Japanese work

Western values 'are causing mental illness' - World - Times Online

From the short article above:

Statistics indicate that 60 per cent of workers suffer from “high anxiety” and that 65 per cent of companies report soaring levels of mental illness.

Meanwhile, the size of the Japanese population is shrinking, and for the first time the Government has acknowledged that the falling birth rate is linked to job-related factors. Directors of the Japanese Mental Health Institute blame the same factors for rising levels of depression among workers and the country’s suicide rate, which remains the highest among rich nations.

Merit-based pay and promotion are of particular concern because they are at odds with the traditional system, built on seniority, that has reigned supreme in corporate Japan. In the harsh new atmosphere of cut-throat rivalry between workers, the Institute for Population and Social Security argues, young people do not feel financially stable enough to start families.

I can think of some other reasons why workers may be depressed (based on some personal observations):

* a common expectation that anyone who wants to get ahead will work a 10 to 12 hour day, and then socialise after hours as well;

* an inability of most workers to have any more than a week's holiday per year (although they do get quite a few public holidays as well). Of course, some men who want to get ahead will take no holidays (apart from public holidays) for decades at a time;

* a traditional culture that is still inclined to view mental illness as a character failing or weakness. (A friend who works in Japan, supervising english teachers from all over the world, tells me that he has had calls from the police saying to come get a teacher who is in trouble before the teacher is sent into a psychiatric care. Apparently, everyone knows that if you are committed to a psych ward in Japan, it may be a very long time indeed before you are ever seen again.) The young are more open to seeking psychiatric help, I think, but the effect of this old cultural view is still strong.

Beware of the fish tapeworm

Tale of the Tapeworm (Squeamish Readers Stop Here) - New York Times

Fish tapeworm can make you sick (and it is hard to diagnose). I wonder if there are any Australian cases?

To boldly go where no cockroach has gone before

news @ nature.com-Space hotel gets a check-up - Inflated craft is holding up, but fate of guests remains uncertain.

This is funny: the small prototype inflatable space hotel has got cockroaches already:

The cockroaches were last seen alive on 16 June, when they were loaded in mesh-covered boxes into the craft. They were left in captivity, dining on water and dried dog kibble, until the delayed launch on 12 July subjected them to vibrations and acceleration. They were then in a vacuum for a few minutes before the Genesis I craft was deployed and inflated.

That would be enough to kill many creatures, but not necessarily the hardy cockroach, which can survive many weeks without food. Charles Cockell, now a professor at the Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute of Open University, UK, once studied how well cockroaches can withstand a drop in atmospheric pressure. At 100 millibars — one-tenth of normal atmospheric pressure - the bugs actively pumped air into their abdomens to survive, he found, swelling themselves up in the process to about one and a half times the normal size. "It's pretty gross actually," says Cockell.

Bigelow Aerospace tested a number of different cockroaches and found that the Madagascar hissing roach, which can grow to more than 7.5 centimetres long and can weigh as much as 24 grams, proved that they had the right stuff by enduring more than 2 hours in a vacuum. "After 20 to 30 minutes they came back to life and we thought 'Oh my gosh, they deserve to go to space'," says Bigelow.

Let's hope that space radiation doesn't turn them into super mutuant cockroaches who return to earth to create havoc. (I like to consider all possibilities.)

Pump in the gas

ScienceDaily: Deep-sea Sediments Could Safely Store Man-made Carbon Dioxide

Some optimistic researchers say that pumping CO2 into deep ocean sediments could be the way to go:

Schrag and his colleagues say an ideal storage method could be the injection of carbon dioxide into ocean sediments hundreds of meters thick. The combination of low temperature and high pressure at ocean depths of 3,000 meters turns carbon dioxide into a liquid denser than the surrounding water, removing the possibility of escape and ensuring virtually permanent storage.

Injecting carbon dioxide into seafloor sediments rather than squirting it directly into the ocean traps the gas, minimizing damage to marine life while ensuring that the gas will not eventually escape to the atmosphere via the mixing action of ocean currents. At sufficiently extreme deep-sea temperatures and pressures, carbon dioxide moves beyond its liquid phase to form solid and immobile hydrate crystals, further boosting the system's stability. The scientists say that thus stored, the gas would be secure enough to withstand even the most severe earthquakes or other geomechanical upheaval.

Interesting commentary on Lebanon

Stopping the battle would not mean stopping the war on Israel - Opinion

The above piece is from The Age today, and takes a sceptical line on the calls for Israel to stop when there is no permanent solution in the pipeworks.

