A journalist in Baghdad

I’m cowering under the bed. But I’m here -Times Online

Here's a short account of what it is like for a Western journalist (and a female one at that) to work in Baghdad at the moment. She deserves praise for being one of the few journalists willing to be there at all.

More deep thoughts from Paul Davies

We are meant to be here | Salon Books

Paul Davies is out promoting a new book, and gets a long interview in Salon to explain his ideas. It explains his views better than the last article I linked to.

Here's the key sections:

Now we're into another variant of the anthropic principle -- which is sometimes called the "final anthropic principle" -- where, somehow, the emergence of life and observers link back to the early universe. Now, Wheeler didn't flesh out this idea terribly well, but I've had a go at trying to extend it...

It's part of conventional quantum mechanics that you can make observations now that will affect the nature of reality as it was in the past. You can't use it to send signals back into the past. You can't send information back into the past. But the nature of the quantum state in the past can't be separated from the nature of the quantum state in the present.

What we're saying is that as we go back into the past, there are many, many quantum histories that could have led up to this point. And the existence of observers today will select a subset of those histories which will inevitably, by definition, lead to the existence of life. Now, I don't think anybody would really dispute that fact.

What I'm suggesting -- this is where things depart from the conventional view -- is that the laws of physics themselves are subject to the same quantum uncertainty. So that an observation performed today will select not only a number of histories from an infinite number of possible past histories, but will also select a subset of the laws of physics which are consistent with the emergence of life. That's the radical departure. It's not the backward-in-time aspect, which has been established by experiment. There's really no doubt that quantum mechanics opens the way to linking future with past. I'm suggesting that we extend those notions from the state of the universe to the underlying laws of physics themselves. That's the radical step, because most physicists regard the laws as God-given, imprinted on the universe, fixed and immutable. But Wheeler -- and I follow him on this -- suggested that the laws of physics are not immutable.

The mechanism by which they are changeable over time seems rather vague speculation to me, and he doesn't seem to suggest a way to test the idea. (Although there has been mention recently that whether changes to certain laws of physics have taken place over time is testable.)

One area in which I think is a bit inadequately addressed in the interview is the odd "Platonic world" feeling of mathematics.

In my previous post about Davies, I suggested that it was a bit of a stretch for him to say that there was "ultimate meaning" to the universe when he doesn't seem to believe in eternal life of any kind. However, maybe he is a secret admirer of Tipler's Omega Point after all:

Ultimately, it may not be living intelligence or embodied intelligence but some sort of intelligent information-processing system that could become omniscient and fill the entire universe. That's a grand vision that I rather like. Whether it's true or not is another matter entirely.

The whole interview is worth reading.

The kindness of rats

news @ nature.com-Generosity among rats-Rats do unto others as they have been done to.

Odd forms of rat research will always be welcome here. (I was particularly fond of the ticking rats story a few months ago.)

Now from Nature:

Rats that benefit from the charity of others are more likely to help strangers get a free meal, researchers have found.

This phenomenon, known as 'generalized reciprocity', has only ever been seen before in humans. A good example, says Michael Taborsky of the University of Bern, Switzerland, is what happens when someone finds money in a phone box. In controlled experiments such people have been shown to be much more likely to help out a stranger in need following their good luck.

In humans, such benevolence can be explained by cultural factors as well as by underlying biology, says Taborsky. But if similar behaviour can be found in other animals, he reasons, an evolutionary explanation would be far more likely.

To test for this behaviour in animals, Taborsky trained rats to pull a lever that produced food for its partner, but not for itself. Rats who had received a free meal in this way were found to be 20% more likely to help out an unknown partner than rats who had received no such charity

Maybe all rats go to heaven too.

How did this slip through?

PM warms to his task - Opinion - theage.com.au

It was most surprising to see in The Age yesterday some commentary by Jason Koutsoukis talking up John Howard's policy initiatives on greenhouse gases:

NOW that winter has settled in and taken some of the heat out of global warming as a political issue, it's worth taking stock of who is offering the best policies on climate change.

