This is what you see when you look straight out. Not the most enchanting view. Not that you could see for miles anyway, but it would be nice to see at least something else.

You can, though, if you face in a slightly different direction. This is one reason I like places like Shanghai–the interesting architecture:

The upper structure is a sports center or something–but below that building, at street level, is a supermarket (you can see the red arch at the supermarket entrance. If you like the image, click on it for a slightly larger version.

Whatever its flaws, I like it. Maybe (probably) I don’t know nearly as much about the details as I should. Maybe I am responding viscerally. I don’t care. These reprehensible asses have been robbing us as customers to line their own pockets, and now they’re robbing us as taxpayers to line their own pockets. If these bonuses were reasonable and as tied purely to performance as they so falsely claim, that would be one thing. But they are not.

Republicans in Congress, predictably, are putting up resistance. Many are caving in and voting with Democrats just like Democrats did with Republicans on the Iraq War. The similarity is due to both being immediate third-rail policies, the difference is that (of course depending on your opinion) one was for the wrong reasons and the other is for the right reasons.

The Republicans’ reasons to protest:

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right. … since the bonuses have been distributed, the solution is not to compound the problem with more inappropriate actions by the federal government.

This only makes sense if you agree that taxing obscenely wrong bonuses is a “wrong.” Many beg to differ.

Retroactive Tax Increase. The tax increase in the bill would be applied to bonuses paid after December 31, 2008. Many conservatives believe that retroactive tax increases are unfair and unconstitutional.

This only applies if you see it applied to specific days of the year. This bill is aimed at the current tax year, so I do not think it is retroactive.

Confiscatory Tax Rate. The legislation creates a tax rate of 90%.

Of course it’s confiscatory. That’s the point. I for one have no problems with this. These scumwads are running off with money earned by working Americans that was intended to save the business and benefit the nation, not enrich the same dishonest bastards that lost the firms’ money in the first place. If Republicans think that it’s wrong to confiscate that money, then I think they go too far on principle where it frankly should never apply.

Bill of Attainder. The bill, while not mentioning AIG by name, is clearly meant to punish AIG executives who received high bonuses–a specific group of individuals in response to public outrage over the bonuses.

The idea being that only courts should be able to apply such specific punishments. They believe that we are punishing a very specific group of people, even though it is a group, and no specific people or even corporations are named. And I think that’s where this argument fails; you can’t name all the specific people who will be affected yet, and more people could fall under this classification based upon their actions, not who they are. After all, one could say that the Estate Tax is a bill of attainder if one limited the definition to a “restricted group or class of people.” That this bill is aimed at anyone working for a firm receiving large amounts of taxpayer bailout money emphasizes the fact that there is a public interest. It is aimed at a wrong, not specific people. Furthermore, it does not really “punish” anyone; if the Congress passed a law that said bank robbers had to pay back 90% of the money they stole but don’t have to go to jail, I rather doubt that Republicans would be crying foul over an “unfair punishment.” Not to mention that Republicans are probably crying foul only because it is white-collar executives running off with public money–if it were bank robbers doing the exact same thing, they’d want to hang the bastards. But these guys are too close to their core constituency.

One of the dangers of going to the more popular areas of Shanghai is dealing with the shopkeepers. They are constantly on the lookout for tourists to fleece. You can note them by their calls: “Lookah lookah!” “Just looking!” “You want this?” And that’s just when you walk by–if you show any interest in their wares, they will bolt up out of their chairs and start in on a spiel. And god help you if you actually ask about something–you will have to beat them off with a stick, almost literally.

I had this happen before when I first came to Shanghai, and forgot my lesson. Today, I looked at Compact Flash memory cards for cameras in a shop, and in a moment of weakness, asked about the 4GB Extreme version by SanDisk. 680 yuan (about $100) was the listed price. I wasn’t actually trying to talk the lady down, I was just trying to calculate the amount in my head and recall what the price was in the U.S. She took my reluctance for a bargaining tactic, and brought her price down to 350 Yuan, or about $50. I told her it was an interesting offer, as I knew that such cards were probably in that range in the U.S. But I don’t like being pressured, and so I told her that I would think about it and maybe come back to buy it.

Not good enough. “What you mean, ‘think about it’?” she asked as if I’d slapped her. “No think, this good deal, I really want to do business with you!” She then lowered her price to $35 after demanding me to type the price I wanted into her calculator. Sachi tried to get her off my back by translating my explanation that I don’t buy things right away, I always think first. This seemed to offend her. Acting angry and hurt, she followed me as I walked away, lowering her price to $20 and then $10, repeating “I really want to do business with you!” I had to walk into another store just to get her to lay off of me. By this time it felt like she was not interested even in making money (the U.S. version costs $30) but if I agreed to take the flash card then she could grab ahold of me and duplicate me with a pod person and then suck my brains out or something. Seriously, I was afraid the card was a defective throwaway or stolen merchandise or something.

They really are that aggressive. Sachi commented on my getup, my digital SLR hung around m,y neck and wearing this big backpack, I just shouted “tourist.” When we walked down busy streets, people would flock to me, saying “Rolex,” “watch,” “bag!” and “antiques!” sometimes holding out catalog sheets full of pictures of watches. Often these people were inside stores they clearly were not employed by. One time a guy tried to hawk special exchange rates to us in a bank. Several people begged for money.

Quite a city to take a stroll in.

Are these real ones in the store pictured above? Or some street hawker who got a big loan and a solid set of brass ones? I would not put it past some of these guys.

