A brief follow up

Apparently, Qantas has something to answer for when it comes to the distribution of information. See here.

The Data Smog

So, I was passed on a link this morn to the NSW Food Authority's register of penalty notices, released in early May this year. My contact expressed her happiness that such information would be released. Her justification, unsurprisingly, was that now people can know who is violating what when it comes to food. Note that this is the penalty register: the offences register is on a separate page. We'll get to a comparison of the two momentarily. For now I want to focus on the former.

Because, being a PhD student, I have a problem with the site, much as I have a problem with lots of things. Too many books = whinges a lot.

So what is what is wrong with this site, for me? It can be summed up best in Alasdair Roberts' catchphrase: data smog. Data Smog is the effect where an institution releases a whole bunch of information under the guise of being a good citizen and letting the folk know what's going on in their world, but ends up releasing so much information so quickly and in such a messy state that they may as well have not released any data at all. The site is a table (sortable by a number of categories) that lists those businesses whom the Food Authority has slapped with a fine regarding a food-related matter: storage, cleaning of food or premises, handling, sale, labelling, etc. On the surface, it looks reasonably manageable. However, the information doesn't really give any substantive insights. To get any information about what particular penalty a particular business has been given, one must click on the link embodied by the penalty code off to the right of the table. This code, again non-descriptive, takes you to the particular information on the case, where you can see the details of the infraction for that business. So, conceivably, if one knew where one was going to dine, or what area, one could scroll through the table to find specific restaurants or restaurants in a particular area.

However, this is all done manually, and requires shifting back and forth from the table on the front page to the specific penalty incurred, and back again, for each offense. Not just each premises, but each offense. So, if an inspector has been having a bad day and goes nuts on a particular joint, there may be a number of incidental penalties that appear in sequence, that one has to look at separately if they are to assess how serious each claim is. For instance, a particular supermarket was fined for labelling a pack of mutton as lamb. Not a serious offense, but still, it is flagged.

Now, I have no problem with all these incidentals being released per se. I'm sure that there are particular religious denominations or others who will find value in such info. But there is no way to screen for a particular offense, for example. So, if someone has a life-threatening condition, say, a bad nut allergy, they can't find who has been charged within the last 2 years (the time period which penalties are noted for) for accidentally introducing nuts into meals. This is important for them, and may influence their choice on where to go based on repeat, or single infractions. However, if one wanted to know this, they'd have to search through all this data manually to get what they wanted. Simple filtering systems aren't exactly new or complicated: If a Microsoft product can do it, it shouldn't be too problematic. Or even just to put a brief description of the infraction within the initial table, for easy viewing.

Never mind that there is no consistency between the penalties and offences tables. In penalties, you click on the penalty rego number to get details, in offences, the business name. Of course, this isn't noted.

I'm all for free information. But it seems like a waste of time and money to throw it out there without at least some rudimentary ability to filter through such information. I mean, because of the two-tier structure of the penalties notices, one couldn't even copy the first table into, say, excel and go from there. They'd have to copy each offense individually. I dont' believe it is enough for governments to provide information to their citizens. They have to provide it in such a way that someone without expert knowledge on the subject can approach the data and manipulate it to acheive their goals, particular when such goals are related to health.

Death's the disease, I'm the cure

yes. To perhaps be paraphrasing that greatest of philosophers, John Rambo, death is now a disease that can be treated with patentable pharmaceuticals. Whew, finally.

A 'small' pharma company has been bought out by Glaxo-SmithKline one the strength of two pharmaceuticals used to prolong life (or to treat death). These pharmaceuticals are still in the clinical trials stage, and despite their potential to supress fertility in subjects (which may even be potential targets for new patents) are said to potentially increase life expectancy by 5 - 10%. And then you drop dead. Aaaah, life. And how do they do this? One pharmaceutical activates the body's sirtuins. Why?

"The hope is that activating sirtuins in people would, like a calorically restricted diet in mice, avert degenerative diseases of aging like diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's. There is no Food and Drug Administration category for longevity drugs, so if the company is to submit a drug for approval, it needs to be for a specific disease."

So here we have the crux of it. Instead of eating healthy, and exercising the body, reducing pollution and exercising mind (all often linked to decreasing diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's) we have drugs, patentable drugs, to do this for us.

Forgive my cynicism, but now that death is a disease that is treatable by patentable pharmaceuticals, one has to wonder what (the) good life is.

I can't believe its not Nietzsche

In response to Catie's earlier post of 'I can't believe its not Kant' I have knocked up this little doozy.
Get on board your favourite 'philosopher as pet' train. All the kids are doing it.

What is a good person? + Nature/nurture debate

After a couple of interesting talks at the AAP conference this week, I stumbled across this BBC article on goodness of character and the nature/nurture debate, both subjects of which I attended talks about throughout the week.

Luke Russell first off talked about what made an evil person, deciding that our intuitions were a good basis for this, but that current models of evil weren't quite up to the task, and Paul Griffiths today talked about the nature/nurture debate, and how you can't really separate nurture from nature (his example from the animal kingdom was the development of rats and their gene expression based on how much grooming they received from their mother (among other examples)), and that the idea of "human nature" is not just explicable by our DNA (or by our environment).

Anyway I'm a little tipsy right now after the AAP conference dinner so I'll leave it at that for now, IMO the BBC is a little behind in the most recent thinking on these debates! ;)

Wikileaks -- when does freedom of information go too far?

I read with great interest this article on wikileaks.org, a fascinating site that allows whistle-blowers to do their thing. As the article mentions, it's already played a huge part in several astonishing cases around the world -- disclosure of information about the looting of Kenya by a former president, money laundering by a Swiss bank, and US interrogation procedures in Guantanamo Bay.

The article looks at criticism of its "free-for-all" policy, publishing actors' tax bills with their SSNs, or scripts for upcoming movies, and for its publishing of Scientology and other secretive religious documents.

All this got me wondering, where should the line be drawn? The old saying "information wants to be free" seems to be the key ethic of wikileaks itself, but how is publishing movie scripts or innocuous tax bills at all useful?

I'm all for freedom of information, but if there's no greater good to be gained from the publishing of it, it seems purely malicious and somewhat counterproductive to the aims of wikileaks itself (establishing it as a reputable source for information, for example). There are certain industries where whistleblowing, although legal, will get you in a lot of trouble if you go through the official channels, and wikileaks adds a good level of anonymous abstraction to the process which can certainly be used for a lot of good.

What do you think?

I Can't Believe It's Not Kant!

I saw this article on Cute Overload and just *had* to share.

I Can't Believe It's Not Kant!: "

While the common dog enthusiast may content himself to costume his cur in the guise of hackneyed pop-culture icons, retro-urban folk archetypes, or even perverse attempts at species confusion, the intellectual dog owner seeks to cloak Man's Best Friend not in the artificiality of cloth, but in the transcendence of Truth.' It is for these enlightened few that The Cute Overload School of Philosophy Gift Shop is pleased to offer ...

The Immanuel Kant Doggie Dress-Up Kit!

Each kit includes a deluxe leather-bound edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason translated into Dog, a set of Categories of the Understanding flash cards, and an easy-to-learn guide to teaching your dog pensive philosophical poses.

To order, contact Ian O.

"

(Via Cute Overload.)