Japan's 2010 Science Budget

Surprise surprise, the Japanese science budget is nowhere near as severely cut as several rather breathless articles had anticipated. According to Science:

"the overall total has probably not decreased," says Koichi Kitazawa, president of the Japan Science and Technology Agency, which administers government grants.

But there are of course winners and losers. We (JAMSTEC) seem set to lose 6%, but they were already planning for a 3% drop, so although this may be difficult for some, it's unlikely to be a devastating blow to the organisation. Note that this news relates to the direct Govt support, the 10% increase I mentioned before is for a much smaller (but still rather substantial) soft money project. (We just heard that another big soft money project is flat for the coming year.) What they take with one hand they will probably manage to give back with another anyway:

Increased support for emerging fields should compensate for areas being cut, says Kitazawa. Gaining ground, for example, are green technology programs; money for initiatives under the education ministry will nearly triple this year to $107 million.

Some of the other major science projects that had been in the news will also face some modest cuts (eg the supercomputer), but that probably just means they will have a little less spare money to waste on end-of-year nonsense.

It also seems that the style of the new Govt is still causing some problems...
With the new party bypassing the bureaucrats, Taira says scientists need to find new ways to influence policy. "Exactly how we're going to do that, we don't know yet," he says.

Scary to think that politicians are actually starting to make decisions...

[jules' pics] 1/11/2010 05:34:00 PM

Coming of age day (成人の日, Seijin no Hi), originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Yesterday was totty day at Hachimangu. It was especially busy this year. Perhaps a couple of photo-clubs had made the pilgrimage. That would explain the groups of same age, same style, same camera people standing in the same place taking the same picture. The youths who were not attending the official ceremony seemed to be having all the fun. One kimono-girl even got her boyfriend to photograph her with James. Ah - the allure of the tall fairish "western" man...

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 1/11/2010 05:34:00 PM

[jules' pics] 1/11/2010 01:44:00 AM

Save the graphic designer; save the world., originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Hidden in the back streets of Kamakura, the answer to all the world's problems, "If the graphics get better people's life-style will change and the earth will be a cleaner planet". Those silly climate change bloggers better hang up their keyboards and take up painting.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 1/11/2010 01:44:00 AM

Open the review process

So the Lindzen and Choi stuff has been effectively trashed (1, 2, 3), and the part GRL has played in the process is not a glorious one.

I'm relieved to see at least that GRL is now starting to be more honest about its attitude towards comments. As you may recall, I've had my problems with them in the past, and I'm glad to see I'm not alone. Perhaps it would be for the best if they bit the bullet and completely abolished comments and replies, which would at least restore some honesty to their behaviour (since in practice they have already abandoned their published policy). However, I don't really like the apparent drift towards comment-in-all-but-name papers which basically focus on errors in a specific previous paper, but which do not give the original authors any opportunity to defend their work against the specific claims. Thus, the disinterested reader may find it hard to judge where the truth lies. There is a hint of this in this Lindzen case, since he has claimed to Andy Revkin that he has a new analysis which sustains his original case (seems unlikely to me in this case, but I mean in general).

A third way could be illustrated by the EGU's approach (eg see here for CP). A major failing in the publication of LC, and probably many similar papers, is the wholly inadequate nature of the peer review they received. Errors cannot be completely eliminated, but I am confident some of the more obvious attempts to game the system would be weeded out - in fact I think most would be dissuaded from even submitting such work, though genuine disagreements can be (and sometimes are) openly aired. Which is, I think, probably useful for the participants, and sometimes amusing for the rest of us :-)

Perhaps the saddest aspect of this story is seeing some apparently talented post-doc try to flush his career down the toilet. Lindzen is a lost cause, Choi is (presumably) not, at least not yet. But if he keeps on putting out shoddy and obviously wrong work, his future may get markedly less bright.

As for the paper itself, it seems hard to defend it as merely honestly mistaken, given the errors identified. However, I haven't seen LC's defence...

[jules' pics] 1/09/2010 02:30:00 AM

Northern Pintail duck, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

More duck.

Yes, despite several meals of Duck Fried X, there is still more than a pint of fat remaining from the one we cooked.

[Hachimangu pond]

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 1/09/2010 02:30:00 AM

[jules' pics] 1/07/2010 09:25:00 PM

Black Headed Gull, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Time for some more ducks. But no, it is a gull pretending to be a duck! I wonder if it would be delicious.

jules' pics at 1/07/2010 09:25:00 PM

Debt-laden Japan completely unperturbed by UKP630bn spree

Of course the Times headline tried to hype it rather more than that, but no-one here took any notice :-) The Japan Times talked about "long-simmering worries" but there are still worries about ongoing recession, so the spend-first, worry-late approach may be justified. Anyway, the Japanese economy has been running on funny money for decades, and despite all the sound and fury, I for one don't expect the new govt to be very different from the old one in fundamentals - there may be shifts in spending priorities, but not in the basic philosophy of dirigisme. Indeed I suspect that most Japanese will not even have considered the possibility that there might be an alternative.

In these straitened times, our budgetary worries continue. A project I am involved in just had its annual review, and on the basis of a mediocre middling ranking (someone described it as a B+) next year's budget has been......increased by a substantial 10%. There is some ongoing restraint on salaries, so we won't actually get paid more, but will have to splash out the excess on electronics and travel, which is presumably the point of the bonus.

Of course we had to provide detailed budget plans to the Ministry some time ago, so will now have to provide new plans, along with an apology for getting it so badly wrong first time :-)

[jules' pics] 1/06/2010 10:04:00 PM

sunrise from Kamakura beach, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Japanese New Year is more about sunrise than midnight. This pic was actually taken on the2nd Jan, but that's accurate enough for this astrophysicist who's just happy her CCD was measuring light from the intended star.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 1/06/2010 10:04:00 PM

We have contact!

Since Hank asked, and I've not seen anyone else doing it, here's some translation of what I can make out from the Japanese video (starting about 23s in)




"hai, tadaima sesshoku"
"We have contact"
"AG-go o honsen no mae tskukimashite, AG-go sesshoku shimashita"
"The AG appeared in front of us, we made contact"
"AG-go o honsen no mae detekimashita, AG-go sesshoku shimashita"
"The AG came out in front of us, we made contact"
[something a bit unclear, maybe "honsen o butsuk-" = "They hit our ship", cut off part way through when he realised how silly that is]
"Koukou o jama shimashite, AG-go sesshoku shimashita"
"There was an intrusion into our path, we hit the AG."

I think. My Japanese is pretty awful though so you have been warned!

Well it looked like a whale...

...sleek and black and with fin-like things...


So it's excusable really that the Japanese whalers should have rammed the Ady Gil, knocking a chunk off its bow.

That picture is a screenshot from the video which can be found here. I won't speculate on the boating laws that might apply in this case, but it is not clear to me that the Ady Gil was actually stationary (as Sea Shepherd have claimed). It was basically idling at the start of the clip, but seems to start generating a significant wake a few seconds before the impact. Hopefully there will be enough hot air generated over this to end the current cold spell.

Having seen a couple more videos, it is pretty clear that the Japanese boat turned sharply towards the Ady Gil and rammed it at high speed. See the boat spinning round at the start of this video



also confirmed by the changing angle in the first few seconds of this: