In this election there are 121 seats open, and Koizumi projected that the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) would win 51 of them. Though many at first thought 51 seats was too modest, the polls up to election day suggested that the LDP might not reach that goal. The winners so far:

Democratic Party (Minshuto)	42
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)	37
Clean Governance Party (Komeito)	7
Independent / Other	3
Communist Party (Kyosanto)	2
Social Democratic Party (Shakai Minshuto)	1

That leaves 29 seats left to go, and the changes are coming in fairly quickly.

The projection is that the LDP will not reach 51 seats, and if that prediction is fulfilled, then it may be the end of the Koizumi cabinet. The LDP will still be in power, but there will be a power struggle within the party and perhaps an new PM.

The two contentious issues in this election are the pension reform (raising social security taxes and lowering the pensions paid), and the Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) being sent to Iraq.

It is hard to say what the reaction may be–will both of those issues be turned on their head? Will one be sacrificed for the other? Or will the LDP continue to hang doggedly on to both?

One can only hope that this will convince Japan to pull out of Iraq, and perhaps turn away from the right-wing drive to re-militarize the country and allow its troops to fight in conflicts overseas.

We already covered the fact that the new Florida Felon List had thousands of eligible voters on it, and had far more Democrats than Republicans (28,000 to 9,500) being taken off the voter rolls.

The new development is that the list almost completely omitted Hispanic voters, including only 61 on the list of 48,000–about 0.1% of the total, while about 17% of the Florida population is Hispanic. And Hispanics in Florida are predominantly Cuban in origin, and predominantly vote Republican.

Apparently, that straw broke the camel’s back. The outrageous election fraud in 2000, the fact that the new list was already disenfranchising thousands of legal voters, mostly Democratic–these facts were pressure enough, but to find that a predominantly Republican felon population had been omitted was apparently enough to shame Jeb Bush into pulling the list.

“It was an oversight and a mistake,” Jeb Bush said; “We accept responsibility, and that’s why we’re pulling it back.” So it seems that if there’s a large amount of election fraud, it’s OK, but if there’s an egregious amount, then it’s an “oversight” and they’ll stop doing it.

We have heard it many times from Bush and his people. I have heard it echoed by conservatives posting to this site and others.

Bush, Cheney and their administration said that Iraq had WMD. That’s been proven false, so they have to defend their saying it. Their defense is yet another lie, a lie by insinuation: that Bush was not out of line about his Iraqi WMD claims because everyone, including Clinton and the U.N., also believed that Iraq had WMD.

That claim is a lie because it attempts to make equal Bush and Clinton and the U.N., when in fact they were as different as night and day.

Yes, Clinton and the U.N. believed that Iraq had WMD. The difference, however, is in degree.

Clinton and the U.N. believed that Hussein had some weapons of mass destruction, in the form of limited stockpiles of chemical and perhaps some biological weapons. But they did not believe them to be an immediate threat, and did not believe they would leave the country; they believed, in short, that Hussein was contained and could continue to be contained.

That is light-years away from what Bush was pushing:

1. Bush and his people claimed that Hussein had massive stockpiles of WMD (Bush: “This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions.” Rumsfeld: “He’s amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons“), far more than Clinton or the U.N. ever believed.

2. Furthermore, Bush and Cheney strenuously asserted that Hussein was six months away from completing a nuclear weapon, or possibly had developed one already. (Bush on a fictional 1998 IAEA report: “…a report came out of the . . . IAEA, that they [Iraqis] were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.” Cheney: “On the nuclear question, many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire such weapons fairly soon.”) The fact is, neither Clinton nor the U.N. believed that Hussein had a nuclear program that was anywhere close to developing nukes, nor did they ever claim that Hussein was buying uranium or using aluminum tubes for his nuclear program.

3. Bush also claimed that Hussein had ties with al Qaeda (Cheney continues with that claim to this day), and that Hussein, who jealously guarded his resources and did not share with anyone, would readily hand over nukes to al Qaeda. (Bush: “Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” “Saddam Hussein . . . is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon,” and “The regime . . . has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda. The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.”) Neither Clinton nor the U.N. believed that Hussein was in league with al Qaeda, or that Hussein would share any of his weapons with them. They were aware that Hussein and al Qaeda were religiously and ideologically at odds, that they hated each other, and were not in alliance.

So, to say that Bush was not out of line to make his claims because Clinton and the U.N. believed the same is outrageous, a deliberate attempt to mislead. Don’t believe a word.

(All non-attributed quotes were provided by Iraq on the Record.)

It just happened a few minutes ago. It was a 4.5 on the Japanese scale, according to Hi-Net, though Tenki.jp claimed it was a 4.9. It was located in Ibaraki–but still strong enough to shake the apartment here in West Tokyo. (Update: Hi-net revised their figure upwards to 4.9.)

Here’s a question which I’ve been thinking about the past few days.

The main justification for the Iraq invasion used by the Bush administration before the war was that Saddam had WMD, and Bush said that the only way for Iraq to stop the U.S. from invading was to destroy all the WMD and prove that with documents and inspection, under U.N. resolution 1441.

