The White Peril 白禍

So, is it the United Nations International Week of the Cad and no one told me? Am I the only one who didn't get his coloring book with "Well, honey, I'm here and your boyfriend's not" and "Why must you be such a stuck-up bitch?" translated into Swahili, Hindi, Maori, and other world languages? Did I miss the CNN broadcast of the kick-off statement by the chairman of the World Health Organization? 'Cause I swear, I had my own run-in a few days ago, Michael had one this morning, and in between, I heard from two or three friends on various major land masses that they'd practically had to punch guys out to get 'em to knock it off with the won't-take-no-for-an-answer come-ons. No, there's never a horndog shortage in urban gay life, but it really isn't the case (at least among people I know) that you have so many colorful encounters to dish about all at once. Cheese and crackers.

I have a few younger readers, so I think--if I don't sound too obnoxiously avuncular here--it's worth pointing out that there's a much more general lesson here. There's a little technique we fusty types call PAYING ATTENTION TO SIGNALS, and people who don't know how to do it end up getting themselves into all kinds of trouble, whether they're trying to make friends, establish business contacts, or realize whatever other designs they may have on people.

If your approach is failing, you need to change it. The number of people who don't get this is truly startling, and you can tell they don't get it because they keep repeating the same unsuccessful tactic, only more loudly/emphatically/insistently. Not everyone likes to give his phone number out to someone he's just met, or have rousing political discussions with strangers at dinner parties, or participate in impromptu sing-alongs. People who don't are unlikely to warm to you if you try to force such things on them, but they may be perfectly willing to get to know you if you settle for an e-mail address or talk about non-controversial interests the first few times you meet them. (I can't think of a good substitute for the sing-along except getting the hell out of there.)

Along with that, you have to make sure your opening gambit allows you to retreat gracefully if it doesn't succeed. If you launch into a political tirade under the assumption that your partner in conversation's views coincide with yours, you'll have a terrible time trying to backpedal into giving him a respectful hearing if they do not. Or (this example may drive the point home more memorably--thanks, Michael's neighbor!) if you show up on someone's doorstep drunk, naked, and tumescent, you'll find it difficult to save face with the pretense that you were just seeking a nice chat and some warm evening air.

More cracks showing in Japan's post-bubble educational system. (For once, the English article isn't much thinner than the original Japanese.)

The survey, conducted in November and December last year, covered professors, assistant professors and lecturers at universities and junior colleges belonging to the association.

About 28,000 full-time teachers, or 36 percent of those at all of the nation's private universities and junior colleges, responded.

Inadequate academic ability was cited as a problem by 60.1 percent of teachers at four-year course universities and 66 percent of those at junior colleges.

They were 24.8 and 22.1 percentage points, respectively, higher than the responses in the same survey in fiscal 1998.

The sense of crisis was especially deep among teachers of science and technology.

...

Many university lecturers said some of their students could not solve linear simultaneous equations that are taught in middle school, and some medical students did not take biology as a subject in high school.

Japan may be heading where the US is now: substandard high school instruction will have to be redressed at the level of community college equivalents such as the junior colleges and trade schools. Of course, it's important to note that only 36% of instructors responded; there's a SLOPs issue here. Also, only instructors at private colleges were included. That leaves out the public colleges, which include the super-exclusive Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, along with many of the other top institutions.

At the same time, most Japanese students don't get to go to 東大, so the experiences of instructors at modest tech colleges who are desperate to help their students catch up to high-school level proficiency may be more representative than the 36% figure would make it seem.

BTW, there's been quite a bit of interesting discussion of math teaching going on. Joanne Jacobs, as always, points to several good links, especially this post by Moebius Stripper about what skill and knowledge set should be required for high school graduation.

