Just ran into this link to download Google Earth for OS X. It is a very cool app. It’s the one that flies around the globe, zooming in and out of any photographed area, with tons of notation and bookmark features. Very fun to play with. The link I provided just above takes you to a blog that links to a download site. The download site is a pay-for-immediate-access and free-if-you-wait type; just go to the bottom of the page, click the “Free” button, wait about half a minute, enter the anti-spambot code, and it’ll download. The app is slightly buggy, but very usable. Enjoy. (Note: this very recent beta version will probably run only on 10.4.3 (the current OS X version), and might be sluggish on an iBook or older Mac.)

Patricia Arndt, a 43-year-old single mother (her son is 13), served four years in the Army in the 1980’s. She left the Army 20 years ago, signing up to be an “individual mobilization augmentee reservist,” which just meant that she was to fill in at home for soldiers gone overseas. She was not a reservist signed up to a unit, and never expected to be called up. But this year, she got a swell Christmas present: she was pulled from the inactive Army reserve, put on Individual Ready Reserve (combat potential), and then ordered to report for active duty by February 5 next year, possibly for service in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Welcome to George W. Bush’s military.

So Ms. Arndt will have to sell her house because the money she’ll be paid while in service won’t cover the house payments. So long, happy homestead. She runs a small business, which she may have to kiss goodbye. And who knows if her job as a respiratory therapist will still be there when she gets back. To top it all off, her 13-year-old son is not old enough to live alone, and her only hope of family care might fall through. So you’d think that a hardship exemption might be in order.

The Army’s response: tough shit. “Single parents are treated no differently than any other soldier, and are expected to have a family care plan at all times,” a spokesperson said. Um, excuse me–“soldier”?

When the military has to resort to yanking single moms in their 40’s out of lives which will be wrecked by pulling them away, then at the very least, the Bush administration has no choice but to admit that they’re not hitting recruitment goals, and they are overextending the military to unbelievable extents.

Via Atrios.

Via DKos, this scientist makes an argument which by itself knocks the so-called “Intelligent Design” theory completely off the stage. He points out that our “intelligently” designed bodies are not quite so intelligent: there are many flaws in our construction which can only be explained by evolutionary processes. These same flaws make absolutely no sense in a creationist paradigm. Our pelvises slope forward, for example, a throwback to a time when we did not stand erect, but used our knuckles to aid in walking. We have too many teeth for the size of our mouths, a product of a shortened muzzle or snout. The appendix and tonsils are unnecessary. And a list of other problems on top of these.

Certainly, a good examination of the structure of the human body would reveal a number of things that make no sense if it were supposed to be a pinnacle of design–or even a mediocre design, but well-built. These imperfections do not make sense if you assume a designer–but they make perfect sense if you assume an evolutionary process. This is similar to the fact that the universe is built in a way that contradicts a 6,000-year-old cosmos. The universe that we observe demonstrates light that has been traveling towards us for billions of years, and a momentum that points to a big-bang beginning about 14 billion years ago. Why would God create a universe with such built-in contradictions? Would He really construct a universe full of light heading toward us as if it had already been traveling for eons? The best (though pitiful) explanation is the whole “God is testing us” theory. But if God is omniscient, then He would have no need of tests. And if the test is purely for us, then isn’t it kind of an unfair test? Or did God imbue us with with the quality of reason as a cruel joke?

I prefer to believe that the universe we live in and the bodies we inhabit are not a tissue of lies.

Just a short note about the conservatives who claim there is a “war” against Christmas, and thereby against Christians, because people say “Happy Holidays” instead, and engage in other heathen practices in which the name “Christ” is not mentioned at every possible opportunity. I don’t for a moment see this as a war that Christians are claiming is going on; this is a conservative made-up non-issue as much as gay marriage or the pledge of allegiance. And all observations of an arrogant majority proclaiming they are persecuted and victimized aside, there’s one note I’d like to make here. Republicans like to claim that they’re inclusive. But demanding that “Christmas” be everywhere and “Holidays” beaten back is the opposite of inclusivity; it is, in fact, the very act of shunning those not in the majority. Unless Bill O’Reilly is suggesting that “Happy Holidays” be replaced by a list of greetings including Christmas, Chanukah, Ramadan (when the lunar calendar comes around to it), Kwanzaa, and let’s not forget that Godless New Year’s holiday. “Happy Holidays” and “Holiday Season” are inclusive. So what are conservatives?

Update: I couldn’t resist adding this quote from Jon Stewart, in response to O’Reilly’s use of a year-old clip to demonstrate how Stewart was waging an ongoing war against Christmas:

If Bill O’Reilly needs to have an enemy, needs to feel persecuted, you know what? Here’s my Kwanzaa gift to him. Are you ready? All right. I’m your enemy. Make me your enemy. I, Jon Stewart, hate Christmas, Christians, Jews, morality, and I will not rest until every year families gather to spend December 25th together at Osama’s homo-abortion-pot-and-commie-jizzporium.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve written on this before (I know I put it into a post in my pre-movable-type blog entry three years ago), but it bears repeating. It came to mind when I saw news reports of Pearl Harbor Day from the U.S. press (the Japanese press doesn’t mention it much, as you might imagine).

There is a famous George Santayana quote: “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The quote is often mangled, only the second part mentioned, and the wording varies greatly. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that everyone seems to completely misinterpret Santayana’s warning and advice, to ends which are completely opposite from the original meaning.

Look at how people claim to follow Santayana’s warning. We remember Pearl Harbor Day, and 9/11. The Chinese remember the Rape of Nanjing. Japanese remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Jewish people remember the Holocaust. So we’re doing a pretty good job of remembering the past, right? Unfortunately, no. Everyone’s got it in reverse.

You see, each group takes great pains to remember the wrongs that were committed against them by others in the past, usually adding the vow, “No More,” or “Never Again.” The same groups have a tendency–which is more or less universal–of playing down, whitewashing, or completely forgetting about wrongs they committed against others in the past. We Americans tend to play down Hiroshima, primarily by talking about how it was necessary, how many others would have died, and so forth, not examining closely enough what suffering we did cause. There is no “Hiroshima” day in America. Similarly, Japanese try to forget about things like the Rape of Nanjing, with their share of deniers and those who say it is not something that should be remembered. Usually, when we decide to ignore our own past atrocities, it is in the name of patriotism, or for the stated reason of not wanting to make our children ashamed of our country.

But here’s how that’s all backwards: Santayana said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. That’s a key word: repeat. It means to do again. Not to have something done to you again, but to actively do it again. And that’s what Santayana was talking about: those who commit terrible acts are condemned to repeat them if they do not remember that they committed them before, if they fail to recognize that an act of theirs was in error. Consider the word “progress” in the first part of Santayana’s quote: progress for whom? Naturally, for the ones who commit these acts. A child will not learn if it is never told it is wrong. Neither will we.

