Check out the trailer for the new movie Lost in Translation starring Bill Murray. Murray plays a celebrity who gets $2 million for making a whiskey commercial in Japan, and meets a woman there with her photographer husband; friendship ensues, so the blurbs say. The big attraction to me is that the whole thing is set in Tokyo, and promises to have a lot of very amusing interaction between Murray and Tokyoites. It is slated for a September release in the states, but I can’t find any published release dates for Japan. It opens in some countries as late as December, though. (IMDB page)

On CNN’s Crossfire, Bob Novak dug into John Kerry for making the statement that he voted to grant the president the power to go to war in Iraq in order to authorize a credible threat of force so that Hussein might allow inspections and the matter might end peacefully. Novak asked where he got that idea from (transcript); Fox News chips in also, asking, in a fair and balanced way, I presume, how Kerry can say that when he authorized full force?

Conservative pundits seem to have short memory spans. A quote from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz from last October: the only hope of “achieving the peaceful outcome is if we can confront the Iraqi regime with a credible threat of force behind our diplomacy.”

Where indeed did he get that crazy idea? The only thing we can fault Kerry for is being fool enough to go along with the president and his wacky administration.

Arnold Schwarzenegger promised loudly on the campaign trail yesterday, “egged on” by the crowd, that he would not, absolutely never, accept money from unions. My first thought: oh, goodie, because I was afraid the AFL-CIO would want to shower him with millions. His promise sounded as thin and hypocritical as a Democratic candidate promising that he would never accept donations from the NRA.

But the world is full of surprises, and Arnold had yet another “Oops” moment in store. It turns out that he had already received a donation from a union–this one a union of L.A. sheriffs. Arnold says he’ll be returning it.

Best one-liner of the day: “This guy owes me bacon now.”

Here’s a very good article in the Washington Post about why Howard Dean and Al Franken are so popular right now (the article covers many other issues as well). Now, I admire most Democrats for their stance on most issues and the fact that they are less bloodthirsty, hypocritical and merciless in their political play than most Republicans, but their downfall is that they have little spine when pressed hard. When the GOP was pushing its post-9/11 agree-with-everything-we-say-and-do-or-we’ll-call-you-traitors strategy, the Dems knuckled under. It was very hard to find any Democrat who was not in full support of the president, even when you could tell they didn’t really want to be. So now Dean is a front-runner, in part because he’s one of the only ones who can say “I have always been against the war” and not look like a liar when he says it–and we need someone who can say that. That’s also one reason why Clark would be a fitting VP candidate for him (not to mention the North-South combo there).

Get ready for this… some Egyptians are preparing to sue Jewish people worldwide because their ancestors, when freed from slavery in Egypt by Moses, stole “gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing, and more.” My only comment: okay, this past-reparations thing is going a bit too far….

Britney Spears apparently told Tucker Carlson that she believes “we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know?”

She also said she didn’t know her kiss with Madonna “was gonna be that long and everything.”

We’re obviously dealing with a high-level intellectual here. Better do what she says.

Three months ago I started trying out the early beta of Eudora 6 for the Mac. Eudora is, in my opinion, a much better alternative to Microsoft’s Outlook Express. The program’s main new feature is a very good Junk mail filter, which does a very good job of that. I also use the new mailbox drawer (opens to the side of any mailbox window), which presents a clickable list of all your mailboxes, allowing easy switching between my many mailboxes without having to open new windows all the time.

If you have a prior version of Eudora 6 for the Mac, and are using it in sponsored mode (free but with ads), and are enjoying the spam filter, then enjoy it for as long as the beta operates–because the new download (v. 6.0b31) no longer includes the spam filter in any but the paid mode ($40 for a 1-year license, with support). The older version should work, and there’s not much difference between the early betas and the new general release.

Me, I paid my $40–it’s a good program, and worth it–I now depend on the Junk filter, it makes the spam pretty much evaporate.

The PC version includes a format painter (a la MS Word, I presume), but lacks the mailbox drawer. All other features are shared. I highly recommend this program, especially the Mac version (which has superior layout to the all-in-one window design in Outlook).

Downloads are here.

Well, he was very much correct about arrogance and humility.