The article makes many good points. I like this one in particular:

The conventional wisdom holds that any military action is counterproductive. The doves point out that the Israeli counteroffensive has boosted Hezbollah's standing in the Arab world.

Well, sure. But Hezbollah's prestige was also boosted by Israel's 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon. If aggressive Israeli actions boost Hezbollah, and conciliatory Israeli actions boost Hezbollah, then maybe Israel's actions aren't really the prime mover here. Maybe Hezbollah has figured out that it can become the champion of the Arab world by putting itself forward as Israel's chief antagonist.

It will all end in tears

Softbank Capital invests $5 mln in Huffington Post | Politics News | Reuters.com

Hard to believe, hey? Huffington Post is a mile wide but an inch deep. Its political analysis and commentary is only marginally above that of Daily Kos, and confirms that most celebrity figures are only good at repeating other people's lines.

Kids movies recently seen

Having children of primary and sub-primary age means that most of the movies I get to see are not exactly Citizen Kane. But, good movies for children can be enjoyable for adults, especially in the animated field, where the writers now spend much effort on adult oriented jokes. Some movies I have seen recently on DVD or the cinema:

Over the Hedge: not bad, not great. But (speaking of Citizen Kane) any movie which has an opossum (voiced by William Shatner) ending a prolonged fake death scene by saying "Rosebud" has got something going for it.

Madagascar: good. Some quite eccentric characters and good voice work made this quite enjoyable.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: A slightly weird exercise in over-the-top art deco/pulp science fiction style. Very watchable for its remarkable computer generated looks, it could have been much better if everything in it was not on such a ridiculously gargantuan scale. Checking Rotten Tomatoes, I had forgotten that it got quite a good overall rating, although even the good reviews had to admit the plot and script were lacking. (As one reviewer there says, "The only thing keeping it from greatness is a good story.") However, it went on to be a box office failure (well, $37 million). I suspect one of the reasons is that audiences don't care much for movies which seem to be in an alternative history setting. Also, even though I can quite like her on screen, Gwyneth Paltrow's line delivery seemed somewhat "off" here.

Wallace & Grommit - The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: While never over-excited by the W& G shorts, this movie was (to my surprise) funnier and more charming than the previous incarnations, and did not suffer at all from being extended to movie length. The rabbits are cute for the kids, the lampooning of English society works well for the adults, and Grommit continues his stoic ways.

Steyn interview on your ABC

Counterpoint - 7August 2006 - Mark Steyn, Dorothy Fields and Global Conflict

I am guessing he won't be appearing on Phillip Adam's Late Night Live, but Mark Steyn was interviewed by Michael Duffy on Counterpoint today. The link will take you to the audio. (I haven't listened to it yet.)

Some useful suggestions on the Middle East?

A tale of two failed Mideast states | csmonitor.com

From the above article:

Washington should, accordingly, not take a passive "wait and see" approach to the increasing violence being exported from both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, and the increasing lawlessness in those areas, but should rather act forcefully in order to make it clear that it will not allow Gaza and Lebanon to remain failed states.

This requires that the US and the international community: a) actively pressure Syria to end its involvement in Lebanon and its continued undermining of Lebanese sovereignty (despite its ostensible "withdrawal" from Lebanon last year); b) actively pressure the Lebanese government to deploy its Army in the south and to disarm Hizbullah (if necessary with the assistance of a multinational force); and c) move toward the establishment of some type of international trusteeship over the Gaza Strip, which will involve the deployment of multinational forces, possibly including Egyptian forces, to disarm militants in Gaza and stabilize the political, economic, and security situation there.

Israeli actions alone will not bring stability to these failed states and are likely to only temporarily weaken Hamas and other Palestinian factions, as well as the Lebanese Hizbullah. This is a problem of global dimensions, and only the world's sole superpower can take the lead in addressing it.


Seems to me the problem would be be with getting international co-operation in any multinational forces, and in particulare getting an Islamic country on board. (Will Egypt really want to be involved?)

Free storage space

AOL using Xdrive to offer free space - Los Angeles Business from bizjournals:

A couple of years ago, I tried using a free online storage service. It worked OK, but uploads were fairly slow (which probably says more about Australia's pathetically slow internet services than the storage service itself.) The free service I tried was soon stopped and became subscription only.

AOL is now to offer 5 GB free to everyone. How nice. Will it last?

