I embrace my "strange kind of streak"

There certainly is a strange kind of streak in the Innsmouth folks today - I don't know how to explain it but it sort of makes you crawl.

Skip this post if you're still planning to read H P Lovecraft's Shadow Over Innsmouth. Otherwise, stand by for another horror story.

I joined DACE in 1991. It was an exciting move for me: a new role, of a sort that seemed intrinsically valuable, but one that would make real use of the sort of expertise I represented. I would still be a research-active astronomer, but with a job that looked out from the university, that aimed to provide something useful to people in the wider community. The Access course in particular seemed like - and is! - something that could make an enormous difference to its students' lives.

It was more of a change than I'd realised. Not the teaching, but the conversations that take place in the academic discussion of Education. The nature of those discussions, the sort of questions that are asked and the sorts of answers offered, are very different from physical science. It took me ten years to begin to appreciate some of those conversations. I still remember the precise meeting in which I found myself thinking, "Good grief, I understand what (person X) is talking about."

It seemed to me that many of those conversations would make little use of my talents, and that I lacked other talents needed to contribute to them. For almost all of that time I thought of myself as an astronomer working in adult education. I thought it was important that I kept my research life alive, that I kept working at being a proper university expert in my subject. I went only rarely to meetings on the subject of adult education. Nonetheless the years rolled on and I became something different from a Physics department academic.

The narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth has laid eyes on creatures that nobody should see and live. An atmosphere of decay and unease grows to a climactic parade of horrors. But it's the twist at the end that makes that story something special: the narrator himself is one of the creatures, and he begins to perceive the inevitability of a future rather different from the one he imagined. Initially only madness and degeneration lie ahead but at last he is reconciled to the only possible course of action: embrace his true nature, evil to men possibly but authentic to him. Flee the sanatorium! Plunge into the ocean! Live with your fellows among the Cyclopean wonders of the sunken city! "Perhaps it is madness that is overtaking me — yet perhaps a greater horror — or a greater marvel — is reaching out."

Three redundancy situations in six years have taught me: I cannot escape my true nature. Perhaps once I could have been like other university academics but the streak of adult education runs too deep now. The tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror.

Nabokov

In Montreal we found a shop "overflowing with paper ephemera and found treasures" and bought a few yellowed paperbacks. In retrospect the blend of literary classics and out-and-out pulp may have been less random than it appeared but I was pleased to find a copy of Nabokov's autobiography, Speak, Memory. A 1967 edition, it has had at least two owners before me, "Alison Smith" (in pencil) and "Evelyn (1976)". Although aged, slightly musty, it is otherwise in good condition and shows few signs of its previous owners. In the whole book just a single sentence has been underlined, in pencil: "Sitting as stiffly as if he were stuffed, he was driven in our car to the university, remained there till dusk, came back in a sleigh, in a heap, in a snowstorm, and in silent despair went up to his room."

Mushrooms, mist, Montreal

We spent two very enjoyable weeks, last of summer, in Montreal. We were on holiday but our daughter will study there this coming year so some time was spent viewing apartments with her, helping with paperwork, etc. We arrived home last Sunday, dazed and disoriented from a sleepless overnight flight and jet lag.

By afternoon our bodies were aching for some unknown combination of fuel and analgesic. I walked down to the supermarket and bought the largest Swiss roll I could find, then headed home through Cathcart cemetery; not the shortest route but a lovely diversion, especially on this balmy summer afternoon (still about 10°C cooler than Montreal!). Often there are others - dog walkers, kids swigging cheap illicit booze, ordinary people out for a wee walk in ones or twos - but on this occasion I met nobody. I wondered how often a man carrying only a Swiss roll is to be found on his own in a cemetery.

Set among the leafy suburbs, a couple of hundred feet above the level of Glasgow city centre, Cathcart cemetery really does feel like a green hill far away, an idyllic spot in which to rot once animation has ceased. I enjoy the glimpses of the city through leafy rows of stones. Often the stones themselves and their stories catch my eye. On this particular afternoon I noticed the grave of someone killed in the Castlecary railway accident of 1937. The stone noted family members subsequently interred, the latest having found his way to Toronto before passing away in the 1970s.

