The placement of city names on maps

This past October, I went on holiday to Japan and, for the first time in about seven years, my trip took me to Tokyo.

Before I left, I was trying to decide where to go and what to do, when I was struck by the curious placement of the city name Tokyo on Google Maps. It didn’t seem to be over anything in particular: it changed slightly each time I zoomed in but it was usually over a small alleyway in Edogawabashi, a fairly anonymous part of Tokyo.

I checked around to see where other online maps had positioned their “Tokyo” labels.

Bing had it over Shinjuku. More or less over the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. A fairly sensible choice.

Michelin maps and Openstreet map both chose the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Perhaps an even more sensible choice.

But I was so puzzled by Google Map’s placement that I actually took the time during my holiday to visit Edogawabashi to see if there was anything there I was missing.

This is the alleyway from one end

And this is it from the other

Couldn’t see anything, so I’m none the wiser as to why it was chosen. Possibly the result of some algorithm, I expect. When I was there, I stood where I thought the exact place was and looked up. But I didn’t see this.

Pity.

An accidental logic puzzle

As is usual for me on a weekend morning, I was browsing through an old newspaper that shared the same date as my current self. Today I was reading one from thirty years ago, 29th April 1987, when I noticed that the division for Group Four in the European Under-21 Championship formed a little logic puzzle: it was possible to look at it and work out all of the results of the tournament to date.

It isn't a difficult puzzle nor, I'd imagine, that unique but it kept me entertained for a few minutes. Plus, it reminded me of that example of Accidental Poetry I found several years ago.

Why Rugby is Popular in Italy

In a documentary about rugby by the theatre director and actor Marco Paolini, there’s a scene where he draws out a typical line-out, and then quickly sketches around it the coastline of Italy. It’s a remarkably good fit. I wanted to share it but unfortunately, the film doesn’t have a decent close-up of it, so I quickly put together another version.

References

Chi Ga Vinto?, dir. Marco Paolini, La7, 2008
Illustration of Italian line-up taken from Fanatix website
Map of Italy taken from Google Maps

Koehler's influence on my prior beliefs

Perhaps the most important paper on parapsychology in recent years did not appear in a parapsychology journal and it did not concern itself with communicating information via telepathy or influencing random number generators. Instead, it investigated the role of prior beliefs when evaluating new (especially contrary) evidence.

The paper confirmed a number of previous investigations into how people considered the result when deciding on the quality of a scientific paper, but it specifically focused part of its investigation on ESP, and the views of parapsychologists and skeptics.

Koehler made a mailing list of scientists from addresses taken from parapyschological and skeptical organisations and "each scientist was asked to evaluate a hypothetical (but representative) ESP study that either agreed or disagreed with his or her prior beliefs." The hypothetical study in question was a ganzfeld experiment.

The questionnaire and one set of study materials were sent to 195 parapsychologists and 131 skeptics, with a similar return-rate for both (38% and 30% respectively). The quality of the report ("good" or "bad") and the results ("positive" or "negative") varied across four types of reports and additionally some parapsychologist were sent two further types of reports: high or low quality, with no results.

Quality varied according to things like method of randomisation, means of separating the sender and the receiver, and use of blind judges. Respondents completed nine questions using a seven-point scale, and then some open questions deigned to encourage written discussion, and lastly a survey of demographics.

The study found that, as predicted, scientists gave favourable ratings to those experiments whose results reflected their beliefs. Skeptics had a greater tendency to do so, to a marginally significant degree (p less than 0.10)

In the open questions the comments were separated and graded as positive/ neutral/ negative so the percentage of each category given to the high or low quality studies could be measured.

It was found that most comments were negative and high quality studies did not receive significantly fewer negative comments than low quality one. Also, skeptics were less critical of the high quality study than the low quality one. Parapsychologists were equally critical of both in their written responses. This finding seems odd, considering how much skeptics' views were influenced by the results but it could be that, once they'd given a low mark on the 1-7 scale, they were not able to justify their grade in detail.

Koehler's work is one of three scientific papers (the other two are Ioannidis (2005) and the Ignobel-winning Kruger, Dunning (2009)) that made me stop and reconsider my own methods of approaching evidence, and also the methods of those sources that I trusted. It was these that convinced me to use sources as close to first-hand as possible, despite the inconvenience, and to reduce my reliance on commentaries written long after the event. Such commentaries can be useful (after all, I write some myself) but as a beginning of research, not an end.

