Some Interesting Pictures

I found some interesting pictures today. It's a collection of x-ray pictures of various unusual cases. Definitely worth a look.

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A Point I Think Needs Making

First you need to watch this video.


For me, the answers given in this interview are completely and totally inadequate. I do not care what her personal position on the subject of abortion is, I do not care what she would advise someone in that situation to do. What I care about is what legislation she would endorse and advocate. This is what will affect people's lives, and on this matter she was silent and evasive.

The question was not about how she would advise someone in that situation, it was what sort of legislation she would pursue as vice-president. This sort of question is not complicated. It could be simply answered as a yes or no question. Not answering the question shows either a lack of comprehension or deception about the real answer, neither of which is a desirable trait in anyone running for office.

And while this may seem like me joining in on the Palin bashing, the fact is that this type of crap is spouted by most politicians. Palin just seems to be the most egregious case right now.

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A Blast From The Past

For Google's tenth birthday they've put up a search of their old index from 2001 (it's not ten years ago, but it's the oldest they've got). It's interesting to have a look at how some thins have changed.

One of the big changes is the absence of Wikipedia. Today Wikipedia turns up in nearly every search you make, but was barely heard of back then. The same applies to IMDB.

Kevin Rudd has gone from being number 3 on the first page to being the whole first page. John Howard went from just being number one to being number one to five. Paris Hilton was apparently a hotel in France. An iPod was on of these. The "neil" was not Neil Armstrong but Neil Young¹. Wow had an entirely different meaning. Podcast was a word in czech but not any other languages.

Many terms relating to TV shows have had their results change a lot (Battlestar is a good example).

blog only returned about 76400 results in 2001, but now gives more than 3770000000.

Anyway, have a look and play around with it.

1 To be the "name" is to be the top result in google when you search for just the first name. E.g. Neil Armstrong is the Neil (it used to be Neil Gaiman), Sarah Palin is now the Sarah , and Kevin Rudd is the Kevin.

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Ahead of his time

It would appear that Leonhard Euler has a number of papers up on arXiv.org. This is doing pretty good for a guy who died in 1783, a good two hundred and some years before arXiv.org started.

The papers are actually in the history section, but it's still pretty cool that they are there. I haven't actually read any yet, but I may. We'll see if any of the titles sound particularly interesting.

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A Little Suspicious

The results from the Belarus elections have come in and they are curious to say the least. All 110 seats contested were won by pro-government candidates. This sort of massive victory is the sort of thing Saddam managed to pull off and Mugabe wishes he could have.

The president is saying the elections were free and fair, but the opposition naturally rejects the claim. International observers are still evaluating the situation before declaring their opinion of the matter.

It seems the era of tin pot little dictatorships still has a while to go.

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How did this happen?

Recently there's been a few reports of modern day pirates, but recently there's been a group who've managed to do rather well for themselves. Somali pirates have managed to board and take a cargo ship carrying among other things 33 72-T tanks that are reported to be bound for the Kenyan military, though some have suggested other final destinations.

Now, since I've never really been put in charge of anything like this, I can't say I know all the ins and outs of organizing the transport of 33 tanks, but I'd definitely make sure to arrange some security for the damn boat, especially if I knew it would be traveling through waters known to be prone to pirates.

Fortunately the pirates don't seem too interested in the tanks (not that surprising giving the price of gas and the notorious fuel inefficiency of tanks), but are just holding the crew for ransom.

This has not gone unnoticed by the international community. Both the US and Russia have a warship following the pirates, as does a third country not identified. It seems some people want to keep an eye on the tanks.

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One Tough Chick

I like to think that I have courage of my convictions, but I know that I am fortunate in that life has rarely tested me to any sort of extreme.

Malalai Kakar is the ideal I'd like to meet, but I know I fall short. She is a police officer in Afghanistan. She gets death threats delivered to her door, carries an AK-47 with her on the way to work, has gunfights with the Taliban, is raising six kids, and is an inspiration and leader for the small but growing group of female police in Afghanistan.

Malalai deserves recognition for her courage and dedication. She does a tough job in a place I'd be scared to visit, let alone live. The best word I can think of to use here is hero.

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PS: I didn't think I'd ever link to an article by Marie Claire.

A wedding

Today I attended a wedding. This was the second wedding I've attended, the first being my Aunt's wedding way back in 88, about which I mainly remember that the reception was held at a vegetarian restaurant, and even at that age, I was not a fan of vegetarian food.

This wedding was of one of the Korean teachers from my school. About half a dozen of the foreign teachers went (all of us who'd been there for more than a two months). The ceremony was held in a big wedding complex. It was about four floors tall with halls on each floor and a timetable for each hall. The wedding was split into two parts. The first was a short ritual for the big crowd, which was followed by a private ceremony for just the family while the other guests went off to have a meal. The public ceremony was quite short, only about ten minutes, and then there was about half an hour of photos and videos. It was kind of a mix of Korean and western weddings. The hall seemed to have an anti camera field, as only a few of my photos turned out ok, and others had the same problem.