At this stage the answer, surprisingly, is John Howard, who in a few short months has managed to cobble together a decent looking framework for a national emissions trading scheme, plus a host of other measures.

Despite harping on about the urgent need for government to do more on climate change for the past six years, Labor is still unable to articulate what it would do.

Gosh, editorial control seems to be slipping at The Age!

Farms of the air

The Vertical Farm Project - Agriculture for the 21st Century and Beyond...

This idea (to start seriously developing farms in high rise buildings) sounds very futuristic, and that's why I like it. The fact that it may actually make practical sense too is just an added bonus.

Humour

So, there's a site that posts some of the US late night talk show jokes. Neat. Here's David Letterman on Paris getting out of jail:

Paris said she hated prison. There’s some insight.
She said she had to eat mystery meat. I think I’ve actually seen video of her doing that.

About time

Egypt bans female circumcision after death of 12-year-old girl | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

The numbers for female circumcision in Egypt are much higher than I would have guessed:

In 2005, research by Unicef found that 96% of Egyptian women aged 15 to 49 who had ever been married reported they had been circumcised. The Egyptian government says a more recent study found 50.3% of girls aged 10 to 18 had been circumcised.

And this is after a quasi ban in 1997, although the article says it was still allowed "under exceptional circumstances". I wonder what exactly would be counted as good reason for that.

Chinese Catholics explained

How an American program bridged the gap between China's divided Catholics. - By Adam Minter - Slate Magazine

The situation with Chinese Catholics is more complicated that I realised. An interesting explanation is in the Slate article above.

Computers no match for Go

Why computers can’ t surpass Go and collect $1 million -Times Online

Well, that's something I hadn't heard before:

...there is one game in which the computer is still no match for Man, a game in which a competent teenager can beat the world’s most sophisticated computer program with ease: and that is the ancient Chinese board game Go, the oldest game in the world, and the only one at which man remains the undisputed champion.

So, my alternative ending for 2001: A Space Odyssey would involve Dave challenging HAL to a game of Go, on a bet that the winner gets back control of the mission.

Fisk-like in its accuracy

You've got to read this. Professional lefty panic merchant author Richard Flanagan has a "Comment is Free" article in The Guardian about the aboriginal situation here. Where ever he is writing from, it seems to be somewhere that is free of talk back radio, TV news and all Australian papers. Here's some extracts; you decide how accurate it sounds:

Howard's response - a five-year takeover of 60 indigenous communities, with soldiers and police overseeing alcohol and pornography bans, the part-quarantining of welfare payments to parents to ensure money is spent on food and other necessities, and the compulsory testing of Aboriginal children for sexual abuse - stunned Australia. Initial confusion soon gave way to condemnation of the plan as draconian, racist, unworkable, an ill-conceived shock-and-awe campaign, a cunning land grab and a black Tampa doomed to fail. Howard's past was rebounding.

It took many back to the horror of the infamous "stolen generation", thousands of Aboriginal children taken, often forcibly, from their families into institutions in a misguided attempt at assimilation through the 20th century. Despite Howard's reassurances, fear and panic were reported to have seized Aboriginal communities. Families were already fleeing to the bush, fearful of seeing soldiers take their children away.

Then condemnation transformed into what is now being described as "a widening revolt", joining together Labor state premiers, a former Liberal prime minister, indigenous leaders, religious leaders, police, and more than 60 community and indigenous groups.

So, the most he can say about the initial response is "initial confusion"?

And how's this for a short summary of the Cronulla riots last year:

He [Howard] has overseen a transition from a national commitment to multiculturalism to a strident advocacy of "national values" - an oily phrase that appears to be a stalking horse for a new intolerance. When riots broke out between white supremacists and Lebanese youths on Sydney beaches in 2005, he described it as an issue of law and order, rather than race.

Talk about a slanted description of the parties involved. "White supremacists" makes them sold like 30 year old neo-Nazis; "Lebanese youths" makes it sound like they were all younger than the young white men involved, as if a pack of 13 years old on the Lakemba Youth Group picnic were attacked.

