Quantum Mechanics in the Gym

or

When do you work out?

Leisure centres are a strange phenomena that put me in mind of Schrödinger's Cat.  At any point in time, they can either be full of 'gym heads' or people like myself who aren't that bothered about getting super-fit, but find the gym or swimming pool a pleasant place to while away an hour or two and catch up on the gossip.

As with Schrödinger's Cat, one is never quite sure what state it will be in until you go (i.e. observe) yourself.  But that leads to the question of how can you be sure your mere presence (or the act of observation) isn't causing the current state to change?

Maybe everybody was chilling out, doing a leisurely jog or breaststroke or maybe casually picking up a weight to see how heavy it is, until you arrive.  And maybe they don't want to talk to you or maybe they don't want you to think they're lazy, but, for whatever reason, they all spontaneously think, "Quick!, Look busy, here she is!" and switch treadmill programme, transform the breaststroke into the crawl and start pumping iron like their lives depended on it.  Maybe there's even a secret signal!  Conversely, maybe everbody is normally very focussed and then, when they see me arrive, the secret signal goes out again - "Ah, it's the poor cripple girl.  Quick, relax everyone, so we don't intimidate her!"

Admittedly, comparing the type of people in the gym to the Schrödinger's Cat problem is a bit of a stretch.  I have started to notice a pattern which, when I put forward my hypothesis in the sauna this, got enthusiastic support from the gentleman I had chosen to sweat beside.

During the day, particularly the morning, people go for a leisurely swim, jog, yoga or aqua class followed by the serious business of the day - chatting in the sauna.  These morning club members tend to be slightly older and thus retired or have some medical issue preventing them from working.  (It really is a club of crocks and grey-heads!).  They probably have more time at their disposal to get things done, and are thus more chilled out and open to connecting with people.-

In the evening, however, you get the post-work crowd.  They are there to 'Work Out' in the snatched hour between work and dinner, after which they still have to do the housework, put the kids to bed, prepare that presentation for tomorrow.  They don't have time to chat, they're focussed on 'Getting Fit'.  They may enter the jacuzzi, sauna or steam room, but it's strictly timed, with frequent glances at the stop-watches on their wrists.

As a result, going for a swim or class in the evening can be a surprisingly lonely affair.  People don't chill out.  They either don't have enough time, or have too many issues going on in their lives to extend common courtesies to strangers, lest they become a 'Klingon'.  I always think the loneliest one can be, is to be surrounded by people and ignored by all.  It's why I couldn't bear to live in an apartment, although I'm quite happy to hole up inside my house for weeks on end incommunicado.

Of course, the irony of this hypothesis, is that I discussed it at some length this evening, the time of focussed training and isolation, in the sauna which a painter turned psycho-therapist who completely agreed with me!  Maybe the evening people are just shy and waiting for someone to reach out and welcome them to the fold.

Back to school

or

My brain's turned to mush :(

Well, this is the last week before I have to go back to work.  I know this won’t incite much sympathy from people but it always comes as a big shock to the system.  It’ll be worse for me this year because, due to ill health, I’ve only actually worked for 5 weeks in 2012. 

Quite apart from having to get up, early, at a specific time, dress presentably, and commute, I will also be expected to converse and communicate in a comprehensible manner.  Lazing around, pottering, doing things at your own pace and, for a large part, avoiding people, is not good for one’s ability to use language correctly.

I have problems with certain key words that I always have to look up in the dictionary.  And no, using spell-check is not a valid option – spell-checks have no context and you can never be sure which language (e.g. American or English) it is using. And even if it knows you are in Ireland, are you confident that incorrect spellings have not been added to the ‘dictionary’ (I put dictionary in single quotes, because a spell-check installed on a computer is really just a list of words, with no associated meaning).  So it’s a traditional dictionary all the way.

One of the words I have most difficulty with is separate.  I always want to write seperate.  I remember being given back an assignment on Broadband ISDN in college with the word highlighted throughout in red pen.  This was not the norm in a computer science module.  The Sci-day committee once printed t-shirts with the word February spelt wrong and hardly anyone noticed!  But it irked my examiner enough to comment on it.  (For those of you wondering why I didn't use the spellcheck facility, this was written in WordPerfect 5.1 in 1993 and I didn't have the spellcheck add-in.)  And despite that, I’m still unsure and need to refer to the oul’ dictionary.  Other words I have problems with include definitely (definately) and precise (presice).