Photos of the event can be found here.

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I can't wait for this to be finished

Japan makes a lot of crazy shit, and a lot of the time it's just crazy. But sometimes the crazy stuff is actually just crazy awesome. This is a case of the latter.

Japan are planning to hold a conference to organise building a space elevator. If just the name isn't cool enough, the actual idea is. A massive cable attached to a satellite up in space with an elevator system attached, allowing us to move stuff to and from space at a fraction of a price it takes to send up a rocket.

It's not a new idea. A Russian came up with the idea in 1895. Arthur C Clarke was writing about it as science fiction in 1979. We just happen to be living in the time when it may just be feasible. We truly live in remarkable times.

The space elevator is one of those ideas that will change the world once it is realised. The new possibilities it will open up are amazing, and those are just the ones we can think of. Just like the wheel, fire, the assembly line, the computer, and all those other inventions that completely reshape the world we live in (can you imagine a world without fire?), so too will the space elevator.

This obviously won't be finished tomorrow, but it's exciting to see people seriously looking at this as something to do, and not just a nice idea for stories.

The one down side to the whole thing is the consequences if it falls down. Not a pretty scenario. I should hope that doesn't come to pass.

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Any Fundamentalist is Bad

Today I read a story about a group of fundamentalists causing havoc in their city. People forcing women off buses because they weren't wearing sufficiently modest clothes. Preventing men and women from socializing, to the point where men and women walk on opposite sides of the street, self-proclaimed morality police who go so far as to prevent the sale of mp3 players, even assaulting women who had the audacity to divorce their husband.

The city in question is Jerusalem and the fundamentalists in question are Haredi Jews. I say this not to cast aspersions on Jews, but to point out that fundamentalists of all creeds tend towards the same means and ends. Violence and isolation aimed at preserving some idealized status quo.

Hopefully, such actions will be condemned as strongly as similar actions from those of other creeds have been, but I think further coverage will be minimal since Israel is on the nominal good side in the current scheme of things. This is a double standard which I don't foresee being dropped anytime soon.

Ideally it would be the forces of intolerance and fundamentalism would be the ones being put on notice regardless of which particular creed they followed. Unfortunately, that is not yet the world we live in.

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Extended Stay

Last week my boss asked me if I would extend my contract for two months for various recruitment related reasons that are a bit more convoluted than I particularly want to go into.

This caused me some serious thought as I was kind of looking forward to finishing my contract and going traveling. Some of my classes can be quite frustrating, while others I enjoy.

I was initially reluctant, having seen the hassles others have gone through to get a new visa.

One of the things that had me leaning towards renewing was my travel plans for after I finished, which had several rather cold countries at the start and traveling there during February is more appealing than doing so in December. Staying on will also give me a bit more money. Also, traveling alone for Christmas wasn't that appealing.

So now I'm going to work an extra two months and finish at the end of January. I think I'll stick around in Korea for a week or two after that to do some final sight seeing like the DMZ, and then take a ferry across to Russia and a long train ride to Moscow.

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Uganda Becomes Less Fun

Uganda's ethics and integrity minister has a new proposal to help his country cut down on traffic accidents. He's calling for a ban on miniskirts.

Apparently wearing a miniskirt is like walking around naked and Ugandan men are mentally weak and can't help looking at these women when they should concentrating on their driving.

Fortunately, this is just one of the evils the minister for ethics and integrity is dealing with.

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I hope this doesn't set a precedent

The nation of Jordan has decided to get a little bit tricky when it comes to dealing with international critics of its state religion. Back in 2006 they amended their Justice Act to allow the prosecution of those who affect Jordanians by electronic means, even if those people aren't in Jordan themselves. Now, prosecutors are using this to go after people in other countries, by filing charges and getting warrants for these people, and the asking Interpol to extradite them to Jordan.

Fortunately, so far no one seems to be playing ball with Jordan, as the people they asked to be extradited are mostly from western democracies, who won't extradite someone for exercising their freedom of speech. But if any of those people go on holiday to the middle east, they might not be so lucky.

Another rather worrying aspect of this is that even though the amendment was made in 2006, they are going after people whose alleged crimes were in 2005. This is a rather worrisome retroactive application of a criminal law. Nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poena sine lege is a very old and very good legal maxim. No one should be punished for a crime if there was no law at the time the act was done.