That was before he was elected, of course, and was in full-blast B.S. mode. He didn’t have to wait until September 11 to start being arrogant, that just made him pump up the volume. He had already abrogated half a dozen or so international treaties, had gotten us kicked out of important U.N. councils, and was well on his way to making the U.S. into a world pariah. Then 9-11 came, and the world turned to us with sympathy. But instead of fostering that sympathy and building new relations with it, something everyone except Bush realized was vital in the days to come, Bush immediately started the abuse again with his “with us or against us” rhetoric. Since then, it’s been nothing but arrogance.

And now? Now, Bush is demanding that the U.N. come in to Iraq and clean up for us. After bullying other nations, after disregarding the U.N., then turning around and demanding they help invade Iraq or become “irrelevant,” after demanding inspections and then dismissing them before they had time to finish, after being condescending and insulting to nations that refused to participate, after making haughty and bellicose statements for all this time–now Bush realizes he’s in over his head, and wants those countries he ridiculed and dismissed to send their young men into Iraq to fight and die for us.

And get this: he’ll only allow them in if the U.S. stays in command of all of them, and they must not even think of wanting to share in the spoils of war.

And the sad thing is, it will be hard for anyone to slap Bush in the face like they all want to–because Bush is essentially holding the Iraqi people hostage. Everyone knows that the Iraqis are suffering, that the situation could devolve into chaos easily, and the U.N. peacekeepers could do a lot of good, perhaps even bring legitimacy to a new Iraq now that the damage is done.

The problem is, it is galling as hell, as the only way Bush will let anyone helps is on his terms, with all command, credit and profit going to him–plus it would at least in part legitimize Bush’s invasion into Iraq. However, everyone is certain that Bush would sooner let the Iraqi people suffer and the situation go to hell in a handbasket before giving an inch, or, God forbid, being the humble leader he promised he would be.

As I was heading home tonight, I noticed that the sky was growing more and more threatening. When I walked in the door, I felt lucky to avoid being rained on–but as it turned out, rain was not on the menu. Lightning was.

Soon after I sat down to relax, I noticed some lightning outside. Well, nice and normal–I like lightning. I like to listen to the thunder, too. Once there was a lightning storm at my work, real close by, and I went outside to watch and listen. One bolt cracked down and hit a lightning rod atop an apartment building just a block away, right in my view–the blast of sound was just about instantaneous. Now, that’s entertainment!

Tonight, it was far away, but something was strange. I noticed some lightning out of the corner of my eye as I sat in my living room. Then again a few seconds later. Then again, and again. I thought I was imagining it–sometimes, reflections off the frames of my glasses can appear to be something else. But when I went to the window, I was right–there was a hellacious lightning storm going on in central Tokyo

Lacking my digital video camera (at school, for a project), I got out my trusty digital camera and took some shots of it (above right, and below). Unfortunately, it was hard to catch the full feeling of it–it was far too light for a good time-exposure shot. But the camera has a movie mode, so I took several 30-second movies (the time limit for higher-quality movie files). I then edited some of the shots together; they are available here. Like with the Bon Matsuri movie, you must have Quicktime and/or the ability to view MPEG-4 files. This movie is only about 500KB in size, and is reduced in size–but you’ll get a better idea about the storm from it.

Toyota just released a new car, it’s environment-friendly Prius (which I have heard good things about), this time with 10% better gas mileage than the last model, and with an interesting new feature: it parks itself.

Apparently, if you get into a tight parking situation, the car will do the job for you with built-in sensors detecting the close-by obstacles. It was only mentioned that the parking assist works “when reversing into parking spaces”; I am not yet clear on whether or not it parallel parks (which would impress me a lot more). The “intelligent” parking system is a $2000 add-on, and includes a DVD-navigation system.

Toyota has sold about 120,000 of the Prius model, and expects to sell another 74,000 next year.

The hybrid car runs on both gas and electricity, using flywheels for the brakes to gather up the energy that would otherwise be dissipated as heat. Especially while driving in the city (with short starts and stops), the energy returned from the brakes helps to sustain the battery for longer periods and increases energy efficiency.

I wouldn’t mind having one of those puppies.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Bush were both out campaigning again today, Bush after a month-long vacation, addressed a crowd in an appropriate setting of rain, the people looking for hope to get out of the economic bad weather as much as they would the dark, wet weather they stood in. In Ohio, where so many people have lost manufacturing jobs during this administration, On a sourly ironic Labor Day, Bush promised that his massive tax cuts for wealthy people would, in some nebulous fashion, somehow translate into jobs for them.

