Squander Two

Having just lived through eight years of people who think they're nicer than me eagerly and vocally wishing George W Bush dead, it's interesting to see that the same people have such mixed feelings about the death of Osama bin Laden. The mangled Martin Luther King misquote doing the rounds — "I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy" — is telling when you remember the huge cheer that went up during James's gig at the SECC — that's a lefty band playing a socialist city — for the proposal that George Bush die. That and a thousand other little events just like it.

They celebrated Reagan's death, they condemned Reagan's attempt to kill Gaddafi, they spent most of a decade shouting for the death of Bush, they were awfully pleased about Fortuyn's murder, they mourned Arafat, they never fucking shut up about looking forward to the big party when Thatcher dies, and now they're awfully upset that people might be pleased about the death of bin Laden. What I really don't understand is why they get so angry when we point out they're not on our side. They clearly don't want to be.

So I'm driving home the other night about three in the morning on pitch-black unlit roads in heavy fog. Real proper fog that stops you using your full-beam headlights 'cause they just bounce off the fog straight back into your eyes and it's like driving into a wall. Fog such that, even though I've done this drive a hundred times and know the road intimately, I regularly have no idea where I am.

And then I overtake this taxi. And the guy immediately starts flashing his headlights at me in a highly irritating way, so much that I begin to wonder if it's not a taxi after all but the police trying to pull me over. He's flashing so much in my mirrors I'm having trouble seeing. And then the guy floors it and overtakes and pointedly flashes his rear foglights at me. The message was clear: "Turn your foglights off, you moron."

In heavy fog.

What the hell is it with taxi drivers?

When you want proper coverage of physics-related news, written by people who actually understand physics and engineering, turn to The Register.

Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now!

Japan's nuclear powerplants have performed magnificently in the face of a disaster hugely greater than they were designed to withstand, remaining entirely safe throughout and sustaining only minor damage. The unfolding Fukushima story has enormously strengthened the case for advanced nations – including Japan – to build more nuclear powerplants, in the knowledge that no imaginable disaster can result in serious problems.

....

all plants are now well on their way to a cold shutdown. At no time have their operators come even close to running out of options. No core has melted down and come up against the final defensive barriers: the safety systems did not come even close to failing, despite being tested far beyond what they had been designed to take. One person has sustained a small dose of radiation which need cause him no concern.

The whole sequence of events is a ringing endorsement for nuclear power safety. If this – basically nothing – is what happens when decades-old systems are pushed five times and then some beyond their design limits, new plants much safer yet would be able to resist an asteroid strike without problems.

But you wouldn't know that from looking at the mainstream media. Ignorant fools are suggesting on every hand that Japan's problems actually mean fresh obstacles in the way of new nuclear plants here in the UK, Europe and the US.

That can only be true if an unbelievable level of public ignorance of the real facts, born of truly dreadful news reporting over the weekend, is allowed to persist.

Spread the word. And if you doubt us on any of this, please read this excellent early description of the events, or follow the reports from the IAEA and World Nuclear News. Very few other channels of information are much use at the moment.

Fukushima update: No chance cooling fuel can breach vessels

Thus far there are no reports at all of anyone receiving a radiation dose with measurable health consequences as a result of the Fukushima damage. The IAEA previously reported that one plant worker had sustained a dose equivalent to about a month's normal background radiation: the US Navy has also said that personnel returning aboard ship from relief work on the quake-stricken coast had sustained similar doses. The Japanese government has carried out a massive programme of radiation checks among evacuees and WNN has reported that so far nine people have been found to have sustained measurable levels of exposure.

Iodine pills intended to prevent radioisotopic iodine from being taken up by the thyroid gland have been distributed to centres in the area. However the pills have not been administered so far as there is no indication of a need to do so.

....

Damage to the Fukushima reactors and possible health consequences from that certainly appear to be totally insignificant to the other effects of the disaster in Japan. One provincial governor has predicted a death toll of 10,000 in his region alone. The lesson to learn here is that life is not made more dangerous by having nuclear reactors, not even in quake- and tsunami-prone Japan.

Nonetheless the reactor situation in most cases continues to lead the international media coverage, nuclear firms have taken stockmarket hits and it is being widely speculated that nuclear build programmes worldwide could be affected.

