Sully didn’t look at this story closely enough. He initially reported on an article outlining how a father accused a school of discrimination when they sent the child home and made him undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Christ on the crucifix, commenting that the outrage was “understandable.” I expect that kind of shallow knee-jerk reaction from less thoughtful types.

The fact is, the story was not was the story seemed to be. The child did not draw Jesus on a crucifix, he drew himself dead on the cross; the teacher was concerned that this might be a cry for help. Instead of being a suggestion that Christianity is a sign of insanity, it was a teacher rightly concerned for the well-being of a child who drew a heavily loaded image that could suggest suicidal or other troubling psychological issues, referring that child to a counselor to make sure they were all right.

What really makes the public ruckus surrounding this case clear is the following:

“It hurts me that they did this to my kid,” Chester Johnson, the boy’s father, told the Globe. “They can’t mess with our religion; they owe us a small lump sum for this.”

At which point the motivation for the father splattering this in the media becomes apparent.

Well, it finally happened. I bought a DVD the other day–bought and paid for–and what’s the first thing that pops up when I play the DVD? A commercial accusing me of stealing movies. Add that to the commercials being shown to people who just shelled out $40 for a pair of tickets in Japanese theaters accusing them of stealing. It’s bad enough that we’re forced to watch commercials for a fully-paid-for version of entertainment. To make them pay and sit through commercials and accuse them of stealing is pushing it way too far.

Do the film studios not understand how truly insulting that is?

Our favorite free-energy company is back, just as certain as ever that they have free energy on their hands. If people were skeptical before, they are doubly skeptical now, considering that Steorn promised a demo of their free-energy device two and a half years ago, but failed to deliver, citing “technical difficulties. This time, they’re back with more promises, more videos, and another demonstration.

If there was ever a case of ”I’ll believe it when I see it,“ this is it.

I went with my sister, nephew, and some friends to the Star Trek Exhibit at The Tech Museum in San Jose (review). It appears that this is an exhibit that has been making the rounds, as it has been in at least a few other cities before, such as Detroit and San Diego.

Before we left, I was preparing to take my camera, when it struck me that they might not allow photography. I checked out the web site, and, sure enough, they didn’t. When I added that together with the fact that they had a complete bridge set from the 1966 show, it became pretty clear that either one of two things were true: either Paramount had some copyright restrictions in play, or they were making a huge amount of money by photographing people on the set and selling the photos. I bet on the latter, and I was spot on: they were charging $28 for a pair of photos of you in the captain’s chair (add $5 for a transporter photo). This in addition to the $15 admission and the $5 simulator ride. Be prepared to spend at least $58 per person if no one can resist the full photo set.

The exhibit was not really bad, but it wasn’t fantastic, either. The set recreation was OK, but wasn’t fantastic, or wholly true to the real thing. It was smaller, for one thing. You could not, for example, walk around the captain’s chair from behind, something they did all the time in the show. Mr. Spock’s station, aside from being in the wrong place relative to the captain’s chair, didn’t have the blue-light scanner thingie he used to look into all the time (they had one at Mr. Scott’s station instead, which was from a third-season version of the set). And the main viewscreen, aside from lacking the blue-light fringe, didn’t have the trademark lights at the bottom which blinked from the center outwards. Heresy.

After the bridge set, you walk through a TNG corridor past a recreation of Picard’s Ready Room (no entrance), a transporter room (another for-cash photo opp), a recreation of the Guardian of Forever set (no photos of you jumping through, wasted opportunity), a display of models and other stuff (including shooting models of a Borg Cub and the Enterprise D, both of which were a bit disappointing), followed by a special gift shop (naturally) and two simulators with a Borg scenario narrated by Michael Dorn.

We weren’t complete dorks, however; while the kids were waiting to ride the simulators, we adults sat around trading recommendations for iPhone apps.