Pointing to the quivering needles on the country’s economic gas tank that signal something may be happening, Bush claimed that it was the tax cuts starting to change things. One might expect the administration’s new motto to be “post hoc, ergo proctor hoc.” Do something useless, then wait for something to change, then claim a connection. Of course, the problem is, the tentative signs of an economic comeback do not seem to be affecting the job market at all, and in fact, wages continue to fall–Bush remains the president with the worst record on unemployment, and a better economy will mean very little to millions of Americans if they have no jobs. The question is, will the economy make a real comeback, will it be in time for Bush, and, if he gets the credit for it, will it be enough to compensate for all the damage he has done in the eyes of the voters?

Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, has been busy morphing, like the special effects Terminator he fought in “T2,” from the “people’s candidate” he claimed to be when he entered the race, into a politician’s politician. Taking cues for George W., he has initiated a campaign of rigorous fundraising from special interests ($4 million to date), has been avoiding the press while making easy, camera-intensive PR photo-op stops. He avoids talking to the press like the plague, and has ducked out of any early debates, promising to attend only one debate, just before the election (“it will be great for the California broadcasters”–that, after all, is the point of the election, right?). This, presumably, is in line with his policy of being totally unclear on what he would do as governor, giving as little information as late as possible and hoping there will not be enough time to check him out before voters go to the polling booths.

What a coward.

Well, it has been a nice month’s summer vacation. We get three of those a year at the college where I work: one in December, on in April and May, and one in August, each between the three semesters we squeeze into a school year. The vacation allowed me to do a lot of work on this blog, and help set up xpat.org, which will be inaugurated on September 11th (I’ve started working on the opening piece for the blog).

Predictably, when it is a case of standing by their principles or picking a potential winner for the party, many conservatives will go for winning. Schwarzenegger, who is left-leaning on many social issues and displayed a past most conservatives would find absolutely unacceptable (if he were a Democrat, that is), will nevertheless vote for him because no other Republican stands a chance of winning in California.

But that may not be good enough. When this recall process started, conservatives were cackling with glee over how they had a hands-down winner of a candidate while the Democrats seemed to be tripping over themselves. Now, the reverse is true: Schwarzenegger is lagging back in the polls and is offset by two nameworthy Republicans (McClintock and Ueberroth), while Bustamante, with a commanding lead in the polls, is the sole Democratic candidate of note. While Huffington and Camejo may draw votes away from Bustamante, their combined poll numbers are much less than McClintock, who soaked up many of the departing Simon’s votes, and will do more damage to Schwarzenegger’s standing.

To make matters worse for him, Schwarzenegger has, for some reason, decided not to join in the first debate, which will feature Bustamante, McClintock, Ueberroth, Huffington and Camejo; this will make him look weaker, unable to discuss the issues, and like he is somehow out of the main group of candidates. He’ll have to come up with a whopper of an excuse to make Californians accept why he doesn’t want to speak. It certainly doesn’t help that he has already broken his first promise, that he would not accept money from anyone he might have to do business with as California governor; he has already raised more than a million dollars from land developers, high-tech companies and other interests.

You know, I think I’ve just been blog-comment spammed. I hadn’t heard of this before, but a quick Google shows it’s not new or unique here.

I get comments to any of my posts automatically emailed back to me, and upon hearing the “ding!” from my email program, I went to read it… and it looked suspicious.

The post the comment was made in was one of my old, quick photo entries on a Costco shopping trip (Costcos are relatively new to Japan).

First, I noted that the name that had been entered was “juicers,” which was one of the products in my cart. So I looked at the link that the person had left behind, and saw that it was a page on a web shop for juicers. I had mentioned buying a juicer in the text.

Then I looked carefully at the comment:

I heard that Costco wants to open 50 branches in Japan over the next 10 years too.. I bet it is true!

In a response I had made to another poster in my comments area, I had previously written:

[…] I heard that Costco wants to open 50 branches in Japan over the next 10 years, […]

And so noted that the wording was exactly the same. I also noted that this page is often hit by search engines. I may be mistaken, but I have the feeling that someone has a spam program that searches for products sold by the company mentioned in posts, and when it locates a blog entry, looks for ways to comment in a seemingly human form–in this case, probably looking for the words “I heard that” among others, then just copied the text up to the next punctuation mark, and added the “too.. I bet it is true!” at the end. Could be completely mechanical.

