Some glass

The room may be free, but...

So, Dubai has told hotels not to throw out guests who are stranded in the country:

Authorities in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have directed hotels to extend stays for guests unable to depart due to current exceptional circumstances, in a coordinated move to protect international visitors affected by travel disruptions. 

The directives require hotels to prioritise guest welfare, ensure accommodation continuity, and avoid asking travellers to vacate rooms if they cannot leave the country or immediately cover extension costs. 

I think the suggestion is that the government will foot the bill for the extended stays, actually.

That's nice of them, but still.  I can imagine having very light sleep if (as is typical) I was in a hotel room there with huge glass windows and no other room (away from the windows) to rest in. 

I would guess, too, that there may be some cheap holidays on offer after this has settled down.   (I'm a little curious to see it, but not at all sure how much I would like it.)  

Watching a man ramble through South East Asia

Have I mentioned before watching the Youtube channel of the Australian travel vlogger who calls himself Fiasco da Gama?  Maybe, but I thought I would mention him again.

It's not like every video is brilliant, and I guess he is sooner or later going to run out of things to talk about, but the simple format of watching a not particularly photogenic Australian man in (I think) his 50's wandering around streets in Asia talking to his camera and the locals is more charming than you might expect.  

I don't think he has ever explained how he has managed to live like this, financially.  He once explained that he worked in Australia until (if I recall correctly) his early 30's, then gave that up to spend the rest of his life wandering through South East Asia (and further a field into Asia) on a shoestring budget.  He has spent most of his time in Bali and Indonesia, it seems, and has explained how he was once engaged to a Balinese woman and lived with her in her village, but gave up on the relationship as he felt somewhat isolated and not able to fully engage in village life.  I suspect that maybe he had an inheritance that was enough to set him off on such a wandering lifestyle?  If so, his economical ways have certainly made the money last.

He has never married or had children, but has made it clear that he is straight.  (He felt prompted to address that as he said some commenters have told him he's gives off a "not very masculine" vibe - which is odd given his bushy beard and general demeanour.  I think, though, that what causes some people to think that may be his high degree of empathy with people, which is generally regarded as a more typically feminine personality trait than masculine.)   He often comments about he loves wandering around where ever he wants, often changing his mind at short notice as to where to go on any particular day,  which means he is happiest travelling without a companion, most of whom would want more certainty.  Yet he has spent so many years doing this, he clearly has a network of friends who he drops in on from time to time. 

This is not the sort of lifestyle I could enjoy long term, I'm sure; but it clearly has suited him and he is generally so positive and respectful of others as a traveller, there is certainly nothing to criticise about his chosen life. 

He speaks some Indonesian, which means he can interact with the locals more than the average vlogger.  

His most recent videos show him making his way via train across Java from its Eastern tip, stopping in towns that are certainly not on the tourist track and just wandering around, looking for somewhere to stay and eat.  And, of course, interacting with locals on the street, who are nearly always happy to talk to him and don't mind being on video.   

Given my short holiday last year in which I caught the train from Jakarta to Yogyakarta, the recent videos have reminded of a couple of things that I reckon are underappreciated:

*    the Indonesian train system, at least on Java, is really, really good.   Modern, comfortable trains;  modestly priced; clean and full of nice staff.  (It seems it has been a while since Fiasco did a lot of travel using them, too, since he has commented in these recent videos that the trains and stations are so much nicer than they ever used to be.)

*   the Indonesian people are very friendly and welcoming, and often quite charming and attractive, too.  Given that the country has significant problems, and Jakarta is a high security city that clearly still worries about terrorism, this was something that I wasn't quite expecting until I got there. But you really do feel, when you see how this older Australian is welcomed on the back streets of virtually any Indonesian city or town, there are a lot of good and welcoming people in Indonesia.  (It helps moderate the impression of Islam, too, to a significant degree.)    

So yeah, I think this guy is a pretty good vlogger, and gives off a likeable personality.  Worth watching, for a while, anyway... 

  

I miss the old way of doing wars...

For all of the stupid brinkmanship that led to War World 2 and other conflicts in the past, at least the old fashioned thing of declaring wars and then fighting them had a clarity which the world decided to walk away from in the second part of the 20th century.   Hence we now have to "law of armed conflict" instead of the "law of war", and countries like the US and Israel deciding that going for international assassination is the way to get countries to change course.  

