Land of the setting sun

Number of suicides stays above 30,000 for 12th straight year

It's something to their credit, I suppose, that the Japanese government does seem to worry about the suicide rate now. Their rate is very economy sensitive:

The number of suicides in Japan grew sharply in October 2008—a month after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc collapsed, throwing the global economy into a prolonged recession.

The comment by Bobbafett following the article is interesting too.

Pricks aren't to be trusted

Doubt Is Cast on Many Reports of Food Allergies - NYTimes.com

“Everyone has a different definition” of a food allergy, said Dr. Jennifer J. Schneider Chafen of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Palo Alto Health Care System in California and Stanford’s Center for Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research, who was the lead author of the new report. People who receive a diagnosis after one of the two tests most often used — pricking the skin and injecting a tiny amount of the suspect food and looking in blood for IgE antibodies, the type associated with allergies — have less than a 50 percent chance of actually having a food allergy, the investigators found. ...

But for now, Dr. Fenton said, doctors should not use either the skin-prick test or the antibody test as the sole reason for thinking their patients have a food allergy.

“By themselves they are not sufficient,” Dr. Fenton said.

Crichton and the pirates

I've just finished Michael Crichton's posthumously published novel "Pirate Latitudes".

It's said to have found as a complete manuscript on his computer, and no one seems quite certain when it was written, or finished. Around 2006 seems to be the speculation.

I don't know if this has been said before, but I think it is perfectly clear why he did not publish it: it is very, very similar in many of its elements to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies; [spoiler warning] even so far as featuring a Kraken attack. (More about that below.) I wouldn't mind betting that this one of those unfortunate cases of creative coincidences; Crichton had probably been researching and thinking about it for years, finally got around to getting it down on paper, only to find before he could get it to his publishers that Disney studios have well and truly gazumped the market for far-fetched pirate events.

So, did I enjoy it? Well, I have said here before that Crichton only seemed really good at the rate of about every second book. This is not a "second book", but it was not his worst. (I recall Sphere as being particularly awful in a new age-y sort of way.)

One of the reasons for reading him was always to get a bit of an education on a topic. In this respect, the novel does provide interesting insights into the 17th Century world of pirates, and that was its best feature.

It is, however, a particularly violent book for Crichton. But by far its worst aspect is the credibility breaking appearance of a real life Kraken. Yes, the attack on the ship is just like the one in Pirates of the Caribbean II. It's not a giant squid being mistaken for a Kraken; it's a gigantic thing the likes of which has never been seen.

Why would Crichton include this? As far as I know (and as the Wikipedia entry appears to confirm) no cryptozoologist in modern times has ever suggested more than that the Kraken legend perhaps derives from the rarely seen giant squid that roam the deep. (Possibly a giant octopus had something to do with it too.) As I say, I found Crichton's other watery novel (Sphere) pretty unconvincing too; he liked sea monsters, but as far as I know there is no one out there seriously suggesting that a massive, novel, tentacled Kraken-like creature is still waiting to be discovered.

Ah well. I see that Spielberg is said to be actively developing a film of the book. This seems pretty surprising, given the fact that there is another POTC movie already on the way.

I guess a realistic, gritty, semi-educational pirate movie could still have an audience, but my key advice to Spielberg would be: dump the Kraken!

Right back at ya

Sex, religion, and Kagan's right to privacy. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

Andrew Sullivan, amongst others, thinks it should be clarified whether or not Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should is lesbian.

William Saletan quotes Sullivan right back at him, and argues strongly why it should be left alone.

Funnily enough, one would have thought that Sullivan could see the silly games that could be played with such enquiries: he's the (now) married gay man who was (according to his 2001 sex seeking ad) nonetheless "into bi scenes."

Very strange

BBC News - China children 'hacked to death' in new school attack

It appears that there have now been six cases in China of a crazy person going to a school and attacking children randomly (and killing a great many) in the space of a few months.

This is not the sort of thing that I would normally expect to be the subject of copycat behaviour. Suicides: yes, we know they go up the more they are publicised. But going out to kill kids you don't know? Very odd, I reckon.

Funny and instructive

Strange to say, but Colbert Report seems to be taking more care this season to have some guests to actually explain international situations. Tonight's segment on Greece was both pretty funny in parts, and instructive:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Greece Wither Soon - Scheherazade Rehman
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Famous friends

H G Wells: Another Kind of Life by Michael Sherborne: review - Telegraph

In this review of a new biography of HG Wells, there is much mention of his sex life, but the most fascinating snippet is this:

....for many years he was at the heart of Britain’s artistic and political life, with an address book like a global Who’s Who. There can't be many writers who criticised Stalin to his face and survived, counted Charlie Chaplin among his friends, and persuaded G B Shaw and G K Chesterton to dress up as cowboys and roll down a hill in a beer barrel for a home movie.

