When Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is released worldwide, it will open on May 18th, 19th or 20th everywhere. Except Japan. Japan is the only country on the list with a release date later than that. And not just later, but considerably later. More than a month and a half later. What the heck is with that?!?

Can’t be because of subtitling–Korea has the same concern and they open on May 20. Latvia and the United Arab Emirates get it on time. So what’s holding things up here in Japan? Just asking.

The frustrating part is that by that time, the contents of the movie will be so widespread, so part of common knowledge that it will be well-nigh impossible not to see or hear stuff (called “spoilers”) that you don’t want to hear.

Okay, maybe Japan has O-bon season in August–but that’s still a month away from the July opening date. And you’d think that this is a movie that kind of transcends holiday seasons.

As if I don’t have enough trouble getting to sleep…

Just a few hours after I managed to doze off, I was awakened rather sharply by the room moving around beneath me. A particularly strong quake shook us up here at 4:46 am. It felt like one of the stronger quakes I’ve felt, and no wonder–it was a 5.4 and the epicenter was not far, only fifty kilometers or so from where I live. Central Tokyo must have felt the jolt even stronger. Needless to say, it took me a few minutes to get back to sleep after that one.

So I wake up this morning, and we have some snow. At least here in the Tama area. None on the ground as yet, but still, a nice touch–as long as it’s this cold and precipitating, I’d rather have snow than rain.

When I first came to live in Japan, I was in Toyama City, up near Niigata, on the Japan Sea coast. As usually happens, I fell ill enough to see the doctor from time to time. One time it was for ringing in my ears. I went to see the doctor, and after a short examination, he gave me three types of medicine: pills, capsules, and bags of powder to be taken with water. Some time later, I had a stomach illness. The doctor examined me, then gave me three types of medicine: pills, capsules, and bags of powder to be taken with water. Later still, I suffered from headaches. Guess what the doctor gave me?

It began to be a bit of a joke, and the beginning of my lack of respect for doctors in Japan. All the medicines looked alike, and I kind of doubted that all three of those maladies really would require so similar a course of the exact same types of medicines. And if the doctors were just trying to placebo me into feeling well, wouldn’t a single medicine suffice?

Of course, this was before I found out more about how the insurance system works. It has set fees for medical treatments, and doctors find ways to milk this for all it’s worth. That’s why a dentist once scheduled me for four appointments to have my teeth cleaned–lower left teeth one visit, lower right the next, and so on. Another dentist did root canal on me, and did it over twelve appointments–again, dividing the visits into tiny tasks. The insurance, it turns out, pays more for multiple visits. How nice–waste my time and make unnecessary alterations to my medical treatment to get a few more bucks here and there.

It’s the same thing with drugs. Each hospital has a pharmacy across the street or somewhere very near, and that’s where they send you to buy your drugs. It also is usually a business which the doctors either co-own or get kickbacks from. So people get rather over-medicated quite often. Thus the rather large assortment of pills, pictured at top, turned up when I was cleaning out my cabinets and drawers last weekend.

Another disadvantage is that you get them in the blister-pack form, and usually only with directions for taking them. What you do not get is drug names or explanations of what each one is for, unless you ask the doctor when s/he prescribes them. I prefer the orange-brown-bottle-with-the-white-childproof-cap system where it says the name of the drug and what it’s for. And don’t expect drug names to be the same, especially not the brand names printed on the packing. The doctor can be helpful there, though–which is how I found out that one drug I was prescribed was none other than Rohypnol, which I had heard mentioned in news stories and TV dramas as the date-rape drug. Kind of startled me at the time.

Your best bet: either find a doctor you can trust (not always easy, especially to find one nearby enough to be convenient), or ask your doctor if those medications are really necessary, and which ones could you perhaps do without?

Caught another speed trap on film recently. It’s not too hard to do, actually, if you happen to use the streets the police here choose for their little setup. I have seen three speed traps in Japan. Actually, I’ve seen a speed traps dozens of times–but it’s always in the same three places. Not just the same general area, but the exact same spot, every time. I’ve posted on this before, but didn’t have time to document it all on film in detail.

One would think that drivers along these roads should easily enough be able to note where the cops set up their traps, and just slow down at those specific points. Not very smart or creative on the part of the police–drivers should be able to figure out that they can break any and all traffic laws elsewhere, they just have to slow down and behave on this 50-meter stretch of road.

Here’s how it works. First, they choose a road out in the countryside. The road is always the same type: long and wide, no pedestrian crossings, intersections only every half kilometer or so, and one side of the road a river or embankment. The kind of road where, say, 50 mph (80 kph) is completely reasonable–but where the posted limit is 25 mph (40 kph). You’ve got the radar cop sitting at a hidden spot (behind a telephone pole, in some bushes, etc.) with his radar setup exposed but placed so as to blend in as well as possible. In the shots below, you’ve got the radar gun looking almost like a post in a long white railing, and the cop sitting behind bushes on some stairs.

