The Blog From Another Dimension

Time for the Democrats to Grow Some Balls

So Bush has just nominated Samuel Alito to be his next nominee for the Supreme Court. In doing so, he seems to be doing everything he can to please his base while making it as hard as possible for the Democrats to object. But Alito is not someone the Democrats should lie down for; though he is experienced, he's way too far to the right--he's nicknamed "Scalito" for how close his ideology is to radical justice Anton Scalia.

This is the Democrats' hour, when they need to stand up and put up a fight. Alito, strongly conservative, would replace Sandra Day O'Connor's seat, which is a critical swing vote. The Dems have to fight this nomination, even if it means the Republicans will use their Nuclear Option.

To those of you on the right who would complain that I am suggesting a political play, you're damned right: but that is exactly what Bush's nomination itself is, so turnabout is fair play. The Dems absolutely should play the politics of this one, and play them hard--take the GOP on its own turf.

Bush and the GOP are weakened now, and the Democrats are in need of a message and a stand, and most Americans approve of Roe v. Wade. The Dems have to push this, to point out what the court will be like if Alito gets on the court. They have to get together in one voice, damn the torpedoes, and say in a unified voice, we will not accept Alito as a replacement for O'Connor, that this political nomination is an insult to her legacy. They have to push every button they can, from the radical nature of his politics to the fact that after an abortive Miers debacle Bush is replacing O'Connor with a white male conservative, after having just seated another white male conservative. The Dems must point out that they were reasonable on Roberts, but this is O'Connor's seat and they're not gonna cave on this one. Demanding O'Connor be seen as the political benchmark to follow is key.

So far, after just an hour or two, the Democrats seem to be striking the right tone, but those comments have to coalesce into real action.

Will that trigger the Nuclear Option? Maybe--but frankly, I think that would be an even better fight for the Democrats. To use the nuclear option would make the GOP into the selfish, we-want-everything crybaby totalitarians just in time for the next election. And that's assuming they'll pull the trigger--if enough Republicans (and it doesn't take many) don't sign on to the nuclear option, then the Democrats win and the Republicans get weakened that way as well.

If the Dems weaken and say to Bush, well, okay, you can put a hard-right-winger in O'Connor's seat, because we can't stomach a fight, I think that'll be a bad sign for what's to come. In lieu of proactively coming together and putting forward an aggressive agenda, it seems like the Dems have been waiting for one to come their way. Well, this is it. The timing is perfect, and there aren't going to be any fights in the next year as pivotal as this one.

And Some More Fun in Japan

Okay, a break from the politics for now, and back to a little more fun with the photos. First, some confectionery English from Japan. Again, these photos are from the past, 15 to 20 years old. In the local supermarket in Toyama, the Pastry section read as this:

I didn't want to ask what those little black specks in the crackers were, quite frankly. Then we had the usual assortment of strangely-named cookies:

You'll find in there: Surely Cookies, Assort Cookies, Love Sound Cookies, Marone Sand Type Cookies, Hartly Cookies, Homely Cookies, and Nice Cookies. The only cookies in there I'm not sure are unusual are the Digestive Biscuits, but I don't recall seeing those in the U.S.--maybe it's a British thing. Or it could be more funny English. They tend to be better about that kind of thing nowadays, though we still have Pocky, Crunky and other assorted strangely-named treats.

This child's toy set indicated a different perspective on trends in parenting, I suppose. In the U.S., most parents would specifically avoid anything close to this:

And then finally, from a Toyama gas station, English which was okay, expect for syntax:

And I'll leave it at that tonight.

Plame, Libby, and the Intelligence Identities Protection Act

I'm assuming you know about the Plame case to date, and about the indictments (PDF file) that were handed down in Libby's case and the ones not handed down in Rove's case. Republicans are putting the best spin on this they know how, including the standard blame-everyone-else defense (for example, anyone and everyone aside from Bush administration officials outed Plame multiple times before Rove and Libby got around to doing it), but also used a lack-of-the-negative defense. They pointed out that Libby was indicted for lying about the Plame event, but not for the original charge of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) of 1982, which makes illegal the outing of an intelligence operative whose identity is classified.

Right-wingers are arguing that because of this, Libby is really innocent and the charges against him now are just a "gotcha," nothing more than penny-ante made-up crimes (never mind that under such a paradigm, Clinton's perjury and subsequent impeachment were the ultimate "gotcha"). Of course, that also raises the question of why Libby clearly lied, committed perjury and obstructed justice if he was innocent.

The general explanation why Libby wasn't charged for outing Plame is that the IIPA is so hard to prosecute that neither Rove nor Libby were ever in any danger of being indicted under that statute--in fact, no one ever has been. Again, conservatives argue that "people" have been, but that's not really true: only one person has pleaded guilty under the law, but was not indicted--they pled guilty as part of a plea agreement, avoiding 18 counts of espionage. No one has ever been prosecuted or indicted under that law. That makes you wonder why Libby lied so much if he was never in danger--was they lying necessary? Or did Libby simply not know the law was unprosecutable? That's hard to believe--one would think he'd have studied that particular law carefully right from the beginning.

So, why is the law so hard to prosecute? Reading the law, it seems pretty clear: if you know that someone's intelligence identity is classified and you release it, you're guilty--and from what I can gather, that's the out Libby has: he can argue that he did not definitively know that Plame's identity was covert or classified. Fitzgerald said in his press conference,

I will confirm that her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003. And all I'll say is that, look, we have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert agent. We have not charged that. And so I'm not making that assertion.

Although one can note that Fitzgerald did not say there was no proof to this effect, it seems to be the message he's conveying.

However, there is the fact that Cheney told Libby on June 12, 2003, that Valerie Plame worked for the counterproliferation division at the CIA. So the question becomes, did Libby know that the counterproliferation division was part of the Operations Directorate of the CIA, which would make it covert and classified? Here's where the question of "proof" comes into the picture: Libby is and was highly conversant in intelligence matters, and for someone in that position, it strains credulity that he would not be aware of the nature of the counterproliferation division:

Vincent Cannistraro, a former operations officer who also worked at the National Security Council during the Reagan administration, concurred, saying, "There's no way they wouldn't know." (source)

But so long as Libby can play the idiot and say that he didn't know, he can do an ultra-limbo back-bend under the law and escape indictment under that charge--which is why the IIPA is so hard to prosecute. This also explains Fitzgerald's wording, in that he did not say Libby didn't know Plame's position was covert, rather that he's not making that allegation. In his press conference, he also put the matter in slightly different terms, using a baseball analogy to explain how it is impossible to know a person's internal motives and knowledge, and that Libby's obstruction made it difficult to go any further.

Of course, the fact remains that it is as clear as it can get without Libby confessing he knew and intentionally outed Plame's covert status that this is in fact the case. Of course Libby knew her status was classified. Of course the motive was base and political. But cowards like Libby and Rove and so many in the Bush administration have always and will always hide behind these kinds of loopholes. That doesn't make them innocent, and if all we can convict them of is lying, then that's the least they deserve, literally.

The Art of Lying

Right-wingers will say that Bush didn't lie when he said in his 2003 State of the Union address, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." They'll say that what he said was literally true--the British government did "learn" that, after a fashion--even if the claim about Hussein "seeking" uranium from Niger was false.

Here's the problem: though you could say that this sentence used qualifying verbs--"learned" and "sought"--the fact of the matter is that the statement's intended message, the impression it was carefully crafted to send, was that Saddam got uranium from Niger and was working on a nuclear weapon. You can go on all day about how Bush didn't "really" say that, but that's the art of the lie: you can make people believe something by not actually saying it literally, then hide behind words.

A statement must be judged a truth or lie more by the message it intends to send rather than just the words taken literally.

A related but slightly different kind of lie is the carefully-constructed half-truth--in other words, using only true statements to give a false impression, especially by omitting key facts that would obviate the intended premise. The more difficult it is to sense or seek out the excluded data, the better for committing the lie. A classic Republican half-truth was championed by Rush Limbaugh and has resonated throughout conservative diatribe to this day: that in the 1980's, taxes were cut and revenues doubled. The intended message was clear: that cutting taxes (Republican-style) can lead to more money pouring into the treasury. The idea is that tax cuts lead to more money in people's hands, which leads to more spending, which leads to more jobs, which leads to more income taxes paid. (An alternate version for targeting rich people includes the front-end of rich people investing more, leading to more jobs, thus more taxes.) Central to this is the net income of average Americans, after taxes; the more there is to spend, the more will be spent.

How is this a half-truth? Well, first, while taxes were cut during the 80's, taxes were also raised, a fact which is omitted and cancels out the first statement. Conservatives will argue that income taxes were cut, but the theory of people having more to spend relies critically upon the individual's net income after all taxes have been subtracted--including the key Social Security tax increases which hit the middle class especially. Also, a lot of other tax hikes are overlooked, the ones at the local and state level due to government spending cuts passed down, not to mention increased personal expenses due to fewer government services. In a fuller context, tax rates actually increased, even if you only count federal taxes, during the 1980's for the average American.

Second, the lie forwards the idea that revenues doubled: indeed, revenue in the 80's rose from $517 billion in 1980 to $1.031 trillion in 1990, just shy of a 100% increase. However: the lion's share of that increase is false, because the claim of doubled revenue is based upon comparison of dollars not adjusted for inflation. Under those terms, Jimmy Carter probably was the most successful president at raising revenues, but I have the feeling that's not the message conservatives want to send. Over the ten years beginning with Reagan's first year in office, the cumulative inflation rate was roughly 77% during the same stated period of revenue doubling (1980 to 1989), making the actual revenue increase in real dollars somewhere around 12%. And a good chunk of that increase was due to population growth.

In the end, the reality was that during the 1980's taxes were raised slightly, and revenues increased slightly. What a surprise! But this is almost exactly the reverse of what conservatives claim in that famous half-truth lie.

So back to the original premise: if your intent in your overall message is to mislead or outright lie, it matters not one bit if each individual component of the statement you make is "literally" if separately true. So don't let anyone fool you by claiming a politician "told the truth" when they obviously were trying to make Americans believe something untrue.

