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Help Japan

Japan needs your help. If you can spare some extra funds, a good place to send it is ADRA, which has a local organization on the ground. Donate here.

Add comment marts 17th, 2011

Body-scanning Impressions

I recently travelled through Manchester airport, which apparently was awarded ‘UK airport of the year 2010′, as touted by numerous posters at said airport (see also their awards page). In the bag drop queue, I had to wait quite a while for the couple in front who had a number of issues getting the whole family, including kids and prams, checked in. While passengers were getting slightly annoyed – I will admit to being part of that group – such things happen, of course.

However, when I got to the security line, I started to get the feeling something was different here. Big posters sporting full-body scanners were put up, saying something to the effect that at this particular airport, enhanced security measures were in effect.

Being slightly concerned about the radiation effect of said full-body scanners, I thought to myself that I can always opt out, as is possible in the states, believing this to be an option in the UK too. Sure, an enhanced search is not altogether pleasant, but better than receiving an unnecessary dose of radiation.

However, while I was in the queue – a long queue – I looked up some info on my phone. It turns out that if you refuse a full-body scan in a UK airport, travel will be declined. And that, while the airport maintains that the scanners are completely safe (stating that the amount of radiation received is equivalent to that of 5 minutes of background radiation), highly competent researchers have posed serious questions with regards to the potentially cancer-inducing effects of these scans.

As I walked through the queue, I considered my options, should I be selected for a body-scan. Having some time to reflect, I came to the conclusion I had none. If I resisted the body-scan, I would not be allowed to travel. £100 out the window, and no way to get back to Denmark. If I went through the scanner, potential long-term health-effects. I looked with envy on the business-class travellers, and the aforementioned couple with the kids and the pram, who somehow got onto the fast-track security line, which, besides providing a vastly more expeditious security process, was completely devoid of these scanners.

I was not selected for the body-scan. Unlike many of my fellow travellers. The worst thing about the experience was that I did not have a choice. Had I been been selected, I would have been compelled to go through with the scan.

On reflection, this is probably the first time government agencies have resorted to imposing potentially health-damaging security checks on its population, let alone the vastly upgraded privacy intrusions. Sure, the liquid restrictions were annoying, but they did not impose any harm on me, other than having to throw out the occasional face-wash that I forgot to take out of the hand luggage Nor are the metal-detectors or the x-ray machines harmful to us in any way. Enter the body-scanners. Radiation-exposure is now mandatory in order to fly.

The reality is that there is some debate on the health effects of the scanners. In addition to the mentioned expert comments, there is a recent case of scanners in the US having emitted much higher radiation than they should, or at the very least being measured incorrectly. And there are the comments of scientists in this wired article, not exactly inspiring calm. As the icing on the cake, Bruce Schneier, a well-renowned security expert and cryptographer, makes some interesting comments on the effectiveness of these new security measures (though he admittedly elsewhere believes them to be safe health-wise).

Bottom-line, I am sceptical towards new technology that is being rushed in, proclaimed safe, and put to mass-use in the name of security. Mass x-ray scans of vast amounts of people is certainly not something to be undertaken lightly.

2 comments marts 17th, 2011

Denmark – State of Affairs

So I just moved to Aalborg. Might write something about that at a later time.

For now, I have noted the public services available, having been at the library tonight.

For one, I now no longer need any sort of DVD-rental stores, since the public libraries lets you check out loads of mainstream movies – for free. I even got a bag for carrying them in.

While I was there, I noted a poster saying something along the lines of ‘Divorce – something you’ll do 0,4 times’. I thought great, perhaps finally a campaign to bring down divorce stats, but alas, the punchline was that now you can do all the paperwork online through ‘NemID’. (the latter being a topic in itself)

I walked away noting I get all sorts of things from the government here that I really don’t feel every Danish taxpayer should be providing..

Add comment februar 9th, 2011

Everybody knows

Ingemann Olesen, administrative director of the commune of Kolding just got replaced. His apparent offence? To comment publicly that what is wrong with the public sector in Denmark are vast inefficiencies due to ineffective employees.

His statements caused quite a stir with reactions from Christiansborg (the Danish parliament) and local political authorities: Of course it isn’t so. Our employees are well motivated, doing a fine job, and by no means ineffective.

