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?

Not coping with green energy

Energy crisis cannot be solved by renewables, oil chiefs say - Times Online

Some pessimism from the oil and energy industry:

Shell’s chief gives warning that supplies of conventional oil and gas will struggle to keep pace with rising energy demand and he calls for greater investment in energy efficiency.

Instead of a great conversion to wind power and solar power, Mr van der Veer predicts, the world will be forced into greater use of coal and much higher CO2 emissions, “possibly to levels we deem unacceptable”.

Alternative energy sources, such as renewables, will not fill the gap, says Mr van der Veer, who forecasts that even with major technological breakthroughs, renewables could account for only 30 per cent of energy supply by the middle of the century.

“Contrary to public perceptions, renewable energy is not the silver bullet that will soon solve all our problems,” he writes.

And the chief executive of Exxon agrees:

Mr Tillerson said that world energy demand would rise by 45 per cent by 2030, and fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal – were the only energy sources of sufficient size, adaptability and affordability to meet the world’s needs.

Might be time to start taking geo-engineering more seriously, I think.

Antony goes to Iran

The peripatetic Antony Lowenstein has turned up talking in the Guardian about a recent visit in Iran.

To paraphrase that line from Grapes of Wrath:"where ever there are peoples who hate Jews, he'll be there."

Actually, I have to begrudgingly say that most of the column is an interesting read, concentrating as it does on the difference between private views and the "official" views expressed in Iran, and the fierce form of censorship that exists there. (I found it particularly interesting that he claims that "many people" told him that they don't want America to leave Iraq yet, because of the chaos it would cause.)

However, Antony can't help himself and goes mad in the very last two sentences. They go like this:

Iranians may be the most hospitable people in the world, and yet any American or Israeli attack against the country's nuclear facilities would be met with even-greater repression at home and rallying around the conservative leadership.

Um, fair enough point. I am thinking "Antony, you have written a piece in which I can't find much to object to at all." But then, out of the blue, comes this last sentence:

For many westerners, the concept of Islam at the heart of a prosperous nation is too much to bear. It's a sad indictment of many post 9/11 mindsets.

What?? The rest of the column has said nothing about the "prosperity" of Iran. In fact, this last sentence seems to have absolutely nothing to do with what has preceded it. It's like he just can't control his fingers from typing out commentary without fitting in some criticism, no matter how off the wall, of westerners for being "anti-Islamic".

You only have to go a few posts down in the comments section to see someone who challenges his "prosperous nation" comment, which is pretty good considering this is the Guardian after all.

Congratulations Antony, your goose-dom is saved by your last sentence!

A Saturday Miscellany

* A fascinating story on what it is like to visit North Korea was on Foreign Correspondent this week. If you missed it, there's repeat at 1pm on ABC TV today, and the story should be available on broadband at the link above sometime soon.

* The SMH reprints a David Brooks piece from the NYTimes on his understanding of human nature and why it means school based sex education doesn't work. While his assessment seems plausible, it also seems to me to have fairly pessimistic implications for how you change an individual's perceptions and behaviour. It's an interesting read anyway.

* Michael Duffy has an interesting column in the SMH too, talking about why experts can be bad at forecasting. Two thoughts:

1. If correct, it's a good sign for the future of blogs, as we are all qualified to guess abut the future;

2. Does this also explain why Michael Duffy wrote a book that was half about the political future of the self -detonating Mark Latham?

* They use about 8 tonnes a year of human antibiotics on farmed Tasmanian Salmon? Does not sound like a good idea.

* Matt Price confirms that the puzzlement political journalists have always expressed about Kevin Rudd's public popularity is due to their knowing him better than you and I:

And let me let you in on an insider's secret. Most of us know, or feel we know, Rudd too well. He's a decent and intelligent fellow who has nonetheless grovelled and scraped and dissembled to get to the top, earning the wrath of colleagues and the suspicion of journalists. While the rest of Australia falls under the spell of Kevinism, his stratospheric personal ratings seem faintly surreal to those acquainted with the baby-faced Messiah, and that includes many Labor MPs.

* If you have missed it from Boing Boing, you really should spend the 5 seconds it takes to watch the dramatic chipmunk (even though it's a prairie dog):

On aboriginal issues

Well, the media and blogs in Australia are running hot today on John Howard's sudden announcement of drastic measures to help stop child abuse in the Northern Territory remote communities.

This seems as good a time as any, then, to express some thoughts on some of the problems with aboriginal housing and culture generally.

1. Second hand experience. I have close relatives who have lived in one of the big Cape York communities, and still live in the area and recently went back to do more work on the community. Although the tavern there has been greatly restricted in its operation (shut completely on welfare payday, I think,) I am told that the atmosphere at the community has still become worse in the last year or so. My relative, for example, recently had to get police help to remove a stone throwing group who were attacking the Council offices because they were upset that their dog had been put down by the vet. (Mangy, decrepit and uncared for dogs are a problem in the community, and they paid for a vet to come and put down the worst ones.)

Alcohol entry into the community is tightly policed.

It seems that alcohol restrictions do not always mean a immediate improvement in general atmosphere of a community. Presumably, there is some improvement in terms of assaults and property destruction, but it's not a magic bullet for making residents feel happier in themselves.

This particular community has recently started a tourist venture (but a very expensive one for anyone to experience.) I am told that it is getting bookings, but having seen it on television, I doubt that it has long term prospects. The local area is simply not particularly attractive.

2. Housing. I think it is well known that for some (or most, or all?) remote aboriginal communities, the problem with housing is exacerbated by their spiritual/religious belief that a house in which a person has died has to be left vacant for some months before it can be re-occupied again, and then only after a ceremony to make sure the spirit is really gone, or happy.

When it is already hard enough to get a barely adequate number of houses built in remote localities, I would like to know how much of a problem this really is. Given high aboriginal mortality, does it mean that, say, you ideally would have an extra pool of (I am guessing) 20% vacant houses if you want death affected families to have a temporary house once every few years?

It sounds as if it could be a really significant reason why housing is always crowded.

Some years ago when discussing this with a (left leaning) brother, I half seriously suggested that perhaps the real solution is to have moveable housing; a sophisticated tent, perhaps. He was horrified that I would suggest condemning aboriginals to such accommodation.

But really, I still think I have a valid case for this. As to the cultural appropriateness of housing, people see Mongolians living in yurts, or Bedouins in tents, and find it sort of romantic. Aborigines living rough in the Northern Territory will live in a humpy, making a modern canvas and wood construction a palace by comparison. Yet there is still the perception that suggesting anything less than a house of bricks is insulting.

You wouldn't make every building in a community like this: they have to be able to get shelter from cyclones and such. But I like to imagine that for (at a guess) maybe $30,000 you could come up with a "super tent" and platform floor combination that is just moored on a bit of land and moved as necessary.

There has been a lot of talk over the years of making appropriately designed, very solid, low maintenance houses for these communities. My suggestion is to go in the other direction: make it virtually disposable, making maintenance as irrelevant as possible.

They can have a new one every couple of years, maybe a new one if they believe they still need to vacate it if a death occurs, and still be ahead of the permanent brick and mortar style housing costs.

Just thinking outside the box, folks.