Extreme cuteness

As appearing inThe Age this morning:

It's a baby Leadbeater's possum. Irresistibly cute, no?

A remarkably warm winter temperature

Climate Central notes that much of the US has had little snow this winter, and some of the Plains states have just had some very high temperatures:

The National Weather Service said on its Sioux Falls, S.D., website that one sign pointing to the unusual nature of the warm weather was the fact that old records were exceeded by huge margins, as much as 17 degrees warmer than previous records, the agency's website states. As noted by the Weather Channel's Twitter account, the high temperature of 61°F in Minot, N.D., — an all-time January record — was the average high temperature in April, according to The Weather Channel.

Life is complicated

Mass prostate cancer screening doesn't reduce deaths: study

This seems pretty strong reason to not worry about PSA testing, but I bet it won't be accepted quickly.

Not dead yet

Tiger set to boost services

Tiger Airways (the airline that's somewhat akin to a flying Soup Nazi, except it's the price that's good, not the quality) is still alive and expanding a bit.

I want them to survive. I should use them again in the next year.

In other art news....

Very kind of them...

Soft drink vending machines offer free Wi-Fi Internet access ‹ Japan Today

Asahi Soft Drinks Co has developed a vending machine that provides free Wi-Fi connection to the Internet.

The company said on its website that 1,000 Wi-Fi vending machines will be rolled out this month in Tokyo, Sendai, the Chubu and Kinki regions, as well as Fukuoka. It said it plans to expand the number to 10,000 within five years.

The free Internet service, to be provided in association with Freemobile, will be available in two types, Asahi said. One will require registration via email, and one will not. Asahi says both services will be free of charge.

Asahi says that sessions will time out after 30 minutes and that wireless hotspots will available within a 50-meter radius of Asahi vending machines. WPA2-PSK security will be provided.

The electrodes must be tiny...

Scientists record electrical currents that control male fertility

Biologists Yuriy Kirichok and Polina Lishko of the University of California, San Francisco, have made a name for themselves recording the electrical currents that course through, yes, sperm cells....

In a pivotal study, the husband-and-wife team has uncovered how progesterone - a hormone involved in menstruation and embryo development - switches on a sperm's internal electricity. The electric current kicks sperm tails into overdrive, powering the final push toward the egg. Sperm that fail to heed progesterone's "get-up-and-go" signal could help explain some couples' struggles to conceive, say Kirichok and Lishko, both Ukrainian immigrants.

Humans and algae

I've found that American Scientist seems to put a fair few of its feature articles on its website.  Here are a couple of some interest:

*  the potential for algae based biofuel is discussed in some detail here.
*  the question of whether homo sapiens' "modern" behaviours evolved over tens of thousands of years is discussed in this article. 

I should add this magazine to the blogroll soon.

Mochi deaths noted - 2012

It's time for me to note the annual New Year's mochi death toll from Japan.

(Look, this blog is high on Google search for only a few things:  Julia Gillard's enormous earlobes, forehead mites, and mochi deaths.   I have to keep going to maintain my pathetic numbers...)

Anyway, as with last year, it seems the English language media from Japan is slow to report this now, and I have to resort to Google searching in Japanese.

So far, I've come up with this, courtesy of Google translate, from Yomiuri Online:

The number of people were transported by ambulance to the New Year mochi choking is 3:00 pm daily, up to 13 people in Tokyo alone, two of whom died.

According to the Tokyo Fire Department, around noon on December 28, men in Nerima (82), died 草餅 clog. Noon to 30 men Hino (101) died of suffocation by clogging clots lunch.

I have had this confirmed:  yes, the story says the two who died were 82 and 101!  (I wonder who fed mochi - famous for causing choking in the aged) to the 101 year old. 

And looking that the searches in Japanese, that is all I can confirm so far.

This job is getting harder by the year....

I'll check for more reports tomorrow.

Update:  collected figures for the nation remain as evasive as ever.  Ah well.  Japan has had enough death within the last year without worrying about this.

Still Kant-ing after all these years

I mentioned before that I had picked up a copy of Philosophy Now for some holiday reading, mainly because Ï felt I just had to reward whoever it was that came up with the cover featuring this:  "Kant & Co.   Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer - Four Dudes that Shook the World".

As it turns out, I didn't find the story on Kant all that good, although it did point out that the famous problem of what his system of morality means for lying (he thought you shouldn't even lie to an axe murderer who arrives at your door looking for your occupant) is about a conflict of values, and Kant didn't talk about this at all.