In any case, I deleted the URL and email just in case this was spam; the comment is still there, as it alone makes no reference to the spammer or any URLs.

Still, this is kind of disturbing. Will I have to start putting spam filters on my blog comments?

A few pages talking about these things and reactions to them are here, here, here, and here.

A senior Bush administration official, commenting on the unholy mess that Iraq is turning into, said that the day of the car bombing that killed the Shi’ite Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim and suicide attacks in Israel was “by far the worst political day for Bush since 9/11.”

Say what? Yes, it has been bad for Bush recently, but let’s face it: politically, 9-11 was a godsend for him. Already at 51% popularity and dropping fast, joked about for his ineptness, he was spinning down the tubes–and 9-11 turned him into an overnight success, people saying he stood “a hundred feet tall” and his polls shooting up to 90%. 9-11 saved his presidency. It was a tragic day for the rest of us, but it saved Bush politically.

Speaking of which, Iraq is indeed turning into an unholy mess. Dick Cheney, on Meet the Press on March 16th, said: “I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.” He pooh-poohed Russert’s suggestion that perhaps not all Iraqis would be overjoyed to have their country invaded by American forces, saying “The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.”

Well, guess what?

Daily Kos has a good piece on it, and that was back in March. Anyway, Bush has been trying to put his best face on things; just a month ago, Bush tried to calm us with the idea that “conditions in most of Iraq are growing more peaceful,” and that came two months or so after Bush’s infamous carrier landing, in which, dressed as the top gun he never came close to being as he was too busy being AWOL from draft-dodging, he declared “victory.” Since then, of course, more U.S. soldiers have died than before our “victory.”

Yeah, this guy is definitely a foreign policy genius.

And since when is Iraq a “war on terror“? The press has been calling it that recently, meekly going along with the Bush administrations long-term attempt to try to justify the war in Iraq by merging it with the post-9-11 offense against terrorism. The Bush administration began, of course, by claiming a terrorist link between Iraq and al Qaeda, which turned out to be bogus; then, when Iraqis started killing our soldiers and carrying out bomb attacks after Bush declared “victory,” he started calling them terrorists.

Let’s get something straight. They’re guerillas. That’s always been the term used for such small hit-and-run military forces in these situations. They were never called “terrorists” before 9-11, and it just shows how much the terms “terrorist” and “terrorism” have been devalued by their constant abuse and overuse by politicians trying to score some points.

Despite administration claims, there is zero evidence that any of the attacks made in Iraq are by terrorist groups rather than Iraqi Hussein partisans. Read the articles carefully, and you will see that the strongest evidence ever claimed for terrorist involvement has to do with nebulous “reports.” I’m not saying that guerillas are nice; I’m just saying that we should call a spade a spade and not let the politicians weasel out of trouble by blurring definitions. Don’t buy into it.

The Texas 11, that is, the Texas Democrats who temporarily moved to New Mexico to stop a Republican gerrymander and grab for power, are still there. It is very difficult for them, living in a hotel and being away from home and family for an entire month, in which time their political enemies decimated their staff’s salary benefits and started fining the absent lawmakers up to $5,000 a day, trying to force them to come back so the GOP can form a quorum and commence to illegitimately pillage the political treasures of the state before the 2004 election.

In the meantime, in just two weeks, the web site MoveOn.org has raised a million dollars to help them out. Much of the money will go to pay for an advertising campaign to alert the public to what’s going on there. Right on, MoveOn.

My neighborhood had the annual Bon Matsuri today. I should have been paying attention to the notice board, but instead I found out by hearing the music playing from my apartment window. On my trip down to the supermarket, I stopped by and took a few photos.

The dancers…

And some kids who will be up there in a few year’s time.

And a group of kids very talented at the taiko drums, both hitting the drums and tossing and twirling the sticks.

A small movie (240 x 360) of the dancing can be seen here. The file is an MPEG-4 Movie, so you will probably have to have an MPEG-4 codec (or an OS X Mac) to view it. The file is 1.7 MB, 43 seconds long. You may have to wait a minute or two before it loads and starts playing. Enjoy!