Miers Withdraws

My brother just called and alerted me to the breaking story: Miers is no longer a nominee. The White House is of course trying to put the best face on it: Miers asked Bush to withdraw her nomination, and the White House "reluctantly" agreed. I'm sure they were reluctant, but I doubt that's how it went down. Look at Bush's explanation: that Miers would never pass unless Senator saw the documentation on her. Which is BS: they didn't release the info on Roberts, and it wasn't a problem with them. If the Republican senators wanted to see the documentation, the White House could find a way to give them the info they wanted to see, under the table. It's not Miers begging, it's not resigning to paperwork problems. My brother pointed out something I probably wouldn't have thought of: that this is the White House deciding to take all their hits at one time, with the indictments against Rove and Libby likely coming out either later today or tomorrow. Instead of this happening over a longer time, say one huge story a week over two weeks, instead two big stories coming out at almost the same time, stepping on each other and fighting for air time.

Now the question is, how will Bush handle the next step? Probably they'll wait for the indictments to come out, and soon after that, release Bush's new nominee to try to sap the strength of the indictment story. But who will he choose? Will he go for a hardcore conservative (like Owen or Brown) to please his base, possibly incurring a serious Democratic challenge? Or will he try to find someone who is a more moderate conservative to avoid a bitter fight? Either way, he'll have to choose someone with far better credentials than Miers. And I'm guessing he'll go with a hardcore nominee; it's a better bet that the Democrats won't go so far as a filibuster, but one hopes that this will be the rallying cry the Dems finally find their cajones with, and go for broke.

So, what if the GOP goes with the nuclear option? I would think, what difference would it make? If the Dems always back down at that threat, then what voice do they have anyway? At least if the GOP goes nuclear and kills the filibuster, it can be used by the Dems in 2006 to demonstrate how the GOP has become drunk with power, and has demolished a much-loved icon of individualism and small-guy power that is the filibuster. It's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington! The GOP has killed Mr. Smith! They're the Taylor machine, knocking over our small-town wagons trying to get the truth out the the public! As I see it, if the Dems don't push it now, they'll never get anything out of it anyway. And who knows, maybe the impossible will happen and the Dems will succeed in knocking out a hardcore candidate without the GOP going nuclear. I think the only way the Dems can lose is by caving in and not making the necessary challenge.

I've got an eye on CNN, and so far, they're only talking to Republicans and getting their spin--haven't heard them interview a Democrat yet. Surprise, surprise.

Update: after more than an hour of only Republicans commenting, Wolf Blitzer finally said he'd get to the view from "liberals"--and then spent five minutes discussing the Republicans' point of view and their actions. Eventually, they got to a live statement by Chuck Schumer--which they cut off after less than a minute so they could take a call from Robert Bork. Yeah, this is balanced, all right. Ten minutes later: Ann Coulter is on the phone. This is a joke.

Rather Not

Conservatives relentlessly point out that Dan Rather was fooled by the forged documents about Bush in the National Guard, and tried to smear Bush with them. But then, was not Bush fooled by the forged documents from Italy about the Niger yellowcake uranium purchases, and used it in the State of the Union speech to start a war? Which is worse? You could say that one or both suspected forgery and publicized them anyway for political purposes--but frankly, if only one of them did it, do you really think it was Rather and not Bush?

A more general point: Dan Rather and the National Guard story on the liberal side do not equal the full force and weight of Fox News on the conservative side. I don't know how many times now I have heard conservatives defend Fox News' incessant hard-core right-wing bias by dragging out Dan Rather and the National Guard story, time and time again, as if the two balance each other out somehow. They don't, not by a long shot. Rather pounced on many a scandal and rumor about Clinton during his years, and did more than his share of cheerleading the Bush war effort and not questioning it; he's a poor icon of liberalism, and if a similar story had come his way about Kerry, it would be hard to imagine him burying it. Rather is not considered liberal because he's done liberal journalism, he's considered liberal simply because conservatives have repeatedly insisted that he is. He simply got sloppy on the National Guard story. See if you can name one--just one--other story by Rather that demonstrated a liberal bias. Hey, expand on that--demonstrate how CBS News is somehow left-leaning. Betcha can't.

Fox News, on the other hand, pours out a continuous stream of right-wing rhetoric and talking points. Right-wing commentators abound, and even their main anchors shill for the Bush administration. One example: Brit Hume, Fox News' anchor, intentionally took Franklin D. Roosevelt's words out of context and made it sound like he was proposing the privatization of Social Security when in fact he was saying the opposite. A quick look at Roosevelt's original statement and it becomes very clear that there is no way you could read that and come away with Hume's spin; furthermore, in order for Hume to have misrepresented Roosevelt the way he did, he would have had to carefully choose exactly which words to extract to give the wrong impression. In short, it was not an error or misunderstanding, but rather a deliberate act. This is just one example of the constant right-wing bias coming from Fox.

Furthermore, as a former Fox News staffer points out in this article, the Fox News team gets its political talking points from its chairman, who is rabidly right-wing:

Editorially, the FNC newsroom is under the constant control and vigilance of management. The pressure ranges from subtle to direct.  First of all, it's a news network run by one of the most high-profile political operatives of recent times. Everyone there understands that FNC is, to a large extent, "Roger's Revenge" - against what he considers a liberal, pro-Democrat media establishment that has shunned him for decades. For the staffers, many of whom are too young to have come up through the ranks of objective journalism, and all of whom are non-union, with no protections regarding what they can be made to do, there is undue motivation to please the big boss.

... the roots of FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it.

The idea that Rather and CBS News were or are even a hundredth as liberal as Fox is conservative, is simply a load of bull. The next time you hear anyone say different, you call them on it.

Another Grim Milestone

A very distressing milestone, and a reason to question why we are here, is it worth the price, and most of all, how many more?

Bush said that the best way to honor the dead would be to complete the mission in Iraq, but then, Bush has never been shy about using the honor of fallen soldiers to justify killing more for his own selfish reasons. Some say that no matter whether we stay or leave, the end result will be the same, that Bush has so totally screwed up this situation that nothing can reasonably expect to bring success now.

And, as always, Bush's rhetoric is sickening: "We've lost some of our nation's finest men and women in the war on terror," as he continues his unrelenting fiction that somehow Iraq is related to the war on terror, and follows that by speaking of patriotism and the honor of the soldiers so as to suggest that what Bush himself did was somehow right and just instead of being a criminally fatal and unwarranted blunder. It's enough to make one physically ill.

Cheney's Complicity and the Shelter of a Shred of Doubt

Oops. Turns out Scooter Libby lied. Who'da thunk?

Conservatives have been trying to convince us that anyone and everyone blew Valerie Plame's cover other than someone in the White House. The press blew her cover. Libby didn't tell the press, the press told Libby. No? OK, then Joe Wilson blew her cover. Plame blew her own cover. And so on. But now we've learned something more important: Libby got Plame's identity from Dick Cheney, and Cheney got it from George Tenet, director of the C.I.A.

Now think about that. It was exactly the time when Cheney was asking for information on Wilson because Wilson was challenging Bush's Niger claim, and a month before Bob Novak made Plame's C.I.A. status public. George Tenet just "happened" to mention to Cheney that Wilson's wife was an undercover C.I.A. agent, then Cheney "happened" to mention it to his chief of staff, Libby, who then "happened" to mention it to a half dozen reporters. Um, yeah.

Now, there's no proof that either Cheney or Libby knew that Plame was undercover and her status was classified. There's no proof that Cheney or Libby sought to distribute the information in order to attack Wilson and ruin his wife's career. And there's no proof that Hillary Clinton is considering a run for the White House in 2008. But in all three cases, it is glaringly obvious that what appears to be the case is without any doubt whatsoever actually the case.

But Ness got Capone on tax evasion, and Fitzgerald (whose straight-shooter status is strong and firm) appears to at the very least have Libby on perjury. I'll go for that, if we can't nail them on the traitorous crimes we just as surely know they committed.

And while this new information may not provide prosecutable evidence against Cheney, it sure pulls aside the curtain and leaves little doubt that he was deeply involved, and the whole idea was to smear Wilson and anyone else who got in the way.

One thing's for sure, it will be very interesting to see what Fitzgerald comes out with this week.

More Fun in Japan

Just a few more photos from the past of interesting English spotted in Japan. The two main entries have to do with bargain sales in Japan. Here, the shopkeepers thing in terms of how much they take off the normal prices; 10% off, 20% off, and so on. So, naturally, this is the kind of sale they sometimes have:

It seems that "off" is the "big" word. Literally:

I assume they are selling clothes. But I didn't check, just in case. Not that I would have really turned down a chance to see the "Ladies' Big Off" on the first floor, but they were closed.

This last one doesn't really fit into today's category, but serves as a kind of similar coda with last week's "Keep the Left" direction photo. From Kobe, many years ago:

Iraq Casualties

And in case anyone has forgotten about Iraq amongst all the Miers and Plame talk, things are not going at all smoothly in the wake of the election--American soldiers are being killed at the highest rate in almost a year, with many of those casualties coming in the last week after the vote. 1,996 Americans have now been killed in Iraq.

Miers Mired

In case you still had any idea that Harriet Miers is in any way qualified to be a Supreme Court justice, read this article from the L.A. Times. The article describes the reception to Miers' recent submission to a standard questionnaire, in particular an answer she gave regarding the Equal Protection Clause. Miers claimed that while on the Dallas City Council, "the council had to be sure to comply with the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause."

One small hitch: the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that proportional representation does not apply to the Equal Protection Clause.

I can imagine right-wingers will try to shrug this off as a minor slip. However, this is not an informal quiz. Even on a regular job resume, an applicant's failure to correctly describe basic qualities of the position would greatly impress the employer: in something as serious to an individual as a resume, any slip-up is considered significant. If I were to apply for a position at a university as a Writing professor and had a glaring grammatical error in my resume, that alone would likely disqualify me, on the grounds that I should have thoroughly checked that one of all documents. And this is Miers' application to become a justice on the Supreme Court. If she can't get even the most basic question right on something as vital as this, how can we possibly see her as qualified?

Legal experts agree; New York University law professor Burt Neuborne said, "If a first-year law student wrote that and submitted it in class, I would send it back and say it was unacceptable." Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan agreed, saying that "Any halfway competent junior lawyer could have checked the questionnaire and said it cannot go out like that. I find it shocking," adding that it almost seemed like the White House was setting Miers up.

The White House, however, tried to cover up her mess, saying that Miers' wording is "amenable to different meanings," and that her "experience" was more important than her "terminology," which is Washington weasel-wording at best.

At some point, Bush is going to have to face the fact that Miers is a lost cause, and will only do more damage than good. With indictments likely forthcoming against senior White House officials in the Valerie Plame case in the next few weeks, certainly having Miers self-destruct in front of Congress is the last thing they'll want to have. Not that I'm complaining, of course, and it's easy to give advice when Bush is facing a more or less lose-lose proposition, as withdrawing Miers would be damaging as well. But this is a time when in complete honesty I can say that Bush would be better off cutting his losses and naming someone well-qualified and right-of-center.

