Ian Clancy @nuadatt@qoto.org

The best bit about being a physicist, rather than a mathematician, is that you get to cross out the complicated terms in your equations on the grounds that they are "clearly unphysical"...

Coding is basically Applied Pedantry.

Well, this seems to be an interesting and unexpected big deal: a new paper suggests that light can evaporate water without actually needing to heat the water up first. And it could sort out a few problems in existing cloud physics:

https://news.mit.edu/2024/how-light-can-vaporize-water-without-heat-0423

#physics #water

University of Limerick’s ‘Pink Ladies’ to star in new series of My Uni Life on RTE

The series, which captures life across a busy year on campus in Irish universities, returns to screens this Friday

Tune in on RTE One at 8pm
https://www.ul.ie/news/university-of-limericks-pink-ladies-to-star-in-new-series-of-my-uni-life-on-rte

#StudyatUL #MyUniLife #Education #Learning #Universities

Today I will be posting thoughts about Aaron Swartz, who died on this day in 2013. The academic community should be much more aware of him, and challenge the massive problem of academic publishing that we are all part of. Let's make it our mission to tell people about Aaron and what he stood for.

#academic #academicmastodon #academicchatter #copyright #publishing #openaccess #publicdomain

Aaron's Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

I encourage all academics everywhere to run their institution's latest Strategic Plan through a plagiarism checker, such as Turnitin...

Are Students Customers?

When tuition fees were brought in to the UK higher education system many academics worried that the relationship between students and lecturers would be changed for the worse, as students would be encouraged to see themselves as customers. I haven't taught in a UK university since 2018 but I have to say I never met any physics students who saw themselves as customers.

http://telescoper.blog/2023/12/06/are-students-customers/

What convinced me to become a theoretical astrophysicist, as opposed to an observer, is that my eyesight is so poor that even on a dark night I've never been able to make out those lines joining the stars together.

The Returning and The Leaving

I got back to Maynooth last night after a pleasantly uneventful train journey. Just for the record both outward and return trips were perfectly on schedule. In fact it has been a very pleasant couple of days. Congratulations to the organizers for running the meeting so well and to all the speakers for delivering such an interesting programme. Anyway, now I'm back I should mentioned that the 2023 Leaving Certificate results were released to…

http://telescoper.blog/2023/08/26/the-returning-and-the-leaving/

The Bachelor's Walk massacre occurred in Dublin, on 26 July 1914, when a column of troops of the King's Own Scottish Borderers were accosted by a crowd on Bachelor's Walk following the Howth gun-running operation. The troops attacked protesters with rifle fire and bayonets - resulting in the deaths of four civilians and injuries to 30 more. Luke Kelly senior, the father of Luke Kelly of The Dubliners, was one of the wounded.

#Ireland #IrishHistory #Dublin #BachelorsWalk #LukeKelly #Dubliners

HOW TO SPOT A RIP CURRENT:

IT'S WHERE THE WATER LOOKS EASIEST AND SAFEST, with no waves breaking or rolling in.

NEVER ENTER THE SEA HERE.

If you get caught in a rip, DON'T FIGHT IT. You can't swim back to shore against it; you will become exhausted and drown.

Instead, SWIM ACROSS IT, parallel to shore. You'll soon be out of the current and can then easily swim back.

Boost, please, and make sure your friends and family know this when they hit the beach.

"...I can now state with confidence: beating out a crowded field, this is the worst book about quantum computing, for some definition of the word “about,” that I’ve ever encountered."

Ouch!

Book Review: “Quantum Supremacy” by Michio Kaku (tl;dr DO NOT BUY)
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7321

As David Meyer (@dmm) reminded us, on this day in 1832, the young Evariste Galois wrote a letter summarizing his ideas - the day before he died in a duel. Hermann Weyl said of this testament, "This letter, if judged by the novelty and profundity of ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial piece of writing in the whole literature of mankind."

Some background, paraphrased from Wikipedia:

Galois lived during a time of political turmoil in France. In 1830, Charles X staged a coup d'état, touching off the July Revolution. While students at the Polytechnique were making history in the streets, Galois, at the École Normale, was locked in by the school's director. Galois was incensed and wrote a blistering letter criticizing the director, which he submitted to the Gazette des Écoles, signing the letter with his full name. Although the Gazette's editor omitted the signature for publication, Galois was expelled.

Galois joined the staunchly Republican artillery unit of the National Guard. He divided his time between math and politics. On 31 December 1830, the artillery unit was disbanded of fear that they might destabilize the government. 19 officers of this unit were arrested and charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government.

In April 1831, the officers were acquitted of all charges, and on 9 May 1831, a banquet was held in their honor, with many famous people present, including Alexandre Dumas. The proceedings grew riotous. At some point, Galois stood and proposed a toast in which he said, "To Louis Philippe," with a dagger above his cup. The republicans at the banquet interpreted Galois's toast as a threat against the king's life and cheered.

(1/n)

Causal evidence that herpes zoster vaccination prevents a proportion of dementia cases

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.23.23290253v1

Huge. And shingles vaccination expected to be covered on PBS this year...

The surprising part is not that math grad students named Cox and Zucker would come up with the idea of writing a paper together just as a joke.

It's that they followed through after they were professors, and wrote a paper that was actually rather significant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%E2%80%93Zucker_machine

A Möbius strip walks into a bar, sobbing.

Bartender: “What’s wrong buddy?”

Strip: “Where do I even begin?”

In depth statistical analysis of the #Eurovision2023 results (not really).

https://telescoper.blog/2023/05/14/eurovision-scores-and-ranks/

@davidallengreen Open source, cross-platform game heavily based on the original Elite here: http://oolite.space

Some thoughts on #research prioritisation, and the implications for the membership of the Board of the new research agency in Ireland: firstly, and to get it out of the way, there are benefits to prioritisation. What's often missed is the downside.

In Ireland, for the past decade or so, we've prioritised funding in certain areas. The focus has been so tight that research in non-priority areas is, de facto, not funded. This is not normal, and there's good reason for that. 1/

Pet peeve of the day: all the people talking about how ChatGPT is not “conscious” and how it does not “understand” what it is saying, but just putting likely-sounding words together into likely-sounding sentences.

Extra bonus points for using an example of a math problem as a way to show how these AI chat-bots talk about things they don’t really understand.

The irony. The lack of self-awareness. It burns.