Amongst the hullabaloo surrounding the iPhone and iOS4, not many people probably noticed the new version of Safari that Apple released in its wake. Safari 4 was less than impressive, focusing more on flashy graphics that caused more trouble than they were worth. I never like the “Top Sites” spread, it took too much time and told me nothing I didn’t know; other “improvements” were so unpopular that software was released to disable them. The top-heavy tabs were an instant failure, and I doubt many people used the cover flow feature in history or bookmarks. It was as if Apple took the uncharacteristic role of copier, trying to add features some people liked in Chrome or Firefox. At the time, I commented that “the feature I like most is the ability to easily uninstall it and have Safari 3 back.”

Well, now Safari 5 is out–and Apple is back in form, delivering some key new improvements in the right areas. Three new points stand out: Extensions, greater HTML5 support, and Reader.

First, Extensions. While this is a great feature, the real question is, what the hell took so long, Apple? It’s about time. Who knows, maybe there were security issues that had to be handled first. Whatever the case, the ability to add extensions made by third parties is just what Safari needs. Before you can use them, you have to enable them: go to the app’s Preferences, go to the “Advanced” tab, and click “Show Develop menu in menu bar.” Then, in the “Develop” menu, click on “Enable Extensions.”

Some extensions out immediately: Reload Button (puts the reload button back in the toolbar where it should be, rather than waaay out on the far side of the address bar, another Safari-4-ism I didn’t like); GMail Checker (an early version–frankly, I’m not too impressed; a mail button in your toolbar that shows a number badge for unread mail–but only if you’re logged in); Live CSS (allows you to edit the CSS properties for any open page in real time); and AdBlock (haven’t tried it, I have excellent blockers already). And more.

After only a few days, there are a surprising number of nice little extensions, and more are sure to follow. If you want an official list of good extensions, you’ll have to wait: Apple’s “Safari Extensions Gallery” will not be published until “later this summer.” But here’s a list of some of them available now. There are warnings, though, that downloading just any extension without checking it could be a risk; we’ll know more as time goes on.

Next, better HTML5 support. This helps developers build impressive web apps (MS Office Live, not so impressive), allowing for pretty nice effects for web sites to be added with relative ease. To get an idea of what’s possible, visit Apple’s HTML5 page, and look at some of the demos. HTML5 is more than just better than flash, it’s a pretty substantial leap forward. The main problem: most browsers don’t implement all of it, and of course, IE will likely remain incapable of properly rendering pages for years. As a result of the masses who use IE–the worst browser on the planet–simply because Microsoft spoon-feeds it to them, the best of HTML5 will be painfully left behind by most web developers for quite some time, just like CSS was sabotaged by IE6 dominance.

many newspaper sites will break stories into pages so as to increase the number of ads you see.

Finally, there is a feature that some are saying could change web browsing–for the better (for users) or for the worse (if you’re an advertiser). It’s called Reader. What it does is simple: it takes the text on your page and puts it up front, where it should be. All the formatting, all the ads, all the spinning, flashing, jumping animations fade into the background, leaving only the text, like a newspaper clipping. Better yet, if the story you’re reading has multiple pages (divisions intended to expose you to even more ads), those pages automatically load for you–no more clicking on 10 “next page” buttons to get through an article.

This feature will not work on all web pages, however; Safari somehow realizes that you’re on a story page (as opposed to a page with an aggregate list of posts), and will only the offer up the “Reader” button at the right side of the address bar.

The story only stands out, giving a clear reading experience. The site’s artificial “page” breaks are rendered as small gaps. Photos were not included in the pages I tried, despite Apple’s site showing them included.

While this feature may be a bane to advertisers, I say let ’em fade to the background, until they learn to behave and not move around like hyperactive Parkinson’s sufferers doing the Mambo while on caffeine withdrawal. Apple even lets the ads load, perhaps making it hard for the site to tell if the ads are being shuffled to the background at all. The only down point here is that I am sure someone is working on a way to set up web pages so as to defeat this spiffy new feature.

One other great feature about Safari 5, one I have not heard anyone mention: it doesn’t disable all the add-ons you may have outfitted your copy of Safari with. That was a major annoyance of previous major Safari upgrades: you either had to abandon all of your add-ons for a while as their developers made them compatible, or else hold back from updating Safari. Not Safari 5–all the stuff I use for it now continues to work great. I use ClickToFlash to turn off annoying Flash ads (while leaving the potential to easily play the ones I want); Glims to add all kinds of functionality (I love the period-and-comma controls for navigating tabs, and the ability to recover previous open page sessions is useful as well–among the many, many features); and GlimmerBlocker, which does a pretty good job of blocking (for all browsers) all the non-Flash ads left over by ClickToFlash. All of these work just fine with Safari 5–a first, as far as I can recall, as the add-ons I used in the past always got knocked out of commission with each new major version of the browser.

What do the following have in common?

• Using budget reconciliation
• Speaking to schoolchildren
• Schoolchildren sing songs about you
• Using TelePrompTers
• Having “Czars”
• Corporate bailouts
• Bowing to foreign royalty
• Prosecuting terrorists in civilian courts
• Interring terrorists in civilian prisons
• Reading terrorists their Miranda rights
• Criticizing specific media outlets for unfavorable coverage
• Not wearing a jacket or tie
• Not wearing a flag lapel pin
• Putting your feet up on your desk
• Not going to church all the time

If you guessed “things Obama has been criticized for,” you’d be correct, but incomplete. The full answer is, “things Obama is criticized for though other presidents were not.” Even more specifically, “things that Bush did to the same or a greater degree but no one noticed, but when Obama does them, the right wing goes berserk.”

This came to note recently when Obama was castigated by right-wingers for not doing anything to mark the anniversary of D-Day or the Normandy invasion. And it’s true, he didn’t. He marked the day last year, but didn’t this year. So, Obama is an ass, right?

As it happens, he’s doing exactly what every president does: he marks the occasion on special anniversaries, like last year when it was the 65th anniversary of D-Day, and like Bush did on the 60th anniversary. But Bush only observed D-Day twice in his eight years–in 2001 and in 2004, and nothing was made of it the other 6 years when he did nothing. When Obama followed suit this year, it’s a “snub,” and Obama is an insensitive cad, insulting veterans, America, and living up to his Hitler image.

The ODS (Obama Double Standard™) was also an issue recently when it was found that the Obama administration had offered a job to Joe Sestak to coax him from running against Arlen Spector; the right wing thought this was worthy of special investigation as if it were a major scandal, despite that kind of deal being an everyday occurrence in D.C. politics and there being nothing wrong with it. Similarly, Obama was castigated by the right wing for not going to Arlington on Memorial Day, despite the fact that presidents often don’t go.

Not to say that any of this is new, or a surprise. Just noting what others are noting about now, which is that Obama is being attacked for stuff which is done (or not done) all the time by presidents and nobody cares. It’s a double standard, it’s hypocritical, it’s dishonest, it’s stupid. In short, the right-wing SOP.