[Update: One day later, it's not getting any better.]

But I'd still be happy watching the Bush administration continue its downward spiral. They certainly can't count on Congressional Republicans much: too many of them are busily setting themselves up contrary to the administration in light of its massive unpopularity right now. Not that that will help them very much, with so many of their own mired in scandal and facing indictments. And many Republicans not even up for re-election are getting tough on Bush: on Monday, Brent Scowcroft, former Bush 41 National Security Advisor, is reportedly going to rip Bush a new one.

But I am withholding my schadenfreude for the moment; when these things result in Republicans losing an election and the power they now hold, then I'll celebrate.

The Kerosene Sellers Are Back

Crap. It had to happen sometime, with winter not too far off. Already I've got a headache with the new Yaki-imo (hot sweet-potato) seller, who has a new loudspeaker on his truck and blares away at volumes deafening even by politicians' standards, stopping for three minutes right outside my window every time he comes by. No one buys from him, but he comes always nonetheless.

But the kerosene seller, while projecting less volume, is even more annoying. The tune the truck plays is a god-awful, mind-numbing abomination of single-electronic-note "musical" dreck. But what makes it worse is the winding path it takes; while the yaki-imo seller passes through with only one stop, the kerosene truck drives at walking speed through every last driveway in the entire complex. Worse, people buy from the truck, which then stops for a few minutes, never turning off the tune. It can be a half hour before the truck is gone, and even then you can't be sure--it seems to have left at times, but really it was behind a building and the noise was only temporarily blocked, and then it comes back out again.

At the very least, why can't these people choose some sound that isn't so jarringly, stupefyingly odious? How about some nice shamisen music? Something like that, which makes a nice background sound, and is easily heard and distinguished? Why do these loudspeaker trucks have to use the worst possible music--as if blaring noise all the time itself isn't bad enough?

Freaky-Looking, Cool-Looking Moonscapes

Boy, the appearance of this moon almost freaks me out. I mean, it almost looks like a diseased, pockmarked vegetable pod split open rather than a moon of majestic Saturn. This photo of Hyperion courtesy of the NASA Cassini orbiter probe, taken Sept. 26, 2005 while 62,000 kilometers from the moon. Click on the image below for a larger (1024-pixel-square) version of the photo.

This raw, unprocessed photo from a few days ago, meanwhile, looks like something right out of a science fiction movie: the small moon Prometheus hovering just above Saturn's ring plane, while another moon (Dione?) passing in front of what I assume is Titan (again, click for the larger image):

I love this stuff.

Looks Like Hillary Doesn't Have to Worry

The Republicans would like little more than to smack down Hillary Clinton, and the best way to do that would be to defeat her in next year's senatorial election. However, there's a little snag: the Republican candidate, Jeanine Pirro.

First, when she announced her candidacy, she made a major gaffe. While giving a prepared speech in which she attempted to savage Hillary, she lost page ten of her speech. Now, Bill Clinton gave his first State of the Union address off the top of his head when his TelePrompTer showed the wrong speech, and nobody even noticed; any good politician should be ready to wing it in cases like this. Not Pirro. She finished the text on page nine with the words "Hillary Clinton..." and then spent 32 seconds (Quicktime video) trying to find page ten. Not exactly your standard electrifying, crowd-charging, go-getter kind of political sex appeal you might be looking for when opening your campaign.

More recently, Pirro has shown she is unable to raise enough money--while Clinton raised more than $5 million in the past three months, Pirro raised less than a tenth of that over the past two months. And maybe it has to do with her mailing list, which is out of date: she sent out a fundraising letter, asking for funds to unseat Hillary Clinton... and a copy was sent to Hillary Clinton. Not only that, it was sent to Hillary Clinton at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Either that's out of date, or it's ironically prescient. The letter even had the special computer-generated insert-recipient's-name-here function, and read: "But today, Hillary, I need to know if I can count on you to stand by my side in my campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton."

When Hillary didn't send a check, Pirro got a bit of money elsewhere--like $1,750 from Salvatore Promuto, accused in an anti-trust investigation in trash hauling; $4,200 (the maximum allowed contribution) from a company owned by Robert F. Ferrucci, accused of bribery; as well as several other close friends of Pirro's husband, many of whom gave the maximum amount. And yes, her husband Al Pirro was convicted on 66 counts of tax fraud in 2001. In short, a large chunk of the small amount Pirro has raised comes from her husband's business connections, many of whom have alleged mob affiliations. Nor has she done well with money in general--she used three full-time police officers as drivers and bodyguards, paying them a great deal in overtime for political events without reimbursing the county, at a time when money was so tight that six prosecutors were laid off.

And now Pirro has put her foot in her mouth with her latest charge: that New York Democrats want nothing more than to see violent sex offenders molesting children and murdering women. Yeah, that's right--I think that was on the Democratic party platform, in fact! Yeah, that's the ticket! Why, I was telling that to my wife, Morgan Fairchild, just the other day! (Apologies to Jon Lovitz.)

Now, Pirro's campaign manager is claiming that her words were "taken out of context." The quote was: "That's a difference between Democrats and Republicans - we don't want them next door molesting children and murdering women." Now, I could not find the full text of her statement, but it's kind of hard to see how that could be taken out of context, unless the words she spoke just before were "I would never say something like...." Which I doubt.

In short, Pirro is doing just fine. From Hillary's point of view, of course. From the Republican party's point of view, she's a disaster and an embarrassment. And she might be the best thing to give Hillary a landslide and propel her on to the White House. At which time, maybe she can respond to that fundraising letter.

New Powerbooks, Power Macs Out

It's getting late and I have to give midterm exams tomorrow, so I won't say much. But I will say that I am not disappointed that I went ahead and bought my Powerbook when I did, four months ago. The new upgrades that came out just a few hours ago are not really much to write home about. They have higher-resolution displays (1440 x 960 on the 15-inch, as opposed to my 1280 x 854, for example) which are supposed to be brighter; they allegedly have a longer battery life, but these claims are always highly questionable, no matter who makes the computers; and they have made the optical Superdrive standard for all Powerbooks, which just means the lowly 12-incher now has one, too.

Aside from that: pretty much nothing. No processor upgrade, not even the smallest speed bump. Essentially, they improved the display and juiced up the battery a little. Ho-hum. Apparently they couldn't get squat from IBM for the last of the G4 PowerPC Powerbooks.

The Power Macs, on the other hand, have what may be a more significant upgrade: dual-core CPUs. The CPU clock speeds also remain the same, like in the Powerbook, but the dual core has got to count for something. Already, the G5 performs very well, hertz for hertz, compared to Pentiums; a dual-core, dual-processor "Quad" Power Mac will likely be an impressive beast. 4 MB of L2 cache, yikes. Of course, the price matches the hardware: $3,300 for the top-of-the-line Power Mac Quad, and that's before shelling out at least $300 for at least another 2 GB of RAM (Apple's 512 MB included is clearly not intended to be enough for anyone--it's a given people will add RAM by the gigabytes).

But hey, I shelled out that much on my last Powerbook, the Titanium, three and a half years ago. If I did not need a portable for work and could spend the money for a home computer, this one would not in the least be a disappointment for me. It'd certainly make my Powerbook's single-core single-G4 CPU look, well, pathetic. Not that I'm complaining. And frankly, I wouldn't use the speed and power enough to justify going that far. But raw CPU power for a computer geek is like raw engine power for a car geek. It's just so cool to have.

Quake at Work

I was just wrapping up things at the office when we all felt a strong, long swaying quake. The swaying seemed to indicate it was distant, and so it was--and it was strong, a Magnitude 6.2 on the Richter scale, located about 40 km off the coast of Chiba and Ibaraki, about 140 km distant from central Tokyo, where I am now. Looks like it was a "4" or so in Tokyo.

Update: turns out it was a 6.5, and the damage was minimal. There have been quite a few medium-sized quakes in the recent past, prompting me to wonder: does an increase in the number of quakes mean that pressure on tectonic plates is being relieved, increased, or is not being affected one way or the other? Are these smaller quakes alleviating pressure that would otherwise be released all at once in The Big One? Or are they precursors to The Big One? Or am I just putting too much into all this?

No Osborne Effect

I recently reported on Apple's increase in market share, which has been qualified since then: Apple's increase was 30%, not 50% (Apple increased sales by about 45% as the market as a whole saw an increase of 17%). Apple's market share has increased from 3.3% to 4.3%. This may seem small, but even beyond the fact that many individual PC makers would like that kind of market share, the increase has significance.

This is particularly significant considering something that nobody seems to be mentioning now: just a few months ago, people were predicting the Mac's doom because Jobs announced that Apple was switching to Intel one year later. The idea was that Jobs had gaffed into an Osborne Effect in that no one would want to buy Apple computers until the new model came out, thus sending Mac sales into the toilet. Obviously this didn't happen--in fact, the opposite was the result.

Add to that the fact that Apple has now and has traditionally held the top spot in customer satisfaction, often scoring way higher than any other maker.

And now we're getting Apple's third new-product-fest in six weeks tomorrow, where new high-end Power Mac and Powerbook models are expected to be announced (the last ones before the Mactels come, according to Apple's standard 9-month product cycle)--and there may be another "one more thing" surprise, as Apple has the biggest exhibitor's space at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York. No one is sure what Apple is planning to release, though the venue suggests it may be a digital camera of some type (Apple not-so-successfully marketed a QuickTake camera years back), or perhaps new photo-editing software (biting the hand of Adobe which so well feeds the Mac?).

So many people have written Apple's obituary so many times, so consistently over the years that it has become a bit of a running gag. Who'll be next?

Ice Cream Headache

This is one of those things that many people don't have a name for, and so different people who have a name for it tend to call it different things. I first heard it described as "ice cream headache" on Roseanne, and years later as "brain freeze" in the movie Shallow Hal. A colleague gave the name "chill brains." I asked many Japanese people, and all immediately reported that there was no specific name for it in the Japanese language.

According to doctors, this is caused not by chilled blood in the throat traveling behind the eyes, but rather by the contact of cold substances against the roof of the mouth; nerves there signal for the blood vessels in the head to dilate, causing the headache.

So what do you call it?

You really should read the article by Dr. Hulihan, if for no other reason than to see a professor say things like "It would be of interest to determine whether antimigraine drugs that modulate serotonergic pathways have any effect on ice cream headache."

