Mon, 11 Jan 2010
Thanks to Joey Hess for the request to set up tor bridges. I wholeheartedly agree, and recommend the video he points to. I've installed a Tor bridge at home, and recommend others to do so.
For the most part, I'm not politically active at the moment - I'm doing a PhD Part-time, and thats consuming all my "spare" time, other than work and family. Just given a blog site, however, one subject strikes me as very important - free speech. Hence the side links to Amnesty International, etc. In Ireland this campaign has a particular focus at the moment - the Repeal of the Blasphemy Law. This law came into effect in Ireland this January. While the government claims that this law will 'never be used', its bad in several ways. Firstly, it promotes the ideas of censorship as a method of hiding social issues, and secondly it may actually be used, as pointed out in :
Blasphemy is a Victimless Crime from Limerick Blogger on Vimeo.
Basically, with Europe-wide arrest warrants, if two European countries have criminal blasphemy laws, then someone may be extradited to face prosecution in another country. While the Irish government says they will never prosecute, they open the possibility of say, Irish citizens being extradited to Greece to safe prosecution for blasphemy.
On a wider level, I recommend Index on Censorship. It keeps documenting the cost of censorship around the world, and has been instrumental in campaigning for Libel reform in the UK, which is ncreasingly important for open scientific discussion.
Fri, 08 May 2009
Adrian von Bidder raises an interesting discussion on why public health care is difficult. Basically, it comes back to the challenge:
The problem is, the majority of health costs are in the last few years of a persons life: when the body is breaking down. If viewed from the problem of health-care funding vs. eg. education, you have an ethical dilemma: is it worth it ? Here there are no easy answers.
Nick Bostrom wrote a very interesting and persuasive essay a while back, The fable of the Dragon Tyrant. In short, we are getting somewhere with regenerative medicine While cures are hard to come by at this stage, there is a growing realization in medicine that senesence, what we used to call "old age", is curable. But we have a lot of psychological defensive mechanisms to help us cope with the carnage of old age that make us deny the problem: if we look afresh at "old age" knowing it to be curable, any delay in doing so is abhorrent.
From a public, societal perspective, we spend a fortune every year on health. But we do so in a very disjointed way: we pay colossal amounts for health care, but also for basic health science: in the US, for example, the budget for the National Institutes of Health is about 30 billion dollars. Nearly twice that of NASA. Similar figures are spent in Europe, but there is this strange gap in the middle: the drug companies and medical industry. We start the development of new drugs with public money, and we buy the drugs with public money, but the choice of what drugs and treatments are developed are left to private industry, that is, a profit motive. This results in many cases in expensive treatments to treat symptoms rather than necessarily cure the problem. Faced with the huge costs of geriatric medicine and senesence, the response should be co-ordinated: funding a cure will be expensive, but save a fortune (Think, instead of a pensioner slowly dying and 'being a drain on resources', of 'experienced citizen in the prime of their productive, tax-paying years'). Instead of funding the basic science alone, we should be funding the complete drug and treatment development publically, only farming out the actual manufacture to private industry.
It is silly to spend a fortune to keep merely keep someone alive at the age of eighty or so, when we know for a larger investment (bigger than a private company can do), we can cure them properly. The solution to the dilemma, then, is to stop thinking of the elderly being a drain, but actually applying our public efforts in a co-ordinated manner to solving the carnage of old age.
Tue, 14 Apr 2009
In college at the students union elections we once had the pleasure of seeing a candidate run into the lecture theatre during a break, give a 30-second stump speech, run out, and (accidentally), run in the other door to the same theatre, give the same speech to the same class, and leave without realising his mistake.
But at least this was college politics, and a friendly audience. It takes a government minister to stand up in front of a rally of his opponents supporters and accidentally denounce them ... (Wrong rally blunder in India poll, thanks to the BBC).
Mon, 08 Dec 2008
Storm World, by Chris Mooney is an account of the development of the science of Hurricanes and their links to Global warming, against the background of Katrina and the politics of global warming.
read more »
Sat, 01 Dec 2007
Jaldhar Vyas points to the rogues gallery of oil producing states and argues that Neoconservatism is good, well at least it gets rid of the dictators such as Saddam Hussein while it grabs the oil.
As he ightly points out, we are researching new alternative energy sources, and just as importantly (or even more importantly) energy conservation. But we have been doing this for decades. Sooner or later we have to realize that the "Oil Crisis" isn't due to a shortage of energy sources: its due to deliberate politics to make us dependent on oil.