For some context on Richard, there's this from the Kerry O'Brien interview linked to above:

There are a lot of disturbing tendencies in Australian public life. We have this language which I haven't heard used since the Stalinist era of elites, a word that was first used by Stalin when he wanted to attack Jewish intellectuals in 1948, the use of the idea that there are things that matter more than individual freedom. Again, that's a Stalinistic argument. We have the rise of hit men in the media who are there to do the Government's bidding and seem to have no conscience or scruple in attacking any individual who has a position different than that of the Government or is questioning government policy. We have an ever more conformist society. We have an ever more cowed media and we see daily anybody who rightly questions or simply interrogates the process of government or government policy being destroyed. Those sort of things, when people who are simply seeking the truth have to put their reputations on the line, when that starts happening, I become very frightened.

Richard seems to have avoided conformism and destruction so far; he must be living in a bunker somewhere avoiding the police with their packs of dogs trying to ferret him out. Prat.

Science fiction ideas

New Scientist Space Blog: Have researchers found the Tunguska crater?

As the article indicates, there are many reasons to be very sceptical of the claim that a small lake in Siberia may be an impact crater from the Tunguska event.

Still, it seems to me to be to the good start for a science fiction movie to have a submarine down there, discovering in the mud an alien artefact that was left over from Tunguska.

Speaking of movies, some years ago it occurred to me (while reading some fan boy ideas as to what would be good stories for future Indiana Jones episodes) that it could be a nice idea if Indiana Jones was involved in some intrigue surrounding the (alleged) Roswell UFO crash. (UFO followers will recall there was a claim that some of the "ufo" pieces had symbols on them, resembling some ancient or alien script. This would be a reason for the scientists to call in Jones.) There could also be a tie in with Raiders, because, you will recall, one of the bad guys thought the Ark of the Covenant was a radio transmitter to God. (Maybe it is a transmitter to the nearly God-like aliens instead.) The end result of it could be a message sent out to aliens, resulting at the end of the movie in the eventual arrival in the 1970's of the mother ship as depicted in Close Encounters. You could digitally insert Indiana Jones into the end of that movie, and have him leave into alien immortality.

Hey, I did say it was many years ago that I idly thought about such stuff. I was single for a long time before I got married, you know!

All about AI

Technology Review: Artificial Intelligence Is Lost in the Woods

This is a good article from an "anti-cognitivist", who thinks AI research is largely going down the wrong path. Very interesting reading.

Suicide watch

Suicide | Elusive, but not always unstoppable | Economist.com

The Economist has a good piece about suicide, and the wildly varying factors that seem to be behind it in different parts of the world.

There were a couple of things in the article that were new to me:

China is one of the few countries in which more women kill themselves than men. Over half the world's female suicides are Chinese; among Chinese under 45, the female rate is twice the rate among males. Why should things be different in China? Part of the explanation clearly lies in the high rate among rural women, which in turn may be partially explained by the ready availability of poisons (weedkillers and pesticides), and the absence of any effective treatment.

And the law of unintended consequences can certainly apply to this area when the government tries to help:

Government action certainly makes a difference, though sometimes results are perverse. Some Indian states pay bereaved families compensation for the loss of a breadwinner who has killed himself; this seems to increase the suicide rate.

Coming attractions

Pixar's new film Ratatouille (which has not yet opened in the States) is receiving very positive early reviews. I saw the trailer for it before Pirates, and it did look promising, especially given that it is directed by Brad Bird, who did the very enjoyable The Incredibles. (He also did Iron Giant in old freehand animation style, and it is well worth watching on DVD. It got great reviews when released at the cinema, but for some reason was a box office flop.)

I think it is fair to say that Bird's storytelling always contains more "adult" themes than other animation, but he never bores young children either. After the instantly forgettable Cars, I have high hopes for being very impressed by another Pixar film.

Before that, I think it likely that my son will need to be taken to see Transformers, which is opening here tomorrow, actually ahead of the US release. There are only a couple of official reviews out, but the impression seems to be that, for a basically silly boy's concept, and one directed by noise-Meister Michael Bay, it's not bad.