I mean, if this is the standard now, just how upset should MAGA Americans be if an Iranian secret agent did manage to kill Trump?   Their beloved leader, after all, partook in assassination without giving any clear warning, so seems to me the moral upset should be quite diluted.  

Yet, it's also true that Iran has been such an international trouble maker for so many decades that we are now forced to watch somewhat embarrassing endorsements of Trump's actions by Western leaders who, surely, in private, are likely to be regretting having to going along with this.  Albanese has got the burden of AUKUS around his neck, too, giving him all the more motive not to upset the apple cart of US co-operation to get new submarines.   

A couple of academics at the not-so-illustrious University of the Sunshine Coast are right, though:

We should be dismayed by the worrying acceptance of increased brazen illegality by Western leaders, including our own prime minister. Anthony Albanese has supported the strikes as “acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”. This places Australia, once again, in open contradiction with basic principles of liberal international order.

They earlier wrote:

Trump said the attacks were intended to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program and bring about regime change. Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government”, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the goal was to “remove the existential threat posed by the terrorist regime in Iran”.

Forcible regime change violates the foundational principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention under the UN Charter.

The strikes targeted Iran’s supreme leader, president, and military chief of staff, as well as military infrastructure. Deliberately targeting heads of state also crosses a threshold that distinguishes military operations from acts of aggression.

Attacking heads of state is illegal under New York Convention, for obvious reasons of stability. With the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the power vacuum will only increase the hardship on the ground for Iranians.

Now, who knows:  it may be that everything will go relatively well, and we soon see the rapid, relatively bloodless, end of a regime that only Putin is likely to think is a pity to see gone.    

But really, does that seem likely given the history of the region in the last 70 odd years?  I doubt it.    

Update:  there is a good summary at Axios about the lead up to this - although you have to subscribe to a newsletter to get to it.

What's clear is that the attack only makes sense if Trump's previous attack on nuclear facilities was not the success he claimed:

Behind the scenes: Before and during the talks, U.S. officials said intelligence made clear Iran was already rebuilding the nuclear facilities that Trump claimed were "obliterated" in Operation Midnight Hammer last June.

• When Kushner and Witkoff asked for a concrete proposal, the Iranians produced a seven-page document outlining enrichment needs they claimed were for civilian purposes.
• Trump's team checked the numbers with the UN's nuclear watchdog. "This would result in enrichment capability roughly five times more than laid out in the [2015 nuclear deal]," one official said.

Officials also said Iran had been secretly stockpiling enriched material at the Tehran Research Reactor under the guise of medical research.

• "Never once did they use any of the fissionable material there to make even a single medicine," one official said. "It was all designed to deceive."

Reality check: This account is based largely on statements by U.S. and allied officials in the aftermath of the strikes, and could not immediately be verified by independent sources.

It's also clear that he is utterly in Netanyahu's pocket.   (Trump and his family also being financially tied to Arab money is another factor.  The Washington Post in particular has been reporting that Saudi Arabia encouraged the attack.)   

Time for some Kantian thinking and excitement

I've been thinking about Kant again, for a few reasons:

1.    I've been reading a novel The Thing Itself (which I only found via watching an English guy on Youtube who talks about science fiction), and it's explicitly based on an elaboration of one of Kant's key ideas - transcendental idealism.   The brief summary of that is:

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that space and time are merely formal features of how we perceive objects, not things in themselves that exist independently of us, or properties or relations among them. Objects in space and time are said to be “appearances”, and he argues that we know nothing of substance about the things in themselves of which they are appearances. Kant calls this doctrine (or set of doctrines) “transcendental idealism”, and ever since the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Kant’s readers have wondered, and debated, what exactly transcendental idealism is, and have developed quite different interpretations.  

 How have I found the novel?  Pretty good, actually.  A science fictiony/mild horror intriguing read, but I would say it is not for everyone, in that the author Adam Roberts tries various stylistic things (with some  chapters written in old or futuristic English, for example), and from comments on Reddit, it seems some have found that a bit jarring.

