That’s what John McCain told a reporter for Newsweek Magazine:

Many of the GOP’s most faithful, the kind who vote in primaries despite 115-degree heat, tired long ago of McCain the Maverick, the man who had crossed the aisle to work with Democrats on issues like immigration reform, global warming, and restricting campaign contributions. “Maverick” is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. “I never considered myself a maverick,” he told me. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.” Yet here was Palin, urging her fans four times in 15 minutes to send McCain the Maverick back to Washington.

It’s hard to tell if McCain is lying or not here. In his 2008 campaign, he flip-flopped and told his base what they wanted to hear so often, you could not tell what he really believed and what was simply the party line he had resigned himself to follow, do or die. One thing for certain, he did not shy away from the “Maverick” handle then–it was, in fact, the primary persona that he ran on.

To hear him now claim that he never considered himself a maverick is not surprising, it’s just a question of whether he let his guard down and told the truth, or if he simply flip-flopped yet again. Maybe he believed himself both times when he said both things. Hard to say.

The only thing that is clear is that the man is essentially made up of a tissue of lies, spoken solely to get himself elected.

Apple is not waiting: they will give everyone a sneak peek at the iPhone / iPad OS 4.0 this coming Thursday, just 3 days away.

This is earlier than most people expected; I think many expected that Apple would wait until the WWDC in June, and then release the OS with the next iteration of the iPhone, which usually comes around August. For Apple to suddenly announce this out of the blue could be related to the iPad, but might also signal an early release of the next version of the iPhone. And what most people expect to be the major feature of the OS is multitasking.

Should be interesting.

In a development one can be assured Republicans will try to find a way to attribute to the Bush administration, the U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the biggest job gain in three years, since the Bush recession began. Analysts expected 190,000 jobs gained, but that figure is likely to be realized with adjustments over the next two months. Unemployment remains at 9.7%, but is below double-digits; while the job market remains tough, we are still in an upward trend and are now in positive territory. Compare this to January 2009, when Bush left office and 741,000 other Americans lost their jobs at the same time.

Obama’s stimulus was put into play, and immediately Bush’s plummet was reversed. Aside from Obama’s election in general, no other major factors aside from the stimulus seem to be able to explain the upswing in job creation. This month’s job report puts us comfortably on the plus side, and hopefully that trend will continue along the lines it has over the past year.

Compare this to when Bush was handed a shaky yet overall positive job market in 2001; he passed his massive tax-cuts-for-the-rich and immediately send jobs down the toilet–and did not see this kind of recovery until October in his third year in office. Bush, on the other hand, handed Obama the worst recession in recent history, the worst since the great depression, and we were hemorrhaging jobs–and Obama is back in positive jobs territory after just 14 months.

Any way the conservatives want to spin this, even despite the still-distressed economy, it cannot be denied that the Obama recovery is remarkable, perhaps even startling. If the current trend continues, we could be seeing aggressive job gains by summer (in the 400,000 ~ 500,000 range), in time to impress voters before the midterms. That would allow Obama and the Democrats to tout their two major victories–the Stimulus and Health Care Reform–in a light that makes clear the long-term benefits of both. And they can point to undeniable massive Republican obstructionism, and state truthfully that the Republicans tried to stop the recovery. Remember, they said it aloud: they wanted Obama to fail. Just run on the record: Republicans were driving us into a recession, and then tried hard as hell to stop the legislation that we can now see is bolstering the economy.

Republicans will no doubt bring up the deficit in criticism of this, but Obama and the Dems can correctly point out–aside from the fact that most of the debt is Republican-generated–that in order to drive down the debt, you must first have a strong economy. We had to spend before we could do anything else; failing to do so would have been courting economic collapse. Had Republicans gained power and there had been no stimulus–or worse, more massive tax cuts for the rich like Bush used in 2001 to drive job losses further–we would have been in a hell of a mess by now, maybe even in a depression.

The Dems just have to show the Bush trend and where it was leading, and contrast it with the Obama trend. This is the magic chart that could win the midterms:

Look at that red trend line and imagine where we would have gone had McCain won, or worse, the Republicans had also controlled Congress. One shudders at the thought.

The difference could not be more stark. Republicans were driving us straight into the toilet; a depression was imminent. Obama and the Dems intercepted that long-bomb pass Bush threw straight to the depths of hell, and are now rocketing out of the chasm Bush was dragging us into, a recovery clearly foreseeable. (It won’t be so easy to recover from the staggering debt Bush drove us into, but aside from that….) Back this up with strong job gains into the summer, with people feeling the recovery in their guts, and the point will be driven home.

This is not one of those bogus charts where a regular trend line to the present is “predicted” to take ridiculous turns in the future, with “our” party’s line going straight up and “their” party’s line going way down. These are actual figures showing definite trend lines based on hard fact.

That chart should be made into a theme for the next seven months, it should be iconic for these elections. Show it every chance you get. Put it up on walls, show it on broadcasts, make it into backdrops for rallies and speeches. Convert it into a simpler graphic:

Slap that on every car bumper and home and store window in sight. Drive the point home.

An advertisement for a girls’ private junior/senior high school seen at Komagome Station, Tokyo:

Seriously, can you get much creepier than that?

