Japan restarts commercial whaling - but for how long?

It's difficult to know how to react to Japan's decision to leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and to recommence commercial whaling, a decision they made public on 24th December 2018 (Merry Christmas, whales), perhaps hoping to avoid too much press attention and push-back.

On the one hand, any undermining of the IWC is unfortunate and to be censured. The organization was set up back in 1946 to address the over-fishing of whales of all kinds, and "to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry".  However, as whale "stocks" continued to decline, the IWC imposed a complete moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, which has been observed ever since. And sure enough, the numbers of many species of whales have indeed recovered in spectacular fashion, although several species are still vulnerable, endangered or critically enangered.

Japan, however, feels that there has been too much conservation and not enough development, and has done its best to erode the IWC's mandate, most egregiously by exploiting a loophole in the moratorium which allows for the killing of whales for "scientific research". Japan kills about 300 whales a year, ostensibly in the interests of science (although the anatomy of whales is actually well understood - what we really need more science on is their social activities, which of course requires live whales in their natural habitats), and the resulting carcasses just happen to be sold in the fish markets of Tokyo and Osaka. No-one is under any illusions about Japan's real reasons, and even the International Court of Justice has called on Japan to stop this activity, although to no avail.

Not satisfied with this underhand activity, though, Japan has now decided to officially leave the IWC, setting a dangerous precedent. They will join fellow whaling mavericks Norway and Iceland in re-establishing a commercial whaling fleet, although only within Japanese territorial waters, thus leaving the sensitive Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary intact, which is at least something. Whether this will result in more or fewer whale deaths remains to be seen.

Japan has always insisted that whaling and the consumption of whale meat is an important cultural practice in Japan, but just because something was done historically is no reason to continue doing it (c.f. slavery, foot binding, etc, etc). In practice, the demand for whale products is falling fast, and, bizarrely, the main impetus for whale hunting may be coming from governments departments scared of having their budgets cut. Maybe the practice will self-destruct all on its own, but somehow I am loath to trust this one to the virtues of the capitalist system.

Do long-term ex-pats deserve to vote in Canada?

The Supreme Court of Canada is currently debating the law on the voting rights of Canadian citizens living abroad, with a public statement scheduled for later today. Since 1993, the law states that ex-pats can vote in Canadian elections for five years, after which time they lose the right to vote.

Many people, including many expatriates, seem to think that the law as it is currently framed discriminates against them, and makes them less of a Canadian citizen than those who choose to stay home. An op-ed example of this way of thinking appears in todays Globe and Mail. In outrage, Ms. Rafiei expostulates: "By stripping this right away after five years, our government makes a resounding judgment that expatriates are less Canadian because we live abroad."

Well, yes, that sounds about right to me. Five years is a long time. It is long enough for someone on a work contract abroad, and with intentions to return to Canada afterwards, to do their thing and still have their say on the situation in the country they expect to return to. If someone stays away for more than five years, then there is a distinct probability that they will not be returning. Even so, arguably, they are not any less Canadian, in that they retain their Canadian citizenship.

The five years is admittedly a more or less arbitrary timescale, but it seems about right to me. Anyone who lives broad for longer than that has clearly burnt their boats, at least to some extent, and made a definite choice not to live in Canada, for one reason or another. In that respect they are indeed "less Canadian", and deserve to have less say in the way the country is run for the rest of us.

Should retirees who move long-term to Florida or Costa Rica because they like the weather, for example, have an equal say over what is happening "back home"? I would argue that they have made a lifestyle choice and need to live with the consequences of that: become an American or Costa Rican citizen and vote locally, but don't expect to influence the political landscape in some other country where they don't live. I came to Canada from the UK, and I think I probably can still vote there, but I don't, because it just seems morally wrong. I would expect no different were I to move from Canada.

 

UPDATE

Well, the courts have spoken, and does anyone ever listen to me anyway?

The Supreme Court has ruled that ex-pats have the right to vote in Canadian elections regardless of how long the have lived outside the country. The Chief Justice summarized, "Any limit on the right to vote must be carefully scrutinized and cannot be tolerated without a compelling justification", which sounds fine and dandy to me, but I guess his idea of a compelling justification is not the same as mine.