References:
Ioannidis J.P.A., (2005) "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False." PLoS Med 2(8): e124
Koehler, J.J., (1993) "The influence of Prior Beliefs on Scientific Judgments of Evidence Quality" Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, Vol. 56, p. 28
Kruger, Dunning, (2009) "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments," Psychology, 2009, 1, 30-46

Ersby's Triangle

Pascal's Triangle is a famous and fascinating piece of mathematical architecture. In its sequences are many interesting patterns that also appear in the mathematics of probability, fractals, and geometry.

One day, I decided to take a closer look at it. In particular, I wanted to find a formula to describe the numbers along each diagonal.

So far, so good. But I came a bit unstuck when I reached the fourth diagonal. At first, I thought I found something to do with the differences between the numbers...

 Eventually, after several false starts I guessed that since the first two numbers in the sequence were 1 and 4 perhaps the answer was something to do with square numbers. Before long, I came up with something else...

The fifth diagonal was also difficult, but when I went back to working only with square numbers, the answer came quite quickly.

I noticed that 1 squared was being multiplied by the following numbers: 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3...

This time the multiples of 1 squared were 1, 2, 4, 6, 9... But I was also interested in how the multiples seemed to "move along" the sum because now 2 squared was being multiplied by 1, 1, 2, 2, 3... I wondered if something was going on so, for clarity's sake, I wrote these multiples on a copy of Pascal's triangle, beside the number that each sum belonged to.

A lone tree

On the plain stood a lone tree. Tall and slender, its brittle branches stretched into the sky. A man walking by looked at it. In the middle of the day, the shadow was shorter than the tree itself, but when he came back at dusk, the shadow stretched off into the distance. He stood and waited for the sun to sink a little further, and he imagined the shadow finally reaching far enough that it touched the part of the Earth where it was already night.

He thought of night like a liquid, slowly washing across the surface of the planet, and he wondered if, now that he had a shadow that reached into it, if the night doesn't rush in like water into a newly cut channel, drawing it closer to him. He sat down in the shade, resting his back against the the trunk, and thought to himself that this was the earliest part of night. It didn't feel much different. Just a little cooler.

He held out his hand into the pale orange sunlight, and considered that now a small part of his body was still in the previous day while the rest of him had somehow skipped forward to tomorrow.

He drew his hand back and sat upright, cross-legged on the floor. In the dark he felt seperated from the daylight on either side, as if he were looking at the past: the way things were a few hours ago. It seemed distant. Untouchable. Unchangeable. These things he saw now had already occured some time ago.

He sat and waited for night to catch up and cover the rest of the plain, before he stood and walked back to his village.

Back in Osaka

And so the wheel turns full circle and I'm back where I started for a couple more days before I fly back. Tokyo gave me a bit of a shock one evening when it started snowing. I was walking back to the hotel and I looked up with a rueful smile at my bad luck. What I should've done was grab someone and demand an explanation, as the snow soon picked up and was whipped about by a pretty merciless wind. As I approached Shinjuku I was impressed by the sight of the skyscrapers disappearing up into the low cloud, their lit windows gleaming while the snow flurried around. I would've taken a photo, but my hands were two blocks of ice and refused to do anything fiddly like operate a camera or even open and close.

Tokyo

Arrived yesterday, although the drop in temepature and driving wind and rain didn't make me feel too welcome. Tokyo's okay. Today has been hard on the feet, as I set out for Akihabara, spent ages looking at things, and then made my way back again. Tokyo definitely has that capital city vibe of "this is the place where things get done, so would you mind getting out of my way?" although Tokyo adds a "please" at the end.

Kyoto

I arrived in Kyoto a couple of days ago and yesterday I decided to walk a mountain trail I had seen described in a book. And since I was going to walk in the mountains, I thought, I may as well walk to the start of the trail since - according to my map - that was a pleasant walk along the river. Which, indeed, it was. But it was a two hour walk along the river. Even stopping for a coffee before carrying on didn't fully recharge my batteries, but it was too late to go back now.