TIME Magazine is offering their periodical on the iPad for the low, low price of just $4.99 an issue! What a deal!

I am, of course, being ironic. Often sold at newsstands for $2.95 (though the cover price is $4.95), Time is selling first-year print subscriptions for $20 (not counting the free issues up front). In contrast, the iPad version will cost roughly $260 for the same one year. They’re not even trying to lure people in with a first-year, first-month, or even first-issue discount.

I’m guessing that they don’t think much of the discriminating skills of their readership. Seeing the prices many app makers are charging, I get even more an impression of opening-day greed similar to what we saw on the iPhone; many seem to think that just because the iPad is a hit, people will spend gobs of money on stuff they can get cheaper or free elsewhere. It’s pretty astonishing, when you think about it–charging 13 times more for the iPad edition than for a mailed subscription? Wow. Even with added content and nice moving doodads, that’s still astonishing. Two years of Time on the iPad would cost more than the iPad itself. People who are buying the iPad may be willing to spend more than they would on a netbook, but it is still pretty solidly in the discount category of computing devices–iPad owners will not be paying premium prices for much.

By the time I get my iPad here in Japan, I expect prices will already be dropping on a lot of stuff.

A urologist in Florida has posted a sign on his office clinic door:

If you voted for Obama, seek urologic care elsewhere.

---

Changes to your healthcare begin right now. Not in four years.

Patients in his inner office become exposed to more right-wing propaganda, including a photocopied list created by the GOP attacking the recently-passed health care reform. The doctor will almost certainly be investigated by licensing authorities, and though he may become a hero in the right-wing community, he’s likely to get into at least a little trouble with those in his profession. Many certainly believe that he crossed a very significant line that should never be crossed.

Truthfully, if I were going to his office for care, I would be relieved. Relieved to know that I had been tipped off that someone I would have trusted my health to is an idiot. Without the sign, I would have been treated by someone who does not allow his reason to triumph over what he hears on Fox News. No way I want someone like that providing me health care. A conservative doctor I would have no problem with–this is not about the doctor’s politics. Instead, it’s about his intelligence and his ethics.

Interesting new data out: Windows 7 is not exactly selling like hotcakes. Sure, it’s selling much better than Vista, which only gained 1% market share per month, but it’s still not selling much faster than that. As the chart below indicates, it seems that 7 moved from 2% penetration at retail launch (when many were using the free beta) to 10% after 5 months–a rate of 1.6% per month. Not exactly flying off the shelves, especially considering that most of the adoption is likely from new PC sales rather than from upgrades.

This recently came to my attention when I asked students in my computer classes which OS they used; of the Windows users, only a few had Windows 7, only a few more had Vista–the majority were using XP. Ironically, one of the Windows 7 users was someone who had just bought a Mac (and was using 7 on Parallels–he just switched from XP on a PC).

To put this into perspective, in order to reach Windows XP’s current 65% market share, Windows 7 will require roughly 40.6 months–or almost three and a half years. Mac OS adoption occurs much faster; it took Leopard and Snow Leopard just 27 months to reach 81% share of Mac OS users.

I’ve been using Windows 7 recently, and to me, it’s a pretty darn good OS. I agree with the general consensus, that 7 is what Vista should have been. Granted, 7 rips off the Mac OS far more than I had previously suspected–perhaps why I like it more–but nevertheless, I see no independent reason to use XP anymore, and if my school’s computers weren’t still XP-bound, requiring me to teach that OS, I would switch over completely.

Which makes me wonder: why hasn’t 7 taken off? It’s certainly good enough, stable enough. OK, so it’s not nearly as cheap as upgrading to Snow Leopard, but upgrade prices aren’t that bad. So why the lukewarm adoption rate? The only thing I can figure is that people are now so used to Vista mindset–that any post-XP Windows version is crap–that they don’t even consider moving to 7. If true, that’s pretty damaging to Microsoft, especially with the Halo effect for Apple becoming stronger and stronger. The iPad looks like it may move iPhone levels of success into the computer arena. If tons of people get iPads, they will probably be even more likely to make their next computer purchase a Mac than was true with the iPhone or iPod. The fact that Microsoft is now more or less refusing to develop a version of Office for the iPad is not going to help them much, what with the $30 iWork office suite being available on what is bound to be a big hit in the mobile computing space.

Microsoft is far from crumbling into dust, but these recent numbers do seem to signify some calcification; with Apple springing around with innovation after innovation, and Microsoft’s new stuff being either slow to catch on (Windows 7), a year away (Windows Phone 7), or still mired in the concept stage (the Courier tablet), it certainly does not look too good.

Ihnatko, Mossberg, and Pogue, among others, have their advance reviews of the iPad out. The general consensus: Apple has a winner. Mossberg, Ihnatko, and a few others just love it. Pogue was the least enthusiastic, dividing his review into two: one for techies (in which he semi-panned it), and one for “everyone else” (in which he gave it a middling-to-good review).

Mossberg, however, was impressed:

I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop.