It’s almost invisible, but you can just see the guy’s nose sticking out from behind the bushes at left, just where the hand railing disappears behind the bushes. Below, closer looks at the radar:

You might even notice how close the radar gun is in appearance to the one I caught 1 1/2 years ago, about 10km away in a different city (older photo on left):

After the hidden cop catches a car or bike going fast enough, he talks to the other cops (by radio, but he also stepped out and signaled sometimes) down the street:

One of these guys has a machine which is in radio contact with the radar machine run by the first guy, and he has a little receipt printer which spits out the incriminating data. He does this while the uniformed motorcycle cop goes out into the street with a little “Stop” flag on a pole, while he and another motorcycle cop stand ready to zoom after anyone who decides to make a break for it. (Another reason they choose roads like this: there are no streets for people to turn off to in case they notice the radar gun too late; this is the “fish in a barrel” aspect to the exercise.)

Then the driver is led over to a desk set up by the cops, who can handle up to five speeders at a time, no waiting:

Of course, this would be far more respectable if they were catching people who sped unreasonably–in a way that was dangerous at all. But one common characteristic to all speed traps in Tokyo that I have seen or heard of is that they are set up at a location based upon how easy it is to catch people, not how dangerously they are driving. The people they stop are not hazards on the road, they are simply driving in excess of speed limits which are set ridiculously low for the road. And from what I understand about Japanese traffic tickets, the cops involved get a cut of the proceeds.

It really puts you in mind of the “Speed Trap” song by Hoyt Axton:

I’m the cop in a little bitty town
And I don’t get much pay
Oh but I caught seventeen out of state cars
And four of my friends today

Yeah, I let the hometown boys go home
They paid five dollars’ bail
Oh but all the drivers in the out of state cars
Had to go to jail

Well, they hollered and they moaned, and they cried and they groaned
They all swore that they’d sue
But the judge was high, and so was I
And we needed the money, too

Yeah, the judge and me, we got a deal y’see
We split the money fair
‘Cept for thirty percent to the county seat
To keep the law out of our hair

And old Charlie’s working out real good
Down at the corner store where the red light is
He sees them out of state plates two blocks away
And when they get right up on top of that green light
Old Charlie pushes that secret button underneath the corner drugstore counter
That yellow light only lasts for a tenth of a second

Yeah, the county pays me about forty a week
Ain’t that the livin’ end
If it wasn’t for them tourists in them out of state cars,
I’d have no loot to spend

But the way it stands this year so far
I’ve made a hundred thou’
For a high school dropout, I’m-a doin’ fine
I make more than the president now (‘course, he’s honest)

So if you’re drivin’ down the road
And flashin’ lights you see
If they’re on top of a red Rolls Royce
You can bet your boots it’s me

‘Cause I’m the cop in a little bitty town
And I’d sure like to see
All them drivers in them out of state cars
Try to get by me

So now, apparently, we should take great pride in the fact that Americans must work three jobs just to keep above the poverty line. Since Bush’s McJob Society has so many working not just for a minimum wage, but for a minimum wage that he’s against increasing though it has the lowest buying power in many decades, we should all be so lucky to have three whole jobs to work at. One can only suppose that in Bush’s tiny little mind he was thinking, “Wow! Isn’t this such a great country that there are so many jobs that everyone can have three of them!”

Here’s what I’m talking about: Bush having a dialog with a single mother of three in her late fifties with a mentally challenged child:

THE PRESIDENT: …There’s a certain comfort to know that the promises made will be kept by the government.

MS. MORNIN: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: And so thank you for asking that. You don’t have to worry.

MS. MORNIN: That’s good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.

THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?

MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)

MS. MORNIN: Not much. Not much.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, hopefully, this will help you get you sleep to know that when we talk about Social Security, nothing changes.

MS. MORNIN: Okay, thank you.

Uniquely American? What is this idiot thinking? It’s supposed to be a good thing? How about having one job that pays well enough for her to live on without having to work eighty hours a week? And the audience applauds this? I haven’t seen such a mindlessly follow-along audience since the one that applauded Dan Quayle for spelling “potato” with an “e.”

Not to mention the fact that Bush’s plan for social security would take money away from the system when this woman will be retiring, so for the government–with Bush long gone by then–to keep the promises he’s making, it’ll have to go trillions of dollars more into debt. And since that would cripple the economy, the plain fact is that, no matter what lies Bush spouts today, the government of the future will not keep the phony-baloney promises he is making right and left. They will be forced to cut benefits as well as raise taxes.

In the meantime, there’s a poll out that shows that fully two-thirds of all Americans think that it is a better idea to eliminate the salary cap on payroll taxes than to dive into privatization–and that’s after Bush’s constant push for his plan, and very little mention of the cap elimination option in the media, which makes the numbers even more significant.

The only problem: it involves taxing rich people, something which just wouldn’t be fair. It is doubtful that Dubya could at all make himself put such a horrible onus on those poor rich folk who are having such a hard time getting by. After all, some of those really rich people don’t have any jobs at all! Not like the lucky woman at the rally who has three! Obviously the poor and middle class, being endowed with so many jobs each, are much better equipped to pay for all of this!

I dunno. Maybe poor old George is confused by that liberal media, by folks like Brit Hume over at that left-leaning Fox News Network. Hume pointed out recently that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the creator of Social Security himself, foretold the privatization of the system, saying that private savings accounts should supplant the government accounts. Which was all BS, of course, Roosevelt never said that. He said that private accounts should accompany the government ones, and he said that one of three aspects of the initial system (the one in which retirees who were not able to pay into the system before it started got payments anyway) should be supplanted by accounts paid for. Fortunately, the good folks at Media Matters caught this one and it has thus be debunked–but not before a lot of idiot reporters simply regurgitated Hume’s fake claim as fact without checking into it.

Not convinced Hume was lying? Here’s the FDR quote:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

There were three different aspects of social security: (1) pensions for those who hadn’t paid in because the system was new (“old-age pension plan”); (2) the compulsory system we know today (“self-supporting plan”); and (3) the voluntary plan. You can see that FDR clearly defined the “self-supporting” plans to be the compulsory ones, not the voluntary ones, and that the compulsory system replace the temporary “old-age pension” system. However, Hume reported:

In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, “Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age,” adding that government funding, quote, “ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

Note that Hume did not just misquote FDR, but he deliberately misquoted him–carefully removing words and connecting the out-of-context segments so that they appear to say something that they are not. He was trying to make it seem like the “self-supporting” plans were the same as the “voluntary” accounts, and that FDR proposed that the voluntary accounts replace the compulsory system, not the old-age pension system. Al Franken has it all parsed out here, but the bottom line is that Hume clearly displayed intent to deceive his listeners (and, as it happened, others in the media). This is not an error, it is a lie, a fully intended distortion, by a “journalist.”

So will Fox fire Hume for doing something other journalists are usually fired for? Yeah, right. It is more plausible to figure that Fox encouraged Hume to do what he did. In the meantime, millions of Americans will hear Hume’s lie, but not the fact that it was a lie (Fox probably will never air that fact), and people will be more and more persuaded to accept Bush’s kamikaze retirement plan. The question is, can Bush and his compadres in the media shovel enough bullshit to cover up the even worse stench of his plan underneath, so that eventually enough Americans will still vote for Republicans despite their having voted for it? Despite past demonstrations of herdlike idiocy, I hold out hope for the ability of the people to see what a steaming pile Bush dogma this is. Stay tuned.

I went out today to see if I couldn’t get some birding done. Since I got the 10x Canon digicam, it’s a lot easier to take photos of the local wildlife as you don’t have to get too close to get a good shot. In particular, I’ve been wanting to get a good shot of a Wagtail, a nice black-and-white bird I’ve seen around town for some time, but have never gotten a decent snap of. So I went to the neighborhood park and to the Tama River to see what I could find. Here are the results:

When I first arrived at the local park, I saw a small flock of these birds, which resembled sparrows or chickadees. It is, in fact, the Great Tit (hey, I don’t make up these names); this is the best shot I could get of one. Despite hanging back to a distance of 10 meters or more, the birds were all rather skittish, and it was hard to get a good, clean shot.

The next bird was a pleasant surprise:

This is a Red-flanked Bluetail, also known as an Orange-flanked Bush-Robin. I was surprised to see such a colorful bird, though at first I didn’t even notice the flash of blue in the tail, or even the yellow spot under the wing:

This next bird is common enough:

The Jungle Crow, which sometimes seems to me like it’s got hair around its beak. These are big, loud pests all throughout Tokyo, cawing from the first stroke of dawn, and getting into the garbage left out for pickup and making a mess of it. Huge birds, these, and sometimes quite bold.

This bird was a bit of a surprise: the Brown-eared Bulbul. Never heard of it before, and had a bit of trouble identifying it, but there it was. A pair, actually, resting in a tree. Its feathers can stand out and look spiky at times.

This pretty little fellow had me fooled for a while–I thought it was some kind of wagtail–but it’s not, it’s a Dusky Thrush. I found it hopping along the ground outside the local tennis courts, cocking its head to listen for insects in the grass.

Then there were the usual ubiquitous Tree Sparrows, one of which I caught in flapping motion:

And finally, down near the river, gliding quietly atop the wind, a trio of Black Kites. Though I only caught solo photos, the three sometimes met up and tangled in the air–shots I missed and wished I hadn’t.

Not at all a bad collection for just spending a few hours within a kilometer of home. I never did get a Wagtail–next time, maybe–but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety I found. I always considered local birds to be limited to just a few–crows, sparrows, pigeons, and the occasional Wagtail or Kite. But looking at a variety of birding sites in Japan, it seems like there is a lot more out there than those birds and the Bluetail, Bulbul, Tit and Thrush. Come to think of it, we do get some Swallows from time to time–but they’re very hard to catch in flight.

The photos, by the way, are generally not reduced much in size, if at all–many are just cropped, and some are cropped and reduced.

I’m hoping to get out a bit more often, see if I can’t find some good birding spots, and get some more photos. Who knows, this could even turn into a hobby again–I used to belong to the Audubon Society when I was a kid.

“Let me talk about North Korea.

It is naive and dangerous to take a policy that he suggested the other day, which is to have bilateral relations with North Korea. Remember, he’s the person who’s accusing me of not acting multilaterally. He now wants to take the six-party talks we have — China, North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the United States — and undermine them by having bilateral talks. … That is a bad policy. Of course, we’re paying attention to these. It’s a great question about Iran. That’s why in my speech to the Congress I said: There’s an “Axis of Evil,” Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and we’re paying attention to it. And we’re making progress.”

–George W. Bush, in the second presidential debate

Fast-forward by four months:

In a surprising admission, North Korea’s hard-line Communist government declared publicly today for the first time that it has nuclear weapons.

It also said that it will boycott United States-sponsored regional talks designed to end its nuclear program, according to a North Korean Foreign Ministry statement transmitted today by the reclusive nation’s wire service.

Pyongyang said it has “manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration’s undisguised policy to isolate and stifle” North Korea, and that it will “bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal.”

The statement, considered a definitive policy pronouncement, said that North Korea, led by the reclusive dictator Kim Jong Il, is pulling out of the talks after concluding that the second Bush administration would pursue the “brazen-faced, double-dealing tactics” of dialogue and “regime change.” (New York Times)

Well, that worked well, didn’t it? If that’s progress, I’d hate to think what his idea of backsliding is.

Bush, focused on vital matters like dismantling social security, pushing for ineffective programs like abstinence-only sexual education, slashing vital services for veterans and the poor, and cutting even more taxes for rich people, apparently hasn’t had time for small details like nuclear proliferation in North Korea or Iran. To say the least, his eye has not exactly been on the ball in such matters; bilateral negotiations which would allow direct presidential involvement would get a hell of a lot more done as Kim Jong Il responds much better to such focused attention. But Bush avoids such involvement most likely because he’s simply too incompetent to handle such things; in pushing for regional talks and distancing himself from North Korea, Bush hasn’t accomplished one damn thing except to piss them off while they build more and more nukes. Well done, George. Now that the world is stable and safe, you can get back to your Medicare fraud and your quarterly one-month vacations.

When starting to read the article “Mac Mini: The Emperor’s New Computer,” you might take it seriously–but not for too long. The write-up is so tongue-in-cheek that lots of people might actually believe it’s not satire, at least for a while. An amusing read, especially if you know about computer technology–for example, the difference between USB and PS/2, DVI and VGA–and if you know the facts about the Mac Mini already.

It’s fun to read this article as if this guy were serious, though: he comes across that way as the dumbest computer “expert” ever. And in so portraying this parody of a reviewer, highlights why the Mac Mini is better–or more specifically, why Windows sucks. I especially like the part where he mixes up the iPod Shuffle claim (“smaller than most packs of gum” and weighs “less than four quarters”) with the Mac Mini, then goes on a rant about it. Or the part about how Apple’s Mail is inferior to Outlook: “For example, there is no Outlook Express for email, but Apple includes a program called Mail, which is like a stripped-down email client that can’t execute scripts or open attachments without user intervention,” features which would flood your PC with viruses.

Well, not all the streets have no name. The larger ones do. But most don’t.

Japan’s streets are usually not laid out in a rectangular grid like American streets more often are. The blocks seem to be divided in a much more haphazard fashion, like people just claimed this bit of land or that, and the streets just flowed around them. This by itself is enough to confuse any non-native person navigating Japan’s streets, but the fact that most streets have no name, no street signs to guide your way makes it even more difficult. Because streets tend to jig this way and jag that way, it is very easy to lose your sense of direction–I’ve done that more than once, and I’ve got a fairly good sense of direction.

Here’s how it’s laid out. You start with a city block (called a “banchi“), which has a certain number of lots on it. Each lot has a number. The numbering begins at some point on the block, then runs around that block ascending, until you reach the starting point again. Not all numbers are used, and the pattern–if there is one–is hard to see. Certainly not like the U.S. system where even and odd numbers are used on either side of the street. And the block is not usually going to be a rectangle, and the lots are often uneven Rarely are they organized, and usually very different kinds of buildings share the same block–you can have an apartment building next to a factory next to a wealthy person’s home next to a convenience store next to a few regular houses and then a trucking company, and so on. Okay, usually it’s not that diverse, but after seeing so many neighborhoods in Japan, you get the clear sense that zoning is not a big thing here.

Next, the blocks are grouped together into divisions of the “neighborhood,” as you might call it. Each division is called a “chome” and is made up of some dozens of blocks. Each block has its own number, and while they usually are sequential, that sequence may wander and meander somewhat. You could be walking down a street, and come to an intersection, and even though all four visible blocks are in the same division, they might have numbers like 7, 8, 21 and 34. The sequence of numbering is usually most apparent on a map, not from the ground. There seems to be no universal logic to how the block numbers are assigned.