But the basic concept is fine.  And it features AI in a way that seems more relevant now than when it was written a few years ago.

I haven't finished it yet, but I doubt the whole can be ruined in the last quarter. 

2.    I have tried asking a couple of AI services about Kant, and been given some interesting food for thought.

For example, I didn't realise (until reading an article that AI led me to) how much Russia* (including Putin!) likes to claim Kant as their own.   I don't recall reading about this controversy in 2024, the year in which there were a lot of "happy 300th year birthday" conferences on Kant, but here we go:

NEW DELHI: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has openly criticiz ..

Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/109561696.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Putin’s war of aggression contradicts all of Kant’s fundamental statements, said the Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz in a speech on the occasion of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences' ceremony to mark Kant’s 300th birthday, on April 22.

“Putin doesn’t have the slightest right to quote Kant […] Nevertheless, Putin’s regime remains committed to appropriating Kant and his work at almost any cost,” said Scholz.

 The big problem:

The congress opened with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko reading a message from President Putin, after which all participants rose for the national anthem. In the message Putin said that Kant’s call for using one’s own reason (sapere aude) in Russia’s case meant to be guided by its national interests.

Ha!  Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of Kant would know that this is ridiculous.

By the way, look at how many places held events about him - 

Key conferences and events for the 300th Anniversary (2024):

• 14th International Kant Congress (Bonn, Germany): September 8-13, 2024. Theme: "Kant's Project of Enlightenment".
• World Concept of Philosophy (Kaliningrad, Russia): April 2024. Focused on Kant's birthplace and legacy.
• International Conference "Kant 300" (Online/Global): April 22-26, 2024.
• "The Young Kant" (Evanston, USA): May 23-25, 2024, at Northwestern University.
• "Critical Philosophy for Cosmopolitan Justice and Perpetual Peace" (Lisbon, Portugal): September 17-19, 2024.
• Kant 300 (Latvia): International conference by National Library of Latvia and University of Mainz (Feb-Nov 2024).
• Kant 300 (Vietnam): Van Lang University (July 2024).

What a guy!

And why don't more people know a bit more about him?

3.    I also asked an AI (Claude) as to what it thought about an idea I've had for ages (and which I have mentioned here before) that a novel or movie which revealed the secret life of  Kant as a Prussian secret agent (instead of a virginal, overly intellectual, routine obsessed, academic) could be fun.   And of course, being an LLM type AI, designed to keep me happy, Claude thought it a great idea.  It also made many suggestions as to how aspects of his life and times could be used, and proposed a broad outline.

The only problem is (see point 2) - no one in the public knows anything about him.   I suppose that didn't stop Amadeus being a hit, even though most people knew nothing of Mozart's odd life and scatological sense of humour.    

The other thing is that there is apparently extremely little in the way of personal diaries or letters from him that give much of an insight into his character.

But then, AI might also have helped (a different one - Deepseek) in that it has referred me to a 2025 book that I am sure will be a top seller (haha):  "Portraits of Kant: Refletions from 18th and 19th Century Europe":

Yes!  Three volumes!  Only $553....😕

Someone has put online some introductory extracts, including this from the preface:

 Hey, I just mentioned Amadeus, and now I find Kant had a real life "bitter opponent"!   

Maybe I have to re-jig my ideas for a fictional treatment....

Anyway:  I think there's a good chance I'm one of a mere handful of people in my entire country who is (kind of) excited to see Kant is still being talked about in such detail.   (I get the feeling Australian philosophy departments may mainly be more into the modern, less satisfying, stuff.)

Do I dare look into Anna's Archive for this recent book that I can ill afford?  Kant would be very against me doing that, I'm sure.   So I should not...

 

*  His home city Konigsberg was Prussian at the time, but underwent a period of Russian occupation while Kant was alive, only to later be permanently made part of Russia and turning into Kaliningrad.

Creeping myself out by getting an AI to describe a photo

Just because I am curious about different AI capabilities, I was looking around at some of the lesser discussed ones (in the mainstream media, at least) and ended up trying Kimi, a Chinese based open source service which seems to be getting favourable comments online by the tech people who make a living by talking about AI.   

I am just doing a free trial at the moment, and I am not even sure if I can continue using it for free after that.  (It is, though, one of the cheapest models to pay for, if I am inclined.)   