I was alerted to this one by my folks, who said they did a bit of a double-take when they heard it:

Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the Sean Hannity show, was asked about gay marriages.

“I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman,” Arnold replied.

Indeed. A man and a woman should have the right to a gay marriage. So should we all.

Japan is rather cell-phone crazy. My folks have a couple of cell phones, but compared to the feature-rich array of phones in Japan, theirs look positively boring. Walk down a city street in Japan, and it seems like there will always be a person or two in sight talking on their phone. Even more so, watch people on trains: many will have their cell phones open (see photo at right), reading or writing email, looking at photos. When Hiromi and I went to Otaki Falls, a couple came down into the waterfall pocket valley and immediately took photos of everything with their cell phones.

When I most recently came to Japan to work and live in 1998, I held back getting one, figuring that it would only make me more accessible to staff at my school to call me in to do more work, and wouldn’t be very useful for me. But after a year and a bit, I caved in and bought a simple model, and the base calling plan (2000 yen / $16 a month, 10 yen / 8 cents per minute for calls). That worked fine for me, but after four years, my phone–basic when I bought it–was looking more and more like a fossil. Also, having started this blog, I began to get interested in the idea of moblogging. At first, I waited for Bluetooth-enabled models to come out–there are some great Sony-Ericsson phones, like the P-800, which can work great with Macs. However, after waiting more than 6 months, I realized that Bluetooth phones are just not happening in Japan anytime soon. In fact, the number of Bluetooth-enabled cell phones in Japan fell from two models to zero while I watched.

So I figured that it was time to break down and buy. I tried doing the best research I could with the limited consumer-oriented review material available in Japan, and settled on a phone using the same carrier / plan I was already using; they have a phone, just recently released, which fit my bill. It’s the DDI-Pocket H” H-SA30001V (Japanese language site).

Staying with the same plan helped me avoid the hassle of canceling and re-signing up for phone service; with the new phone, I have the same number and the same calling plan prices I signed up for four years ago. It also made it easy for the people at the store to transfer the phone book data from my old phone into my new one–a pleasant surprise, as I had no idea that was possible, and they didn’t tell me that they did it–I found out by going home and finding all my numbers there.

But be careful when deciding what to do when you switch–there are two options if you stay with the same carrier. One option, in which you keep the same phone number and calling plan, costs 2000 yen more. The option which seems costs less keeps you with the same carrier, but allows you to change the phone number and calling plan. However, the cheaper plan has hidden costs: a 2000 yen fee for cancellation, a 2000 yen fee for re-signing, along with a few other fees as well, making the deal more expensive than the first option.

Features of the SA3001V that attracted me included the CCD camera, the postage-stamp sized external LCD screen, the phone-to-PC data transfer ability, and, something I had not expected, the ability to switch all menus to English! (See left.) The phone also has the usual extras, such as calculator, schedule book, alarm clock and so forth. Another nice feature they have is the ability to match ring tones and photos with phone numbers; if, for example, my friend Andrew were to call from his cell phone, I would hear a specific ring tone and see his photo flashed on the mini-LCD screen before answering the call.

I did find out some facts about the camera which showed up the advertising to be a bit misleading. One, for example, was the claim that the CCD camera has 110,000 pixels, suggesting the ability to take photos with dimensions like 300 x 370 pixels. It turns out that this phone camera actually takes photos the same size as all the others–144 x 120 pixels–so I guess the “110,000” number has to do with the digital zoom feature, and has nothing to do with the actual photo size.

Also, there are quite a few freeware programs allowing you to engage in data transfers, but they are all (of course) in Japanese. The one I tried to install on my English-language Windows machine crashed on install. The Mac version did install, but only works under OS 9.2 (not in Classic mode). After spending a few hours banging my head against the wall, I finally got it to work, and was able to use the “H Tonya” to edit my phone book. Frankly, this is a big thing for me, because I absolutely hate having to key in my entire phone book using those danged tiny buttons, especially when I have to first switch to English for every entry, and then cycle through up to eight characters to get the single one I want.

Another nice feature is the addition of a slim, English-language summarized version of the instruction manual. With only 40 pages of notes, it pales to the 577 pages in Japanese, but it is far more than I had hoped for. It looks like Sanyo, the phone maker, is realizing that there are non-Japanese speakers living in Japan and some concessions would be helpful for them.

