Only here for the merch

The "brand" new South East Technical University was signed into existence on Sunday 1st May - the minister putting in a bit of overtime. Last week an e-invitation went out for a series of l[a]unches at the three campuses which constitute the new Tech University  Expect great hospitality, music and SETU goodies  which I have cleverly rendered in appropriate branding colours. There has been much laconic comment among my old colleagues about the leaky bucket logo [shown L at knee-level, my old roomie Y included for scale] in which U for University is constructed with a series of tangents to the curve - all sort of missing the central point of a University. 

I am a sucker for freebies = I was a graduate student once. There is no better metaphor for a shonky organisation than distributing hundreds of branded pens . . . which don't work. But I couldn't justify driving a round-trip of 80 kilocarbons to pick up more crappy pens. I therefore arranged a date with A3 the bright young fella who didn't get my job - wasn't even short-listed - when I retired from one of the SETU parents in October 2o2o. We had a couple of zoom calls at that time to give him the inside dope because he was part of the Irish Binfo community and post-doc in the binf.lab of A2 an old pal and one time employee. A3 is like my younger self, except smarter and with significantly more 'finish' = able to get data into shape, written up and published. 

We went for a long walk up the towpath of the Barrow Navigation, incidentally checking out the industrial blight at the Navigation's interface with the old demolished sugar factory. In contrast to Hamilton in 1843, neither of us had chalk in our pockets, so we couldn't write down any deep thoughts on the abutments of the several bridges under which we passed. I learned an remarkable amount about the Tara Oceans Project and the distribution of deep-sea marine amphipods. Tara has similar aspirations to Craig Venter's Sorcerer Project which documented a marine sampling of microbial DNA - so much local diversity despite the stirring of oceanic currents. YIL that dogfish Squalus acanthias, several of which I dissected at school because it was so abundant in the by-catch of the 1960s, is on a branch of the tree of sharks which a) separated from other elasmobranchs 200 mya b) hasn't a sequenced genome to show for itself. The effort to obtain DNA sequence data is patchy and particular: shouty important people can get the money to analyse their pets [Shadow, we're looking at you]. Why might this holiday in the data-landscape matter? Because these fish have an immune system which works and is not too dissimilar to ours, and comparative immunology might give us insight into how immune systems work: are there essential elements in a sea of variation?

We also had a wide ranging discussion about how science works, and how we as individuals in that peculiar world found our niche and made contributions towards understanding the ticking of the natural world. Sometimes it is more productive to keep the show on the road: teaching, maintaining, mentoring rather than being obnoxiously ambitious, secretive and careless of the feelings of others. I had a really great time teaching in The Institute for the last 8 years of my working life - every Monday morning I put on my happy face for Bio 101 labs - but I'm really glad I didn't start into that mill when I was A3's age. A combination of [lucky but make you own luck] circumstances let me be a fly on the wall when extraordinary science was being done and that experience made me a better teacher and my classes a lot more interesting - for everyone.

But all good walks must come to an end . . . and I had merch to collect at the SETU launch. As well as a couple of bites of chicken nugget and a fancy petit four, I secured a [branded] pen, a lanyard, a tee-shirt, a water-bottle, all in a cotton tote bag so thin you could read a newspaper right through it. I hope that SETU lasts longer than this token bag, because re-branding is a hugely expensive drain on the planet. There is a dumpster out back filled with The Institute letterhead. It was nice to catch up with my old, and getting older, colleagues but nobody was wearing a mask [R the minister sharing spittle for Twitter with A4 and A5 student palominos from The Institute], so I'll have to hope that, as well as a tee-shirt, I haven't copped a 'Rona.

Arson arsole

We had a really dry January: maybe ⅓ the last ten years average. Feb and March were situation normal all rained up SNARU as expected for Ireland. But April was parched - except for Easter Sunday morning when we all got sopping in the drizzle during a woodland egg-hunt. This is great because it means I can yomp up the hill in my runners so long as I avoid the known seeps and wet draws. But it's not so great because the heather is like tinder and last year's bracken is dying drying lying all over the hillside. Traditionally, this has been a good time to set the heather blazing: clearing off the thatch and allowing fresh green sheep-feeding shoots to get their heads up. Prev on the far side of the valley. Me, I sternly disapprove of burning as an unsustainable nutrient-depleting practice. It grills the microbes too!