Question

Simply out of curiosity, why are half of all Chinese-American women named "Michelle," and most of the other half named "Catherine"? Just wondering, having noticed.

Birdwatching Locations in Tokyo

I've been promising this for a while, and didn't get around to it until now. Here is a quick rundown of the better birding spots I've come across in the Tokyo Area.

Bayside

In geographical order, from east to west:

Toyko Port Wild Bird Park (東京港野鳥公園), a.k.a. Oi Wild Bird Park: Located near Haneda Airport, this park features both freshwater and saltwater/mudflat environs. There is a visitor's center (air conditioned in summer), and many small scopes for the visitors to use. The saltwater mud flats can be viewed from the visitors center or from two blinds, and a great variety of birds visit there. Another blind overlooks a freshwater lake and marsh that attracts grebes and ducks as well as swallows and kingfishers. All of this is on the east side, beyond the admission building. Opposite that, on the west side, are a few small gardens, trees, and a freshwater lake, but I have seen few if any interesting birds there. I have been told alternately that low tide and high tide are best--low tide because the birds come in at that time, and high tide because the birds are all out on the bay at low tide and this is higher ground.

Admission is ¥300, not much at all, and you are given an English-language pamphlet with good illustrations as well as an English checklist. Access by train is from the Ryutsu Center station on the Monorail, third stop out from Hamamatsu-cho, which can be reached from the Yamanote Line. Vehicle access is on Kan-Nana Blvd., stay to the left after you pass Route 357. Here is the location on Google Maps.

Kasai Rinkai Park (葛西臨海公園): The east side of this park is dedicated to a bird sanctuary and viewing area with a good number of blinds. There is an open viewing structure in the middle, and a walkway dividing the two water areas. The "lower lake" area, on the east side (not the one with the cormorants) has mud flats and some excellent viewing spots, one in particular favored by birders, on the north side. A good many waterbirds can be seen here (including less-common sandpipers, stilts, even curlews), and in the winter, they say it is overflowing with ducks.

There is no admission, so no literature (as is the case with most parks). Access by train is by the Keiyo Line (not the Keio Line), five stops out of Tokyo, or by car off of Route 357. It's right across from Tokyo Disneyland. Here is the location on Google Maps. If you look at the map, you'll see the east side lake is shaped like a duck; the favored viewing blind is by the "tail" on the top.

Niihama Bird Park, or "Bird Paradise" (野鳥の楽園): A lesser-known bird park just a bit farther east off of Route 357, accessible from Ichikawa-Shiohama Station on the Keiyo Line. I actually have not been inside this park yet--I went on a weekday, and it's only open on weekends. The peek I did get seemed to indicate that it was mostly occupied by cormorants. I will have to try again sometime soon--perhaps in winter there are a lot more ducks there. There is, however, a very interesting bird hospital on the west side. Serious birders will be less excited as the birds are in captivity, but there were dozens of very interesting birds in there, including Green Pigeons, Cattle Egret, and a Peregrine Falcon.

Here is the location on Google Maps. The bird hospital is marked by a small circle on the waterside road on the lower left side, the title of the location extending into the water. I am not sure how much admission is.

Yatsu Higata Salt Flats (谷津干潟): a much more popular birdwatching area. Essentially a large, rectangular area where saltwater is brought in to create saltwater flats for the shorebirds to enjoy. A wide variety of birds visit here. There is a visitor center with a small restaurant, but some of the better viewing can be done outside where there are benches and overhangs built, along the edge of the flats.

There is no admission. Access by train is by the Keiyo Line (again) from Shin-Narashino Station; ask for directions at the station. By car it is again off of Route 357. Do not assume that access is from the park on the north edge of the flats--it is not. Here is the location on Google Maps.

Inland

Tama Reien Cemetery and Sengenyama Park (多摩霊園、浅間山公園): Tama Reien is a huge, one-kilometer-square cemetery in the middle of Western Tokyo, straddling Fuchu and Koganei Cities. It has a good amount of shrubbery and not a few trees. The smaller but more verdant and hilly Sengenyama Park is adjacent to the cemetery's southwest corner. Together they are one of the best inland birdwatching areas within the Tokyo city area, without having to go all the way into the mountains somewhere. I've spotted Hawfinches, Grosbeaks, Long-tailed and Varied Tits, a few different Thrushes, Partridges, and a Japanese Green Woodpecker.

There is no admission. Access by train is by the Seibu-Tamagawa Line, which starts from Musashi-Kasai Station on the Chuo Line. Take that line to Tama Reien-Mae Station. By car, Shin-Koganei Road off of Route 20 takes you by Sengenyama; a turnoff will take you to the main entrance of Tama Cemetery. Here is the location on Google Maps.

The Tama River (多摩川): I know this is very general, but it's a long river and there are many good birding spots along it. I live in Inagi, and there is one place where I have spotted a lot of birds, including the most recent Bull-headed Shrike. You can find it here on Google Maps, less than a kilometer east of Minami-Tama Station on the JR Nambu Line running from Tachikawa to Kawasaki. I've also spotted terns, greenfinches, sandpipers, a lot of wagtails and egrets and herons, a good supply of winter ducks, meadow buntings, greenfinches, and others.

Experienced birders I've asked have told me that this spot along the river, at Seiseki-Sakuragaoka (on the main Keio Line) is the best place, but my luck has been less than great there. I've seen some good birds at this spot myself.

Other than these two places, my birding inland has been limited to various local parks and pocket valleys occupied by farms, none of them notable as bird cornucopias--just the occasional lucky sighting. I've heard that going up to the Oku-tama valley way out in northwestern Tokyo is good, and of course Mt. Takao out of Hachioji is supposed to be very good as well. I tried places marked as "Bird Sanctuaries" on my maps, but these places tend to be more sanctuary-oriented, and less watching-oriented, like the sanctuary in Koganei Park.

If you have any suggestions for other good birding spots in Tokyo, I am eager to hear them and try them out. I will likely re-publich this list in the future if I find any other good spots. Keep in mind that I'm still an amateur birder and so have probably missed some significant locations, particularly inland. So your help and support would be greatly appreciated!

2000

Look for a new landmark in Iraq to come in the next week or two. And no, not a constitution. It'll be the 2,000^th American soldier killed in Iraq. The total today is 1,975, with 42 having died in the past two weeks.

About the constitution? I see it as only slightly more relevant than the other half-dozen "momentous occasions" we've been sold over the past few years. I sincerely hope it all goes well from here, but I just as sincerely doubt it will. The Iraqis will still not be free, the "Democracy" is a thinly-veiled puppet state, our soldiers will still be fighting and dying there after Bush leaves office in three years, and there is anything but the semblance of order or stability there. And a constitution will not mean much in the middle of all that, any more than the multiple "handovers of power, the prior election, or any of the other milestones we've been told will make All The Difference.

Fun in Japan

First, an ad for a gas station in Japan called "ENEOS." Here is an ad for a car-related product which might seem reasonable in Japan, but which has quite obvious negative connotations in America:

To an American, the probably impression is that of a "lemon" car. This ad, however, is intended to express a sulfur-free gas--yellow for the sulfur (presumably), and the green outline and the leaf design to show environmentalism.

Next, from my early travels in Japan in the early 80's, and from an era of much funnier T-shirts and sweaters:

It speaks for itself. Other T-shirt and sweater English from the time: "Retro-Dandy BIP MEN," "Hysteric DOG," and the ever-popular "SLURP! Is that your foot?" One shirt had a bit of English on it, with one part reading "Beat his monkey ass till it ain't no fun." We didn't know at the time that these were Public Enemy lyrics, and so on a Japanese T-shirt they were hilarious.

And then there was this sign in a train station in Aomori which seemed to also be a political statement:

More of this coming very soon.

Medium-Sized Quake

From the reports I've seen, a 5.0 or 5.1 M quake hit southwest Ibaraki Prefecture (36.048N 139.932E) 5 minutes ago at 4:05 pm Japan time. That's about 40 km perhaps north of Central Tokyo. It was felt as a Japanese "4" in northern Kanto, and as a "3" in Tokyo. Some parts of Tokyo felt it as a "4," and frankly, it was pretty strong where I am. Maybe not a "4," but very close to it.

No reports of great damage so far, or warnings of Tsunamis.

For reference: two good Japan quake reportage sites include Hinet and Tenki. They tend to have quake reports up within a few minutes of the quake. The Hinet site has copy-and-pastable map coordinates which you can then plug into Google Maps Japan to see where the epicenter was.

Bull-Headed Shrike

And the Japan Life List (photographed) gets to 77. I went down to the river not expecting to get much, and my expectations were met--a ton of Tree Sparrows, a few Great Tits, two common Spot-billed Ducks, one Egret, some Crows and Bulbuls, and a few Wagtails. Very pedestrian. But then a bird flew into a nearby tree and nearly posed for me, and I could see from its size and basic shape that it was probably something new--and it was. It's not too rare a bird, but it's the first time I have seen the Bull-headed Shrike (Mozu • モズ).

Here's another one of the same bird, deeper in the tree. If you click on it, there's a 1000-pixel-wide blowup.

At first, I thought it was a Brown Shrike (harder to tell from behind), but there's a very small white spot on its wing which tells the difference.

Here's Another One

In another Right-Wing Power Grab, Schwarzenegger and the Republicans want to curb union contributions or actions:

Proposition 75 would require public employee unions to seek written permission from members before using dues for political purposes.

Another Republican play at a Democratic power base, under the guise of "fairness."

They want fairness? First issue a law prohibiting corporations from using any corporate funds for political purposes unless they get written permission from stockholders. Yeah, like that's gonna happen. It's kinda hard to think of what other way Republicans can steal power--redistricting, impeachment, recalls, court manipulation, and outright election fraud and theft... some say that the Republicans took only 10 years in power to become as corrupt as the Democrats did in 40 years, but quite frankly I find it difficult to believe that the Democrats were anywhere near this corrupt.

More Right-Wing Redistricting

Except this time it's the courts the Republicans want to redistrict. Already in Texas and other states, Republicans have gone on a non-census redistricting spree in state congressional districts in order to grab more power and control in Congress. Supposedly-"moderate" California Governor Schwarzenegger has been pushing hard to redistrict California to more Republican-friendly standards, even though the Democrats control the legislature. They always state non-political "reasons," but in the end it's always proposed by Republicans and only in states where Republicans would gain by it. In California, the redistricting measure is called "more fair," but Republicans never call for "fairness" in states where they already control redistricting--they would fiercely oppose the exact same measure in Texas, for example.