These are a great little snack: Mini Castella. “Castella” are a kind of pound cake, and sometimes you will see stalls along the street which make small balls, slightly smaller than golf-ball size versions of these, called mini castella.

In the basement of the Ikebukuro Mitsukoshi Department Store, they have a mini castella stand which produces a variety–cheese pudding filled, chocolate filled, maple flavored, and a few more, but the all-around favorite is the Caramel Flake, which is a castella filled with a good dollop of caramel cream with crunchy flakes. Yum. And not too expensive–each one is two bites, and you get 32 for about $10. (Well, not expensive for Japan, at least.)

I got these when Sachi’s friends came to visit, and they quickly disappeared.

March is a full month for us, with Sachiko’s Birthday, White Day, and our wedding anniversary. Sachiko’s birthday is what I decided to splurge on this year. Being as excited not about cleaning as much as she is about having a clean house, anything which can help in that direction is a sure-fire bet to make Sachiko happy. Sachi will always perk up at commercials with cleaning devices, and so this seemed the perfect choice:

The Roomba. What I didn’t expect was how expensive it would be. In the U.S., a similar model is about $350–already quite a bundle. But then you have to factor in the Japan appliance tax: almost any electronic appliance in Japan will end up costing about 30-50% more than the exact same item costs in the United States–especially if it is built in Japan. So the base unit was expensive–but the higher models cost a lot more for very little extra. For an extra $200 you can get a Roomba that auto-docks to a base station (so you don’t have to plug in the power charger), and for another $200 on top of that, there’s a model which you can program to clean on a schedule in addition to auto-docking. I didn’t feel that $400 was worth it just so we could avoid plugging in a cable and deciding when it would clean stuff, and so went with the base model.

Sachi was thrilled with the basic model. We charged it up and just watched it go. The robot would seem to constrain itself to small areas at first, but eventually would cover the whole room. I am not sure, but I got the impression that it learned the layout more or less, as it seemed to figure out how to navigate through the narrow areas better, cleaning more effectively under chairs and so forth as time went on.

Previously, Sachi would cover the entire apartment with her mop-brush thingy, complaining about my “cotton balls” (little balls of material often from socks) and “poodle hair” as well as the copious amounts of dust that seem to result from my presence. Now, she just starts the Roomba and instead relaxes for a good part of the morning–now working more on her blog (which I’ll get to soon).

Since we got a “super saver” ticket to Shanghai, we did not choose our airline–they did not even tell us which airline until after we paid. It turned out to be JAL. My last experience with them more than 20 years ago was less than ideal, but they were pretty decent this time–for a 3-hour flight, at least. They had the back-of-the-seat video system where you could choose from more than a dozen new films, a dozen old ones, and some TV offerings as well. The kind where you can start, pause, fast-forward, etc. They even didn’t charge for booze. They also had a feature that I never saw before and kind of liked: cameras in front of and below the plane, so you could watch the take-off, landing, and the scenery below the plane in flight. Though their “PA IN OPERATION” signal could have used a few abbreviation periods to make it look less like a torture announcement.

Shanghai is like I remember it: smoky, smoggy, and a bit smelly. Sachi and I took the taxi from the airport, and the taxi driver raced wildly; the way everyone shifts lanes and crowds each other off the road is kind of scary. At least twice on the way we made exclamations in unison when it looked like we were going to hit someone. There is construction everywhere, and tons of high-rise buildings.

We got to the hotel, and though it is relatively new and nice, the lobby had a strong chemical smell. The elevator was a bit better, and the floor where our room is better still. You can still smell it, but it’s bearable.

We went out to a local convenience store to pick up some beers and snacks. Three 500 ml beers, bottles of tea and coke, 2 bags of snacks, and a largish bag of pistachio nuts set us back all of $7. That also brings back memories of how cheap it can be here. Even the taxi ride cost only $23 for a very long ride in from Pu Dong Airport. The only thing that’s too expensive so far is the Internet access in the hotel–$5 a day, and only less if you connect for less than an hour.

Tired right now–will post this tomorrow, later, when we get around to starting up Internet access.

New Rule: if you use an ATM, especially if there is only one terminal and a line of people waiting, you don’t get to do more than ten transactions.

I see this a lot in Japan: people who come to ATM machines with a fat envelope, and it turns out they have about 20 passbooks. They then monopolize the machine for a good 15 minutes, sometimes even longer, doing transaction after transaction after transaction. I don’t know if these people simply have a ton of accounts, or if they are deputized to carry out the banking business for a large group of people. (Does this happen in the U.S. as well? I never saw it.)

I got caught behind one of these people today. Just a few hours before I have to leave for a flight, and I have to waste a quarter of an hour for this guy to do his business. Meanwhile, a long line of people are forming behind me. After we reached the 15-minute mark, I asked him–extremely politely, though my irritation might not make that sound likely–when he might be finished. He completely ignored me.

Whatever the case, these people should not be allowed in ATM lines. If they have that much business to do, they should either go to a proper bank or at least find an ATM kiosk which has multiple machines.

Sorry I have not blogged recently; Monday and Tuesday were crazy busy. Monday I started work early and finished late; Tuesday I started earlier, finished a bit earlier, but then Sachi and I went straight off to our first anniversary dinner. More on that later. This morning we’re prepping to run off to Shanghai for an extended weekend.