How is it possible for someone to get stuck in a clothing donation bin?

I find it unbelievable, in a whole host of different ways, that 8 Canadians have died in the last 3 years in those charitable clothing donation bins you see on the edge of parking lots. A similar thing is happening south of the border too.

I must confess I have never actually used one - we tend to take used clothes to Value Village, or have them collected by the Kidney Foundation - and I can't really visualize how they work or how a person might end up stuck in one. I can't imagine it would be easy, though. Apparently, it can happen when someone tries to retrieve an item of clothing from one, or decides to use it as a (relatively) warm nest in which to spend the night. So, essentially we are talking here about homeless people.

It's partly that I can't imagine anyone being desperate enough, or cognitively challenged enough, to want to crawl into one. I know that homeless shelters are not exactly pleasant, but they must be a better option than risking life and limb in a donation bin. But then, I also know that many homeless people suffer from various varieties of mental health issues, which of course must also be a factor.

For homeless activists to call the donation bins "death traps" is a bit strong, though. The average car is a death trap if used inappropriately (and god know, we have seen that often enough in recent years too), but you don't see people calling for them to be banned. I feel kind of sorry for the manufacturers of the bins, who now either need to withdraw them all from service, or at the very least seriously tinker with their designs. Here are people who thought they were helping charities make a hard-earned and much-needed buck or two, and now they are being branded as serial killers or something close? What a world we live in.

How to understand a millennial

I don't often frequent BuzzFeed, but this article about millennials was forwarded to me by a millennial, my daughter. And it is a very well-written and well-thought out article. The author is pushing the limits of "millennial" at 38, but clearly identifies as one, and is much closer to her subject than I am. The article still might make you cross if you're of a certain age, but it also might just help you understand the most misunderstood demographic of our times.

I'm not going to paraphrase or summarize the article here - it's quite a long and wide-ranging piece - but I encourage you to read it. It starts off talking about why many millennials find it so hard to complete simple little domestic or administrative tasks, and concludes that this is a psychological response to a kind of emotional and cognitive burnout that millennials frequently complain of. But, before you start to roll your eyes about another whiny millennial slacker, this is not THAT article. It is a much deeper analysis, and a genuine attempt to try to understand (and explain) where these feelings and reponses come from, and why.

Even this author ultimately concludes that a full understanding may not even be possible, but that the very act of analyzing the claims, stereotypes and reality of millennial life as she does has been a therapeutic process. You might find it so, too.

Trolleyology

I've been reading a 2014 book, "Would YOU Kill the Fat Man" by David Edmonds. It explores in some detail the ethical problem often referred to as "the spur" or "the trolley problem", which has given rise to a whole subsection of moral philosophy sometimes jokingly called "trolleyology".

You've probably come across it, or some variant of it: a man sees a trolleybus or train hurtling towards 5 people who are tied to the track, people who will surely be killed if the man does nothing. If, however, he pulls a signal switch, the train or trolley will be diverted to a spur track, but in doing so it will surely kill another person who is tied to the spur track. What should he do?

It or something similar has plagued philosophers for centuries - arguably it dates back to 13th century theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas and his Doctrine of Double Effect - but this modern formulation of the problem is usually credited to the upper class Englishwoman, political activist and Oxford scholar (and friend of novelist Iris Murdoch) Philippa Foot, née Bonsanquet, as recently as 1967. Since then, it has ignited a whole mini-industry of sorts within academia.

This is not just some dusty old academic  philosophical chestnut with no real answer. It is a problem with some very serious real world repercussions. For example, Churchill's sleight of hand around German flying bombs towards the end of the Second World War, imperilling some areas in preference to others; President Truman's decision to kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with two atomic bombs in an attempt to shorten the war and save even more lives; real life tales of sailors cast hopelessly adrift, who take the life of the weakest in order to save the rest; the decision to kill one conjoined twin in order to save the other; or for a mountaineer to cut loose a colleague so as to ensure that the whole group were not jeopardized. The list goes on. Another aspect of it might be the old argument as to whether torture ever justifiable in the interests of the greater good - to save a person's life? to save ten lives? a thousand? to save the planet? - or is there a "categorical imperative" (to use Immanuel Kant's phrase) that overrides this?

