Gosh

Landslide

It's hardly unexpected, but WOW:

Exit polls and early vote counting indicated the DPJ was heading to a victory much larger than the LDP's landslide win in the Lower House election four years ago, when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's postal privatization plan gained widespread attention.

As the DPJ racked up seats to push it above the 241 needed for a Lower House majority--and even beyond the 296 seats won by the LDP in 2005--a who's who of prominent LDP lawmakers were going down in defeat.

Although Prime Minister Taro Aso won his seat in Fukuoka Prefecture, he indicated Sunday night he would step down as LDP president to take responsibility for the drubbing that many blame on the unpopular leader.

"We will have to accept the voice of the people that has produced such a severe result," Aso said.

The LDP now appears bereft of leaders. Party Secretary-General Hiroyuki Hosoda said he told Aso earlier Sunday that he and other top party executives would resign to take responsibility.

"We will seriously atone for our faults and prepare for the next election," he said.

The LDP came into the election in an unfamiliar spot: as the heavy underdog. Public opinion polls proved accurate, as the LDP was struggling to match the 113 seats the DPJ won when it was humiliated in the 2005 election.

So, a retread of 1993-4, or actual change? I liked this summary [via James Annan]:

One of the parties is led by an immensely wealthy grandson of a former conservative party prime minister, and the other is led by an immensely wealthy grandson of a former conservative party prime minister. One of these princelings 's tongue frequently gets tied in knots when he is trying to explain himself and the corruption of his colleagues, while the other's tongue frequently gets tied in knots when he is trying to explain himself and the corruption of his colleagues.

We'll be treated to a load of tribalist bollocks in the UK, of course, of both the "DPJ? Oh noes, teh leftisses and there socialism!!1!" and the "Democratic Party Japan = UK Labour Party = WIN!" varieties. 

Blast from the past

Toyama Kooichi rides again

Via Blood and Treasure, Toyama's speech from the 207 election for governor of Tokyo:

He came 8th, out of 14. And you thought Ishihara Shintaroo was colourful...

"The thing's hollow - it goes on forever- and oh my God!"

It's full of hippies

Selections from the climate camp programme [link via LC]:

Interactive Theatre on Climate Justice

SM1, Sat, 14:30-16:00

2% of fear and desire. A fun but challenging interactive show that uses Augusto Boal's Cop in the Head techniques helps examine what stops people taking effective action on climate change.

Eco-Feminist Story Telling (Part 1)

Kids' Space, Mon, 10:30-11:30

We will read some eco-feminist stories for children, and then you will get a chance to create your own story! We will play ‘circle stories’ and each child will add to the collective story line-by-line. We will write down the story, and it can be illustrated and printed within a zine. We can make puppets and act out our story too!

DSEi 2009: 8th September, City of London. Destroy the Banks! Destroy the Investors! Destroy the Arms Trade

MM4, Sat, 14:30-16:00

This year's DSEi will be making the link between climate chage and the arms trade. Come to the workshop , find out more, get involved, and let's hold the investors accountable for the death and destruction they cause worldwide!

Everything you Need to Know to Occupy your University

Student Space, Sun, 10:30-11:30

Occupations are back in vogue and this participative workshop - run by a student involved in organising the Cardiff University occupation in February of this year- will give a you step by step guide to practical knowledge of what you need to do to successfully occupy your university.

If not Carbon Trading, then what?

MM4, Sun, 16:30-18:30

We know the European Trading Scheme is a disaster, and Kyoto was a joke. But is it possible to design a carbon descent framework which would guarantee equity as well as the necessary carbon reductions? If so, what would it look like? And what possible steps could an activist/campaigner take to get us closer to this ideal? Is it worth our precious time thinking about this nerdy stuff at all? This is a mini-plenary discussion with Charlie Kronick (Greenpeace’s senior climate advisor), Ruth Davies (head of climate change policy at RSPB), Oliver Tickell (architect of the "Kyoto 2" initiative), Niel Bowerman (advocate for Contraction & Convergence), and Shaun Chamberlin (advocate for Tradable Energy Quotas).