Lastly, any Indiana Jones tragics who might read this probably already know that there's a photo released of Harrison Ford in costume. Seems to be holding his age better when in a fedora, I guess.

I personally do not hold high hopes for Indiana 4: George Lucas's involvement in this might mean the series continues to follow the same trajectory as Star Wars, where the second in both series were the best, followed by a plummet in story quality in the third. Interest was well and truly lost by the fourth. But at least George isn't directing.

Undercover in Scientology

The Spectator.co.uk

Follow the link above for an article about a woman who spent 3 months as an undercover reporter who joined the Scientologists via their London "Celebrity Centre". It's very interesting.

I must say that, while her experience confirms the flakiness of the Scientologists, it also indicates that the therapy courses (at least at this level) are not exactly sinister in nature.

I object to their crusades against all medication for psychiatric conditions, and the science fiction silliness of its core beliefs, but it does seem to me that the Europeans in particular have over-reacted to this trite form of therapy masquerading as religion.

Rain rain come again

Brisbane has now had about 24 hours of continual, light to moderate, rain. While my guess is that it is still not going to add all that much to the dam levels (currently right on 18%,) there should at least be a substantial halt to the death of trees, shrubs and lawns that has been very noticeable throughout the city. Also, all the new water tanks that have been installed in the last 6 months should finally be full. (Shareholders in companies that make water tanks must be very happy here. The demand for them has been huge.)

Paul Davies, the laws of physics, and God

Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn't mean that a god fixed it

Former Aussie resident Paul Davies has a neat summary of his recent thinking in the above article from "Comment is Free" in The Guardian.

His suggestion that the physical laws of the universe are changeable over time, and in some sense, have created themselves in such a way as to be hospitable to life, certainly feels counter-intuitive. I am also not sure what he means by this:

Thus, three centuries after Newton, symmetry is restored: the laws explain the universe even as the universe explains the laws. If there is an ultimate meaning to existence, as I believe is the case, the answer is to be found within nature, not beyond it. The universe might indeed be a fix, but if so, it has fixed itself.

Yet he has never claimed to believe in a personal God, or a creator God, and presumably does not believe in an afterlife, even of the Tipler Omega Point (eternal cyber-heaven at the end of the universe) variety.

So within that framework, how does he think you can say there is "ultimate meaning" to existence?

While I am mentioning God, I have been meaning for some time to post this passage from CS Lewis, which I have always thought makes a very valid point about "modern" thinking about God:

". . . When [people] try to get rid of man-like, or, as they are called, 'anthropomorphic,' images, they merely succeed in substituting images of some other kinds. 'I don't believe in a personal God,' says one, 'but I do believe in a great spiritual force.' What he has not noticed is that the word 'force' has let in all sorts of images about winds and tides and electricity and gravitation. 'I don't believe in a personal God,' says another, 'but I do believe we are all parts of one great Being which moves and works through us all' -not noticing that he has merely exchanged the image of a fatherly and royal-looking man for the image of some widely extended gas or fluid.

"A girl I knew was brought up by 'higher thinking' parents to regard God as perfect 'substance.' In later life she realized that this had actually led her to think of Him as something like a vast tapioca pudding. (To make matters worse, she disliked tapioca.) We may feel ourselves quite safe from this degree of absurdity but we are mistaken. If a man watches his own mind, I believe he will find that what profess to be specially advanced or philosophic conceptions of God, are, in his thinking, always accompanied by vague images which, if inspected, would turn out to be even more absurd than the manlike images aroused by Christian theology. For man, after all, is the highest of the things we meet in sensuous experience."

I think there is more benefit in that passage than in most full length books of theology.

A big problem

Town at the coalface in fear of overflow | Indigenous Welfare | The Australian

The mayor of the Northern Territory town of Katherine notes this:

Ms Shepherd points out that part of the problems of her town ironically stem from existing alcohol bans in the dry Aboriginal communities around Katherine, ranging from 50km to 600km away. With Katherine their regional hub, Aborigines come in for shopping and medical services, and many buy grog they can't get in dry communities.