Three years ago today, I asked this question concerning the right-wing assertion that it was highly improper to criticize a president while we had troops in the field, with my own short answer:

Let’s say that a Democratic candidate wins the 2008 election, and, for a while at least, we still have soldiers on the ground in Iraq. Will Republicans lay off criticizing the president, especially on war issues, during that time?

No, I don’t think so either.

Couldn’t have called that one more right, could I have? Of course, it was a no-brainer–anyone not completely fooling themselves could have answered that spot-on. Right-wing hypocrisy is one of the true constants in the world.

If anything, the question was far too mild; while the hypocrisy was a given, it was just as sure that no one could guess the degree. In the prediction above, substitute “lay off criticizing the president” with “refrain from hysterically vehement attacks on the president, calling him a communist, fascist foreign usurper and a traitor to America,” and you’re closer. But who would have guessed such bizarrely self-contradictory drivel would have been spoken aloud, much less used as the central themes in a consistent barrage of smears aimed at the president of the United States?

But I guess if you’re an American patriot who supports the troops and puts country first, then you gotta have priorities.

So, what’s going on at WWDC?

iBooks is already being updated, sometime later this month. You can add notes, bookmark pages (instead of just text), and iBooks will read PDFs. Whether it will be able to recognize text in readable PDFs is another question, as is the note-taking feature. If it does, then this will be a pretty big thing for iBooks in terms of students using the platform. Note-taking during reading is something students do a lot. How those notes can be read back will also matter–will you be able to combine all your notes and print them out on a single sheet, no matter how they’re spread out in the text?

The big news, of course, was the new iPhone–the “iPhone 4” (couldn’t be the “4G” because the “G” refers to cell technology, not the generation of cell phone). Huge feature–as reported recently–4 times the resolution. 326 ppi, a stunning 960 x 640 display, almost more information than the eye can accept at the distance you would hold a device like that at comfortably, so Apple claims–ergo their name “retinal display.” When they bring this to the iPad, it’ll be unbelievable. Imagine a 2048 x 1536 display in your hands!

The new phone, again as leaked previously, has the front-facing camera for video chat (WiFi for now, 3G later), LED flash on the back, and the back camera is now 5 MP, with better light-gathering than before. 720p / 30fps video recording. The phone is about 25% thinner than the 3GS. There’s an extra mic for better sound pickup and noise cancellation. A new CPU. Better battery performance. Most of these things were known or guessed at.

What was not known: the “gyroscope,” an added motion sensing system, which makes the phone even more sensitive to movement, more able to respond to how you hold it and move it around.

iMovie for the iPhone: edit movies on the phone. Ken Burns effect for photos, scene transitions, titles, music tracks, themes, geolocation–and then upload the movie to the web, without going home or moving anything to a computer. Jobs mentioned that it’s pretty hard to remember what cell phones were like before the iPhone, and this app pretty effectively demonstrates that difference. Four years ago, I could barely figure out how to call up a photo taken with my cell phone, and the resolution was practically postage-stamp size. The features were few and horrifically complex to learn. Now, you’re editing movies on your cell phone, with a screen resolution better than some desktop monitors had just a few years ago.

One of the down sides of the leaks we’ve seen is that there’s little new to find out about. iMovie & iBooks for iPhone, the gyroscope, and a few other small and insignificant features were all that were new. Which is too bad, because there’s a ton of fantastic, even stunning new developments with the new iPhone. The high-resolution display, the new cameras, the new CPU, the new design, the new OS with multitasking, folders, and so on. Contrary to past keynotes, this was the most new features and goodies presented with the least surprises or new information that I can recall.

One other thing that this makes me think of–there’s so much new stuff on this phone, what’s left to add to the next-gen iPhone a year from now? Seriously. It’ll be hard to make it much slimmer; doubtful they’ll up the screen resolution; no more cameras to add, or video functionality; no more wireless stuff to add that I can foresee. The iPhone 4 didn’t up the flash memory, nor did it add colors, so that could change, but those are relatively mundane “upgrades.” So, what could be added next year that could compare with this year? The iPhone 4 will be pretty damned hard to beat, even for Apple.

One note, by the way: the iPad does not seem to be included in the devices that can get the iOS4 upgrade. It will come to the iPad, it will just come a bit later–exactly when is anyone’s guess.

An interesting turn of events at the keynote: so many people were livecasting and uploading photos, they overloaded the WiFi in the building a Jobs had to ask everybody to shut off their WiFi so he could do the demos. Here’s an idea, Steve: bring back the live video webcast. It’s shown online several days later, but you can get around the livecasting metablogs or whatever and speak directly to people around the world that way.

As part of a larger mural project, painters created a mural on one side of an elementary school facing a roadway. The mural’s theme was “Go Green,” and featured four boys using green transportation–walking and riding bikes among images of nature. So, how could this possibly generate racist hatred? Well, this:

No, not the woman in front of the mural. It’s the kid prominently featured in the mural. Specifically, the fact that he’s not white. The image is based upon a student at the school who is of Hispanic origin.

For a few months, while painters were putting the mural up, they endured a steady stream of racist shouts from passing cars. Among the most common comments: “You’re desecrating our school!” “Get the nigger off the wall!” “Get the spic off the wall!” Comments on a newspaper web site said the mural was “ugly,” “tacky,” and “ghetto.” Callers complained of “graffiti” and “forcing diversity down our throats.”

Wow. That’s almost like 1960’s Mississippi or something. Now, seriously, how screwed up do people in a community have to be to spout such racist crap because of a mural like that?

Apparently, screwed up enough that the school district gave the artists a directive: lighten up the face.

More was vocalized by Prescott City Councilman Steve Blair, who had a local radio talk show. On May 21, he got onto the topic by starting with the phrase, “I am not a racist individual, but….” Right there we have a red flag. You know that any statement starting with “I am not a racist individual” will have a pretty strong dose of racism. And the fact that he followed it with the word “but” is telling; that conjunction is contrasting, meaning that the following phrase contains meaning opposite from the preceding one, as in “I don’t like romance novels, but I loved that one.”

Blair’s full statement: “I am not a racist individual, but I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who’s president of the United States today and based upon the history of this community when I grew up, we had four black families – who I have been very good friends with for years – to depict the biggest picture on that building as a black person, I would have to ask the question, ‘Why?’”

Welcome to post-racial racism.

Several interesting cues in there. First of all, what the hell does Obama have to do with this? The fact that Blair hit on that shows that he’s got Obama hatred on the brain. If the mural was made two years ago and featured a white kid, would it have been “based upon” Bush? Clearly this guy has issues with the president which are linked in with his reaction here.

Second, “we had four black families – who I have been very good friends with for years” is the classic “some of my best friends are black” statement, almost universally used in racist statements, as a way of legitimizing the speaker as somehow non-racist, as if liking specific people in a racial group means that you can’t possibly hate the group in general.

