Hail fellow

. . . well met. I must have met Dan Bradley in the Summer of 1990 when I came back to Ireland for a week long scoping exercise in Trinity College Dublin. I was then 'resting' in the NE of England having run out of steam as a population geneticist. I had secured an EU 'retraining fellowship' to convert whatever number-crunching skills I had from pop gen into a more useful area of science. That would be molecular evolution using bioinformatics. During that week, I hung out in the binfo lab which was hosting the fellowship, found I could do the work, found an old farmhouse to rent out near the airport, found my way down to coffee and probably had a few pints in the Summer evenings.

When I came back in October on salary, I defo met Dan because by a peculiar set of circumstances his boss was my boss. Dan had just finished a PhD looking for lesions in genes that resulted in retinitis pigmentosum which causes late onset hereditary blindness. Like me, he was also stepping sideways - into the genetics of tropical cattle. His boss Paddy Cunnngham had bigger fish smaller flies to fry running the screwworm eradication programme out of the FAO in Rome. Cunningham had recently landed a huge research grant, and hired a postdoc [Dan] and two post-graduate students Ronan Loftus and Dave MacHugh to prosecute the cattle project.  My boss, Paul Sharp, as tenured faculty could act in loco parentis for these three orphans. But they didn't need much hand-holding; being recklessly brave and technically competent in adverse circumstances in the Third World. And quite undaunted by the institutional bureaucracy of TCD. For the next tuthree years, the two labs would have a joint Christmas dinner which seemed to require G&Ts between each course, and telling cray-cray war stories from the bush.

Irish science had been absolutely in the doldrums through the 1980s, and the cattle project was one of the first big-money rumblings of what became the Celtic Tiger. in 1992, TCD scrabbled together the money to create a new lectureship in Genetics. It was exciting: we all sat through job presentations from the short-listed (Top Gun) candidates - before they went in to be formally grilled by the search committee. In the pub that evening, Paul Sharp confided [I got all the important information in the pub] that he'd been asked his opinion for the best candidate as "the person most like to bring in the largest grants". The most intellectually stimulating science or the best teacher of genetics came further down the list of desiderata. Paul's unequivocal answer was "Dan Bradley"; and it was so.  Turned out Dan had an even better nose for writing citable papers of which he's contributed more than 25 to [super-prestigious Nature | Science | PNAS]. That's about as many papers (crappy + marginal + okay + pretty good = all my papers) as I've been party to . . . six of which were actually coat-tailing on Effectives from the Bradley lab.

Pure science is fine; bringing in big grant money gets you Best Boy status with your employer; launching a successful Campus Company is pure gold. Dan was one of five founding directors of Identigen [multiBlob] which is still trading well into its third decade.

I should add that as well as being a great scientist who can tell it so that non-specialists can appreciate its importance, Dan is a good bloke and a loyal friend. He brought me to hospital when I was whacked off my bike in Westland Row in 1998 and was smart enough, and kind enough. to know that I'd be so long in A&E that I'd need a Mars Bar and an Irish Times.

In the middle of May, Professor Bradley was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. Short of a Nobel, that's about the biggest gong you can acquire as a research scientist in the English speaking world. No slouch the chap who escaped from a chicken farm in Maghera, Co Derry to go to Cambridge. Chapeau! and a sweeping respectful bow.

A fresh face in politics

It's about a month since I was canvassed to elect Daniel Pender to the local county council. Local elections are really local. Even county Carlow which is a micro civil polity [90,000 hectares; 62,000 ppl] is divvied up into 3 LEAs Local Election Areas. We are assigned to the southernmost LEA, comprised of the scut-end of the county: wedged between the Blackstairs and the River Barrow. Of course, my #1 went to Willie Quinn who lives between us and the nearest post office. But I did give Dan Pender a number. You're meant to continue your choices until you really have absolutely no preference among the remaining candidates.There were only 8 candidates for 5 seats at the county council table. Having excluded the patently deranged, the fixers and racists, it should be a shoo-in for any reasonably honest, reasonably personable, fairly photogenic, applicant for the job. Who takes the photos on the promotional literature? Who signs off on the choice??

Our LEA data: Electorate: 14,100; Total Poll: 7,231; Turnout: 51%; Spoiled votes: 138; Total Valid Poll: 7,093; Quota: 1,183.

Well, the votes are counted and the results are shown here [R]. And who gets elected on the first count? . . . with a chunky surplus, but The Fixer, who arranged-to-be-delivered 100 tonnes of roadstone back in Feb 2022. Call me peculiar, but I'm not going to vote for people who bend the system in the interests of patronage. That kind of grift inevitably preferences those who have connexions and excludes those who really need a leg up. Willie sailed in on the second count. The person who's ragin' this weekend is the monumental incumbent Arthur McDonald FF. The people have voted for a younger, fresher, fitter version of Fianna Fáil - Go Dan Pender!  The next Taoiseach but four.