Yesterday I tried it on describing a photo, as it seems to sell itself as being very good at dealing with visual stuff.

I uploaded this photo (which appeared in a recent post):

and got this description:

This is a beautiful winter photograph of a traditional Japanese temple or shrine blanketed in snow.

 

Main Subject

 

The central focus is a two-story wooden temple building with classic Japanese architectural features:

 

Curved, tiled roofs with upturned eaves (karahafu style)

 

Dark wooden beams and structure with intricate joinery visible under the eaves

 

Snow-covered roof creating a striking contrast against the dark wood

 

An open entrance on the ground floor revealing a dark interior with what appears to be a small orange/red offering or light inside

 

Setting & Atmosphere

 

Snow-covered stone pathway leads directly to the temple entrance, creating strong leading lines and symmetry

 

Deep snow banks line both sides of the pathway

 

Stone lanterns (tōrō) flank the entrance, also dusted with snow

 

Snow-laden trees visible in the background, suggesting a forested or garden setting

 

Overcast, pale sky giving the scene a serene, muted atmosphere

 

Composition

 

The photo uses central symmetry with the pathway drawing the eye straight to the temple entrance. The cool color palette of whites, grays, and dark browns creates a peaceful, contemplative winter mood. The wet stone path suggests recent snowfall or melting, adding texture and subtle reflections.

This appears to be a well-known temple, possibly in Kyoto or another historic Japanese city, captured during a quiet winter moment.

I don't know - if it had just said "looks like a temple, probably in Japan" it wouldn't have struck me as anything too special.  But the detail in that description is what freaks me out, a little....

(I subsequently talked to it about the exact name of the temple, and asked whether it could train itself on our conversations, so that it might recognize the specific temple if another person ever uploads a photo of it.  It said no, it doesn't train on conversations, and doesn't remember them, unless I ask it to for my own account.  So each conversation is "fresh".  I guess that's a good thing?) 

A word about appearances

After many years of not fiddling with the blog's appearance, I have spent a few days changing the details, with questionable results.

Google hasn't had much interest in blogger as a platform for years and years, and so the ways in which you can change themes and layouts hasn't changed for ages.   It seems to me to now be a bit buggy, too:  certain changes make certain things disappear and I can't work out why it's happening.

The end result I think looks good on a desktop; but the theme changes on mobile version have it look unduly pink! But changing to other colours is making the blog title turn white.

I'm not I can be bothered looking at the HTML to work out what is going on.  Maybe I should ask an AI service to look at it for me!  (If the blog disappears, you will know why...) 

Economists, hey?

The Washington Post has an article that says there is now some debate over the basic question of whether the US economy has only grown because of massive AI spending.   Some economist apparently say it hasn't contributed at all - which sounds rather implausible.   

It’s clear that the huge spending on AI is adding to the U.S. economy, but the available economic data doesn’t neatly capture its effects. The debating economists and the slippery data suggest that if the technology does start to reshape the economy, it may be challenging to detect and clearly measure. That may leave political and corporate leaders to choose the numbers that fit their preferred narratives on how AI is changing American life and work.

The struggle to even measure what is happening today suggests there may be years of bickering ahead over whether AI is creating a golden age of prosperity or a path to mass unemployment and impoverishment.

The high-stakes quibbling over AI’s current economic impact largely hinges on how to account for the foreign-made computing equipment and components inside the expensive data centers that AI companies are building across the nation.

Economists who argue that AI’s contribution to U.S. growth is overstated calculate that much of the money spent to equip AI data centers drags down economic growth rather than boosting it. 

That’s because the $31 trillion in yearly U.S. gross domestic product, the widest measure of the economy, tallies only the final value of products and services produced domestically. Spending on imports and foreign made components is subtracted because it boosts the economies of other countries, not that of the United States.

If a U.S. store paid $500 for a sofa made in China and sells it for $1,000, U.S. GDP mostly records the $500 difference, said Hannah Rubinton, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The sale of a $50,000 American-made truck with $10,000 worth of foreign parts counts as a $40,000 lift to the U.S. economy.