And finally, his question: Why depict the biggest picture on the wall as a person of color? The answer, of course, is why not? Now, I am not suggesting that there is not a tendency to emphasize diversity in public murals or other works depicting people, it is quite common. But the real question here is, what’s wrong with that? Does Blair not want his kids exposed to other children of color? Is he offended that a minority face got “more screen time” or “better representation”? More likely, he is simply offended by the idea that someone thought it would be a good idea to express a level of diversity in the community–a thought Blair made clear by saying, “I’m not a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but whenever people start talking about diversity, it’s a word I can’t stand.” Again with the “I’m not racist, but” bit. And his use of the contrasting conjunction is logically sound: “I’m not racist” certainly contrasts with “I hate diversity.”

Fortunately, there is a a streak of sanity and reason in the community. Blair was let go from the radio station and no longer hosts the show (he is still ticked off about the mural, calling it a “defacing” of the school building). The school principle and superintendent stood up in public and said, “When we asked them to lighten the mural, we made a mistake,” and “Shame on us if we can’t say, ‘We made a mistake and we’re sorry.’” Now, that’s an attitude I can respect–though I am sure that conservatives gagged on that, seeing it as equal to “apologizing for America” or some such. A rally was held at the school where the school officials made this statement with a healthy number of people protesting the racism. Presumably, the less tolerant citizens stayed away in disgust.

Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Republicans are supposed to be the prigs, the “family values” crowd, the religious, morally-upstanding types. So how come you can now be a Republican, cheat on your wife, get caught in a scandal doing unacceptable and even illegal things, and still stay in office and run for re-election? It’s a little bit more than IOKIYAR.

You may think that Clinton was the one who made it OK to have an affair without resigning, but that’s not entirely accurate. Many presidents before Clinton were known to have committed adultery, it was simply considered out of bounds to talk about it. What made the Clinton affair, as well as the graphic terminology involved, so public was the fact that right-wingers deployed a relentless offensive to make it as public as humanly possible. Newt Gingrich, the party leader at the time, pushed incessantly to investigate, publicize, and attack the president over his affairs–all the time while Gingrich himself was having an extramarital affair. The central issue, however, is that Republicans who worked furiously to root out the scandals, throwing every accusation they could and investigating every lead they could come up with before finally striking gold with Monica Lewinsky–and then they rode that one to town, making as big a noise as they possibly could.

Now, there was a problem with that: this was a sitting president, and a popular one. Think of Bush 43 in office, who had real scandals–violating several constitutional amendments among other laws, for example–and yet Republicans, then and since, have fought tooth and nail against the idea of even investigations, much less actual prosecution. The presidency is not something you toss out lightly. Republicans were OK with cheapening the office and the act of impeachment; the public, not nearly as much. The Republicans knew that Clinton would fight this, and that the nation would be quite averse to seeing the office sullied by a resignation. Doing something wrong is, strangely but truly, the lesser sin–resigning is the frank admission of that wrong on the highest level, soiling the office far more than anything else, and is only a last resort against criminal prosecution. Even with Bush, who committed far more grievous crimes than lying about an affair (including his lying under oath in a criminal case at about the same time Clinton did so), the nation was averse to giving credence the commission of these crimes with any kind of official action.

As a result, we had the occupant of the highest office in the country have an affair and he did not resign–he even finished office with high approval ratings.

In the election following his successor, the Republican party ran with a candidate who had in his past worse affairs than Clinton; consequently divorced and also having been centrally implicated in the Savings & Loan scandal, he received the stamp of approval of his party. Similarly ignored were the even worse affairs of fellow candidate Rudy Giuliani, while fellow Republican and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich made sounds of running for president soon, and thrice-married Rush Limbaugh ascended to de facto leader of the conservative movement.

Now, once Democrats have been exposed doing something that Republicans believe is wrong and then got away with it, they see this as an open door to do the same in spades–and they do so with gusto.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who voted to impeach Clinton for his “reprehensible” behavior, hiked the Appalachian Trail and acted aberrantly to say the least, and used state funds for his dalliances; not only has he stayed in office, there is even talk of his running for president in 2012. Nevada Senator John Ensign, who called for Clinton to resign and said he “had no credibility left,” not only had an affair, but paid off his mistress in a way that was potentially illegal; Ensign is still in office. Louisiana Senator David Vitter, who earlier replaced a congressman who had an affair, using it as fodder to call for Clinton to resign, not only had extramarital sex, but did so illegally, hiring prostitutes; he escaped arrest only due to the statute of limitations, and is now still in office. Idaho Senator Larry Craig, another Clinton critic, was arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom stall, and did not resign, instead finishing out his term.

Making all this even worse is the fact that conservatives continue to run on “family values” and “higher moral ground” issues. They still hold that infidelity is a sin while committing these sins in the greatest number. Democratic politicians, Clinton in particular, are not squeaky clean in all of this, but they do have the redeeming quality of not preaching on the issue and not hypocritically focusing on such affairs by Republicans while committing those sins themselves. John Edwards stupidly committed adultery, but at least he was not at the same time running on a pro-marriage and family-values platform while attacking his opponents, like McCain and Giuliani, for their infidelities.

In the end, the greatest responsibility for making an extramarital affair allowable while staying in office lies with the right-wing crowd, and it is so primarily because they never actually cared about its morality, but instead found it to be a convenient political weapon. They used the issue as a form of cheap political attack, preached incessantly about it, were exposed as hypocrites, and now violate the principle commonly and openly, creating the model for all to follow, legitimizing it. Thus, they devalued its impact and made it an acceptable practice.

These, the same people who claim to be defending marriage by denying it to others.

One of the talking points I’ve often heard from the right wing about the sub-prime crisis is the idea that it’s the fault of liberals and minorities: liberals for passing legislation that forced banks to take on bad loans, and minorities for eagerly buying into loans they should have known they could not pay for. The contention is that liberals, in their blind, unthinking ways, wanted more minorities to have homes, and minorities, being grabby and not too bright, overreached and precipitated the crisis. This ties up the scandal into a nice, neat, right-wing trifecta: you get to move conservatives and their still-favored deregulatory practices out of the picture, make the bankers into unwilling participants and even victims, and heap blame and scorn upon lefties and the lower-class dark-skinned people you look down upon so much. Bush, the Republicans, the deregulation they passed, and the banking industry are all innocent; stupid liberals and minorities are to blame. Of course, these charges are demonstrably false, but that doesn’t stop the meme from becoming firmly established on the right wing.

Nor is this hardly anything new. Remember how, when Hurricane Katrina hit, the fact that Bush dawdled for five days and completely blew relief efforts was handled the exact same way: it was, the right wing claimed, the fault of (1) local Democrats (specifically Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin) for not declaring a state of emergency (Blanco did) or using local buses to move people (Nagin did), and (2) the minority-rich population of New orleans for being too stupid to leave before the storm. Thus, the claims went, Bush, who reportedly begged Blanco and Nagin to declare the emergency (he didn’t, it was the other way around), was not to blame for the disaster that ensued. For weeks afterward, the right wing distributed false and misleading email messages which heaped despicable abuse and outright racist slander which was designed to vilify the people of New Orleans and thus make people less inclined to care about Bush’s ineptitude in helping them.