Copenhagen and Carbon Trading - where did it all go horribly wrong

MM3, Sat, 16:30-18:30

What is going to be discussed at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December? What is carbon trading, and why should we care? What role does the European Union play? Discussions on a new global climate agreement are shrouded in a cloud of acronyms and obscure market schemes. This workshop decodes what is at stake in Copenhagen, exposing how the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), sectoral carbon markets, and schemes aimed at Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) would exacerbate local social and environmental conflicts and incentivise land grabs whilst failing to tackle the climate crisis. It will then explore some alternatives needed to promote climate justice in the UK, the EU and beyond.

************

The thing I want to go to is the workshop on Nuclear Power, which is fairly and unbiasedly called "If Nuclear is the Answer, you're asking the wrong question". 

 

Promises, promises

The DPJ and LDP manifestos are here. More comment on this tomorrow.

Both parties are promising to ban "hereditary" Diet seats. "Hereditary", in this context, means seats that were held by by the candidates father[1] and then "inherited". The DJP don't say how this ban will be enforced, but the LDP say they will not "endorse[ment n]or support" candidates "within three degrees of kinship" of a retiring candidates, although only from the next general election.

Meanwhile, Yomiuri is reporting : 

The Democratic Party of Japan has featured "three icons" of the party in its campaign for the Aug. 30 House of Representatives election to convince voters that the main opposition party is well equipped to take the reins of government.

The prominent coverage given to DPJ President Yukio Hatoyama, Secretary General Katsuya Okada and Acting President Naoto Kan--the latter two also have served as party leader--stands in stark contrast to the approach adopted by the Liberal Democratic Party, many of whose candidates hope to cash in on the popularity of Health, Labor and Welfare Minister and House of Councillor member Yoichi Masuzoe to boost their campaigns. - [source]

I don't think we're going to see anything comparable to the phenomenon that was Kazuhiko Yamauchi this time round, tho'.

[1] The actual Hereditaries, the Peerage, were abolished after the second world war, and the House of Peers replaced by the elected House of Councillors. The adoption of a bicameral rather than a unicameral legislature was one of Matsumoto's few successes in the face of GHQ's "advice".

Wipeout for the other Liberal Democrats?

Election count-down

A week to go, and a DPJ victory seems almost certain:

The Democratic Party of Japan appears likely to sweep into power by securing over 300 seats in the Aug. 30 Lower House election, a Kyodo News survey showed Saturday.The ruling Liberal Democratic Party looks set to lose its grip on government and be reduced to slightly over 100 seats in the House of Representatives, down from the 300 it held heading into the campaign.

I had assumed the previous poll from July was an outlier, but this looks conclusive. 

The Liberal Democratic Party has something to hold on to:

Of those surveyed, 36.3 percent said they have yet to decide which candidate or party to vote for in the single-seat districts, while 32.8 percent remain uncommitted in the proportional representation section. It is thus possible the overall situation could change suddenly ahead of election day.

but I don't think I'd be betting on it. It's remarkable - except for 1993, the LDP has been in power since 1955.

[I was going to write a post comparing DJP with the LDP manifestos, but I've been ill for the last few days. Hopefully, I shall be well enough to write it before the election]

Tale from the White Hart

I used to love Arthur C. Clarke's short stories set in the White Hart.Not everyone cares for "club tales", and the stories are woefully deficient in monoliths; but Harry Purvis is a fun character, you get to meet lightly fictionalized versions of the UK SF writing establishment, and "Silence Please" must be the first suggestion of noise canceling technology.

I think in "Silence Please" the White Hart is described as being close to Kings and that if you cram your head out of the window in the gents you can see the river. Clarke also describes the pub as a fictionalized version of a pub called the "White Horse".

Which brings us to last night, when I was enjoying a most agreeable pint in a pub called the "The White Hart" which is close to Waterloo and the Kings physics department. There were no windows in the gents. 

So - is it the right one? I think I shall pretend it is. 

