Visiting Lenin

The designer skin he lives in: is it time to bury Lenin's stage-managed show?

The Guardian has an interesting and entertaining account of what it is like to visit the body of Lenin these days.

Big battery news

Two potentially important battery development stories:

* Air battery to let electric cars outlast gas guzzlers

IBM claims to have solved a fundamental problem that may lead to the creation of a battery with an 800-kilometre (500-mile) range - letting EVs potentially compete with most petrol engines for the first time.

Would be very impressive if this pans out - but it is IBM making the claim, apparently.

*  new technology that sounds as if it would allow large scale battery storage of solar power:

Battery developer Eos Energy Storage claims to have solved key problems holding back a battery technology that could revolutionize grid energy storage. If the company is right, its zinc-air batteries will be able to store energy for half the cost of additional generation from natural gas—the method currently used to meet peak power demands.

This is a start up making the claims though, so caution is warranted.

The Anti Tattoo League

I am getting tired of waiting for fashion sense to turn against tattoos, particularly on women. 

Call me sexist, but young men generally are known to be silly risk takers in all  aspects of life.  Ask the insurance companies; and I noted last year the "accident hump" for young men, which apparently "exists in almost all societies and is statistically well documented."

So, it doesn't surprise me that garish and godawful tattoos which will fade into horrible splotchly things in 30 years time appear to be a good idea to some relatively young men.  Of course, this doesn't help explain why any man over 25 gets a tattoo, but who am I to disagree with a few decades of American sitcoms which sociologically prove that women are actually, unknown to their oblivious husbands, the most sensible ones in 9 out of 10 marriages.

So, women:  come on, you mature earlier and are supposed to be the moderating influence on stupid young men.  Hence, I am getting increasingly disturbed at the amount of awful, large tattoos appearing on women's arms.  There is no sense of the tattoo craze petering out for females at all yet - in fact, at this rate, I expect to see our Prime Minister return from summer holidays with a "Timbo 4 eva" tatt, complete with a facsimile of her beau armed with haircutting scissors and dryer emblazoned on the large expanse of skin she often shows between her chin and bustline.  (See here, here, and especially here.)   My previous cautious hope that tattooing has peaked seems to have been misplaced. 

I've said before that the small tattoo on the back of the neck (which seems popular with women) is a bit silly:  they're never going to see it themselves, so it's just self branding for the audience that's behind them in the shopping centre.  But at least it could always be hidden in future if they tire of it by virtue of longer hair. As for smallish tattoos on the breast line or ankle:  again, depends what they wear, but it's not always going to be on display if it turns ugly in future.

But lately I have been noticing absolutely horrendously large tattooing down arms on otherwise conservatively dressed and coiffed women, who don't particularly seem to be wanting to make a "look at me" statement to the world - except, that is (by way of recent example) for the ghoulish zombie like face that is on the forearm handing me change at the newsagent.   Or the shift manager (for goodness sake) at the MacDonalds I was at today, whose entire left arm was devoted to an extensive fairy world themed tattoo.   Granted, it was better than the newsagent's tatt, but you look at this otherwise attractive enough young-ish woman in short sleeves and all you can see is an enormous, arm-devouring fairy tattoo.  

I think it's time society (or at least, the over 50, wanting-to-control-the-rest-of-society-for-their-own-good part of society to which I subscribe) to start taking matters into our own hands.   I mean, would nice women with tatts in a public environment really punch out people for making the quiet observation "my God, that's a hideous tattoo", or "I would notice your nice face if it wasn't for the fact that you seem to want people to stare only at your arm", or the more vindictive take "tattoos are generally kitsch art*; yours particularly so.  I hope you regret it now, or will in the future"?  Maybe all of them could then be followed up with a quick "Nothing personal, mind you.  I hate the tatt, not the person, but nonetheless seek to encourage a severe reduction in tattooing by whatever guerilla tactic I can muster."