Before getting more busy, I wanted to blog on the most recent announcement from Apple–a big one, the news of the iPhone 3.0 upgrade due out this summer. Maybe it was Palm breathing down their necks with the Pre, maybe it was just a backlog of technical issues that got resolved, but finally Apple has done most of what people have been clamoring for on the iPhone. They claim a hundred new features, though as is usual with these big claims you will likely only use a small fraction of all of those.

• Systemwide Cut, Copy and Paste: This is a biggie. I still don’t see why Apple could not have had this from the start, but they needed this. If they had come out with a third generation without cut, copy and paste, the iPhone might have suffered from it. Apple’s solution looks simple and elegant: double-tap to select a word, use end-handles with a new magnifier to extend the selection, and tap on the cut, copy, or paste buttons.
• Systemwide Push Notification: Again, Apple needed this, and hopefully it will work right this time. Should provide a new level to what apps can do, even if Apple was unable to provide the ability for apps to run in the background (something they will eventually need to offer). The ability to have sounds and screen messages (hopefully also when the phone is asleep) will make a big difference, especially if Apple allows this to work with its email app; Sachi, for instance, very much misses her phone making an audible alert when a new email arrives.
• Systemwide Search: Another long-needed feature. Now you can also search Mail–though I am not yet clear as to whether or not you will be able to search only the few hundred messages currently residing on the phone–or iff more messages can be stored and searched locally.
• Landscape Keyboard: I don’t need this as much as others, but it makes complete sense, and again seems strange that Apple didn’t do it sooner.
• Stereo Bluetooth: I presume that this means that Bluetooth headphones will not only be stereo, but that you can listen to music over Bluetooth headsets as well. This always struck me as a bizarre omission on Apple’s part. I’ve long desired a good wireless headset–but not just for phone calls–and this will probably get a set made that I’ll be interested in buying.
• Developer Pron: A thousand new APIs–the ability to embed maps, use shaking, in-app email and voice chat, use notifications, and especially to purchase more stuff from within applications (possibly along with a premium store which would help avoid slumming with all those free apps) all are pretty clearly aimed at enticing developers who have grown disenchanted with Apple. A lot of these will be good for the end user as well (Apple has struck a good balance between helping developers and keeping performance good for users), but most of this is most useful for the software writers.

There’s a lot more–peer-to-peer connectivity, the ability to plug in more hardware, turn-by-turn navigation… Needless to say, this will be a pretty huge update, bigger than 2.0 was. For the time being, this is all I can post on. Gotta go pack now.

You can view Apple’s event via hi-quality streaming here.

Postscript: I understand that most of the new features will also work on 1st-gen iPhones (unless limited by hardware, like lack of GPS or not-adavanced-enough Bluetooth) as well as 3Gs–and, of course, whatever new version is coming this summer.

Now the media is telling us that Obama is not allowed to point out facts that might acknowledge Bush’s faults:

In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

It hasn’t taken long for the recriminations to return — or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome “inheritance” of its predecessor.

Over the past month, Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems “inherited” from the Bush administration, using increasingly bracing language to describe the challenges his administration is up against. The “deepening economic crisis” that the president described six days after taking office became “a big mess” in remarks this month to graduating police cadets in Columbus, Ohio.

“By any measure,” he said during a March 4 event calling for government-contracting reform, “my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster.”

Obama’s more frequent and acid reminders that former president George W. Bush left behind a trillion-dollar budget deficit, a 14-month recession and a broken financial system have come at the same time Republicans have ramped up criticism that the current president’s policies are compounding the nation’s economic problems.

And which one of these things is not a rock-solid fact? If people on the right work constantly and tirelessly to blame Obama for every piece of bad economic news despite the fact that he has barely had time to do anything to effect the situation, then should not Obama be allowed to point out the obvious realities? If Obama wants to have any chance of being effective in this crisis, he has to maintain a level of confidence from the American people; he cannot do a good job if he cannot defend himself against baseless charges of malfeasance which erode the public’s trust in him.

I don’t fault the Bush administration for having said in their first year or even year and a half that they inherited their fiscal state from Clinton; they did. I fault them for their bad policy decisions to correct it, and their continued attempts to blame Clinton even well into Bush’ second term. If Obama, two years from now, is still saying that every new downturn in jobs is all Bush’s fault and not in any way due to his administration, then he should come under criticism for similarly faulty incriminations.

The fact that Obama is not doing what he has every right to do–actively investigating and prosecuting the blatant illegalities of the Bush administration–has demonstrated a rather strong commitment not to go to lengths to attack the previous administration. The last administration clearly violated the Fourth Amendment as well as other Constitutional principles, condoned, conducted, and legitimized torture, started an illegal war, and made an absolute mockery of the legal system in a plethora of illegal ways. This goes way beyond what is covered in the usual gentlemen’s agreement not to kick the outgoing administration on their way out.

So to fall all over Obama for stating truth in defense of smears as a means of allowing him to do his job, that’s going more than a tad too far. For some reason, there is a persistent meme out there that Obama, in order to be bipartisan, has to not only extend a hand, but he has to allow those on the right to bash him incessantly while he just stands there and takes it.

I noted this story in Google News and wrote the post in reaction to it. After writing this and getting ready to publish, I noticed that Steve Benen in The Washington monthly wrote a similar post.