But this is the pattern: blame liberals and minorities. Immigration? The left loves minorities so they go soft on immigrants and immigration offenses while the dirty Mexicans walk all over us! (Pay no attention to the fact that corporate America is the actual villain here.) Elections won by Democrats? The liberals were guilty of election fraud, assisted by minorities within ACORN! (Pay no attention to the fact that ACORN was slandered, there is very little election fraud, and what there is is more right-wing than left.) Where only one or the other can be attached to a scandal by any stretch of the imagination, then only one is implicated–but whatever the problem, it’s always Democrats and minorities somewhere who are supposed to be behind it all.

It looks like several states, at least, have found an answer to the problem of police misconduct being recorded and made public. The solution is simple: make it illegal to record a police officer. There’s a good (if at least slightly biased) article on this, outlining the legal state of public recording of officers over several states. Often the illegality is claimed under an extension of state wiretapping laws, which is not only a stretch, but also ironic in that in the past few years the government has more or less seen fit to ignore those laws in the recording of citizens’ private dealings. We can record you in your private conduct, but you can’t record us in our public conduct. Heinlein’s “public servant equals public master” rule at work.

The no-recording laws are disturbing also because they appear to be directly targeted at hiding police misconduct. It may still be legal to record in public, and you won’t be taken to task for recording police where nothing embarrassing is happening. But if the police do something out of line and they find out you’re recording it, then the line is crossed. Which, obviously, is the exact opposite of how it should be. Yes, not all of an incident may be caught on tape, and yes, the video might not allow citizen viewers to take in the whole picture and understand the nature of the job. But the answers to those issues are education and judgment made by informed persons; making recording a police officer a crime punishable with a prison sentence borders on Orwellian.

Take the video recorded by Anthony Gruber, detailed in this Baltimore Sun article. He had a helmet-mounted camera while driving a motorcycle, and was recording while driving down what appears to be a highway. Public location, not illegal to record there. The recording certainly makes it look like he was speeding, though. After he takes an exit, an unmarked car follows him, and when he comes to a stop behind traffic, the car pulls over and a guy in plain clothes jumps out and pulls a gun, shouting “get off the motorcycle!” three times and putting his hand on the motorcycle dashboard before identifying himself as state police. He does not begin by identifying himself as a police officer, does not immediately show his badge, does not simply keep his hand on his gun in case the motorcyclist goes for a weapon or does something else threatening. No, without any indication that he’s an officer, he just jumps out of the car and pulls his gun out. I don’t know about you, but that would scare the crap outta me. Maybe I just don’t know police procedure, but that seems pretty improper.

Here’s the thing, though. They guy did not start recording because he saw a police officer, he was just recording his driving. And as soon as he discovered the identity of the officer, he immediately complied with the order to stop his bike, and then took off his gloves and stopped the recording. In essence, he did not try to record the officer and stopped as soon as he found out. He was given a ticket on the scene and was let go, and almost certainly would not have been punished further by the police. But after he posted the video on YouTube, the police came and arrested him, confiscating his computer and other equipment. The police claim that the subsequent arrest is not retribution for embarrassing the cop, but few people are buying that. Those familiar with Maryland law say that the use of this statute–making an audio recording of someone without their consent–in a case such as this is unprecedented. The fact that the recording was accidental and was stopped as soon as the person was capable makes the arrest on these charges even more transparent.

What’s scary about this is that the tendency to make the recording of police illegal is not in the interest of public safety–the opposite is true, in my opinion–but to essentially protect the police in cases where they act improperly. It resembles the practice in many states of destroying all evidence in a capital case after the person has been executed, thus making it virtually impossible to prove that the person executed was innocent.

And we know that sometimes this kind of record is needed. Take the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., where it was pretty firmly established that the arresting officer filed an incorrect police report, misstating facts and exaggerating. Such police reports carry significant weight in court cases, but there is little doubt that these reports are, when there is improper police behavior, at the very least biased and very much subject to question. A video recording is powerful evidence for an arrest subject’s case in such situations. To remove these is to promote abuse.

Whatever the issues with recording police, banning recordings of public activity and arresting those who do so is not the answer. It smacks of a perpetual cover-up, and makes the public even more suspicious of police activity, not less.

Tonight, Sachi and I went to a Yakitori place that we found online. Comments said that the food was delicious, so we decided to give it a try. It’s on the north side of Hibarigaoka Station, so when I got home from work, Sachi took the bus up to meet me, and we went to the place.

Having just moved from Ikebukuro, we are used to the kind of place you find in the city–nice, but cloistered, separate–you have nothing to do with the other clients, and the restaurant people leave you alone. Kitaro is the kind of place where you sit at different tables, but everybody has a good time together. The “master” took to us from the start, and we became part of the “in crowd” very quickly. As we ordered food, there was stuff thrown in–an extra Yakitori here, complimentary beers for us before we left–and always, conversation.

We were given a nice seat near a small gallery of drawings, and a white-haired and bearded gentleman at the end of the counter turned out to be the artist–and drew portraits of us both. We engaged in a lot of talk, and had a good time. It’s a lot like going to the bar in “Cheers,” in some ways–you feel like you’ll always be welcome there.

And, like the reviews said, the food is excellent.

Liz Cheney tries to revive the 1990’s mindset where every single imagined impropriety, no matter how frivolous or unsupported, merited an independent prosecutor:

Look, I think there are some things that clearly rise to the level of needing independent investigation. And what you have had happen here, obviously is the White House put out a statement the Friday before Memorial Day announcing Bill Clinton was involved, which I’m sure was really not that reassuring to most Americans. There is not an impeccable record of integrity there on the part of the former president. Secondly, then you have Rahm Emanuel basically have his own lawyer, the White House counsel issue a statement saying ‘Hey, this is all fine, we’re good to go,’ with no analysis whatsoever. Clearly, you need somebody to come in and take a look at exactly what happened.

Hey, Clinton himself was involved–that’s reason enough for an investigator right there!

What Cheney is talking about is the fact that the Obama administration offered Joe Sestak a White House position in exchange for him not running against Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter. Scandal!! Lawbreaking!! Why, no one has done that, except for perhaps every other single president in U.S. history!!

It’s not surprising that wingnuts want to smear Obama with something, it’s the sheer ridiculousness of their choice of vehicles. The offer Obama made is the same kind of political horse-trading that goes on every day in Washington, and is not even considered unethical by the more conspiratorially-minded. Even the Bush administration ethics lawyer said there’s no “there” there.

