a-cubed.info

It’s that time of year, and I never knew if Japan had DST. So, having been reminded of the issue by User Friendly, I did a web search and found that Japan does not follow daylight saving time. You learn something new every day, and today one of the things I learned is that in Antarctica there are three time zones observed: Chile, GMT-3 and New Zealand. The Chilean and New Zealand zones observe their relative DST settings, but the British base at Rothera maintains GMT-3 all year. So, when the UK “springs forward” I’ll only be eight hours ahead of the UK.

There’s a fun site that allows you to generate maps of places you’ve beenfrom a full worldwide map to the US states, European countries et al.

My world travel map:

my US states map:

and my European countries map:

(create your own maps)

In the run-up to the 50th anniversay of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, various people and groups are setting forth their vision of Europe. Amongst these is the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has a decidedly Christian view of Europe, in her proposals for the “Berlin Declaration”. Humanists, and secularists (some of whom are of course of a variety of religions), opposed to such a religious viewpoint, have drafted a counterpointing Brussels Delcaration.

The Senior Common Room at the University of Reading sent out an email advertising two events coming up:

• Therapeutic Massage: explanation and demonstration
• Organ recital

I think because the first of these put me in mind of bodily function, the second produce the image of a surgeon performing a public autopsy as used to happen in the Victorian Era:

• Lungs
• Heart
• Liver
• Spleen
• Kidneys
• …

I bought one of the electronic dictionaries that so many English-speaking Japanese use. (For those interested, the one I bought is the Canon Wordtank V90.) While very useful for many of its features, which include animated stroke order of kanji and handwriting recognition of characters, it’s not as useful to me as to a native Japanese speaker since it’s English-Japanese dictionary has the explanations of English and Japanese words in Japanese, and in full kanji-mode at that. As my Japanese improves (and particularly as my knowledge of kanji gets broader) it will become more useful.

Today I was looking something up and got the “neighbouring word” distraction. The Japanese word “kakuka” was listed with English meanings of “drupe” and “stone fruit”. I’d never come across the word “drupe” before and it wasn’t in the English-English dictionary in the V90. Wikipedia to the rescue, though, and it turns out just to be a technical biology term for a fruit with a stone-like seed at the centre.

Nice Piled Higher and Deeper cartoon about sabbaticals.

Bigots in various Christian sects and some in other religions, have been campaigning in the UK against legislation which outlaws discrimination against people on the grounds of their sexuality. Their claims are that:

• Christians who run guest houses may be forced to provide homosexual couples with a double bed;
• Adoption agencies (apparently Catholic agencies place most of the third of children with significant problems who are therefore most difficult to place) will be forced to place children with homosexual couples.

Well, except within the confines of the religious institutions themselves, we don’t allow them to discriminate against women or the disabled or on the grounds of race. Sexuality is no different here. This is another example of exactly what the Pope railed against as “the rise of secularism” in Western Europe. Well, speaking as a secularist, I think that the separation of religion and public life is the only way we can have a multi-/no-faith society. If we allow private religious beliefs to be expressed in public life in this way, then we allow anyone to claim exemption from any law “for religious purposes”.

I have no problem with your personal religious beliefs, if you want to be a bigot, then you must find a job in which you don’t encounter anything which arouses that bigotry. You have freedom of speech and may espouse your beliefs but you may not put them into practice any more than those who believe that cannabis should be legal can import, process, sell and smoke it. They may campaign for a change in the law, but they may not violate it.