Edward Baig at USA Today was even more positive:

The first iPad is a winner. It stacks up as a formidable electronic-reader rival for Amazon’s Kindle. It gives portable game machines from Nintendo and Sony a run for their money. At the very least, the iPad will likely drum up mass-market interest in tablet computing in ways that longtime tablet visionary and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates could only dream of. …

Apple has pretty much nailed it with this first iPad, though there’s certainly room for improvement. Nearly three years after making a splash with the iPhone, Apple has delivered another impressive product that largely lives up to the hype.

Andy Ihnatko, however, was nuts about it:

iPad is pure innovation – one of best computers ever

No company can generate as much hype around a product launch as Apple. But that’s perfectly OK because no company is also nearly as successful at producing a new product that can justify almost any level of excitement that precedes it.

They don’t do it with every product launch, but bloody hell: they’ve done it with the iPad.

Ihnatko makes a good point concerning those who see the iPad as lacking because it doesn’t match netbook specs point for point:

… I’m here to tell you that in fact, we haven’t seen tablets before. And maybe the iPad is the only true tablet we’ll get in 2010. The hardware we’ve seen in years past, (and what we’re likely to see in these Android devices) are laptop computers with the keyboard section broken off. They’re not fundamentally touch-based computers, they’re the products of old thinking. When Apple looks at a fingertip, they see a warm, living thing that can feel. They don’t see a poor substitute for a mouse.

That’s the problem facing all of these other tablets. They’ve never stopped and looked at this device as a brand-new thing, and thrown out all of the design elements that they’ve only included out of force of habit. These other tablets have a feature list a mile long… That’s easy. The challenge they all seem to be avoiding is to restrict the device to features that are truly relevant to tablet computing. Otherwise, these added hardware and software features only create greater instability and user confusion, and turn this tablet into something that you’d never, ever use if you had any alternative.

If you doubt the truth of that, then ask why tablets produced up until now–and there have been many, over quite a few years–have never sold worth a damn.

One surprise: Apple, like most electronic makers, was inaccurate about the battery lifetime. Unlike most makers–including Apple itself most times–their claim for battery life was lower then the tests showed. Apple advertises 10 hours of video playback, but the reviewers got about 12 hours–with WiFi and email going on in the background.

From Pogue’s review and what I have heard others saying, I would make a general prediction: if you (a) know what level-2 cache is, (b) have ever installed a hard disk drive on your own, or (c) balanced your finances last month and decided you had to give up something you really didn’t want to, then the chance you’ll like or buy an iPad is going to be somewhat lower. Just a rule of thumb, not an absolute–I’ve done two of the three and I’m absolutely going to buy one–but people who like to control their tech and/or are really pinching pennies will be more likely to pass on the iPad, especially at first. Except developers, of course.

Me, I’m still waiting to hear whether or not the iPad can directly, wirelessly connect to your desktop or laptop and read from or write to their disks without having to sync through iTunes or physically connect. That will make a huge difference for me. Technically, there should be no reason whatsoever for the iPad to lack this feature, but it’s exactly the kind of thing Apple would intentionally leave out (probably because adding it in would weaken the necessity of buying a model with more internal memory). We just got an OS update (10.6.3) a few days ago–coincidence, or was it timed to allow for iPad interaction?

Anyone who finds out about that networking detail, please let me know–it’ll be a factor in my own purchase.

The Washington Post has an interesting article on the alarming nature of Glenn Beck–something the Post claims is even dividing those within Fox. The article, however, like most mainstream reports on Fox News, is far too timid:

By calling President Obama a racist and branding progressivism a “cancer,” Beck has achieved a lightning-rod status that is unusual even for the network owned by Rupert Murdoch. And that, in turn, has complicated the channel’s efforts to neutralize White House criticism that Fox is not really a news organization.

Really? Is the idea of Fox News being an actual “news” organization even really a question anymore? I think it’s pretty damned clear that Fox jumped the shark quite some time ago. That anyone still makes this a question is rather indicative of how weak-kneed analysts tend to be about challenging Fox’s status. A good example of this from the article:

Television analyst Andrew Tyndall calls Beck an “activist” and “comedian” whose incendiary style has created “a real crossroads for Fox News.”

“They’re right on the cusp of losing their image as a news organization,” he declares. “Do they want to be the go-to place for conservative populist ideas on television, or do they want to be a news organization? Ailes has done a good job of doing both.”

“A good job of being a news organization”? “Right on the cusp”? Please. Well, maybe if you look at it from the perspective of a right-winger who agrees with so much of the commentary that he sees “Obama is a communist” as news rather than opinion, perhaps. Maybe that’s what they’re referring to–that even the politically biased cheerleaders of Fox are beginning to think the network is going too far. And when the cheerleaders stop the chant and start saying, “hey, too far, man,” you know that’s too far. It’s as if Fox is convinced of its own invincibility and has just left a brick on the accelerator pedal while they climbed atop the media car with a bottle of Tequila in their hand, shouting like a banshee without any pants.

The thing that really spurred the questioning was Beck’s call for listeners to start leaving any church that advocated “social justice,” which he called “code words” for communism and Nazism. Even right-wingers started to blanch at that one. It may have been Beck’s “I’m more popular than Jesus” moment, and certainly allowed for a more mainstream boycott of Beck and his show. Already more than 200 advertisers have joined the boycott, including Apple, which, I am proud to say, has abandoned the Fox News network altogether–not an uncontroversial move considering Fox’s market share. But then, Apple is more popular than Fox.