Iraq said that they had destroyed their WMD, and despite scorn and lies from Bush, it turns out that he had, in fact, destroyed them.

Despite Bush’s bizarre claim that “we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in,” the fact is that the inspectors were allowed into Iraq, and later said that they found no evidence that there were WMDs (now confirmed by the Coalition™ search teams) and there was no evidence that Iraq was even obstructing inspections (makes sense, as they had nothing to hide), and that it was Bush who demanded the inspectors leave Iraq, and Bush was lying about their findings.

Iraq forked over documents which they said showed that the weapons were destroyed. The Bush administration scoffed and said the documents were worthless and an attempt to buy time to entrench themselves–but at that time, the Bush administration was lying a blue streak.

So here’s the question: now that we’ve gone over Iraq with a fine-toothed comb, has anyone looked back on those documents Iraq gave us and checked–objectively, not in classic Bush style–whether or not the documents presented were in fact real and what Bush said he needed to stop the war?

If the documents were in fact what was demanded, then it would be the case that Iraq actually did comply with UNR 1441, and Bush invaded illegally. Unless the lame excuse, “I didn’t believe him when he complied” is acceptable to the world.

I Went to Akihabara today to try to find some computer equipment for the school. Every time I go there, I am less and less impressed; really, the electronics stores in Shinjuku are better stocked and with better prices. There was a store called “Liberty” which sells used DVD movies for cheap (¥980 and up), which might be something to visit once in a while, and if you hunt long enough, you might find some cheap junk at some stores in the back alleys, but other than that, I don’t see much use to visiting the place. Maybe 20 years ago some deals could be found and some merchants were willing to dicker and bargain, but now it’s pretty tame.

I did find an interesting new sight, however: a place called “Smoker’s Style” (pictured below). Apparently, a place where they could dwell in smoking heaven while working on their computers, eating snacks and drinks bought from the machines, and so forth.

God knows they need a place like that. After all, with 90% of the coffee shops and restaurants being only mostly smoking (who could stand to be in a place where non-smokers were allowed a corner of the room?), smokers need places like this now more than ever.

Apparently, the room was created by Japan Tobacco, Inc., because, in theory, smoking was banned on Akihabara streets (though not in cafes or restaurants). Funny, because I saw dozens of people smoking on the streets, as well as about a dozen cops walking around, and no one being ticketed. I also saw no prominent no-smoking signs.

Japan Tobacco is still half-owned by the Japanese government (the Finance Ministry, specifically–they owned two-thirds until a month ago, when they sold off 15% of the company for $2.2 billion), and while one part of the government is making the very Japanese-style shallow acts of outlawing smoking on a few streets, another is fighting back with lounges like these. All kind of bizarre, meaningless, superficial–in other words, business as usual.

If you want to keep up with smoking news in Japan, this page is where the action is at. Roughly 53% of Japanese men smoke, the highest percentage among industrialized countries, and Japan is among the nations that tried to block an international antismoking treaty (the U.S. and Germany were the other two holdouts), until revisions watering down the treaty were introduced. So what will Japan do? Increase the warning label on the cigarette packs (maybe) and consider changing the name of its “Mild Seven” brand to one that does not include the word “mild.” Goody.

This is reprehensible.

The Bush administration sees Kerry get a bounce from his announcement of Edwards and his newfound equal footing in the media, so what does he do? He fucks with our national security so that he can steal the news cycle away. I am listening to Tom Ridge, after repeating the old news that al Qaeda is up to something but we have no information–exactly the same as he and Ashcroft announced before–and now he’s droning on about how cool their new communications equipment is. There is nothing new, no new data, and absolutely no reason for the announcement except as a political dirty trick.

The announcement was even scheduled to take place exactly as Kerry and Edwards appeared at a rally in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where the networks and news shows would have covered them; additionally, the conference was made early in the day, the better to control the news cycle.

This is blatantly political, there is no getting around that. He even began the broadcast with a rehash of the right-wing fiction that Spain’s election was turned by the al Qaeda attack. That, however, is bullshit, had Aznar’s government handled the investigation competently then he probably would have won the election–it was his skewing the reports of the investigation to his political advantage that angered the Spanish people and tipped the scales to lose him the election.

But Ridge, like so many other right-wingers, are deliberately skewing that fact for the dual purpose of attacking their political enemies overseas (i.e., the Spanish opposition which pulled their troops from Iraq), and of laying down the foundation of the belief that if al Qaeda attacks, it will be to throw the election to Kerry–which again, is complete bullshit, as an al Qaeda attack, most analysts believe, would rally support for Bush and cinch the election to him.

This is politics, and not just your standard vindictive, nasty, underhanded spit-in-your-eye dirty-tricks politics–this is far worse. This is the Bush administration taking advantage of our security apparatus to frighten the American people and derail a political opponent. National security is a sacred cow, you don’t fuck with it–but to them, it’s just another tool for party hacks.

Sorry for all the language, but I am seriously pissed off right now.

Update: the White House is reporting that they have no choice about this, that they are “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” make these announcements–which is more bullshit. That’s a classic either-or fallacy: they have other choices, like reporting this at the end of the week rather than the middle, or making the announcements only when there is new information, not just when they feel like it.