Folk philosophy

Are you sure "dualism" means what you think it means?

The real problem about commenting on this is that we have yet to see the full proposals. The Lib Dem blogosphere, particularly the Libertarians, love to get terribly exercised at the prospect of banning things. It’s just not liberal! we are constantly reminded, or more precisely, it is Fundamentally Illiberal(complete with scary looking capitalisation). Personally however, I tend to take a more evidence-based approach before banging on about John fucking Mill (I think the Lib Dems should produce their ownGod Trumps inspired Liberal Trumps, with the Mill card always winning. It would save a lot of time). Philosophy is always reached for, psychology or sociology almost never. It is as if the last 100 years never happened. More to the point, it is as if dualism was never critiqued. Frankly, if we did all live in a state of complete seperation of mind and body, the libertarians would have a point. The fact that time and again we learn that environmental factors affect behaviour is a problem they have never come to terms with.- [source]

I don't have a view on banning "air-brushing", but I don't see how whether dualism or d'Holbachian materialism is correct can have any possible bearing on the necessity or efficacy of the proposed ban.

For bonus hilarity, the previous instalment of this row involved people who couldn't diagonalize a Hamiltonian expressing firmly-held opinions on the implications of quantum mechanics on "free will" and, remarkably, the amount of time physicists spend on different problems. Favourite comment:

"You ask for “proof” - well, how is thousands upon thousands of accumulated scientific knowledge? We live in a closed, causational universe (you could, again like a theist, argue for some kind of quantum-get-out-of-jail-free card but that don’t wash). That is what science, from Newton to Darwin to Einstein tells us. " - [source]

which was a surprise, as the last time the political blogosphere tried to dress up as David Deutsch, we were assured:

"Quantum mechanics screws with the whole concept of a personal god at such a fundamental level that even the most ardent religious apologists steer clear of arguing with the cosmologists and trying to take on the uncertainty principle.

They just ignore it and hope that everyone but a few physicists will go on thinking that quantum mechanics is way to difficult to bother trying to understand."

The things you learn on the internets!

They're back!

Excellent news

After a long absence, Andrew Rilstone and Steven Poole are back. Excellent stuff.

[via Andrew Hickey]

Robotic ramen

Noodles!

The Reuter's transcript describes the robot- produced dinner as ramen. 

Of course, given it's in Nagoya, they should be serving misonikomi udon rather than ramen. 

[Video from Singularity Hub, via Marginal Revolution]

BYO satellite

"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to burn up on re-entry"

Amateur satellites have been around for years, and there's a fairly active community of hams [via Alex]. But via the Register, I learn that "Interorbital systems" are offering to launch you a satellite (albeit one that'll burn up in a couple of weeks). 

As the companies business model includes selling futures on moon rock, I'm a little bit sceptical. But on the other hand, it's $8,000 for your own satellite...

I do not find this persuasive 

Barbara Ellen reports 

The Guardian:

How quaint that the Conservative party is planning to punish naughty children by taking away their mobiles. Labour is proving much more hardline: taking away the educational futures of tens of thousands of British teenagers, who will be denied university places this autumn.

This shortage of places, between 60,000 and 80,000, has been caused not only by cutbacks, and higher numbers of young applicants, but also by older applicants, "mature students", who have lost their jobs and want to "sit out the recession" at college. Well, fine, so long as the younger applicants get priority.

Admittedly, I am biased. I am one of Britain's beleaguered Pots (parents of teenagers) and this is a headache too far. Don't our young already have it tougher than recent generations? And, while I have nothing against mature students, surely they should be given places purely because they want to study. Otherwise, all we are doing is enabling the government to hide appalling unemployment figures.

It is almost reverse ageism - the young being bumped out of their rightful places so that universities can be employed as higher education catacombs for the fiscally dispossessed. Suspicion deepens when one hears of Brown's response to the crisis - the creation of a measly 10,000 places, with priority given to "maths, science and engineering".

