes as a Most Marvellous Metaphor.
What does it mean? The motto of my horse-riding protestant family is Respice, Prospice - Look forward, Look back. It means that we-the-scientists have to slow down, step sideways and look back at what we've done, STOP now, don't be rushing ahead until truly know where you are and what you've got.
Meanwhile under the ash tree, a hot young-than-me Lecturer in TCD Zoology Department, let's call her Paula, was talking to a neighbour of ours starting out as a found-art artist. The latter, let's call her Cathy, was born in NZ the other side of the world and had acquired a primary degree in microbiology, so a) could understand the language of science but b) brought a different tool-kit to the table.
Within a year (things take a long walk through bureaucratic treacle especially if they are different / unexpected / cross-disciplinary / interesting) Cathy was installed as Artist in Residence in the Zoology Department. She started talking to final year developmental biology students but eventually got into dialogue with all the academic staff, even the old buffers, about their work. Cathy created a number of pieces out of these exchanges; but more important, the scientists took up a brush or a camera to look at their own practice with more shiny eyes. The picture [R] 'unwanted genes on a DNA spiral' is prior art from Cathy's portfolio; prior in the sense that she created it before her AiR gig. I like this ephemeral piece very much. She has captured the delicate folds and subtle colours of the reproductive parts of some plants that we treat as weeds because they grow in inconvenient places, secured them to spruce Picea abies twigs and suspended them in the fresh air for a few minutes as a Most Marvellous Metaphor.
What does it mean? The motto of my horse-riding protestant family is Respice, Prospice - Look forward, Look back. It means that we-the-scientists have to slow down, step sideways and look back at what we've done, STOP now, don't be rushing ahead until truly know where you are and what you've got.
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