The abortion debate is always a complex one, with many levels to it. Where the pro-lifers tend to lose out is when they object to aborting a pregnancy in its very initial stages. They have to fight the hardest when dealing with the first few weeks of a pregnancy–the “day after” pill, for example, or abortion very early on–because most people just intuitively do not equate a near-microscopic clump of cells with a human life that can be “murdered.” Ergo the emphasis on placards bearing photos of bloody six-month-old fetuses and the whole “partial-birth” red herring. And it brings to the forefront the predominant issue here: when does life begin?

This question is why I believe that the abortion debate is, at its foundation, a religious one, and thus my belief in pro-choice is partly founded on First Amendment issues. Not that privacy issues don’t apply, but I really do believe that belief is fundamental here. And it’s not just me–anyone who believes that life begins at conception because that’s what their church tells them must feel the same way.

Not that they readily admit it–I have encountered several people who are deeply religious, absolutely believe that life begins at conception, but in the context of a debate refuse to admit that the two points are in any way related–they insist that their belief about the starting point of life is based upon reason, not faith. But then none of their arguments about why life begins at conception–if they indeed have any–hold out for very long.

One of the arguments I have heard the most often is that life begins at conception because that is when the genetic code is formed: once a zygote forms, you have an established genetic code that forms a new person. This, however, is confusing time sequence and form with quality. A corpse also has a unique genetic code, as do the countless bits of skin we shed every day; this does not make them living human beings. One would also then ask about genetic twins–they begin as a single individual and do not split until, usually, a few days after fertilization (some split much later than that). At fertilization, there was only one life; days later, there are two (and possibly more after that). This does not make much sense if fertilization is the beginning of life, as splitting also begins new life.

Another common argument is one of potential: once an ovum is fertilized, it has the potential to form a human life. The thing is, before fertilization, the separate gametes also have the potential to form a human life; we are again confusing time sequence with quality. The “potential” argument is dangerous because if you take it to its logical and rational end, you are forced to concede that any lost opportunity to conceive a child is equivalent to murder. If aborting a day-old zygote is murder because it has the potential to become a human being, then using contraception is similarly murder because you are blocking exactly that potential. Similarly, any ovulation of a woman that is not met with a reproductive coupling is also murder, as there is a potential for life and you are keeping it from taking place. We reach the logical but absurd end to that argument by concluding that once a female reaches menarche, even at age ten for instance, she must be impregnated at every opportunity until she reaches menopause, lest she and her potential mate become serial killers.

Furthermore, a zygote and an undifferentiated cell have essentially the same genetic code and can, depending on external influences, both form a human life. But one is supposed to be “human” and the other not. I once made that point in a discussion forum, pointing out that any cell which could potentially be used to create a new life, such as with cloning, would also have to be considered “human” and its life potential carried out, with its discarding being equivalent to murder. The person on the other side of the argument berated me for using a “science fiction” argument, pointing out that higher mammals cannot be cloned. I pointed out that, science fiction or no, the argument still made a valid point because we could be pretty sure that it would some day come to pass. It just happened that only a few months later, news of Dolly the sheep became public.

The conclusion that I have come to is that in the end, the life-begins-at-conception mindset, if not religious, is certainly just another case of finding a convenient landmark and becoming attached to it, and is no more superior from a logical or rational point of view than is any of the other landmarks, such as viability.

For me, higher brain function remains the most logical indicator of when life begins, as we tend to equate that activity with human life. A living human becomes a corpse when higher brain function is lost; does that not indicate what we consider most relevant?

But even that is far from certain; no indicator is. But one thing is clear: most people consider a freshly fertilized ovum as not being equivalent to a human being with rights. Everyone (or so close to everyone as to make no difference) considers a newborn baby as a human being with rights. And the number of people who believe that humanity exists increases as one moves from the zygote to the newborn.

A few years back, I blogged on abortion and wrote about the Roe v. Wade decision, and how the specifics of that decision, while nominally based upon medical privacy, in fact resembled more a timeline of general belief:

The Roe decision enumerated the stages of pregnancy and the restrictions involved in each trimester. In the first trimester, abortions are allowed generally without restriction; in the second, restrictions may be applied but may not transgress upon the health of the mother; and in the third trimester (or viable stage), the health or life of the mother is the only allowable excuse for an abortion to be carried out.

The question is, how does privacy dictate these three levels of restriction?

It seems to me instead that the divisions in Roe reflected the increasing likelihood of a fetus being a full-fledged human, capable of being ‘murdered,’ as the pregnancy progresses. It begins with a single fertilized cell which most people would have trouble acknowledging as a murder victim, to a fully-developed fetus at 9 months, ready to be born, which few would say is not a human being. So, for most people, there is a line between those two points at which the fetus crosses that vital threshold–but also for most people, it is questionable exactly where that line exists.

Ergo the divisions in Roe: abortions fully legal in the first trimester, somewhat restricted in the second, and heavily restricted in the third. But, at least to me, this does not reflect a rationale of privacy, but rather a recognition of the decision of where to draw the line of life increasing in difficulty as the fetus develops. …

This is ultimately a matter of belief. And that belief is rooted in one’s views of life, the universe, and everything, to steal a phrase. In other words, it is a spiritual or religious decision. And that clarifies the entire matter for me considerably: the state cannot force a certain religious or spiritual viewpoint on its constituents by statute. You can’t make a law that tells people what religious opinion must be followed upon pain of imprisonment. Each person has the right to determine their own stand on the matter. You cannot make a law forcing one to observe the religious determination of when life begins any more than you can make a law forcing people to observe religious doctrines concerning diet, dress, behavior, or worship.

This is why I see abortion as not primarily a Ninth Amendment issue of medical privacy–though that would serve just as well as an alternate reasoning–but rather that the legality of abortion is a First Amendment issue: every person has the right to religious belief, and one belief is when human life begins. Society has a right to enforce some restrictions based upon near-universal agreement–you cannot claim that your religion says that life begins 30 days after birth and so infanticide is a religious right. But to impose a total ban on abortion goes too far in the other direction, taking a religious belief held by some and enforcing that belief upon others by force of statute.

Thoughts?

Obama and Democrats in the Senate propose stimulus spending to spur job growth and economic revitalization. The public approves of it strongly. The bill passes Congress. The states await the funding.

A few opportunistic Republican state governors make noise about refusing token bits of the spending, but one governor–Mark Sanford of South Carolina wants to take that state’s $700 million cut of the money, and instead of spending it on what it was intended for, use it to pay down the state’s debt. Remember the young girl asking for funds to make her school livable again from Obama’s address to Congress? South Carolina. Sanford would be pulling the carpet out from that school, as one small example of those who would suffer from it.

So, why does he want to do that?

What we’ve said is it’s not a good idea to spend money that you don’t have, whether in your personal life, in the world of business, or for that matter, in the world of politics. At the end of the day, all this stimulus money’s about spending money we don’t have. We don’t think that’s a good idea, but that debate was lost.

Ah. After eight years of non-stop Republican borrow and spend, where right-wingers couldn’t spend “money they didn’t have” fast enough, after decades of smearing of the Democrats as “tax and spend” (which would be using money you DO have), after thirty years of Republicans running up ten trillion dollars in debt, we now have Republicans lecturing Obama and the rest of us on “spending money we don’t have,” a practice the Republicans have owned for the past three decades. And their timing could not be worse–we now actually need spending like we never have before.

And Obama’s spending is not the earmarks Republicans have dominated, nor the no-bid contracts to cronies and contributors, or the billions in giveaways to oil companies already flush with profits or billions more for wealthy people flush with profits from the Clinton years. Instead, the spending is mostly for stuff that I guess Republicans see as wasteful–schools, roads, bridges, communications, and other infrastructure stuff.

Remember Al Gore and the lockbox, using some of the money the Clinton surplus would have given us for paying down the debt? Remember how Republicans scoffed at it and instead insisted that it was “your” (the taxpayer’s) money, so you (and by “you,” we mean wealthy people) could get tax cuts? Remember how those tax cuts, along with Bush letting 9/11 happen, and his debacle of a war in Iraq, gutted any chance of surpluses helping, even if Republicans had any intention of paying down any debt?

Yep, the Republican Party is now officially the Party of Dangerously Irresponsible Economics. Not that they weren’t for the past 30 years when they gave in to “Voodoo Economics” so they could win elections. But now they have removed any and all doubt.

On the close flip-side of the FUD story is that of new product rumors. While market manipulators create false rumors for profit, a lot of Mac fanatics out there spread rumors which may or may not be false based upon pure enthusiasm. And recent reports of Apple ordering lots of ten-inch touch screens for later this year (now backed up by some high-level news sources) follow up on years of rumors that Apple has been developing a tablet computer. We saw a similar pattern with the iPhone–years of rumors that Apple was developing a phone, official denials of same, then orders by Apple for parts pretty clearly intended for such a product, then the product being announced. There’s no guarantee that the last phase will come to pass, but we have now seen all the prior stages, so there’s a good chance that something is there.

The question is, what would the product cost? Some are speculating that this is Apple’s entry into the “Netbook” market, but with Apple charging an effective $400 or $500 for the iPhone, I kind of doubt that a 10“ touchscreen would come in at netbook prices. If Apple follows its past patterns, it will release an ultra-cool device at premium prices. In the current economy, maybe Apple will change that strategy–the iMac, after all, is now very competitively priced–but somehow, I doubt we’ll be seeing a $500 Mac Touch Tablet.

One thing such a computer would bring is true multi-touch; Apple holds a lot of patents on this, and would be foolish to pass up profiting from it, so long as they can make it work really well. We’ve seen pop-up semi-transparent keyboards and how they might work. There is talk about handwriting recognition, but I doubt that more–Apple is opposed to using a stylus, it seems, and the virtual keyboard just seems to make more sense.

Here are a few mock-ups of a Mac tablet that have been making the rounds:

That last one seems inordinately contrived–taking a Leopard screen and adding iPod/iPhone elements. The keyboard would never be so limited and the virtual scroll wheel would be useless. Likely none of these will be spot-on or even very close, but they do give you an idea of what a 10-inch touchscreen would look like with a bit of Apple styling applied.

We’ll have to see if this even comes to pass at all–who knows, the 10-inch touch screen could be for something we haven’t even thought of yet.

Jon Stewart finally had Jim Cramer on his show last night, and boy, did Cramer come across as a giant ass. Not to mention, a clip Stewart showed of him in a webcast interview from TheStreet.com from a few years back (before the iPhone was released) shows how and why FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) was “fomented” by hedge fund managers (like he was) to bring stocks like Apple down–because though it was “blatantly illegal,” it was easy to do and the SEC wouldn’t go after you for it. In his words (video here):

Jim Cramer: You can’t create yourself an impression that a stock’s down. But you do it anyway ‘cause the SEC doesn’t understand it. That’s the only sense that I would say this is illegal. But a hedge fund that’s not up a lot really has to do a lot now to save itself. This is different from what I was talking about at the beginning where I would be buying the Qs and stuff.