I passed through the cemetery into Linn Park by a shady path among trees. In a dappled spot I came on these eye-catching mushrooms on a tree stump. It struck me that summer had ended while we were away and that we were entering the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

Autumnal mists had caught my eye as we banked above the Campsies and made our final descent towards Glasgow, fine layers of cotton wool blanketing the fields around Lennoxtown, Torrance, Kilsyth. It was not yet 8.00 AM Glasgow time; few people not suffering from jet lag were around to relish this soft, misty, morning.

Why are we so miserable?

Academic staff in universities are getting more and more miserable. Earlier this year the Times Higher Education Supplement published their Best University Workplace Survey. Especially when compared with the last such exercise, it tells a worrying tale. In brief, unfairly crude summary: academic staff are getting more miserable and administrators are getting happier. Academics still mostly enjoy teaching and/or research but are less and less happy with the running of their institutions and the managerial demands placed on them. The Times Higher suggests this might be a temporary side-effect of the REF but the fact is that many academics have deep-seated anxieties over the long-term direction of higher education. Some of them have put these views in the public domain. Here's a small sample:

• Stefan Collini's is one of the leading voices. Here's an example in a book review; see also What Are Universities For?
• The Strange Death of the Liberal University, Michael Bailey
• The Slow Death of the University, Terry Eagleton
• How should universities be run to get the best out of people?, David Colquhoun - "...describes an effect of corporatisation in the medical school of Imperial College London, but the same trends are visible in universities throughout the world"
• Council for the Defence of British Universities
• The war against humanities at Britain's universities This Guardian article makes many forceful points about marketisation in British universities. It's a big shame it opposes sciences and humanities. As the comments show, that's not helpful; a distraction. In a response to a different article, here are some very good further comments on this "opposition".

People sign up to academia with definite ideas of the higher education project but they find a world evolving rapidly away from those basic principles. Of course they're miserable.

Open Studies;Pluto

No blogging for a while. Sorry, eager readers. Had other things to think about, part of the ongoing "DACE Memorial" story. Not much science adult education from now, with the honourable exception of the mature student Access programme.

So to shift the mood let me just mention how amazing I find the images from Pluto: a more geologically active world than expected. Why? My guess is something to do with the tidal interaction between Pluto and Charon. And why on earth (or "on Pluto") does it have huge mountains? Great stories to come, I'm sure.

Reminds me a wee bit of the many "first images from..." stories from the Voyager spacecraft, how many surprises there were, particularly among the moons of the outer planets. Every time we go somewhere new there are surprises - new questions to answer! The Pluto images are all over the media. You don't need to see them again here. Instead let me share this image of Saturn's moon Hyperion, taken by the NASA Cassini mission in 2005, surely one of the weirdest looking bodies of the solar system. A tiny world, roughly 300 km across, its spongy appearance is still unexplained.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI/Gordan Ugarkovic

Sitzfleisch

What a great word! Knowing a little German I was able to look at this word, unfamiliar though it was, and think "sit - flesh" - what the hell? A German borrowing in English, it means something like, The ability to endure or persist in an endeavor through sedentary determination. It's used in chess, apparently, for those people who can just sit staring and thinking until they work their way through to the winning move.

I came across this word in a journal article about Regiomontanus, the 15th century German astronomer and mathematician. He was a bit of a prodigy, at the age of fourteen producing his own table of planetary positions that was more accurate than the published ones of the time. In the time before calculators, Sitzfleisch was an essential attribute for such work. Probably it still is vital in research, although what you sit doing has changed.

Regiomontanus is a major figure in my wee talk at lunchtime today, one of the events for the Ingenious Impressions exhibition at the Hunterian Art Gallery. One of his books is included in this wonderful exhibition of incunabula. The talk's only ten minutes - no need for much Sitzfleisch.

Regiomontanus must have had Sitzfleisch in abundance, even as a boy. I find myself wondering what he looked like as a dancer.

Access Maths

I enjoy David Colquhoun's blog. As someone who often thinks too long before speaking up, I enjoy forthright people and I often - not quite always - agree with what he has to say. I started to look at his book, Lectures on Biostatistics; statistical ideas and methods, much of which I'm at least aware of, but deployed in different contexts for quite different purposes so I was curious to see how he'd present and discuss them. Even if there was nothing else useful in it, this book would be interesting for its discussion of the experimental estimation of Purity in Heart index.

Almost immediately I came across these words: "...most of us find arithmetic easier than thinking." This is so true! I'm going to stick these words under the noses of my Access Maths students. Mostly Access Maths is about mastering standard techniques: how to find the solutions of a quadratic equation, how to find unknown sides or angles in arbitrary triangles, how to calculate the area lying under the graph of a curve (well, not any curve, those defined by functions we've learned how to integrate). These are not "arithmetic" but the same point applies: one can learn how to carry out these exercises without really understanding the ideas behind them; without really thinking. In fact they can be systematised so completely that there is software to carry them out (try Wolfram Alpha for instance).

There is an irresistible pull of gravity towards the calculations you can do without thinking. You're learning something new for the first time, you're not quite sure why other people think you should learn it, you know you need to pass the exam to continue next year/get a job/avoid getting a job.... "Thinking" is hard so let's look for "arithmetic" ways through the course. So every now and again I stick the occasional non-standard question in, and over the year I try to encourage people to develop the general habits of thought that will help with these previously unseen kinds of problem. But there are always people who want to know "how do you do that problem?"

How interesting, then, to also come across another blog post about a book I haven't read which seems to be all about avoiding that pull of gravity right at the start of education; about making Maths interesting by emphasising concepts and ideas rather than memorising techniques and for standard sorts of problems. When I meet people they bring grown-up motivations. They meet me, and Maths, in the course of a greater project of making their way through life and they're looking for strategies to get them through the course. If involvement in what we might call the internal life of the subject turns out to be the best way to deal with the course, well, that's a pleasant surprise. As children they don't yet have those motivations; mere "arithmetic" holds no interest for them. But ideas, thinking, well, that'll drag you in every time,

Natural Philosophy

My Bachelors degree is in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. My sense is that the name, "Natural Philosophy" lingered on in Scotland particularly, well after the rest of the world had decided to call it "Physics". For instance, everybody who took high school Physics in Scotland in the 1970s used a textbook called, "Nat Phil 5". Must have been much-loved - you can still buy second-hand copies. "Natural Philosophy" was dropped in Glasgow University in the 1980s, maybe as a by-product of the mergers of the Astronomy and Natural Philosophy departments. I remember a slightly frivolous discussion about what a mouthful "Natural Philosophy and Astronomy" would have been for people answering the telephone, but also rather less frivolous discussions about pals at job interviews: "Natural Philosophy, that's nice. Have you studied any Physics?" Aberdeen nonetheless still retains the name for its Physics degree.

I also remember one distinguished, semi-retired member of staff, not in Physics but a closely associated department, lamenting the demise of true "Natural Philosophy", at the expense of what he called "unclear physics" (which probably included elementary particle physics at that time). In retrospect I'm really not sure why he said this; perhaps he felt that particle physicists, hypnotised by the dizzying array of "fundamental" particles they'd uncovered, had stopped thinking about what they were doing and got suckered into a sort of sub-atomic butterfly collecting. Anyway I guess he felt it was important to think about what you were doing and why you were doing it, as well as how to do it. Put like that, why would anybody argue?

I thought about all this again when I read this article in the Guardian. At first sight it's about a "war on the humanities" but really it's about the huge changes sweeping British universities.

The whole climate of higher education is changing. Like climate change in the natural world, some sections of the landscape are more vulnerable to these changes than others (look at the case of high-altitude glaciers, for example). Most of that article is about the changes in ideology in the universities, in thinking about which subjects should be taught and why, in who makes these decisions and how, in universities' relationship with the state and politicians. These changes have happened in a way that means their effects are more immediate and severe in the humanities but they are changes to the whole of the university system, not just the humanities.