Each “neighborhood” (called a “cho” or “machi“) is divided up into anywhere from one to perhaps even a dozen “chome.” Usually the number of chome is four or five, but there are all kinds of variations, again seeming to follow rather non-standard rules, if there are any rules to this.

Finally, put all the neighborhoods together and you get a ward/borough (“ku“), or some sort of village, town or city (“mura,” “machi” or “shi,” respectively). These then collect to form a prefecture, kind of like a state or a province.

In the U.S., our addresses are initially linear–using streets–but then go to a radial zooming-out system. In Japan, addresses are purely radial. First there is the building number, then the block number, then the neighborhood division number, then the neighborhood, city/ward, prefecture and country.

Take the map fragment, from Machida City, shown below:

This focuses on the area shared by two neighborhood divisions: the orange 7th chome of Sagami Ohno Neighborhood at top, and below, the pinkish 1st chome of Kami Tsuruma Neighborhood. The big bright orange line is a major boulevard, so it’ll have a name (Tokyo Kanjou, or the Tokyo Ring Road). You can see that it is intersected by a semi-largish white road; sometimes a road that size has a name, but not this time–the Tokyo Ring Road is the only named street on this part of the map. The blue numbers are block numbers, and the smaller red ones are lot numbers. Note the “block” numbers for the uppermost neighborhood above the orange road: the numbers are in the thousands, indicating that it is a neighborhood (machi) with no divisions (chome); in this case, there are no division numbers and even no block numbers–each number is a lot number. So instead of having an address like 7-31-22, the number is just something like 1880.

You might think that the block numbers and lot numbers could help, but these are not always easy to spot on the ground. The closest thing to street signs in most places in Japan are small placards on telephone poles which, along with local advertising, show the address down to the block number. But these are too small to note while driving, and even when walking, they are sometimes absent; people rarely use them for directions. Some residences will have the address on a small plate on the outside wall of the lot, but that is the exception, not the rule.

Now, there are some landmarks to assist you. Note the blue box with the white letters; that’s the name of the intersection. Intersection names can be a help as they do not depend on street names, but as you can see, there are not many of them. So what we are left with are landmarks. You can see two McDonald’s, a 7-11, and a supermarket (“Coop,” right at the named intersection). After that, you have to depend on traffic lights, pedestrian overpasses, schools (the brown buildings just above left of center are an elementary school), hospitals (the cross-in-a-shield mark at center right is one, the Mori Clinic), car dealerships (trust me, there’s a Toyota and a Honda dealership in there), and so on. So directions from point A to point B are heavy on landmarks. “Go two traffic lights down, take a left and when you see the fire station, take the next right. The place you’re looking for is about 30 meters down the road, just after the small park on your left.”

Needless to say, a lot of people get lost. Especially when maps provided by businesses are heavily distorted in terms of distances and relative positions.

You can also see on this map the haphazard layout of blocks and streets. And you can see the variety of buildings in a small area. Take the Coop supermarket: above it is an apartment block, and above that is a factory (marked by the circle with what looks like a Roman numeral “I” in it). Just below it on the map is a fire station, across from which is a kindergarten. Kitty-corner from the Coop across the intersection is the Toyota dealership, and across from that is a pharmaceutical company. In all the vacant spaces are houses and any number of small shops, warehouses, apartments, and so on. In short, it’s a mess. But people get by somehow.

After Bush gave huge windfall tax breaks to wealthy Americans flush after the Clinton boom, the deficit is as high as ever. Although Clinton turned the prior Bush’s deficit into a surplus in just eight years, the new Bush says that in nine years he can only achieve cutting his newly-created deficit in half. And how is he going to do it?

Tax the poor, of course. Not in the form of an actual tax hike, but instead by slashing their services. He wants to gouge education, welfare, health care, veteran’s benefits and housing by so much that even some Republicans are gagging. In just education alone, Bush wants to wring dry “school dropout prevention, state grants for vocational and technical preparation and Even Start, a family literacy program.” Cut food stamps, Medicaid benefits, veteran’s drug subsidies–a laundry list of items that Bush naturally neglected to inform Americans of before the election. Nothing on the list will take away anything from wealthy people.

And even after slashing all of those services, Bush still only takes away $15 or $20 billion a year in a projected $400 billion deficit–which conveniently does not include $80 billion for Bush’s Middle East wars, nor does it factor in costs for Bush’s desired social security privatization nor for the tax cuts for the rich that he wants to extend even further–an obscenity when you consider that he is trying to give billions to the rich while at the same time trying to strip away programs that help the poor just to scrape by. A tax cut for Bill Gates right along with taking food stamps and Medicaid from the poor. How inhuman is that? Is he going to give us more BS about how “it’s only fair”?