Peak Oil is "only" a crisis for us consumers, dependent on oil to drive our cars, heat our houses, and supply our food. For oil companies, it means (1) they are shipping oil at a greater rate than ever before, (2) at higher demand than ever before, and (3) in circumstances where pesky politics like OPEC can't interfere and try and moderate the price down (I'm not arguing OPEC or cartels are good; its just that its long-term 'maximize the benefit for the oil producing nations' strategy interferes with oil companies shorter-term profit maximization). For the Oil Companies, its a good thing. In this context we have to see our current dependence on oil as the result of deliberate policy by the oil companies.
The small filip that USanian governments have done towards alternative energy, such as funding Hydrogen fuel-cell research, nuclear power, etc. are so long-term, and so small in scale, that they have to be seen as deliberately not solving the problem. Thinking that research into alternative sources is good is gpoing to save us (disclaimer: as a scientist I think research is a good thing :-)) is missing the real problem. Its politics: the oil companies have simply been better at politics than the strugging alternatives; we need to recognize this, and fight for alternatives. When oil prices reach $100/barrel, and we struggle to pay rising food and energy bills, its because other have deliberately caused the crisis.
Oil has often been called a Curse because of the effects 'Oil Wealth' have caused so many countries. They are not co-incidentally dictatorships; Saddam Hussein remained in power in Iraq for so long because it benefitted the West (see the weapons supplies to Iraq in the so-called "Iran-Contra" affair, for example). Ditto Saudi Arabia, remaining 'friends' of the USA despite its ties to 911. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein was about consolidating even more power in the Gulf than America had previously, not democracy. What was planned for Iraq was democracy in name only: all real power was already neutralised, with decisions to US benefit cemented in place before the parliament met: non-negotiable contracts already signed giving US companies control. This is straight imperialism, and cannot be considered democracy or a good thing.
Sat, 26 May 2007
Well, the people have spoken, now the airwaves are full of puzzled politicans and pundits trying to decide what they said.
The outcome was a suprise, especially in Galway West (where I live), for which I'm annoyed; as I said before, a poll would have been useful. Niall O'Brolcháin, said in the last poll in March to be likely to take a seat, came fairly off the mark, unfortunately.
Quick summary: The Irish Parliament (the Dáil) has 166 seats, so the majority is 83 (I seat goes to the Chair or Ceann Comhairle). In recent years, majorities of one or two seats are normal, so we all wait for the final seats to be decided before really knowing the outcome: The Bookmakers paid out for Bertie Ahern being the next Taoiseach by 9.30 AM yesterday, though technically the numbers could still add up for the alternative, Enda Kenny. We might not know until next week.
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Tue, 22 May 2007
Has anyone seen a recent poll for Galway West? (In the Irish General Election, that is). The last poll was March 26th, which is way out-of-date : long prior to the election being called, before the Cryptosporidium Crisis, etc.
The result is, I'm in the unusual position of having to make a decision. Ordinarily I'd vote Number 1 for Niall O'Brolcháin (Green) and 2. Micheal D. Higgins (Labour). Ireland uses the unusual Single Transferable Vote system, with multi-member constituencies. Galway West is a 5-seat constituency, and Micheal D. is a long-sitting TD, who most would have expected to be automatically returned. Niall O'Brolcháin is fairly new; he's a member of the City Council and current Mayor of Galway (thats a relatively powerless post in the Irish local council scheme of things, though). Unfortunately news from the Labour camp appears that too many people assume he will be automatically returned; the word they are getting on the street is "Yes, you'll be getting my no.2 ". But in the STV system, this could mean he wouldn't be in the running. Those votes for the Greens and others will perhaps stay with the Greens and won't transfer to him.
So the choice, Vote 1. Greens, which is my natural preference, or 1. Labour, in the hope of getting both Micheal D. and Niall elected? a poll of the current situation would help.
BTW, for voting geeks, following the link and reading about STV is worth it. It makes Irish election counts the most fun election counts in the World. One of the main arguments against electronic voting in Ireland has been that it would take all the fun out of the count, which would be over too soon ...
Well, theres a General Election here in Ireland on the 24 May, and the politicans are well and truly on the last lap of the campaign trail. We're a bit rural to see them all, for those who don't make it to the door, here's something to think about.
In Moycullen we are on the edge of the Gaeltacht. Various institutions, such as the main primary school, have been struggling to retain that status with the encroachment of the Béarla 'burbs (suburbs of the Gaeltacht where English dominates).
Our children go to Baile Nua, the villages' gaelscoil. To hold standards, the school has a policy of capping its current enrollment (to 84, I think), to keep class sizes small, until the potential intake is large enough to justify another teacher. Fair enough.
However this has the side-effect that, in an area supposedly set aside to protect the Irish language, students are necessarily turned away from the only Irish-language school in the Village. Any comments?