I made the mistake of looking at the comments. An article about the changes sweeping higher education spawned a pathetic squabble between scientists and humanities types: "scientists are children," "humanities are a waste of time," etc. Oh dear. Scientists really don't profit, for more than a week or two at most, if free enquiry ("academic freedom") is stifled. And a surrender to short-term, utilitarian aims will come back to bite them. Worst of all, all those broad-thinking, articulate people from the humanities, who might have been able to come to their defence, will have been chased out of the universities completely - well, apart from the one or two institutions that can continue to purvey a sort of classical education to a tiny, privileged elite.

So ultimately I have no doubt that Natural Philosophers really need to have the other kind around.Just as people who live near sea level should be worried about those disappearing glaciers.

"Looking at the night sky" - 2015

Only a few months since I used that title in a blog posting. This one is almost identical, deals with the planned Astronomy weekend in the Highlands next autumn, 13 - 15 November 2015. Mark your diaries now!

I'm using the blog as a place to assemble some bits and pieces of information about the Astronomy weekend being offered by the Centre for Open Studies, in cooperation with the Scottish Youth Hostel Association. On the weekend of 13 - 15 November 2015, Douglas Cooper and I will be tutors for a weekend titled, Looking at the night sky. Here's the course description from the Open Studies course programme (or at least the one we used last year):

We will introduce the night sky, stars and constellations, telescope usage and first steps in astrophotography. Our venue will be Loch Ossian Youth Hostel, a beautiful setting distinguished by its remoteness and consequent dark, star-filled skies. Workshops, computer activities and games in the event of unsuitable weather. See Centre for Open Studies website for details.

So, a weekend introducing Astronomy, in a dark, remote location. Here are some more details:

Where is this place? Loch Ossian is at the eastern end of Rannoch Moor, marked on this map. No public road goes there. Unless you're up for a long walk from the nearest public road (which would be lovely, for those who enjoy such challenges), you get there by train to Corrour station. Corrour station is on the West Highland line, the train line that goes from Glasgow (Queen Street station) to Oban or Fort William. People coming from further south might prefer to leave a car at Rannoch or Bridge of Orchy stations, from where Corrour is just a couple of stops along the West Highland line. The Youth Hostel is about 20 minutes' leisurely walk along a "well made track" from the train station. We'd definitely encourage people to bring their own equipment - telescopes, binoculars, cameras - but you should assume you will need to bring it on the train and then in your rucksack along that well-made track.

Why go there? At left I've included a map showing the amount of artificial light experienced across Europe (from http://www.lightpollution.it/dmsp/). Light pollution now spoils most Europeans' views of the night sky. You'll notice on that map that the biggest remaining dark areas in the continent are in Norway or Scotland. We'll be in the middle of the Scottish dark area, and a long way from even small towns. As long as the weather cooperates we will enjoy very fine views of the beautiful but elusive sights of the night sky. The Milky Way will be obvious. We'll be able to spot the Andromeda Galaxy with our naked eyes.

There are many more luxurious places one could stay in the Highlands. The sheer remoteness of Loch Ossian will be an additional pull for some.

We're going to the Highlands of Scotland in November. Let's be honest: the weather could be awful! No telescope that you look through with your eyes can compensate for rain and clouds. Even if this happens we'll still be able to discuss the night sky, some modern ideas of planets, stars and the Universe, and telescopes and astrophotography in a remote and beautiful setting.

More on Scottish dark skies here; of course there is now a Dark Sky Park in Galloway, and the island of Coll has been designated a Dark Sky Island.

Youth hostel The SYHA website has more information on Loch Ossian Youth Hostel. You can see that it is comfortable and well managed with due attention to sustainability in a potentially fragile location. We should mention that accommodation will be in its two shared dormitories. No single rooms - sorry. We will supply more hostel information to anybody who signs up.

By the way, just in case there's any doubt, you don't need to be a "youth" to use a Youth Hostel!

What will we be doing? On the Friday and Saturday nights we will look at the sky, clouds allowing, with our own eyes and with telescopes and binoculars, and take some first steps at astrophotography. Douglas and I will help you in this. As we look we can discuss the nature of what we're seeing - some of the best conversations I've ever had about stars, planets, galaxies etc. have been as a wee group of people viewed them in a telescope. If the night is clear we'll keep going until people run out of steam, and start slow and lazy the next morning if necessary.

Bring many layers of warm clothing. Douglas and I will have a couple of telescopes with us so don't worry if you don't have anything appropriate yourself, or if it's too difficult to bring it to Loch Ossian.

During the day we'll look at a variety of telescopes and discuss their pros and cons, talk about what's in the night sky just now, how the sky changes, how to plan an observing session, and have a couple of wee talks on modern astrophysics, the natures of the objects we can see, straying a little into big or exotic topics like black holes and the Big Bang. We'll try to respond to suggestions and questions. We'll also have a close look at our very own nearest star, the Sun - "daytime astronomy" (My own research is on the Sun. Solar astronomers talk about "night-time Astronomy", meaning the whole of the rest of the subject!). We'll bring a couple of ideas for astronomical games, etc., for light relief - especially if the clouds do not cooperate and we're stuck inside in the evenings.

Fee Last year the fee was £130. It might go up a bit; we'll have it fixed exactly very soon - before the brochure goes to press this year. The fee includes accommodation, all meals and tuition. You are responsible for getting there yourself. There are enrolment instructions at this link but you can't enrol yet - soon! Bookmark our website, maybe keep an eye on our Twitter or Facebook.

Tutors I work in the Centre for Open Studies, University of Glasgow. Among other duties I teach and organise courses for the public in Astronomy and Physics. I've been doing this job for a long time so I've heard lots of questions and worked out my answers to them. I believe I can speak understandably with all sorts of different people and you can maybe judge that from some of the other posts on this blog (this one, for example, or this one).

Douglas Cooper is a mainstay of several Central Scotland Astronomical societies and a skilled astrophotographer (i.e. photographer of objects in the night sky). You can see some examples of his images here and here. Some of his images of the aurora and noctilucent clouds have been featured on spaceweather.com.

I hope this sounds interesting and indeed exciting and that we might meet at Loch Ossian. I might update and refine this posting over the next couple of weeks. If you have pressing questions you can always email me.

Credit for the light pollution map: P. Cinzano, F. Falchi (University of Padova), C. D. Elvidge (NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder). Copyright Royal Astronomical Society. Reproduced from the Monthly Notices of the RAS by permission of Blackwell Science.

Archives

I spent 90 minutes in the University Archives. While I was inside the pavements turned white. I trudged and slid back across the campus to the St Andrews Building. Don't think my glow of excitement actually melted the snow but you never know.

I'd spent my 90 minutes looking through some of the material donated to the University by Jessie Wilson, daughter of the Scottish physicist and Nobel Prize winner CTR Wilson. In a few weeks' time I'm giving a Hunterian Museum Insight talk about him. It was quite a privilege to handle some of his original cloud chamber photos and select a couple that will accompany the talk.

I've been interested in Wilson's story for years now. While I'm suspicious of personality cults around scientists I think we should celebrate our great scientists' achievements as we celebrate those of musicians, writers, sportsmen and women. A man who found his inspiration in the first place in the Scottish mountains offers an appealing way into stories of fundamental science, of subatomic particles and supernova explosions. I've given my "Lochaber to the Cosmos" talk to many different kinds of group in very many different places - and will do so again tonight, at the Scottish Dark Sky Observatory (sold out, apparently - I'm excited to be visiting it for the first time, by the way).

There are some other reasons for spending time with this tale. It's often been commented that the cloud chamber would have waited a long time for its invention had it not been for a very particular combination of events, people, coincidences of place and personality. So this story underlines that it's people who do science, not machines or robots or faceless organisations. That often comes up in discussion when there are professional scientists in the audience.

Maybe you and I will meet soon to talk about Wilson, Ben Nevis, the cloud chamber and the origins of cosmic ray science, tonight at the SDSO, on 17 March at the Hunterian - with a couple of Wilson's original pictures to hand - or somewhere else. Hope so!