Workshop Day 1+2: Train stopped play

A day late but never mind. Email access here is patchy (ie a computer lab across the road rather than on-site wifi) so there won't be much more from me for the rest of this week.

I still don't have the energy to write about yesterday's journey down from Scotland. Maybe later when the memory has faded. Meanwhile have a look here for some hints:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5119668.stm

So my first talk was shifted to today - unfortunately by that time, a few of the audience had had to leave, but it still sparked some interesting comments...

Workshop talks

I'm off to the UK shortly, for a workshop on "Uncertainty, Probability, Models and Climate Change". It is such a highly top secret event that there is nothing about it on the web - in fact, there doesn't seem to be a programme yet at all - but that's ok cos it doesn't start until next week :-)

I understand that workshops such as this one represent the new NERC funding model - they won't actually pay anyone to do any research any more, but they will pay for us to talk to each other about what we would do if we had any money :-) I'm not complaining because I get a ticket home and I'm having a few extra days of holiday while I am there.

I'm giving two talks, which I've put here and here. I'm hoping that the first in particular will provoke a bit of discussion - the list of attendees includes some of those who have published extremely alarming "pdfs" in prominent journals, so it will be interesting to hear their defence.

Afloat again

So I spoke too soon. It seems that Japan has rounded enough of its mercenaries to actually win a vote for once. Does it matter? Some conservationists seem to be getting very upset, but I find John Quiggin's comments to be very reasonable. There are no compelling moral or ethical arguments (except perhaps for the hardcore meat-is-murder types - but aren't 2,000 chickens worth more than 1 whale to them anyway?) so making decisions on the basis of reasonably democratic voting is probably the best we can do.

Again, David in Tokyo has roundup of all the news.

Beached

Japan's hopes to buy up the IWC seem to have run aground for the time being at least. I have to say I have little sympathy for either side in this debate. On the one hand, we have the sentimentalism and symbolism of the anti-whalers, and on the other, the pork-barrel politics of a few local interests and nationalist flag-wavers.

This blogger seems to have a particular interest (and knowledge).

Imprisoned for dancing

This sort of stuff scares me about living in Japan. The police have completely draconian powers, and routinely hold suspects for up to 3 weeks - completely incommunicado, their families often don't even get told what has happened - on any completely trivial charges while they try to coerce the victim into signing a confession. Conviction rates are about 99%, by the way.

In this case, the offence was that a bar owner didn't have the correct set of licenses for late-night dancing. So this apparently warranted 60 policemen storming the bar on a Saturday night, harassing all the foreigners who happened to be there, and imprisoning the owner for 10 days. I understand the standard treatment in Japan for suspects is several days of sleep deprivation, and interrogation with threats. And this guy got 10 days of it for a technical licence violation. It doesn't seem overly cynical to suspect that his real crime was the posession of a Peruvian nationality.

I suppose the majority of Japanese shrug their shoulders and assume it will not happen to them (and of course they are right). Perhaps it's not so different to how things are heading in the rest of the world. Indeed, you could perhaps argue that it is still better here - at least they didn't shoot him, beat him up, or kidnap him and send him abroad to be tortured. But still, it leaves me feeling somewhat uneasy.

Two strikes...

And this time the Comment on Hegerl et al is definitely in the bin. No surprise there, and I did appreciate getting a more reasonably-worded explanation along with the rejection this time. It still seems odd that they say they might be prepared to consider it if and only if we remove any suggestion that it has implications beyond that one specific paper, but they have obviously made their final decision on that point. I'm not going to pursue that approach for the time being - we are off to the UK next week for a workshop on uncertainty in climate change, and I intend to talk about these issues so hopefully we'll get some useful feedback from a wider audience.

Meanwhile, the Comment on Frame et al has been revised and resubmitted, and can be found here. In light of the reply and reviews, we've tried to point out more explicitly where we have significant points of disagreement. We'll probably see how that fares before planning our next move. In the time it's taken, we could probably have got a stand-alone paper done and dusted, but I still think there are good reasons for pursuing it as a Comment and Reply.