When you see these apps in motion–mind you, these are just some of the simplest apps you’ll find–you begin to get an idea why the iPad will be very different than computing experiences you’ve had before. There’s a big difference between clicking on cards in Solitaire and moving them around with your fingers, for example. And note the drawing app, and how clumsy the demo is–because the user is on the emulator and is using a mouse. With your fingers, the drawing will be a lot more natural. Also note the OS features, including the use of cover flow and side-to-side pans–not to mention simply very nice layout & design features.

A lot of examples we’re seeing show that one or two basic levels or features come “unlocked,” allowing for free demos to be downloaded so you can get an idea of what the app is like before plunking down whatever the app will cost you to unlock the rest.

Interestingly, the developers seem to be aiming for higher price points; a lot of apps appear to be at the $9.99 price point set by Apple’s iWork apps, without giving that level of actual productivity, as if the developers want to push the envelope and see how much people will pay. I have a feeling that we’ll see a repeat of what we saw with the iPhone–a lot of pricier apps at first which will, in time, get marked down as competition and customer balking force them to.

Side note: Dan Lyons (“Fake Steve Jobs”) has written an article on the iPad for Newsweek. Despite his initial negative reaction after (the real) Jobs’ introduction, his mind changed after actually using one and later consideration of what the product will bring, despite all misgivings about the closed system.

Some people fear the idea of Apple exercising editorial control over content which will appear on their iPad:

That’s why the issue of Apple picking and choosing what we can and can’t read is so disturbing. If they’re forcing magazines to edit their contents in order to get distribution, then whatever Apple’s then-current (and thus far completely arbitrary) rules would determine what you get to read.

I believe that this is exactly what editors and publishers have done on a daily basis ever since the invention of publishing. Deciding what content should or should not appear in branded media is the norm, not a scary new age of oppression. If you want to read something else, then go read something else. Apple will not control all media in the world, won’t stop you from reading whatever the hell you like. Nor, as the writers of the scare piece quoted above suggest, will Apple start forcing content providers to follow any particular “political, religious, or ideological slant” just because they won’t allow porn or boobie apps on the iPhone. To go from Apple not approving some fart apps to the idea that Apple might one day start telling Time Magazine what political slant they should take, or what religious views the Christian Science Monitor is allowed to print, is the slippery slope at its worst. Nor can they make the argument that Apple is different because it is a distributor of other media publishers; Amazon does not allow certain content to be sold on their store, bookstores similarly choose what books appear on their shelves, and so on. Nothing new here.

Fact is, outside of the web, all book, magazine, newspaper, radio, television, and motion picture content is already edited by a small group of people who decide what will or will not be published, and many already impose a “political, religious, or ideological slant”–always have, always will. And much of what is on the web is similarly controlled. (Come to think of it, the writers of that very article were working under the exact same level of editorial control, which could explode into terrifying abuse at any moment!) Look at Fox News; you think they don’t control the political slant on their media outlet? The authors of this piece are going for the shock value of a nonsensical potential state of affairs which (a) we have no reason to expect will happen on Apple media and (b) happens most everywhere else already.

Sheesh.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor is pissed off at Democrats. Why? Because they are complaining about a wave of threats and acts of violence in the wake of the health care reform bill passing. The bastards. How dare the Democrats make public the fact that they are being terrorized. If right-wingers are being unduly violent and bullying, Democrats should just man up and take it quietly. Mentioning them at all is equivalent to using them as a “political weapon,” a phrase Cantor repeatedly used.

Cantor demonstrated this by mentioning a recent “threat” made against him:

Just recently I have been directly threatened. A bullet was shot through the window of my campaign office in Richmond this week, and I’ve received threatening e-mails. But I will not release them, because I believe such actions will only encourage more to be sent.

Wow. OK, a bullet was fired at his office. That’s equal to what the Democrats have suffered, so of course if he’s not using the fact that liberal extremists are firing weapons at his premises, then Democrats should follow his sterling lead, right?

Except that the bullet wasn’t fired “at” his office. It was fired randomly up into the air from a distant location, and by chance happened to strike his window from the sky.

Oooohhh. Scary. Those damned liberals extremists, firing guns up into the air from distant parts of the city until the bullets randomly hit Republican campaign offices. Yes sirree, that’s about as direct a threat as you can get. And I am sure that the emails Cantor will not release are just as legitimate.

The threats that Democrats have been getting include direct, immediate threats to shoot and kill their children, coming from an extremist element that is well-armed and eminently willing to use those weapons, from whose number have come people like the one who killed the doctor in his church in Kansas, or the man who shot three police officers in Pittsburgh. The acts of violence were numerous and direct, the threats were far more volatile than the norm and had infinitely more potential to be carried out than what Cantor said he received himself.

For Cantor to use a random bullet falling and generic hate email and say that this is somehow in any way equivalent to what Democrats have been subjected to this week is reprehensible, and Cantor should be ashamed. Of course, he would not be.

This is not your usual level of background threats and violence, nor is it isolated, nor is it bound to decrease over time. It is escalating, and not a little because of the wildly hysterical rhetoric coming from people like Cantor himself.