Instead, in the name of Santayana, so many claim that they are “remembering” by emphasizing when they suffered, while forgetting when they made others suffer. A human enough reaction, but that’s what gets us into trouble. By remembering the wrongs committed against us, we create the impression amongst ourselves that we are the ones who were wronged, that we deserve the special status of victimhood that entitles us to take extreme measures to protect ourselves. By spreading the warning that this could happen again, we become suspicious of outsiders, expecting them to attack us or do us wrong again.

At the same time, by forgetting the wrongs we have committed in the past, we create the impression that our people do no wrong. We are the good guys, and when we decide to move or act aggressively, we do so only for good reasons. We’re not the evil dictators who have caused so much pain and suffering.

Put those together, and you have the recipe for disaster. A people who feel victimized, suspicious of outsiders, like they have a right to act aggressively to protect themselves, and that they can do no wrong. That’s not good. In fact, it is the polar opposite of what Santayana was trying to warn us about.

Americans should not be memorializing Pearl Harbor as much as we should be Hiroshima, the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, My Lai, slavery, or the genocide of American Indians. The Japanese should memorialize the Rape on Nanjing and other past wrongs. The Germans should be remembering the Holocaust more than the Jews.

Each society should take its worst wrongs, and examine them carefully, so as to remember what truly must be remembered, what is of paramount importance: that although I see myself as a good person and my country as a good nation, the fact remains that horrible atrocities can happen by my hands; that my nation, my people, my community, my family–that I, can be responsible for these things. Even if I believe myself to be right. Even when I feel my cause is just. See? It happened before. It can happen again.

This is what we must remember, so that when the time comes and we are ready for war, that we send our troops overseas, when we decide to act in a way that could deprive others of their rights or their lives in an unjust cause, that we remember the wrongs we committed–so we can better recognize when we are in danger of committing them again. Because we don’t remember; we are blinded by patriotism and our own causes, we intentionally disregard the fact that we kill tens of thousands of people, and feel that whatever is happening, it must be right.

But not only do we avoid asking if we are in the wrong, we fear asking, and we fear even more saying that aloud in public, because we know others will become wrathful, attacking our ideas and even our selves, calling us unpatriotic, saying we love dictators, that we are on the enemy’s side, that we hate our country. They face us with hatred and accuse us of hate.

But patriotism cannot be blind or it is corrupt, and “my country right or wrong” does not mean that you ignore those wrongs or allow them to continue. If you love a family member, but see them falling into destructive behavior, you stay with them, but you don’t encourage the destructiveness–you fight to bring them around, to make them whole and good. And so we must do with our nation, stand with it, but never be afraid to utter the words, “we are wrong.”

And more importantly, we must remember our past wrongs. Not to celebrate them, but to use them to make ourselves better, the people we want to be. Not to shame our children, but to make them proud that we are a nation of adults, of mature, thinking people who can admit wrongs and learn from them. Not to give our country a bad name, but to give it a good name, a reputation that is admired.

So on this day of memorial for our own dead, remember also those we have killed. Otherwise there will never be an end to days like Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

Has anyone else been getting this? About 20 spams sent to your site per day–but none of them have any spam URLs. All of the links are to legitimate sites, major corporations and such. The messages in the spams are highly complimentary of your site, with a bit of gibberish in there sometimes. Every time it’s a different name (aside from an occasional repeat), a different email address, a different IP address, and a different message variation. The spammer has been keeping this up for the past five days solid. What’s the deal with this idiot? If he’s testing his systems, isn’t this going on a bit too long? Of course, my spam filters stop any from getting through, but you gotta wonder about the guy’s sanity.

Then there’s this “grandpa stole bets” joker, someone who posts by that name, and clearly uses spam software (Google the name, you’ll see) to spread this bizarre comment all over the place. A deranged, rambling, conspiracy-theory-laden, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic tirade. I can only guess that some 12-year-old got hold of some primitive spam software and thought it’d be fun to pee all over the blogosphere.

None of these are really annoying as the filters do such a good job of keeping them out, but when you peek at some of these pieces of waste before they get zapped, it makes you wonder as to who’s out there, and if their medical insurance covers Mad Cow Disease.

I remember my first experience in public debate on a computer network. I forget if it was Usenet access I enjoyed as a student at San Francisco State University, or if it was on the discussion forums at GEnie, one of those “Online Services” like Prodigy before general dial-up Internet access became available for $20 a month.

I had wandered into a discussion area on gun control, and read a couple of posts. Nothing really representative, just what had been posted recently. I then quite naively decided to post my own beliefs on the issue. Now, such discussion groups were relatively new (it was in the very early 1990’s, when web pages were just being invented), and I had no idea what was waiting for me. Worse, I had not before engaged in public debate, nor had I carefully studied the topic in detail. I just had some uninformed personal opinions, untested by opposing listeners–in other words, weak views, not founded in fact, just casual opinions. And I publicly posted them in the gun control forum.

I might as well have just walked into a maximum security prison stark naked and shouted, “fresh meat!”

Needless to say, the pro-gun advocates went into a feeding frenzy. When you’re on an Internet discussion group in a disputed topic populated by extremists on both sides, anyone showing naivety immediately draws out even those who don’t usually participate in debate, taking the golden opportunity to “win” an argument, demonstrating how right they are against an opponent who presents very little risk of making a skilled riposte. Within hours, my post had drawn about a dozen replies by the pro-gun element, all of them gleefully tearing my statement to shreds.

It was a very sudden and powerful education.

I could have simply been repelled by the reaction, ashamed of how foolish I must have appeared, and avoided visiting such places ever again in hopes of forgetting it had ever happened. If I had done so, things would have developed so that I probably would never have started this blog. Instead, I hung on, took the electronic beating, and decided to rough out my inglorious debut on the discussion groups, maintaining my arguments while putting a great deal of effort into finding out the facts, hopefully never to post so naively again. I felt my opinions were essentially correct, I just didn’t have the facts at my disposal to prove it.

And so began my career debating social and political issues over the Internet, an experience which has not been a waste of time. While I doubt I have converted too many souls, the experience has nonetheless provided a strong incentive to study, to research the subjects I am commenting on. It has vastly sharpened my debating skills, teaching me through painful experience how to engage in public debate. And more than just a few times it has proven me wrong (more often on small points than on broad ones) and taught me things I probably would not have learned elsewhere or otherwise. The main problem, and what keeps me from engaging in such forum debates for too many months is the fact that I tend to be wordy (you haven’t noticed?), and if I am present long enough on a forum, researching my points and writing new posts begins to eat up too many hours of my day, leaving me little free time–even more frustrating when my debate opponents never do their research but demand I do mine to a tee. This blog took over as an alternative once I figured out the Movable Type system; nevertheless, I am sure I will find a new discussion group somewhere and jump in again, for another several months at least, before it gets to be too much work again.

But that’s not what I wanted to write about.

More specifically, that history is just background to the main point I intended for this post: how to argue and debate on the Internet. Like any other endeavor, there are tricks and strategies and techniques and pitfalls. I felt like going over a few, to share a bit of what I’ve learned. That’s part of what a blog is for, right? Showing off and acting all superior. So here goes.