So I set off, not exerting myself too much and before too long - perhaps an hour and a bit - had reached the summit of the mountain - Daimonji ("large charcter", so called because during a festival a giant kanji character of the word "big" 大　is lit up on the side in fire).

So I figured I was making good time. I continued the path, making sure to always check the signs at junctions so I was heading towards the next spot on the trail. As it turned out, this too a while. And while I was expecting a steady descent, the path meandered about, going down and then - cruelly - up and with each sign it still pointed towards this place I was heading to with no indication if I was getting any closer. This went on for an hour, with my legs getting increasingly tired. If I hadn't had a compass with me to reassure myself I was always heading south, I'm sure I would've thought I was going in circles.

Finally, arrived at this place but that was cold comfort since the book assured me that after this was another hour of walking. At least for now on it was all downhill, and there were some pretty interesting little shrines dotted along the way, and a waterfall where buddhist pilgrims pray nude while standing under it. No photos of that, since there was one there disrobing as I went past and I didn't want to intrude.

Finally got back into Kyoto after four and a bit hours in the mountains and collapsed into the nearest coffee shop.

Old man in park

While out for a walk, I sat in a park for a bit of a rest and to read a book. Before long an old man had come up to me, asked if I was American, and then invited me to chat. I said okay and so we wnt back to his bench where he'd been drinking whiskey and iced tea. We then spoke (mostly in Japanese, mostly him) about his daughter (half-Phillipino, sixteen years old, which means he must've been about fifty or sixty when she was born, so well done to him) and how the Japanese are happy people, and his job as some kind of agent who works to solve disputes between companies. At one point he started whispering and I get the impression he was telling me a terrible secret. I didn't undserstand a word of it, apart from someone going to prison for ten years. Possibly him.

He then pointed to his bicycle and explained he didn't live in Osaka, but only came in to by instant noodles. I have a hard time imagining any town in Japan that doesn't sell noodles locally, but I didn't ask for details.



At one point, he said he was just going to the toilet, so I said okay. Although the were some public lavatories in the park not far from us, he just walked a little distance away and started pissing against some bushes! I wasn't sure where to look (although "not at him" was the obvious first choice) and tried to pretend that nothing weird was happening.

The Takedao Tunnels

One of the things high on my list of things to do was to visit the Takedao Tunnels. I'd read about them and found it interesting that a disused railway had been turned into a nature trail, despite the presence of some very l0ng, dark tunnels along the way. So, armed with torch, I took the train out of Osaka to try them out.

On the walk from the train station at Takedao　to the start of the hike I passed passed two signs giving off bad vibes. One was a sign warning women of the danger of muggers, and the other was a hand-made sign in Japanese, the only word of which I understood was "abunai" (danger). I hoped that whatever the sign was about, it didn't refer to the walk.

The first tunnel was a good introduction to the walk, not long and gently curving so you can see the end before you begin. The second was just straight ahead, so didn't offer any real problems. And between the tunnels there were some beautiful views of some tree covered mountains and a raging river.

Tunnel three was the first to offer up some challenge. For a start there's a big sign in front of it, which looked a lot like a warning, but I couldn't really tell. There was also a photographer nearby having a cigarette but most importantly, to my discomfort, on the ground at the mouth of the tunnel was a dried, withered bunch of flowers held in place by two stones. They looked somewhat funerial, but I gritted my teeth and entered the tunnel.

This was the first tunnel where I needed my torch, so I switched it on. I was disappointed that, after seeming so bright when I tried it out in my bedroom, it seemed to struggle against this much darkness and could only offer a rather pale yellow beam that let me see where I was about to walk but no further.

About a third of the way in, I heard other footsteps and, looking behind me, I saw that the photographer had started to walk through too. I could see his silhoutette and the light from his torch. He was some distance back so I didn't give it much thought. Later, as I was approaching the end, and the beginning of the tunnel was no longer in sight, I realised that I couldn't hear the photographer's footsteps, nor see the light from his torch. I guess he either turned back or stopped to take a photo. Either way, I found his disappearance a bit disconcerting.

Tunnel four was a doddle, but tunnel five really lived up to the trail's reputation. It's very long and, for the most part, in total darkness. In this situation, your mind can't help but play tricks on you, such that a white streak on the wall fleetingly picked out in the edge of the torchlight gave me quite a shock until I double checked and it was just a white mark on the wall. After a while, you notice how the brownish stains of water on the wall resemble blood and I don't know why but a row of sleepers propped up against the wall really disturbed me.