Roughly three-quarters of the cost of an AI data center is for the computer gear and parts such as computer chips that go inside of it, technology analysts estimate. America’s AI champions, including the computer chip pioneer Nvidia, manufacture many of their products in Asia — despite efforts by the Biden and Trump administrations to reduce U.S. dependence on essential chips made overseas.

Other economists say the contrarians are too pedantic and looking too narrowly at AI’s contribution to the economy. And some forecasters say that the U.S. government’s economic data is a poor measure of the impact of AI and that alternative calculations show the current boom is an even bigger boost to economic growth.

But even some of those not in the AI-zero camp agree that the narrative of the technology propping up the economy was overblown. 

 

Odd gods

This beautiful Zen temple is in Takaoka, about a 25 minute local train ride from Toyama.  Here are the basic details:

Zuiryuji Temple (瑞龍寺, Zuiryūji) is a Soto Zen Buddhist temple in Takaoka, recognized by the Japanese government as a national treasure. The temple was completed circa 1659 to mourn the death of the retired local lord, Maeda Toshinaga. His mausoleum is situated approximately one kilometer to the east from the temple.

Zuiryuji has a symmetric layout with corridors connecting its buildings in a manner typical of Soto Zen monasteries. The temple is comprised of various buildings, including its imposing Sanmon Gate that meets visitors on their way through the temple's inner grounds. 

As you can see, it was a very snowy day on this visit, and that can interfere with the clarity of photos...

One of the most interesting aspects of the complex is that they are very proud of their old statue of a toilet deity: 

A rather unique deity worshiped at the temple is Ususama Myo-o, a guardian of Buddhism. A large statue of Ususama Myo-o stands in the Hatto Hall, while a smaller one stands at the entrance to the public washroom. Ususama Myo-o is regarded as the guardian of the washroom and is accredited powers to purify and prevent diseases. 

The statue above is a replica of the real, old statue, which is in another part of the complex, and while you can photograph the replica, not so the original.  (Which, by the way, is not as brightly coloured as the replica.)  

I have now read a delightful and detailed explanation of toilet gods in Japan at a podcast website, and it turns out there was a Shinto, home-grown toilet god, as well as one imported via Buddhism:

You might hear it go by: Kawaya-gami/厠神, Benjo-gami /便所神 or Toire no kamisama/トイレの神様..

There was also the belief that the Benjo gami didn’t like to be seen, so before you entered the outhouse you’d have to cough once to let it know you were there before opening the door so it could hide. Where would it hide? I’ll let you use your imagination on that one.

The god was also thought to be blind. I wonder if that has something to do with where it was hiding? Seriously. These jokes write themselves. I read also sometimes the god wasn’t only blind but also had a red spear. Not sure at all what’s up with that. But a courtesy cough before entering, so the god can hide sounds like the polite thing to do. Oh, one more, another site said the god had no hands.  

As for the Buddhist import:

Ususama Myouu wasn’t born out of Japanese history, he originated in India and is recognized in several sects of Buddhism: Tendai, Shingon, Zen, and Nichiren. In Tendai he is one of the great five gods or Myou. In Nichiren he is worshipped as both a toilet god and the fire god. In Indian mythology the god is called Agni, the god of fire. Fire purifies. Toilets are considered places that are unclean and thus need to be purified. So there ya go.

Ususama Myoou is one of the great guardian kings, their names all ending in Myoou. Myoou are super cool, fierce, dramatic, scary. Compared to the other Myoou, Ususama has more varied appearances. Sometimes having six arms, holding various implements, rings, beads, a sword. Tools you’d probably not want to see and contemplate while sitting on the pot. But then again, the Kawaya-gami had that red spear.

You can identify Ususama Myoou because he stands with one foot raised high off the ground, almost as if he doesn’t want to step in something. Ringed in fire, his hair often looks like fire and is blowing upward. He’s got a very angry expression on his face.  

Back to my visit to the statue of Ususama Myoou in the temple:   while in the room with the real statue, I was a little surprised to see a Japanese man, perhaps in his 50's or 60's, saying a prayer to it.   

Now, the Japanese make prayers at Shinto shrines (and Buddhist temples) of all kinds, and I find it one of the more charming things about the country.   Much has been written about whether this should count as spirituality, or mere superstition.  (After all, it's said that most Japanese will say they don't believe in God, and are "non-religious", but see no contradiction in continuing to offer prayers and buy "good luck" charms and carry out other good fortune seeking rituals at their shrines and temples.)   