As I’ve mentioned, the first thing you should do is to research your topic. Relying on what you think you know without checking can be perilous. Your opponents have search engines ready and waiting, not to mention their collective experience–you will be writing in opposition to dozens, if not hundreds of people; though few will come out and reply, it will more often be those who know more about the particular facts of the case that you have brought up. If you get your facts wrong, there will be several people ready to jump down your throat, point out all your errors, and proclaim you to be their bitch.

You also have to be honest in how you present your information; you cannot ignore contradictory evidence. You cannot only quote the facts that support your case. True, that is easier on a blog, but a blog is more about exposition and less about debate. I hope that in this blog, I never commit the former offense, and not very often the latter. But in a forum debate, where vociferous antagonists wait readily to prove you wrong, you can’t get away with that kind of stuff. So save yourself the embarrassment and attacks and check yourself. Say what you know you can support with facts from a credible source. Quote your cited material in the correct context. And don’t omit contradictory evidence, because someone else will bring it up anyway and make you look like you were hiding it. Instead, quote it and refute it right away.

Next, remember to explain yourself sufficiently. This can be hard. We all think within our own minds, and we fully understand our own context. We often mistakenly assume others will as well. That’s a common error that my college Writing students commit, making it hard sometimes for me to understand what they are writing about. For example, let’s say that I want to explain a political point to my students, who are all Japanese. If I explained to them, for example, Bush’s Social Security plan, in the same way I write about it here on this blog, they would not understand. They do not have the social or political context, nor an understanding of the nature of the American pension system or its history, the kind of stuff Americans have absorbed through experience.

That’s an extreme example, though; usually the kind of context differential you experience will be much more subtle. An example of that would be one time in a college linguistics course when the topic of “English as the official language” came up. A lot of students in the class got angry with me because I suggested that English was a logical base language for universal communication within the U.S. They were angry not at my concept of a common linguistic experience serving as a communications bridge, but at what they assumed to be the underlying context of making English into the only respected or required language, disenfranchising other languages and cultures–meanings I had not spoken and did not intend to relay. The meaning of a word or a set of ideas can be very tricky when each individual presumes different definitions and connotations.

In short, you must explain your argument in detail, not depending on people to make the same assumptions you do–they most often will not, especially if they have a different ideology than you have.

Next, do “opposition research.” After forming your argument, look at it from the other side. If you were to argue against your own writing, how would you go about it? What holes would you poke in it? What research would you do to try to get ammunition to knock it down? Then apply those findings to your argument, shoring up weaknesses, tearing out easily assailed segments, and adding fortifications in the form of added evidence or further argumentation.

Finally, edit. Cut. Whittle. It is a common failing for a writer to say everything they want to say, to make every point they think of. Especially for gabby writers like me. One of the first things an opponent will do is pick out your weakest argument and focus on that. If you give three different points in your argument, one strong, one moderate, and one weak, guess which one will get attacked? So cut the weak one, and if possible, the moderate one as well.

That leads me to how you should deal with your debate opponent. As I said, they will attack your weakest point–but they will also use that as an excuse to fully avoid your strongest point. This can wholly decimate even the strongest argument. A case in point: Bush’s National Guard disgrace. Public debate was fierce about that one, and Bush’s argument was weak in the face of many unexplained facts, or facts that could not be challenged. I collected and detailed those facts in a blog post. There was a lot of damning stuff, and the arguments showing Bush had gotten special preference and dodged the draft, and then later deserted the Guard and was never punished for it; these arguments were pretty strong, and Bush’s denials sounded pretty weak.

Then the 60 Minutes story on Bush came out, and the Killian memos, though described by those who served at the time to be more or less accurate, were shown to be fakes. And at that, the debate was over. Sure, the fakes did not weaken any of the other evidence by one iota, nor did they exonerate Bush, proving he did nothing wrong. But in a debate, if one side sets forth a weak point that can be just obliterated by the other side, all the stronger facts and arguments seem to vanish, and the other side will proclaim righteous victory–and the audience will accept it. Try it out: read my blog post, and go to even a moderate citizen and state the facts. Their reply will almost certainly center on the faked memos, even though they are irrelevant to the other facts of the case. I am certain that Bush would have loved to give Dan Rather a big wet one right on the lips, as Rather had handed him a huge victory.

The same goes for your own arguments: get something wrong, forward a weak point, and your opponents will find it easy to attack the weak point and completely ignore all of your iron-clad arguments. So don’t give them the chance. Get rid of the weak stuff yourself, before you present your argument to others. Force your opponents to face only your strongest arguments and nothing else. Sure, they may use straw men anyway, but don’t give them the opportunity to gain the same advantage without resorting to trickery.

Even still, opponents will focus on even the smallest details to nitpick, avoiding the main thrust of your argument. That happens a lot when conservatives come to comment on my blogging. After the Killian memos were shown up, I posted on the outstanding weight of evidence against Bush in his National Guard misdeeds. In my list of evidence, I included a document that was not fake–but one conservative visitor jumped on that one document and tried to tie it in with the discredited memos. That was his response to a long, well-evidenced writing demonstrating how Bush dodged the draft by using his family’s influence, and then went AWOL without being punished–99% of my argument was just ignored and a single detail was attacked, as if to discredit the whole argument. That will happen to you, so be prepared.

If a debate opponent does any of this, and you want them to answer the strong points or the main thrust of your argument, then press them. Word your main point and prime evidence as succinctly as possible, then demand that they respond to it before anything else. Usually they’ll shut up at that point. Which makes the case for being as succinct as possible in the first place–something I’m not good at.

Aside from avoiding the strong points and focusing on the weak ones, your opponents will try other tricks. The next most common one will be the undocumented source. After all, if you can’t see where they got their “facts,” how can you respond to them? One of the most common examples of that technique on this blog is in the discussions about the ratings for the Air America Radio network. When I post about Air America Radio doing well, conservative readers often respond with attacks about how AAR’s ratings are in the toilet, how Limbaugh and Dr. Laura and others are doing well and AAR is showing poorly, etc. etc. But few ever cite specifics, nor do they usually cite sources. The reason becomes apparent when I demand they do and the results show up: their sources are usually right-wing rags which ignore vital data (e.g., they quote overalls and ignore demographics), cherry-pick their data (pointing to the least successful AAR stations or shows while touting conservative strongholds), and intentionally mislead with vague and inaccurate representations (for example, one conservative journalist blasted AAR because of ratings one member radio station got before AAR even went on their air).

So when your opponent cites any information and you don’t know where to find the original, press them for it, demand they produce it, and refuse to accept their argument until they do. Naturally, you’re going to have to be prepared to do the same–but that was my first point of advice in any case, and it only serves to strengthen your argument. So certify your data, and don’t let your opponent get away with passing off shoddy merchandise.