It should also be noted that (a) Cantor, while “not condon[ing] violence,” did not condemn the threats or acts of violence either, and (b) he did condemn the Democrats for complaining and essentially blamed the Democrats for future acts of violence, saying that they were encouraging it. Which is BS, of course; making such things public will bring about public censure and harm the opposition’s cause, thus providing far more impetus to reduce the violent acts. But instead of trying to calm things down, Cantor instead only continued to use inflammatory rhetoric while at the same time sending the message to the instigators of the violence that what they are doing is just business-as-usual, and that the Democrats actually deserved it. In short, Cantor was the one “fanning the flames.”

That said, Cantor should take more care in choosing his examples; I have noted that Republican politicians often do this, using bogus illustrations to make their points. This reminds me of the time Dan Quayle was on the campaign trail in 1992, and the Bush administration was criticized for the poor job market–not just the lack of jobs, but also the decreasing quality of available jobs. He actually stopped his motorcade and pulled the media caravan over so he could show them a “help wanted” sign that he had spotted from his limo. The sign, he said, showed that there were in fact jobs out there to be had, and the economy was looking up. When reporters asked the establishment–a Burger King franchise–displaying the “Now Hiring” sign, they found that the job in question was a part-time, minimum wage job.

I have commented before on how over-the-top right-wing rhetoric can lead to violence, and how conservative intimidation tactics of publishing the addresses of “targets” of “criticism” are an incitation to vandalism or worse, and this week we have seen first-hand evidence of this. Teabaggers, who have insisted on their right to “visit” the open halls of Congress and political offices everywhere as a pretext for harassment, and who vilify anyone who even suggests they not be allowed their right to do so, have shown exactly how much they abuse this freedom as a thuggish means of terrorizing their political opponents. Offices of Democratic legislators across the country have been vandalized–windows broken, doors smashed, and the traditional trademark of home-grown violent persecution, the cowardly anonymous letter tied to a brick hurled through shattered glass.

This is what the right-wing opposition has proven itself to be: goons bent on tactics of bullying and terror. If they can’t win an election, then lie and cheat and call the other side vile epithets; if they can’t win a vote, then vandalize and intimidate.

But it doesn’t stop there. Showing the worst of all wingnut stripes, Lynchburg, Virginia Tea Party organizer Mike Troxel posted the home address of Democratic congressman Tom Perriello, and slyly suggested that angry teabaggers should “drop by” the house. Any suggestion that this is outright incitement to violence that it so obviously is would be pooh-poohed by right-wingers, of course. But reality proved that Troxel was, in fact, instigating an act of violence: someone came by the address and cut the propane gas line, something that could have led to serious property damage and even injury or death of the family which lived inside. Even more frightening, Troxel had posted the wrong address–it was the home of the congressman’s brother.

This is what it has come down to: the home of a relative of a congressman vandalized, his family’s lives put in danger because some scumbag right-winger thought it’d be fun to terrorize the politician personally.

And that’s not the end of it. Several other Democrats have received death threats, not just to them, but to their children. One politician found that reform opponents published a photo of his children in a public advertisement, and another Democrat received a call from someone who claimed they would send “snipers” to “kill the children of the members who voted yes.”

It started with John McCain and Sarah Palin calling Obama a terrorist and stirring up crowds who started shouting out death threats against Obama. It continued with tea party activists swarming all over Democratic town hall meetings with the sole intent of disrupting and intimidating, shouting hysterically to silence anyone who disagreed with them. Then we had right-wingers showing up with guns and rifles outside of events Obama with signs advocating presidential assassination. We’ve had right-wing bloggers publishing home and school addresses of children who spoke publicly about how insurance programs helped their families, and right-wing activists and talking heads stirring up the nutjobs leading to assassinations of doctors. And now, nationwide violence and threats of violence against lawmakers who voted to give health care to Americans.

What is this, 1930’s Europe?

Well, we laid our claim on the apartment with UR yesterday, so if we find that we indeed like the place, and if we don’t find a better place in the next month, we will likely be moving in sometime in late April or early May. We still want to look at a few places we’ve singled out from UR’s rather considerable inventory, in particular a place 9 minutes’ walk from Kokuryo Station on the Keio Line. However, I must say that I am more and more enamored of the Hibarigaoka situation–the large apartment, the quiet surroundings, the nearby shopping, the station and line. But something better could pop up, you never know. For example, there’s a building at a station called Oizumi Gakuen on the Seibu Ikebukuro; it is virtually right next to the station, and the area looks nice. Alas, when we asked, no units of the size we’re looking for were available. However, should something come up, we will be interested. And something else could crop up elsewhere that we didn’t expect.

Right now, we’re just biding our time on Hibarigaoka. The current people move out in three days (we saw moving boxes stacked up in the windows when we were in the area), and then UR will reform the place until April 16. We will not be allowed to view the actual apartment interior until then. We could, in theory, see it that day, make our decision, and sign the contract all at once, and then we could move in no sooner than one week later. That would allow us to move before Golden Week, and before I start working again after the Spring Break.