Joanne also posted about a boneheaded theory a few weeks back that math learning is extra-hard because of the way words are used. Though I was a literature major and expended quite a bit of energy memorizing the names of various seasonal plants and birds in Japanese, I have to say that math vocabulary is one of the more fun aspects of the language to learn. Many terms you can basically translate directly. Some of the more fun ones you can't, but they make sense once you get used to them: 負の数 (fu no suu: "owed number" --> "negative number"), 数珠順列 (juzu junretsu: "Buddhist rosary" + "order" + "line-up" --> "key ring permutation"), 放物線 (houbutsusen: "release/throw" + "object" + "line" --> "parabola"). Okay, fine, I only think they're fun because I'm a big dork. They still aren't that hard if you're also learning Japanese as an everyday language.

Added on 31 July: People sometimes ask me about the fabled Japanese math education system, whereby, it is assumed, a mystical blend of Zen and Euclid are employed to produce a new cohort of Karl Friedrich Gausses every year.

Don't you believe it. The Japanese (and Korean and Singaporean) systems are successful because they don't proceed until the kids know what they're doing. [Earthquake! Feelable but mild. I hope as always that it wasn't feelable and non-mild a few hundred miles away.] Two articles about a New Jersey school in deep trouble that used textbooks from Singapore and structural approaches from Japan to revamp their math classes show what I mean. If you're an American who sailed through a good school system and got a 5 on the AP Calc AB or BC test for your trouble, you're probably wondering what the fuss is about. Of course, the teacher introduces a concept by giving you a problem to solve and seeing whether you can figure out a profitable approach. Of course, you work alone or in groups so that, through trial and error, you can figure out the bone and sinew of what you're doing and why some plans of attack are bad or waste time. Of course, the lesson in the textbook is a point of departure and not a script.

But those aren't of courses anymore. The sad irony is that a lot of American public schools teach math the way Japan teaches other subjects: as an exercise in memorization with minimal imagination.

Added later: A while back I posted about one of the ads on my train line--from a cram school, not a public school--that was indicative of one of the ways the Japanese reinforce numeracy.

Added on 1 August: So AXN is showing this here Canadian movie from about ten years ago called Cube. I have no idea how popular it was; I do know that it assumes no one in the audience knows the first thing about math. The math genius chick keeps looking at three-digit numbers and trying to determine whether they're prime. Understandable for some numbers, but she lingers over every single one. You know, like, 548. Hmm...that would be an even number greater than two. I WONDER whether it's prime. Oh, the SUSPENSE. [pause...pause...gears turning in math genius chick's brain] Oh, it's not prime. Goody! No trap in that room! Next one: 153. Uh, 15 seconds for math genius chick to go 1 + 5 + 3 = 9? Pretty slow genius if you ask me. Especially now that it's toward the end and they're running out of time--why are we asking the autistic-savant how many factors the even numbers have? Who cares? 512 is the highest power of 2 with three digits, and if you haven't memorized all the values up to 2^9, what kind of math genius chick are you, anyway?

Ghost of a Flea posts about Kylie. (No, really!) No matter how heady an experience it is to watch Kylie's singing corpse half-submerged in rushes, my favorite Kylie video is still "Put Yourself in My Place"...although I have to say, that frickin' continuity error--the way she removes her left sleeve twice--is super-annoying. (I don't mind so much that the mole is on different sides of her face in different shots; you only notice it if you're paying close attention because of the sleeve thing.)

Japundit contributor Ampontan posted an interesting entry about the Japanese liquor shôchû a few days ago. If you don't know much about how it's made, it's an interesting read. This part struck me as being just a bit too tactful, though:

There are several ways to drink shochu. We've already talked about chuhai, and if you can mix a gin and tonic, you can make that. Obviously, you also can drink it straight, particularly if you're the kind of guy who likes sitting around in sweat-stained undershirts. Some people drink it on the rocks, but I can't help you there–I was never one for that style of drinking. People say the melting ice brings out the sweetness of the drink. Another way is to mix it with warm—not boiling—water. This drink, called oyuwari is popular during the fall and winter, and I used to like it this way myself. Some people with cast iron stomachs use more shochu than water in the mix, but I downed it in about a 1-5 ratio, which is how they usually serve it in restaurants and bars. This method brings out the aroma of the beverage, if you’re interested in such things, and it also warms you up on a cold winter night.

