a-cubed.info

Christmas in Japan is rather odd for a Westerner. Just like in the US or Europe, images of the Coke-inspired (i.e. Red and White) Santa Claus are all over the place, as well as the evergreen symbolism of midwinter solstice. Howeever, Christmas Day isn’t a holiday. The current emperor’s birthday is the 23rd December, so that is a holiday, but Christmas Day itself is just a normal day, unless one is among the tiny number of Christians in Japan, where it’s a religious day for them. The build-up is pushed by retailers, with Christmas decorations all over the place. These are replaced on Boxing Day with the Japanese New Year decorations instead. New Year is the big holiday season here, really. (more…)

I just came across a book which I thought would be useful for one of the courses I’m teaching at Meiji University: Information Society. It’s a 2009 book called The Information Society and it includes the same kind of approach I’m using, with a historical background and various sociological, technological, economic and other facets explored. It’s a huge book, admittedly, at almost 2,000 pages. You can see the full details at the publisher’s web site. I’m not going to be using it as a book, though, even purchased for my University library, because it costs £675.00 (Amazon UK) $1,325.00 (Amazon US) $1,192 (Routledge List price). What on earth? That’s 25p per page! (more…)

I recently had my first Times Higher Education article “Lost Without Translation” published (I’ve been in the letters pages very often before but never had an article in there). Here’s the text: (more…)

To be sung to Where the Streets Have No Name by U2 (or the Pet Shop Boys cover version):
I wanna blog
I want to speak
I wanna see through the fog
That makes us all weak
I wanna reach out
And touch the flame
Where the tweets have no name
Ha…ha…ha…
I want to feel
The book of my face
To see the cloud as it appears
Without a trace
I want to shelter from the trollish reign
Where the tweets have no name
Ho…ha… (more…)

As this blog has been down for a while due to technical issues, I posted this on my LJ already. From 1st April I have a new job. I will be a professor in the Graduate School of Business Administration, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics, at Meiji University in Tokyo. I will be travelling to Japan at the beginning of March.

Three Youtube videos from the same guys doing episodes one, two and three of “If Google Was Your Roommate”. Very well done. Reminds me of the Idiots of Ants’ “Facebook in Real Life”:

• Episode 1
  
• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Facebook in Real Life

I commented in agreement with Matt McCormick’s post on The God Projector:
There is a very good book by Reeves and Nass called “The Media Equation” looking at the psychological responses of human beings to various media, including television and computers in particular. One of the telling elements which jibes quite well with the ideas presented here is solid evidence that our psychological reactions to computers automatically ascribe human emotional contexts to machines. One of a number of well-documented examples is the subconscious positive bias we make when filling out a survey about the qualities of a computer program. If we fill it out on the same physical computer on which we used the program, then we give higher scores than if we fill it out on a different (but otherwise identical) machine. So, given a lab with two identical Dell computers in them if we fill out the questionnaire on the one we used a program on then we give higher results for the program than sitting at an identical machine. The only mechanism that seems plausible for this conclusion is that we’re hardwired to avoid hurting the feelings of the computer we used. These results are consistent even among people with a high level of education about computers and a high level of intelligence. So, there are hard-wired subconscious elements of the human brain that attempt to ascribe human-like qualities to everything we interact with. Hence “don’t make the lightning mad” is perfectly reasonable as a first hard-wired reaction. (more…)

The Counter Terrorism Act 2008 includes the provision:

76. Offences relating to information about members of armed forces etc

(1) After section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (collection of information) insert:
“58A Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc

(1) A person commits an offence who:

(a) elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been:

(i) a member of Her Majesty’s forces,

(ii) a member of any of the intelligence services, or

(iii) a constable,

which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or

(b) publishes or communicates any such information.”

This is in addition to a prior claim in December 2008 where the Home Secretary informed the National Union of Journalists that photography in public places may be restricted when it “may cause or lead to public order situations or inflame an already tense situation or raise security considerations”.
(more…)

The Today programme (BBC Radio 4’s morning news/current affairs programme for the non-Brit amongst you) has a “Best of Today” podcast available on the BBC site. While I regularly lsiten to the whole programme for a lot of the other news/current affairs programmes from Radio 4, the Today programme being 3 hours long has quite a bit of repetition (most people listen to it for up to an hour rather than the whole thing). Anyway, I had a look to see if the “Best of” was better than picking up the iPlayer version and forwarding to 08:00 today and found that they’d obviously had use of the TARDIS while no one at BBC Wales was looking. The date as I write this is Monday 6th April. Look at the podcast page, then see the close-up. (more…)

So, I found a reasonably priced book on Amazon.co.uk available through one of their external sellers. Said seller is in Florida. As always when ordering such things I got three emails confirming the order: Amazon confirming the order; Amazon confirming the payment to the external seller; the external seller confirming receipt of the order. The odd thing is that the external seller sent me their confirmation message in Japanese. As this is a prolific external Amazon seller, whose trading name I vaguely recognise, I can only think that I’ve ordered from this seller via Amazon.co.jp (with whom I also have an account, of course) and their system somehow managed to tie up the two separate accounts – not difficult by any means given I don’t try to hide my identity particularly on these transactions, but it would take some work since the co.uk and co.jp accounts and indeed stores are separate entities.