So, while it is clear that the Japanese don't worry much about the objective reality of the figure they are praying to (or, in the case of Shinto, how a place became "holy" in the first place), it was still a bit surprising to see a deity as unusual as that one, which appears to have a near comical "what have I stepped in?" pose, receiving devotion.  

This is typical across so many Asian countries though:  in Vietnam, you see prayers being offered to deified old rulers or heroes - some of dubious historicity - with their altars in Buddhist temples; no one has an interest in the historicity of (say) Amitabha Buddha despite him being the key figure of Pure Land Buddhism; and of course there's the whole matter of Hindu gods, none of which (unless you are an Indian PM who thinks Ganesha was the result of advanced ancient Indian surgical techniques) seems real.   

Even within Catholicism, a lot of devotion to saints has also had next to no reliable history behind it.

So, if I don't have a problem with, and in a way find it charming that, (say) half of the world's religious people pray to mythological figures, why does it bother me when Christians (like the St Mary's rebels discussed in my last post) fully endorse a "non-realist" version of Jesus or God?   

I think - and this is a tentative view - is that Christian non-realism feels like it has a different character to the non-realism of the Asian religions, probably because it undoubtedly started with a strong sense of historicity being at its core, whereas it feels like it was never at the core of the others?

I don't really understand how thoroughly mythological religions create their gods - it has always amused me a little to think that somewhere, someone invented the idea and appearance of their specific household god in ancient Rome, not to mention the more elaborate major gods;  but it just seems it must have been a very different process from interpreting the cosmic significance of a living person and their apparent sayings in a way that was very concrete, which I think you can say is the most plausible way Christianity got going.

Anyway, I've been thinking about this for decades now, and I am still not precisely sure where it leads me...   

Fading rebels

For no particular reason this afternoon, I thought about the "rebel" liberal Catholic church regime at St Mary's in South Brisbane that led to a couple of priests being chucked out of the church, and the supporting parishioners and former priests heading off down the road to conduct very, very socially aware services in the Trades and Labor Council building.   I wrote about them a few times around the time of the crisis, and hadn't looked up for some time whether they still existed, and indeed, if former priest Peter Kennedy was still alive.   

To my surprise, it turns out that Philippa Martyr, who I used to like disturbing when she joined in threads in the old era Catallaxy blog, wrote about them a year ago  in her weekly column in The Catholic Weekly (evidently, a very conservative Catholic publication, seeing it hosts Philippa.)    She was inspired to write about them because the Guardian had a (rather sympathetic) piece about them.

 Turns out Peter Kennedy is about 88 now, and retired.  The other former priest, Terry Fitzpatrick, is 67 or so, and still active in the community, but the whole theme of the Guardian article was that their alternative spiritual community (or whatever you might call it) has clearly not attracted new membership, and the average age of those attending now is apparently above 60.   Certainly, it is hard to see from photos in the article, or when viewing their online liturgies, any participant without grey hair and wrinkles.

Of course, all churches (except perhaps the pop music performance based mega churches) have ageing average attendees, but with St Mary's rebels, it's gone exactly as I expected - a rebellion that fizzled out, as making belief in God completely optional in a group devoted to vaguely following the liturgies of a Church that, at a minimum, did believe there was something real to worship beyond the material universe, kind of doesn't make a lot of sense.  

Update:   I've changed the way I worded the last paragraph.  This is a topic (the significance of "realism" in religion or spiritual practice) that still comes to mind a lot after learning more about Buddhism and Asian folk religions in all of their varieties.   More about one example of that in my next post!

 

A good point from the NYT

Michelle Goldberg is thinking the same things I am, about the current weird state of Washington:

I never imagined I’d miss being lied to by George W. Bush and his henchmen.

When the Bush administration wanted to go to war with Iraq, it undertook a full-court press to propagandize the American people. Administration officials leaked false information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a deceptive presentation at the United Nations. In Congress, many Democrats, succumbing either to relentless public pressure or their own hawkish instincts, joined with Republicans to authorize an invasion.

