Categories
Politics Technology

Adding One Word Turns Science Into Bullshit

©William Murphy, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license
Met Éireann's headquarters were modelled on the Death Star

I was wondering what Gaddafi was really up to when he declared a ceasefire. Taking a chance to regroup perhaps, or attempting to bargain? In fact it was something a whole lot more audacious: He would continue to kill people, while saying “Stop fighting back, this is a ceasefire”.

Meanwhile for some reason, the Independent thinks it’s clever to publish the headline “Explosion could send contamination to Ireland“, as if there was actually some reason to fear that happening.

The Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland said it was “extremely unlikely” that any material being released from the nuclear plant would have health implications here.
But Met Éireann forecaster Pat Clarke warned that if an explosion occurred, Ireland could be affected.
“If there was an explosion of up to 30,000 feet, that (material) would be carried (across the world),” he said.

Let’s leave aside the image of 30,000 exploding feet. If we can read even more into his words that has been already, he presumably means an explosion that ejects radioactive debris to a height of 30,000 feet. This would be possible if a Chernobyl-like explosion and fire does occur. Indeed, debris from Chernobyl was carried to the furthest corners of the globe.

Where it did… pretty much nothing.

While it clearly had deadly effect in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus and probably killed in Western Europe too, the fallout was gradually dispersed as it spread, eventually becoming so diluted as to be insignificant next to normal background radiation. So the probability that the explosion of a reactor as far away as Japan will actually harm anyone in Ireland? To use a round number, zero.

Which is what the story here is actually saying – if you ignore the spin. See that “but” in the second sentence of the part quoted? It suggests that this statement disagrees with the previous, that one national agency is contradicting another. That’s what turns these two rather anodyne statements into a story. Ask two different questions, “Can debris from Fukushima hurt us?” (answer: No) and “Could debris from Fukushima get here?” (answer: Yes), then put the two together so that what is actually a reassuring agreement between experts sounds like a worrying conflict. Voilà, news.

Categories
Cosmography Humour

Map Of The Future

i.doubt.it - some class of a blog

You may have noticed this blog has a new address: “I.doubt.it“. No W’s, no dot-com, just a short yet meaningful sentence in English. Not many websites can boast that. As you may know it’s actually an Italian domain name – you don’t have to be Italian to own one (just an EU citizen). I bought this a few years ago but never really got the best out of it, until now.

Naturally I.doubt.it will be the title of the blog as well as its address. As the newspaper column was Micro Cosmopolitan for over fifteen years I’ll use that name in parallel for a little while though. Until the t-shirts are ready at least.

Which could be something like a month. I’m working to a budget made up mostly of coupons here, and had to go for the super-slow delivery option. I don’t quite get this; without being any cheaper it’s actually slower than ordinary post. In order to offer this rate they had to set up a special concussed delivery service, staffed by people in long trailing coats they keep treading on.

Oh, they just don’t print the stuff till later. Right.

That’s the design up there, incidentally. I wanted to keep it simple and slightly mysterious. The strap line “some class of a blog” is a temporary one I think, something vague that won’t tie the blog down too much as it develops. Who knows where this baby is going to go? If the Irish expression is a bit opaque to the overseas contingent, it just means “a sort of blog”, and is faintly disparaging.

So I’ve a month of anticipation ahead. It really is exciting actually – I’ve never done something like this before. Getting t-shirts made feels like the most egotistical thing I’ve ever done. Even though it isn’t.

Categories
Humour Politics

Here Are The News

Artist's Impression of a Queen
Artist's Impression of a Queen

 

While we in Ireland were trying to take a day off, the world elsewhere got on with things. Action on Libya, which apparently is having some effect. This morning the Gaddafi faction claimed they were calling a ceasefire. I trust them about as far as I can throw grenades at them, but it’s a start.

Signs of hope too from Fukushima. Having discussed this with engineers I’m a little more sanguine now that the pool of molten fuel rods isn’t necessarily doomed to burn its way through the Earth’s crust. Still not entirely clear what they can do with it, but at least they don’t consider it to be their most pressing problem.

Er, I think that’s a good thing.

And of course, not unrelated to the day that was in it, President Obama made a date to visit Ireland next year because, like all American Presidents, he is part Irish. In his case, 1/32nd part. It amazes me how successful Ireland has been at creating this image of being a place where people come from. Just about every single US President had some English ancestry, usually a lot, but I’ve yet to see one of them stand outside 10 Downing Street and say “You know, I’m always glad to come here because there’s a little English in me too”.