Chesterton was shaped like a beer barrel, from what I recall. I can't imagine him fitting in one with Shaw.

What were they up to?

gulfnews : Bahrain arrests 14 Chinese with fake Japanese passports

Lower the jury duty age

Psychologists say babies know right from wrong even at six months

How do you tell that a baby knows right from wrong? It's pretty entertaining research:

In one experiment babies between six and ten months old were repeatedly shown a puppet show featuring wooden shapes with eyes. A red ball attempts to climb a hill and is aided at times by a yellow triangle that helps it up the hill by getting behind it and pushing. At other times the red ball is forced back down the hill by a blue square. After watching the puppet show at least six times the babies were asked to choose a character. An overwhelming majority (over 80%) chose the helpful figure. Prof. Bloom said it was not a subtle statistical trend as “just about all the babies reached for the good guy.”

In another experiment the babies were shown a toy dog puppet attempting to open a box, with a friendly teddy bear helping the dog, and an unfriendly teddy thwarting his efforts by sitting on him. After watching at least half a dozen times the babies were given the opportunity to choose one of the teddy bears. The majority chose the helpful teddy.

And at 21 months, most will even "punish" the bad toy:

A third experiment used a puppet cat playing with a ball with a helpful rabbit puppet on one side and an unhelpful rabbit on the other. The helpful rabbit returned the ball if the cat lost it, while the unhelpful rabbit stole the ball and ran off with it. In this test five-month-old babies were allowed to choose one of the rabbits, and most chose the helpful one. When the test was repeated with 21-month-old babies they were asked to take a treat from one of the rabbits. Most took the treat from the unhelpful rabbit, and one even gave the rabbit a smack on the head as well.

Maybe I should have been a psychologist. A day at the office could be quite fun.

Severe danger avoided

gulfnews : Joggers furious as Sharjah shuts parks in the morning

I am not quite sure where the municipality of Sharjah is in the Gulf region, but you can't accuse them of not taking action on serious matters:

Sharjah Municipality has just passed a law that keeps all parks closed to the public until 4pm.

They will stay open until 10pm.

The law includes free-entrance neighbourhood parks and those which have an entrance fee.

A Sharjah Municipality official told Gulf News the new rule aimed to prevent gardeners from staring at female visitors.

"The municipality cannot accept the responsibility of having its employees staring at women and making them feel uncomfortable," said Sharjah Municipality Agricultural Department head Yaseen Mohammad.

What a mad place.

Still singing (sort of)

Julie Andrews: She's climbed every mountain - Profiles, People - The Independent

Julie Andrews surely doesn't need the money, but is starting a (sort of) singing tour in England again. (She's warning that her voice is not what it was. Maybe Whitney Houston could have considered the same tactic!)

Anyhow, this potted history of her life, which I have read about elsewhere, claims as follows:

Like her fellow musical star Judy Garland, Andrews became both a gay icon and a family favourite.

Really? I thought her screen and private lives both lacked the strange melodramatic style which seems to be the key characteristic that marks actresses as gay icons.

In any event, she seems to enjoy a broad reputation as a very decent person.

That time of year again

It's more likely to be rats in the belfry, possums

The Age reports on how the onset of winter means rats start moving into the roofs of Melbourne houses.

It's exactly the same in Brisbane. Sitting at the computer the other night, I heard what sounded like slight roof tile scrapping. I suspect it was my first visitor of the season squeezing its way in between tiles.

Time to bait the ceiling space again. Pity this causes them to die and decompose there too...

Could be interesting

The LA Times gives top marks to Laura Bush's memoir. The New York Times quite liked it too. It must be pretty good.

Took them a while to work this one out

Mice pull pained expressions : Nature News

Humans are not the only ones to grimace when they are in pain, scientists have found. Mice show their discomfort in the same way.

When you look at the photos in the article, it seems a little odd they didn't know this before.

Nuclear in the earthquake zone

Monju fast-breeder reaches criticality | The Japan Times Online

I see that Japan has just restarted a prototype fast-breeder reactor, which was halted some years ago after a sodium leak.

It's odd, isn't it, that one of the most earthquake prone countries in the world should also be the one forging ahead with developing a new type of nuclear reactor plant that has one good feature, and one somewhat scary one (molten sodium.)

As such, I am a bit unsure about whether to be impressed or worried.