Certifying the data can be problematic in itself. Take the AAR ratings. Media ratings are tricky. The original Star Trek was cancelled on the weight of its bad ratings, but when it had finally been killed off, a network analyst told the network executives that they’d just killed their most popular show. How could that be? Demographics. If the audience for a show is made up more of people with disposable income, then low overall numbers don’t mean much. Many of Rush Limbaugh’s listeners, on the other hand, are older people who do not spend as much. Air America performs poorly in overall ratings, but does very well in demographics, which is why they’re still on the air, picking up more sponsors and expanding into new markets.

But the main argument conservative journalists make about AAR failing is in its ratings–and even though they have access to the expensive demographic data for radio, they only refer to the overall ratings–because those look the worst.

Furthermore, don’t let them get away with grabbing “facts” from biased sites. If their source was Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly, call them out on it. If you cited Al Franken, Jesse Jackson, and Janeane Garofalo as your sources, chances are your opponent would call you out for it. Point that out to them if they try to pawn off Rush Limbaugh or Joe Scarborough as credible sources for data. And, of course, keep to the same standards in your own writing.

If they do come up with apparently credible sources, then investigate. Never take it for granted. When I first started debating gun control, I was overwhelmed by the number of facts and figures that the pro-gun advocates peppered their arguments with. I almost was ready to throw in the towel when I started getting the feeling that I was being lied to–some of the “facts” they produced sounded fishy. That’s when I discovered that SFSU had started an account with LexisNexis, and started doing searches–and immediately discovered that my opponents’ source of “facts” had been NRA literature; seemingly credible sources either turned out to be biased or simply were reporting the biased data. Lexis also provided me with powerful supplies of ammunition to shoot back with, in addition to cutting down my opponents’ arguments as being full of half-truths, shoddy and biased studies, and NRA propaganda. I went from almost losing the argument to actually winning it; I recall that in the end, only one opponent survived the arguments I posed, and he was a professional writer. And in the end, he was reduced to admitting that the law stood behind my statements, adding that he felt the Supreme Court justices would burn in hell for their judgments interpreting the 2nd Amendment to apply only to organized militias like the National Guard. But then, he was a professional writer, which meant he was less willing to ignore facts.

And that’ll be another roadblock to winning arguments: obstinacy. Pigheadedness. The stubborn refusal of an opponent to admit a point, no matter how clearly you have presented your evidence, no matter how desperately weak and unsupported their own argument may be. You’ll always come up against people who will never admit they’re wrong, even when faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. With the Bush National Guard case, it did not matter in the least to Bush supporters that there was ironclad proof that Bush had used his family influence to get into the guard and was catapulted to officer rank and the much-sought piloting slot after just a few days, after scoring the absolute minimum (25%) on his aptitude test. These facts are not in question, they are firmly established. But try to approach a conservative on a debate forum and get them to admit that Bush used undue influence to get into the Guard and avoid Vietnam. It’ll be like pulling teeth, except that teeth at one point or another finally come out.

So the above points should be a guide to surviving (or at least tolerating) public debate on the Internet–or, in reverse, a guide to obfuscating and winning arguments by cheating. If you want to win the quick and dirty way, just pick at the weakest point in your opponents’ writing, make up fake facts and refuse to cite your sources, mine the ultra-biased talking heads for ammo (again, don’t cite), avoid making any arguments yourself except for the most vague and insinuating kinds, and never, ever admit to being wrong no matter how badly you get thrashed–just keep insisting that you’re right.

But not around me.

That’s what my father suggested I should use as a title, the same phrase used in football games after a ref’s call has been challenged. And so, as it turns out, I’m not going in for surgery.

I figured surgery was necessary, as did my parents, my aunt (who is a GP), and her husband (who is an anesthesiologist). I mean, look at the x-ray. How could that heal correctly? I thought the doctor at the E.R. was nuts for suggesting it–he didn’t even suggest surgery, I had to bring that up.

But my aunt’s brother-in-law is an orthopedic specialist, and he said I should not have surgery. That the intervening area will fill with collagen, and then with bone, and it should not impede my abilities. If I were a runner, then maybe, but I’m not. There would be too little to gain, and the risk, hassle and expense of surgery on the loss side. The doctor said he would be giving me a spinal block, not an ankle block. There would be a risk of infection. And then, the pins would have to come out next April, which would mean more surgery.

So I’m not going in for surgery. Go figure. That’ll leave me more time to do what I need to one-footed. But it won’t let me travel into Shinjuku for the remaining final exam nor the graduation ceremony–I’ll have to leave a note to be read to everyone. I’m ordering pizza a lot more, and am putting off going to the store until I really need to. So it’s immobile in bed for me for the time being, which means I’ll be getting my grading done a lot faster this semester.

Not that fate isn’t having fun with me in the meantime. The gas system in Japan is such that if there is any irregularity, the system shuts down automatically. I have to go out my front door, open a cabinet in the wall, and hold down a button for three seconds, then wait a few minutes before I attempt to turn on the gas again. I thought it only got tripped by earthquakes and the like. But I believe I have just figured out that another condition for tripping is if you use too much gas for too long–on the assumption that there’s a leak therefore. And because I’m now home all the time and prefer to use gas heating instead of the air conditioners, the gas heater is on all the time (I have a big place). So every 24 hours or so, the gas trips off. It just did it for the second time as I was just starting to shower. Imagine the prospect of getting dressed, walking out the front door, holding down a button, then coming back inside and waiting–when you have a broken foot and are buck naked just about to take a shower. Not an easy task, and frustrating as hell, particularly with the timing.

I caught on to the possibility that prolonged gas use triggers the stop mechanism when this morning, at 8 am, while I was still sleeping, the doorbell rang. I couldn’t ignore it because it could have been my airline ticket for next week, which the travel agent said he’d deliver sometime soon. It turned out to be the gas meter reader, enquiring why my gas use was more than double what it was last time. It was because I started using my gas heater, that’s why. So I had to wake up and crutch my way to the front door for that. Lovely.

Well, enough of my whining and moaning. I’ll still post soon on what’s involved in a hospital stay in Japan, despite my not going now. I’d heard about it before but had forgotten. Coming soon.

Unless a relative we’ve contacted through a few branches of the family who is an orthopedic surgeon gets back to us and says not to, I’ve arranged for surgery on the foot. It is, I am told, a spiral fracture of the fifth metatarsal. The doctor I spoke to said that he would perform a simple surgery, just two pins or screws to hold the bone together. This as opposed to five screws and a metal plate, a more involved surgery that would result in a stronger (or perhaps he meant more stable, less easily re-broken) repair–but would also require two weeks either in the hospital or being completely immobile, neither of which are particularly likely for me at this time and under my current circumstances.