I thought about it seriously for quite a while, investigated the models, shopped around and everything. But in the end, I kept coming back to the question, “Why?” I’ve got a MacBook Pro, after all. Yeah, it’s heavier, but that never bothered me. The only other thing I’d want a netbook would be to have a handy WIndows computer around. But a netbook is so underpowered, there really wouldn’t be much point to it. In the end, I’d be shelling out $300-plus for a disposable Windows computer. I probably wouldn’t use it much outside of showing it to my class. Just not worth it, for me.

How about we judge Obama on the wars he starts instead of the wars he inherited and are next to impossible to get out of?

Just saying. I don’t recall anyone judging Bush on Bosnia. Of course, Clinton won that war, and didn’t leave a quagmire. Bit of a difference.

Predictably, Republicans are launching scathing attacks against Obama for sending out “Holiday” cards from the White House:

A Republican lawmaker with a mission to save Christmas is aiming his latest salvo at President and first lady Obama, who’ve followed in a recent tradition to eliminate the mention of Christmas in the White House holiday cards.

The card selected by the Obamas announces: “Season’s Greetings.” Inside, it reads: “May your family have a joyous holiday season and a new year blessed with hope and happiness.”

But Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., said abandoning Christmas at Christmas is just plain wrong. On Tuesday, he introduced a resolution calling for the protection of the sanctity of Christmas. So far, 44 lawmakers, Democrat and Republican, have co-signed the bill.

“I believe that sending a Christmas card without referencing a holiday and its purpose limits the Christmas celebration in favor of a more ‘politically correct’ holiday,” Brown told Fox News Radio on Thursday.

Even Fox News, in the above report, mentions that George W. Bush sent out “Holiday” cards, though they only mention the 2008 card–and they call the “Holiday” card a “recent trend” (and they use “Democrat” as an adjective).

David Greenberg of Slate noted, however, that it’s hardly a “recent trend,” as Eisenhower first sent out “Seasons’ Greetings” in the 50’s. Reagan sent out “Holiday” cards for most of his term, as did Dubya (though he included Old testament passages inside, which mollified only some Christmas Warriors).

The point is, after the long string of accusations against Obama for things that many presidents have done before, including his ardently Conservative Christian predecessor, don’t you think that Conservatives would, by now, be checking to see if their accusations are hypocritical? And at least modifying their accusations to match?

But they aren’t; instead, they are simply demonstrating, quite baldly, that they want to attack Obama for the sake of attacking Obama, and hypocrisy doesn’t bother them. Obama could sneeze and they attack him for not blessing himself. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t attacked him for being left-handed yet.

In the video rental place I go to in Japan–Tsutaya, a huge chain–they have one narrow shelf of Blu-Ray titles. They say it’s because not many titles have gone to Blu-ray yet. I went to a local electronics store in the SF Bay Area today. This was their Blu-Ray section:

I think I mentioned this before: what the heck is going on with Blu-Ray in Japan?

First we had “hiking the Appalachian Trail.”

Now, it’s “You should have said ‘green balloons.’”

The victim told police that Jetton hit her on the face very hard and then remembers waking up to find Jetton allegedly choking her and having sex with her, according to the affidavit. The next morning, Jetton woke up, kissed the victim and allegedly said: “You should have said green balloons,” according to the affidavit.

This just a month after he divorced his wife.

Why is it the bible thumpers and family value pushers who turn out to be the most perverse?

No matter how few people on an airplane lean their seats back, especially way back, it’s always the guy directly in front of me. Particularly galling this time is that the ass has an exit row, so he has all the space in the world to stretch out–but he just has to lean back too, and steal what tiny increment of space I have left.

I wrote the above as I was on the plane, and was feeling fairly frustrated. It really is true, however: on every flight I have taken over the past several years, the person in front of me (always a man, by chance) never fails to lean all the way back right after the initial in-flight meal. I always check around, and see that no more than 20-30% of the people in the area have their seat backs down, so in theory it should happen to me only once every four or five flights. But no, it’s 100% of the time on my Pacific flights–I’ve been keeping track.