Some don't make it back.

"At any time we can have 300 or more visitors from Aboriginal communities sleeping in doorways and drains, many severely affected by alcohol," Ms Shepherd said.

There is a town camp owned by the Territory Government and leased to an Aboriginal-run community organisation, but it's a dangerous hell-hole with tension between those who live there permanently and visitors from other clans.

"It has not been properly managed in the past, and although the current manager is doing his best, it needs to be safe for temporary residents," Ms Shepherd said, adding that she worried for the children there.

When Ms Shepherd visited a camp called Geyulkan yesterday, there was no one sober enough to string together more than a sentence.

It certainly is a big and complicated problem that Howard is taking on.

As to the issue of how much change needs to take place in consultation with the communities, isn't the fundamental problem that it's difficult to identify those residents who have the authority to bind the communities? As many people point out, aboriginal women have been asking for change for years, but what authority are they perceived to have by the rest of their community? Same with male tribal elders. If in a community a significant number of them have an alcohol problem, or a history of being a sexual abuser themselves, are they excluded from consultation?

So, while many are complaining that a more authoritarian approach is unlikely to succeed, my suspicion is that this fundamental practical difficulty of the consultative approach has been downplayed for years.

One of the more surprising sections in the Report was this:

The Inquiry found that at many community meetings, both men and women expressed a keen desire to be better informed about what constituted child s-xual abuse and the health, social and legal responses to it. However, people did not want to be talked at. They wanted to be able to enter into a dialogue in their own language through which they could develop this understanding, with information, assistance, support and time being given by the relevant agency to facilitate this process of learning.

Well, this is an area where I think most people should rightly react along the lines: "forget cultural sensitivities when it comes to knowing what is child (or even adult) sexual abuse. They just need to be told in English (or if they don't understand that, their own language) a few key points: incest is illegal at whatever age; sex between adults and children is illegal. Sex without consent is always illegal too, no matter what age. No one who has an STD should have sex with anyone until it's cured. "

The basic rules just aren't all that complicated, surely.

The main grey area may be about consensual sex between unrelated teenagers below the age of consent, as indeed it is within the white community too. But that's probably the least of our worries anyway when it comes to abuse in these communities.

Pick me

Libs are making it up | The Australian Your Say Blog

Let's see. Howard and Costello say they are sick of Keating claiming sole credit for economic reform, as the Liberals commissioned the Campbell Report which recommended the key changes. Keating says - but look, in 1977, I told Parliament that foreign banks should be let in, Hayden agreed with me, and so I had the reform idea first.

Soon, I reckon Keating will be pulling out notes of conversations he had with high school teachers to prove it all started with him.

I like Keating's claim that Howard and Costello were "stunned" by his recent Lateline performance.

I reckon the people more likely to be "stunned" are Rudd's team, who must grind their teeth every time electoral poison Paul makes another self-aggrandising media appearance.

Higher education in Japan

Japan's universities fighting to attract students

The competition amongst universities in Japan for new students means offering some luxuries previously unknown in Japanese uni dorms:

Perched immodestly on the edge of a steaming bath, a dozen judo teammates soaking happily next to him, the junior in economics said he picked this university when he saw the spa pictured in a brochure. The university's resort-like new dormitories also boast private karaoke rooms, an English garden with pink roses and a swimming pool.

"This was the only university to recruit us by offering a hot spring," Iwanaga, 21, said.

"They really wanted us to come here."

The most interesting thing in the article is the demographic information:

According to census statistics, the number of 18-year-old Japanese has fallen to 1.3 million this year from 2.05 million in 1992, when the second peak of Japan's baby-boomers' children were entering universities. Estimates show it dropping to 1.21 million in two more years. This year, as a result, nearly a third of the nation's 707 four-year universities were unable to fill all of their openings, according to the Education Ministry and university groups.

That seems a huge drop in the number of 18 year olds over 15 years, doesn't it?