Fact is, Bush isn’t cutting the deficit at all, not if he gets what he wants this year–in fact, he’s on his way to expand the deficit greatly–but he has no trouble stopping along the way to bash the working poor and tear the heart out of primarily Democratic programs, while the Republicans in control of Congress continue their pork-barrel spending spree.

Yep, it’s a Bush budget, all right.

If you want to get the latest information and rumors about Macintosh products, there are a few good places to visit. Macsurfer.com has an excellent daily listing of Mac-related articles and even blog entries (this blog has been listed there several times), updated every day. If you’re looking for a story on anything related to the Mac, that’s the place to go.

For concentrated rumors, Think Secret may be the most often quoted, but MacRumors has the most comprehensive information around, with discussion areas that have a lot of good feedback.

But the place not to go to: MacOSRumors (not to be confused with the excellent MacRumors). You may have seen the link I had to their site on my linkboard at right, but no longer. For some time, they’re been unreliable in both their information and how often they update their site (too many “coming soon” claims that are never followed up), but most annoyingly, they’re more of an ad site than a Mac rumors site. Want to see a story? Click through ads to get there. Ads all over the place. And something that surprised me: they have pop-under ads that actually get through Mozilla’s pop-up ad blocker, something I did not think was even possible. It’s the only site I have been to where this happens.

I wrote them about it when it first happened, telling them I would not return as long as they had such ads. They sent back an email assuring me that it was a fluke, and when they caught an advertiser doing that, they would cut them off immediately. Just that alone sounded like BS–the pop-under ads were not coming from advertisers’ pages, they were coming straight from MacOSRumor’s code. And sure enough, subsequent visits have brought more pop-unders. So I have switched their link with one for Think Secret; I will not return to the site and I advise you to avoid it as well.

I typically do not comment on anything that Ann Coulter says, for the reason that she is a pitiful wretch of a person who just says outrageous stuff to enrage people. But this one was too hard to pass up. Commenting on anti-Bush demonstrations in Canada, she noted, in her typical obnoxious manner, that Canada “needs us. They’d better hope the United States doesn’t roll over one night and crush them.” Explaining this, she noted that Canada used to be our good ally because they did everything we wanted them to do, specifically sending their people to fight our wars. “Canada sent troops to Vietnam,” she claimed to CBC’s Bob McKeown for Canadian TV. Because they sent troops to Vietnam, she reasoned, they should be willing to send troops to Iraq.

Turns out they didn’t.

MCKEOWN: “Canada didn’t send troops to Vietnam.”

COULTER: “I don’t think that’s right.”

MCKEOWN: “Canada did not send troops to Vietnam.”

COULTER: “Indochina?”

MCKEOWN: “Uh no. Canada …second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No.”

COULTER: “I think you’re wrong.”

MCKEOWN: “No, took a pass on Vietnam.”

COULTER: “I think you’re wrong.”

MCKEOWN: “No, Australia was there, not Canada.”

COULTER: “I think Canada sent troops.”

MCKEOWN: “No.”

COULTER: “Well. I’ll get back to you on that.”

MCKEOWN (voiceover): “Coulter never got back to us — but for the record, like Iraq, Canada sent no troops to Vietnam.”

Of course, if Coulter had just thought about it for a minute, she would have realized that many of those kids during Vietnam who left the U.S. to avoid fighting went to Canada. Duh.

You can read about it here, but even better, Michael Moore has it available on QuickTime on this page. It’s a real hoot, watching her squirm like that–knowing she’s got a big point completely wrong, and yet her titanic ego won’t let her admit to it.

Since Gene Roddenberry came back in 1987 to resuscitate Star Trek on television, it has been on the air in one form or another for the entire eighteen years up to today. In 1993, when The Next Generation had one year left, Deep Space Nine went on the air. A year later, Voyager joined in and the two Trek shows ran concurrently. When Voyager went off the air in the Spring of 2001, Enterprise picked up the ball that autumn and has been running since. TNG, DS9 and Voyager each ran for seven years before they were retired–but it looks like Enterprise will not be so lucky. After the end of this, its fourth year, Star Trek: Enterprise will face cancellation–and it looks like no fan uprising will keep it on the air.

The reasons for cancellation are pretty clear-cut: it’s doing badly in the ratings, so much so that its rich demographics can’t save it. Part of the ratings problems have to do with the fact that it is on UPN, which is not exactly a powerhouse of a network; part has to do with the fact that it has not been the most appealing show on the air; and part of it has to do with the fact that it was tossed into the Friday-night trash bin (like the original series was in the 60’s) where it has languished this year. Paramount has its 100 episodes which will keep the show alive in syndication, and for them, that’s all that is necessary. And hopes that the show might be picked up by the SciFi channel, like the popular, long-running Stargate SG-1 series (now in season eight) after Showtime axed it, have been dashed by Exec Producer Rick Berman, who says the show won’t be shopped around.