You know those “Economy Plus” seats they now charge extra for? Guess where they got the space from? I swear, every time I fly, it seems like the seats are closer and closer together. And while the annual incremental crawl may be imagined, the overall crunch is definitely not. I remember, for example, that it was once possible for the passenger in the window seat to leave without the other passengers getting up; this act is now physically impossible. (Thought: is there any regulation determining the minimum distance airlines can squeeze people into for flights over three or four hours in length? If not, there should be.)

And that wasn’t the only problem I had. The only aisle seat I could get was right next to the galley door–I thought it would be next to the lavatories, but in fact it was farthest from those. Instead, I had flight attendants shoving the food carts against my seat for half the flight, the other half filled with their loud chatting and the bright lights from the galley area–and no matter how often I tried to close the curtain, an attendant would come along moments later and brush the curtain aside.

At least the guy sitting next to me was not a large, sweaty, or talkative guy, nor was he an armrest hog, but he apparently had bladder problems. To get seated again, it took some gymnastics to get everything back in place: discover where your seat belts snaked off to, reach down with your hands to retrieve stuff from your bag on the floor (again, you used to be able to bend down forward), put the seat tray up, set up the laptop or whatever else you were doing–a real study in what the human body can accomplish while crammed into a very confined space (a study in resentment when your already tiny space is cut in half by the ass in front of you with all the space in the world).

Once, I got some water to take Ibuprofen to help with the back pain the seat was causing. Then, of course, because of the confined space, right after I popped the pills in my mouth, my hand caught on something and the cup full of cold water spilled all over. It was then that I discovered that airplane seats are anti-absorbent, and gravity caused a good deal of that water to run straight for my crotch.

So, while freezing cold water was slowly gathering in my nether region, I had to do five things at once in that tiny space: yell to the attendants for towels, try not to elbow or spray the guy next to me, try to levitate in my seat–and nothing was really possible until I got my laptop put away and the tray table up, but I couldn’t do that until I got towels from the attendants to dry off the keyboard–all of this while I held on to a cup which still had enough water to make things worse, and my mouth had unswallowed Ibuprofen.

After I finally got up and had to apply towels to my crotch in front of a hundred or so people, the flight attendant helpfully (a) offered to change my seat cushion, which, having directed all of the moisture to my pants was not the least bit wet, and (b) stepped on my stocking foot with her heel.

While that was the highlight of the flight, the rest was not really all that much better.

It takes a lot to make a three-week trip back home not worth it. Flying economy comes pretty damned close.

Well, at least the car I’m in is new.

I’m trying out WordPress for iPhone 2.1, hoping the photos below will work. I’m adding shots of the whole car, the luggage racks (now with locks!), and the new displays above the seats.

On my way to SFO!

You see these everywhere now. My school even has these. The one pictured above is from the entrance to the supermarket on the ground floor of our apartment building. Hotels have them set up. I saw them at CEATEC. More and more, plastic pump-spray dispensers of alcohol-based hand wash and becoming ubiquitous (and thankfully, it’s the water-based stuff, not the icky snot-like transparent-lotion-cream stuff that used to be the norm).

And it turns out I am ahead of my time–I started using the stuff four years ago, when it was still hard to find. I could only find water-based wash at one place in Inagi, and when I moved to Ikebukuro, I bought six or eight extras which have lasted until now. And as I noted a few years back, they helped a lot–instead of catching colds several times a year, I am down to once or twice a year.

While I would like to claim to be a trend-setter, I am pretty sure that the real cause for the sudden mass use of this stuff is the Swine Flu–which, ironically, I caught anyway.

This had me in tears. Literally.

Wow. Even in Japan, printers are down to about fifty-five bucks. Sachi and I saw several in this price range when we went to pick up more postcards and some printer ink.

And I think that’s the idea: you get lulled into buying the printer for cheap, and then get hit with the real profit-margin sales when you’re forced to buy ink.