Now it's the courts they want to gerrymander. The 9th Circuit has always been a thorn in the Republicans' paw, being the most powerful liberal federal appellate court. So two Republican Senators, Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and John Ensign (Nevada) want to split the 9th Circuit so that the more liberal side can be contained, and an expansive new 12th Circuit made up of more conservative states can take away their influence. The 9th Circuit has already expressed disagreement, and one of its members, a former Alaska Supreme Court justice, has testified that it would be more effective to simply add judges than to split the court.

Only after the Republicans call for "fairness" in states they already control, or redistrict the deeply conservative 5th Circuit court, I'll agree to look at such standards in California. Until then, it is blazingly evident that this is nothing more than a highly partisan power grab by the right wing.

The Video iPod, or vPod

So the predictions were right, and it was a video iPod that Apple came out with today (along with some new iMacs, which was less predicted). And there's a lot of hoopla about the video, in that you can download not only movie previews and music videos, but TV shows as well--in particular, Lost and Desperate Housewives. (It seems pretty clear that Jobs used his Pixar influence on Disney to open up their video vault to Apple for this.) The price: $2 an episode, or $35 per season. Not bad pricing, similar to a DVD set. And like with music on iTunes, you can download them to your iPod (if you have the new video iPod, of course) for portable viewing; you can share them between five computers; and you can burn them onto a CD for safekeeping.

Sounds good, doesn't it? However, most people who have checked the details aren't too impressed, and I'm one of them. First of all, how impressive is video on a 2.5-inch screen? Not very. If you don't mind a tiny picture in exchange for watching TV on the train, then OK. But I don't think many will really be wowed by that, at least not consistently. And with the iPods already bearing color screens, who didn't fully expect them to go video at some point? The bigger draw for videophiles would be the ability to watch video on one's computer, and perhaps hook it up to the TV for viewing.

The key advance here is the TV and movie downloads (the music videos are a step, but a small one). It would mean that video is going the way of music: instead of downloading TV shows and movies via BitTorrent or other piracy networks, people could download them via iTunes and pay a nominal fee for it. It would be a great alternative for people like me living overseas where some media takes forever to get here. The pricing scheme is just about right (on the high side of "right," however). Buying a DVD set would have advantages, like the special features (commentary, subtitles, special videos, outtakes, etc.), but the iTunes version would allow for immediate downloads of the episodes a day after they air--on-demand availability that will be key for a true video downloading paradigm.

There is one big caveat, however, and it will be a deal-breaker for most, including myself: video quality. If you go to Apple's web page for the new video feature, they studiously avoid mentioning anything about the video quality on a computer screen, aside from the highly misleading claim that the video are in "high-quality, H.264 QuickTime format." That's misleading, because people will think that "high quality" refers to the size of the video. It doesn't. HDTV quality is 720 pixels tall on a computer screen. 480 pixels tall is commensurate with non-HDTV size, and would look great on a normal TV screen. But that's not what you get with the new videos--instead, it will be 240 pixels tall, and 320 wide (see image at top of this entry as an example). That's 1/2 of regular video, and 1/3 of HDTV. You pay for the DVD, for example, the 1st season of Lost, and not only is the quality much higher, but you get a truckload of special features to boot, and the price is only $4 more.

Apple and Disney would have to make the quality a lot better and the special features present before a lot of people will buy into this. Right now it has more curiosity appeal than anything else, but that will soon pass. One can only assume that the small video size is mostly to guard against piracy. OK, fair enough. But you're probably going to drive more people to the pirated videos, which can be downloaded in 720-pixel HDTV format, and the DVD special features are often available for download as well. People who already pirate won't be tempted to go legit, and some people who were not aware of video downloads on demand actually might be attracted to the idea but will want more quality and could be led to download the content from BitTorrent instead.

That's why the iTunes music sales model has worked so well: the quality is as high as or higher than the pirated stuff, and it's easier to get. If the iTunes Music Store provided music with low-quality audio, no one would buy it. If Apple and Disney really want to fight video piracy, they have to offer something at least as good or even better than BitTorrent. Not worse.

Apple Gaining Ground?

There's a new article from a publication called The Streets which claims that Apple's retail market share shot up about 50% in the past year, from 4.3% to 6.6%. If true, that's a significant amount. however, there are a few caveats. First, the article, linked to by many sites, has either been edited or changed--the quoted statistic no longer appears. Whether simply an error by the publication, an address mix-up, or a knowing decision to edit the article and leave out the information is not clear. I can't find the claim made elsewhere (without quoting that changed article), so it's up in the air. Other qualifications include the fact that this figure only quotes retail and not online sales, which would lower the number a bit, but would still represent a significant difference.

Nonetheless, there are factors that suggest that Apple's market share is actually higher than most report. For example, Apple computers tend to last longer. If one company makes tennis shoes that are popular but wear out in a month and must be replaced, and another company makes higher-quality shoes that last for years, the former company would see more sales--but it does not mean that so many more people actually use the shoes. It just means they sell more. This is suspected with PCs and Macs, where Apple has maybe 5% of all computer sales, but more than 5% of computer users own an Apple.

Certainly Apple is still faring well with people who buy them. Customer satisfaction for Macs not only exceeds all other makers, but it exceeds all other makers by a wide margin--in both laptop and desktop models.

The current increase is seen as an iPod "halo" effect--people who buy iPods but use Windows see the high quality of the product and want to try the computers out as well. But starting next year, Apple will have a new inroad which will probably propel its sales even faster than they are increasing now. That will be the switch to Intel chips, making it possible to run not only Mac OS X, but Windows OS as well--both on a Mac, both at native speed. You can bet that there will be the ability to switch OS's on the fly, by typing one key or another. And with that, a great many people will be perfectly willing to shell out a few hundred more bucks for a machine that has both in one. People can continue to use their old software on Windows, while at the same time get new software for the Mac OS, using both operating systems toward their strengths. It will suddenly become a lot cheaper to "switch" from PC to Mac.

New Rule: It's Everybody or Nobody

Why not emulate Bill Maher's "New Rules"? He had a great idea, so let's rip it off.

New Rule: When you have a "Town Hall" meeting, the whole town has to be invited. Otherwise it's a staged party-members-only event. Bush became infamous for these stacked-audience love-in events, pretending as if they were open to anyone while at the same time, severely restricting the audience to the party faithful and sometimes even requiring loyalty oaths to be signed. And even then, the questions were usually screened and rehearsed, and were either softball questions that allowed Bush to pitch his selling points, or they were unabashed gushing compliments to our Dear Leader.

California Governor Schwarzenegger has been doing the same kind of thing, and even Senator McCain criticized this after attending one to support Schwarzenegger:

As at many of Schwarzenegger's campaign events, outsiders were not allowed to attend what the governor's office called a "town hall meeting" at a hotel near Oakland's airport. Union protesters gathered outside the venue carrying signs. ...

At a subsequent news conference, McCain, a possible candidate for U.S. president in 2008, said he had always favored town hall meetings open to the public, adding that some especially noisy dissenters had occasionally been ejected. "The benefit of an open town hall meeting is one that you get to hear a lot of different views, and two it has credibility," said McCain.

Couldn't have said it better. Of course, many Republican politicians don't want that; look at what happened when Kerry tried it: he was often heckled and jeered at by conservatives who came for no other reason than to make him look bad. He didn't always have open events, but even his closed events were far less restricted. So, far more often, Kerry paid the cost of hearing different views and having credibility, and some Republicans know full well that they don't need or want either.

Well, too bad. You have a closed event, it's not a "town hall." It's a rally for the party faithful.

The Obsequious Instruments of His Pleasure

A lot of people are onto this now, but it merits reprinting far and wide. Andrew Sullivan points out that in the Federalist Papers (No. 76), Alexander Hamilton writes on the reason why the Senate must confirm any nominees put forth by the president. Remember that the Federalist Papers were written chiefly by Hamilton and Madison as a means of explaining the Constitution to the people of New York, defending it against those who wanted to reject it. They are a primary source for interpretation--the Supreme Court's job. Also consider the nature of Harriet Miers' nomination, and why Bush chose her. With that in mind:

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.

It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other. He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

That last part is the most relevant: the authority of the Senate to confirm nominees was put into place so that the president "would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of ... being in some way or other personally allied to him."

I would strongly point this out to those who believe that Supreme Court nominees should just be rubber-stamped by Congress as a political privilege for the president. According to the founding fathers themselves, this was never intended, and Bush should be ashamed of himself.

The thing is, you know he isn't, and never will be.

Another Good Read

This one is better if you're already into science fiction, but god overall as well. It comes from a writing duo, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. together, they wrote books such as Footfall (elephantine aliens invade the Earth) and Lucifer's Hammer (comet hits the Earth), but their best collaboration is The Mote in God's Eye, written in 1974.

It's one of those books with a very detailed, background rich environments that usually strengthens a good story, not as rich as Dune, but certainly deep enough to make a big difference. A thousand years in the future, humanity has regressed from its zenith of the First Empire, though it still capable of space travel using something called the Alderson Drive. The drive uses gravitational lines of influence between stars to allow for a jump from one system to another. No alien species are encountered, however.

New Caledonia, a human colony on the far side of the Coalsack Nebula has been isolated from most of humanity for some time due to wars. During that time, something strange is observed. From the colony, the Coalsack Nebula resembles a hooded man, and two stars--a red giant and its yellow-dwarf companion, appear as the Eye of the man, with the yellow dwarf seeming to be a mote in the eye. But suddenly and inexplicably, the Mote turns bright green--and the green light is coherent. In other words, laser light. After many years, the light gets brighter and brighter, and then suddenly it just turns off. Because of the war, scientific observations are not possible, and the change gets passed down into folklore.

Then, 145 years later an alien probe enters New Caledonia space using a solar sail. When the probe is intercepted, the alien occupant is found dead. But that occupant is bizarre: it is asymmetrical, with one powerful arm on the right, and two delicate ones on the left; a large bat-like ear on the left, a single teat on the right. Its mouth is fixed as if in a smile.

A ship is sent to explore the origin of the craft, which is problematic because the exit point of the interstellar jump to the red giant is within the star itself. It can be done using a special shield, but it also explains why the aliens had to use a solar sail, beyond just lacking the technology: there is only one jump pathway between their world and the universe, and it requires a ship to pass through the red giant's atmosphere.

The human ship successfully makes the transit and enters the alien system, and that's where you'll have to pick it up. The alien race created by Niven and Pournelle is wild and fascinating--and more than just a little scary. There are a lot of secrets, a lot of mysteries about the race, and it is a great deal of fun to see it all revealed over time. The aliens--Moties, as they are called in the book--are very likable, at least the ones you meet. There's a good deal of exploration, intrigue, and action involved.