Brilliant, except it would be surprising if there was a shortage of places in such technical subjects, though, if they had the relevant qualifications, these may be the sort of degrees mature, probably male, students would go for. What a coincidence.

I suspect there may be other reasons why the government may wish to give priority to "maths, science[,] and engineering" than to directly conspire to deprive Ellen's offspring of places reading sappier subjects. I'm not going to engage in fashionably smug sneering at "humanities graduates"[1], but stuff like this makes you wonder...

[1] Why is so much opprobrium directed at "media studies", BTW? Why is this subject derided in a way that related subjects like "political science", "history", and "english" aren't?

Attention, legal beagles!

Could this happen in the UK?

Via Dr. Isis, this:

I am an assistant professor (about 3 years into starting my lab) at a research university. On Monday of this week, I received an email from a freedom of information act specialist saying that a secretary at another research university had requested a copy of my recently funded R01 and that I had 5 days to comply. I called the secretary (who was requesting for an anonymous physician) and explained to her that there was a ton of unpublished data and a research plan for the lab that I thought when writing was confidential. I then offered to send her the grant in its entirety without government involvement if she would have the physician send me an email promising to keep it confidential. I should point out that I am very good about sharing reagents and have given out my grants (funded R01, R21, R03 and foundation grants) to others with the agreement that they stay confidential. Two days after my phone call (and subsequent email), this secretary sent a very curt email saying that they "preferred to go through the freedom of information act."

The same bloke adds in comments:

"Also, it actually makes you wonder if the lab notebooks filled with data generated with NIH money are also subject to the FOIA."

Over here, the EPSRC publish a synopsis - usually a 1-3 paragraph lay summary of the research that you contribute with your proposal  - on each successful application. Do the other RCs do the same?

Everyone's a critic!

A 19th century "higher" critic 

Via Phil, I learn that German biblical criticism has been challenging the bastions of other "historical" events:

1. If you watch programs about the moon landings, some show certain film clips near the start of the program and some show the same clips near the end. This shows that the producers of the programs are not interested in preserving truth, but just in getting across the message that suits their preconceived aims. They are therefore not to be trusted.
2. The release of Led Zepplin 1, the Beatles’ last performance, Yasser Arafat’s election, the Boeing 747’s maiden flight and Robin Knox-Johnston’s solo nonstop circumnavigation are not mentioned anywhere by any of the astronauts. These were major world events that happened in the months before the mission, so their non-inclusion shows that the astronauts’ lines are clearly fakes, read from a script.
3. Neil Armstrong’s accent sounds different sometimes,, which leads scholars to believe in the presence of a deutero-Armstrong who recorded the scenes while on the moon, and possibly a tritio-Armstrong for the scenes on the way back. That Neil Armstrong could actually sound a bit different at different times, is considered too improbable to countenance.
4. Man has always dreamed of walking on the moon. By making up this moon landing story, NASA were merely channelling stories they’d cherished for years, and passing on the truths they’d learned around the campfire. They felt the need to create a ‘moon-community’ who could pass down this myth they’d created, as it contained the truths by which they now lived their lives. This must be true, as any other explanation would require NASA to actually innovate and do something nobody had done before, ie land on the moon. Innovation involves doing things that haven’t been done before, and as we judge things by the standards of the past, we can never judge an historical event was the result of innovation. - [read the rest here]

[I suspect that 9, which reads differently to the others, was an interpolation by a redactor, which we will need to transcend to access the real proto-Greg text]

Ignore the wailing of "fundamentalists" (by which I mean people who disagree with me) who insist on the literal truth of the moon landings, a mere counjouring trick with stones:  what really matters is that Armstrong walked on the moon in our hearts. 

This post should not be construed as supportive of Brian Haw

Will they be any better?

"Mr Cameron today told Sky News' Sunday Live a future Tory government would take steps to have it removed.

He said: "I am all in favour of free speech and the right to demonstrate and the right to protest.

"But I think there are moments when our Parliament Square does look like a pretty poor place, with shanty town tents and the rest of it.