Still, even this smaller surgery will require a 4-day hospital stay–I check in at 2 pm the day before surgery, get operated on the next morning (they’ll use a spinal anesthetic, so the doctor told me), put in the pins/screws, close up with a dressing and keep the foot in a splint (not a full cast, apparently). I then spend the rest of that day and all of the next day in a semi-private hospital room, and then the following morning I’m released. And that’s not too many days before I go on my trip back to the U.S.! Busy busy…

So I just hope that nothing else goes wrong in the meantime. I’m trying to arrange for a wheelchair at the airport (crossing that mammoth space and an hour waiting in lines while on crutches? No thank you) as well as hopefully special seating on the flight. I tried to get my ticket pushed back a few days, but the airline couldn’t do that for me–they referred me back to my travel agency, which would only do it for full cancellation charges plus big fare hikes for later flight dates. A broken foot along with a doctor’s recommendation mean nothing to them, alas. But (just found out now) they are mailing me my ticket so I don’t have to go to two counters and wait in those lines–though of course I’ll still have to check in, naturally.

The hospital visit itself will be blogworthy of course. And while I’m there, I’ll have to figure out how to keep my blogging streak straight. A little of pre- and post-blogging at either end, I think. I do have a few entries in the can which should get me started, and then when I get back I can back-post what I wrote while in my hospital bed.

Nothing but for for me!

Apple’s announcement of their Intel-powered line of computers claimed the new Macs would not start appearing until June of 2006. It is becoming more and more likely, however, that at least one and maybe a few Intel Macs will be released as early as next month, half a year early.

Though Apple, as always, is keeping closed-mouthed about this, rumors have proliferated that a Mac Mini, an iBook, and/or a keynote the expo. Since all the Macs and iPods have recently been updated and the usual reason for a keynote by Jobs is to release a new product, it seems likely that this will indeed be the case.

Just a few days ago, Think Secret reported that not only will the MacTel Mini be released in January, but that it will be reborn as a digital hub, including a built-in iPod dock and DVR-like video recording software, presumably to allow you to record any show and then see it on your iPod. That rumor has a flaw, however: Apple just recently opened up the video section at the iTunes Music Store, with new TV episodes downloading for $2 a pop. Why give people the means to do it for free? Yes, the pat version would be without commercials, but it seems counterproductive for Apple to give people such an easy alternative to buying their latest iTMS offerings–especially if the Video iPod would allow viewers to fast-forward past commercials. Not to mention they’d be greatly ticking off the media companies they’re trying to arrange an association with.

A non-DVR and non-iPod-docking MacTel Mini, on the other hand, seems far more likely, mostly because of the general Apple sales strategy that was apparent from the start. Think about it: buy one computer, a cheap one, no less, and you can have the Mac OS and Windows. Make those easily switchable (which might be hard on RAM), and you have a killer product.

In order to switch to a Mac, people used to have to throw away everything they had previously bought, and start over with new hardware and software. When the Mac Mini was introduced, they could keep their monitor and keyboard, and only had to throw away their software and start over again. With the MacTel Mini, they will not have to throw anything away. They can have it all–run their existing Windows apps, and switch to Mac OS X whenever they feel like it.

But why do that? Why go to the Mac OS at all? One easy answer is to avoid viruses and other security headaches–a major concern for a lot of people. They can do their email and Internet work on Mac OS X using Mail and Safari, or buy/download other software solutions, and then switch to Windows for other stuff. Keeping networking tasks on Mac OS X would make virus infections near impossible (until hackers start targeting Mac OS–though there’s no guarantee they’ll have nearly as much success as they had getting through Windows’ sieve-like security). Safe computing without having to buy Anti-virus software.

And that’s assuming that they won’t be tempted by Apple’s own snazzy style and impressive software suite. With a Mac, you’d get an integrated suite of iLife apps with the computer–iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, and Garage Band, as well as Safari, Mail, Address Book, iCal, iChat, Dictionary, and the QuickTime/DVD Player video apps. Not a bad free package to come with the computer.

True, many PCs come with Word and Excel (though usually not PowerPoint). But Apple offers the iWork suite for $80, and while the current bundle only includes word processing and presentation software, a spreadsheet program called “Numbers” is rumored to be on the way. Say they introduce that app at the January Mac Expo and up the iWork price to $99. That’s still way below the $365 price tag for the standard version of MS Office, even well below the $220 you’d pay just for an MS Office upgrade. And all of the iWork apps are compatible with MS Office docs, able to both open and save in the formats most people use. When you’re buying a computer, an extra $100 for that kind of suite is not something that would slow most people down. Of course, if Apple were smart, they’d bundle iWork with the MacTel Mini for free for at least the first year or two.

The reason that’d be a smart move is because (at least I believe) the MacTel move will prove to be the biggest threat to Microsoft’s domination of the computer market that we have ever witnessed. Providing a platform which can house both operating systems is the first truly viable switching environment–and as I’ve stated before, I think that a lot of people will say that for a few hundred extra bucks, getting a MacTel Mini will be well worth it. From there, it’s just a matter of people getting hooked on the Mac OS as they use it side-by-side with Windows and see the difference. (I wonder, will the new MacTel Keyboards have a Windows key?)

Heck, it may not even be a price hike to buy a Mac–the only serious WinTel contender against the Mac Mini is AOpen’s Mini PC, a virtual physical clone of the Mac Mini–and it’s priced significantly higher than the Mac. A Mac Mini would set you back $500, but an almost identically outfitted AOpen would cost you $620; the high-end Mac Mini is $700, but the similar high-end AOpen is $890. For the same form and performance, Apple’s Mac Mini is actually 20% cheaper. And the AOpen doesn’t even come with TV-video output.

Will it really be that tough a choice?

The good news is that this probably won’t prevent me from traveling back to the U.S. for Christmas. That’s about the only good news there is. The bad news is that I will have to cancel just about every birdwatching trip from now until January–and this was gonna be a huge birdwatching time for me. I just arranged to join a birdwatching group going to Mt. Fuji on Dec. 10th. And I had at least a half-dozen big-time birding plans made up for when I returned to the SF Bay Area.

So much for all that.

How it happened was that I was going to attend a party today. I spent a while last night preparing, using the Internet to get detailed information on the multi-transfer train trip, printing out schedules and station maps. I recharged my iPod, and chose a good book for the 2-hour train ride. This morning, I got up, showered, dressed, got the Italian Salami and chocolates I had chosen for the pot luck, and went out the door, right on time. Five feet out the door, I slipped, fell, and heard a distinct “crack.” Two and a half hours later, I’m back home from the emergency room, writing this.

I suppose there is one other slightly positive aspect: I won’t have to limp into school on crutches every day. We just had the last class yesterday, and only two final exam periods are coming next week. After that, graduation the following Saturday.

However, right now, I have to decide about whether or not I’ll be having surgery. Money is not a big deal, the operation would probably cost no more than $750, really more than triple that but with the Japanese National Insurance paying 70% it’s much cheaper (here’s where all those payments come in handy). The doc I saw in the emergency room seemed ambivalent–6 weeks of healing without surgery, and the bone heals as is (see the photo), rebuilding in the gap you can see there. With surgery, the bone heals straight, and takes 4 weeks to get better. Right now I’m leaning toward surgery, but frankly, I know nothing about the ins and outs of all this. So now for some research.