This is just actually blatantly illegal. But when you have six days and your company may be in doubt because you’re down, I think it’s really important to foment if I were one of these guys. …

Aaron Task: Okay. Another stock that a lot of people are focused on right now seems to be Apple.

Jim Cramer: Yeah. Apple’s very important to spread the rumor that both Verizon and ATT have decided they don’t like the phone. It’s a very easy one to do because it’s also you want to spread the rumor that’s it not gonna be ready for MAC World. This is very easy ‘cause the people who write about Apple want that story, and you can claim that it’s credible because you spoke to someone at Apple, ‘cause Apple doesn’t –

Aaron Task: They’re not gonna comment. They’re not gonna –

Jim Cramer: So it’s really an ideal short. Again, if I were a short Apple, I would be working very hard today to get that. The way you would do that is you pick up the phone and you call six trading desks and say, “Listen, I just got off the phone with my contact at Verizon and he has already said, ‘Listen, we’re a Lucky G house. We’re a Samsung house. We’re a Motorola house. There’s no room for Apple. They want too much. We’re not gonna let them in. We’re not gonna let them do what they did to music.’” I think that’s a very effective way to keep a stock down.

Oh, great. So here’s a stock that I have invested in with money that I worked hard for years to earn and save, and there’s some scumwad hedge fund manager who made some bad choices–so to help himself, he goes out and spreads fake rumors to rob me of money. And here is this self-described “banking class hero” scum virtually bragging / instructing others to do this kind of thing, on national TV. And here we are more than two years later, and the guy still has a TV show on CNBC and other high-profile writing gigs.

Yes, unchecked capitalism works so well.

(Click here for an article from RoughlyDrafted on this, from back in 2007.)

If you’re Japanese and you want to visit China for 15 days or less, you don’t need a visa. For longer trips, the Chinese embassy charges you ¥3,000 ($30). If you’re a non-American other than Japanese, for any length of stay, the embassy charges you ¥4,000. If you’re an American: the visa will cost you a whopping ¥15,000, or $153. I found this out to my complete shock when I picked up my visa just an hour ago.

In fact, there is a different fee for non-Americans for single-entry, multiple-entry, and so forth–but Americans pay the top fee no matter what the visa type.

I knew that Sino-American relations were not at their best, but what a way to sock it to Americans! A hundred and fifty bucks for a lousy tourist visa? When I traveled to China five years ago, I am pretty sure that it was ¥6,000, maybe even less. So, this is recent. (Looking it up, it appears to have taken effect in 2007.)

The freakin’ 3-star hotel Sachi and I booked for 2 people didn’t cost that much for a 5-day, 6-night stay–I think the bill came out just short of ¥15,000.

Is there something specific I am being punished for? Or is this general anti-Americanism?

This news is ricocheting about:

Today is Employee Free Choice Act day in the Senate, with Tom Harkin holding a hearing on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that will serve as precursor to the bill getting sent to the floor. …

The more impressive strike came, however, earlier this morning, when Citibank downgraded Wal-Mart’s stock from a “buy” to a “hold” on fears that passage of EFCA could force the company to unionize which would in turn decrease shareholder profits as more of the company’s worth was distributed to employees.

What would the Employee Free Choice Act do, exactly? Its description says, “To amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.” In short, if people want to join or form unions, they can. How heinous! While characterized as making it easier for workers to form unions, the act is probably better defined as making it harder for businesses to keep unions from forming or controlling how they work.

What the downgrade seems to mean is that Wal-Mart’s business is essentially based in large part upon abusing employees.

Wall Street has always been unmercifully anti-union, however. Back in mid-2005 I blogged on a NY Times article expressing how Costco treated its workers much better than Wal-Mart does; their pay is almost twice as high, and their insurance burden is about one-third as much. Wall Street’s reaction? Not that Wal-Mart is almost fascist in its abuse of its workers, but that Costco is “too generous.” That Costco should “force employees to pick up a little more of the burden.” As if workers don’t deserve fair pay and benefits, as if businesses don’t depend absolutely on their employees and should treat them that way.

Unions may have their faults (they deserve nowhere near their current reputation), but they are just about the only way that people in the lower and middle class can count on representation; Congress and the government in general is far too likely not to work in their interests, and even with Democrats back in charge, things won’t always be too rosy. We have just been through a 30-year period of anti-union, anti-worker, anti-middle and lower-class government. It has created 10 trillion dollars of debt and has crushed our economy and our viability.

Let’s try maybe doing the opposite and see how that works, shall we? Maybe, just maybe, putting some capital back into the hands of regular people could result in a stronger economy and do some good. Clinton went some distance in that direction before Bush derailed it. Let’s see if we can get back on that track.

This quote is all over the blogosphere now:

“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., an outspoken conservative who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

As many point out, the GOP’s legislative submissions and policy proposals are full of stupid, unworkable, and even disastrously bad ideas which sound good to an uneducated public, obviously designed not to be passed as laws but instead to be held up in front of the news cameras. A spending freeze might sound good to voters if you’re trying to paint the opposition as responsible for overspending, but it would be insane in today’s economy. So GOP politicians submit such proposals and then squawk all over TV about how the Democrats are big spenders (after Bush and the GOP ran up an $10 trillion-plus debt, creating more debt than all presidents before combined). Though on a certain level, you can understand their desperation–despite historical precedents of a party losing Congressional seats in the first midterm after winning the White House, Democrats are poised to actually pick up several seats in the Senate in 2010.