At least with spellings, with a bit of care and attention, you can hide your flaws.  A more worrying encumbrance is the inability to pronounce or use words correctly.  Again I have my foibles such as environment, government and vocabulary.  I am improving though.  I used to get terribly confused with personal pronouns and would often wander off topic, trying to figure out if I meant to say ‘I’ or ‘You’, ‘we’ or ‘them’.  Normally by the time I’d figured it out, I’d realise that I’d spent the last five minutes muttering to myself while the people I had been conversing with had run away, in a most python-esque manner.  I think I’ve mastered the pronoun problem now, but I’m still never quite sure of the difference between Cole Porter and Phil Coulter, George Hook or George Lee, Kevin Barry or Barry Kent, to name but a few.  I just try to steer the conversation away from these popular topics.  (Do these count as malapropisms?)

But, with the ubiquitousness of American English through its dominance of the world wide web, and the popularity of text-speak, it is easy to get confused.  Words one could spell with ease 15 years ago, can leave one muttering to oneself again and making basic errors with “your” and “you’re” for example.  When do you use ‘s’ and when do you use ‘z’?  Organise or organize?  And, even if you look a word up on-line in a dictionary, can you be sure it is both accurate and reliable?

I am quite pleased to have come across one particular on-line dictionary – Wictionary.  As with Wikipedia, it is editable by the general public.  While this may cause one to question its credibility, it is worth noting that Wikipedia has been shown to be at least as reliable as Encycleopedia Brittanica.  Admittedly this is quite an old study (2005), and I don’t feel inclined to investigate it further, but I’ll include it because it suits my purpose.   

Anyway, I won’t be turning to Wictionary to check my spellings.  For that, I’ll still be using the traditional hard-copy dictionary, but I really like it because it validates some of my favourite and most used words.  Yes, yoke (11th noun definition) is a valid term for a thingamajig (careful with the spelling now - I've always written thingymajig!) or a whatsit (plural, whatsits).  And the oul’ I used earlier is an alternative form of ould which can either mean old, aged, long-established or be used as a term of denigration.  You choose!  Interestingly, while both yoke and ould are identified as Irish, thingamajig and whatsit seem to be international.   Who’d have thunk it?  (Yes, thunk is valid too, as a past participle of think!)

The Olympics are over

or

What do I watch on the telly now?

So, the Olympics are over.  It was indisputably Ireland's best since 1956, but was it our most successful Olympics ever?  Well, in 1956, Ron Delaney got gold in the 1500m, Fred Tiedt got Silver in the Welterweight boxing and John Caldwell, Frederick Gilroy and Anthony Byrne came home with bronze in the Flyweight, Bantomweight and Flyweight boxing respectively.  So far, a match to the 5 medals achieved by Katie Taylor, John Joe Nevin, Cian O'Connor, Paddy Barnes and Mick Conlon in 2012.

Both games were also significant in terms of female participants.  Maeve Kyle was the first female athelete sent to represent Ireland, in the 1956 Olympics.  Unfortunately, she came last in both her heats running the 100m in 12.3 seconds and the 200m in 26.4 seconds.  But, she went, she ran, she participated.  She deserved praise, glory and support from Irishwomen and men alike, she got abuse and derision.

What about the Proclamation?

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

2012 was also a step towards equality of the sexes with the introduction of women's boxing.  And our own Katie Taylor, 4 time World and now Olympic Champion, was a key factor in making this happen.  Boxing for women is finally an Olympic sport.

In many ways it is deeply upsetting that we still have to make these inroads into equality in the 21st century.  I remember, in secondary school, there were a wide range of sports available and also that teachers talked a lot about equality between the sexes.  On the surface, they were talking the talk but the girls had to wear skirts, soccer for girls didn't happen until I got to 5th year and we weren't even allowed to discuss boxing for girls. Yes, we did have boxing at our school, but only if you had a penis.  In fairness there was also discrimination against the boys.  From what I recall, they weren't allowed to pierce their ears and I remember one boy in my year getting pressurised into cutting his hair (I think he chose to get suspended instead, but my memory may not be accurate).

Now, around 25 years later, Katie, along with her fellow female boxers, has shown the world that women can box and the hurt and confusion I felt at age 12, due to not being allowed to do something for no reason other than I was lacking a Y-chromosome, is vindicated.  I was right to feel anger and despondent and was not just 'a silly girl'.  Up to then, I had thought that the woman's lib movement had dealt with gender equality decades earlier.  Yes, admittedly I was naive, but I was only 12.