So I haven’t used or even found out about all the features yet, but so far, it’s worth the investment. I hope it hold up over time.

Now to figure out moblogging, once I can find the time….

A 1977 interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger from the adult magazine Oui has surfaced, in which Arnold, then pre-Conan and -Terminator, talks about using pot and hash, not having any problems with “fags,” and “gang banging” a black woman with a group of other male bodybuilders.

The liberal establishment will likely not react too harshly to it; while very racy, it was 25 years ago, he was a young man, it does reveal progressive beliefs and tendencies, and hey, it is California.

The test here, however, is how conservatives react to it. Were it Gray Davis or Cruz Bustamante, you can bet that the GOP would be raising holy heck over it, publicizing it like crazy, calling their opponent a crazed, drug-using, sexed-up hedonist.

But then again, if Gore had had Bush’s background, they would have gone nuts over that, too.

For the GOP, it only matters if the other guy has flaws.

You may have noticed some design elements changing on the site. They are less an effort on my part to spiff things up than they are a reflection of new stuff I’m learning about how to use Movable Type, stylesheets, and other web tools. One of the new things is the Category archives, and the list of links to each one. Another is the sidebar appearing in archives beyond the main page. The site will continue to change in small ways like these over the next few weeks.

I was also introduced to a program by Amazon.com. Before now, when I mentioned a book, I would always link to the page where the book is sold at Amazon.com; it occurred to me that if someone bought a book through that link, it would be nice to get credit. To my surprise, such a thing is possible. The membership allows me to have integrated click-through links to Amazon’s site; I decided to use it as a possible way of generating income to cover the cost of maintaining the site. If someone (other than family or friends, dang) clicks through that link and buys the recommended book or other item immediately or within 24 hours, Amazon pays a commission, depending on the item and how the order was made after the link was followed (immediate purchases is best for credit).

Since the site became more visited, I wanted a way to ask for contributions, but I don’t like asking people to fork over money. The Amazon deal seemed like a good way to compromise, as the book or DVD bought via this site doesn’t cost the buyer any more than usual, but it nevertheless generates income here. In an attempt to keep the main page from being too commercial, I only feature one book or DVD on the sidebar, with links to a page with recommended media and reviews of the same. We’ll see how it goes.

I am learning about a lot of this as I help set up a new web site, xpat.org, which Sako Eaton and myself are building. Not yet fully completed, the site will consolidate our political commentary, and, over time, we hope to welcome several other commentators to the site. But for now, we have to get things set up; Sako is teaching me quite a bit I had not done before, and necessity is teaching me the rest. We hope to inaugurate the site on September 11th, for obvious reasons. It should be fun. I’ll continue to post the best stuff here as well as there, but most of my day-by-day commentary will move to the new site, leaving this blog a little more open for stuff on Japan and my personal experiences.

I have to admit, I am greatly troubled by the anger and anguish demonstrated by those protesting the removal of the Ten Commandments monument in Alabama. The people have been shouting, crying, and generally reacting with powerful negative emotion at the state action to remove the monument. They claim the removal is bigotry against them, that they are being attacked and betrayed.

I have a great respect for individual religious beliefs, and I am without doubt that most and perhaps all of the people here are earnest and well-intentioned. However, they are also dead wrong, and the vehemence of their protest is disturbing. Bigotry against your faith is when your faith is treated worse than others, held below other beliefs, or is unduly denigrated. The removal of the monument is not bigotry against Christianity; rather, it is the reverse. If the monument were being removed with disrespect or animosity, that would be bigotry. If there were all manner of monuments in the courthouse–Hindu, Muslim, Atheist, Buddhist, Jewish, and so on–and the Christian monument were the only one being removed, then that would be bigotry. But these are not the case.

Instead, Christianity has held a special, elevated position in our government, a place that it should not have, as the government was designed to be secular. Either all belief systems must be represented equally or not at all, but Christian testaments like the monument in Alabama have been snuck in over time, just as Roy Moore snuck his monument into the building, late one night, to the chagrin of his colleagues. As I discussed before, “In God We Trust” replaced “Liberty” and “E Pluribus Unum” on money over many years of time; “under God” was added to the pledge of allegiance during anti-communist fervor; “so help me God” was tacked on to oaths of office and testimony in courts. None were there originally. All, by the way, were chiseled into the Alabama monument, which made it even more a religious-political statement, as it represented a history of Christian appropriation of governmental special representation. No other faiths or belief systems were represented or elevated in such ways.