But Cheney seems to think that by singling out Clinton as a “cut out,” she can get an actual investigation started:

There is a lot here that just smells funny. If the White House thought what they were doing above board why did they go to Bill Clinton? Why did they need a cut-out for whatever they were doing? I want to know what he offered. I want to know what the president knew. The president said he didn’t know. I find it really hard to believe that the chief of staff would go to the former president to get him to try and get somebody out of the race without telling the president. And finally, this is very reminiscent of the campaign finance scandals back in the mid-’90s when they were selling the Lincoln bedroom. So I think the American people have a right to know here. We have Bill Clinton, Rahm Emanuel back engaged in this exactly what happened? Were any laws broken? Was an offer made?

Yes. Let’s not even think of investigating the massive, illegal warrantless wiretapping, or the near-infinite graft during the Iraq War in which billions simply vanished; let’s not have an investigator looking into Halliburton or the no-bid contracts, or the collusive policy-writing by oil company executives. And it’s traitorous to ask for an investigation of torture, or of the abandonment of national security leading up to 9/11.

No, let’s start a huge investigation because of an unsuccessful attempt at mundane, garden-variety political deals which cost nothing, harmed no one, and which happen all the time and nobody gives a rat’s ass about.

Ironically, if anything, Cheney’s blathering actually validates Obama’s ethics: if this is the worst someone like her can think of to charge Obama with, he must be pretty damned squeaky clean.

A short while ago, I commented on the recent mass-nuisance lawsuit issued by the producers of The Hurt Locker. The lawyers in that case are repeat offenders, carrying out the same tactics for a German film titled Far Cry. In that case, they are suing roughly 2000 “John Doe” IP Address holders, subpoenaing their ISPs to rat them out so they can be squeezed for cash.

One ISP, Time Warner Cable, said “no.” Their claim is that they have limited resources for hunting down the identities linked to IP addresses given by outside sources, and most of that capacity is dedicated to law enforcement, to help hunt down people like child porn distributors or other seriously dangerous people. They claim that their spare capacity is only 28 subpoenas per month–and the bottom-feeding lawyers trying to extort money in the mass-nuisance lawsuit are demanding that Time Warner drop everything else and spend the next three months doing nothing but servicing their claim against 800 of their customers. Time Warner said they were not interested, thanks.

So the scummy lawyers did what scummy lawyers do: they filed a brief against Time Warner, claiming that they were aiding and abetting pirates, threatening to sue the ISP for contributory copyright infringement.

Look, I’m not endorsing piracy here, but these filmmakers are being asses. Extorting $1500 for downloading a movie? Up to $300,000 if it goes to court? Strong-arm tactics if anyone stands in your way? There’s money-grabbing, and then there’s asinine money-grabbing. If these people were more reasonable and proportionate in seeking redress from some couch potato in Springfield who never would have paid $20 for the movie anyway downloading their film and watching it in a way that is little different in the long run from watching it on TV while muting the commercials, then OK. But demanding an ISP abandon its law enforcement duties in serious cases so they can extort a grand and a half from people like that is going beyond normal schmuckery.

Today, I took some time to do some computer shopping and maintenance downtown. The worst part of it was taking my MacBook Pro to the Apple store in Ginza, where it conveniently died. It had lost its optical drive a few days before–the issue I had come in for–and was having difficulty restarting. When I tried to restart it in the store, it just refused–wouldn’t work in target mode, after zapping the PRAM, after letting it rest for 20 minutes, nothing. And before turning it off, I had neglected to collect my most recent files on a USB flash. Argh. So it’ll be in for repairs for a week or so, and I’ll probably be lucky to get the files back.

While there, it was hard to miss the fact that the first floor was packed with people checking out the iPad. They have none in stock, and when I asked about reserving one (my brother may be interested), they pointed me to the online store, which has a long waiting period. Interestingly, this may help its popularity in Japan. People here think something is cooler if it is unobtainable or even hard to get. Krispy Kreme was a big hit when the lines were a mile long.

On the way to the store, I saw my first iPad used by someone else on a train–a westerner, as it turned out (he said he bought it in Japan). I also noticed that people pay attention to your iPad more in crowded trains; on the local trains on the Seibu line, the seats are half empty, and I never noticed anyone looking. Taking the subway during rush hour, to Ginza and then Akihabara, however, it was easy to note people sneaking looks. In fact, a couple of young ladies made quiet but greatly interested noises as I used the iPad to read an ebook, oohing and ahhing when I turned a page.

---

I went to Akihabara to complain about an iPad screen film I had bought the week before, when I was in Akihabara for something else. I had bought the screen film at the Labi (Yamada Denki) there as I had seen it on sale nowhere else. When I got home and opened it, the damned thing was blue. I called the shop chain, Labi, about getting a replacement, and they said they could not do that at any store but the original–meaning I’d have to go all the way back to Akihabara to exchange the thing, a proposition that would take an hour or two for me, and would cost maybe four bucks in train fares, to exchange a $15 product.

I tried to figure out where I was going wrong, but there seemed no solution–it was a blue sheet cut perfectly for the iPad, right down to the hole for the home button, stuck to a slightly larger clear sheet to protect the side to affix to the iPad. The instructions showed only those two sheets, the ones that I saw. No freakin’ way I would put something so blue on my iPad. I figured it had to be a packaging error.

I finally found time to go to Akihabara today, coming back from the Apple store, so I made the trek back to Labi. When I showed the film to the shop staff, the guy pointed out that the blue sheet was a secondary protective cover, with the actual film–exactly the same shape and size as the blue film–sandwiched invisibly between the clear plastic sheet and the blue film top. Very badly designed, incredibly badly written instructions. They were indistinguishable until you spent a while prying them apart.

What really ticked me off, though, was the shop staff’s attitude and demeanor. First, the guy who pointed out the blue protective sheet did so in a manner that all but shouted, “what, are you stupid, dumb ass?” I wanted to smack him, he was so condescending–I doubt one out of three people would have figured it out. Second, when he demonstrated that they were separate, he did so by separating the blue sheet from the film, which took him about 10 or 15 seconds, demonstrating how hard it was to separate them–and in the process touched the inside part of the film liberally with flaky-skinned hands. I grabbed it back from him before he could do more damage. Tis guy was the antithesis of the normal shop staff in these kinds of stores, who are usually very helpful and polite.

Not wanting to have to return to the store for a third time if I encountered more difficulty, I tried to apply the film right there. I spent a few minutes very carefully wiping down the iPad, and took extreme care in handing the film. But the product–made by “Elecom”–was very badly made, aside from the poor instructions. There was a crease near the bottom which had been covered by a tape, which all by itself would have ruined it–at first I thought maybe I could get it off later somehow. The film was slightly smaller than the actual screen, making it difficult to put on just right, and it attracted dust like a magnet–not unexpected for such films, but this one gave me headaches. One piece of dust had settled on the inside of the film near the center, making a big splotch when the film was affixed.