In terms of Irish Olympians, we sent 65 athletes to London in 2012.  In 1956, the total was 18, 12 to Melbourne and an equestrian team of 6 to Stockholm.  The equestrian events had to take place in Sweden, due to quarantine restrictions in Australia.  Of the non medal winners, the highest ranked was Gerry Martin who came 4th in the men's light-heavyweight freestyle wrestling.  We were also represented by Éamonn Kinsella in the 110m hurdles, John Somers Payne in the Finn class  in sailing, and 3 additional boxers and a 6-person equestrian team.  So we sent more atheletes to London this year, participated in a wider range of events and achieved 2 rather than a single 4th place but the Olympics has expanded over the years, so in terms of most successful, I think it's a photo-finish.

Now the games are over and as if in an effort to bring us all back to reality, the weather has turned with the met office issueing gale warnings (and a blight warning - watch those spuds, people). But, as Eric Idle reminded us at the closing ceremony, we should "Always look on the bright side of life..."    And, besides, it'll all kick off again in exactly 2 week time (29th August) when the Paralympics take centre stage.  Go Ireland!! Woop, woop!!

Paparzzo Pretensions

or

Another Weekend, Another Festival

It seems the country is over-run with festivals these days.  For example, a quick search on the internet reveals that The Secret Garden festival is happening in Martinstown House, just down the road from me next weekend (18th and 19th August), featuring story-tellers, poets, musicians and artists in return for €38.  This is the first I have heard of this festival.  Who goes to this?  Why are the tickets so expensive?  €38 to sleep in a tent?

Attempting to erect the tent

If you want to spend a weekend camping in the rain while enjoying a few bevvies and listening to good music, check out a bike rally.  It'll cost you €10 or €12 and you'll get a badge to pin on your jacket.  A great night is guaranteed with the music and bar open well into the night, stalls to buy bike gear, t-shirts and camping equipment and the ubiquitous chipper van looking after all your nutritional needs. 

Anyway, last weekend was the turn of the OGAM festival in Uisneach.  That's the Off-Grid Arts and Music festival.  It has something to do with solar energy, but I'm afraid I didn't listen to that bit too closely.

Éanna, with Stephen, event organiser, behind the pole

The Hill of Uisneach is the centre of Ireland and the meeting point of the Cúige, or five ancient provinces of Ireland - Leinster, Munster, Ulster, Connacht and Mídhe.  It was an important site and a fire was lit there every year on the feast of Bealtaine (first of May, first day of summer) which could be seen from the Hill of Tara.  Uisneach is also mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters (celt.ucc.ie is a great resource for old Irish documents).  Unfortunately the hill is in private hands so you can't just wander up it, although you can get permission from the landowner.

Finally! Tent's up!

Anyway the reason I was at this obscure festival was to meet my brother, Éanna, who was playing with his band Synergy. I got there at about 3, a couple of hours before my brother was due to arrive.  According to Facebook, it was supposed to kick off at 11am, but alas, nothing was happening apart from a slight panic about forgotten equipment - in that hippy-eco kind of way that you only see at such events.

Now there were some nice colours so I took out my camera and took a few photographs before deciding that there must be a better way to spend my time.  I left, much to the consternation of a female 'organiser'.  It's funny how people assume that if you've a camera around your neck, you're from the media.  When I came back later to meet up with Éanna and laugh at his band's attempts to erect a tent, people were lining up to ask me to take their photo and give me their names and e-mail addresses which I duly jotted down in my notebook.  It was great fun!  Some people even thought my walking stick was a fashion statement.  I had a brief feeling of being a VIP trend-setter!

Synergy in full flow

The festival itself was scrappy, to put it mildly.  A band from Navan started off the show early, but proved incredibly difficult to get off the stage, leaving the small crowd fairly bored after hearing their entire repertoire for the 4^th time.  Synergy took over but weren’t too happy with their performance.  It was a messy kind of night and their guest drummer was, to be blunt, incapable of keeping the beat.  However, the crowd enjoyed it and happily nodded and drank away with a few brave souls dancing in the trippy lights.  Not the best festival, but meeting up with Éanna always makes for a good weekend!

The London Olympics 2012

or

There's feck all else on the telly

The 1st of August, start of Autumn, the Lughnasa and Tailten games, created by Lugh the Sun God in honour of his mother Tailtiú.  Mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters, they were held up until 1770 (see The Book of Tara by Michael Slevin) and were briefly revived in 1924 to coincide with the Olympic Games.