Maybe it's a regional thing...or a purist thing. At least around Tokyo, though, I don't think I've ever seen anyone drink national-brand shochu straight. People do drink the special varieties from Kyushu straight (we have friends who ask Atsushi to bring back a bottle of this or that sometimes when he returns to Tokyo). Jinro, Kyôgetsu, and the other major brands all taste like diluted rubbing alcohol. Otherwise, people use it as a mixing base.

For anything. And I mean anything. Of course, I'm most familiar with the gay pubs I go to, where they do bottle keep for regulars. (If you don't know Japan and are scratching your head at "bottle keep," the way it works is, you pay between, oh, $30 and $100 for your own bottle. Your name is written on the glass or, if the bar is fancy-schmancy, on a placard that's hung over the bottleneck. When you show up, the bottle is brought out for you and your guests. You also customarily invite the bartenders to drink with you.) The most common cold mixers people ask for are water, tonic water, green tea, oolong tea, and fruit juices. But I know guys who drink it with Calpis, or with Coke--both inexpressibly foul, in my opinion--or with a little liqueur (crème de cassis, or the Midori melon stuff, or Godiva) for flavoring. I once saw a fresh-faced young thing of about 22 or so ask for a Zima, drink a quarter of it, and ask the bar guy to fill 'er up with shochu--like a fraternity hazing ritual, or something.

Ampontan is right that drinking it oyuwari is very restorative in the winter, especially if you put a pickled plum in the bottom. Great for warding off colds, or for forgetting the one you already have is bothering you.

What Michael said:

While the outcome would be right if marriage were enacted in CT, the method is clearly wrong. If the state refused to do anything for gay couples, that would be one thing. Yet here we have a state that democratically gave gay couples most, if not all, of the rights of marriage. Why not let that sink in for a few years, then petition the legislature for marriage?

Here’s the thing: Civil Unions give you all the rights of marriage in Connecticut. What are you accomplishing by pushing for marriage rights? Answer: Nothing. Because any rights beyond what you have are Federal. And there is nothing that state can do about that. In effect, what these gay couples are doing is ruining it for the rest of us. They are ensuring that state legislatures will remain queazy about enacting civil union legislation in the future.

He's talking about the news that there are eight gay couples in Connecticut using the state's recent passage of a civil unions bill to sue for the ability to marry. I'm not sure that even breaking the argument down into the shortest possible clauses, as Michael obligingly did, will make people get it. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure his prediction is correct.

BTW, he didn't quote the most unpalatable part of the article:

"We really believe marriage best reflects what we've had together. We have a deep love and commitment, and civil unions don't reflect that," said Janet Peck of Colchester. She and her partner, Carol Conklin, will celebrate their 30th anniversary later this year.

"Civil unions just kind of feel like you're not good enough," Conklin added.

Other couples, such as Jeffrey Busch and Stephen Davis of Wilton, will apply for a civil union reluctantly. They feel they cannot pass up the legal protections the arrangement will provide--such as the right to sue for wrongful death and the ability to file taxes jointly--but they do not plan a celebration.

"Civil unions are humiliating. We're embarrassed by it," Busch said. "We will in essence be agreeing to be officially marginalized. I'm very hopeful that is a temporary step on our way to being considered a full family deserving the same respect as other families."

Sometimes I would love to break my own rule about not using any but the mildest four-letter words here. Would everyone be so kind as to imagine my letting fly with a stream of loud and hideous profanities right now?

Argh.

Early last month, a Love in Action administrator said that two male teens in the program were both enrolled for six-week stints in the "ex-gay" camp, and last week in an interview broadcast on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Zach’s father, Joe Stark confirmed his son's identity as one of Love in Action's clients.

"We felt good about Zach coming here ... to let him see for himself the destructive lifestyle, what he has to face in the future, and to give him some options that society doesn't give him today," Stark said.

"Until he turns 18 and he's an adult in the state of Tennessee, I'm responsible for him, and I'm going to see to it that he has all options available to him." [These are the statements to CBN that were quoted a week or two ago.--SRK]

A Los Angeles-based psychologist [Ruh-roh!--SRK] took issue with the father's statement.