Which is too bad for Enterprise, which was just getting its footing. Each Trek series got off and running at different times, and Enterprise, which got a good push last year with the season-long “Xindi” arc, has been doing much better this year, winding plotlines and Trek “history” from the original series into the Enterprise storylines. But probably the most important improvement has been that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga finally let go of their control to the show and gave it to Manny Coto, who improved the show tremendously. But it came too late–Berman and Braga let go only because they knew the show was doomed.

So now they’re talking about giving the franchise a rest, which might not be such a bad idea. But what it really needs is new blood. Berman and Braga had been with Trek ever since it began its current run in 1987. Eighteen years is too long for two people to be in control of the franchise, and their stagnant direction has been one of the biggest reasons Trek has not been doing well. Hopefully, when Paramount decides to revive the franchise again in four or five years, they will be wise enough to seek out someone talented and fresh, with a respect for the show and the fans.

The end game for Bush’s disastrous social security privatization plan is drawing near. This time Bush’s Reality Distortion Field™ is wavering, and the general public is getting the idea that it’s nothing more than an ultra-conservative attempt to destroy one of the most successful government programs ever. (Bush has already mucked things up at NASA, another brilliant success story–what’s next, is he going to try to dismantle the interstate highway system after this?) Even the Wall Street Journal (subscription only; here is an article about it) is now questioning the whole idea–and the answer is not positive.

It boils down to this: Bush claims that social security is headed for bankruptcy. And he’s dead wrong. Like with Apple Computer, people have been proclaiming doom since the start, and it hasn’t come true yet. Under the status quo, in another 40 or 50 years, social security will have enough money to make only 80% or so of its payments, unless, of course, we find another way to fund it. And there is a solution that won’t destroy social security or cripple the economy–but Bush claims there’s no feasible way to do that, so instead let’s privatize.

Unfortunately, privatization is not an answer, it’s a wrecking ball. It will take as much as 1/3 of all contributions into social security and divert them to private accounts. That will not help social security, it will devastate it, by sucking up so much of its funding that it will go truly bankrupt decades sooner! It will incur up to $15 trillion in debt before it starts paying off, which would be literally crippling to the American economy. Furthermore, the WSJ article shows how social security privatization has failed so miserably in other countries that many look at our system as an ideal they wish they could get back.

And, as it turns out, there is a real solution. Right now, the social security tax rate is 12.4%–meaning that, unless you are self-employed, you pay 6.2% from your own paycheck, and your employer handles the other half. But there is a built-in tax cut for the rich here: the tax cuts off at $90,000. So someone making $90 thou a year pays exactly the same amount of payroll tax as someone making $90 million a year. In other words, we have a regressive tax, where the rich pay less than the poor.

The Wall Street Journal (free article) points out the obvious solution: repeal the cap of $90,000, and the problem is solved. Social security will be solvent for at least the next 75 years, and there will be no need for privatization–not that there is any need for it now!

I’ve been writing for a while on how referrer spam is making the blog visitor stats semi-useless. Spammers, hoping that bloggers will list the top several sites which send visitors to them (with links to the referrers included), barrage blogs with massive amounts of fake referrals. That is, they “look at” your blog, and in so doing, fool your site into believing that the “visit” originated from a link on their site leading to yours. The “visit” will be recorded in your logs and their site gets credit as having sent the “visitor” your way via a link on their page, even though the link doesn’t really exist. The more they barrage your site, the higher they will rise in your rankings.

Now, I don’t post such rankings. Most bloggers don’t. And my stats files are in protected directories which others can’t access. So it is for most bloggers. But that doesn’t stop the spammers. Of my top 100 referrers in AwStats, only two are legitimate. The vast majority of the spam referrals are about poker, and probably most if not all are generated by the “Texas Holdem” cockroach that so many bemoan.

Now the good people who write code are finally starting to react–Tony at juju.org has created a script that accesses the MT-Blacklist file to actively clean out log files. Ron at Groovy Mother has created a hack for AwStats that will filter out referral spam from its logs.

So you’d think I’d be a happy camper, right? Except that so far, the hacks introduced are at the same level of many hacks: designed for people who know a lot more about computers than I do, including use of the command line interface. The instructions are greek to me, no for-beginners kind of stuff that says step-by-step what to do. They assume I know exactly where to put the code and how to integrate it, stuff like that. Heck, I have no idea of where AwStats resides on my site or if I can even access it for a hack. Movable Type and MT-Blacklist are the next step up, scripted code but with documentation so you get taken by the hand through the process–well enough, anyway, so that it only takes a limited amount of time scratching your head to figure out how to get it to work. I will, of course, ask on the pages of the scripters if they’ll provide such instructions, but in the past I haven’t had too much luck when I do that.

Still, it’s a great first step to getting the spamming bastards’ maelstrom down to a dull roar.

