Edward Snowden’s (not-so-secret) Secret Superpower

I’ve nothing to hide, but please don’t ask about the midget porn.

I’ll let you into an open secret. Lie-detectors (polygraphs) don’t detect lies: they elicit confessions. They’re the juju in a Nacirema witchdoctor ritual, designed to soften you up before the interrogation (or, as they like to call it, the post-test interview).

Why my dog comes first

I'm not publicly announcing this yet, but this blog only has two followers so what the heck.

Here's a slideshow essay I made. It's basically a rant about how we teach formal grammar. Feedback is very much appreciated.



Why did I do it as a slideshow? Well, who has the patience to read a blogpost these days? The pamphleteer is long dead. If you have a message you want to promote, it's up to you to make the reader's life as easy as possible, and if that means speech bubbles and a cute dog, so be it.

Removing a Facebook curse

We all know how to protect ourselves on-line from viruses and fraudsters. But what about curses? You see a perfectly-innocent looking message like:

AN ACCURATE HOROSCOPE FOR THE WHOLE YEAR 2013! THIS IS SO DEAD ON TO ME IT'S SCARY...

And before you know it, you've read the line that says:

7 years of bad luck if you do not share this post.

And it's too late! Either spread the evil, or suffer 7 years of bad luck. (Note, the above line is for illustrative purposes only, and is magically inert. I've had it curse-checked.)

Well, I broke a mirror when I was 10, and I can tell you that puberty sucked for me. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. So I did a little research, and it turns out that it is, in fact, possible to break the chain of evil.

No more nukes?

Somebody asked me, “Should Japan switch its nukes back on?”  Here's my answer.

It’s such a shame. Geology notwithstanding, Japan should be the ideal place to build nuclear power stations. Few nations have more to gain from nuclear power, and the Japanese values of safety, cleanliness, and attention to detail are exactly what is needed to operate a nuclear power station safely. But it has a cultural Achilles’ heel so severe that the only question still worth asking is: “When, and how are we going to shut these nukes down?”  (Read more...)

Don't get sick in Grimsby

This is what they missed
(©2010, James Heilman, MD; CC-BY-SA 3.0)

We're visiting family in Grimsby, England. On Friday, Chisako came down with a high fever and sore throat, so we took her to hospital to get her checked out.

The doctors were mystified by her condition. They put her in an isolation ward, and tested her for malaria (even though she hasn't been to a malaria region), typhus, and goodness knows what else. They X-rayed her, ultra-sounded her, and swabbed every orifice. Finally, on the fourth day, in sheer desperation, they tried listening to the patient:

"Why don't you look down my throat? I think it's tonsillitis."

"Er ..." shines the flashlight from his cellphone down her throat "Yes, you're right. It's tonsillitis. That's solved the mystery. I'll get your discharge papers."

what

the

fuck

I wouldn't mind so much but, as Japanese residents, we have to pay for our NHS treatment. Three unnecessary nights in an isolation ward and dozens of unnecessary tests won't come cheap. We have travel insurance, of course, but that only pays for treatment that is medically necessary.

Mistakes happen. If it was just that one simple oversight, I guess we could forgive them. But everything was just so sloppy. The nurses couldn't even insert a cannula or mount a drip correctly. When Chisako was moved to isolation, the ward that she left had no idea where she was. I could go on....

I know that the NHS has some excellent, world class hospitals. The Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital in Grimsby is not one of them. In fact, while Chisako was in hospital, it was announced that parts of the hospital would be closed after inspectors found that hundreds of patients were dying every year due to inadequate care.
If Chisako has a relapse, I'll hire a taxi and we'll go to Scunthorpe.

---

ADDENDUM
In response to comments on Facebook:

1. I got the photo on Wikipedia. It's not Chisako.

2. Many thanks to well-wishers. Chisako's doing well.

Love Japanese. Hate kanji.

On the left: an ordinary box of Hello Kitty strawberry flavor Pocky sticks. Perfect for when you grow tired of sushi.

On the right: a cute little kid's cartoon on the back of the packet. It's a simple story of a game of hide-and-seek gone wrong.

Below: the last frame from of the cartoon, with the punchline, "Orirarenaku nacchatta yo..." which I'd translate as, "Oh no! I can't get down!"

"Oh no! I can't get down!"

Now, you're probably thinking, "What a long word that is!" But that's because long words are difficult in English. In Japanese, long words are easy, because long words are really just short words with bits added on the end in a systematic fashion.

In this case:

• the stem is oriru which, among other things, means (I) get down.
• orirareru means (I) can get down.
• orirarenai means (I) can't get down.
• orirarenaku naru means (I) become / will become unable to get down.
• orirarenaku nacchau means Oh no. (I) become / will become unable to get down.
• orirarenaku nacchatta means Oh no. (I) became unable to get down.

The yo at the end is a acts like an exclamation mark.

The nice thing is that we can mix and match these different endings in pretty much any way we want:

• orinai  means (I) don't get down.
• orita means (I) got down.
• orichatta means Oh no. (I) got down.
• oriteinakatta yo means (I) wasn't getting down!
• and so on ...

If you're a connoisseur of programming languages, you'll recognise this as being the much-desired property of orthogonality, which makes languages both expressive and easy to learn.

Sadly, I can only see the beauty and simplicity of Japanese on packs of Pocky sticks, because it's for kids and is therefore written in phonetic script.  Out in the real world, they'd write it like this:

降りられなくなっちゃったよ。

And that first symbol, 降, is one of the many hundreds I still have to learn before I can even begin to make sense of a paragraph in a normal book. Makes me want to weep.

Another Booze Taste-Test

The question we are answering in this taste test is: does a ¥105 can of happoushu (synthetic beer-flavored drink) taste noticably better than an ¥88 can?

A Taste-Test Comparison of a Popular Japanese Beer and its Synthetic Analogue

A Taste-Test Comparison of a Popular Japanese Beer and its Synthetic Analogue

McArthur, C. S.

Abstract

In a blind taste-test, a cheaper, beer flavour alcoholic drink was rated better than the real thing. However, this study lacked statistical power, and further research is needed.

PeTA: less shock, more honesty please

I'm angry with PeTA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). I'm angry that they exaggerate for shock value, and that they are undermining the credibility of an important cause.