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There’s been dismay among many students at the University of Manchester at the news that said institution is planning to keep lectures online next year. If the reason for that decision were that campuses are likely to...

After an interruption of almost two months because of a Cyberattack on the Health Service Executive’s computer system, daily updates of Ireland’s vaccination statistics have at last resumed, including via the...

One topic on this blog seems to be as perennial as the weeds in my garden: the so-called Hubble Tension. I just saw a review paper by Wendy Freedman, one of the acknowedged experts in this area, on arXiv here. I have...

Yesterday the Chair of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), who also happens to be the President of Maynooth University, Professor Philip Nolan published a lengthy but interesting Twitter thread (which you...

Today is 28th June which means that it’s the anniversary – the 52nd anniversary to be precise – of the Stonewall Riots. I was only 6 in 1969 so wasn’t aware of this event at the time but it (and Pride Month...

I have been struck by the number of people upset by the latest analysis of SARS-Cov-2 “variants of concern” byPublic Health England. In particular it is in the report that over 40% of those dying from the so-called...

Yesterday was quite a busy day because, as well as my talk in the afternoon, we had the main University Examination Board in the morning. Because many students in Maynooth are taking courses that spread across more than...

Just time for a quick reminder that I’m giving a talk on Wednesday (23rd June 2021). It’s at 4pm Paris Time which is 3pm Irish Time. See my original post here. I had a sudden sense of dread that this Colloquium...

The Summer Solstice in the Northern hemisphere happens tomorrow, Monday 21st June 2021, at 04:32  Irish Time (03:32 UTC). Among other things, this means that tomorrow is the longest day of the year around these...

The Royal Canal, Maynooth (Picture Credit: M. Maher) Written in 1954 when the poet was recovering from a life-threatening illness this poem – a sonnet by Patrick Kavanagh – is a celebration not only of nature’s...

So it’s 16th June, a very special day in Ireland – and especially Dublin – because 16th June 1904 is the date on which the story takes place of Ulysses by James Joyce. Bloomsday – named after the character...

I recently came across a comprehensive review article on the arXiv and thought some of my regular readers might find it interesting as a description of the current state of play in cosmology. The paper is called...

Pottering about in the garden this morning I remember that on my little birthday trip last week I noticed a huge amount of the above plant growing on various railway embankments between Maynooth and Dublin. It’s red...

I noticed an article today in the Grauniad about a wave of redundancies about to hit English universities. Among those affected are the University of East London; Goldsmiths; and the University of London and the...

City West Vaccination Centre Well, this morning I took my second trip to City West Convention Centre for my second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. That’s four weeks to the day since my first jab. It all went off...

Time to announce another publication in the Open Journal of Astrophysics. This one was actually published on Friday actually, but I didn’t get time to post about it until just now. It is the fourth paper in Volume 4...

As planned I took some time out yesterday, hopped on a train for the first time in 15 months and went into Dublin. I was shocked by some of the scenes I saw when I reached my destination: large crowds with no masks and...