This mendacious campaign was shameful and despicable, and helped create today’s national atmosphere of corrosive cynicism and nihilistic paranoia. But it was, in retrospect, a tacit acknowledgment that public opinion mattered, that a president couldn’t start a war without convincing Americans it was necessary. It was a manipulation of democratic deliberation rather than a negation of it. 

Whereas now:

Most reporting indicates that the White House is planning for a campaign far more intense and sustained than last year’s bombing of Iran or the abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But we don’t know if Trump and his team are after regime change, and if they are, what they think comes next. This is how an autocracy goes to war, without even a pretense that the consent of the governed matters. 

Information for the future

I always like reading about research into really, really long term data storage methods, and have posted about it before.  It's nice to see it's still a pursuit, and that Superman's crystal storage methods may be real:

In the digital age, the need for data storage is ballooning. But current magnetic tapes and hard drives are ill-suited for long-term data storage because they degrade in about ten years. This “impressive” glass-based alternative could “in principle, act as near-permanent archival storage for backup of critical data,” says Mark Bathe, a biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The Microsoft team used a high-energy laser to imprint deformations into a 3D chunk of borosilicate glass, the kind used in ovenware. Each deformation encodes data that can be read out using a microscope.

A 12-centimetre wide, 2-millimetre-thick square of the glass can store 4.8 terabytes of data, the equivalent of around 2 million printed books, the authors demonstrate in their paper published in Nature on 18 February1.

Writing and reading the data is considerably more convoluted than opening a file on a hard drive, but the information is much more secure. Tests suggest that the data would survive for 10,000 years at a temperature of 290 ºC and potentially for tens or hundreds of times longer at room temperature, says Richard Black, a computer scientist who led the initiative known as Project Silica at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK.

Although the glass method requires specialist hardware to write and read data, the paper demonstrates that glass storage has gone beyond a materials experiment and is now a “deployable archival system”, says Long Qian, a computational synthetic biologist at Peking University in Beijing.

“By showing a complete system … they have shown how this technology can truly revolutionize the data-centre industry,” says Peter Kazansky, a researcher in optoelectronics at the University of Southampton, UK, and a previous collaborator with Microsoft on glass storage.  

Trip photo blogging...

Nagano, in and around the Zenkoji temple grounds...

Some notes about Nagano:

 

*  It has lots and lots of foreign tourists milling around in winter, obviously for the skiing and snow sports.  The train station is always packed.   Very different from the town we were in before that - Toyama (about which I am yet to write) - where I barely can recall seeing a foreign tourist (or at least, a Caucasian one.)

 

*   The biggest tourist attraction in the town itself would have to be the Zenkoji temple, which is on large, beautiful grounds, and has a very attractive street leading up to it.

 

*   The history of this temple is pretty interesting, and includes a mystery statue which is supposed to still exist, but as it seems no one has seen it for about 1,400 years (give or take), who knows!?: 

The history of Zenkoji temple started in 642, when Yoshimitsu Honda enshrined a Buddhist Image at the present site.
The main image was created in India and introduced into Japan with Buddhism via Paekche in Korean Peninsula in 552. It is called “The Image of Sangoku Denrai” in Japanese.
The image has been believed to lead all the people to the Buddhist Pure Land regardless of their status, gender or creed. It has been earnestly worshipped by many people from those in power at the time to the common people.
The main image was completely hidden from the people in 654, and since then no one has ever been allowed to see it.
The temple name “Zenkoji” literally means “Yoshimitsu’ s temple”. It is read as “Zenkoji” by another way of reading of the Chinese characters. 

 The Wikipedia explanation goes into more detail: 

Zenkō-ji was founded before Buddhism in Japan split into several different sects. It currently belongs to both the Tendai and Jōdoshū schools of Mahayana Buddhism, and is co-managed by twenty-five priests from the former school, and fourteen from the latter. The temple enshrines images of the Amida Buddha. According to legend, the image, having caused dispute between two clans, was dumped into a canal. It was later rescued by Honda Yoshimitsu. The temple was thus named "Zenkō," according to the Chinese transliteration of Yoshimitsu's name.