To combat that, the Republicans are literally following Rush Limbaugh’s marching orders. From his speech at GOP’s CPAC (boldface mine):

…there’s no reason to let them set all the premises and all the agendas to which we respond to. I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself here but everybody asks me and I’m sure it’s been a focal point of your convention: What do we do as conservatives? What do we do? How do we overcome this? Well, the one thing, and there are many, but one thing that we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas right now. … Republicans and Democrats. Ladies and gentlemen of the United States of America, that’s exactly what your future is about, who wins, Republicans or Democrats, conservatives versus liberals. The notion of partisanship, false premise. Let me define bipartisanship for you. … To us, bipartisanship is them being forced to agree with us after we politically have cleaned their clocks and beaten them. And that has to be what we’re focused on.

This is not about bipartisanship for the GOP. It’s not about compromise. It’s not about ideas, or even what works. For Republicans, it’s about one thing, pure and simple: winning. Nothing else matters–not even America.

Just power.

Every year for her birthday, I take Sachi to a fancy restaurant (Sachi reciprocates on my birthday exactly three months later). This time I chose a place in Ebisu, where Sachi used to work (she worked in Ebisu, not at the restaurant). It’s called the Cardenas Charcoal Grill, and is really, really good.

The place is about 4 or 5 minute’s walk from JR Ebisu Station. You go down to the basement level, but the ceilings are so high you figure that it reaches up to the 1st floor that way. Fearing cigarette smoke, I had asked for a private room, but when we got there, the room was just a cramped side room kept way too hot by an air conditioner in the ceiling. We opted for the main dining area and did not regret it–it was virtually smoke-free (the smokers were in another area, I gathered) and far more pleasant.

We started off with two beers and a nice Caesar Salad, which was tasty though not phenomenal. Around this time they brought the bread, which also was not fantastic–but they served it with a whipped butter with maple flavoring, which was fantastic. Then we got a small plate of fois gras with pita bread, which was very tasty if you can get past the animal-cruelty part.

Alas, the lighting was very low and our iPhones not all that great at low-light photography–but you can get the idea from these snapshots.

Then we got a less politically-incorrect plate, a chicken-and-avocado tortilla roll with fresh salsa. It was dominated with vegetables to the point that I didn’t really taste or even see the chicken or avocado, but we didn’t mind, it had a very rich yet light flavor and was very good.

About this time we got a decanter of a Chilean Pinot Noir (Pinot is my personal favorite) which was excellent, and I had a nice Sangria on the side (which had a wonderful flavor accented surprisingly well by a bit of mint).

But then came the main course: I had a U.S. sirloin steak, Sachi the “Platinum Pork,” and both were, as I often put such things, “pure evil.” Both came with a serving of bacon-and-something mashed potatoes. Mine was topped by a slab of butter, Sachi’s pork was accompanied by a sole spare rib (Sachi passed on it and I devoured it). Both were as good as they sound.

Finally, it being Sachi’s birthday, we finished it off with a plate of small cakes lit with a candle and two sparklers. There were maybe eight small cake pieces and two medium daubs of ice cream (vanilla and strawberry ice). The best cakes were a rich chocolate almost-brownie and a very soft cheesecake.

The total damage came to about ¥16,000 (about $160), which was not bad considering that the decanter of wine alone cost about ¥3400 and the dessert plate was about ¥2000. For the rest to cost only about $50 a person was pretty impressive; I would have expected it to cost more. If you’re willing to spend that amount but not be bled dry for a very nice dinner, try this place out.

Got Sachi her birthday present this Saturday (more on that later), but the only place in town that had what I wanted to get her was Bic Camera. Bic is usually OK, but not their main Ikebukuro store. They have three or four branches around the station, but their main shop is a nightmare to get around. The escalators (only wide enough for one person) only go up, and after going to the 2nd floor, you have to walk halfway across the place to get to the escalators going up to the 3rd floor. The elevators are worse–just two small cars, always overloaded, and it takes forever for them to go anywhere.

I was disheartened to discover that what I wanted to get was on the 6th floor, but I had time, so I didn’t sweat it. But after I bought it, they could not give me the box or even bring it up for me–no, I had to go all the way down to the basement to pick it up. (Even though they had it sitting there, they took five minutes to discuss whether or not to hand it to me.) The I wanted it gift-wrapped. No problem! All you have to do is go up to the 7th floor. The 7th floor?!? Who the hell puts item pickup in the basement and gift-wrapping on the 7th floor? The 7th floor doesn’t even have anything worth gift-wrapping–that counter was among the toilet fixtures. So, in a building that it already really inconvenient to run around in, I had to go up to the 6th floor, down to the basement, back up to the 7th floor, and then down and out. Just to buy a single item.

If you need anything in Ikebukuro, stay the heck away from Bic, the place is a narrow, crowded nightmare to navigate. Labi, right next door, has wide, dual up-and-down escalators and several large, fast elevators, and the place has wide places to walk. They just didn’t have what I wanted, else I would have gone there instead.

The San Francisco Bay Area, home of Silicon Valley and the hi-tech supergiants, is getting super-charged, lightning-fast 50 Mbps Internet connections! And for just $140 a month, how can you beat that?