That’s what a Justice Department probe found, in any case–six lawyers and two analysts found the Republican off-census gerrymandering to be discriminatory:

The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department’s voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.

So, did this decision by the Justice Department have any influence on the Texas gerrymandering attempt, led by now-indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay?

Of course not. As soon as the memo hit the political zone of the Bush administration, it was suppressed, and the Texas redistricting was given the Justice Department’s stamp of approval.

These people show absolutely no restraint in their corruption, not even the slightest.

President Bush has been called for jury duty. And he says he’s going to do it.

Does Judge Strother expect him to show up?

Why, yes, the judge said by telephone, the White House assured him that “the president considers it an important civic responsibility and duty.”

And, he said he was told, “the president didn’t want to be treated differently than anybody else.”

It’s deja vu, all over again. In 1996, as Texas Governor, he was called to jury duty:

GOP Gov. George W. Bush, saying that it’s “a feeble excuse” to say he’s too busy or too important for the task, reported for jury duty today.

The 1996 case is notable because it demonstrated Bush’s clear intent in lying in order to hide his drunk driving arrest.

Seeing as how it would be a great “I’m just a regular guy” publicity stunt, Bush enthusiastically agreed to do jury duty as governor in 1996. However, he was then assigned to a drunk driving case, which sent him into a panic: jurors would be asked–under oath–if they had ever been arrested for drunk driving. Time for a feeble excuse!

Then-gubernatorial-counsel Alberto Gonzales got Bush out of that mess by coming up with a lame “the governor might be asked to pardon this guy for drunk driving” excuse, and the judge, who I can only assume rolled his eyes, allowed Bush to slither off. Gonzales in now the Attorney General, by the way, wonder how that happened.

And here’s the liberal media striking yet again: I checked about 30 different major media articles, independently written, and found only two–one local and one AP version–that mentioned that Bush had been called for jury duty previously. Only the AP version brings up how Bush left blank the part of his jury form that asked about his criminal record, and only alludes slightly as to how Bush used the “governor’s pardon” excuse to dodge having to lie under oath or admit to drunk driving.

Outside of The Boston Globe, that AP story ran only in local Texas papers. All other non-Texas papers completely ignored the 1996 incident.

Darn that liberal media!

So there’s a story out that a military contractor with strong conservative ties has been paying Iraqi journalists to spin news favorably to the U.S. in the Iraqi press. The White House, of course, is feigning ignorance and concern, but they’re not fooling anyone.

My immediate reaction to this was, this is a surprise? While it may have had a different direction previously, Bush administration press manipulation in Iraq is old hat:

[April 05, 2004] BAGHDAD, Iraq — Inside the marble-floored palace hall that serves as the press office of the U.S.-led coalition, Republican Party operatives lead a team of Americans who promote mostly good news about Iraq.

Dan Senor, a former press secretary for Spencer Abraham, the former Michigan Republican senator who’s now energy secretary, heads the office packed with former Bush campaign workers, political appointees and ex-Capitol Hill staff members.

More than one-third of the U.S. civilian workers in the press office have GOP ties, running an enterprise that critics see as an outpost of Bush’s re-election effort.

So we’re supposed to be surprised that Bush is using the press in Iraq to spin things the way he wants? As this story demonstrates, he’s been doing it from the very beginning–it’s just his audience that’s changed. Now he’s trying to use the press to spin the news to Iraqis instead of to Americans.

And let’s not forget the the blatantly fake news reports that Bush generates here, not to mention the fact that they’ve been paying off reporters in the U.S. for some time now.

So forgive me if I am not in the least bit surprised about this news. Anyone with an eye open would recognize it as standard operating procedure for this White House. But if it’ll stir up antipathy to Bush and finally get someone to investigate and do something, then maybe this is to good purpose. But let’s not pretend it’s new, okay?

I wanted to touch on this subject because I hear so little in-depth discussion about the issue. It’s somewhat of a political-correctness third rail to talk about. There’s little doubt that there is more crime in poverty, even if one factors in the large amount of white-collar crime that goes uninvestigated, unprosecuted and under-punished. But to suggest a connection between poverty and crime is to draw sharp and impassioned criticism, accusations of economic bigotry and racism. Stating that there is a connection makes it sound like you are saying that poor people are innately criminal, which also suggests that they are innately poor. So most people tend to stay off the topic, especially in talking-head mode, where lengthy explanations don’t fit or work particularly well. But I thought I’d express my own theory on the matter, unresearched and unproven as it may be.

The way I see it, all of us exist on a spectrum of likelihood to commit a wrong. Some people will commit a wrong no matter what, even if they have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Other people would never commit a wrong, no matter how bad or desperate their situation may be. Most people live between those two extremes, with a variety of situational variables determining our exact location in that range. One way to refer to it is your “price”–what’s your price for doing something wrong? If someone asked you to commit a crime, how high a price would they have to offer for you to actually consider and possibly do it? Of course, the variables matter a lot: what kind of crime? What chance is there of being caught? What are your circumstances–are you well-off, justing getting by, desperately poor? Do you have needs or desires that cannot be met within your current means, and what are they?

This defines your place on that scale. We all like to think we’re way at the “never commit a crime” end, but then again, how many of us are in desperate situations? And that’s the defining variable when it comes to the connection between poverty and crime: whether things are good or bad for you.

Take the “likelihood to commit a wrong” spectrum, and add the dimension of “how well off are you.” If all of us were enjoying the best life, well-off, happy, hopeful and not needful of anything, the crime rate would be close to zero, as few people would have their “need to commit a wrong” trigger pulled. But go to the other end of the “well-off” scale, where all of us are in dire straits, desperate for food, needful of anything and everything, especially providing for children and other loved ones. Or it could be emotional strain, stress, or passion of the moment. There would still be some who never commit a crime, but there’s no denying that a lot more of us would be committing wrongs, our conditions for doing so having been met.

And so we exist between those extremes; but as our situations become more grave, hopeless and despairing, our triggers are pulled. And that’s why there would be more crime in a poverty-ridden area: not because the people there are more bent on crime, but because the situation of poverty brings more of us over that line. Take the people of a poor community and the people of a wealthy community and reverse their fortunes, and the results will be the same–those put in poverty will have more reason to commit a wrong. It’s not innate, it’s situational.

One interesting side discussion on this issue is, what keeps us from doing wrong? Is it fear of punishment, a sense of absolute morality, a desire not to harm or wrong others, or simple self-respect? More likely, of course, a combination of two or more of the above, if not a combination of all in differing degrees. This is where I have less respect for the whole “you’ll go to Hell if you sin” philosophy: it allows for empty morality, for someone who whose ethicality is weak and only kept in check by fear. But the concept of Hell is a different discussion, for a different time.