The main Buddhist image is a hibutsu (secret Buddha), a hidden Buddha statue, not shown to the public. This hibutsu is rumored to be the first Buddha statue to ever be brought to Japan. The commandments of the temple require the absolute secrecy of the statue, prohibiting it to be shown to anyone, including the chief priest of the temple. However, a replica of the statue (Maedachi Honzon) has been created which can be shown publicly once every six years in spring, in a ceremony called Gokaichō.

I'm finding it hard to track down a photo of the replica hibutsu, actually.

 

But, I would love to know more about where it is supposed to be locked away.

 

*   The main hall (rebuilt after a fire, like so many old Japanese temples, in 1707) has a pilgrimage gimmick, I think you could call it - a dark tunnel you grope your way through under the main altar.  

 

After paying your respects before the altar, take the stairs down to the underground passage located under the main hall. Once inside, you are in complete darkness, only able to move forward by touching the wall beside you. Somewhere along the path, you’ll find the “Key of Enlightenment,” a metal latch fixed directly below the temple’s hidden Buddha statue. Touching the latch is believed to create a direct connection with the hidden Buddha statue of Zenkoji and bring good fortune.

I think I successfully touched it - although I did not fully understand the significance that I am now (possibly) enlightened.  

It reminded me of the other famous temple "gimmick" - crawling through "Buddha's nostril" (not literally!) at the awesome Todaji Temple in Nara.   (If you had to see the ultimate Japanese temple, that would be the one I recommend.)    

*  Bear in mind - visiting the temple in winter involves removing your shoes, and your feet will quickly turn to blocks of ice and encourage you not to linger too long inside the temple, and tunnel.

*  There is a museum with lots of interesting Buddhist artwork, but again, no shoes, no photos - makes a winter visit a bit of an ordeal!

So, all of the photos here are around the temple complex. 

If you enlarge the sign, you will see the bell is from 1667 - and although it doesn't say where it was made, there is a good chance it came from Takaoka City, near Toyama, which we had been in the day before.

 

That city is home to another, smaller but very beautiful Zen temple with its own idiosyncratic figures, and I will have to post about that... 

Isn't it weird that no one seems to know what's going on with respect to Iran?

In other times, wouldn't the US media be highlighting a lot more grave concern about the opaque intentions of their government?   

The BBC says:

Iran has said it has reached an understanding with the US on the main "guiding principles" to resolve their dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Why aren't there (some? any ? more?) commentators saying "wait a minute. I thought the Trump strikes on their nuclear facility was supposed to have shut it down?"

Why can't I be bothered talking about Australian politics now?

When I look back at previous years of this blog, I'm sometimes surprised at how much I was thinking about Australian politics, especially at the Federal level.   

But as should be clear from the greatly reduced frequency with which I comment on it now, I have been finding it somewhat boring since the replacement of the awful Morrison government with a bland, but basically competent, Labor government.   

Sure, it was fun watching the Liberals think that the charmless version of Mr Potato Head Peter Dutton could win over voters, as well as his getting badly burnt by being associated too much with the poisonous Trumpian politics of the USA.  But it has also felt dull watching the deeply unappealing Susan Ley try to straddle to internal chasms within the Right side of politics here and paint a new picture of how Liberals really were for everyone.

As for all the talk of One Nation polling so well - we all know that they have no organisation skills of any depth, are based on the (alleged) straight talking appeal of one ill educated but resilient woman, and just attracts the disgruntled old "Australia isn't what it used to be, with all these foreigners on the streets" vote.  Just wait to see they perform in an election campaign before counting the eggs in the basket - I expect it won't go well.

 I've been saying for years and years that the fundamental issue on which the Coalition needs reform - to show it is in fact a credible and unified party that believes in real things and hasn't become culture warred into believing nonsense - is climate change.   The tensions that such a key issue to various aspects of policy keep causing just keep resurfacing, to be pushed down again with unconvincing "no, no, we really do believe it - or most of us do, and those that don't, well, we're a broad church, aren't we, and that's a good thing, right?" excuse making just keeps coming back to ruin their overall credibility.   

Turnbull had a chance to bring it to a head, but didn't.  I wonder if he regrets that now?   

Angus Taylor is, of course, exactly the way to keep this lack of credibility going.   

So, it looks likely to continue being kind of boring.