Beard of Ireland 2023.Four Face Off in Beard Off Final

Well, I got through the first round by a whisker but I’m up against stiff competition in the final. Please consider giving me a vote if you can stand interacting with the Bird site!

Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

15th March

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

BEARD OF IRELAND 2023 FOUR FACE OFF IN BEARD OFF FINAL

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that competition for the Irish Beard of the Year 2023 has reached the Beard Off Final.

William Crawley and Peter Coles won the first Trim Off round and Aodhan Connolly and Shane Lowry won the second Trim Off

The 2017 winner was politician Colum Eastwood who bearded broadcaster William Crawley for the annual Award.

In 2018 the DUP’s Lee Reynolds shaved writer Dominic O’Reilly for the honour with Colum Eastwood in a steady third place.

In 2019 Lee Reynolds retained the title

The 2020 winner was Maynooth academic Peter Coles

In 2021 Aodhan Connolly shaved opponents to win the coveted title and he retained it in 2022

The BLF says that while traditionally a land of predominantly…

View original post 176 more words

Beard of Ireland 2023 Poll sees competition bristling

It seems the poll for Beard of Ireland 2023 has opened. If you remember that far back, I won this award in 2020 with an early manifestation of lockdown beard. The voting is on Twitter and quite a few people who might have been tempted to vote for me have left that platform because of a Musk allergy, so I probably won’t get many votes. Here goes anyway, though. If you feel like voting for me in the first qualifying round please follow the instructions here.

Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

11th March

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

BEARD OF IRELAND 2023 POLL SEES COMPETITION BRISTLING

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that competition for the Irish Beard of the Year 2023 is officially open

The 2017 winner was politician Colum Eastwood who bearded broadcaster William Crawley for the annual Award.

In 2018 the DUP’s Lee Reynolds shaved writer Dominic O’Reilly for the honour with Colum Eastwood in a steady third place.

In 2019 Lee Reynolds retained the title

The 2020 winner was Maynooth academic Peter Coles

In 2021 Aodhan Connolly shaved opponents to win the coveted title and he retained it in 2022

The BLF says that while traditionally a land of predominantly clean-shaven cultures, Ireland has in recent times become something of a centre for stylish and trendy beards.

Contenders for the title in 2023 include a diverse range of…

View original post 137 more words

Product Placement

I’m grateful to Franco Vazza for pointing out this superb bit of product placement in the advertisements on yesterday’s blog post:

I wonder what advert it will place under this one? Will it cause an infinite regress?

The Cost of Elsevier

I’ve just seen the annual report of RELX, the parent company of academic publishing house Elsevier. This annual report for RELX contains the accounts for Elsevier for 2022 in which I found the following headline figures:

• Revenue: €3.26 billion
• Profit: €1.2 billion
• Margin: 37.8%

A couple of points of reference are worth mentioning.

One is that the entire annual budget for the European Research Council is €2.4 billion, so Elsevier’s profits on their own represent about half this budget. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather it were spent on actual research. People talk about a windfall tax on profiteering energy companies. Why not apply the same logic in this case?

The other is that Elsevier’s profit margin (37.8%) can be compared with that of, Google (21.2%) or Apple (24.56%). It’s easy money being an academic publisher.

I cannot understand why the academic community allows this parasitic industry to flourish by continuing to throw taxpayers’ money at it. I draw your attention to the Cost of Knowledge campaign and, when it comes to publishing in Elsevier journals, acting as Editor, or doing refereeing for them, just say no.

The RAS Awards

I’m sitting in the bar of the National Concert Hall in Dublin ahead of tonight’s concert but I have enough time to congratulate all the winners of this year’s Royal Astronomical Awards. The full list of awardees, announced this afternoon, can be found here.

In particular, I’d like to congratulate John Peacock on his Gold Medal!

John is an occasional commenter on this blog, and may even read it sometimes too!

Fifty Years of Gravitation

I was surprised to discover, a couple of days ago, that the classic textbook Gravitation by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler is 50 years old this year. MTW as it is usually known was first published in 1973, and has has now been reprinted 24 times. I bought my copy (shown above) about 30 years ago. I’ve often joked that this tome is so hefty that it not only allows one to read about Gravitation but also to experience its practical effects!

This anniversary reminds me that there was a competition running at ITP2022 last year that involved holding out a copy of the book  in one hand at arm’s length for as long as possible following the instructions below:

The winner of the competition was John Brennan of Maynooth University, with a time of 3 minutes and 29 seconds. If you can lay your hands on a copy of MTW you can try to do better!

 

Merry Christmas to Physics Students Everywhere!

Swingin’ Them Jingle Bells

Well, it’s been a miserable Christmas Eve with heavy showers of sleet and God knows what else nearly all afternoon. Nevertheless I’m determined to make an attempt to get into the Christmas spirit for tomorrow. If Fats Waller can’t do help me achieve that, nobody can. Here’s his classic version of Jingle Bells on which the general atmosphere of hilarity and inspired chaos allows his superb musicianship to shine all the more brightly. Few ever managed to play Harlem Stride piano as well as Fats Waller, and he’s on top form in the opening choruses of this record.

 

Another year, another RAS diary…

It’s December 19th 2022 and my 2023 RAS Diary has arrived in Ireland, this time with an added Brexit bonus of a customs declaration!

The diary part of the RAS diary, being I suppose intended for academics, actually runs from October to December the following year. In previous years it has arrived in time to use it for Semester 1 but for the last three years it hasn’t arrived in the post until December, meaning that I couldn’t use the first three months in the new diary. The heavy delay of the diary is matched by that of the RAS house journal Astronomy & Geophysics which usually takes a couple of months to reach Ireland. I notice that this year’s wasn’t even sent out from Burlington House until 7th December…

Apparently about a quarter of all Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society (including myself) are located “overseas”. Those in far-flung places presumably get everything even later than I do here in Ireland.

This year’s diary is a much brighter orange colour than the picture suggests. I’ve included a picture here along with various others from over the years.

2023

2022

2018-2021

Although many of my colleagues seem not to use them, I like old-fashioned diaries like the one above. I do run an electronic calendar for work-related events, meetings etc, but I use the paper one to scribble down extra-curricular activities such as concerts and sporting fixtures, as I find the smartphone version of my electronic calendar a bit fiddly.

What is Mastodon?

I know quite a few people these days are asking what Mastodon is. Fortunately, I see in the latest Private Eye that some leading experts have given their opinion on the matter:

I hope this clarifies the situation.