The problem is leaving our current place. We must give 2 week’s notice, and once given, we can’t take it back. So if we were to move into the new place on April 23 or 24, we would need to give notice of leaving our current place around April 10–a week before we even see the new place. And if, for some unforeseen reason, we don’t like the new place, we would be stuck–forced to move out of our current place a week later, and would have no place to move into. So, instead, just to be 100% safe, we will hold off canceling our current lease until after we’ve seen the Hibarigaoka unit, and instead will move either during Golden Week (should we be able to get a moving company to take us then), or just after. Less than ideal, but not unworkable.

Just for fun, here are some photos from our trips to check out the apartment and the neighborhood. First, the stairs to the third floor: the first and second floors are 2-story “maisonettes,” so the stairs go straight up to the third floor:

Alternately, the elevator is in the next building over. See the little map below; the stairs start from the lower left side (where one comes in from the street); to take the elevator, you keep going to the next building, take the elevator up to the 3rd floor, then cross over that little circular building between.

Here’s the circular building, with the garden on top.

Doesn’t look like much now, but later in spring it should green up nicely. The bird feeder is in there, and it seems like a nice little spot to sit and rest outdoors in nice weather.

From there, you cross a small plexiglass-sided bridge to get to our unit.

Here’s a shot of the taller building to the south of the place we signed up for, from the bus stop across the street. Our place is just out of frame to the left.

The bus stop has a radio connection and a timer telling you how long before the bus gets there. I would presume that it is in contact with the bus and lets you know how far out it is (I saw the same system in Inagi), but as we watched, it went down to 0 minutes … then no bus … and then it went to 9 minutes … and then the bus came a minute or two later. So we’ll have to see about that. If it is just a slightly-off system and we get used to its quirks, it’ll be nice to know exactly when the next bus will be along.

Here’s a shot of the Daiso. It’s around a largish city block, and so maybe 4-5 minutes’ walk away. But it’s a very nice and very large supermarket, a sizable pharmacy, and a huge discount shop–effectively a 100-yen shop, but with items going up in price to 1000 yen.

One nice thing about this is that the Costco run will be easier for me. In Inagi, it was a dead-simple 20-minute run over wide, straight country roads (alas, speed trap-infested ones), but from Ikebukuro, I have to plow through most of Tokyo’s traffic to get to the closest Kawasaki branch. From Hibarigaoka, however, the Iruma Costco is close enough so that the drive may be cut down to 30-40 minutes. This coming weekend, I may ride out to Hibarigaoka to check out the neighborhood again, but then ride out to Iruma and time the ride. Alas, it’s even farther from the train station than is usual for a Costco, so train runs might not be an option.

It may sound like work, but for me, it’s always fun to check out new living areas.

Jeez. The Republican crybabies are out in full force. For the past year, Obama and the Democrats have given the GOP far, far, far more say in matter than the GOP ever gave Dems during the years Bush and the Republicans controlled Congress. But after using the filibuster as an ultimate cudgel an unprecedented number of times, after following a scorched-earth policy where they would rather destroy the legislative landscape rather than let it function well under Obama, after vehemently attacking Obama as a “socialist,” “communist,” “fascist,” and every other epithet imaginable… they say that after Health Care Reform passed, that NOW they are taking off the gloves.

These people are batshit insane.

John McCain:

“There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year,” McCain said during an interview Monday on an Arizona radio affiliate. “They have poisoned the well in what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.”

“No cooperation for the rest of the year”? As if they have been cooperating in any significant way up until now? Talk about your meaningless threats. Does this sound to anyone else like a five-year-old picking up the ball and taking it home so no one else can play? And they don’t even own the ball.

Mitt Romney:

America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation — rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics, and rising above raw partisanship, he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends. He promised better; we deserved better.

He calls his accomplishment “historic” — in this he is correct, although not for the reason he intends. Rather, it is an historic usurpation of the legislative process — he unleashed the nuclear option, enlisted not a single Republican vote in either chamber, bribed reluctant members of his own party, paid-off his union backers, scapegoated insurers, and justified his act with patently fraudulent accounting. What Barack Obama has ushered into the American political landscape is not good for our country; in the words of an ancient maxim, “what starts twisted, ends twisted.”

Boy. The vast hypocrisy of that statement is breathtaking. Ignore for the moment that Obama has, relative to GOP actions under Bush, bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans in attempts to be bipartisan while the Republicans have been excessively vicious in their extreme partisan zeal. Let’s instead begin by examining what Romney (and many other right-wingers) have been calling “the nuclear option.” That term was first used by Republicans (Trent Lott coined it) to describe the plan to scrap the filibuster as a Senate procedure because Democrats were using it to block the most extreme of Bush’s far-right judicial nominees. But when public reaction showed that people thought the term “nuclear option” sounded unattractive, Republicans accused Democrats of creating the term (a lie), and insisted it be called the “constitutional option.” Their claim was that it was undemocratic and unconstitutional to not allow an up-or-down vote where a 50%+ majority could decide on a bill–something they have monolithically blocked since they lost the majority in the Senate.

Now, however, Republicans are saying that Democrats are exercising the “nuclear option” because they used reconciliation to pass health care reform. So, somehow the “nuclear option” is now reconciliation and not scrapping the filibuster. Never mind that Republicans used reconciliation 10 to 14 times (depending on who you listen to) over the past 30 years, including non-budget issues like student aid and welfare reform. Democrats used it also, including passage of the two most deficit-reducing acts over that period, while at least three Republican uses were for their massive tax cuts for the wealthy which included the biggest deficit increases in recent memory.