It was a relatively small graduating class this semester, but a very good one. Congratulations, guys!

Why do all street signs in Japan feature men wearing hats? I’m pretty sure that those went out of style at least forty years ago, probably even longer. Is the municipal graphics department that backed up?

You know there’s a scam afoot when some big entity wants something enacted which will profit them handsomely, but holds up a sympathetic face as the “real” benefactor of the scheme. Wealthy people and corporations do this all the time through politicians–whenever there’s a tax cut for huge corporations, for example, the “small business owner” is always trotted out as the real reason the tax cut is being proposed. But in reality, small business owners end up getting reamed because the real benefactors, big business, become more engorged and able to crush the small business owners.

This is the strategy used by the music labels when they do anything concerning their “war on piracy”: they trot out the poor, beleaguered artist, claiming that it’s all for them. Of course, none of it’s for the artist–the artists, of course, get reamed by the labels, who force them into horrifically unfair contracts. The music industry is nothing more than a parasite, a middleman grown into a monster which dominates the entire business, holding both artists and audience hostage. Whenever the labels want a “piracy tax” on blanks CDs, digital audio players, or any music delivery system “for the artists,” you can be damned sure that the artists aren’t getting squat from it. Whenever they want new legislation which gives them perpetual control over something you have paid for, or the ability to violate your privacy or otherwise treat you like a criminal, or to sue more easily so they can extort more money from those unable to defend themselves, you can be sure that the winnings don’t ever get distributed to the artists.

Case in point: the artists are suing the music industry in Canada for stealing their music and not paying for it. Yep: the big music labels–Warner, Sony BMG, EMI, and Universal–have been pirating music for more than two decades. That’s right, they were pirates before online file sharing was even possible.

Here’s how the scam works: in Canada, there’s a loophole in the copyright law which says that if a music label wants to create a “compilation” CD (hey, that’s a mix tape!), then they don’t need to get the artists’ permission beforehand. Instead, they only need to make the CD’s and then place it on a “pending list,” the claim being that they will eventually get the permission of the artists and pay them the required royalties.

You get one guess as to how that worked out.

Yes, that’s right: the music labels put more than 300,000 songs on the “pending list,” and never paid for them. Maybe that should be the legal defense for any P2P file sharer sued by the labels: “The songs were on my Pending List! I was eventually going to pay for them! After a few decades! Maybe!” Why not–after all, that’s what the music labels have been doing, cheating the artists out of at least $50 million in royalties.

The irony of this situation deepens: you know how the music labels lobbied for and got a ridiculous $7500-per-song penalty against file sharers? Well, by Canadian law, there is a potential $20,000 penalty per song which is abused in this fashion–meaning that the labels are now potentially liable for more than $6 billion in damages.

And the artists are suing.

It will be interesting to see how the industry defends itself. They’re the ones who have been claiming that ripping off artists is the primary crime committed; they’re the ones who have pressed for the full damages possible when they even have circumstantial evidence of stolen music. And in this case, the music labels themselves have admitted they’re doing this.

I am certain that I am not the only one here who hopes that (a) no settlement is reached, and (b) the court rules for the artists to the full extent of the law. The only regret here is that the labels will probably be able to limit damages to their Canadian branches only–the bulk of their businesses are probably shielded from damages. But if the Canadian labels claim they aren’t worth a collective $6 billion, then they can simply have 100% of all music profits redirected right into the artists’ pockets, with interest, until the full amount is paid off.

After all, it’s for the artists.

Right-wingers have been bashing Obama for “losing” millions of jobs–and have even found ways to bash him further still for the fact that only 11,000 jobs were lost in November. As if there was no such thing as “last year,” or even sometimes “last month.”