This also raises again the rather complicated issue of who has jurisdiction over the internet. With this law Jordan is claiming that anything that can affect the people of Jordan electronically falls within its jurisdiction, which essentially means the whole of the internet is subject to their laws. This is all very good, but what does Jordan do if say Israel claims the same thing and starts prosecuting anti-Semites in Jordan (I'm reasonably sure there must be some who have internet access) and asking for their extradition. My prediction is Jordan would tell them to go to hell. The only sensible way to handle internet jurisdiction is that each country looks after those in its territory and leaves the rest of the world alone.

Were it otherwise anyone defamed by something on the internet could simply choose the country with the most advantageous defamation laws and bring their case there to their benefit. And can countries that guarantee freedom of speech keep that guarantee while allowing its citizens to be prosecuted by countries with strict restrictions on speech like China. Overlapping jurisdictions do not work.

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Score

Today at the start of one of my classes, one of the kids gave me a small box wrapped in black paper. This is not the first time something like this has happened, and as I usually do in this situation I thanked the student in Korean and put it aside to look at later. When I opened the box I found that it contained two pairs of socks. Certainly better than a kick in the pants.

Previous scores from students include some hankies from a student in Japan when the kids school was closing down, a box of tea from a student who recently went to China for a month (that's going to be shipped home to my mother and grandmother (I'm pretty sure my student won't find out)), various snacks and candy, and once an elaborate decorative egg bauble thingy, which again is something I doubt I'd ever get for myself, but in all of these cases it's more the sentiment of it than the actual item.

There's actually a teachers day over here, where students and parents used to give gifts to the teachers. It mainly applies to regular school teachers, but it does overflow a bit into the English academies. However, people went quite overboard in trying to get the teachers to give the most attention to their children (I've heard of cases of teachers getting new cars or huge amounts of cash) to the point where the Government has actually made teachers day a day off for school children, so they can't go to school and give their exorbitant gifts to their teachers (although why they can't give them a day later I don't quite get).

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Well what do you know, the world's still here.

Despite various doom and gloomers, the Large Hadron Collider, also known as the LHC, at CERN was activated today, and did not destroy the Earth by creating a new big bang or creating a micro black hole that would suck in the whole of the Earth.

The LHC is a massive feat of engineering, and will certain let us explore new aspects of our universe which have not been seen before. I really don't get those who think that these things are unwise or dangerous, especially those who think suing over the matter is the best way to resolve the uncertainties.

Anyway, well done to all those at CERN for a job well done.

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Euler or Broke

Two weekends ago via XKCD I found out about Project Euler. It's a series of maths/computer programming problems to be solved. It's proved an interesting project to while away my hours. I don't think I've played Civilization IV since I started on the problems.

I think though I've now reached the point where I've got most of the low lying fruit. The first problems were easy enough, but now they're taking a lot longer to solve. It also seems to be a test of the strengths of your language of choice. So far I've been using a Matlab clone. On one problem it wasn't giving me the right answer despite everything I did to refine my code. When I put the same algorithm into Mathematica, it gave me the correct answer right away. That really annoyed me. I'm not sure if I make a full switch, since that'll take a fair bit of learning to get up to the same speed on Mathematica as I'm at with Matlab, although it seems to make a few things a lot easier. One problem can be done in one line of Mathematica that took me about 60 lines in Matlab. Admittedly it was a rather crude algorithm but still, that's a big change, and it ran a lot quicker too.

There is no doubt though that I will not complete all the problems any time soon. Problem #202 seems well beyond me (take a look for yourself if you think I'm wussing out), and there are more, tougher problems on the way.

I have learnt a few things along the way, and it's been good to flex the old maths muscles again.

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A Classy Town

I always knew Mt Isa was a classy town. This quote from the mayor just confirms it.

May I suggest if there are five blokes to every girl, we should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women and ask them to proceed to Mount Isa.

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Haeinsa

Last Friday I didn't have to work so I decided to do something that I messed up on the first attempt, and visited Haeinsa temple. Haeinsa is about a 90 minute bus ride from Daegu, for most of which due to crowding I had the small seat right at the front of the bus where the steps to get on are. Hence I managed to take a few photos of the landscape on the way that look similar to this one.
After arriving it was a slight walk to the temple (about 1.2km, so I'm not complaining. It was nothing compared to that damned mountain on Jeju) which is a reasonably large complex. There is at least a dozen buildings and two courtyards. In the first courtyard there was a sort of labyrinth, although I guess it was really more of a path to walk while meditating than an actual maze. Also in the main courtyard they had a big fire going. It looked like they were just burning paper, but at times ash would fall from the fire throughout the temple.