If you read Footfall, don't worry--the aliens in Mote are a lot better drawn than those in the alien-invasion novel. And if you're not a huge Larry Niven fan (or if you've noticed that his latest novels are almost bizarrely discordant), again not to worry, Pournelle tempers Niven's style; the two make a good combination.

There is a sequel to Mote, titled The Gripping Hand (named after the strong, single right arm that Moties possess), which is good, but not as good as its predecessor, as is so often the case with sequels. But the original is one of the top ten science fiction books I would recommend.

Congressional Republicans

That about says it all, those two words of the title of this post. Congressional Republicans will do just about anything, abuse any power, burn any bridge if it will gain them any more control. They'll do all this and then turn around and call the Democrats bloody bastards for doing even a tenth as much, and they won't even blink at the outright hypocrisy. This was expressed in all its sordid splendor the other day when a vote was called on an energy bill that was little more than yet another sop to energy companies, while making it seem like the Congressional Republicans were doing something to fix the problem, instead of actually being the problem.

You have got to look at the clip from start to finish to see what I mean. Just hearing that the Republicans extended the vote from five to more than forty minutes because the initial count did not go their way; they held the vote open only long enough until they could do last-minute arm-twisting, claiming that they wanted to give everybody "a chance to vote," when in fact they were waiting until the shifting numbers came into their favor and then slammed the door shut. Every time the Democrats tried to object, the Republicans shut the door in their faces, not allowing them to speak to the dishonest tactics being used to pass a bill that was so contrary to the interests of most Americans that even their own people needed to be cajoled into getting a slim majority. This in addition to the usual dishonest Republican oppressive, immoral tactics like introducing the bill and pushing a vote before any House member has even the least amount of time to read a fraction of what they are voting on.

It's as if the Republicans don't even care anymore, that they believe that since they have power now, they have to squeeze every last drop of influence out of it before the Democrats take over and they can return to... I was about to write, "blaming the Democrats for everything," but realized that even though the Republicans hold all the power, they are still blaming the Democrats for everything.

Just watch the video. C-SPAN was never so compelling.

Happy Anniversary

By the way, today was the 20th anniversary of my coming to Japan to work and live. Hope you enjoyed the recent posts, and if I think of anything more to say on the topic, I will.

Bashing the Victims

Snopes.com, the arbiters of urban legends, has commented on one of many false accusations regarding the New Orleans evacuees. Since the first days of the debacle where Bush and FEMA left the people of that city to fester for the better part of a week, right-wingers have been quick to shift blame to everyone else--and the victims of that disaster and of Bush's negligence have been prime targets. Early reports of lawlessness in the flooded areas, combined with the fact that many trapped in New Orleans were poor and black, sparked the imagination of the wingnuts, sending them on a spree of completely bogus claims regarding their behavior. Note that the email uses this story specifically to excuse Bush and FEMA:

Like everyone in this nation, I watched as the news media blasted FEMA and President Bush for the "poor response". While everyone on TV saw nothing but people being let down by government, I saw people letting down people. ... FEMA did not fail them. ... I have always said New Orleans was a toilet; now everyone has proof that not only was it a toilet, but a toilet long overdue for a flush.

The idea is that if the victims can be blamed, then sympathy is less and Bush doesn't look so bad. People either knowingly propagate these rumors, or readily believe and disseminate them as they play into their own political desires.

Here's an example of that phenomenon in action, a copy of the claim that Snopes investigated and found to be utterly false. The claims are that evacuees who were taken to Utah brought with them an epidemic of crime, including drug use (claimed to be immediate after deplaning), rape, and the formation of violent gangs. The evacuees were depicted as lazy and ungrateful.

While many commenters weren't taken in, obviously many people were. The state governor, however, felt it necessary to dismiss rumors early on; on September 8, he released a statement that included:

Guests on the base have displayed exemplary behavior and been cooperative with volunteers and law enforcement. No major crimes or incidents have been reported at Camp Williams since the arrival of our guests.

And yet, here we are, a month after the events in the letter were officially noted as false, and still it persists. Right-wing blogs have been picking it up, needless to say. And this is just one example--there have been many other such fake claims. It is sad. It is racist. It is political. And it is quite notably right-wing tactics, to blame anyone--even innocent victims of a horrible natural disaster, people whose lives have been ruined--so as to divert blame from right-wing politicians. This is about as low as you can go.

A Little Egret

Today was a bit busy, so the post will be primarily a photo I took recently. This was from the Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park, the same day I got the Kingfishers, Herons and Snipes. I was able to catch a cute image of a Little Heron taking off. You know the Little Heron from its yellow feet. Well, here they are quite visible:

That's a cropped version of the image. If you click on the picture, you'll get a full-sized Wallpaper image, which includes the bird's shadow on the water. I like this image because the Egret's wings are down, making it look like the bird is just leisurely hanging in mid-air, feet dangling.

Pretty soon I should blog on all the birding locations I've found in Tokyo, like I promised a while ago. I've got a lot of good water locations, but need to get more land watching places--I've still not seen a lot of passerine (land-based) birds, not as many as I'd like. They're tougher, of course--you have to see them in trees, which is tough, as opposed to shorebirds which sit there out in the open.

Japan, Expectations, and Food

Recently I saw an American late-night talk show interview in which the guest had recently visited Japan, and the subject of raw food came up. As if it's hard to find anything but raw fish in Japan. I mean, sheesh, come on, guys. Let it go. It's like saying that it's hard to eat anything but hot dogs in America.

But these are difficult images to swat down, just like the images of Japan I had when I first visited--Mt. Fuji, shrines, being one with nature. Hah. On the Limousine Bus ride from Narita to Ikebukuro my first evening in Japan, what I saw out the bus window was not what I expected. Neon. Lots and lots of neon. Pachinko parlors, yes, but lots of other stuff too. It felt like Las Vegas, but not in English as much. The following morning, as I was at the age of 19 less prone to jet lag, I got up early and walked around the neighborhood of the Sunshine City building and ran into other stuff I didn't expect. A wedge area cut out of a corner building, empty flat concrete where space was at a premium. It wasn't until I looked up that I saw the hoses for pumping gas hanging from the ceiling and realized I was standing in a gas station closed in the morning. Then I found a vending machine on the street which I could not figure out, selling three different types of flat square boxes, about three inches square by half an inch thick, each a different color. I stared intently at the boxes in the machine for several minutes, trying to work out the nature of the products from the little katakana and hiragana I could make out, until I realized that I had spent several minutes staring at a condom vending machine.

That's the kind of experience you have when you wander into a completely new context. You can't figure things out at first. The first time I stayed in a Japanese home and had to go to the bathroom, I spent a few minutes trying to figure out where the light switch was. I looked all around inside the small half-bathroom after not finding the switch at hand-level on the inside wall on right side of the door, where the switch is supposed to be. It was dark in there, so I just figured that I missed it somehow, until a host family member showed me the light switch panel outside the bathroom.

So a lot of stuff is unexpected, but more importantly, a lot of the strange stuff you do expect is not really there as much as you think it will be. It's not all raw fish. But it most certainly is not home when you first get here, either. You find that out quickly enough when you try to find things that you've become used to most of your life.

On my first trip to Japan, I stopped by a McDonald's and ordered a medium root beer (they still served it at McD's in the U.S. then), only to be told that they did not serve alcohol. I had to explain, and still the girl behind the counter did not understand. My mistake. Just like most westerners come to Japan find they cannot stomach natto and umeboshi, most Japanese cannot stand the tastes of licorice or root beer, and both are very hard to find here.

There are a lot of things that you come to miss. Chocolate is different here. Japanese chocolate, that is; it tends to be less sweet or rich, and sometimes more waxy. And remember, back in the 80's, stores carried far, far fewer imported goods or foreign brands than they do today. Hell, you can even get boxes of After Eight mints in supermarkets now. That's not the Way It Was. And having a sweet tooth, I was in trouble, since what passed for "sweet" in Japan was not what I had in mind. Consider that you are reading the words of a See's Candy addict, and if you don't know See's, I feel sorry for you. Mmmmmmmmm. Seeeeee's. [insert sound of Homer Simpson drooling here] Decadent. Godiva? Give me a break. It's not the same thing. But See's is way too sweet for many Japanese. Should I try the local color? I'm sorry, but I just can't get into sweet bean paste.

Other things were different or missing. Like breakfast cereal. No Cap'n Crunch, that's for sure. Corn flakes have been here for a while, and recently they've gone wild and added even Fruit Loops to the store shelves (those nutty guys), but for a long time it was flakes or nothing. And the milk tastes strange too, even if you can find the rarely-sold skim variety. So what can you have instead? Vegetables. Come again? For breakfast? The first trip I came here I had a one-day homestay in Okayama and was served Okra with natto sauce. It looked like someone sneezed on a skimpy salad. Yech. Vegetables and soup just didn't go with breakfast for me. You could get toast, if you liked it sliced two inches thick. I'm not kidding.

Things have changed. More of what I missed is available now. Many of the candy bars being sold now are more to my liking, much to the detriment of my health. I mean, you can get white-chocolate Kit-Kat bars with maple syrup flavor now. That would have sent many Japanese of 20 years ago into diabetic shock. And the more-meat, more-bread, more-sugar diet is changing the shape of people. When I first came to Japan, I could stand on a crowded train and see clearly in every direction. Not so today. In 1983, in a small tourist town, some young ladies' toy airplane had landed on a roof awning, and a local store clerk was madly jumping up and down, arms stretched up high, not even reaching the awning; I came up and simply plucked the toy plane down without even reaching up too high. And I'm five foot ten. And a half. Today, my view is blocked in crowded places, even with that extra half inch working for me. And while Japanese people are still thin enough to make me feel fat (in contrast, when I visited Wisconsin, I felt downright skinny), Japanese people today, in general, are larger in girth as well as height.

I'm okay with it. Seriously, we're talking white chocolate with maple syrup here. Mmmmmmmm.

TypeKey Buggy

I am turning off TypeKey on this blog for the time being. It is so screwed up that the TypeKey cookie expires after only a few minutes. Even when trying to comment on my own blog, if I don't type and save my own comments within a few minutes after logging on to TypeKey, I get shut out. Completely. Not only will my comment not be accepted, but even if I log out and try a normal comment, it will not register. Even if I open another browser and try an anonymous comment, the comment will not register. Even if I go to a different computer and try, the comment will not register. Somehow, because I did not click the "post" button on the comment within three minutes of logging into TypeKey, the damned system actually locked my own IP address out of my own blog comment system. But only for the post I tried to comment on. How completely screwed up is that?