Don’t believe a word. At best, this is cover-your-ass, making the announcement so they can say “we warned you” later on, but I would put every cent I have on the take that this is just as I have outlined before. Bush may have misstepped, as the news services are highlighting the political aspect of the story, but that notwithstanding, they are still talking 90% about terror now, and will be all day, instead of reporting on Kerry and Edwards–so that’s a big “Mission Accomplished” for Bush and Cheney today.

This from The Boston Herald:

A feisty President Bush yesterday took a broad swipe at Democratic vice presidential pick John Edwards – branding him as a lightweight lacking enough experience to step into the Oval Office.

Bush’s jab was in response to a reporter’s question about how Edwards, a freshman senator with a dynamic stump style, compared to his own running mate, Vice President Dick Cheney, who has decades of Washington experience but little flash.

“Dick Cheney can be president,” Bush snapped. “Next.”

Interesting. If you only have six years’ experience in politics, you’re a lightweight who cannot be president. Hmmm. Let’s see. Who else ran for office with only six years of experience in politics? Hmmm, would that be… maybe… SATAN? Er (apologies to the Church Lady), excuse me–BUSH?

And Bush’s Statement that “Dick Cheney can be president” probably sums up who was in charge when lightweight Bush took office four years ago.

This is at about the same level of hypocrisy as putting down Kerry and Edwards by saying that McCain was Kerry’s first choice, and he went to Edwards only after McCain turned him down. In fact, it is public knowledge that in 2000, Bush approached McCain and was turned down by him. Further, to say McCain was Kerry’s “first choice” is misleading at best–just because Kerry contacted him does not mean he was at the top of the list. Kerry undoubtedly contacted others on his A-list, and not necessarily in order of preference.

New reports are suggesting that Bush administration officials are pressuring Pakistan to make significant al Qaeda captures or killings before the election this year, and to announce these “high value target” deliveries on the first three days of the Democratic convention at the end of July. According to The New Republic:

This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials–from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official–have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf’s government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a “sanctuary” for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. “The problem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better,” he said.

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. “Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn’t change because of an election,” says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), “The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections.” Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations–according to a recently departed intelligence official, “no timetable[s]” were discussed in 2002 or 2003–but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, “The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections.” (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan’s Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.)

A third source, an official who works under ISI’s director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis “have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must.” What’s more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: “The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq’s] meetings in Washington.” Says McCormack: “I’m aware of no such comment.” But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July”–the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

This is rather scandalous, even though completely expected. There was a great deal of suspicion and some circumstantial evidence that in 1980, Reagan’s people visited Iran made deals that the hostages would not be released until Reagan took office, and lo, the hostages were released practically the very moment Reagan took the oath; a release before the election might have won the election for Carter, and a release before Reagan took office would have robbed him of a glowing start to his tenure. That Reagan was found to have been involved over many years in shady dealings with Iran was also supportive of this idea.

And now we see Bush doing something very similar: making deals with shady governments in the region to sway the election at home. While Bush says that he is promoting democracy in the region, it cannot be ignored that his biggest new ally, Pakistan, is a military dictatorship that gained power in a coup d’état over a democratically elected government, was developing weapons of mass destruction, and had practically invented the Taliban. That they agreed to help us in Afghanistan is less a measure of their friendship to us and more a sign that they saw an unstoppable military force coming their way and wisely decided not to get in its way; their alliance with us is questionable in light of massive internal support for al Qaeda and their reluctance to truly go after him, and Bush’s weakness in dealing with them is apparent in how his administration did nothing whatsoever when they found Pakistan was giving nuclear secrets to other countries in the region–they allowed Pakistan to blame the whole operation on one man, who was then pardoned. (“It’s a quid pro quo: we’re going to get our troops inside Pakistan in return for not forcing Musharraf to deal with Khan.”)

Let us not forget that Reagan oversaw Saddam’s rise and gave him massive support as a perceived necessity in dealing with Iran. Bush has not learned the lesson of history, and now cuddles up with Musharraf, letting him spread nuclear technology (while claiming to invade Iraq because it had nukes, when it did not) and give safe harbor to al Qaeda (while claiming to be going after that organization full boar).

But now Bush, after years of letting Pakistan host the al Qaeda “high-value targets,” is getting “tough” with Pakistan: fork over some al Qaeda VIPs as sacrificial lambs during the Democratic convention, or the election might be lost–and then Kerry might not let you sell nukes to Iran and others, and might actually demand you fight al Qaeda for real.

Who’d like to place a bet that in 10-15 years Pakistan won’t be the new Iraq, and that a Republican president won’t be trying to scare us over the madman of Karachi?

Well, you probably already know about Kerry choosing Edwards; that kind of news travels faster than the speed of blogging, so I tend not to try to “announce” such things here. What I can do is comment on it all.

Edwards was the odds-on favorite, and for good reason: he brings a good deal to the ticket. While Veep choices often don’t seem to help a ticket too much, they can make a contribution, and if chosen badly, can hurt the ticket. But the Edwards choice–and the fact that it came out just now, so early at 20 days before the convention (usually it’s a week or less before)–has helped Kerry to dominate the news, and hopefully put him in true election-year quasi-equal footing with the incumbent.

But Edwards was a good choice for other reasons as well: he’s energetic, young, handsome, and likeable; he can bring in southern voters, and is talented at addressing themes in a way that is both compelling and easy to understand (in other words, he’s a good orator). He’s a clean-cut American with a down-to-earth blue-collar upbringing, and a self-made man, now wealthy from his past law practice. The downside: he’s relatively green, being just a 6-year veteran of the senate, he is a senator, like Kerry, and therefore his voting record can be more easily skewed and misrepresented, and the fact that he was a trial lawyer will make him a target for the GOP smear machine.

However, those negatives are mitigated; most recent presidents have had little pre-office political experience (Bush only had 6 years, too, for instance); his voting record is relatively short and can’t be misrepresented as much (not to mention that he’s had a more conservative record, approving of the Iraq War, for example, though not its execution); and his trial lawyer experience will be less of a liability than Republicans think–a CNN poll found that a majority of people felt this was a positive, not a negative, and Edwards is said to have chosen his cases carefully, and not argued frivolous or questionable ones, rather cases where the plaintiff was truly wronged, and deserving of sympathy in the eyes of observers.

I watched Kerry as he made a speech soon after the announcement, and he ripped into Bush, but with style, class, and conviction. He laid out a laundry list of failures of the Bush administration, along the theme of “Don’t tell us that this is the best you can do; we can do better.” This is Kerry beginning to hit his stride, and is a sample of what the media hasn’t been showing us: the speech was a variation of one he’s been giving for a while, but the “liberal” media has until now neglected to air. I’m waiting for a transcript of the speech to appear on the web–when it does, I’ll post it, it’s a good one.

Over the next week, we will finally see what has long been coming, many–including myself–feeling it was long overdue: his real definition. Not the asinine, snide and falsified “Kerry is an ultra-liberal flip-flopper” garbage spewed out by the Bush campaign, and not the “long-winded” label slapped on him by the “liberal” media, but Kerry as he can be, has been and will be for the rest of the campaign: a speaker with a strong message and even stronger conviction. And the speech he delivered at ooo was dead on target. There is no question whatsoever, Kerry can do better.

The Edwards announcement, though early to the point some thought was premature, may have been a brilliant idea. Instead of just one week in the spotlight and in the minds of the people, he has a good chance of being in a good light right up to the convention. Hopefully he will be able to spend all that money he’s been raising in an advertising blitz before the convention and the subsequent $75 million cap until the election. After the convention, he will be at a disadvantage: he will have to make his $75 million last a month longer than Bush’s, and Bush will get the later convention bounce–in large part by shamelessly and sleazily capitalizing on 9/11 in New York less than a week before the third anniversary. And the Bush campaign did not miss a beat, starting a massive smear campaign and a steal-the-thunder press blitz against Edwards just minutes after the announcement was made.

But in the next month, if Kerry can indeed maintain the spotlight, then you can expect his positives to rise and for him to jump ahead in the polls even before the convention. This will have a feedback effect of making him and even bigger focus on the news, which up until now has largely focused on Bush, both on his capitalizing on his incumbency and the perks it brings, and on the series of massive blunders, lies, scandals and crimes that he and his administration have committed. Kerry stayed quiet while Bush beat himself up with Abu Ghraib and other filthiness, but when Bush did not fall much in the polls it became increasingly clear that Kerry had to define himself, to make a forceful entry back into public view–and today’s events were the perfect platform for that.

It will be interesting to see the poll numbers for next week, in this newly Kerry-aware, post Fahrenheit 9/11 atmosphere.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is doing very well, even better than expected, and this film might have a good set of legs, possibly generating million-dollar-plus daily grosses for weeks to come.

The film opened in 868 theaters as the highest-grossing film, beating out the opening weekend of the Wayans Brothers’ film, White Chicks and the second weekend for DodgeBall and the Spielberg/Hanks film, The Terminal. In the first four days of its wide release, F-9/11 grossed $28 million, easily breaking the record for highest-grossing documentary that had been held by the nine-month release of Bowling for Columbine. The new film also broke record for per-screen grosses, pulling in about $9,000 per screen, even better than Spiderman 2 did on its opening weekend.

Even better news followed: F-9/11 held up well in the weekdays after the opening. Most films lose a huge chunk in those days, but Fahrenheit fell less than most films do, continuing to bring in between $3 million and $5 million per day during the week.

And more good news: Fahrenheit got a wider release, now in 1,725 theaters, and again, held up well for its second weekend, often a sign that the film will do well over time. It broke $50 million last Saturday, on its 8th day of wide release, and its second 4-day weekend gross was $22 million, just a 23% drop from the first. Compare that, for example, to the 50% drop for White Chicks.

The holiday weekend also helped F-9/11, with the revised Monday grosses ($5.75 million) besting Sunday’s, for a grand total of $61 million so far. Excellent news. The third and fourth weeks will be more telling as to this film’s longevity, though–and it may well have a good run, as there is great word-of-mouth, continuing controversy, and a lot of people who will be watching this film two, three, or even more times.

All of this is even despite the fact that the film faces a widely-reported (though not official) September DVD release, and is already available on the Internet for download. What’s more remarkable is that Michael Moore has stated publicly that he is perfectly fine with people downloading the film: “I don’t agree with the copyright laws and I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that.” Even more remarkable is that lion’s Gate has also given a public-but-not-official OK for people to download the movie. That is unprecedented!

For those who want to see the online version, it can be found on Torrent (I recommend Shareaza for PC users, Limewire for Mac); the valid files are just over one gigabyte in size, in “.cue” format (you have to download a special program called VCD Gear to decompress), and it unzips into a folder containing two half-gigabyte MPEG files. The quality is fair, but too much of the sides are cropped out. Speaking for myself, I want to see it on the big screen first, and would use the downloaded version for reference after that while I see the film a second and third time at the cinema.

And now for the news the Japan crowd has been waiting for: I can’t tell you a release date for F-9/11 in Japan yet, but I can tell you that Gaga Communications will be announcing its Japan release date this weekend–I just called them to find out. I will be calling them again the day they make the announcement, and will post it here immediately, so stay tuned. If you want immediate news, get an RSS feed program (for Macs, NetNewsWire Lite is the best, IMHO); just enter “blogd.com,” or the Feed Address, or just look this site up under the program’s “Site Drawer” (I’m listed under “Weblogs A-F”).

The release date should be mid-August, perhaps around the 13th.

Here’s a good Robot Bartender joke as told by Lauren Shannon on the DAJ mailing list:

A popular bar had a new robotic bartender installed. A fellow came in for a drink and the robot asked him, ‘What’s your IQ?’

The man replied, ‘150.’

So the robot proceeded to make conversation about Quantum physics, string
theory, atomic chemistry, and so on. The man listened intently and thought, ‘This is really cool.’

The man decided to test the robot. He walked out the bar, turned around, and
came back in for another drink. Again, the robot asked him, ‘What’s your
IQ?’

The man responded, ‘100.’ So the robot started talking about football,
baseball, and so on. The man thought to himself, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’

The man went out and came back in a third time. As before, the robot asked
him, ‘What’s your IQ?’ The man replied, ’50.’

The robot then said, ‘So, you gonna vote for Bush again?”

Now that the Cassini-Huygens probe has successfully reached Saturn, we’re getting even more of a grand tour of the solar system–and the Internet brings that closer to us.

Before, with Voyager and Viking, we had to wait for TV or magazines to print the images, and it was all quite short on the kind of details a real space nut like myself might want. But with the Internet, we now have a front-row view of mission control, with access to far more information than before.

With both the Spirit & Opportunity rovers and the Cassini-Huygens probe, we can see results as they come in. NASA has done the best job, not only giving us access to press releases, but to the raw images as they arrive from Saturn–and the same is true for the Mars missions as well. Now you can see far more than the media decides to print, and you can see it faster.

Below is an example: a recent view of Iapetus, though at a distance. Iapetus is a stunning moon, half of it far darker than the other. The Cassini view in B&W below almost looks like it’s half in shadow, but that’s the dark half, in sunlight–almost like a huge Tao symbol in the sky. And below that is another image accessed from NASA, a much clearer image of Iapetus from the Voyager missions–again, all available on their site.

At bottom is a great image of Saturn–click on the image to see the spectacular full-sized view.

On a recent trip up into the local hills, I wandered on to the grounds of a Buddhist temple. That’s where they tend to be, on the outskirts and often on the high ground (though the Shinto shrines then to be on hilltops more often). You can find temples and shrines just about anywhere in Japan, from the pocket shrines set into tiny spaces between buildings in the city to sprawling establishments almost like parks in their own right.

While up in the hills, I found an interesting place–more than just the standard temple building with perhaps a bell outside (the kind they strike 108 times at New Year’s). This place was more of a modern-style temple, a bit flashier than most, perhaps belonging to a newer sect than most (they have quite a few here, some of them even a bit outlandish). This one, as you can see below, had a newish-looking, clean white structure with an alcove housing a rather attractive gold Buddha, with black calligraphic text behind it.

The temple also had cats. I guess they feed the strays or something. As there are few children around and probably just nice, charitable temple staff to feed them, they aren’t too shy or skittish; the one kitten well on its way to becoming a full-fledged cat, pictured below, walked right up to me. In fact, because of the time it takes my camera to power up, I missed by maybe 5 seconds a beautiful photo: one of the many crows in the area happened to land just a foot away from the small cat, and for several seconds, they just stood there, looking at each other, like “what are you gonna do?” Maybe it’s the local version of the lion and the lambs. Man, I wished I could’ve gotten that shot.

Sometimes I just like to step outside, pick a direction, and see what’s down the road. I don’t do it every day, but when the weather is good and there’s nothing else to do, it’s fun to explore. All too often, having lived in Japan for more than 13 years now, I forget that I’m living in a foreign country and haven’t seen a lot yet. I’ll stop where I am, look around, and realize that I’m in Japan. It sort of hits you that way sometimes.

This time I went to the edges of town, near where the railroad runs against the nearby cliffs and hills, and noticed more and more the little farms that traded off occupancy of the lots with suburban houses built on the less expensive real estate on the fringes of town. There are lots of little farms all over Tokyo, in fact, and you’ll find them in the darndest of places–an artifact of high property sales taxes and low property ownership taxes, subsidies to small farmers and so on–the farmers have been represented fairly well in government.

What I saw more and more were small orchards of trees kept at a low height, maybe 6 feet or so, and hanging from the trees were small paper bags. When I got to wondering what was in the bags, I asked a lady at a small fruit stand (they sell a lot from the mini-farms and -orchards at stalls), and she told me they were pears. Not grapes? They can be wrapped too, she replied, but they’re wrapped in different paper.

Too bad I’m not a big pear fan….

Remember in the last election, when a variety of criminal and near-criminal actions broke out in Florida near election time, each one giving Bush hundreds or even thousands of votes? Remember the one pulled off by Katherine Harris, then Florida Secretary of State? During the post-election brawl, she jumped at every chance to announce Bush the winner, only to be stopped by the state courts each time. But it was before the elections that she pulled her coup (perhaps literally), by using the felon rolls in Florida as a political weapon.

She took control of the list away from a Florida firm and gave it to a Texas firm, then told that firm to compile the list based upon ridiculously biased rules that would ensure that 90%–more than 50,000 legal voters–would be added to the list, and since most were minorities, that means most were Democrats. Despite having thus deprived so many thousands of their legal right to vote (never notifying them, they found out by going to the polls to be told they were criminals), Harris and the GOP then mocked these people and the Democratic party for (a) being stupid, and (b) being criminals. The net loss of more than 20,000 votes lost for Gore were one of many over-the-top actions that, each one individually, handed Bush enough votes to win the election. Fitting, I suppose, for the first president with a criminal record to win by crook, but that’s old news.

Or is it?

Past is prologue in Florida, it seems. Jeb Bush and the GOP are at it again. They’ve got a whole new list of “felons” and have been fighting like hell to keep it secret–the specific names, at least. They claimed that they were taking every precaution and notifying everyone on the list so they can challenge their status, but we all know what a load of horse manure that is. Their actions in 2000 were so crooked as to be unbelievable, and yet Bush was handed the election, and no one on Jeb Bush’s staff was arrested or even charged–they know full well that if they do the same thing this time, they won’t be touched, again. All they have to do is keep it under wraps until after the election, and then they’re home free.

A small hitch developed for them, however, as several news organizations sued the state and finally got the list published. And guess what? It’s full of names of people who should not be on it. After the state said the list of 47,000 was valid, having had months to check it out, the news services, with the list in hand less than 24 hours, identified at least 2,119 people who should not have been on the list. And that’s just so far–it is likely that a vast majority of the people on the list are legal voters, minorities, and Democrats, just like in 2000. Just among the 2,100-plus names identified so far as being legal, eligible voters, 62% were registered Democrats and 20% Republicans, and more than half are black. Again, numbers almost the same as in 2000. Surprise, surprise.

A look at the list (alphabetical, in PDF format) will also reveal that a great many names are nearly identical, suggesting that again, as they did in 2000, many were added to the list just for having names similar to alleged felons.

The Florida GOP are complete, unabashed scum–sorry, but they are. And that’s just one ploy in Florida. Another GOP game is the no-paper-trail electronic voting fiasco, machines supplied by a company run by a Bush campaign manager. God knows how many other frauds they’re up to without anyone knowing about it.

No wonder why Democrats are calling for the U.N. to come to America to observe and verify the 2004 elections. The GOP has made our country into a Banana Republic, where elections are openly rigged and the world has to observe in order to have even a small hope that some of the fraud can be stalled.

By the way, Katherine Harris got her payoff–in the 2002 elections, the GOP gratefully gave her the seat in the GOP stronghold of Sarasota in Florida, which she now occupies–instead of the jail cell she so richly deserves.

When running a blog, one has to deal with the inevitable annoyance of spam. Not email spam–blogs don’t reveal your email address (unless you foolishly post it on your site). But blog comment spam will get you. Blog comment spam is when advertisers use automated software to pummel your blog with fake comments, usually in long-ago archived posts. The blog comment spam can be as innocuous as a single line of text (e.g., “Love your blog!”) with a link to the spam site, or it can be as obnoxious as a list as long as your arm, full of dozens or even more than a hundred links to spam sites, many or most of them obscene. The blog comment spam is primarily created by spammers so that your site will host one or many links to their site, thus improving their site’s search engine rating, better advertising their scummy business. Software add-ons like MT-Blacklist or comment registration sequences help stem the tide of spam.

As if that weren’t enough, now we have a completely new type of blog spam rearing its ugly head: “Referrer Spam” (sometimes called “referral spam” or “stat spam”).

Referrer spam is a fairly new phenomenon. I noticed it first in January, when, according to my statistics, a Paris Hilton site seemed to send 13 people to my site via a link from their site. Curious as to why they were linking to me, I cautiously checked them out (never by clicking on the direct link to their site in my referral logs, then they would see where I came from–instead, I copied the URL and pasted it into a new window). But their site had no link to mine. Puzzled, I set it aside and forgot about it–until March.