This was when I really did get stupid: I asked another clerk there for help. He told me to use my microfiber cloth to wipe it off. “Really?” I asked, and he said, yeah, that’ll do it. Like an idiot–partly because I could see no other way, partly because I figured he knew what he was talking about–I did what he said. And promptly saw an inch-wide splotch of dozens of dust particles now stuck where one had been before. The sheet was ruined. The ass then suggested I use a kleenex tissue, as if that wouldn’t leave any more dust and would solve my problems. As far as I could tell, the film was ruined there and then, doubly so from the crease that had been there from the start. When I said so, they guy just shrugged. No way I would even try to get a refund then–they would without any doubt have refused. I don’t know, maybe it could have been washed or something, but I didn’t see that or anything else working. Frustrated, I just tore the thing off and crumpled it up, telling the guy “thanks a lot” before leaving the place for good.

On the way back, I stopped by Bic and bought a cheaper film made by Buffalo, and took it home. It was clear, the right size, and easy to affix. Let me tell you, I am never going back to the Akihabara Labi, and am staying away from Elecom junk.

Alas, I may have to ditch the Buffalo product as well. While it covered the screen OK and seems to reduce the glare a bit, it is a horrible surface for fingerprints. People complain about how the iPad picks up fingerprints–let me tell you, the iPad’s oleophobic screen is getting a bad rap. The cover film picks up fingerprints like nobody’s business, smudges which are three times more visible than they were on the iPad screen, making me want to wipe it down every 30 seconds or so. Worse, the film is five times as hard to wipe down. Relative to this, the iPad’s own screen is far, far superior to this film, harder to smudge and a breeze to clear off. I don’t know if I just got a bad product again, but damn, this is disappointing. I had wanted to protect the screen, foreseeing either potential scratching or other damage, or possibly having the oleophobic coating wear off. The film I have on my iPhone is great. The stuff on the iPad sucks, big time.

So, not the best afternoon ever.

You can almost smell the desperation among the right wing to smear Obama in any way they can, using the time-honored political strategy of throwing as much mud as they can at him until something sticks. But in their method they betray their shallow, self-contradictory nature. Obama is a socialist, they tell us. He’s a communist. And he’s a fascist. Which is kind of like trying to say that he’s a Democrat, a Libertarian, and a Republican–they don’t mix.

In the BP oil spill disaster, the right wing sees a glimmer of hope, in that there’s a terrible incident that covers a span of time, so of course it can be blamed on Obama. At first, they saw an environmental disaster hitting the Gulf region, and naturally glommed onto the idea that this was “Obama’s Katrina.” However, the meme didn’t catch on; whereas Bush was immobile and inept, Obama is merely unsuccessful. Hurricanes are something that the US government is expected to act on promptly and with vigor; oil spills, not so much. The government’s handling of Katrina was hampered by stagnation, corruption and cronyism within the bureaucracy which Bush was responsible for; the government’s responsibility for the BP oil spill also harkens back to corruption–but not Obama’s, as Bush was the one who deregulated the industry to allow this to happen. With Katrina, Bush delayed ending a vacation, and dallied for five days before ordering in the national guard while people starved, were abandoned, and died; Obama has been doing about all that a president can for such a crisis–that it is taking so long is not a matter of incompetence, but rather the difficulty involved. It took ten months to stop a similar–but less disastrous–oil spill in the Gulf back in 1979. Had Obama’s direction been able to cap this leak after just one and a half months, it would have been miraculous, not a failure.

So the “Obama’s Katrina” story didn’t work–but the right-wingers felt they could tack this on Obama if only they had the right slogan. So in came “Obama’s 9/11.” Forget that this claim betrays the idea that 9/11 was a failure on the part of the government to respond well to a severe crisis, something right-wingers insist was not the case. And forget that the right wing tried to say that the economic crisis was “Obama’s 9/11,” or that the New York Times Square bomber incident was “Obama’s 9/11,” just like Haiti was supposed to be “Obama’s Katrina” before the oil spill was. One reason they fail is because they just don’t resonate: the oil spill is a terrible disaster, but not a political scandal. Who associates Bush 41 with the Exxon Valdez? Nobody–they associate Exxon with the Exxon Valdez. Fact is, the public doesn’t blame presidents for oil spills.

So the 9/11 meme didn’t gain any traction–the comparison was kind of silly, and right-wingers may not have liked the inference that 9/11 was a failure that could be blamed on the previous administration.

In fact, right-wingers may have started to become aware of how revealing it was that they were constantly trying to assign Bush scandals to Obama–Obama’s Katrina, Obama’s 9/11, Obama’s Enron, Obama’s Harriet Miers, Obama’s “Mission Accomplished,” Obama’s Iraq War, and so on. It highlighted the fact that the Bush administration was hip-deep in scandals, validated the idea that Bush’s scandals were indeed his fault, and came across as a desperate ploy to “hand off” the scandals to a Democratic administration in the hopes that Bush would no longer look so bad.

As a result, we are now seeing a different approach: The BP oil spill, we are now being told, is “Obama’s Iran Hostage Crisis.” The parallel is supposed to be that this is a long-drawn out crisis which will kill the president’s chances of re-election.

Yeah, good luck on that one. When it fails, what next? Obama’s Vietnam? Obama’s Great Depression? Obama’s Appomattox? Obama’s Boston Massacre? It could be months before the spill is finally plugged; the right wing will have the chance to try out a variety before the well runs dry.

Can’t wait to hear the next meme.

As you may or may not know, my brother has written several Harry Potter fan-fiction novels under the pen name “Semprini” (Monty Python in-joke), which are widely considered amongst the best published on the web. The first three novels pick up after the end of Rowlings’ The Order of the Phoenix, and go off on an alternate timeline for the sixth and seventh years (with an additional novel set five years later). Although they have a different tone than Rowling’s books, they are a close match in terms of the inventiveness and “look and feel” of the originals, so much so that I have sometimes become mixed up about what characters and events are from Rowlings’ books and which are from the alternate novels.

Personally, I like my brother’s versions a good deal better than the real deals–they seem much more reasonable in terms of how people act and how events turn out, and are much more satisfying in general. Even better, they recognize and discuss a variety of moral, ethical, and spiritual issues in a manner that is entertaining, making the stories more interesting for adults and more valuable for younger audiences. The greatest flaw with the book was the tendency to draw out some discussions about personal feelings and such, but this is a subsequent edit, in which the author did much to improve the read.

This first novel is titled The Veil of Mystery, and was finished in late 2004. I first published text and pdf versions on this blog in mid-2005, and since then, there have been about 10,000 downloads of the novel from this site. Keeping in mind that that this is not the primary source of publication–that would be fan fiction sites–that number is quite appreciable.

Even more impressive is the fact that the versions published so far are not the easiest to read–one must either print out a large stack of text, or read the book in a less-than-optimal form on a computer. Now that the iPad has come along, it seems the perfect chance to publish the novel in a form which is both attractive and easy to read.