Tunnel six was another straight ahead one, so no challenge there. Finally I got to the end of the route and arrived in a different town. This was something of a let down after majestic mountains and the rolling river. I then realised I didn't know where this town's train station was, and after a bit of a sit down, I decided that instead of wandering around an unremarkable Japanese town looking for a railway station that could be anywhere, I could just go back the way I came. The walk wasn't long or physically difficult, so why not? It was a great walk in the other direction, too.

In Japan

I'm currently in an internet cafe in Osaka typing to you, and as I do, I'm imagining the words being spoken by a plummy 1930's BBC announcer talking to you all the way from Ally Pally.

There's going to be a tsunami tomorrow, according to the TV. In fact every channe; has an icon in the corner of the screen of Japan, with the coast line colour coded according to the level of sea rise. I'm not feeling too worried myself since I'm quite a long way inland and on the 7th floor, but I do wonder if I'm taking my holiday in the middle of a little bit of history. We shall see: the last tsunami warning the Japanese gave out was withdrawn soon after so we'll see how long this lasts.

The flight was okay. Only got three hours sleep in the whole night, so I'm feeling a bit wired. Interesting things I didn't know about Japan is that the layout of the seats in train carriages can be arranged by switches near the driver's cabin. I watched as one guy made all the seats in all the carriages turn on the spot so they were facing the other way.

I also successfully piloted my first Japanese toilet, managing to avoid the "spray my bottom" button (not a literal translation, I admnit) and hit the flush button instead. Good job too, since I wasn't sitting down at the time and it would've sprayed most of the cubcile door. Anyway, inbuilt bidets aside, I can't say I'm too keen on the heated seats. It's like you'll always feel that someone's done a poo just before you did.

Quick news about getting published

Ages ago I mentioned, at least I think I did, that the Institute for Knowing Things had been accepted by the UK subscription-only magazine The Skeptic for their redesign and relaunch.

Well, the relaunch is finally out and at TAM London, I was able to get hold of a copy and admire my work.

TAM London

So last weekend I went the The Amazing Meeting London - a conference of skeptics and scientists arranged by the James Randi Educational Organisation. It was very good, and I learnt a lot, and I posted as much on the JREF forums the next chance I got. Then, some time later, another guy posted about it saying that there were too many people not talking to each other. I looked on his blog to see if he'd written anything else and I saw that he'd put up a few photos from the event. I looked and I saw that in the queue to get in, the guy standing in front of him was me! And it was true: I didn't speak to him. I didn't know he wanted me to. I feel bad now - like I let the whole side down. If only I'd spoken to him, he would've had a whole different attitude to the event. Oh well. Maybe next year.

Torino: passion lives here

While walking across a bridge in Turin, I noticed that someone had attached some padlocks to the railings. On closer inspection, they had initials written on them in marker pen.

Before too long I worked out that these were signs of affection - a long-lasting declaration of love that will remain until the bridge falls down or the local council decides to go out of their way to remove them. A bit sentimental, but I liked it.

EDIT: I've since learnt that this practice is based on a book (or the film of the book) and it first appeared in Rome. So there you go. Rome: passion lives there, too.

Torino: looking up

So, I’m back from a week in Turin, or Torino (call it what you want: they’ll just be happy that someone mentioned them) and when I was there I was more determined to treat it like a tourist, rather than as someone who used to live there. To that end, I decided to look up more often, like tourists do. In doing so, I noticed a lot of fake or bricked in windows I hadn’t seen before. I found this quite peculiar, so I used my crappy mobile phone to take some pictures.






This mixture of real window frame and lintel and fake window kind of sums up Torino. Famous for its industrial output more than any cultural reasons, and kind of dismissed by other Italians as grey and unfriendly, but it definitely warrants a closer look, since it seems like there’s always something that you missed at first glance and there’s another story around every corner.

I told my friend about me looking up more as we were walking through town, and she took me to a nearby church, where it is said if you look up, you can see the face of the devil staring down at you.



Makes a change, I suppose...

