From the "only in Japan" files

'Sun Child' statue to symbolize Fukushima recovery at Aichi festival

NAGOYA—A giant child wearing a fluorescent yellow hazmat suit to guard against radiation arrived on Aug. 6 in one of the venues for Aichi Triennale 2013, a powerful symbol that conveys a message of hope for the future.

Contemporary artist Kenji Yanobe, 47, created the “Sun Child” statue hoping that the areas affected by the 2011 accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will recover from the disaster. The accident was triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

“This is a monument of recovery that makes people think about the coming future,” Yanobe said.

So, what does this "monument" look like:

Uhuh.

The old problem with tattoos

An interesting piece here on the history of tattoos in ancient Greece and Rome:

Tattoos today are decorative and voluntary, even if sometimes recklessly selected and deeply regretted later. But in ancient Greek and Rome tattoos were punitive, forcibly inflicted on slaves, prisoners of war, and wrong-doers. Tattooing captives was common in wartime. For example, in the fifth century BC Athens defeated the island of Samos and tattooed their Samian prisoners’ foreheads with Athens’ mascot the owl. Later, the Samians crushed the Athenians and tattooed their captives with the Samos emblem, a warship. In 413 BC, after Athens’ disastrous defeat at Syacuse, 7,000 Athenian soldiers were captured. Their foreheads were tattooed with the symbol of Syracuse, a horse, and they were sent as slave to work the quarries. Slaves were routinely tattooed and runaway slaves had sentences such as “Stop me, I’m a runaway” crudely gouged and inked into their faces.

These dehumanizing tattoos were not artistic or carefully applied: ink was simply poured into grooves carved in flesh with three iron needles bound together, with no thought of hygiene. There was copious bleeding; infection could be ugly. The indelible marks turned one’s body into a text recording forever one’s captivity, enslavement, or guilt. Naturally, there was a market for hiding or removing shameful tattoos, should one be lucky enough to escape a master or prison. Some opted for a painless approach: Grow long bangs to cover forehead tattoos. During the Roman era, pirates’ crews offered a haven for many criminals and runaway slaves. The dashing pirate scarf trick—tying a bandana around their foreheads—was invented to mask the tattoos of one’s old life.

Mormon underdaks

Here's a pretty non judgemental explanation of the Mormon "temple garments" - the much derided "magic underwear."

I've never looked this up in detail before.  Now I know.

The Libertarian* horoscope

Aynian:  a mooching loser will make your day a misery.  Kick them in the shins.

Collectivarian:  once again, you do something stupid to help drag humanity back to the dark ages.

Smokertarian:   a good day to enjoy your domination over the forces of nature by going through at least a pack of 30, and that's just after lunch. 

Roarkian:   two, possibly three, members of the opposite sex will want you to aggressively have your way with them.  Enjoy, you magnificent beast. 

Lootarian: just do us a favour and die in a train crash, won’t you?

....etc (further suggestions are welcome).

* yes, yes, we know about Ayn’s claims about the term.

Possibly significant physics news

Has LHCb spotted physics beyond the Standard Model? - physicsworld.com

 One of seven experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the LHCb experiment focuses on the physics of B-mesons – those particles containing the bottom (or beauty) quark – produced during proton collisions. One process of great interest is the decay of a B-meson into a kaon (K*) and two muons: B →  K*μ⁺μ^–. This is a relatively rare decay and according to the Standard Model it occurs only because of the subtle effects of heavier particles – W and Z bosons – that mediate the weak force. As a result, particles that are not described by the Standard Model may be contributing to the decay and so their effects could be measured by LHCb. Evidence that this decay happens in a manner that the Standard Model cannot explain could point the way to "new physics".

It'll be a while before they feel certain this is happening, though.

Let's catch up with Tony Abbott and his dynamic power base

Electric optimism

Electric Cars Are Doing Better Than Hybrids Did in Their First Three Years | MIT Technology Review

There's much to learn in the infographic at the above link.

Improbable idea for a webcam

Last night,  for no particular reason (other than a generic interest in krill,) I thought that I should post an image of the Southern crustacean.

It turns out I can do better than that.  For some reason known only to someone in Hobart, the Australian Antarctic Division of the Australian government's environment department has, since 2008, run a regularly updating video of its krill aquarium.  Yes, every 15 minutes, you can see a new short video of krill being krill. 

There might be odder webcams of bits of nature in captivity out there, but this one would have to rank pretty high in the peculiar stakes.

They do have big eyes, by the way.

Update:  for those readers who can't be bothered clicking on the link, here's a shot of what they were up to 10 minutes ago:

 

In slightly more interesting webcams from the Australian Antarctic Division, here's a shot from Macquarie Island this morning:

Gee.  It seems not very high above the high water mark, in a ocean known for rough weather, doesn't it?  If you look at the 48 hour time lapse video they make from the webcam, it looks even worse.

 

Good memories

Dolphins remember each other for decades 

I didn't know this about dolphin "names":

Between the ages of about 4 months and a year, every bottlenose dolphin settles on a whistle of its own that stays the same for the rest of the dolphin's life. In another recent study, published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences², Stephanie King and Vincent Janik, two marine-mammal biologists at the University of St Andrews, UK, have shown that dolphins use these whistles in the same way as humans use names: they voice their own whistles to identify themselves to others, and they mimic others’ whistles to call to them.