It is this special elevation of Christianity that represents, if anything, bigotry against all other belief systems, as if to say that Christianity alone is worth praise and worship, that other belief systems deserve less respect. Removing the monument represents a level field where all are equal. But Christians–not all, of course, but like those seen at the courthouse–have become so used to the idea of elevation that anything less then dominance feels to them as if it were an attack against them.

There were many such people demonstrating outside the courthouse, on the ground, face-down, crying hoarsely into microphones, wailing to God, imploring Him not to abandon them to their enemies (those are the exact words used). To put it lightly, they are overreacting. The removal of the monument is not the End of Days, in fact it is little more than real fairness to others.

That is why it is so scary to see these people reacting so: if they become so anguished and vehemently angered when their special advantage is nulled just a little bit, then what is in store for the future? How radical will their reactions become if Americans decide that we bring our nation back to the secular state it was intended to be? These protesters seem to be of the same stripe as those who are vehemently opposed to abortion, to the point of approving of the murder of doctors who carry out the procedures, and the frightening harassment of anyone seeking the services of a clinic.

But there is something even more disturbing: for these fundamentalists, this is not just a protest–it is a rally cry to elevate their religion even higher. That their intentions are good, that they feel they are on the path to saving us all, is little comfort; from such intentions, Crusades are fashioned (as well as certain roads to certain places).

It should be noted that despite the immense media coverage these people are enjoying, there are only several hundred participating, despite the calls of evangelists for all to come and stand with them. However, it is not uncommon that an enraged, committed minority can, by being loud and highly public, gain concessions out of proportion to their numbers and true importance.

The reaction to this enraged pocket of fundamentalism must be calm but openly, widely and firmly expressed opposition to religious encroachment on the state, an affirmation of both the freedom of religion and the political principle of separation that protects that freedom.

I have no idea where the recent surge is coming from, but the number of visitors to this site has made a sharp increase. Today, over 200 people will have visited, and the day before, almost 160; in the past two weeks, I’ve had an average of 135 unique visitors per day (but not all unique for the two-week period, as many visit daily). Quite a shock, but then the whole thing has been that way–when I started four months ago, I expected no more than a dozen or so people to visit my site in any given month. So far for August, I have visitors from about 1500 unique IP Addresses.

Maybe it’s the gyoza recipe….

UPDATE: On the 27th, 260 people visited the site, a new high. The numbers have not stayed that high, but are suddenly averaging about 150 a day now, with 1700 unique IPs for the month.

Hiromi had been urging me to go with her on a hike to a waterfall she knows and loves, up in the mountains beyond Oku-Tama, in the westernmost portions of Tokyo Prefecture. I’ve been right there with her for some time, but the weather never cooperated with us. With the extended rainy season and a couple of typhoons, every time we thought we could go, we got rained out. But finally, the weather and our schedules granted us a free day with sunny weather on Monday, and we took it.

The train ride to Oku-tama is a bit of a trip, taking three different trains, and an hour and a half to get there. We left at about 8:30 am. After Ome Station, trains leave for Oku-Tama only every half-hour–uncommonly sparse for railway service in Tokyo. When we got there, we got our gear together and headed off for the park, on foot–a five-kilometer or more hike, almost all the way uphill. It being summer in Japan, the weather was hot and humid, and so in the traditional Poza fashion, I sweated buckets. Not being a that good shape (I do sit in front of the computer a lot), we had to rest a few times along the way, especially when the uphill climb became somewhat steep.

But the scenery was beautiful all along the way, including the early climb. Every corner we came to, it seemed, we were greeted with scenery like you see below.

We also met our share of winged and scaled passers-by, including this rather beautiful butterfly.

In the park itself, things cooled down considerably, with the shade of the forest and the mist from the many waterfalls, many small, and a few rather large. But our destination was Otaki, a fairly large waterfall (well, certainly not by Yosemite standards, but still impressive for Tokyo), where Hiromi knew we could find a small open space in front of the falls to lay down a tarp and enjoy a nice picnic–and that is exactly what we did when we got there.