A quick study of the chart above (Bush months in red, Obama’s in blue) tells the story in undeniable detail: Bush drove us into one of the worst recessions in memory, with unimaginable levels of job losses totaling more than 700,000 per month by the time he left office. Obama came in, quickly instituted a stimulus package and–purely by coincidence, of course–the trend immediately reversed itself. November job loss numbers were only barely negative, promising possible job growth for December or early 2010. I would not be at all surprised if the new growth turns out to be steady.

There is no way to look at that chart and blame Obama for anything except reversing a horrific hemorrhage of jobs that Bush saddled the nation with. At best, if you want to insist that the turnaround, timed exactly upon Obama’s entrance and his promised deployment of a stimulus package, was nothing more than an incredible coincidence, then you still can’t blame him for anything–unless you want to contend that Obama has damaged job growth but that has only been overcome by a delayed economic miracle that Bush somehow quietly enacted when no one was paying attention. But realistically, this kind of result just doesn’t happen by chance. Obama clearly had a strikingly positive effect on employment. He hasn’t fully repaired the damage done by Bush, but he has clearly turned it back onto the right course, and was correct to claim ownership of that early this year (when it was far from certain that the numbers would improve as much as they have).

In contrast, look at the chart of job gains and losses starting at the same point near the end of Clinton’s second term (in blue), and then where Bush took it afterwards (in red):

Not quite as clear-cut as the previous chart, but one can see a pattern: Clinton handed over a bad economy, but it was only middling-bad. Keep in mind that Bush signed his huge tax boondoggle for the wealthy in early June 2001 (after it passed through Congress in May)–exactly at the time when job losses became steady and notably increasing. It took until late 2003 before sustained job growth returned. Now it looks like Obama will achieve the same thing in just over one year–not two and a half–despite being handed a death spiral which made the economy Clinton handed Bush seem positively robust.

Contrast the Clinton-Bush chart with the stark shape of the job losses under Bush and then Obama, and it’s inescapable: had Obama not come in and turned things around, we could have been looking at ten million more jobs lost. He turned that trend around, but fast.

And for this, right-wingers attack Obama for “losing” all of those jobs. It’s as if Bush put the national aircraft into a deep, steep dive, then Obama took control and immediately started to pull us up, and we’re now leveling out, much safer now–and right-wingers are thrashing Obama for being at a low altitude.

I shudder to think what would have happened had McCain won and vetoed anything except yet another tax cut for the rich. Yeah, that would have worked.

Just got finished with a mountain of grading for three classes, in addition to studying for and taking a final exam in Introduction to Computer Programming, as well as some personal commitments. All went well–finished the grading my students on time, and aced the final exam in the programming class I was taking. Today, Sachi and I will do a bit of shopping, and I may take some time this afternoon to have my scooter checked out, and maybe even get one of those ten-dollar haircuts. Livin’ it large, what can I say.

Here’s why Palin is a front-runner for president in 2012: she fits the now-standard right-wing NeoCon bill to a tee. They started with Reagan, had to allow Bush Sr. because he was VP, but then picked up the ball with Bush Jr., and are now lined up and ready with Palin.

In short: they have someone with folksy, down-home stage-and-screen appeal who’ll whip up the masses, someone on board ideologically, but most importantly–this is the real key–someone who is not all that bright and can be easily manipulated to allow the real show to be run by the NeoCon lieutenants.

I don’t think that Palin’s selection as VP in ’08 was a mistake. Clearly McCain didn’t choose her–it was made by more powerful forces behind the scenes who likely had their eyes on Palin already as the most likely to suit their eventual needs. I think there was an understanding that Obama would win, and that they didn’t have anyone who could really pull it off, not after the horrific mess that Bush created. They even needed a Democrat who they could then use as a punching bag and heap all of the blame for their eight years of misdeeds. So they did what any football team would do in a rebuilding year: they set up future prospects, began to establish strengths for the next season, and began a strategy aimed for that time. If they happened to win in ’08, then great, but I think they knew it was a lost cause.

Palin is the New Bush, who was the New Reagan. The NeoCons have a game plan, it has done well in the past, and they will continue to go by the playbook.