Japan’s treatment of the Mad Cow Disease phenomenon is becoming increasingly similar to how the media in this country reacted to the AIDS outbreak in the 80’s: it’s a foreign problem. I recall a case in the 80’s where a Japanese callgirl (from Kobe, I believe) died of AIDS. The stories were all over the press: she got it from her foreign boyfriend. Despite the fact that she slept with a great many men over many years, and despite the fact that she met her boyfriend not too many years before dying of the disease (not enough to make it likely he was the source), there was almost universal agreement in the domestic media that it must have been that European guy. AIDS was a foreign disease, and this was proven by how few Japanese got it–though since it was a shameful disease, whenever someone died of it, the doctor protected the family from stigma and shame by certifying the death as caused by the opportunistic disease that finished the patient off and not the syndrome itself, thus skewing the numbers to prove an “AIDS-free” country.

Well, here we go again, this time with Mad Cow Disease. I’ve already pointed out how Japan’s ban on American beef is rather irrational, since America has had only one case and that cow came from Canada, while Japan has had fifteen purely domestic cases (the most recent just a few months ago), and on the first one in 2001, they even sent the carcass to be turned into cattle feed after the diseased cow had been diagnosed–but Japanese beef remains as freely sold as ever.

But now comes the story that the first case of the disease variant in humans has taken its toll: this week a Japanese man died from Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, and although there is no evidence to show where he got it, Japanese doctors are now all but certain that he must have contracted the disease in Britain because he stayed there for one month three years ago. No matter that the disease has been rampant in Japan the past four years, where he likely ate 98% of all the beef he consumed during that period. It must have been the 2% of beef from England that killed him. Well, when pressed, the Japanese doctors admitted that it is possible he got the disease from eating Japanese beef, and ministry “experts” will continue to “investigate.” Meanwhile, this death, while having nothing to do with U.S. beef, reportedly may hold up Japan’s decision to start importing U.S. beef again. Talk about using any excuse!

In the meantime, I continue to avoid Japanese beef….

Some more nice sunset photos of Mt. Fuji from the banks of the Tama River. Click on any of the photos for a 1280×960 full-sized image (about 60KB each).

Every once in a while you come across the sight below: a traffic cop laying in wait. They love to do that at major intersections, expecting people to violate traffic laws there. Not that they really do their job well–if I had the slightest feeling that they were really trying to maintain traffic safety, I’d have some respect for them. But the tend instead to avoid danger spots, instead hiding in spots where there’s very little danger from vehicles crossing yellow lines and such, but where it’s easy to catch and ticket people. A lot more on that in this past post.

I watched him for a few minutes while waiting for my order at McDonald’s to get made. He never went after anybody, and apparently gave up, as he left just as I was heading back. A little video of that–nothing really interesting, just a bit of video for fun. (Quicktime movie, 1.4MB.)

The new Powerbook line was announced today. Not only did the G5 Powerbook fail to materialize (as most expected but hoped otherwise), but even the second-best Freescale dual-core–or even single-core–G4 chip didn’t show up. Instead, the new Powerbooks out are relatively unremarkable upgrades, up to barely 1.67 GHz over the prior 1.5 GHz. A minor speed bump, at best. One can easily understand now why they didn’t want to mention these at the MacWorld Expo.

There are some other upgrades, as if Apple knew the CPU bump would be disappointing and so wanted to cram in as many small improvements as they could: a larger hard drive (up to 100 GB, over the prior 80 GB, but still spinning at 5400 RPM), an 8x Superdrive (I presume the prior model was 4x), more RAM (though 512 MB should have been standard for a long time now), faster Bluetooth, optical audio I/O, a faster graphics chip, and a hard disk drive drop-protection system which will protect the hard drive from a head crash in case of a sudden jolt or impact. There is also a new trackpad scrolling feature and a brighter keyboard backlight. None of these is exactly enough to blow your socks off, even with the $100 to $200 price drop over before, though all of them combined might be enough to impress some buyers just enough. In fact, the low-end Powerbook is just barely better than the high-end iBook, which is priced $100 lower; if the Powerbook doesn’t surge forward sometime soon, Apple will have to slow down the iBooks just so they don’t start to outshine their older brothers.

The Powerbook is still an excellent machine, but it’s just not all that more spectacular than it was a few days ago. A better deal, but not close to being enough to make me drop at least two and a half grand to replace my current Titanium 800 MHz DVI model–especially when it is apparent that a much faster model, a significant upgrade, is just around the corner. Just how far around that corner is another question: will we have to wait another 8-9 months for the next line to come out, and will it be a G5, a dual-core G4, or yet another minor speed bump. Some model turnarounds have come as early as 6 months after the prior release; others have taken almost a year.

This is the hard part about deciding when to upgrade–you never know when the right time is. I got lucky when I bought my own machine almost three years ago; it is still quite serviceable, and will do very well until the next big jump.

But, dammit, you just want to buy a new one!

Jogging became a popular means of exercise for a great many people, as a way to lose weight and stay healthy. Then it seems like doctors eased up a little, and said that all you need is a nice, leisurely 20- to 30-minute walk. What will be the new exercise regime of the future?

Fidgeting.

What’s next? Tapping your feet? Breathing hard?