Tony had a dream

OK, maybe I have to confirm to readers that it's Gina*, and who knows, maybe it's her dream too...

* Gina is joining the club of rich Australians who are losing in court.  I thought this might cheer her up...

Why do it?

Sam Rockwell in talks for Poltergeist remake | Film | theguardian.com

It's always a puzzle as to why people want to do remakes of films which were critical and commercial successes at the time.  (At least if they are not based on earlier, "classic" stories or novels.)

So this seems a very strange proposal.

"Poltergeist" was an enormously enjoyable and witty fright flick; well directed, written and cast.   It played as emotionally real as well (remember the scene where the spirit of the girl passes through the mother, and her reaction?)

Why remake it?

What? Is Abbott doing the full Romney?

It was just mentioned on Lateline, as breaking news, that the ABC understands the Coalition will tomorrow announce a tax cut for companies, worth $5 billion (I think) over an unspecified period.

Well, if true, those Liberal Party operative trips to learn how to do politics with the Tea Party influenced GOP is going to backfire.

Because everyone knows, the way to deal with an ongoing government revenue problem (and government debt dis-arrs-ter)  is for it to, um, cut revenue.

Update:  So, I see the justification is expected to be:

a.   that it compensates big companies for the parental leave plan levy. (Responses noted in some comments at The Guardian:  "yeah, big companies like the banks are doing it so tough we must be very careful they never hurt"; and "so Abbott is effectively having the public fund it after all".)  

b.  part of the Henry Tax review proposed cutting the company tax rate.  But,  um, didn't he also expect a mining tax to usefully increase revenue for the government?

Update 2:  to be honest, to do the full Romney, a politician or economist has to have read Ayn Rand and say things that indicates he's thinking in terms of Moochers and Looters.   Abbott is (note dear readers:  I am giving him a compliment) almost certainly not silly enough to have read Rand, and his Australian variety of Catholicism helps ensure that he is happily free of the weird Randian influence that we see in US Catholic/libertarian Republicans.   Still, there's always a slim hope that at some point in the campaign he might make some comment about what a bunch of losers some of the electorate are, and then we award him "the full Romney". 

Update 3:  well, even with all the normal reservations (online polls are hardly scientific and can be scammed easily by partisan players, particularly during a campaign, and this is a Fairfax poll after all, etc etc) I would still guess that the response shown here on the issue indicates most people aren't overly impressed with the policy:

Update 4: so, the "we never saw a tax cut we didn't like - it helps ensure the teeny, tiny government we believe in on ideological grounds" crowd are noting Labor's not so long ago support of lowering the rate of company tax. But Wong handled this pretty well on radio this morning - Labor was saying they were "aiming for" this when they were also saying they could be back in surplus in a couple of years. That hasn't happened, and won't for a while yet, so they put off the company tax reductions too.

Isn't the problem for the Coalition that, as they like to run with simplistic economics arguments that governments have to control their budgets like households do, then that approach is going to come back to bite them when they try to go with Laffer curve, trickle down arguments for lowering taxes at a time when they are simultaneously saying there is a government debt crisis.

More evidence I'm not alone...

Slate has a article entitled Clint Eastwood made Mitt Romney's strategist vomit, and other tales. with some short extracts from a book about the 2012 US Presidential campaign. Given that I was scathing at the time of wingnutty people who thought that the Clint Eastwood "empty chair" performance was brilliant, I am happy to see that even as it was happening, it was freaking out Romney people (or, at least, one of them):

Stuart Stevens, watching in another room in the hall, was literally sickened. He walked out of the room and threw up.

- Balz on how Romney's ad guru watched the RNC Clint Eastwood speech.

Heh.

No one cares? Excellent...

Avatar sequels? Three? No one cares. Here's why.

I have seen about 10 minutes of Avatar while the kids were watching it on DVD.  The blue characters looked a bit cartoonish to me.  I had no interest in the story, which is just about a guy who goes blue, and  native, isn't it?  James Cameron is personally bizarrely brave (even thinking about sinking for hours into the black, crushing abyss in a one man submarine makes me feel claustrophobic) but I have never cared much for his films. 

So I was pleased to read this article which explains that the film hasn't had the same cultural longevity as its box office might suggest.  Good. 

It certainly gets around...

HPV linked to oesophageal cancer

The human papillomavirus (HPV) triples the risk of the most common form of oesophageal cancer, a study by researchers at the University of New South Wales has found.

There was other HPV and throat cancer news around recently that I didn't note.  Here it is:

One third of people diagnosed with throat cancer are infected with a form of the HPV virus, a study suggests.

HPV (human papillomavirus) is the major cause of cervical cancer, and the virus is known to spread through genital or oral contact....

Experts said this study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which quantifies the link, showed "striking" results.

There are more than 100 types of HPV. Most people will be infected with HPV at some point, but in most the immune system will offer protection.

There are two HPV strains which are most likely to cause cancer - HPV-16 and HPV-18. 

HPV-16 is thought to be responsible for around 60% of cervical cancers, 80% of cancers in the anus and 60% of oral cancers.