Earlier in the month, immediately after the two wet days that were in it, I was down by the river planting willow whips to help stabilize the bank against the floods which will, inevitably, return. That was a +++ for the carbon footprint budget. Last Thursday night, contrariwise, some person or persons unknown, took advantage of the dry weather - and  darkness  - to apply accelerant to the commonage next door and set the whole hillside on fire. Over 36 hours, scores, possibly hundreds, of hectares of heathland were reduced to a dusting of grey ash spiked with black twigs. It was big enough, orange enough and unexpected enough that one of our neighbours called the fire-brigade. These lads spent several hours full hazmat on the hillside, doing their best to minimize the damage. My couple of dozen willows weighs as a gob of snot against a blast-furnace in the carbon footprint scales. KnockMordor:

Because our home turns its back to the hill to take advantage of whatever sun is available, all this drama passed me by as I slumbered. But I was sitting on the stoop Friday forenoon and another neighbour paused to say that they were organising a meitheal to stomp some fire that afternoon. It seemed absurd to be aware of the problem and wait another 2 hours to be part of the solution /mitigation, so I gobbled an early lunch; then seized a long handled shovel, 2 litres of water, binoculars and a sun hat and sallied forth:

By the time anyone else rocked up [these farrrmers are all busy lambing], I had beaten into submission a section of fire-front maybe 75m long. And fakk! I was knackered. But we soldiered on, the wind backed, we got the SW section of the conflagration down to code smolder, dealt with the recidivist flare ups and called it a long thirsty arvo at 6 pm. This is a job for young knees and a work-outed upper body; sofa surfers need not apply.

What about the arsole? you may ask. Not this Arsole (C₄H₄AsH), but . . . Word on the street is that, for the second year running, our common has been targetted out of spite by owners of other local commonages who didn't get dibs on a pot of Brussels money to be part of a pilot project to repurpose and sustainablize European uplands. I can see where such a sentiment might come from - pity about the collateral damage to the heather, insects, worms, microbes . . . and people who like to walk the hills in white linen.

Here's a nice planting story. Martin Neary is planting both himself and some thousands of trees on his Mayo farm.

May Day

Mayday indeed

• Try a little kindness . . .  at the ballgame. 
• Teachers: quit if you have to
• & the hell with censorship 
• Help! CSO Outdoor engagement survey
• Help! Crap-detecting data survey
  
• Women so can carpent.
  
• £5 from Banker Boggs  
• Thinking of college in Scotland?
• Alternative take?
• Scotland? thinkplant Populus tremula
• Yes, the Salmon! 
  
• You might remember 28 Apr 1985; if not you, 18 million other people do [cw: snooker].
• Bit o Billy Bragg ?
• Bit o Ivo Graham
• T[r]opical Entertainment - Masks! Pandemic! Government! Rumous of War!  Dhrink! - Myrna Loy and Tyrone Power in The Rains Came (1939)  Exec Summary
  

Salixing the bank

Back in January I wrote note to self: more willow cuttings needed . . . to protect our bank of the river from further flood-damage erosion. But notes to self are much less useful than actioning the thought. And it turned out that, back in Jan I had at least one eye on future forest. While dismembering the fallen trees and sorting into brash vs fire-wood, I had sidelined a couple of bags for straight willow branchlets. These scions I brought back home and dumped, cut-end down into a bucket of water. That worked a treat. Willow Salix spp. typically tolerate a good deal of wet in the ground and will naturally root if a leaning branch comes into contact with wet soil. They say that you can leverage this natural tendency to root as a source of natural ?woowillow? rooting hormone.

As Winter turned over to Spring, knobby white rootlets could be seen poking into the water of my propagation bucket. We had all the descendants on site over Easter. They tend to be champing at the bit to be useful about the property which is a boon and a blessing. The Boy was very happy to carry the now-rooted willow whips down to the river, while I carried the iron spike for making holes in the bank into which they might be popped.

It really only took a few minutes and now we have a couple of dozen incipient trees, running along maybe 20m of bank, ready to fight their corner against all comers. I reckon they won't fight too hard against the blue-bells Coinnle corra Hyacinthoides non-scripta and white campion Coireán bán Silene latifolia which currently cover the bank below the badger sett. But their task, for us, is to contribute a dense tangle of roots to retain earth and small stones against the rushing water. It doesn't look very rushing in the picture above: it would be hard to get the water to over-top your wellingtons. But after a spill of rain on the hills this quiet beck becomes shoulder-deep maelstrom which carries all before it.  Side note: I explained the non-scripta part of the bluebell's name at the birth of The Blob.

Turkey dangle

The challenging flubbers of bare flesh hanging from a turkey's [Meleagris galloparva] neck are a) called wattles b) something else entirely. Today we address [a small but politically significant part of] the country which straddles Europe and Asia. Time was that Turkey aspired to join the EU, as it had been a key member of NATO - joined 1952. The idea of Turkey joining the EU got a lot of side-eye from Greece which has had issues with the Turks since Byron or Smyrna. Turkey was the clue/answer to Worldle last Thursday [see R]. When you rip an outline map from its context, it exaggerates any distortions in the border - as recently Lithuania. Thanks to my very expensive education, I got Turkey.worldle in one go - hint: looks like a brick and there is Gallipoli and the Dardanelles over in the NW. But WTF is the dong-shaped penisula halfway along the South coast? A: not a peninsula at all!