Furthermore, it performs this way in an even more bizarre fashion. After attempting to comment, the "thank you" message appears, and says that my comment is in the registration queue. But the comment does not appear there, does not generate an email, and apparently just completely vanishes. And no matter what I try, the state persists for hours. This problem has been bugging me for a few months now, but today it elevated to new heights of absurdity. I am ready to trash the whole system and just have unregistered comments from everyone, to be moderated equally. Sorry, but I refuse to use a system that locks me out of commenting on my own blog.

Now It Matters

Suddenly conservatives care about SCOTUS candidates being qualified, and believe that Congress has the right to turn down nominees if they want.

Litmus Tests

Bush has claimed more than once that when he makes a choice for a Supreme Court nominee, he does not apply a litmus test on the issue of abortion. He does, however, apply a litmus test on the issue of strict constructionism.

News flash: they're the exact same thing.

Media, O English Media, Where Wert Thou?

Okay, now on to the topic I first promised some time ago. Sorry for getting sidetracked. Three days until the 20-year anniversary, though, so there's still time.

When I arrived in Toyama in October of 1985, I simply did not know what to expect in terms of living there. Does it snow? Yes, so bring warm clothing. I could predict simple stuff like that. But what about the fact that Japanese shoe stores stock sizes that end three centimeters short of my size? How about the (then) ludicrous prices for eyeglasses? I could tell stories about those, but what really got to me more than anything else was the dearth of media.

Today it is far, far different. Today there's cable and satellite TV with CNN, Super Channel and so on, endless English TV. But back in 1985, even the aptly-named BS TV (alas, it stands for "Broadcast Satellite," though the obvious alternative does apply) was not there yet--at least, I believe it started in 1987 with minimal service. I recall getting bad piped-in reception in my last apartment in Toyama just before I left, mostly just beginning programming with Yu Hayami's "Let's Get Happy" repeated endlessly as the theme song for the new service.

So mostly television was not English-friendly. Yes, the TVs even then had "bilingual" ability (essentially, the left audio channel of the stereo broadcast carries English while the right channel carries Japanese), but it was not used enough for English speakers to depend upon as a media carrier. In fact, aside from the English translation of NHK news, sometimes the only bilingual broadcast you could look forward to was the Wednesday Foreign Movie Roadshow (or some title along those lines), a weekly showing of foreign films that all too often featured dreck like Death Wish III, which I swear to God I saw broadcast several times in my first several years in Japan. There may also have been the Sunday Movie Theater, hosted by Nagaharu Yodogawa, the little grey-haired guy who spoke in a birdlike manner and always signed off with his famous "Sayonara! Sayonara! Sayonara!" But those broadcasts were not always foreign movies, as I recall. And what movies were broadcast were usually crap. And we watched every one of them, usually all of the teachers from the Y together, like a weekly event. It reminds me of the Woody Allen joke where he recounts two elderly ladies complaining about the food they were served; one said, "such terrible food!" and the other chimed in, "yes, and such small portions!"

My TV addiction may also have been frustrated by the fact that I lived in Toyama. Now, even in Tokyo there were only 8 or so channels, including the two obligatory NHK channels (General and Educational), which would have been considered sparse for any metropolitan American area. But Toyama was limited to four channels, two of them NHK. So that left the video rental store, which probably kept most of us foreigners from going mad from lack of English entertainment.

Books were even more scarce. Kinokuniya was the place you went to for English books, and out in the countryside I had to travel to Kanazawa in Ishikawa prefecture to get to the Kinokuniya bookstore which had an English-language rack, sparsely populated of course. Not ideal. Even in Tokyo, where the whole 6th floor of Kinokuniya was dedicated to English books and magazines, you had to deal with usurious prices. Kinokuniya posted an "exchange rate" by which you could take the price of an English book in dollars and translate it to yen. It was about double the real exchange rate, making any book cost twice as much as the list price. And forget about magazines or newspapers.

Even as late as the mid-nineties, the book situation was not all that good; the alternatives included English-language used book stores and the Foreign Buyer's Club, and I seem to recall there was a book seller by mail order somewhere, but most of those got knocked out when Amazon Japan started up after the turn of the century. But back in the 80's, the best way to get books you really wanted was to go book shopping when you went back home on holiday. That's what I did, stuffing perhaps half of my suitcase with paperbacks. And maybe the sparsity of books is how I got into the habit of re-reading books again and again and being happy with it.

Today, there is the Internet. Amazon.com and other stores for books. Cable and satellite TV. As much media as you can eat. It's hard to express what a difference there is. And I have to admit that it may not be a completely positive one, and not just because of the media itself, but because of the draw it provides away from the country in which we live. It allows us to keep perhaps too strong a tether to home and to our native media. I should watch Japanese TV more, but I don't so much. But frankly, if it's a choice of too little or too much, I choose too much. There ain't no ginger*.

Next: food and other stuff you buy.

Cell Phones on Planes

Well, that would be just great. Like everyone else, I get the feeling that I'm the one who always attracts the unwanted neighbors on planes. Certainly I have not had luck in terms of the forward seat: over the last several years, on every flight, the passenger in the seat in front of me reclines his or her seat all the way back for almost the whole flight. I've been luckier with squalling infants, and so-so with passengers dominating arm rests and jabbing me with elbows. But allowing cell phones? I dread the day.

I just can't see how the airlines could agree to this. Hell, they more or less insist that you close the window shutter during the time most people sleep; how could people get to sleep if a passenger nearby is gabbing away? Not that I get much sleep on planes, but I like to at least rest. And it would be hell for me to be stuck on a plane for hours on end with that distraction. I can only hope and pray that the service is not active over the Pacific Ocean, where I do most of my flying.

Now, Internet access on flights, that's a horse of a different color. The worst noise that could come from that is keyboard tapping, which when lost in the background roar of the jet would be hardly noticeable. No problem there.

But even more desirable than that is the idea of power outlets, which are now available only in first class and maybe business class on some airlines. If you've ever tried to use a laptop for prolonged periods of time on an airplane, you know what I mean; on international flights, your laptop runs out of juice long before the flight is even half over. You need an adapter cable to plug in to an airline power outlet, but if an airline were to add that feature to economy class, I would consider that a huge plus.

This and That

Some unrelated bits and pieces for today.

Bush's choice for the replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor is drawing reactions as confusing as the choice itself. The candidate is Harriet Miers, White House counsel.Democratic Senator Harry Reid is said to have urged Bush to select her. She has no experience, zero, as a jurist, and has never argued a case before a high court, Supreme or appellate. She's not a constitutional scholar. She started work for the Bush White House as a deputy chief of staff but also as a staff secretary. She has no paper trail. She's a Bush loyalist and crony. The Republicans don't like her, at least on the surface and on first glance. Bush chose someone without a paper trail, a cipher, which is usually a move which indicates that he's got a rabid conservative but wants to hide it so he can get an easy confirmation. Or it could be he's doing whatever he can to avoid a fight now that he's very weak. Miers apparently thinks that Bush is the most brilliant man that she's ever met.

What in the name of hell is going on here? There's obviously a lot we don't know. Speculation at this point is pointless. Stay tuned.

Though I sold my old TiBook (which got replaced by my new AlBook), the ads persist for a while and now I am getting far more enquiries than I was before I sold it. One of them came from a guy in, believe it or not, Nigeria, telling me that his laptop broke and he needs me to ship mine to him right away. I don't know what his scam was, but hell, a guy from Nigeria, world capital of email fraud, wants me to ship him my PowerBook? I don't care what "safe" payment plan he has. And maybe he really is legit. But I'd have to be stupid to take the chance, even if I still had the computer to sell. Which makes me figure that those 419 scammers have ruined anyone trying to do business from that country--probably no one wants to do business with anyone operating from there anymore.

Check out Firefly. It's really good. Weird how Fox (whose entertainment branch does a decent job, apparently not at all connected to the News branch) aired the series' episodes completely out of order, showing the 2-hour pilot episode last and not even airing 3 of the 14 episodes made. Like with the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (the ones with Sean Patrick Flanery as the teen Indy, not the episodes with boy Indy), when ABC kept changing days and times, taking it off the air for weeks or months and then airing a few episodes here or there. Sometimes networks seem intent on sabotaging good shows. Cancel Dark Angel after two seasons and run dreck shows for three times as long? And Futurama, even after five years, what the hell were they thinking canceling that?

Anyway, it has me wanting to see the new flick Serenity, though, as usual, it's all mucked up for Japan, which might not get the film at all.

Paramount has semi-left the Toshiba HD-DVD camp and says they'll support both HD-DVD and Sony's Blu-Ray. That makes a majority of major studios siding with Blu-Ray, along with Apple and the greater number of corporations, though Microsoft and Intel recently signed on to the HD-DVD ticket. Disney, Columbia (owned by Sony), and 20th Century Fox are on the Blu-Ray ticket, which Warner Bros. and Universal still are on the HD-DVD side, though Warner Bros. is expected to follow Paramount's move and put one foot in the Blu-Ray camp also, thus weakening HD-DVD that much further. It may even prompt Universal to follow as well, and that could be the beginning of the end of HD-DVD.

In case you haven't been paying attention, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are the next-generation DVD players designed for HDTV content. Current DVDs store from 4.7 to 8.5 GB on a single side, which is not enough for the new high-definition media. The new DVD formats use higher-wavelength blue lasers to pack more data into a disc the same size as today's DVDs. Toshiba's HD-DVD can save 15 to 30 GB on a single side (single- or dual-layered), while Sony's Blu-Ray can save 25 to 50 GB (single- or dual-layered, though a 4-layer version could get as much as 100 GB on one side). The two formats are incompatible, making this to be a fight along the lines of the 1980's VHS vs. Betamax struggle, which (of course) Sony's Betamax lost due to Victor's decision to open-source the VHS standard. Beta was introduced in 1975, by the way, and conceded defeat as late as 1988, 13 years later. Know anyone with a Betamax machine?

Sony looks to be the winner this time, though--despite the fact that HD-DVD was designed for easy manufacturers' upgrade to existing DVD production technology, Blu-Ray offers more features and better speed in addition to more capacity. And while HD-DVD was supposed to get an early start, they had to delay the release of their product so it gets released about the same time as Blu-Ray. In addition, Sony is going to include Blu-Ray in the next version of the popular PlayStation video game player, which will pump up production and bring prices down faster. And Sony got the jump on selling Blu-Ray machines here in Japan.