Google Night View

Well, it’s all gone a bit Twin Peaks on Google Street View, with this night-time trip down several country roads in Alaska. The fact that it’s fragmented – one bit here, one bit there - gives it a weird accidental feel as if they didn’t mean this to be here. Perhaps the driver kept nudging the camera on and off as they drove home. Why this should be uploaded, I’ve no idea, but I’m glad that it has. It has a certain claustrophobic beauty. As you move along the road, you do get the feeling that you’re about to go past a parked pick-up truck with all the lights on, but no one inside.

Edit: nope, they've replaced it with some ordinary daytime views. How dull.



View Larger Map

Or you can muck about in Google Maps here.

Edit again: thanks to Google Maps new history option, it's back if you click on the clock icon in the top left hand corner. This is what it looked (looks) like.

The Strip That Writes Itself #10 and #11

As a budding comic strip writer, I admit to being grimly fascinated by bad comic strips. Like picking a scab, I find myself drawn towards them day after day once I’ve found one. The idea that people either (a) think this is funny, or (b) think that other people think it’s funny amazes me.

The pinnacle of this was a comic strip called “Reliable Sources” which ran in the Metro in its first month or so. This strip was almost entirely without merit, such that I thought it might be a clever meta-comic strip, mocking other comic strips by using the same form in an unfunny, uninspiring way, it drew attention to the idea that perhaps all comic strips were like this. Then they dropped it, so perhaps it wasn’t.

These days, I like to torture myself by reading “As If”, a long-running strip in the Independent. Written by Sally Ann Lasson, this piece of work is breath-taking in its tiny set of pre-occupations, revolving entirely around the differences between men and women, delivered in two distinct formats with almost no concern for actually being funny. Like naive art scorns the more formal expectations of the art establishment, perhaps As If should be applauded for doing the same regarding humour.

UK Citizenship test

So, the new practice citizenship test

http://www.ukcitizenshiptest.co.uk/

is online, and a number of my (British) friends gave it a go, and found that they'd fail to become citizens of their own country. With questions about where the European parliament meets and what year did women get the right to divorce their husbands, it turned out to be somewhat obscure. I thought about it, and wondered if these questions might not be a better measure of someone's Britishness.


1. When you hear people talking in the street in a foreign language, do you…

a) marvel at how multi-cultural this country has become?

b) assume they’re talking about you?



2. When you hear the national anthem in a public place, you should…

a) stand up.

b) complain about the noise.


3. The British Empire was

a) an unworkable mess from the start.

b) the best thing that ever happened to them.


4. “IOW” means…

a) Isle of Wight

b) “In other words…”


5. The years 1918, 1945 and 1966 should be dropped into conversations with…

a) Germans.

b) anyone.


Score
Q1 a) 10, (b) 50
Q2 a) 100, (b) 150
Q3 a) -50, (b) 50
Q4 a) 0, (b) 0
Q5 a) 25, (b) 75 (NB, give yourself 50 points if you wanted to say "Americans", especially since they probably won't know what 1966 refers to)

Japanese lessons and socks

So, I’m now doing, on and off, two Japanese lessons a week. Both are in their houses, so I have to take off my shoes when I enter. This is no big deal, but it does mean that on those days when I have Japanese I have to choose my socks carefully.

At the moment, in my bag along with my homework and a dictionary, is a pair of clean, hole-less socks which I will change into after I’ve washed my feet and then I can head out, confident that I will not cause offence on my arrival. On those occasions that I forget, a quick trip to a sock shop is needed or else I spend the lesson self consciously tucking my feet under my chair in a futile attempt at maximising the distance between my socks and her nose. Makes it difficult to concentrate on grammar. I've even gone to the trouble of buying new socks if I realise I have no spares to change into.

Meanwhile, in a recent lesson, my teacher and I were doing adjectives, and I asked what the Japanese for "simple" was. She said it was "shinpuru", シンプル, a loan-word from English. I was quite disappointed by this. If you go to all the trouble of learning a foreign language, it almost seems a shame when they start using large chunks of yours. Although, obviously, they had words for these concepts before English started influencing the language (the proper Japanese word is "kantan", 簡単, btw) it does conjure up some weird images of people in old Japan struggling to verbalise certain concepts. Like for "door" the Japanese say "doa", which brings to mind people saying "Don't forget to close the thing when you leave." "What - the window? The cupboard?" "No, the other thing. You know. The thing you walk through."