Further comments on New Zealand

Some observations from the recent short New Zealand (south island only) holiday:

Things I liked a lot:

* the mussels. These featured in maybe 3 meals while I was there, and although I have been wary of their chewiness when trying them in Australia, the New Zealand meals did them well and I quite enjoyed them. The black mussels which are farmed in Australia can be very hit or miss in terms of the amount of mussel meat you'll get: at some times of the year, the common kilo pack really is barely enough for a meal for two. That never seems to be a problem with green lipped mussels, which always seem to be very substantial. I also liked the large "scoop your own" vats of live mussels in every New World supermarket we went to.

* the scenery. Well, naturally.

* good service: they do seem to be doing a pretty good job at customer service for tourists in that country. There was one grumpy person we came across twice (at the rest stop on one of the main highways.) But her unhappy demeanour perhaps stood out all the more because everyone else seemed very cheery.

* the wine: of course, we stuck to New Zealand wines, and not just the sauvignon blancs. (While the later are no doubt very good, am I the only person who sometimes finds some of New Zealand examples have too much of that famous "herbaceous" character?) However, the sauvignon blanc we did try were great, but we also really liked the other whites (and a pinot noir) too. They were all very modestly priced (nothing more than $15 per bottle) and seemed high quality for the price. (It seems to me, in fact, that New Zealand wine should be cheaper in Australia, considering its price over there, and the advantageous currency exchange.) Clearly, it's a country that is doing wine well.

* smoked food. Colder places seem much more interested in smoked food. Last year, for example, while visiting Adelaide, I was happy with the wide variety of smoked fish available at the central markets. The best smoked thing we ate in New Zealand was smoked venison. In fact, it seemed to be a pretty common entree in restaurants: smoked venison served with a bit of blue cheese. Very tasty.

Things we were slightly disappointed with:

* soft cheese. We tried a couple from the supermarket, and tasted one at a small cheese maker's, but neither of them were really good examples of (I think) brie. The country seems to do your regular hard cheeses very well, but soft cheeses, for some reason, they don't seem to have mastered as comprehensively as in Australia.

* beer. Tried a few, found all of them pretty unremarkable. No doubt this may just be bad luck (as may the soft cheese too.)

Things it's lucky you have a bit of cash left over for:

* The $25 per adult airport departure tax. Fortunately, I was told, it will soon be added to airline ticket prices, which is clearly the more sensible way to go.

Waiting for Nietzsche

There's no doubt that intellectual interests in life can change over time. An unappealing topic in your youth can gradually change to one which you do want to read up on in your later adulthood.

So knowing that, and given the number of people who seem to like to debate the merits of Nietzsche, I have suspected for some years now that, someday, I will probably get the urge to read him (or even about him).

Yet it is also entirely possible that this day may never come, if this review (by Francis Fukyama, no less) of a new book on him is any guide.

This is the final paragraph:

Young appropriately underlines the notion that postmodernism, with its embrace of diversity in values, is no different from the 19th-century modernism that Nie­tzsche hated. He would not have cele­brated alternative lifestyles, non-­Western cultures or the right of every fourth grader to be his or her own value-creator. Acknowledgment of the death of God is a bomb that blows up many things, not just oppressive traditionalism, but also values like compassion and the equality of human dignity on which support for a tolerant liberal political order is based. This then is the Nie­tzschean dead end from which Western philosophy has still not emerged.

I suspect there'll be people out there debating the accuracy of this representation of Nietzsche (there always is: has there ever been a philosopher more frequently defended as having been misunderstood?) But I think this Fukyama quote does help explain my lack of interest in Nietzsche: I guess I have also always thought of him as an exponent of "dead end" philosophy, and that's something about which I just feel doesn't deserve a lot of effort to learn about in detail.

But as I say, who knows? In 20 years time, maybe I'll be reading him.

Bovine construction method

Dezeen » Blog Archive » Trufa by Anton García-Abril

From the above post at Dezeen:

Photographer Roland Halbe has sent us his photographs of a holiday home in Spain by Anton García-Abril of Ensamble Studio, cast in the earth and hollowed out by a cow.

It's actually kind of interesting...for a small house built by a cow.

That's interesting...

BBC News - Incredibles' Bird to direct fourth Mission: Impossible

Brad Bird, who has directed three terrific animated films (Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille) is to make Mission Impossible IV as his first live action film. I suspect he'll do a much better job with the action than John Woo or JJ Abrims did on the last two.

There's at least one other promising precedent for an animation director turning to live action: Andrew Adamson did Shrek I & II, then did a great job on the two Narnia films.

Speaking of babies...

This documentary is attracting some good reviews:



UPDATE: Salon has an insightful bit of commentary about the film, and documentaries generally.