Lightning and stupidity

NOAA News Online (Story 2676)

Opinion Dominion has strong views on how stupid people can be about lightning. A future post will detail one particularly good example of this from first hand experience. In the meantime, the NOAA (see link) warns people not to be stupid. It won't work.

Carbon offsets offset

Carbon offsets | Sins of emission | Economist.com

The short piece from the Economist about carbon offset problems is worth a look. Mind you, The Economist still thinks that in general they are a good idea in theory. The problem is in the implementation.

Further co-operation from Iran

Defiant Iran threatens to use 'oil weapon' against sanctions - World - Times Online

From the above:

In a blunt response to international concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Ali Larijani, the chief negotiator on atomic issues, said that Tehran was ready for a showdown with world powers when the matter was taken up by the UN Security Council this month.

“We will expand nuclear technology at whatever stage it may be necessary and all of Iran’s nuclear technology including the [centrifuge] cascades will be expanded,” he said in Tehran.

The announcement was regarded not simply as another rhetorical outburst from Tehran but rather the precursor of a formal reply to the West which will be delivered in full on August 22....


Mr Larijani said yesterday that Iran had a right under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to build a civilian nuclear programme. He said Iran was planning to expand its operations at the heavily-guarded Natanz facility in central Iran, where the authorities hope to have 3,000 centrifuges — which enrich uranium by spinning it at supersonic speeds — operating by the end of this year. “We will expand nuclear activities where required. It includes all nuclear technology including the string of centrifuges,” he said. ”We won’t accept suspension.”

Why not just set up a big football field sized poster saying "Bomb me now (or as soon as you finish up in Lebanon)" ?

Europe still thinking about making travel expensive

MPs call for VAT on flights as greenhouse gas emissions soar - Britain - Times Online

By the way, what is the "Green" way to travel within Europe? Is it by train, ship or what? Is it time to bring back airships? (Hey, I just think they look cool.)

"But I'm not dead yet!"

New Scientist News - Not brain-dead, but ripe for transplant

Interesting article on doctors reconsidering when to treat patients as dead.

Against wind power

Matthew Stevens: The answer isn't blowing in the wind | News | The Australian

This is an interesting article explaining why wind power is not the great benefit that it would seem. For example:

...even in those states with the most ambitious renewables targets, South Australia and Victoria, the net effect of wind power on carbon dioxide emissions will be negligible, if not illusory. According to another recent study, if Victoria reaches its target of 1000 megawatts of renewable generation capacity by 2016 (the state currently boasts about 120MW of wind capacity), its share of national greenhouse gas emissions will fall from 32 per cent to 28 per cent by 2020.

But in raw numbers, Victoria's power plants will be pumping out 24 per cent more carbon dioxide by 2020 than they do in 2006 because, quite simply, Victorians will be using much more power.

I suppose it can still be argued that it is better to have some of that electricity produced by clean wind power than an alternative CO2 producing means, otherwise the total future CO2 output will be even higher than that already bad forecast.

But it would seem that the more important message is that, in reality, windpower is just fiddling around the edges of the problem. What's worse, such fiddling can give an impression of significance that is undeserved.

A long review article on mini black holes

What fun! Today I get to post about my two favourite subjects one after the other.

This link will lead you to a fairly lengthy review of issues around the possible production of black holes at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It's by physicist Greg Landsberg, to whom I give some credit for actually answering some emails sent to him by James Blodgett, the author of the Risk Evaluation Forum site (see link in my blogroll.) Blodgett's site got me interested in this whole topic.

Landsberg does not think there is anything to Blodgett's concerns, but at least he was respectful in his answers.

Anyway, Landsberg's article above is interesting in several respects:

1. He confirms clearly that Hawking Radiation is never going to be observed directly at astronomical distances (it is far too weak - see pages 8 to 9.)

2. The entire article makes it clear how many different ideas there are about what exactly would happen in the decay process of a micro black hole.

3. Landsberg notes this:

Given the current lower constraints on the fundamental Planck scale in the model with large extra dimensions of ≈ 1 TeV [8], the black holes that we may be able to study at colliders and in cosmic rays will be barely transplanckian. Hence, the unknown quantum corrections to their classical properties are expected to be large, and therefore it is reasonable to focus only on the most robust properties of these mini black holes that are expected to be affected the least by unknown quantum gravity corrections.