The relevant section from the article is this:

Staying with the axe murderer, it should be plain that more than one imperative/moral principle is relevant to the situation.  Certainly we should tell the truth; but do we not also have an obligation to fight evil?  We are confronted with a conflict of values here.  Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no explicit discussion of this issue in Kant.  One could assume, however, that his general approach of distinguishing the lesser from the greater evil should be applied.  I think Kant might say that although lying is never right, it might be the lesser evil in some cases.

What the writer (Prof Peter Rickman, a former head of philosophy at City University in London) is that the murderer example came up during Kant's life and he did try to address in an essay.  If this summary from Wikipedia is any guide, Rickman's optimism about Kant coming up with a "lesser of two evils"resolution seems ill placed:

This challenge occurred while Kant was still alive, and his response was the essay On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives (sometimes translated On a Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns). In this reply, Kant agreed with Constant's inference, that from Kant's premises one must infer a moral duty not to lie to a murderer.

Kant denied that such an inference indicates any weakness in his premises: not lying to the murderer is required because moral actions do not derive their worth from the expected consequences. He claimed that because lying to the murderer would treat him as a mere means to another end, the lie denies the rationality of another person, and therefore denies the possibility of there being free rational action at all. This lie results in a contradiction in conceivability and therefore the lie is in conflict with duty.

I also note that in what can be argued is a sign that philosophy is either:

a. a lively, relevant and engaging activity relevant to the modern world; or
b. stuck in endless and unproductive repetition and should be replaced with more drinking

you can Google the topic "Kant and conflict of categorical imperatives" and get 225,000 links, including to this one, from a discussion in 2011 which is pretty good. The modern issue of lying to the axe murderer at the door is usually reformulated to the more historically relevant "what should good Europeans have done if they were hiding Jews in their house and a Nazi came to the door asking awkward questions". The "best" answer to the question in that last link notes that strict Kantian thought would deny there really was a conflict; the lying can never be justified. It also points out that Kant would argue that the truthful house owner would not be morally responsible for the deaths of the Jews, which is technically true but no doubt hardly a source of comfort to most people. But the other interesting point is that Neo Kantians have another way out of the specifically Nazi based example:

It's also worth considering that a neo-Kantian would take issue with your example on technical level, arguing that it's not a good example because the Holocaust is an exceptional situation, a special case, if you will. More specifically, the German state at the time formed an illegitimate government, and the SS officers were acting as agents of this illegitimate government, this state that is on face unjust. Given such case, one could argue, his entire corpus of ethics does not apply, as it was only intended to apply to situations involving a just government. (For more on this, see Kant's "Doctrine of Right" and Metaphysics of Morals 6:264, etc.)

That's not helpful if a real revenge seeking violent person comes to your door looking for your relative, however. The last link also provides a link to a philosophy journal discussion of the issue from Nov 2010, which looks interesting indeed, but is behind a paywall.  Here's what we can see, from the part of the abstract that is available:

 Sorry about the fuzzy quality of the image: I did my best.

The author of the article is Helga Varden, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois, and her list of work indicates she's quite the Kant fan.   I see she has one paper entitled "A Kantian Conception of Rightful Sexual Relations," which sounds like a blast from a man who thought masturbation was more degrading than committing suicide.

Anyhow, it's interesting to note how Kantian philosophy continues to intrigue and be debated after all these years.  The motivation, I suppose, comes down to wanting to ground morality and ethics on something rational other than utilitarianism, which has its own distinct problems (which, incidentally, get discussed in an article in the same issue of Philosophy Now about the "trolley problem".)    

Back to normal programming soon...

A short history of drinking on New Year's

Why we get wasted on New Year's

Salon has a fun look at why drinking and New Year's go hand in hand. Here's a key paragraph:

Across ancient Europe, the yuletide holidays were a free-for-all, made dicey by role reversals: The poor invaded the homes of the rich, men dressed as women, and the lord bowed to the peasant. The 12 days of Christmas, from Dec. 25 to Jan. 7, were set in the mold of the Roman holiday Saturnalia: The holidays were a period of truce, when old grudges should be forgotten (at least temporarily), and anger swallowed. But despite all this brotherly love, the Christmas season had a sinister playfulness, similar to the original concept of trick-or-treating. Echoing Saturnalia’s public ridicule of society’s laws and customs, rowdy bands of peasants invaded the manor, demanding food and drink. In exchange, the lord received his subjects’ blessings and goodwill for the coming year.