One perhaps unfortunate element is that the visits by the US President and the Queen of England will be within a week of each other. So if you have any sort of even slight association with a Muslim political organisation, and don’t want searchlights poked up your every orifice, that might be a very good week to take a holiday.

Categories
Humour

St Patrick’s Day 2011

Ireland
Ireland without borders. Or weather.

Watching the St Patrick’s Day parade from Dublin on TV. Huge crowds, people of all ages from all parts of the world having heaps of innocent fun. Weird to think that just two days ago I was on that street, in a shop that sells what I will refer to only as apparel of an intimate nature. But that’s another story¹.

Some like to complain that the St Patrick’s Day parade has become Americanised. I have news for them; if anything it has become Irishised. There may be a lot of things about Ireland that have gone to America and come back strangely transformed. The Taoiseach spoke in the US yesterday wearing a green bow tie, something that would be unthinkable at home. The four-leaved clover you see everywhere these days is another case in point. That’s not an Irish emblem at all, simply a well-known symbol of luck because of its rarity. It’s become confused with the shamrock, presumably with the idea that it’s ‘even luckier’, but of course a four-leaved shamrock makes about as much sense symbolically as a five-legged muskrat.

The St Patrick’s Day parade however is no American version of an Irish tradition. It is an American tradition – and about as old a one as there is. They’ve been having them in New York for two hundred and fifty years, so it pre-dates even the US itself. It was begun by Irish soldiers in the British forces there, and became a tool for recruiting Irish colonists. So, not exactly the associations it has today… Shows you how mutable traditions really are.

So while celebrating St Patrick’s as a special day for Ireland has been traditional since mediaeval times, parading is a much later innovation, only becoming an official national thing as recently as 1931. Naturally Ireland’s own St Patrick’s Day parades were highly influenced by the much older US tradition, with expert American marching bands and cheerleaders frequently stars of the show.

Over recent years though it has been becoming more Irish. Today there are still the bands from overseas, but interspersed with them are arts groups from all over the country using floats, performance and giant puppets to tell chapters from a Roddy Doyle children’s story. Looks like a lot of fun at ground level. St Patrick’s Day parades may have begun as military marches, but it’s good to see them moving on.

  1. Which I am not telling.
Categories
Humour

Food For Breakfast 1

Deep fried pork intestines
Deep fried pork intestines

I am trying to eat breakfasts. Not a lot of them. Just one a day as nature intended. The main thing is that they not be fried. I allow myself fried food in the winter when you need a layer of fat to settle on the midriff and keep you insulated. But as soon as it is even nominally Spring – and I have to admit, the last couple of days have been downright summery – I resolve to eat like a herbivore.

So now it’s all fruit, seeds, yoghurt. I love it. Since I gave up drink I have found a strange comfort in such food. I think it contains all the important vitamins I was previously getting from beer.

To this end, I am seeking a great breakfast cereal. Maybe you consider that cheating. A real health person would be buying their grains and dried fruit by the sack and preparing breakfast with a scoop. But I am not a health person, and I am not a morning person. If it’s not in a big colourdy box marked “Breakfast”, there is a danger that I’ll eat the cat’s stuff.

It turns out my favourite one is by Kellogg’s, of all people. I like it for its mellow fruitfulness, and also because of its name: “Just Right – now with more fruit” – a pretty clear admission that it actually wasn’t just right.

And to be honest I don’t think it’s quite there yet. Slightly too many oats for my liking. Though it’s probable that too many oats for my liking is any oats at all. I’m just basically suspicious of any grain you don’t make beer out of. (You’re welcome to comment that, actually, you can make a perfectly good beer out of oats. You can play golf with a set of bagpipes if you try hard enough. It won’t make you popular though.) My girlfriend eats porridge every morning anyway, so I feel I am making sure that we have a balanced diet between us.

Categories
Technology

Don’t Panic – But Do Walk Away

The China Syndrome
Image via Wikipedia

If I was in Tokyo right now, I fucking wouldn’t be. It sounds like they’re rapidly losing control of the situation at Fukushima. With the cooling system gone, the fuel stored at the number four reactor first melted and has now gone critical – that is, it’s acting like a nuclear reactor itself, generating vast amounts of heat and radiation. And the occasional explosion.

So now they have a pool of self-heating molten metal that is too dangerous to approach. It is hard to imagine what exactly they are going to do about that.

It looks like we could see China syndrome here. Except of course in Japan it is somewhere near the Falklands Islands syndrome. There is a real possibility that Fukushima is going to become the worse nuclear accident ever. And it is close to one of the greatest cities on Earth.

Bugger.