I mean, I seriously want to say those things to men too (well, not the bit about the nice face) but I'm not completely insane.  And let's face it:  women can have substantial influence on men, but it ain't going to happen with tattoos while ever they are in a competition for garish arm covering ones too.

So the tactic is identified, and all we need now is to apply it. Join the league.  I won't do it alone...

*  Oddly enough, I Googled "kitsch" to check the spelling, which led me to the Wikipedia entry on the topic which notes the important contributions of both Kant and Hegel to the philosophy of aesthetics; two philosophers who I have recently been discussing at this very blog in other contexts.   I was obviously destined to make this post.

UPDATE:  whaddya know:  Kant did discuss tattoos briefly, and did not approve.

Say anything..

I don't normally find myself reading the (Brisbane) Sunday Mail, but I had time to kill while my daughter and her friend were in the cinema watching the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks travesty (well, after no.2, I think we can safely assume the latest was dire for anyone over the age of 12) and found myself reading this story about the Walter Mitty style Facebook life of a sometime Brisbane school teacher.

Apparently, people enjoy reading Facebook pages of people they don't know and get upset when they realise there is not a shred of truth in them. According to the report, this guy named an imaginary girlfriend (well, at least the life story was imaginary) who was said to be a drugs squad police officer who had been shot during a raid last November, made a recovery, only to die unexpectedly of a heart attack at the end of December. An imaginary funeral was then announced and took place, and our fiction writing "hero" made the following entry on Facebook:

"One thing that Kell said to me the day before she passed away will always stay with me: 'You have made me the happiest woman in the world . . . I love you Clintypoo . . . I'll always be with you'," Mr Acworth wrote on his Facebook page last week.

People kept reading his Facebook after that? Really?

Was this all an in joke, or maybe a deliberate lesson to his students about the dangers of trusting strangers on Facebook? As far as I can tell from the odd comment I hear, Facebook has had nothing but a malign effect on high school student relationships. (I heard someone on talk back radio in the last year or two complaining that half of each Monday at a high school he/she was involved with was taken up with having to deal with the the fall out from the weekend's vindictive slagging off and bullying on Facebook.)

I remain quietly confident that Facebook has been a net detriment to the betterment of society.

Bryan Appleyard seems inclined to feel the same way, and a couple of days ago he was discussing "twittercide", the phenomena by which a politician or celebrity makes ridiculously unguarded, career-endangering comments on Twitter. Bryan seems to fear the worse:

I suspect there’s a neuroscientific aspect to all this. The neurological walls that divide public from private utterance are crumbling. Our brains are being hollowed out. At this rate there will be no unexpressed thoughts and all the sustaining complexity of the human world will drain away to be replaced by a featureless, babbling simplicity. But you’ll now have to buy my book to find out what I mean.

But to get back to Facebook, I am curious as to whether the possibly apocryphal story at the end of this comment to Appleyard's post is true:

Yes I’m shocked at some of what I see on my 17yr old nephew’s Facebook page but the shock is because I’m 40 and not used to seeing that sort of thing set out so publicly, not in the content itself (which, largely, is the same as anyone’s teenage years). This habit of documenting everything is becoming the norm so if he applies for a job in 15 years then all the other candidates – not to mention the hiring manager, HR department etc. – will be in a similar position. They may be apocryphal but I’ve heard stories about shops & supermarkets actively discriminating against applicants without Facebook profiles etc. on the grounds that it’s an indicator of a normal, hopefully gregarious teenager. In other words the absence of social media history may, in time, become more problematic than its presence.

God help us if this right.

Sweaty palms flying

Qantas passengers injured in turbulence

Given last week's news of small cracks developing in the wings of the A380, this is exactly the sort of flight in one which would make me a tad nervous:

Qantas says seven passengers have been injured on a flight from London to Sydney.

The airline says the seat belt sign was turned on and passengers were returning to their seats when an A380 experienced turbulence over India yesterday.

Seven people suffered minor cuts and bruises during the incident.

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.