Republicans claim that this is different because it’s not fundamentally a budget issue, though as I mentioned above they have used it that way before as well, for significant social legislation. They say it’s different because it’s an end-run around a filibuster, but Republicans have used it for controversial bills which did not have a super-majority and might have been blocked had they tried it the usual route.

Top it all off with the fact that the Republicans, who called filibusters undemocratic and unconstitutional and threatened to kill it with the real “nuclear option,” have been using that same procedure constantly over the past 3 years, more than ever before in all of American history.

Just when you though that the sheer hypocrisy of Republicans could not be outdone, here they come and break all-new records.

What’s wrong with this sentence? Aside from the typo in the compound verb in the ending dependent clause:

Mobile device manufacturer Palm has announced that it is putting its popular Pre and Pixi models on a production halt until it can sell of its current inventory.

I’d hate to see the sales figures for their unpopular models.

As is usual with a house-hunt, plans have changed a bit. Nothing final, but some developments. First, Sachi and I have switched preference from the first apartment I featured here a few days back. While it was a nice apartment, there were a few minor down points. While we were OK with the first floor, that was not a big plus for us. It was a touch on the small side for us, though it would have sufficed, to be sure. The toilet room was placed too centrally for my taste; I don’t like toilet rooms that feature sound from that room so prominently to the rest of the apartment. All these are minor points. A slightly bigger problem was location; at the far side of the development, it was pushing more than 15 minutes in walking distance to the train station. A potential problem was a construction site on the other side of the building. Plus points were the fact that it was brand-new, there was a Seiyu supermarket a few minutes away, and it was among park-like territory, with nice birds flying about.

Sachi and I can’t move house until at least mid-April, however, and putting a claim on the apartment would have necessitated that we move in earlier than that. So we waited for a week (risking the place being snapped up), and in that time, did a bit more looking around. One thing we found was another project in Hibarigaoka–same station area–but an older development, this one about ten years old. But we found that for just about ¥14,000 a month extra, we could upgrade from a 3LDK to a 4LDK–from 84 m² to 89 m².

The problem: we can’t even see the place until mid-April. The current tenants won’t move out for another 5 days or so, and UR won’t give us a peek until the reforming is done on April 16th. We’d love to tell them it’s OK, we won’t be scared by a little mold on the walls–but they were sticklers about it. So all we have to go on is the floor plan and a look at the unit from the outside. Here’s the floor plan:

The “Poza Room” is where Sachi does her aromatherapy / reflexology stuff. Sachi and I would each have a room to ourselves to use as office / den / workrooms. Sachi might use the feature of opening up the rooms between her work room and the “Poza Room.” (I might use the door space for shelves.)

Here’s a view from above:

The new place in Hibarigaoka has some nice pluses. It’s on the top floor of the building; admittedly, it’s a three-story building, but noise from above tends to be the most notable, so having no one above is nice. It’s big, with a significantly sized living-dining room combo and a kitchen with an open counter to the dining room, and four rooms aside from that. The three smaller rooms are together and actually can be semi-combined by opening sliding doors. The hallway space is mostly adjunct to the other rooms, opening things up more. The kitchen opens to both sides, as does the bath, accessible directly from the master bedroom. There’s a small park on one side, the rest of the development on the other. There’s even an elevated nature area right outside, complete with bird feeder, which I think I could load and attract some nice birds with.

The down sides include the age of the building–at ten years, it’s not new. There’s a lot of green–including on top of the building–though as you can see above, it mostly turns brown and bare in the winter. The park outside is nice, but it was filled with kids at the time we were there, a bit of a noise potential. And the 14-story buildings are right in the southern-facing view; not only does a third-story apartment lack a good view, it is easily blocked.

However, the sun mostly stays above the buildings to the south, and strategically-placed trees help with the general effect. Moreover, the local amenities are not to be sneezed at: it’s on Yato Blvd., a good north-south road leading straight to Hibarigaoka and Tanashi Stations; there’s a bus station right out front; there’s a 24-hour supermarket right across the street, and on the far side of that block, a large combination supermarket / pharmacy / Daiso (discount store) open till almost 11pm.

The distance from the station is roughly equivalent to the place from last week–at 12 minutes walking (I timed it), it’s at least a few minutes closer, and along the main road too.

In the development in question, we were able to see a room–but only one that was a bit small for us. It was, however, on the 13th of 14 floors. The view was magnificent–north of Tokyo laid out behind you as you come in the front door, and from the balcony, all of south Tokyo laid out–from the skyscrapers of Shinjuku on the left, to Mt. Fuji on the right. Fuji was even in view when we visited:

But then we thought back on the two and a half years we’ve spent in Ikebukuro: despite having a great view, we almost never actually look at it. We do, however, use the floor space in our apartment on a regular basis. So as nice as the view may be, floor space trumps it.

In the room we saw, though, we could get an idea of how ten years looks on the building, and what the fittings are like. Similar to many UR housing developments, the materials are pretty basic and relatively unattractive. Still, it’ll do.