Categories
Cosmography Technology

The Argument For Nuclear Energy 2

History of the use of nuclear power (top) and ...
Image via Wikipedia

The first question then is: Does the world need nuclear to avert global warming and/or replace fossil fuels?

And I’m afraid the answer is an unequivocal Yes. It is pretty much inevitable that as fossil fuels dwindle, we are going to use nuclear more. But we must not make the error of seeing it as a solution to these problems. Debate goes on over how long supplies of uranium and other fissile materials will last, but there is no question that like fossil fuels before them, they are finite. Even if they are safer than hydrocarbons – even if they were perfectly safe – they remain a stopgap measure.

The real technical challenge we face is making these non-renewables hold out until renewable energy systems are sufficiently developed to take their place. We have a destination to reach, if you like, and just one tank to get there on. We do not know how long the journey is. There are no filling stations.

And we need to get there as soon as we can. In part of course because both fossil and fissile are environmentally harmful, but mainly because the more of them we use up, the more expensive they will become. A world that is struggling to find sufficient energy just to keep going is not a world that will be able to take on massive engineering projects. If we do not reach that destination while energy is still relatively cheap, we may find that we cannot afford to get there ever. In which case, we face war and starvation on a barely imaginable scale. Energy is, quite simply, the means to survival.

So what I fear most about nuclear power is not its risks, but that it will give us a sense of energy security where none is justified. We need – and we need right now – to focus on the long-term destination, not on finding new ways to keep the unsustainable going that little bit longer.

Categories
Politics

Look Behind You

Foreign troops have entered Bahrain to quell the month-long uprising. Some are calling it an invited peacekeeping force from neighbouring Gulf Cooperation Council states. Others are calling it what it looks like – military intervention by Saudi Arabia.

Remember the raving lunatic Gaddafi who seemed to be under the delusion that he was the ruler of Libya? Well he’s winning. He may only have minority support, but it’s the minority with most of the heavy weapons.

There is little the rest of the world can do for Japan now. They have the resources to deal with the disaster; any specialised help needed they will get. The danger is that while we are fixated on the human tragedy and nuclear drama, besieged dictatorships in the Middle East will move to crush their nascent democracy movements.

Categories
Cosmography Politics Technology

The Argument For Nuclear Energy 1

Nuclear CartoonIt was not the best day to argue for nuclear energy.

However Philip Walton, emeritus prof of physics at NUIG¹ and son of Irish Nobel laureate Ernest Walton², appeared on national radio last Friday to do just that. News of Japan’s reactor emergency was just coming in at this point, but the appearance was part of a campaign that he and two other physicists had launched at NUIG on Wednesday, so cancelling was really out of the question.

It all seemed a little surreal.

We should not of course let circumstances carry the debate. There are strong arguments in favour of using nuclear fission to generate electricity. Walton is perfectly right to say that all other methods have their risks and their costs too.

The debate is really over how you quantify those costs, and one person’s convincing argument is another’s canard. Walton for instance says that more people are killed mining coal in China every year than in the whole history of the nuclear industry. This may be true – but should we really take greater risks here just because the Chinese have an appalling safety record?

The argument needs to be broken down further:

  • Does the world need nuclear to avert global warming and/or replace fossil fuels?
  • Assuming the answer is yes, do we need to have a nuclear generator here?

The first part is of course enormously controversial right now, and is going to get more so.

I will try to deal with it tomorrow.

  1. The National University of Ireland, Galway. (My own alma mater, as it happens.)
  2. (As in Cockcroft and)
Categories
Cosmography Technology

Accident and Design

It is weird how people focus on the nuclear angle. One Irish news programme even got a radiological official on to assure us that we wouldn’t be in any danger here. We really have no sense of proportion about radiation – and I speak as someone who is not in favour of nuclear electricity generation. This is against a background of perhaps 10,000 actual deaths caused by the natural disaster. So far it’s only been reported that 160 people may have even been exposed to some level of radiation.

For sure, questions do need to be asked about why such an earthquake-prone country is so dependent on this energy source. And it is also true that the nuclear threat is a human element in the story, a preventable disaster.

But we shouldn’t overlook the preventable disaster that was prevented. An earthquake and a tsunami of unprecedented size struck one of the most densely populated places on the Earth. There might easily have been millions dead.

In a place where almost all habitable land is coastal there is little one can do to stave off a tsunami, short of abandoning the country altogether. But buildings can be designed to withstand tremors. They were, and they did so brilliantly. Compare this to Christchurch where they were not anticipating an earthquake and so hadn’t built for it. Amid this tragedy, Japan can take some comfort in the fact that tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives were saved.