Sun Msc 9th Jun 024

Misco

• Wairarapa Fault, NZ Earth's biggest shunt = 17m
• Je fais mon devoir - RIP the Angel of Dien Bien Phu
• Cooper's Hill, Gloucs: wet underfoot in 2024. Abby Lampe Women's Champ [R] 
• Keith Jarrett Köln improv 1975
• Brits 1994 gays and miners sang Together!
• via MeFi
• Kosovo trad: Rožice - Vrbice, vrbo zelena
• Kentucky Restoring a pantograph
• Medway Queen restoration
  

Grace first, the rest nowhere

Big day for Democracy.

It's election day in Ireland. We're going to the polls for a) local candidates on County Councils b) supranational Members of the European Parliament. In neither of these constituencies are there bye-elections if the incumbent dies, retires, resigns or self-combusts: that democratic privilege is reserved for TDs departing the Dáil. For CoCo and MEP, when you vote for a candidate, you are also voting for their replacement. The full list of nominated replacements. Christopher Doyle's replacements, for example, are both Doyles and live in his Wexford home; so you're voting for a dynasty.

Obvs, my #1 is going to Grace O'Sullivan with whom I have traded poetry down Costa na Déise way.

Full list. UL has done some candidate polling to find out where they stand on issue that matter. Not everyone has responded to the request for info: some are too busy assaulting refugees, or denying women bodily autonomy. To help decisions down the lower end of the list, I have struck out populists, haters, nut-jobs, fascists, people-with-eyes-too-close-together . . .
 Billy Kelleher (Fianna Fáil)
 Grace O’Sullivan (Green Party)
 Seán Kelly (Fine Gael)
 Mick Wallace (Independents 4 Change)
 Kathleen Funchion (Sinn Féin)
 Paul Gavan (Sinn Féin)
 Niamh Hourigan (Labour)
 Susan Doyle (Social Democrats)
 Patrick Murphy (Aontú)
 John Mullins (Fine Gael)
 Cynthia Ní Mhurchú (Fianna Fáil)
 Cian Prendiville (People Before Profit-Solidarity)
 Eddie Punch (Independent) [fancies a bit of eutrophication]
 Derek Blighe (Ireland First)
 Ross Lahive (The Irish People)
 Una McGurk (Independent)
 Graham De Barra (Independent)
 Michael Leahy (Irish Freedom Party)
 Michael McNamara (Independent)
 Lorna Bogue (An Rabharta Glas)
 Christopher Doyle (Independent)
 Mary Fitzgibbon (Independent)
 Ciaran O'Riordan (Independent)

If I've failed to exclude known monsters, please help by flagging them in a comment. More down-in-the-grass local politics nerdling from RTE.

Red Herring

Colloquial Inglês: 
What's that got to do with the price of fish? Used when someone says something completely irrelevant to the conversation.
red herring: something that misleads or distracts from the relevant question. The jury is Out on whether Shagsper had any interest in fish or angling. But it is clear that Shaxpere's contemporaries had an interest in eating fish. Clear? How? Wot am ur evidence?

Clear because of the existence of Familiar Dialogues 1586 by Huguenot emigré Jacques Bellot who had been baffled by the colloquial English of costardmongers and drapers and resolved to write a phrasebook of English, French and English-as-she-is-spoke. These dialogues are familiar because they revolve around the antics of a cliché family arguing in the kitchen and out and about trying to purchase food and clothing. You can get the whole text in three columns on Project Gutenberg. I am annoyed with myself that this was completely new to me when it was posted on MetaFilter in May: niche lists involving foreign languages - c'est ma confiture. As often with MeFi, there is some interesting comments. Thereby, fo one example, I learned that a sheep's gather is/was equivalent to a chicken's pluck: liver + heart + lungs = the basic ingredients, with oatmeal, of haggis.

Mais revenons nous a nos poissons. It's all very well for quasi-bilingual foreign johnnies in 1586 to be comparing notes about what was on the fishmonger's slab but what are we to make of the available chowder-fare 440 years later. It's the perennial problem of using common names with all their ambivalence of meaning and regional variation [see Flora previa]. For future googlers, I here share my Linnaean findings. 

English            French         Linnaean
Soles              Des soles      Solea solea
A good plaise      Vne bonne plis Pleuronectes platessa
Viuers             Des viures     ???
Rotches, Gornettes Des rouges     Chelidonichthys cuculus
Whittinges         Des merlenc    Merlangius merlangus
Waisters           Des huistres   Ostrea edulis
Thurnebacke        De la Raye     Raja clavata
Smeltes            De l'eperlenc  Osmerus eperlanus
Redde hering       Du hareng sor  Clupea harengus
Whitte hering      Du hareng blanc Clupea harengus (salt)
Shrimpes           De la creuette Palaemon serratus
A loupster         Vn hommar      Homarus gammarus
Crabbes            Des escreuices Cancer pagurus
A picke            Vn brochet     Esox lucius
A pickerell        Vn brocheton   Esox lucius (small)
A millers thumbe   Vn gouion      Cottus gobio
A saumond          Vn saumond     Salmo salar
A lamproye         Vne lamproye   Petromyzon marinus
Elles              Des anguilles  Anguilla anguilla
A dorey            Vne dorée      Zeus faber
A makerell         Vn maquereau   Scomber scombrus
A trouette         Vne trouite    Salmo trutta
Smal lamproyes     Des lamprions  Petromyzon marinus
Moskels            Des mousles    Mytilus edulis
Cockelles          Des coques     Cerastoderma edule
A tenche           Vne tenche     Tinca tinca
A carpe            Vne carpe      Cyprinus carpio
Kempes             Des pimperneaux Anguilla anguilla
A whale            Vne ballaine   Balaenoptera acutorostrata