Then a Nude Celebrity web site seemed to send 12 people my way via an apparent link from their site, and again their site seemed to have no such link. Again, WTF? But I again dismissed it as an anomaly.

But then in April, my site was “visited” 156 times by a dating service, 125 times by another celebrity porn site, and 105 times by a generic porn site. That set off alarm bells, and I started looking into it more. And I found out what it was: Referral Spam.

So what is it? Referral spam is when spammers hit your site with a fake referrer (a “referrer” is the site which sent viewers your way via a link on that page). That is, they have an automated program “look” at your web site, while falsely telling your site that they came from the spammer’s web page. This is counted as a hit on your site, and is reflected in your web site’s statistics page.

So why do they do it? Well, first of all, it’s cheap and easy for them, so they’ll do it for even a negligible payback. But they do get a payback: a link to their site on your statistics page, or you clicking on the link to visit their site and maybe buying something, or–the holy grail for these scumwads–if your web site automatically displays your top referrers, they get a big, fat, free link on your main page, one that will increase their search engine standings and may get dozens or hundreds of people following the link on your site to their page. In other words, free advertising for them, at your expense.

So it benefits them just a little, but it annoys, inconveniences, and sometimes costs you–and will soon make all statistics for web pages completely useless. It’s annoying because when you look at your stats, you have to look at all those porn sites and other spam invade your numbers. It’s inconvenient because those hits are not “real” visits, and so in the total numbers, you’re not sure what’s real and what’s not. It costs you because sometimes these idiots will hit your site thousands of times, which takes up bandwidth, and that can cost money.

But most of all, we are just seeing the beginning of this. At the end of last August I got my first blog comment spam. Within 3 months, blog comment spam started getting too much to handle without MT Blacklist. And now, even with MT Blacklist, I am still having to manually delete several blog comment spams every day–and that’s after MT Blacklist stops dozens more each day, prompting me to look into establishing comment registration.

Following that model, we can expect referral spam to similarly explode over the next several months. Already, in just the first eight hours of July, out of 12 referrals to my site, 8 of them are from fake sites. And it’s not just the sites that throw 150 hits “from” one spam site, there are also a multitude of single hits. In addition, many of them are not identifiably from spam sites. You might get a couple of hits from “www.yourpetcrafts.com” (I just made that one up), a site that looks innocuous–but when you go to that site, it immediately redirects you to a heavy-duty triple-X porn site. Apparently, the porn and other spam sites are buying up innocent-sounding domain names so they can be set up as a conduit to the real–and more clearly offensive–spam sites.

The end game of this is that web site statistics will soon be completely meaningless. As the number of fake referrals from spammers starts to represent more and more of a web site’s traffic, it will be impossible to figure out how much of your web site hits are coming from spammers, and how many are real people visiting your site. Not that the spammers give a damn–it hardly costs them anything, and while the return for them is probably negligible, they would gladly make your life a living hell if they could get a nickel or two out of it.

These people have to be stopped.

Articles on this can be found at Wired News, Spyware Info, and M5 Computer Security, among other places.

Update (June 2005): FYI, referrer spamming has become devastating over the past year. In the month of May 2005, the top three “referrers” to my site were online gambling spammers; those top three referrers accounted for more than 4500 fake link visits to blogd.com. The next three referrers, also spam, also gambling sites, left another 3000 collective fake referrals. In fact, only one of the top 25 referrers was a legitimate site (http://blo.gs), and that was #21 on the list. The other top 24 “referrers” accounted for almost 10,000 false hits. Quite a progression from those first spammers leaving only a dozen fake hits almost a year and a half ago.

Actually, they want everyone in Washington to see the film–and while many will, it’s a sound bet that Bush won’t, and just as sound that few in Washington would change a bit, unless they felt pressured by a groundswell among their constituents.

Meanwhile, F-9/11 remains at the top of the box office through the early part of the week, losing less of its audience than other films, and now grossing a total $32.3 million through Tuesday. It should be interesting to see how F-9/11 will fare once Spiderman 2 comes out–will it be knocked way down in revenue? Will the increased number of screens prop it up? Or, under the rosiest scenario, will it both benefit from having more screens and catch most of the overflow from sold-out shows of Spiderman 2?

Long-time BfAD visitor Pat alerted me to this article in the English-language Asahi, written by Jane Singer, the Western wife of a Japanese politician. The article seeks to explain what politicians are doing and why they do it, at least in part–if not fully–for the purpose of calming the protest by foreigners in Japan about the loudspeaker truck barrage. A very interesting read, though I do have some comments:

A Diet and a local election campaign of course differ vastly in scale and organization, but all campaigns must abide by regulations aimed at curbing fraud and vote-buying. Election management committees and local police keep an eagle eye on a candidate’s activities during the official campaign period (17 days for Upper House elections, 12 days for the Lower House, 9 days for prefectural posts). The rules forbid many of the campaign activities, like television advertising for a particular candidate or, for the most part, ads in print media, that are sine qua non for elections in other major democracies, although advertising a political party is allowed. Campaigning door-to-door is prohibited, campaigns can use only one sound truck and one microphone at a time, and outdoor campaigning is restricted to the hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

While Ms. Singer does not necessarily endorse these measures, she does not contest them, either–perhaps because it would not help her husband’s campaign or status as a politician.