Unfortunately, pretty much everyone who has ever worked in the public sector knows for a fact that this sector – at least in Denmark, and I suspect other places as well – are filled with people just such as the ones he describes (though of course, there are those that do a very good job). I think this is most likely a function of the (generally low) attractiveness of working in that sector, which in turn expresses itself through the supply-and demand mechanics of the labour-market in terms of who finds a job where.

I believe this is a case of everybody knowing deep down that there is an issue, though no-one dares to touch it with a 10-feet pole.

For more info, see politiken.dk.

2 comments april 7th, 2010

Swine on the menu?

In a yet unprecedented onslaught of sheer ignorance, Dansk Folkeparti (right-wing party in Denmark) has demanded that swine be on the menu for kindergartens and elderly people’s homes – at least in the amount of 20% of the meals. (Part of this story, for those not in the know, is that Dansk Folkeparti is against anything they do not consider ‘Danish’, this not the least includes foreign religions and cultures.)

Hans Kristian Skibby, running for city council in my home town, ‘admits that an arrangement around swine flesh could create problems for a lot of Muslims and Jews who don’t eat swine, but he does not think this is something that should be taken into account. “I know it can be a problem some places, since a lot of people do not feel like eating swine, but that should not stop us from meaning that this should be the case in Denmark”‘

He proceeds to stating ‘Especially healthy or unhealthy? I am no dietitian, but in Denmark, there is a tradition through many generations, that in this country we can eat pork roast and frikadeller [traditional Danish dish]‘.

Not that I am surprised. Dansk Folkeparti is just banging on their old drum: An underlying agenda of harassing anyone who is different, especially Muslims, until they get enough and leave the country.

But, Hans Kristian Skibby, just so you can take this into account: I am by any standard Danish. I come from several generations of Danish ancestors – not that this should matter, but I have a suspicion that to Dansk Folkeparti it would – and I do not eat swine. In fact, I do not believe it’s good for you, and I choose to not eat it. And no matter what you might think of the Danish’ness around this, I would hate to end up in an old people’s home at one point where I would have to eat swine just because someone like yourself do not think this is ‘Danish’ enough.

Denmark and being Danish should be about more than eating ‘flæskesteg’ and ‘frikadeller’ – good as it may be. It should be about respect for freedom of thought – ‘det danske frisind’ – also towards those that think differently than us. But then again, Dansk Folkeparti has never really wanted this. They want only to cling to a shallow, narrow definition of what is Danish, thereby hollowing out any essence of its true ideals.

Source: http://politiken.dk/politik/article833614.ece

7 comments november 12th, 2009

The age of plurality

So today, having a fever, I took a bath. Having recently seen the movie Pi, where Sol paraphrases the story, and possible as a result of my feverish condition, I began to ponder the Archimedes principle of displacement. The quote from Pi goes:

“The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he’s received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks – insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife – she’s forced to share a bed with this genius – convinces him to take a bath to relax. While he’s entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that’s a way to determine density – weight over volume. And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams ‘Eureka’ and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king’s palace to report his discovery.” (Sol’s point is that Max needs to ‘take a bath’ to solve his problem, but this quote spurred my interest, apparently)

Not remembering the quote exactly, I seemed to remember something about weight, and claims being made that the amount of water displaced were somehow related to the weight of the object, but I couldn’t get it to make sense that anything but the volume of the object would determine how much water it would displace. Enter google: Search archimedes gold displacement.

It seems reasonable to go from the top, and this site is on a .gov domain, carries the emblem of the US department of energy, so it seams at a 10-second glance to have some reliability. While, when reading it again, the scientists answering do not appear to give any outright wrong information, they don’t at all seem to convey the essence of the story. And when initially reading it, I strongly got the sense that some of them were arguing for a heavier object displacing more water than a lighter object (of the same volume).

Right, let’s try link 2: Now, suddenly, the crown under inspection could be partly silver instead of iron (as claimed by the first site), and this site is more or less about posing a critique against the method anyways, ending up suggesting a setup with scales, reminding me of the epic scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Sir Bevedere goes ‘we shall use my largest scales’.