I think I'm correct‽ Fight me in the comments. "Rotches" could be the fresh water roach Rutilis rutilis but I think it's more likely in the context to be gurnard. I was baffled by "Waisters" until I looked at the french huisters or, as she is wrote today: huîtres where the âccent is the trace of the lost "s". Still baffled by "viuers" or in modern orthography vivers. A viver is apparently a stew-pond but here seems to be the inhabitants, so it's likely some sort of carp. As for "A whale" I've taken a punt with Balaenoptera acutorostrata, the minke whale, the smallest of the baleen whales. Although at ~10m long, it would be a good old heft to get that up from the Thames to Billingsgate fish market. The mystery fish pictured at Top? Clue.

More? In my trawls I came across Fish-eating in ancient Greece. Edible fish categories beyond the Linnaean taxonomy at academia.edu [behind sign-up wall]. Like me they have tracked down some ancient writing about the availability of fish in the market and tried to work out exactly what folks were eating 2000 years ago.

Great God Mullein

Great Mullein | Coinnle Muire | Verbascum thapsus is [triffid alert] an arresting part of the Ireland's native flora. Up to 2m tall with pale greyn furry leaves as big as a Sasquatch boot-sole and distinctive upstanding reproductive parts. Sometime last year, one of our slightly-woo friends dug up a specimen up and gave it to The Beloved. It was deposited in a packing crate [because it came with a large ragged clot of top-soil] in a corner of the polytunnel and more or less forgotten. Occasionally over the last 12 months, I've dumped a bucket of water into the crate and most if it has run straight through to make a temporary downhill puddle.

But in mid-May, I discovered some poppies Cailleach dhearg Papaver rhoeas struggling in the same adverse xerophytic desert corner of the tunnel. Poppies are the best of weeds, growing in most unlikely places and producing culinary seed - I like poppies. I started clearing around the poppies until The Beloved stopped me with "Whoa, sunshine, that's my mullein you're messing with". So I stopped hacking at the leaves and we carried the crate outside. Later the great mullein (just beginning to show yellow flower) was re-installed with honour in our largest blue-glazed earthenware planter on the recently de-thatched patio in front of the house. Now that I can reach my log-table without getting wet socks, I am resolved to sit out beside the mighty mullein with my morning quart of tea.

Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland BSBI publishes distribution maps of most-all of the plants found on these islands: herrrre's Mullein [map L] the darker the square, the more recently that species has been observed in that 10x10 km location. The Sunny South East seems to be the epicentre of V. thapsus's plan to take over the island and reduce mere people to Those Who Serve Mullein. But that recent activity may be all down to the indefatigable Paul Green populating his Flora of County Wexford [bloboprev]. 

The medical take seems to be that mullein is mostly harmless. If you choose to extract the active principles [saponins, polyphenols] from the leaves by steeping them in hot or cold oil, then you're not going to kill anyone. But you're unlikely to cure asthma bronchitis congestion dropsy eczema frostbite gout . . . either. Part of the problem is that there are 250 species in the Genus Verbascum and folk-practitioners may be using them inter-changeably. Some known anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial compounds have been isolated from some of these species. Maybe it will be as effective for me to commune with the The Mullein (while having tea, like) to spare my life when they uproot and take over the world.

God? Verbascum blattaria moth mullein seems to be immortal. The Beal weed-seed longevity project 1879-2100 is still going.  2021 Seedlings upcommmming.

June Bank Hol w/e

World Rambles

• Tim Traveller looks at meanders and borrrders
• MeFi discussion about Lost Lands like Lyonesse [prev]
• Cantre’r Gwaelod
• Hand-crafted books 
• Hand-crafted sausinges - World record 83/min
• Building an arched bridge "by hand"
  
• Matt Parker on geometry of footballs [prev] 12 pent + 20 hex
• Spelinge is now a sport
  
• Peat-slide b/c renewables [70km of cable-trenches and tracks it couldn't possibly happen again]
• H5N1 anxiety? MeFi suggestions. 
• The launch of The Rest is Entertainment is surprisingly engaging. Same Goalhanger stable as TRIP with Alastair & Rory
• Spot the lump hammer! Cold-starting a monster diesel engine = a three-person job.
  
• ♬ ♪ ♫ ♩  
• Up and down
• Leaning on the Everlasting Arms Iris Dement
  
• Once more with landscape