I spent the last week or so learning how epubs are put together; on the Mac, at least, Sigil seems to be the best for creating an ebook from scratch. I was able to create an epub version with a cover image, table of contents, and nice formatting (using xhtml, so not so much of a stretch for me). This allowed for nice font selections, making the text look more like a professional publication. The primary font is Baskerville; Zapfino and Cochin are used for chapter headings; representations of hand-written notes use Snell Roundhand (for adults) and Marker Felt (for children); newspaper articles are in Futura and Optima. iBooks does the rest in making the ebook look very nice indeed. The fonts were selected because they were the best available among the iPad’s offerings; if you use another ebook reading device, the appearance may suffer if the fonts aren’t there–but try it anyway, and let me know how it works.

To read the novel using iBooks on the iPad, just download the ebook (click on the cover art below or the download button at top), decompress the archive (zipped so as to preserve the book title), and add it to iTunes (drag and drop it into your “Books” section of the Library, or in the Library itself if there is no “Books” section yet). When you connect your iPad, iTunes should upload the book automatically; if not, you can select it under the “Books” tab of your iPad’s content area, then Apply/Sync. The book will appear on your bookshelf, as pictured above.

This is just the first novel of the series; over the next few months, I hope to similarly translate the other four novels into epub format as well. Bookmark this page and/or keep an eye on this blog for additional downloads.

If you have not read this book before, then to get the proper context, read or watch Rowling’s The Order of the Phoenix (book / DVD / BluRay) first. This novel picks up where that one leaves off.

Enjoy!

click image to download

The conservative majority on the Texas state school board is pushing through a set of changes to History and Social Studies textbooks which present a view of these subjects more in line with politicized, right-wing thinking. The school board, made up of ten Republicans and five Democrats, is dominated by a conservative Christian bloc. None on the school board are experts in the field of History or Social Sciences, and have rejected the opinions given by those who are experts in those fields. The board is not interested in making changes across the board, but instead only in fields which have a political bearing. The changes reflect a definite bias toward conservative Christian biases. Therefore, it is blindingly clear that this is not a debate over balanced education, but rather the desire to dominate the education of children with political views rather than objective information.

Should you think this is exaggeration, then consider this board member as an example:

Board member Cynthia Dunbar, a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School and author of a book declaring that America’s founders created a theocratic government, opened the final board session with a prayer for “a Christian land governed by Christian principles.” She explained the ideology driving curriculum changes: “[N]o one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses. Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia, or the charter of New England … the same objective is present — a Christian land governed by Christian principles.”

Well, I’m glad the board members have no preconceived notions.

This will affect more than Texas: since so many textbooks are made for Texas’ large population, textbook publishers often apply these changes nationwide. This fact is not lost on the school board, the conservative members of which have obviously taken the cue from national conservative leaders and gone whole-hog with the now-popular out-and-out divisive wingnut strategy. That strategy is to claim a liberal bias which, if it exists, is mild, and “counter” it with such an outrageously one-sided bag of rabid right-wing polemics as to make one gag.

Among the proposed changes:

• increased emphasis on the ideas of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis;
• increased attention to Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich;
• new entries on the NRA and Phyllis Schlafly, replacing removed entries on Kennedy and César Chávez;
• requirements to study right-wing personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, but no requirements to study left-wing commentators;
• critical analyses of “unintended consequences” of Title IX, affirmative action, and the Great Society;
• change in terms used–e.g., “capitalism” changed to “free enterprise,” “imperialism” where applied to the U.S. will be called “expansionism,” and references to a “democratic” society are replaced with references to a “republic”–not because of the meaning of the words, but instead because of their connections to political parties;
• slavery de-emphasized as a factor in the causes of the Civil War;
• “slave trade” now referred to as the “triangle trade”;
• insertion of critical analyses of Social Security and Medicare in the context of conservative critiques;
• increased scrutiny of the idea of separation of church and state;
• Thomas Jefferson’s role in U.S. history to be de-emphasized, while the roles of Christian personages such as John Calvin to be more prominent;
• lessons framing the United Nations as detrimental to U.S. sovereignty;
• watered-down coverage of the Civil Rights movement;
• insertion of lessons regarding causes and key organizations of the conservative movement, including the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority;
• major political ideas examined under the paradigm of “Laws of nature and nature’s God”;
• the image of Joe McCarthy will be cleaned up; and
• where President Obama will be mentioned, he will be referred to, unlike all other modern presidents, by his full name–Barack Hussein Obama.

Well, these are hardly political at all, wouldn’t you agree?

All of this, of course, is supposedly to “remove the liberal bias” from existing education standards. In short, to counter what is claimed to be a perceived liberal bias, make the whole shebang blindingly conservative, knowing that the nation will tilt toward you.

Welcome to Fox Education.

Voltage Pictures, makers of The Hurt Locker, have officially filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against “1 – 5000” John Doe defendants in “every jurisdiction in the United States” for illegally downloading and sharing their motion picture. In the suit (PDF), they allege “great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money.” Nevertheless, they are seeking to be compensated in money–specifically, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 504, at least between $750 and $30,000 per defendant, in addition to costs, attorney’s fees, and “other and further relief,” in addition to demanding that each defendant destroy all downloaded copies and never, ever even think of downloading any of their movies ever again.

In short, they have jumped on the RIAA bandwagon: file a massive, indistinct lawsuit against thousands of people in the hopes of (a) scaring file sharers into stopping their nefarious activities, and (b) raking in huge amounts of cash via what is essentially extortion writ large. It is expected that Voltage will offer “settlements” in the amount of $1500 per defendant, qualifying as extortion because, like any good nuisance lawsuit, the settlement will cost less than any defendant would pay in legal fees even if they successfully fight off the lawsuit. If all the defendants settled, Voltage would rake in $7.5 million. This assembly-line extortion is a new line of business for attorneys, just like class-action lawsuits as described in Grisham’s The King of Torts. They even go so far as to put the movies online themselves so they can more easily get the IP addresses of downloaders.

So, who are the defendants in the Hurt Locker case? Essentially, Voltage Pictures, makers of the film, have collected up to 5,000 external IP addresses, which identify only the general location of the people who downloaded the movie via BitTorrent, and have filed suit in hopes that this will allow them to legally obligate the ISPs serving those people to hand over the internal records which will provide enough information, they hope, to identify specific downloaders. ISPs who cooperate are not exactly innocent here–they make money off this as well, charging $32 to $60 for each IP address given to plaintiffs, citing costs for doing the search and notifying the address holder.

Voltage Pictures has the ability to carry out this kind of action this primarily because corporations were able to get laws passed which demand abusively large penalties for file sharing. The statute allows the plaintiff to “elect” (language used in the current suit) to take statutory damages between $750 and $30,000 per infringement, even if it cannot be proved that the defendant willfully committed the offense–meaning that if it were simply their liability, if it happened over their connection even without their knowledge, they could be still be forced to pay. I presume that this covers not having a protected WiFi network and a neighbor downloads the movie over stolen bandwidth.