A lot of the ridiculous scaremongering is trying to paint this event as nearly as bad as Chernobyl — history's second-worst nuclear disaster, they're saying. It is worth bearing in mind when reading such reports that, contrary to what you may have heard from your friendly local Greenpeace activist, Chernobyl caused fifty-six deaths and zero birth defects. Second-worst after that really ain't so bad.

Like The Register says, spread the word. The last thing the Japanese need right now is the worry of worse to come, based on nowt but ignorant fiction.

When you drive over the border from Ireland into Northern Ireland, there's a big sign warning you that speed limits are now in miles per hour. When you drive from Northern Ireland into Ireland, there's a big sign in English, French, and German warning you to drive on the left.

I can't figure out whether this is an incredibly subtle and clever put-down or just the stupidest damn thing on the planet.

Of course, there is the possibility that the road planners of Ireland actually run a competition for Stupidest Road Sign Ever — it would explain a lot — and this is the winner.

Damien makes a case against voting "reform" rather succinctly:

I am opposed to the adoption of AV. One of the main reasons I am opposed is that most of the people who will use it (including many of those who support its introduction) don’t understand the system; whereas nearly everyone on Earth understands FPTP. Call me “a conservative Right-winger who hates any form of change”, but I think that it is fundamental to the legitimacy of a democratic system that its voters know what their votes mean.

Predictably, commenters are ridiculing this, on the grounds that how you vote in AV is really very simple. This misses the point.

AV's defenders tend to misunderstand the "complexity" complaint. The problem isn't that it's too complex to understand how to vote. The problem is that the relationship between the vote and the result is complex enough to allow people who've studied the system to make their votes count more than other people's. And that's fundamentally antidemocratic.

Plus there's an instinct problem. Give people a list of candidates and tell them to list them in order of preference, and they'll put a number next to every name. People don't like leaving blanks. This is why Facebook do so well: stick a form on the site for "favourite music" and users will list all their favourite bands, despite the fact that it's a completely pointless thing to do. AV by the nature of its design abuses this fact of human psychology to give large numbers of votes to candidates no-one actually wants. And it is deeply counterintuitive: putting a candidate twelfth out of twelve is understood by everyone to mean "Worst — do not elect", but AV treats it as a positive vote to be counted in that candidate's favour. Which comes back to my first point: the few politics junkies who study the system will know this, enabling them to make their votes more valuable than everyone else's.

That AV's voting instructions are so simple to follow is the very problem: the system is so simple to use that its complexity isn't apparent to users — and, if people don't know the complexity's there, they won't try to find out about it. A system that was more obviously complex would actually be an improvement: it would be honest.

Perhaps the most helpful change we can make is to change in our own thinking. In the West, there's been a certain skepticism about the capacity or even the desire of Middle Eastern peoples for self-government. We're told that Islam is somehow inconsistent with a democratic culture. Yet more than half of the world's Muslims are today contributing citizens in democratic societies. It is suggested that the poor, in their daily struggles, care little for self-government. Yet the poor, especially, need the power of democracy to defend themselves against corrupt elites.

Peoples of the Middle East share a high civilization, a religion of personal responsibility, and a need for freedom as deep as our own. It is not realism to suppose that one-fifth of humanity is unsuited to liberty; it is pessimism and condescension, and we should have none of it.

We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold.

As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.

— George "Dubya" Bush

Interesting that the man was famous for being ineloquent, yet I couldn't put it better myself. I'm not sure anyone ever has.

There's an estate agent round my way by the name of Peter Rogers. He puts signs up outside people's houses which say

Peter Rogers
Estate Agents

This pleases me.

Voters of Derby, take note. This is what your elected representative thinks of your rights:

Of course, the police can get a court order but what a waste of public money in order to do that.

Yes, Tory MP Heather Wheeler thinks that for the police to obey the law — specifically, law designed to protect us from tyranny — is a waste of public money. If she's consistent in her principles (assuming she has any), then she must think the same about having to get a warrant to search your house. That, or she actually has no idea what she's talking about and is disastrously unqualified for her job. Tough call.

As I may have mentioned before, the problem with the Tories is that they're authoritarian bastards.

The headline:

Ex-Irish PM Bertie Ahern to stand down at next election

Yes, the BBC appear to be suggesting that Bertie Ahern is still Prime Minister and used to be Irish.