Of course, if you’ve read this blog a lot before, you know that this is hardly impressive. Japan had these kinds of speeds available more or less nation-wide about five years ago. And even when it first came, it cost nowhere near $140–50 Mbps ADSL has always hovered between $40 and $50 a month, roughly what I pay for 100 Mbps fiber-optic today. Even out in Inagi, a town out in the hills and forests, I got 70 Mbps fiber optic vDSL service in late 2004.

Somehow, I find it very hard to believe that the only reason is that America is a bigger place. Five years late, three times as expensive, in one of the more densely-populated and highest-tech corners of the country? More like a stunning lack of a government Internet policy coupled with Telecoms squeezing every penny out of systems both old and new,

Bill Maher likes to test people’s reason by asking them if they actually believe in a talking snake, referring, of course, to the tale of the Garden of Eden. Frankly, to me, the idea that the snake talks is perhaps the least troubling detail of the story. Maybe I’m just missing something; maybe a biblical literalist can set me straight here. Let me lay it out.

God is supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent. God created us as we are, foibles and all. So right there, I begin to have some problems with the Eden story, because if God is (a) omnipotent and omniscient and (b) created us complete with our faults, then just at that the story of the garden falls apart–it’s clearly all God’s fault.

But let’s take it from the beginning. God creates Adam and Eve, but wants to keep them innocent of the knowledge of good and evil. Okay, we usually envy children their innocence, and say that ignorance is bliss; we may not agree with the idea of not teaching our children, but at least we can understand this part to a certain degree.

But here is where the story, taken literally, begins to take on a bent angle. God takes the quality of knowledge of good and evil, and places it in the garden where he has placed Adam and Eve. Right there I have questions: why put the knowledge in the garden–in fact, why make the knowledge accessible at all? Why not keep the knowledge of good and evil completely out of mankind’s reach?

And if God does decide to make it something which can be accessed, then why put it in the middle of the garden? Why not put it in a far-off place? Why not put in on top of a mountain beyond a thousand miles of desert? No, God puts it smack in the middle of the garden, right at the feet of the very beings he supposedly wants to keep it from.

But God goes further: he not only puts the knowledge in the garden, he makes it edible. Not so that you have to study hard or go to any effort at all to acquire the knowledge, but just eat the fruit and magically, you know all about good and evil.

Worse, God makes the knowledge a fruit–which is not just food, but food which has no other purpose than to be eaten, more so than any other kind of food. That’s what fruit is for: it’s a strategy that plants have to offer nutrition along with its seed, so that animals will eat it, then deposit the seed a distance away right in the middle of a pile of fertilizer. By putting the knowledge in a fruit and making the knowledge attainable just by eating it, and then putting it in front of Adam and Eve, God is essentially inviting them to eat it, despite his verbal warnings to the contrary.

But God doesn’t stop there. He then creates a serpent, imbues it with the power of speech understandable by humans, and gives it the will to deceive and entice the humans to eat what God has forbidden. Then he puts the serpent in the garden with full access to the tree, where (being omniscient) he knows that it will successfully tempt the humans.

Imagine taking a couple of kids, and commanding them to not eat yummy chocolate. Okay so far, so long as you keep the chocolate out of reach somewhere, on a high shelf perhaps. But then you not only put a big bowl of yummy chocolate in the middle of their playroom, but you invite grandma in, knowing that the moment you’re out of the room, she’ll start begging the kids to eat the chocolate. Then you go off for a walk for a few hours, and when you come back, you are shocked–just shocked–to learn that the kids actually ate some chocolate.

Really, I see no way possible of laying the blame at the foot of Eve, or Adam, or even the serpent. This was clearly the fault on one being and one being only: God. In this tale, if taken literally and read in the light of reason, God comes across as either a sadistic con man or a psychopathic moron. And apparently as someone completely incapable of accepting responsibility for his own actions.

First, when he comes across Adam in the garden, God acts like he was unaware of what Adam had done. Remember, God is omniscient–of course he knew, even if he was such an idiot that he didn’t see it coming just by thinking about the setup he arranged. It’s almost as if God is toying with Adam–setting this innocent kid up and then playing him along, as if he did not know exactly what had transpired, letting Adam squirm, cementing his feelings of guilt.

And then God metes out his punishments: condemning the snake to walk on its belly and pitting it against mankind; condemning Eve to sorrow and pain in childbirth, not to mention submission to men; and cursing Adam, sentencing him to hard, painful labor and eventually death.

The church itself takes it even further: it calls this “original sin,” claims that it makes every human being guilty regardless of their own actions; we must be forgiven by God (or, more precisely, his agents in the church), and/or be indebted to Jesus who, apparently died for the purpose of rescuing us from original sin–despite the fact that we are apparently still just as guilty of that sin as we ever were. So now we have to beg God/the church for forgiveness and be indebted to Christ for saving us from sins that we are still responsible for.

Does this, or does this not, all come across as a rather transparent con game?

Now, take the story in a different way: not literally, but as a parable, which chronicles our path from naked animal to thinking being, causing us pain in our knowledge, the fear of ultimate death, the labor of agriculture–even the pain of giving birth due to a larger cranium. A story which speaks to rebellion of youth, a desire to become wise, even to outgrow childhood and leave the house of one’s parents. There is a lot which can be gleaned from the story if not taken literally.

But taking the story literally robs it of meaning, makes God into an abusive, manipulative ass, and shows up the church as conning the people into being forever beholden to them, no matter what.

Or am I missing something?