Ego traps us in costly, losing battles, study finds

This looks like a really nice piece of research. Kevin Vranes, take note :-)

No, really, that last comment was meant as a joke. But the findings of the paper certainly ring true to me - there's nothing that provokes a good flame war more than a few put-downs, subtle or otherwise. The internet is full of people doing the equivalent of bidding $3.71 for a (known) $1 prize.

Afghan granted refugee status

In a country that only accepts about 10 asylum-seekers per year, each one is headline news.

Bicycle helmets and risk-reward calculations

Since Kevin raised the issue, I thought I would present some of the arguments against the campaign for compulsory helmet use for cyclists. Unfortunately, few people come to the debate with a sufficiently open mind as to allow the facts to influence their beliefs, but here goes anyway:

1. Cycling is already safe and not in any way deserving of special safety equipment
2. The health benefits of cycling massively outweigh the risks
3. Helmets are pretty useless anyway, and can be expected to make some types of brain injury worse
4. Risk compensation means that those who believe helmets to be useful will not be safer
   
5. There are many higher priorities for safe(r) roads
6. Heat stress is a real issue (sometimes)
7. There is no evidence from population studies that helmet legislation (or increased wearing) makes cycling safer
8. Cycling is safer where more people cycle and fewer helmets are worn
9. Pro-helmet 'science' is junk pushed by ignorant shroud-waving nannying do-gooders and the helmet industry
   

I don't claim that is exhaustive, but it should do for now :-)

There are many detailed explanations of the above points to be found on the internet, eg here and here. It's not necessary to accept all the above points in order to conclude that helmet legislation (and perhaps even promotion of their wearing) is at best a distraction from the real issues, and more likely actually damaging in terms of public health alone, let alone the sort of values that we claim to hold dear (eg freedom from unnecessary interference by pettifogging bureaucrats and shroud-waving nannying do-gooders).

I used to routinely wear a helmet when cycling, but gradually came to realise, as I investigated the subject, that there wasn't really any justification for it. In Japan, the summer is hot enough that it was really unpleasant and definitely distracting. The final straw was on discovering a trivial error in a published study, the correction of which demonstrated that their data actually showed helmets to have (at best) a minor influence on safety rather than being the dominant factor they had claimed them to be. The authors' response was basically to say that they still believed their main conclusions even though the data didn't support it! If that is the best they can come up with, I'm distinctly unimpressed. Most of the other oft-cited studies have well-known flaws - in the most infamous example of which, the authors produced a revised analysis (showing a lower benefit from helmet wearing than their original work) but the incorrect (but more impressive) figures are still routinely cited by "safety campaigners".

There are, of course, several differences between powered two-wheelers and bicycles, which may tip the balance more in favour of helmets for the former (I don't claim to know much about the m/c case). But I'm disappointed that Kevin's promised "risk analysis" consists of nothing more than "it's common sense innit". The evidence clearly indicates otherwise, for me anyway. And how many of the "it's common sense innit" crowd wear walking helmets, or even buy them for their children?

If any of you non-cyclists still disagree with me...too bad, I'm cleverer than you and here's the proof :-) As for any cyclists who are still attached to their magic hats, well every rule has its exceptions. It's worth bearing in mind that the UK Govt has stated that one reason it does not support helmet compulsion for cyclists is that the wearing rate is currently too low for it to be workable - so every time you exercise your right to choose to wear a helmet, you are helping to bring forward the day when that right to choose will be removed.

Rant over. I'm off for a bike ride...

Japan considers extending foreigners' work visas to 5 years

Well whoopdedoo. I suppose there is no real reason to actually complain, but for people with jobs, getting a visa extension is generally not that big a deal.

Tenure, employment rights, permanent residency and citizenship are where the real issues are. Will the Govt actually address these substantively? I wouldn't advise anyone (gitwizards aside) to hold their breath.

As one of the comments on the news article mentions, the "gaijin tax" otherwise known as pension system is something they could usefully look at too. We have to pay in to the compulsory system, but on leaving the country, the refund is limited to about 3 years' worth of contributions. This makes it basically a state-sponsored theft from the small number of us who have been here for longer than that time. (We have no chance of actually getting a pension out of the system, which would require us to contribute for 25 straight years.) If 5 year visas become standard, they can hardly not give a 5 year refund - or can they?