It's unfortunate that we can only manage fun for about 8 or 9 days, in this modern world. However, if you had money, you probably would tire of "wassailing"pretty quickly:

By the 17th century wassailing was a holiday tradition. Girls gussied up in holiday finery would carry a dubious alcoholic punch (usually spiced beer with apples) from door to door. The wealthy were expected to drink a toast and offer the wassailers payment in return. Far from the beatific carolers of today, the mobs were known to get unruly: Wassailers would prank or menace householders who refused them booze or money.

After noting that Puritans did not approve of this festive season, we at least can be thankful that we do not have to watch our national leaders emulate the Sumerians:

Mather no doubt was equally horrified by New Year’s Eve, which always marked an apex of drunken revelry. This is true around the world and throughout time: Although the New Year is celebrated from June to January and from Tallahassee to Timbuktu, almost all cultures have used the passing of one year to the next as an excuse to really party. Take for instance the fine old Sumerian tradition wherein the king had public sex with the high priestess of Ishtar, symbolizing the conception of Ninkasi, the goddess of beer.

A deep and meaningful end to 2011

Hegel and Hegel's God - The Philosopher's Zone - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I read an article in Philosophy Now by Robert Wallace about Hegel's idea of God, and found it pretty interesting. He was in Australia last year and did an interview with Alan Saunders on the Philosopher's Zone, and it covers the same material.

I found it rather interesting, but you must read it all.

At GOMA today

It was time to make another school holiday visit to the Gallery of Modern Art today.  It's hard to dislike modern art when it's in such a nice building.  Some highlights included a exhibit by a Japanese avant garde artist who's infatuated with dots (I think I had heard of her before), and some Aboriginal dogs from North Queensland.   I'll just post the photos to give you an idea:

If ever you are in Brisbane, you must visit it.

Oiko oiko

Green Philosophy by Roger Scruton – review | Books | The Guardian

Here's a somewhat cynical, but nonetheless interesting, review of Roger Scruton's new book on his version of being Green.

You have to read it to understand the title of the post.

Here comes the AP1000

New Toshiba reactor model gets U.S. nod | The Japan Times Online

I meant to post about this before Christmas, but forgot:

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved Toshiba Corp.'s AP1000 reactor design, paving the way for the first new reactor construction license to be issued in more than 30 years.

The five-member agency voted unanimously Thursday in favor of certifying the reactor's design.Southern Co. and Scana Corp. are seeking permission to use the next-generation reactors to expand nuclear power output at existing sites in Georgia and South Carolina. The certification "marks an important milestone toward constructing the first U.S. nuclear reactors in three decades," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday in a statement.

Well, they certainly take their time with new reactor approvals. As the report goes on to note:

The biggest difference between the AP1000 and existing reactors is its safety systems, including a massive water tank on top of its cylindrical concrete-and-steel shielding building. In case of an accident, water would flow down and cool the steel container that holds critical parts of the reactor — including its hot, radioactive nuclear fuel.

An NRC taskforce examining the Fukushima nuclear crisis said licensing for the AP1000 should go forward because it would be better equipped to deal with a prolonged loss of power — the problem that doomed the Fukushima No. 1 plant.

Good to see better passive safety being considered so important in new designs, but I would assume you could better than having a water tank on top.

Anyway, you can have a detailed look at the design at the reactor's own Westinghouse/Toshiba website. It's full of reassuring statements like this:

The AP1000^® pressurized water reactor works on the simple concept that, in the event of a design-basis accident (such as a coolant pipe break), the plant is designed to achieve and maintain safe shutdown condition without any operator action and without the need for ac power or pumps. Instead of relying on active components such as diesel generators and pumps, the AP1000 relies on the natural forces of gravity, natural circulation and compressed gases to keep the core and containment from overheating. However, many active components are included in the AP1000, but are designated as non safety-related.

Multiple levels of defense for accident mitigation are provided, resulting in extremely low core-damage probabilities while minimizing occurrences of containment flooding, pressurization and heat-up.

The AP1000 meets the U.S. NRC deterministic-safety and probabilistic-risk criteria with large margins. Results of the Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) show a very low core damage frequency (CDF) that is 1/100 of the CDF of currently operating plants and 1/20 of the maximum CDF deemed acceptable for new, advanced reactor designs.

I hope they are right.