I found this image on a Hubble site; it shows the center of the M51 galaxy, the image being hundreds of light years across:

According to NASA:

The “X” is due to absorption by dust and marks the exact position of a black hole which may have a mass equivalent to one-million stars like the sun. The darkest bar may be an edge-on dust ring which is 100 light-years in diameter. … The second bar of the “X” could be a second disk seen edge on, or possibly rotating gas and dust in MS1 intersecting with the jets and ionization cones.

Me, I think they’re huge fans of The X-Files and are trying to tell us something; see one version of The X-Files’ logo below, and compare:

The Truth Is Waaaaay Out There.

I think it’s important for something to be made widely clear: this war was Bush’s failure, not anyone else’s. If he follows his past and present patterns, and those of the GOP in general, he will try to declare Iraq a victory. When that position inevitably fails to remain tenable, even as he continues to insist it was a victory, he will blame the loss on his political opponents, both pointing out that they voted to give him war powers and so were with him, while at the same time blaming them for undercutting the war effort, allowing “the terrorists” to win. He’s already doing it now.

The fact is, Bush was completely responsible for this one. The Democrats were in no way eager or willing to go to war; Bush politically boxed them in, forcing them, with just weeks to go before an election, to either give him war powers, or else vote against the war and be overwhelmingly smeared as being pro-Saddam and pro-terrorist, and likely lose the election in far greater numbers than they suffered as it was. Remember Andrew Card’s “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August”? This war was a marketing move from the beginning, a political ploy played out in classic Rovian style.

So the Democrats voted him the powers on the condition that he use them only as a last resort, though they likely knew full well Bush had zero intention of honoring that promise. But the point here is that it was Bush’s call, not the Democrats: if Bush had not rammed this war through, it never would have happened–and most certainly the Democrats never would have started it. So any claim about how the Democrats were “with him” or “for the war” is complete bull. They may have been culpable as far as they did not stop it, but politically, they did not have much choice.

The war itself was ill-conceived from the beginning, and there was no secret or mystery about it. Bush made massive errors right from the start. Fully aside from his knowing lies about Saddam’s offensive and WMD capacities, Bush’s conditions for going to war were never sufficient to allow for victory in the first place. Even his father, with a full, actual coalition behind him, was wise enough not to venture that far. And nothing less than a real coalition would have sufficed this time–not for invading forces, but for securing, staying and rebuilding forces. Bush did not wait for a full coalition to form, however, nor was he willing to do what it would take to form that coalition–assuming he even had the diplomatic skills to pull something like that off, which he almost certainly did not. So instead he went in with a small, partial coalition, so weak and fractured that even Bush called it a “coalition of the willing.”

There were not enough troops for the long haul. There was no exit plan. While the military strike worked (you can count on the U.S. military to do a good job in that regard), there was no planning for obvious contingencies like looting or an insurgency. There was no long-term planning, and the contingencies for setting up an internal government in Iraq were half-assed at best. The question is, why was that the case? And I believe the answer is, none of these things mattered to Bush. This was about politics, this was about oil–but it was never about really building a stable nation or a democracy.

The oil fields were paramount, but not the people, the infrastructure, national coherency or security, or anything else. The focus was on the mercenary desires of the administration; after all, only the political maneuvering and oil field control were well-planned, and that betrays their real focus. If making Iraq a true and secure Democracy were their real focus, if freeing the people were their real focus, why were there no plans for how to accomplish that? Either through pipe-dream naivety or, more likely, sheer neglect, the Bush administration did not feel anything else was worth planning for, or that it would simply take care of itself. By noting the only things that the Bush administration was careful about, what they did plan for, what they were assiduous about–by this you can see their real goals in the conflict.

As a result, very soon we saw the results of this poor planning. Oil and oil-related companies like Halliburton reaped huge windfalls, as did Bush and the GOP, politically: mission accomplished. After that, everything started to fall apart because none of it was a serious focus of the administration.

There were possibilities of success, had the affair been handled properly. Not much possibility, which is why Bush Sr. stayed away. But at least there had been a chance. Had a real coalition been built. Had any care been taking to securing Iraq and its people and not just the oil fields. Had international and especially Arab involvement been deeply and significantly established the moment the invasion ended (instead of greedily hanging on to absolute control of the economic goodies, the literal spoils of the war). Had any realistic and convincing intention of handing Iraq back to the Iraqis been put on the table immediately. Had the borders been guarded more carefully. Even with all that, it would have been touch-and-go, but at least there would have been a chance.

Right off from the start, Bush botched all of this. At every turn where something constructive could have been done, Bush turned away from it because it would have meant giving up the spoils. As time went on, the chances of salvaging something, anything close to stability, still existed but dwindled. As every month went by and the liquid opportunities for hope instead congealed into a quagmire, Bush “stayed the course” and closed up one possible window of hope after another, until the last strains of hope died out and there was really very little hope left, no matter what Bush or anyone else did. And that’s where we are now.

I believe, like many now do, that there is no remaining hope for salvaging Iraq. Bush has destroyed any such hope with his mismanagement and endless string of blunders, the hallmarks of a domestic political war applied to a real foreign country. Whether we leave now or leave ten years from now, the situation will differ little, except for the lives of American and other “coalition” soldiers destroyed in the interim.

Unfortunately, Bush has screwed up far worse than that: he’s created a situation where doing anything will cause disaster. If we leave, collapse and a civil war is likely, and even if not, Iran’s designs will likely replace our own, allowing them to take power in the region and the oil resources within. If we stay, it remains a quagmire for us, with an endless insurgency killing off our soldiers and the Iraqi people continuing to suffer under our control–and eventually, it is most likely that civil war and breakdown will be inevitable anyway.

The greatest irony here is that as bad as he was, Saddam Hussein was probably the best solution to a bad problem. Contained, Hussein would have been of little threat to us and would have kept Iraq in place, checking the Iranians, keeping the country secular and non-terrorist. More Iraqis are dying today under our control than they were under Hussein, and the future looks even more bleak than it did before we invaded. The Iraqis are not better off today than they were under Hussein. Count on Bush to do a worse job than Saddam Hussein did.

And that returns me to my thesis: Iraq is a totally botched job, a hopeless, bloody quagmire with no more hope of a solution and only the promise of bloody civil war with Iran waiting patiently to capitalize from it–and all of this is Bush’s design, Bush’s will, Bush’s incompetence. Bush is fully responsible. He owns it. He can’t blame the Democrats when he outmaneuvered and bullied them into giving him his way. Only Bush himself is to blame for what has come to pass, and what will come to pass in the years ahead. And when he tries to claim victory and at the same time blame the defeat on his political opponents, see it for the dishonest, cowardly whining that it is.

HBO’s current series, Rome, of course has to be broadcast in English for its American audience (god forbid we should have to read subtitles). But one question some have asked is, why do the Romans speak with British accents?