Browsing through the google-list once again, my eye caught (after having discarded link three as relatively unuseful for my purposes) a debate at ‘Science forums’. This debate again reminded me of the debate preceding the use of Sir Bedevere’s largest scales in the forementioned movie. A guy called Vexer seems determined not to get it, and during a full 2-page discussion seems to hold that the water displaced has to do with weight and not volume.

While scrolling down the list further, my eyes catch something most welcome: What looks like an authoritative source indeed – the Encyclopædia Britannica in it’s very person (the linked page was followed through a couple of additional links). However, my rejoicing is short, since you can read about 5 seconds off that page, before a nag screen pops up asking you to register. So I took a screenshot of the info and read it at my leasure. It seems that indeed, the volume of water (or any fluid for that matter) displaced by a fully immersed object is – dam dam dam – the volume of that object; irrespectable of its weight I might add (while it is of course true that the upward force has to do with the weight of the object, and so becomes relevant for determining to what degree the object will be immersed). Which incidently is the same conclusion found (albeit in even more understandable terms) at Wikipedia. Which adds another point to the trustworthiness of Wikipedia.

So I’m happy; I got confirmed what I initially thought to be true (which raises again another set of questions on the biasedness of my inquiry). However, what’s the point of writing it here, or, as one of my lecturers like to reiterate, ‘so what?’

I had a chat with my dad yesterday evening about postmodernism and the pluralistic society in which we live. He thought much of it had come from technology (perhaps somewhat like Lyotard). And I was reluctant to accept that (there must be more). However, as this little exercise confirms, on any given topic – even the ones we consider to be very established and universally true – we can find a host of both confusing, opposing, and confirming information, since anyone with a keyboard and Internet access can contribute even further to the confusion (you and me both).

I think my dad said something about how it used to be simpler. I agree. Maybe I’m missing a bit of that simplicity, even though I’ve never experienced it, or rather, I’ve probably experienced it growing up, since as a child, you tend to trust your authorities much more. I don’t think I’d like to go back though.

And even further, within especially religious communities, there tend to be those groups who view everything as being very simple. I am envious. However, I find it difficult to go back. And yet I agree. It is very simple. But perhaps simplicity is about choice, and that choice starts out with examination. And entails inspection. And then perhaps in the process, we learn which voices to ignore and which to include.

Add comment februar 1st, 2009

Another one bites the dust

So, yesterday, the Danish airline company Sterling went bankrupt. This was not totally unexpected, seeing as the ownership is Icelandic, but it still sucks when you’ve got tickets with them for going home in the Christmas break and coming back again in January.

This will probably give me a loss of about 60 pounds, but it could’ve been a lot worse. Especially since I was originally supposed to be in Copenhagen this week, coming home on a Sterling flight Sunday…

Funny thing is that today and yesterday, I received bank transfers (ok, technically not bank transfers, but returns on my credit-card) from Sterling giving me back the remaining taxes and fees on the tickets for this week, so it appears they can still disperse money (I had requested this before the bankruptcy though)

Long live Sterling. It shall be exciting to see whether we will face a time of increased competition as new competitors try and move in on the gap Sterling leaves behind (as suggested by one veteran in the industry), or whether SAS will be benefited by a near-monopoly situation on some of the routes. As it turns out though, Norwegian is already moving into the market, so things tend to point in the former direction. Hoping for cheaper plane-tickets in the coming season (and perhaps slightly more realistically priced tickets so we won’t have to endure another fall)

P.S. Hope I’m not breaking copyright with the image. However, if I was, who would there be to sue me anyways? :p

1 comment oktober 30th, 2008

An interesting observation

The list of the most read news-pieces this week, on the website of a quite respectable Danish newspaper:

1. Woman set fire on ex-husbands penis.
2. Women love their breasts.
3. Female teacher convicted of sexual crime risk 15 years in jail.
4. Why does hangovers make you want sex?
5. Miss France penalized for provoking photos.

Note that this is a mainstream newspaper, having many news-items about politics, sports, culture, education, science and so on. Thus, the list above must tell us something about the mind of the mainstream reader.

What makes the world go round in this day and age? I dare say it’s not money.

1 comment januar 4th, 2008