The highlight of Haeinsa temple though is the Tripitaka Koreana, a collection of over 80,000 hand carved wooden blocks containing the oldest and most comprehensive collection of Buddhist writing in Chinese characters. There are four buildings containing the wood blocks that were specially built centuries ago to house the blocks.When you look at it the sheer density of writing is amazing. It is like looking at a huge and ancient library. Well, it's not like looking at a huge and ancient library. It is looking at a huge and ancient library. I think if the Library of Alexandria were still around visiting that would be a similar experience. The Library of Congress might get there if it's still around in a few hundred years.

One curiosity I did notice was the special fire extinguishers they have. Obviously for something as precious as the wooden blocks your ordinary put out the flame and damn the consequences to the burning stuff type extinguisher won't quite make the grade with the guys looking after these. It was the first time I've seen a silver fire extinguisher. I've seen red and yellow before, but never silver.

After wandering around the temple for a while and taking pictures until the battery on my camera ran out (I hadn't charged it since before going to Jeju, and that was only the second time I'd charged it so it does all right, but I should have thought of it before) after which I took pictures with my phone instead. I had a look through the accompanying museum, but there wasn't much to read about the items on display. It was however while I was in the museum that the rain started, and didn't stop until almost an hour later. At one point while the rain was light I made a move for the bus stop, but it started getting heavy and ducked under the umbrella of an old lady selling fruit. I braved the heavy rain when the lady told me my bus had just turned up, but it was full to the brim so I spent another 20 odd minutes standing in the slight shelter the ticket booth provided until the rain stopped. Then it was another twenty minutes until the next bus arrived, and 90 minutes back to Daegu. All in all, a good trip.

I'll put a few more pictures up here, and there are more on my flickr page.The largest building in the temple
The wood blocks on their shelves
A stone thingy

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Ouch

This is why I'm not a foreign affairs correspondent in a war zone.

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Adventures on Jejudo, or Why on Earth did I think climbing a mountain was a good idea?

A week and a bit ago I got four days off work and in celebration of this fact took a trip to Jeju Island, the closest thing Korea has to a tropical paradise. I spent four days on Jeju and enjoyed myself quite a bit. I went with a friend from work.
The first day I got up at the ridiculously early time of seven am in order to catch a 10:30 plane. After the flight we caught a bus to Seogwipo on the south side of the island where one of our hotels was. After checking in we went walking around town to see the local waterfalls. These were pretty good.

Next to one of the waterfalls was a huge rock with some writing on it, which according to local legend was written by an ancient Chinese general.

Day two we went on a submarine ride, for which I inconveniently forgot my camera and then proceeded to get seasick. Not enough to actually be sick, just enough to make the experience unpleasant enough for me to want to get off the sub as quick as I could. In the afternoon we went to a nearby beach, where I sat on a rented plastic chair under a rented umbrella and read some of Purgatory, while my friend went swimming but was yelled at by the lifeguard if he went out further than knee deep, as did anyone else who tried to actually swim instead of just getting their feet wet.

Day three we changed hotel and went from Seogwipo to Jeju-Shi via the Manjanggul lava tubes, one of the largest lava tube systems in the world. The total length is about 7 and a bit kilometers, but tourists can only walk through about two to three kilometers worth. This was pretty impressive, although I think it would have been better if there was a section of pitch black. One of the coolest things about the other caves I've been to is when they turn all the lights out and you get to see what pitch black really is. But to do that you really need a guide, which this place didn't have, just some guys at a ticket booth near the entrance. (Actually, nearly all natural landmarks on Jeju have a ticket booth.) After the lava tubes we continued onto Jeju-Shi where we checked in with a slight hick up that was quickly resolved.

The final day we spent climbing Mt Halla. In a certain sense, the entire island of Jeju is Mt Halla, wiht Mt Halla being the volcano that spewed up all the rocks and stuff that make up the island. Mt Halla is 1950m tall, but the trail we took starts at around 800m up, so we had a bit of a start. The trail starts out not to bad, but the incline keeps getting tougher as you approach the top. The first 7.6km took about two hours, after which we stopped at the main rest stop for lunch. The final 2.5km however involved climbing about 450m. This was a lot tougher, and I think I took more breaks on this section than I did.

The final climb from about 1800m was a set of stairs and near the end I was climbing in a daze, just putting one foot in front of the other, until I was surprised that there weren't any more ahead of me. The top was cloudy nearly the whole time, so I was unable to see the lake that is inside the crater, and after sitting up there for about half an hour started getting rather cold.

The hike down was a lot easier than the hike up. I managed the first 2.5km down without a single break, and then only a few more the rest of the way. Once I got down to the bottom (well, end of the trail) I saw you could get a medal saying "I climbed Mt Halla" and I tried to buy one, but I then found out you actually needed to buy a certificate before you started and there's a guy at the top who would sign it, and then you could buy the medal. I wish I'd know that before I started climbing. After that, I was too exhausted to do anything else, so it was an early night and got up early the next morning for flight back to Daegu.

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