Interestingly, certain formulations of the trolley problem tend to elicit one response, and others the opposite. For example, people often see the spur problem as justifiable, perhaps because it is merely a diversion of an already existing threat, and perhaps because there is a slim possibility that the single victim who is sacrificed for the greater good can also be saved in some miraculous way, subsequent to the initial decision. In the case of the Fat Man version of the problem (the fat man of the book's title), a man has to be actively pushed off a bridge in order to save the five who are tied to the track, and most people find this much more problemmatic. The difference between intending and merely foreseeing a death appears to be key. In another example, that of an unwilling or unsuspecting donor who can save five other patients by the harvesting and transplant of his major organs, most people find this solution absolutely abhorrent, maybe because the death of the donor is such a deliberate, unequivocal and required act.

Other subtle variations of the problem make the decision-making even more complex, difficult and uncomfortable. Judith Jarvis Thompson has spent much time cooking up just such subtle variations, including the unfortunate fat man of the book's title, who needs to be physically pushed off a bridge in order to stop the trolley and save the five porential victims. Frances Kamm has devised other even more subtle, contrived and tortuous variations, some of which divide and baffle even trolleyologists.

So, where does all this leave us? How do we weight up positive duties and negative duties, doing and allowing, foresight and intention, acting and omitting, a concern for emotion and agency and strict numerical utilitarianism?

With the advent of "x-phi" or experimental philosophy, statistics have been gathered on the extent to which ordinary people agree or disagree on the various scenarios of trolleyology. There is a surprising convergence of opinion: for example, between 80% and 90% of people agree that the switch should be pulled in the basic version of the thought experiment, and a similar 80% - 90% agree that the fat man should not be heaved onto the railway line in that version of the story. There are very minor differences between women and men, between the religious and non-religious, between conservatives and liberals, between hospital workers and others, but generally speaking there is a remarkable degree of consistency, regardless of socioeconomic strata, education level, culture and geographical location. Differences can be introduced artificially by changing the order in which a series of scenarios are presented; by changing the person who is making the decision; by introducing personal elements like relatives in danger; by building into the storyline conplicating details like criminals or geniuses or children or dying people on the line, etc, etc. But even then, the deviations from the underlying trends tend to be relatively minor. Does this, then, mean that human morality is innate? Should we, then, be able to teach the agreed "rules" to robots, battle computers, or autonomous cars,

"Would YOU Kill the Fat Man?" is written in a clear and engaging style, and explains complex and confusing concepts in an accessible manner, and with many examples. It is a thought-provoking and mildly challenging read, but not really a difficult or long one. The book veers off towards the end in favour of a consideration of the effect of various drugs and hormones on people's reactions, and of another popular moral experiment known as the Ultimatum Game (interesting enough in itself), but in general it manages to spend almost the whole 200 pages talking about just this single ethical thought experiment. It seems that some moral philosophers have devoted their professional lives to trolley-type dilemmas. Make of that what you will.

So, what would YOU do? Would YOU kill the fat man?

Woman in vegetative state unexpectedly gives birth at Arizona nursing home

God! A woman in a persistent vegetative state for over a decade in an Arizona nursing home has just given birth to a baby. Which means ... well, you can figure out for yourself what it means.

The chief executive of Hacienda Healthcare, the corporation that owns the nursing home, has resigned in an attempt to defuse the situation, and is promising a full investigation, as are the local police. But what an unprecedented situation it is, to be sure! 