This is a common phenomenon, it seems–remember all those WWII films you saw where the Germans also spoke with British accents? It seems that whenever Hollywood has a large number of cast members supposedly speaking some European language, they’ve gotta have Brit accents. Maybe the idea is that if a European person were to study English, they’d learn from a Briton, and therefore they’d have a British accent. Or maybe the producers just think it sounds classy. But it still comes across as strange, when you think about it.

A similar question is why actors can’t be cast correctly in terms of ethnicity. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen supposedly Japanese characters on TV shows portrayed by people who don’t know any Japanese, and use incorrect accents. It can’t be that hard to find actors who actually speak the language, can it?

One example is the new film, Memoirs of a Geisha, which has stirred some controversy in Asia because it uses Chinese actors to fill Japanese roles. Some Japanese are upset that Japanese actors were not used for the film, shot in California. But some Chinese are even angrier, some suggesting violence against the Chinese stars for having sold out and taken roles representing China’s former imperial oppressors, from their point of view. One Chinese blogger even said, “She’s sold her soul and betrayed her country. Hacking her to death would not be good enough.” Well, isn’t that special?

On the one hand, I suppose it’s not such a big deal, and seems more than a little territorial: after all, no one would even blink if an actor of German descent played the role of a Russian, so long as they could play the role well enough. Peter Sellers played American, British, and German parts in Dr. Strangelove, and pulled it off with aplomb (though I’m not sure what native Germans might have thought of his performance). There must be countless times when European actors crossed ethnic lines, like a French actor playing an Italian (Gérard Depardieu played the Italian Columbus–though that may be a bad example), or an Italian actor playing a Spanish role, and so on and so on. So why should a Chinese actor playing a Japanese character be a problem, so long as they don’t sound funny?

On the other hand, why not use actors of the right ethnicity? It can come across as the filmmakers being lazy, not caring, or even as insulting–as if, for example, Japanese actors with enough skill to play the roles could not be found.

What I’m waiting for is a movie set in Japan, filmed with a fully bilingual cast; they could shoot the film in English and Japanese (a few extra takes for dialog scenes being all that is required), and release the film in both languages without the need for dubbing or subtitles. Does anyone know if that’s been done before?

If you sign up for Apple’s dot-Mac account, you get a variety of services, like an email account and 1 GB of disk space. They give you lots of bells and whistles, too, but in my trial for the service I found I never used them–and since I can use FTP and my domain’s disk space on my web hosting account, I never really needed it. Certainly not enough to pay $99 a year.

But there is now a Mac application that allows you to use a function just like iDisk, except it uses a GMail account and it’s completely free. The app is called gDisk (donationware). It’s a very simple app on SourceForge, no documentation, but it’s so easy you don’t need any. Just download and open, and you see this:

Under “Username,” just type your GMail address without the “@gmail.com.” For example, if your GMail address is “john.smith@gmail.com,” then just type “john.smith”. If you don’t have a GMail address, get one from a friend. It’s still on an invitation-only basis, but it’s so widespread that surely someone you know has an account and so can get you one. I have 100 invitations available at any given time, so I assume all others with accounts have so too. Gone are the days when this was a special thing and people actually auctioned off invitations on eBay.

Once you’ve logged in, you should see a blank window with some button at the top. Just click on the “New Label” button to add a folder. As you can see, I added several folders / labels, and some even come with custom icons if you give them the right name:

After that, it’s as easy as drag & drop. Just select a folder, drag icons into the window and drop them there as if it were a folder on your Desktop. An “transfer queue” dialog will appear, showing you the status of the upload. When it’s finished uploading, it may take a minute for the item to appear (switching to another folder and back again might speed that up). Now the item is in your 2.7 GB (and growing!) GMail account, and can be downloaded from any Internet connection in the world. Just open gDisk again, and drag & drop the item back onto your Desktop. Done and done.

The main drawback is that such network disks take time to upload and download the files, making it seem sluggish. But then, that’s true of any app like this, including iDisk. Also, in this early version of the program, you can’t save account settings and select them from a menu; you have to type your GMail user name each time, though the password will pop into place once you’ve done so. I would expect this to be remedied in a future version.

gDisk with a GMail account accomplishes the same thing as iDisk, providing you with the equivalent of dot-Mac’s core services, except it’s free and you get more than double the disk space. Hard to argue with that.

This is one massively bizarre movie. If you’re into Star Trek and Babylon 5, you gotta watch it. If not, you’ll probably be bored and confused. Either way, if you watch it, you’ll be very impressed. Not by the film’s chances of getting an Academy Award for writing or acting, but for the unbelievable effort and skill put into this thing.

Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning is a fan-made film spoof of Star Trek and Babylon 5. Created by a team of five amateur filmmakers in Finland over the course of seven years, it’s no run-of-the-mill video. Running one hour and forty-three minutes, it’s a pretty major production with, quite frankly, stunning visual effects–the kind you’d expect in a Hollywood film. These guys went all-out in making perfect recreations of dozens of ships from their favorite sci-fi TV shows, having it out in major space battles. Anyone familiar with Trek or B5 will instantly recognize that even the smallest details are in order here.

The plot and acting, while also impressive for a fan-made film, are a bit odd, though maybe that’s a cultural thing. The film is in Finnish, available with English subtitles. It follows the adventures of Captain Pirk, from a Star-Trek-like future, who becomes stranded in the present day after his ship crashes on a mission to the past. Pirk, Dwarf and Info (spoofs of Kirk, Worf and Data) get tired of trying to blend in without changing history, and when the timeline changes anyway, Pirk decides to take over the Earth and become Emperor. Using his crashed ship’s technology and a Russia wanting to bring back the Soviet Union, they build a giant starship (the Enterprise from the latest movies) and conquer the planet. They then build a fleet of ships, discover a “maggot hole,” and travel to an alternate universe based upon Babylon 5. Whereupon we get space battles and so on.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff in this film. The conquering of Earth is played out artistically well in the fashion of an old Soviet-era propaganda film, for example. If you look carefully, you can spot several in-jokes, some based on the sci-fi series, and others on general popular culture (look for the McDonald’s take-off in the Babel 13 space station, for example). But the best laughs come in the last half of the film, so if it’s not funny at the start, hang on and it’ll get better. The acting is fair, pretty good considering the amateur production. The plot is strange and wanders a bit at times, but is serviceable. The costumes look amateurish. There are lots of umlauts. But as I mentioned, it’s the special effects that’ll catch your attention on this one. The sets are either existing 21st-century sets, or are virtual sets–again, impressively done. The effects are so professional-looking, in fact, that they look out of place with the acting and costumes, as if they stole the FX from real Star Trek films.

The movie is a free download from the makers’ web site, starwreck.com, using either BitTorrent or a direct download from mirror sites. You can even order the film on a DVD. The trailer is also available. Already it is the most-viewed Finnish film ever made (probably most due to the fact that it’s free), without about 3 million downloads so far. I have a feeling that these guys will be getting job offers from effects studios–which may have been the idea in the first place. And I have to wonder what Straczynski (the creator of Babylon 5) and the various Trek producers must think of all this….