So, will we go with the new place? Probably what we’ll do is put our claim on it. Since it is just now opening up, it gives us more time to look for another place. UR allows you to place a claim on a room, but if it’s open, you must make a final decision within a week. However, since this place won’t be open for viewing until mid-April, we get to keep our hold without a commitment until then, allowing us to spend the next month looking at possible alternatives, seeing if anything else opens up.

So, that’s probably what we’ll do–pass on the place I blogged about last week, and sign up for this other place tomorrow–then take our time looking at still more places. Whee!

Remember how the iPhone originally didn’t have copy and paste? And remember how critics, in particular Windows supporters making fun of the “Apple Fanbois,” put down the iPhone for not having copy and paste?

Guess what the Windows Phone 7 OS won’t have?

Some people are not happy. And this is not coming from somebody who was OK with the feature missing from the iPhone; I commented on the iPhone’s lack before (2008: “[a] negative … makes no sense,” 2009: “This is a biggie … they needed this”).

Microsoft’s explanation of why they’re not including it: people don’t use copy and paste. Yeah, I thought that was an exaggeration myself. But Gizmodo has the goods, including a recording of a Microsoft guy telling them that:

Microsoft says leaving clipboard operations out was a conscious design decision based on user research showing that people don’t actually use copy and paste very often, and that instead 7 Series features a systemwide data detection service which recognizes things [l]ike phone numbers and addresses so you can take action on them. Third-party apps can hook into this service, so that an email address can be routed to the email client of your choice, but there’s no copy and paste functionality. We specifically asked about Office and OneNote, and we were told that Microsoft’s research shows that people mostly want to view and comment on documents, not move things around. We also specifically asked if copy and paste was coming later and were told no, although we’d guess that it’s at least being worked on for a future version.

Wow. Did Apple ever say anything that stupid? I don’t recall anything like that–I believe Apple just didn’t say anything either way in their infuriating, cat-like take-it-or-leave-it attitude. But telling people they don’t use it is as arrogant as it is wrong: the point is not that people don’t use it every day, it’s that when they do use it, it is a huge convenience and saves a lot of trouble. Instead, Microsoft says that it’s sufficient that the phone smart-detects phone numbers and addresses and allows actions to be taken on those–something the iPhone

Oh yeah, and no multitasking for third-party apps, either. I think a few Windows fanboys have had choice words for the iPhone in regards to that as well.

Update: Microsoft, no doubt in response to the reactions everyone has been giving, is now saying that they “will continue to improve our feature set over time based on what we hear,” leaving the door open for copy-and-paste to be added. Interesting how the official line before the public reaction was that they simply were not going to have the feature. How did this really not occur to them in the planning stage? Did they completely miss the two-year firestorm of criticism over the iPhone’s similar lack?

How is it that no one doing PR against piracy can open their mouths without sounding like complete idiots? Agnete Haaland, the president of the International Actors’ Federation, has the solution to the piracy scourge:

“We should change the word piracy,” she told reporters at the unveiling of the report on Wednesday.

“To me, piracy is something adventurous, it makes you think about Johnny Depp. We all want to be a bit like Johnny Depp. But we’re talking about a criminal act. We’re talking about making it impossible to make a living from what you do,” she said.

And no, that’s not from The Onion. I did not make that up. Piracy, according to Agnete, is making it impossible for actors to “make a living.”

It’s not the greed of giant megacorps that make $2.64 billion from a movie like Avatar, or, as the same article points out, rakes in nearly $2 trillion every year. It can’t be that the huge parasitic media corporations are robbing the performers blind and making life tough for the rank and file. No, because $2 trillion can only go so far. No, it’s the pirates who are sucking up as much as 1.16% of that total (again according to that same article, and that’s probably an over-estimate) who are the real problem. If only the megacorps could recoup that 1.16%, then it would all go to the starving artists, who would reap the full rewards of their efforts and could finally make a decent living. Yeah. I believe that. That makes sense.

And what’s the biggest part of that problem? That they’re called “pirates.” Normally, these people would be leading responsible lives, paying $40 for that second visit to the multiplex instead of downloading the film online–but the urge to visit thepiratebay.org and download a torrent so they can feel just like Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean” is just too damn strong.

And it’s not just the swashbuckling image of clicking a web link, it’s that label, “piracy.” Oooooohhhh. That’s what sucks people into these lives of reprehensible crime–they can’t resist the cool name.

Says “Agnete Haaland.”

IE9 is now being tested, the third big update for Microsoft’s browser in the past couple years. Unfortunately, it’s as much a joke as the others. On the test drive page itself, it shows an Acid3 test–and scores a dismal 55%. While it is an improvement over the laughable 20% score IE8 coughs up, it’s still a joke. Four years working furiously on this app, and Microsoft can’t even pass a web standards test better than 55%? Chrome and Safari score 100%, Opera 99%, and Firefox 93% on my computer. Is Microsoft simply incompetent, or do they truly want to break standards?

As most web designers would agree, IE makes designing web sites harder than it should be. It’d be great if (a) more people knew what a piece of junk it is, and (b) the whole world would require Microsoft to give users the browser lineup that Europe requires. It’d be great if Apple did the same thing, BTW.