If the file sharing is found to be willful, the penalty jumps to $150,000.

For file-sharing a single movie file. Yeah, that’s “justice.” The law allowing this is obscene and must be rewritten.

Let’s call this out for what it is: extortion. Legal or not, it’s is nothing less than extortion, a grab for cash by unethical means. Today, a film’s profits are measure in terms of domestic and international box office, as well as DVD rentals and sales. How long before proceeds from nuisance lawsuits are added as an element in determining the total earnings of a film?

There are long lines around Tokyo for the iPad. Very long lines.

Sachi told me that she got tired of so many iPad news stories on TV. My students seemed particularly interested in the iPad today, a few demanding a demo, and some stating a distinct desire to get one sometime soon.

So, so far, so good.

The WSJ has what is to me a rather insipid article on iPad finger smudges:

The smudging has turned some of the giddiness of iPad ownership to disappointment. Matthew Rudnick, a hotel supervisor in San Mateo, Calif., looked forward to getting an iPad so much that he reserved one ahead of time. Now, however, “every time you touch it, it just leaves greasy smudges all over,” says the 26 year old. “It’s very disappointing because I’m showing it off to co-workers, to my friends and family, and the first thing they see is grease.”

It’s a touch-screen device with a glossy screen. What do you expect? Magic? Fingers have finger grease. Deal with it. But then the article gets absurd and starts catering to hypochondria:

Others worry about the device becoming a bacterial breeding ground. Stephen Hood stood in line outside an Apple store the first weekend the iPad went on sale, but by the time the 35-year-old resident of Menlo Park, Calif., got to try the display device, so many people had touched it that the screen was smeared by fingerprints and smudges.

“I couldn’t read the screen because the way the light was hitting it, all I could see were finger smears,” says the software developer. Mr. Hood later tweeted, “demoed an iPad at the Apple store. Loved it but from the amount of finger grease covering it I expect I’ve just contracted H1N1.”

OK, dude, I get that you’re kidding, but seriously, do you realize that the only difference between an iPad screen and every single computer keyboard you have ever touched is that you can see the finger grease on one and not so much on the other? I hope this guy never figures out what’s on escalator handrails or men’s room door handles. But maybe the guy is just exaggerating–seriously, I have seen my iPad screen pretty badly smudged, but never to a point where the smudges are visible when the screen is lit. Mostly I notice smudges when I turn it off.

But then the WSJ flies off into idiocy with an “expert” assessment of the germ threat:

Chuck Gerba, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona who is studying bacteria on touchscreens, says it’s possible for people to contract a disease from sharing a device like an iPad. Personal touchscreen devices aren’t as bad as the self-checkout screens in grocery stores, but he knows of rare cases where people contracted a serious skin disease called Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, from sharing a cell phone with bacteria on it.

“The best friend your germ has ever had is your fingers,” says Mr. Gerba. MRSA makes skin red and swollen and can even cause fever and skin abscesses.

Oy. Do I even need to get into how stupid including that in this story is? If you can catch MRSA from an iPad, you can catch it from any door handle. The same finger grease is everywhere. If anything, the iPad is safer than keyboards or door handles because you will wipe off the iPad screen, whereas you will not wipe off keyboards or door handles you use.

But no, let’s all panic now. Or perhaps you can (a) avoid handing your iPad to other people (and don’t let them near your urine jar collection), and/or (b) stop being such a blazing drama queen. At least the article does mention the obvious:

Ms. Sobhany, the disc jockey, says she has become an expert at quickly wiping down one iPad while the other handles the music-playing. Her recommended technique is to breathe on the screen and wipe it with a microfiber cloth.

Bingo. Though breathing on it first is not necessary. A tiny, cheap piece of cloth in your pocket, three seconds of wiping off a few times a day. What a horrible fate. And maybe stop throwing your iPad into a mosh pit.

The iPad may be getting an official release in Japan today, but it has been available for some time–for a premium. I went to Akihabara yesterday and saw the iPad at several stores–usually priced at 77,000 yen ($845), I presume for the 16GB WiFi version, though it wasn’t specified. Ouch. I saw at least 5 or 6 of the things there, and now I suppose the shops will have to eat whatever premium they paid themselves for people to buy them and ship them to Japan (probably with customs charges added) on what stock they have left. Unless, of course, official supplies are even sparser here than in the U.S. and there are people who won’t be able to wait…

In the meantime, even more stores were carrying iPad goods–mostly cases. This was a typical display:

At Labi, they had a good selection of iPad screen protector films. At other stores, such as the one pictured above, only one film was available (the “LCD Protector” seen at lower right)–and it was an oversized sheet you had to cut to shape yourself. So I picked up what looked like a good screen film at Labi, took it home and got set to apply it–and the damn thing is blue. Not just a slight tint of blue, but blue. I held it over my screen and it made the colors a horrible hue. I have no idea what the hell they were thinking. The cover image on the product shows a clear film, no color, and there is no mention of color on the exterior of the product. Bizarre. I just hope I can return it at any Labi, and don’t have to make a special trip to Akihabara for it.

You’d think people would learn. But no. Here’s yet another article about how another new Apple product, already a hit elsewhere, will fail in Japan. After spending several paragraphs noting the iPhone’s success, the prognostication begins for the iPad, sounding ever so familiar:

However, Japan poses unique challenges that the cool thin slab of 21st Century computing may struggle to overcome.

With popular credit card and train ticket functions unavailable on the iPhone — not to mention connections to pet-feeding machines — many users also carry a Japanese phone made by the likes of overall leader Sharp or Toshiba.

This means they may not contemplate juggling a third, larger device on crammed subway trains, analysts say.

Again with the complete misunderstandings. First, the error of confusing frivolous bells & whistles with ground-breaking hardware and software features. “Pet-feeding machines”? Really?

Second, the idea that people carry iPhones and other cell phones with special features. Not everybody is Steve Wozniak, guys. I have never heard of someone carrying two phones just to cover a wider variety of features like that. And if they did, what would that have to do at all with the iPad, which would be carried in a completely different place? It’s not like people will say, “Oh, my pockets are full, I don’t want to put an extra thing in my bag.”

Third, they appear not to realize what a boon the iPad is for the commute, nor how it will replace even bulkier items. People don’t mind carrying things the size and weight of the iPad on the train–many would (and some do) use laptops, except they are too unwieldily for that venue. The iPad is thinner and lighter than many comic books or magazines that people carry, for crying out loud, and will provide so much more to occupy people’s time. The form is easy to carry and fine for sitting or standing in confined spaces, yet allows for reading, browsing, working, or enjoying music, video, or games, and then some.

Once again, people are just completely missing the whole point, and spouting off about points they clearly know nothing about–all so they can revive the most treasured of all chestnuts, the old “[new Apple product] will probably fail in tech-jaded Japan” canard.

So far, I have seen nothing but vividly enthusiastic interest from people seeing the iPad, even more so than there was before the iPhone came out.