2012 and the Olympics are on again, hogging all the TV channels.  It's quite a spectacle with plenty of controversy to go along with it - drugs, betting scandals and four badminton pairs diqualified for not trying hard enough!

I have to admit, I really don't see the point of some sports.  The synchronised diving is just ridiculous, as is water polo.  There is something seriously dodgy and un-justifiable about beach volleyball, and trampolining is still a sport?  How?  Was it not just a fad of the 1970s?

So far, I've been enjoying the archery, cycling and equestrian events.  In fact, I'd love to see a triathlon combining all three - a cross-country race on the horses, followed by archery and finish off with a cycling road race.  I'm really looking forward to the modern pentathlon.  I like the idea that you have to excel in a number of sports to win.  That'd be a gold medal worth having.  It also means that the outcome would presumabely be less predictable and make the games more exciting all around.

That's what I like about the equestrian and cycling events.  Anything can happen on the day and there have been a number of surprises such as Nicolas Roche and Dan Martin finishing so far down the field on the road race and Mark Cavendish being well out of the running.  And in the equestrian, you are disqualified if you fall off meaning we only had three competitors left going into the show-jumping with Michael Ryan and Camilla Speirs falling in the cross country.  The added bonus with the equestrian is that everyone, men and women compete on an equal footing.

A few other sports have alos be suggested.  An archery competition, where you have to make your own bow and fletch your own arrows before using themto shoot into a straw man/woman.  Traditional targets are so boring!  My dad suggested synchronised grass cutting.  Now, that could be fun, especially if done with a scythe!  Sarah Gannon also came up with the excellent sport of dog grooming.  Bring these in and then you could immediately get rid of the synchronised diving etc. mentioned earlier.

Other sports I haven't yet managed to see but am looking forward to include the boxing, our best chance at a medal in both the men's and women's events.  It's so exciting to have world champion Katie Taylor participating in the first ever female Olympic boxing.  Go Katie!


Annalise Murphy is also doing extremely well.  I know nothing about her or sailing but it's looking good so far.  Other I'm looking forward to seeing include David McCann in today's time-trial, Derek Burnett tomorrow in the shooting, and Martin Irvine in the track cycling on Saturday, as well as our six boxers and Natalya Coyle and Arthur Lanigan O'Keeffe in Modern Pentathlon.

Don't forget to follow them all (as well as the Irish athlete's I've omitted) and while you at it, I highly recommend following OlympicSeat on twitter.  Poor thing, it breaks my heart!

Right I'm off to join an archery club, buy a bike, book some horse lessons and find a few clays to shoot!  Best of luck to the Irish team!  Laters!

Alan Turing, a genius

or

You don't know me at all

As everyone knows, this year is the anniversary of Alan Turing's birth.  It's been hard to avoid the worldwide celebrations, the code-breaking competitions, the endless analysis of his life and achievements and a campaign for a full pardon.  Then again, it is possible that not everyone is reading the same websites as me!

e.g. of Turing machine, from my college notes, '92

Turing was first and foremost a mathematician, but like Newton before him, made significant breakthroughs in a number of different fields (did you know that Newton, apart from his three laws of motion, also contributed significantly to the development of calculus, wrote a teatise on Optics and still managed to find time to be master of the mint in the UK?).  Turing's greatest contribution was the Turing machine, a conceptual device (although it has since been created in lego) which tests where or not something is computables and was fundamental to the development of the computer.

He also set the standard for judging artificial intelligence - the Turing test, which states that if you cannot figure out whether you are having a conversation with a human or machine, the machine can be said to be intelligent.  I personally think he was slightly flawed in his philosophical approach to AI, but that's a subject for a whole different type of blog.

His other achievements include cracking the German Enigma code during the second world war and describing how patterns e.g. giraffe markings, occur in nature.  He also happened to be homosexual and was convicted for this offence which resulted in him being chemically castrated a few short years before he took his own life.  His alleged suicide was also a nod to Newton.  A half-eaten apple was found by his bedside, assumed to be contaminated with cyanide, a substance he was using in his experiments.