We spent a few hours eating lunch (gyoza, sandwiches, assorted drinks and snacks), taking photos, and sitting together, taking in the sight. Only once did a few other people come in for a few minutes, taking cell-phone photos as they walked through; other than that, we had it all to ourselves. When it was getting a bit late, we packed up our trash and left, making our way back down the trail. My knee complained more than my muscles; it’s always hardest going down for that reason. But it was still a beautiful view, as the sun set behind the hills.

By the time we got back to Tachikawa, the last transfer station, and parted ways, it was well after dark, about 8:00 pm. A wonderful way to spend a day off during the summer.

When Bush was running for president, one of his greatest advantages was the claim that he was at a disadvantage. His people stressed that Bush was just an ordinary guy, and not a practiced, high-power speaker like Gore; therefore, so long as he didn’t get completely trounced in the debate, it would be a victory. And indeed, he performed more poorly than Gore, but was declared the winner for, effectively, not drooling.

The same tactic is behind the conservative myth of the liberal media. By claiming that the media is left of center when, in fact, it is to the right of center, they gain the ability to spin perception in their favor. If a story comes out which looks bad for conservatives, they can just say that the liberal media is spinning it to look that way, but it really isn’t as bad. If a story comes out favoring liberals, they can also claim that the liberals aren’t really so good, it’s just the liberal media making it look that way.

The fact of the matter is that while a majority of reporters, about 60%, are liberal, a greater majority of editors, commentators, and media owners, about two-thirds, are conservative. Editors and owners are the ones who decide what gets reported on and how. A liberal reporter cannot get liberal bias by a conservative editor unless s/he approves it.

Besides, straight reporting of the news is less where the bias is; it is in editorializing, in commentary where spin really comes into play–and a great majority of commentary is right-wing. Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Robert Novak, George Will, Oliver North, G. Gordon Liddy, Laura Ingraham, “Doctor” Laura Schlessinger, Bill O’Reilly, William Kristol, William Safire, John McLaughlin, Tucker Carlson, Bill Bennett, Matt Drudge, Pat Buchanan, Bay Buchanan, Pat Robertson, William F. Buckley, Sean Hannity, Jonah Goldberg, Brit Hume, and several dozen more. At least a few dozen are very well-known names, and have their own TV and/or radio shows (as opposed to sharing the show with opposing commentators).

Compare this with liberal commentators. How many can you name? Just a few, probably–James Caraville and Jesse Jackson come to mind quickly; Paul Begala, simply because he’s often on Crossfire; Arianna Huffington (a recent switch from right to left); Columnists Molly Ivins and Joe Conason, and George Stephanopolous, mildly liberal as he may be. Outside of these people, it is very hard to name any liberal commentators with the same kind of name recognition that dozens of conservatives enjoy, and you will note that not a single one of the above liberals has their own television or radio talk show at present. (Bill Maher is more Libertarian than liberal or conservative, in case you were thinking of him.)

In short, conservatives who control the news and who comment on it with bias are not only greater in number, but also more radically leaning than their liberal counterparts.

The only reason we hear about the “liberal media” is because conservatives have pushed that particular big lie in a correspondingly big manner, because they benefit from it in a big way.

Think about it: the media branded Gore a liar for errors in detail (such as which fire site he visited) and for statements misquoted or taken out of context (he never said he “invented the Internet,” he rather stated quite correctly that he “took the initiative” in creating it, as one of many people who created it; Gore indeed was the greatest proponent of Internet-friendly legislation while in the Senate, championing legislation that allowed the Internet to boom and bring the economy along with it. He deserves credit for it, not mocking due to a poorly-worded sentence. Nevertheless, he is still misquoted today by smirking, self-righteous right-wing pundits).

On the other hand, we had Bush, who dodged the cocaine question in a manner more Clintonesque than Clinton, who lied many times about draft-dodging into a celebrity unit of the Guard, and about his going AWOL thereafter, who lied about his arrest record and blamed his drunk-driving label on his opponents, and who should have been questioned much more closely about these things and about his many other questionable acts (SEC violations, lying under oath as governor of Texas, etc.).

If there really were a liberal media,they would have virtually ignored Gore’s slips and focused all their attention on Bush’s lawbreaking, draft-dodging and general lying.

Instead, the media labeled Gore a liar and Bush as “plainspoken.” Does that sound like liberal bias, or even a neutral one?

As the church lady said, “you be the judge.” It’s not much of a choice, if you’re honest with yourself.