Later, he writes:

In quantum gravity, it is expected that there is a fourth, Planckian stage of black hole evaporation, which is reached when the mass of the evaporating black hole approaches the Planck scale. The details of the Planckian stage are completely unknown, as they are governed by the effects of quantum gravity, which should be dominant at such low black hole masses. Some authors speculate that the Planckian stage terminates with a formation of a stable or semi-stable black hole remnant with the mass ∼ MPl. Others argue that the evaporation proceeds until the entire mass of the black hole is radiated. The truth is that no predictions about the Planckian regime are possible, given our lack of knowledge of quantum gravity.

This has been said before: I just thought that it is nice to see such a blunt and direct statement of ignorance.

4. Despite this, Landsberg expresses no doubts at all about Hawking Radiation applying to micro black holes. (It is expected to occur before the black hole reaches Planckian scale and its behaviour becomes guesswork.)

5. Landsberg notes that it has been suggested that instead of (or as well as?) mini black holes, the LHC could create other things such as string balls (don't ask me) or this:

Another possibility is a production of higher-dimensional objects, e.g. black p-branes, rather than spherically symmetric black holes (p = 0) [48].

First time I have heard of that. Did the safety review of the LHC take these into account?

6. The article appears optimistic on the possibility of the by products of naturally occurring mini black holes being detected in neutrino telescopes being built. If this is confirmed, then any of my concerns about Hawking Radiation not occurring would be gone.

7. Landsberg raises one point in such a way that I cannot understand whether it is a potential danger to the LHC or not. This is heavy going, and I refer the interested reader to section 10 of the paper on page on page 27. It seems to me that he may be saying that, on some models, it may be possible for a mini black to evaporate quickly with the equivalent energy of a few hundred pound bomb. This sounds dangerous to me, but as I say, I could be misunderstanding him here. (I would be happy to hear what other reader's think he means.)

How cats control the world

LiveScience.com - Study: Cat Parasite Affects Human Culture

Regular readers know that this is a favourite topic here - the dreaded Toxoplasma gondii that may drive people mad.

This report suggests that it might also just make many of the infected (about half of the world's population!) neurotic, and this in turn might affect entire cultures:

...Lafferty wondered whether high rates of T. gondii infection in a culture could shift the average personality of its individuals.

"In populations where this parasite is very common, mass personality modification could result in cultural change," Lafferty said.

The distribution of T. gondii could explain differences in cultural aspects that relate to ego, money, material possessions, work and rules, Lafferty added. In some countries, infections by the cat parasite are very rare, while in others nearly all adults are infected.

To test his hypothesis, Lafferty looked at published data on cultural dimensions and average personalities for different countries. The countries examined also kept records of the prevalence of T. gondii antibodies in women of childbearing age. Countries with high prevalence of T. gondii infection also had higher average neuroticism scores.

"There could be a lot more to this story," Lafferty said. "Different responses to the parasite by men and women could lead to many additional cultural effects that are, as yet, difficult to analyze."

What I want to know is the rate of this infection in Muslim countries. Maybe the whole Middle East crisis is due to cats. (Just a theory.)

Things I don't understand about Iraq

Top generals see threat of Iraq civil war - Reuters.com

Of course, Iraq's slow burn civil war-ish thing is getting worse, but the political situation on the ground seems not to be attracting much in the way of commentary or analysis since Hezbollah decided to light up a front on Israel.

Here are some things I admit to not understanding about the situation in Iraq:

1. What are the ultimate goals of the warring Sunni/Shia factions? Does either of them think they can drive the other out of political power entirely, or (who knows?) out of the country entirely? Given that each group is sizeable, the entire removal of the other isn't an option seriously believed, is it?

2. I heard once on Phillip Adams radio show that there is a high degree of intermarriage between Sunni and Shite in Iraq, and this was believed by some commentators to be a major reason why there would not be a "full blown" civil war. Sounds like a good theory, but why is it not working to curb the terrible fighting even at these current levels (about 100 people a day)?

3. Last night, I saw a report on a bombing of a group of school boys (I forget which faction they were in, but they were just in a park at the time.) What sort of point does any faction think it is achieving by killing unarmed civilians, especially children? And if the intermarriage point mentioned above is true, surely attacks like that only hurt both Sunni and Shite when the families are mixed.

4. Seemingly, it remains impossible to disarm militias in Baghdad. Why exactly is that the case?

I am sure there are more points I could ask, but I need to do other things right now.

Michael Costello: Israel is not the bully here | Opinion | The Australian

Michael Costello: Israel is not the bully here | Opinion | The Australian

Conservative Laborite Costello defends Israel, and good on him.

Actually, if Labor has any internal tension over support for Israel at the moment (which I am sure they would), it is being kept well under wraps.