It is an important day for many young people in Ireland because the Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate examinations both start today, so the first thing I need to do is wish everyone starting their examinations the very best of luck! Among other things, the results of the leaving certificate examinations are important for September’s […]
As well as being Lá Saoire i mí Mheitheamh, today is also the start of Pride Month, so let me take the opportunity to say Bród sona daoibh a chairde!
The spell of warm sunny weather has made a huge difference to the view from my office window: Well, what did you expect to see from a Maynooth University office window? Sydney Opera House perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of Wildebeest sweeping majestically across …
At the start of the spring gardening season I decided to leave a bed that I had cleared unplanted to see what would grow there of its own accord. I expected standard weeds like dandelions, and did get a few of those, but more recently I have a considerable number of Ox-eye Daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare). […]
I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone involved in the Euclid Consortium Meeting an enjoyable and productive time in Barcelona as well as a fun stay in what is truly an amazing city.
It has taken a bit longer that I expected to get this far but I have now completed the grading of one of my modules. It wasn’t the written examination that took all the time, but the marking of the computational physics projects. This is always a slow job but for some reason it took […]
Last week I posted about the dire situation at Nottingham University and particularly in the School of Physics & Astronomy there. I since learned that I didn’t get the nunbers quite right: it appears that there are 71 staff in the School and 56 received notices that their jobs are at risk. There are 23 […]
I saw this picture on a LinkedIn post from a former member of staff in Physics at Nottingham University: It shows a notieboard in the foyer of the Physics Building, which houses the School of Physics & Astronomy. Earlier this week members of staff received letters informing them that their jobs are “at risk of […]
At last we’ve made it to the end of term. This morning I delivered my last particle physics lecture. Given that it is the last day of the semester I was half-expecting no students would turn up, but in the end I had about 60% attendance. At the end of my lecture there was even […]
It is a great pleasure to be teaching students who are eager to learn. That's the aspect of academic life I'll miss the most when I retire.
So here I am, back home in Maynooth after a long weekend away in Not Maynooth. The weather forecast for Maynooth was typically dreadful for a Bank Holiday weekend but I have to say I can’t sign see much sign of the heavy rain that was predicted. On the way back I checked the cricket […]
Lá Bealtaine shona daoibh go leir!
Yesterday the Open Journal of Astrophysics published a paper by Porredon et al which will feature in the usual Saturday round-up. That paper, which is based on the First Data Release from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) reminded me that I should mention that DESI recently reached an amazing milestone – it has now […]
According to this document, Maynooth University has committed to:
Introduce a University Workload Allocation Model (WAM) enhancing transparent processes and procedures in the allocation of work.
If there is such a model, it is news to me.
Even if they were not being steered unerringly onto the rocks, universities would in any case be in danger of sinking because they are unable to support the weight of bloated management.
So here I am, sitting in the (empty) Physics Computer Lab. The formal Computational Physics lab sessions are over, but I’m on duty to provide help the students with their project work, which will take up the remaining two-and-a-bit weeks of term. It’s a lovely day outside which explains why there are very few people […]
Anyway, as well as being a goldmine for historians, those of you out there with Irish lineage will no doubt find it interesting to search the 1926 census to find the records pertaining to your ancestors.
It seems that after Donald Trump shared an image of himself as Jesus on social media, ridiculous pictures of oneself in biblical settings have become all the rage. In that vein here is a picture of me downloading a paper from arXiv to read on my tablet:
So the Easter break is over and I was back to campus today armed with a very long to-do list. I’m pleased to say I’ve ticked all the items off except the last, which was to prepare my lecture for 9am tomorrow. I’ll do that after supper. I was very tired this morning after doing […]
James Geoghegan is a "farm contractor" who passes himself off as an upstanding fellow but it turns out he has numerous judgements against him for non-payment of tax and cruelty to animals. He chose to put himself forward as the "PRO" of the protestors, which doesn't seem very wise given that it was inevitable his substantial sack of dirty laundry would get a very public airing.
When I was a lad, back in England, the name for the Thursday before Good Friday was Maundy Thursday. That term isn’t used here in Ireland, where it seems to be known as Holy Thursday. Anyway, Maynooth University is closed tomorrow (Good Friday) but not today (Holy Thursday). Although today is not an official holiday, […]
It’s Sunday 29th March – Palm Sunday in fact – and Friday 3rd April is Good Friday, which is followed by a break of a week for Easter, so I’ve been looking at what I have to do in the four days between Monday and Thursday. On Tuesday afternoon part of my 3rd Year Computational […]
So now after a half-term mid-semester study break, including one day of actual holiday, that was both pleasant and eventful it will soon be time to return to the fray, at least for 9 working days. A full week of lectures, labs and tutorials starts tomorrow but the following week end a day early, on […]
The date of the Vernal Equinox is often given as 21st March, but in fact it has only been on 21st March twice this century so far (2003 and 2007); it was on 20th March in 2008, has been on 20th March every spring from then until now, and will be until 2044 (when it will be on March 19th). I'll be retired by then.
Just got back from the St Patrick’s parade in Maynooth to find that I won the Beard of Ireland poll! Thanks to everyone who voted for me! I’m going to celebrate this evening with a traditional Irish dinner of bacon and cabbage, with a parsley sauce.
One of the things I learnt during my sabbatical in Barcelona a couple of years ago is that un Puente (a Bridge) is a term used to describe a day in between a weekend and a public holiday. In Spain, it is quite normal to take such a day off work so as to create […]
So Operation Epstein Furore is in full swing, and already US and Israeli forces have scored some notable successes in the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians – the attack on a school in southern Iran that killed over 150 people, many of them children, stands out so far although it is certain that many more Iranian […]
One of the curiosities that sometimes arise from running a blog is that old posts suddenly start generating new traffic. This happened again yesterday when after lying dormant for many years, this post suddenly got a large number of hits after lying dormant for many years. The reason for its reactivation is that it concerns […]
On most Friday afternoons there is a seminar in the Physics Department at Maynooth University, and I got it into my mind that there was one this afternoon and set aside an hour to attend it. It turns out that there isn’t a seminar so I have time to write a quick blog post before […]
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. I remember this time eight years ago when I was very much a newcomer to Maynooth being quite surprised to see some folk wearing a cross marked in ash on their forehead as in the picture above. I think this practice is a tradition within the Roman Catholic Church, with which […]