But I certainly would disagree with the need for the exact restrictions. For example, television or print ads. Politicians make speeches on NHK Educational–very democratic (as you sometimes see the loonies in there too). And if that’s not enough, then in exchange for licensing, private TV stations should also be made to allow for such statements. Or, if necessary, the government can fund each candidate who receives a certain number of petitions or other prerequisite to a limited amount, forbidding any other funding for advertisements. Singer notes that parties can run ads–I just saw one today for the Jiminto, the ruling party–and it featured Koizumi, a specific candidate–which kind of puts a hole in the anti-corruption net–and the idea that corruption is not rampant in Japanese politics despite these restrictions is, of course, wishful thinking. Despite the freedom-of-speech questions, I fully approve of restrictions on advertising (I do not see money as equalling freedom of speech in any case), but completely banning it, to me, is a far less attractive alternative than banning the loudspeaker trucks. As I noted a year ago, at least you can turn advertisements off.

The door-to-door ban is a fair idea, I’ll admit–especially if it keeps the party reps from doing the business. If it were allowed for candidates only, I’d be OK with it–just a half dozen doorbell rings to fend off, rather than weeks of non-stop noise pollution.

However, the rules on loudspeaker trucks I cannot abide. The trucks are restricted to 8am-to-8pm shifts (I can personally attest that some politicians break this rule), and though she does not detail this, the trucks are “cautioned” from doing their thing in front of schools, hospitals, or nursing homes. Those restrictions are far too lax. First of all, not everyone has the same sleep patterns. One reason many foreign residents may complain is because many of us are teachers, often with late schedules. And we’re not the only ones who sleep later than 8am. As a result, a great many people have their sleep interrupted for weeks on end. But more than that is the disruption for infants–can you imagine what it must be like to get an infant to sleep with those trucks blasting by every few minutes? Limiting the trucks to predominantly public and shopping areas areas (in front of train stations, at shopping streets and so forth) would be best–I mean, whatever happened to the famous Japanese “wa”?

And if that is not possible, then turn the damned volume down! Who says that it has to be up so high? I’m rather high up (equivalent to the 6th floor or so relative to the street, and even if I set my TV to blaring levels, the volume of the sound trucks still competes hardily with the audio right there in my apartment. If it’s that loud, then it’s too loud. I can hear the trucks clearly when they are half a kilometer away and more–and there are two schools closer to me than that (so much for the school zone rule). The obvious solution (which Professor Dolan speaks to) is to limit the vans to a reasonable sound level: enough so you know when they’re out in the street in front of you so you can go look if you want to, but no louder. And I certainly would not be averse to forbidding the trucks from entering parking lots for apartment complexes and driving at 5 kph through every last lane, keeping the high volume in your ears for 5 minutes at a time.

Singer’s article does explain a few things, though:

When voters visit the polling place, they write their candidate’s name directly on the ballot, rather than just check a box or punch out a chad. So the need to ensure name recognition despite the restrictions on promoting the candidate may help explain why the uguisujo (nightingale women), as female campaign van announcers are charmingly called, spend so much of their on-air time repeatedly warbling the candidate’s name.

That explains that. But it also calls into question why they can’t do it another way. Not that it would make the loudspeaker trucks much more bearable if they varied their message.

Singer’s observations are also sometimes amusing:

After an hour or so, the driver received an urgent call from the campaign office. A local resident had called to complain that my hand-waving “lacked sincerity.” For the rest of the drive, I leaned halfway out the van’s side window, endeavoring a full-arm flourish that left my shoulder aching for days. My efforts were praised by the campaign staff.

I have to admit, this sounds quintessentially Japanese, not just that windowsill observers would note and call in a complaint about lackadaisical hand-waving, but that the call would be treated as “urgent,” and–well, I can just visualize the Japanese campaign staff earnestly praising the candidate’s wife on how strenuously she waved. “Good waving!” “Yes, that was an excellent job. Sugoi!” “Yes, I’m impressed, too.”

According to PolkOnline.com (“Your guide to Polk County, Florida”), Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” will be coming to that area this Friday, after not being included in the original release. The site reports that F-9/11 grossed $24 million up to Monday, and no wonder–according to the site,

“‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ was released to approximately 868,000 theaters last week; however, this week only 19,000 are carrying the film, according to reports received from Dickinson Inc., Lakeland Square 10 Cinema’s parent company.”

Nearly a million theaters got the film! I didn’t even know there were that many theaters! So Lakeland Square 10 Cinemas in Polk County must have been the only one not showing the film! Taking that number, on can figure that’s about one theater for every 350 Americans, and it means that the per-screen gross up to Monday was just $27 per theater. What a let-down; no wonder 849,000 theaters dropped the movie by this week so only 19,000 are carrying it still.