"I am all for demonstrations, but my argument is `Enough is enough'."" - [source]

That isn't an argument, it's a tautology. 

How utterly vile

But leftists are TOO caring!

I think the best way to deal with unpleasant rubbish like this is just to file it away, and wheel it out when some halfwit tries to tell you how uncaring and "nasty" Tories are.

[via Ben]

Should we teach maths like music?

"High School Geometry: the instrument of the devil"

Via Scott Aaronson, I read this glorious rant by mathemetician Paul Lockart about maths teaching in schools. 

Now, I don't agree with most of it, and hope to discuss why in a future post, but it is such a pleasure to read a critique that isn't by a laudator temporis acti who took his O-levels in the 1970s and has been sulking about it ever since. This bit, in particular, is splendid:

"“The area of a triangle is equal to one-half its base times its height.”  Students are asked to 

memorize this formula and then “apply” it over and over in the “exercises.”  Gone is the thrill, 

the joy, even the pain and frustration of the creative act.  There is not even a problem anymore.  

The question has been asked and answered at the same time— there is nothing left for the 

student to do. 

"

Much as Stephen Fry is the stupid person's idea of what a clever person looks like, an exam that require the rote memorization of  endless formulae before plugging in a series of random numbers is what some non-physicists  think a physics paper should looks like.

The difference between physics and economics

Graphiness

Straight lines, baby! There was no need to take 3 data points, or it might have spoilt the fit.

Oh well, at least it wasn't bloody Widdecombe.

Great minds think alike

And the pounds took care of themselves

Via Alex at the Fistful of Euros, I learn that John Graham-Cumming, Slayer of Spam, has had similar ideas regarding Benford's law. He has looked at the figures in the forms submitted by the chancellor, the prime minister, and Harriet Harman. The PM and HH expenses follow the distribution, but the chancellor's do not. There are rather more 3's and 4's than you would expect by chance. He has identified the source of these: the chancellor claims exactly £300 for food every month, and reqularly claims £45 for his telephone bill.

He also observes that Hazel Blears has submitted claims for whole number of pounds. Hmm.

Were I to fabricate my expenses, I -or at least, whichever of my sons was working for me full-time whilst also a full-time student  - should be sure to add an appropriate and possibly random number of pennies to each of my more creative claims, if only to add an air of vermislitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. [Benford's law probably wouldn't be able to pick up divergences south of the decimal point, as the distribution tends to uniform as the order of the digit increases]

On the other hand, you are allowed to round down in (some of) the boxes on your self-assesment, so it might well be legitimate to do so on an expenses form. 

In any case, I think the best test is reciepted expenses vs. unreciepted expenses. As soon as we see some tabulation at the Guardian project, it'll be time to break out the Benford's.

Benford's law and The Commons

A modest proposal

Have you ever tried to make up numbers? I mean, to write a series of random numbers on a bit of paper? It's a problem faced by fraudsters: how to fabricate a series of plausible data. 

Consider the digits. I had always supposed that, in a given series of numbers, you'd expect the likelihood of a number starting with a 1, a 2, a3,..., or a 9 would be about equal (for a large enough sample of numbers) at ~11%. 

I supposed erroneously. 

Actually, for a surprisingly wide range of data types -from the lengths of rivers in an atlas to amounts of money in an account- numbers beginning with a '1' are much more common, appearing about 30% of the time. Numbers beginning with a '2' occur about 18% of the time, and higher digits with decreasing frequency. This is called Benford's law.

This remarkable result has been put to use in fraud detection, by using it to pick out suspicious sets of accounts for further investigation.

Now, there's a few caveats: it doesn't work for all data - sequentially assigned numbers like bank account numbers, for instance. However, the MPs expenses scandal (via the Guardian data blog) provides a natural test for this, as MPs expenses are all either:

(a) amounts over £250, which had to be supported by a receipt, or

(b) amounts under £250, which didn't. 

Will both sets of figures follow Benford's law? Will neither? Or will most sets of expenses (a) follow the law, while the un-receipted expenses (b) won't? This might raise some interesting questions.