But there's still a heated argument over which side is going to win. Hard to say, but as you could tell in this writing, I have a feeling that Blu-Ray is going to come out the winner.

Update: Intel, which last week jumped on the side of HD-DVD, is now wavering, saying that it may also put one foot into the Blu-Ray camp, if Blu-Ray can deliver a certain kind of copying technology.

The Fisher King

Or, more accurately, the Kingfisher, or more specifically, the Common Kingfisher (Kawasemi • カワセミ), though its appearance is anything but common. I finally got some great shots of this bird, after several attempts that only gained small, fuzzier images. For a "common" bird, it's not so easy to catch. But I got two good looks at the little guys yesterday at the Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park.

The first one sat on a post maybe fifteen meters away, in the direct light. This first image has a beautiful 1280x854 blowup version if you click on it--the water reflection behind the bird is just great in the enlargement.

Then this guy flew up within perhaps 8-10 meters of one of the blinds, sitting on a rope across the water put there for just this purpose: to attract Kingfishers. Note the beautiful blue-green stripe down its back.

So Much for Warding Off Referral Spam

While Comment and Trackback spam are under tight control, the referral spammers have broken through the AwStats referral patch; despite quickly adding any new spammers to the list, blacklisted domains continue to break and flow through. As always, the spammers get zero benefit--the spam is visible to me and no one else, and no links at all go back to them. But now it seems like they're just doing it for fun--as is marked by the fact that the referral spam almost invariably accesses blog entries I have made on spam. So we've gone from aggressive advertising to pure vandalism, not that any spammers out there are anything but vandals.

Next step: wait for someone to create a better site statistics filter. Probably the folks at AwStats should rework the software so as to include this natively, allowing for manual control of filtering--but more important, retroactive filtering, a la MT-Blacklist. The current patches only stop spams as they come in, and they miss a certain amount even if they are working. It seems like such an obvious thing--referral spam is making AwStats useless, so one would only imagine that the people who make AwStats would do something about it.

Snipe Hunt

I got two new birds today: a Common Snipe and a Striated Heron. That along with some other nice photos, but the two new ones first. I should note that this brings my Japan life list to 76--I mistakenly thought I'd had 75, but I had 74. These two then bring me to seventy-six.

You may have heard of a "Snipe Hunt" before, a practical joke where a hapless mark is taken out into the forest late at night with a gunny sack and told to find and capture a "snipe" using the bag. As it turns out, the Snipe is a shorebird, and is not nocturnal, as the joke would have it. And I just caught my first one today, actually one of a group of four Common Snipes (Tashigi • タシギ) at the Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park.

The second new bird, the Striated Heron (Sasa-goi • ササゴイ) was hard to see--I only was able to find it because someone from the Wild Bird Society (they had a group tour there today) had spotted it and pointed it out to me. It's kind of like a Black-crowned Night Heron, but its colors are not quite so contrasted and it has yellow and not red eyes. I wasn't able to get too good an image because of how far it stayed from the viewing points in the park.

It became much more visible when contrasted against a darker background:

Like I said, the quality of these images are lacking. I really like the camera I have now; however, this guy had the kind of equipment that I really want:

His camera was a very simple, plain digital job just costing a few hundred bucks, but he had hooked it up with a mini-video screen, a shutter cable, and a monoscope on a tripod. He had to carry with him a boxed set of maybe a dozen double-A batteries to run the monitor, but the setup worked, an beautifully--he could aim using the viewscreen and take great long-distance shots. Not so good, he admitted, for moving birds, but for stationary ones, it was very impressive. Though I have to temper that desire with the knowledge that it would take a car to conveniently carry all that gear around...

Here's a close-up of the setup, with an enlarged image (you can see he's shot the heron) available if you click it.

Japan, 1985 - Conclusion

This is not the conclusion to my looks back to twenty years ago, but rather the conclusion to the story of how I came here in the first place. As you'll recall from my previous two posts, I found out about teaching in Japan during a summer trip in 1985, and later was contacted by the YMCA, who then sent me the wrong info about how to get a visa.

So on Monday, October 7th, I set off on my journey. I would rather have taken a direct flight to Seoul on Korean Airlines and then a quick jump from Seoul to Tokyo (Korean had no direct SF-Tokyo flights), but the ticket I had bought was non-changeable. (It had to be Korean because after the 1983 downing of Korean Air flight 007, their prices were very low and their service great, so I preferred that airline.) I had, in fact, paid more for the multi-leg ticket, on the YMCA's advice.

So the airplane trip began, the longest I have ever taken, and an outstanding example of why I now demand direct flights. The first leg was not even Korean Air, from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I'm pretty sure it was PSA, the fun airline that used to paint smiles on the front of their planes. I recall the pilot cracking jokes before take-off ("I'd like to request that the flight attendant move out of the aisle so I can see out the rear window"), and on landing ("If you enjoyed your trip, remember you are on PSA flight 274. If you did not enjoy your flight, then remember you are on South West flight 781").

At Los Angeles, I switched to a Korean Air Flight to Seoul with a layover in Anchorage. By the time we arrived at Anchorage, I had run out of reading material and still faced many hours ahead on the trip. I went to the kiosk at the airport (it was late at night, so the regular fully-stocked book store was not open), but could not find much that I would like to read. The only thing I could find was a Playboy magazine with articles that seemed of interest. (It was a near-empty flight, no adjacent passengers to offend.) Now, I'm not saying I never bought that particular magazine for the pictorials, but I swear to God, this time I really, actually did buy it for the articles. In fact, I didn't even think of it as pornography, but as reading material--which is why I took no special care hiding it deep in my carry-on. When I was finished reading (stop snickering), I just laid it on top of everything else in the bag and closed it.

And so set up my rather interesting entry into Japan.

You see, Japan has always had rather interesting pornography laws, in that you could show bare breasts on prime-time television, but you could not show pubic hair anywhere. It was strictly verboten. And don't even ask about genitalia. Severe violence and sexual situations were all fine in practically any media, but that one specific place always had to be airbrushed out. Now, Playboy was no Hustler in those days, but even it was in excess of what Japan's laws would allow.

So by the time I arrived in Tokyo, after more than six hours sitting in Seoul Airport, and after the trip that lasted more than a day, I was dead tired and still had quite a bit of traveling left to do. I had put away the magazine when we were pulling into Seoul maybe 8 hours earlier and had completely forgotten about it. And so I sauntered up to customs unaware of the trouble I was about to get into.

Sure enough, the customs agent asked me to open the carry-on, and out popped the Playboy. As the agent picked up the magazine, I remembered the Japanese laws and realized I was in trouble. So I automatically switched to stupid-gaijin mode with the agent, who could not speak English. Kore wa dame! he told me, holding up the magazine. I played dumb, as if not understanding that he told me the magazine was not good. I hoped he would just take the magazine, put it into a drawer, and wave me on. But this guy was insistent. When I feigned ignorance, he wanted to show me exactly why the magazine was no good. So he opened the magazine and started looking for a photo with the offending patch of hair.

Comically enough, he couldn't find one. He tried the centerfold, no luck; he riffed through many pages, landing all too often on pages with text or photos that would not serve as an example. Meanwhile, a line started backing up behind me as the agent searched more and more intently through the Playboy. Finally, he found a page with what he wanted. Kore! he exclaimed triumphantly, pointing at the model's nether region. Kore wa dame! This part is not good!

It took every ounce of my self-restraint not to switch into my basic Japanese and tell him that it was, in fact, very good! Somehow I kept a straight face, nodding sagely, saying, "Ah!" to show I now understood. Then the agent got his assistant to take over while the agent walked me to the men's room at the back corner of the luggage claim area, where he showed me a trash can styled like a mail box, so that you could not reach in and get anything out. He then handed me the magazine and gestured for me to drop it in, which of course I did. Crisis resolved, and he let me go.

So I left the airport, got to Ueno station by the Skyliner (a different trip back then), transferred to JNR to get to Shinjuku, from where I caught the express train to the Japan Sea coast, and Toyama city. I seem to recall that I arrived there early evening Japan time, and after my bags got stowed, the gang immediately took me out to have yakitori at Akiyoshi, a restaurant chain from Fukui which I still frequent today.

Soon afterwards, I was introduced to my apartment (a bare-concrete-walled 6-mat room with a unit bath and a hallway kitchenette, with no windows except the balcony doors, and was soon to be overcome by mold) and my job. It offered a minimal salary--210,000 yen a month, plus 40,000 yen for the apartment rent. And the Y never compensated me for the extra few hundred bucks that the longer-flight ticket cost me, despite the fact that they not only caused me that excess expense but very nearly cost me much, much more. I wanted to rant at them, but it being my first time living and working in Japan and wanting to build a good relationship with my employer--not to mention that they made it clear they would never pay--I decided not let it go. Alas, that was not my last problem with that particular branch or its management at the time. Like when they ripped me off on the apartment's key money (they said I would pay "half," but didn't tell me that I was paying the non-refundable half while they paid the refundable deposit--though they made me move when I left their employ, retaining ownership of the lease), or when they essentially stole $700 I made teaching on a side job ("Thank you for the donation"), or when they threatened to deport me when I complained about the lost wages. I could make a whole other blog post about it, but I probably won't.

After one and a half years with the Y, I left to go full-time (if only for six months) with evening classes at a local 2-year public college, and company classes. Though I worked only a few hours a day (the YMCA had me on morning to night, with lots of idle time with nothing to do), I made a lot more than the Y ever had paid me. But I couldn't get local visa sponsorship after the end of the second year in Japan, and so went to Tokyo, where I found a job for the next three years. It was after the fifth year that I decided it was about time I went back to get my A.A. and my B.A. I had also found out from my first few years in Toyama that if one could get a job at a university, the salary and working conditions were excellent--and thus began my initial interest in living in Japan permanently. That, more than anything else, was the life-changing part of that first few years in Japan, which stemmed from the initial offer to work there.

I got my B.A. in 1992, went back to Japan until 1995, when I returned again to get my M.A. in TESOL. In 1998 I came back for good. There's another story about my arrival, but it's not a 20th anniversary thing, so maybe later.

In the next post of this series, I'll get back to the original topic, which was about what things were like in Japan back then--don't worry, I didn't forget. I just thought it would be appropriate to preface that with the story of how I got there. Seeing how this story has fleshed out, I'm beginning to think that the original post idea will not be nearly as meaty... but I'll try.