I recently read his biography, by his mother, written over fifty years ago and republished to mark the centenary of his birth.  What struck me was how clueless and shallow his mother was.  She said she knew him best as she was his mother, but she was largely absent from his life, living in India for much of the year while Alan and his brother remained in England.  She clearly did not understand him at all.  She was also very critical of his slovenly ways and lack of reform to society's norms.  He was unconventional, certainly, but seemed to get on well with people and was willing to help out others.  Also, some of his actions, which distressed the hoi polloi seem eminently sensible to me, such as wearing his gas mask outdoors during the war, to ward off hayfever.

Alan's brother adds his own chapter at the end of this edition.  He too seems to have little understanding of his brother and judges his homosexuality to be a psychological problem resulting from his upbringing and abandonment issues due to his parents' long absenses.  In one respect, this attitude was a product of the time it was written, but what it must have been like for Alan to have a brother who so disapproved of him!

It was an interesting book, by all means, but mainly because of the insights we gain into his mother and brother's psyche.  It goes to show that the people society judges you to be closest to really don't have a clue what you're about.

Anyway, if you haven't already, check Alan Turing out - a great man!

I recommend following @AlanTuringYear on twitter for all things Alan related

Remembering Karen

or

The Summer Gig Season

Ah, the summer concert season! The long, lazy days of sitting in the sun, having a smoke and a beer, finding a good spot and waiting for the main event.

6th Year School Sport's Day

 My first major gig was in the RDS in 1988, age 15 - Hothouse Flowers.  I remember the ticket price was an exorbitant £12.50 and part of me couldn't believe that my mother not only let me go, but funded it as well!  I went with my friend Karen Bearpark (RIP) and her little brother Timmy and we took turns sitting on each others' shoulders to get a better view.

Deacon Blue, Tracy Chapman,  Hothouse Flowers - we knew all the words of all the songs.  It was an awakening, a first tentative step into independence, debauchery and adulthood.  Tracy Chapman was the biggest disappointment of that day.  She's just not that great live although her songs were great you've got a fast car...  During her set, most people were distracted by the human pyramids spontaneously appearing throughtout the crowds.

You never see that at concerts anymore.  On Tuesday night at the fab Bruce Springsteen concert (first time I've seen him - great night!) there were no pyramids, no sitting on shoulders, apart from the adorable 6-year-old on her father's shoulders which the Boss plucked from the crowd.  Maybe it's the health and safety culture we now live in, ruining our fun, or maybe the crowd was older than the Liam Ó Maonlaí fans of '88 and more worried about the ageing, deteriorating backs.

One thing that hasn't changed is that you always meet people you know at events.  On Tuesday I was standing beside a guy who was in UCD with me and who I haven't seen since graduating in '94.  In 1988, our small threesome soon swelled into a gang of about 20 as we bumped into neighbours, gaeltacht room-mates, friends of friends.

In my memories, these events are always sunny.  I know it lashed rain on Tuesday after the gig - my clothes were still soaked on Wednesday when I finally dragged myself out of bed - and I know it rained at the Iron Maiden/Marilyn Manson gig in the same venue in 2005 because we wondered if the t-shirt stand sold raincoats and umbrellas and then laughed at how old, uncool and non metal-head we'd become.   Yet somehow you remember the sun, the good times, the music and all the gigs merge into one conglomerate of happiness.

Last day at school

But I'll never forget that first gig in the RDS.  The excitement beforehand, the sun, the music, the friends and most of all Karen.  She was so kind, so generous, so trusting.  While easily embarrassed, she was honest and never worried about making a fool of herself.  Not that she was a fool, far from it, she was just free of the posturing most teenages adopt.  She was so much more than she realised.  When she got into Physio in UCD she was amazed that she'd got enough points for it, while the rest of us were delighted for her but not surprised.  We shared the cost of a locker in our 1st year in UCD while she was still based in Belfield but then we slowly drifted apart as I drifted apart from all my MacDara's friends.

The that 'phone call from Brian McMahon years later while I was at work.  Karen was dead, the funeral the next day, St Jude's Church.  I'm embarrased to say I don't even know when it was.  It was too much to take in.  I know it was sometime between 1998 and 2000 because I remember the leather jacket, the jeans the t-shirt, the docs I wore that day and I remember having my Starlet and for some reason I'm fairly sure Brian was driving a Mitsubishi Colt.  Strange the things that you remember and also the things that elude you.

But, it's summer concert season again and time for long, lazy days sitting in the sun with a smoke and a beer.  And while I bop around, no longer knowing all the words but singing along all the same, a part of me remembers that first major gig, the beautiful, kind, lovable friend I once had and the innocent, tortured, but most of all fun, days of my teenage years.

Karen at the debs