It is a chunk of land, but only its Western border is wet. For 170 years from 1098, it was part of the Crusader Principality of Antioch and eventually was subsumed into the Ottoman Empire. After WWI, The Empire was stripped of everything that could be considered a colony, with these bits gobbled up by France and Britain as "Mandates". France taking what we now known as Syria and Lebanon, with the Brits shouldering the burden of Palestine and Iraq.  The Mandat pour la Syrie et le Liban was a real melting pot: mostly Arabs, but also Kurds, Turks, Assyrians, Armenians, Circassians, Mandaeans, and Greeks. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Isma'ilis, Mandaeans, Shiites, Salafis, and Yazidis.  The administration divided their territory up into 5 States centred on Aleppo, Beirut, Damascus, Latakia & Swaida. Some of these places are household names in the West after years of bloody sectarian and internecine conflict. Others less so because our news coverage and education is partial in both sense of that word. From 1923 to 1939, the NW corner of the Mandate was promoted to an autonomous Sanjak of Alexandretta; at least partly as a sop to the new state of Turkey and the ethnic Turks who made up a substantive minority in that micro-region. 

As the World shaped up for War again in the 1930s, France had realpolitik reasons for keeping Turkey sweet with The Allied Powers rather than, as in WWI, throwing their lot in with the Germans. The French were also trying to divest themselves of their Mandate territories in the Near East as soon as she deemed them to be sufficiently evolué to manage their own affairs. In 1938 the Sanjak of Alexandretta was rebranded as Hatay State aka The Republic of Hatay. And the following year, the Turks finessed a plebiscite to determine the future status of the province.   On dit que the plebiscite was packed with ringers who were no longer domiciled in Hatay. Whatevs! the count brought in a majority in favour of [re]joining Turkey and the area was annexed by Turkey on 22nd July 1939. The President of Syria resigned in protest but the French barrelled on regardless - their minds distracted by events along their own border . . . not to mention the Anschluss Österreichs in March 1938 and the Munich Betrayal of the Sudentenland in September 1938.

And that, kids, is why Turkey occupies both sides of the Gulf of Alexandretta aka İskenderun Körfezi.

Systems and users

 A while back I self-referentially ended a Blob about a book noting that Borrowbox came to officious life and <klang!> closed my account as I was finishing the book. It was mildly more confusing because I was up on the hill without my specs, so could barely read the close-out message . . . let alone respond effectively to it. Dropping out of the system so abruptly caught me with my panzers down on a) by Borrowbox backcatalog - the list of all the books I've heard over the last tuthree years b) the title of the interesting book on which I put a reserve. The last was aggravating.

Luckily I have unlimited access to a Family Librarian who has the covetted AAAB access all areas badge in  all matters relating to LMS and OPAC  = Library Management System and OnLine Public Access Catalogue. The problem condensed around two un-related changes in my relationship with the now national library service. 

1. Our Family Librarian F.L. had sorted me with a Dublin Library card flagging my "Home Library" as Tramore, Co Déise, which is 180km South of Dublin. Goodo, except that the bar-code on that card would never scan, so the long-suffering librarian had to type in the 14 digit number. A week before the F.L. had sent me a new card hoping that the whatever UV problem glitch wouldn't replicate.
2. The whole nation had, two days prior, switched from one LMS [Sierra] and OPAC [Encore] to another integrated LMS/OPAC system called Spydus.

My problem [it is all about me, after all] was compounded by both issues. F.L. got onto Borrowbox customer service and they merged their records for the two different cards. >!Shazzam!< not only did the back-catalog and my reservation come back to me but so did my access to the book I had been reading the day before with the bottom dropped out of my digital world. That was bonzer.

The access problem was system-wide. The /etc/passwd file in which all the user PIN codes were encrypted could not be ported to the new Spydus system and all the passwords in the country had to be reset. The transition to the new, better system had been outsourced to external IT consultants who, for all the €million$ they had trousered for that contract, had been unable to leap this small user-interface hurdle but off-loaded the task on librarians across the nation who, over a million transactions involving hundreds of billable hours were able to get the new system up and running with users whose PIN was recognised. Not a million miles from the €20million EirCode debacle / boondoggle.

Sun Apr 24t

Orthodox Easter today: Щасливого Великодня!

• Sailing the Sound of Sleat  
• Round about the time I was born, my Da piled through the Sound of Sleat >/whoooheee/<at 30 kts = 55km/h in HMS Barossa D68. . . because it was there; because they could
• ♬ ♪Sound of Sleat♫ ♩
• Land navigation problems [hint: baDANNNG!]
• Surfing down hill:  Haka Pei, Rapa Nui
• Cycling 3000 miles.
  
• Jump rope for the world
• Repurposing anchor chain
• Less effort composting - Red Garden 
• Impossible to compost - Plastic Bag by Ramin Bahrani, voiced by Werner Herzog