British companies are worried about Brexit, not Jeremy Corbyn

I was ill-advised enough to talk to my English father-in-law over Christmas about Brexit. He is one of the only people I know who unashamedly voted to leave the EU and, despite being an intelligent and clued-in individual, he still seems to think that this is a good idea. (Polls suggest that a re-vote would result in a comfortable Remain victory, whatever that might mean for the situation in practice.)
One particular claim he made gave me pause for thought, though. When I said that companies were already pulling out of the UK in droves, even before the divorce becomes official, he countered that "studies show" that those that are exiting the country are doing so because they are worried at the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn labour government, not because of a little thing like Brexit. This struck me as eminently unlikely, but, as I had no evidence to the contrary, there was little I could say.
After a bit of research, it seems that the study (singular, not plural) my father-in-law was referring to was reported recently in The Spectator, a right-leaning British magazine, and refers to a specific study of high net worth clients (i.e. individuals, not companies) by British wealth management company Saunderson House. The survey of these rich guys asked what worried them most. Actually, the survey showed that they were most worried about losing their jobs, but a "change in government" (note, no specific mention of Jeremy Corbyn) was second, and "global instability" (the closest the survey came to talking about Brexit) was third. The article also mentions a couple of other British wealth managers who claim, on a purely anecdotal level, that many investors are taking their money out of Britain because they are worried that Corbyn might come to power in the chaos swirling around, well, Brexit... In this context, what they are actually talking about is the threat of a wealth tax that a change in government might bring.
So, this is not quite the science-based evidence that my (rich, white, and slightly racist) father-in-law purported it to be. In fact, it is nothing to with company movement at all, does not mention either Brexit or Jeremy Corbyn, and is certainly not definitive even in what it does claim.
In fact, the evidence seems clear that many companies, particularly in the hugely-important finance field, are in fact pulling out of the UK in favour of new European operations, and banks and other finance companies have moved at least $1 trillion out of Britain and set up new European offices in recent months, specifically due to the uncertainty of Brexit. This represents about 10% of the total assets of the UK banking sector, and is probably a conservative estimate as it only includes those companies which have made public announcements about their moves.
I rest my case.

Relax, you really don't need to drink 2 litres of water a day

Do we really need to drink 2 litres (or 8-10 glasses) of water a day to stay healthy? Many people, including health professionals who should know better, people seem to be fixated on this, whole others maintain that - like 10,000 steps a day - it's just a more-or-less arbitrary number, essentially an urhan myth.
Like so many of these health fads, it seems like the whole 8 cups a day thing is not really scientifically valid. An Australian researcher, who has done lots of work on the subject, pooh-poohs the idea, and calls it an urban myth. He points out that water from other sources (food, juice and other drinks) is just as important, there is no additional benefit from imbibing pure water over other sources of moisture. Even tea and coffee, which have the unfair reputation of causing dehydration, are perfectly good sources of eater. He, and an American researcher in the area, also maintains that the 2 litre benchmark is probably overatated, and people should just drink when they are thirsty. Dark-coloured urine is also a good indication of dehydration.
Anyone with low blood pressure or a propensity for urinary infections may have to drink more than the average, but the typical person probably does not need to be forcing themselves to chug glass after glass of water. Neither do they need to obsess about hydration when working out in the gym, running on a treadmill or playing indoor sports (outdoor sports in hot sun, or long-distance running are another matter - use common sense).
The idea of the 2 litres of water requirement comes from the fact that we typically lose about 1.5 - 2 litres of water each day through breathing, sweating and urinating. American recommendations dating back to 1945 suggested taking in 2.5 litres of water a day, but did at least point out that most of that could come in the form of food (which is typically 40-90% water by weight), something that seems to have been forgotten in recent years. Most people will accumulate enough water just by normal eating, drinking coffee, etc, without the need for endless glasses of water in addition. More water will not help flush out toxins or help the kidneys in some way (the kidneys process many more times the volume of blood in a day than you will ever be able to drink as water).
Having said that, there is no real downside to drinking too much water (uses you have a kidney condition); it will just get excreted, which may at worst be inconvenient. So, don't sweat it: just eat and drink as usual, drink a bit more if you feel thirsty, or if it is hot and dry. But you really don't have to fixate on hydration, or force yourself to drink unpteen glasses of water.