"It appears that both Mr. Stark and the LIA director's public comments are highly defensive and indicate that their concern is less for the child's well-being and more for their own purposes," said Paul Chimubulo said via e-mail.

"The sort of homophobia they espouse has been shown to be rooted in anxiety and a feeling of threat. ... The gay child's expressions are recognized and interpreted as injurious to the parent's sense of self. With the publicity this has gathered, the father's internal anxiety and feelings of threat over his son's gay identity must really be ratcheted up."

I have no doubt that Joe Stark is doing quite a bit of hard thinking about his own performance as a father and how it might have "made" Zach gay, but can we please remember that people have convictions, too? It is perfectly possible--likely, as far as I'm concerned--that the Starks, at least, are genuinely acting as they think is best for their son, based on religious and other beliefs. That those beliefs are fed by factoids that play on confirmation bias doesn't make them less real, though it should make them easier to argue against.

My sense is that the wording Joe Stark used is probably the result of heavy-duty coaching--the focus on Zach's coming adult independence and the characterizing of LIA as showing "options" distract attention from the coercion involved so shrewdly that I find it hard to imagine their coming spontaneously from a distraught parent. But that doesn't mean he can be dismissed as acting out of a neurotic attempt to preserve his "sense of self." The word homophobia, paradoxically enough, could conceivably be justified here--for once, we're not just talking about anti-gay sentiment but about a real attempt to erase homosexuality in someone. But it's not a judgment call we can really make, and crappy reasoning is just as bad coming from our side as from the opposition. Couldn't the Washington Blade have found someone more level-headed to cite as an authority?

A slightly different group of six has also been meeting in Laos:

The world's top two air polluters — the U.S. and China — joined Australia, India, Japan and South Korea on Thursday to unveil a new Asia-Pacific partnership to develop cleaner energy technologies in hopes of curtailing climate-changing pollution.

They described the initiative as a complement to the Kyoto Protocol that commits 140 countries to cutting emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, but environmentalists said the new pact lacked firm obligations to cut pollution and that it might undermine the Kyoto accord.

...

It said the countries could collaborate on clean coal, liquefied natural gas, methane, civilian nuclear power, geothermal power, rural energy systems, solar power, wind power and bio-energy. In the long-term, they could develop hydrogen nanotechnologies, next-generation nuclear fission and fusion energy, it said.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth was skeptical about the pact because it contained no legally binding requirements to cut emissions.

"It looks suspiciously as though this will be business as usual for the United States," said the U.K.-based group's member, Catherine Pearce.

"A deal on technology, supported by voluntary measures to reduce emissions, will not address climate change. This is yet another attempt by the U.S. and Australian administrations to undermine the efforts of the 140 countries who have signed the Kyoto Protocol," she said.

Well, nature girl, I have to wonder just how much there is to undermine. Remember this story from several months back?

Under the Kyoto Protocol, Japan has agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions between fiscal 2008 and 2012 by an average 6 percent from the fiscal 1990 level.

The Asahi Shimbun established that only a few prefectural and municipal governments have done anything about it. In fact, a nationwide survey found that only three of the 47 prefectural governments and seven of the 13 major cities can actually boast decreases in their greenhouse gas emissions.

Also, latest statistics offered by about half the prefectural and municipal governments surveyed showed double-digit increases over the fiscal 1990 level in greenhouse gas emissions.

I've been looking out for information since then that the federal government is somehow taking this into account and doing something about it (say by directly regulating industry). It's always possible that a pertinent article has slipped past me, but I kind of doubt it. The Nikkei, the major business newspaper, is the one I read most extensively on-line and subscribe to (morning and evening editions) in dead-tree form. And the way the issue was reported in native English outlets was so bland you might not have noticed that there was even a problem. This CBS report is typical:

In Japan, a tireless supporter of the pact, the enactment was being met with a mixture of pride and worry that the world's second-largest economy is unprepared to meet its emissions reduction targets.

...

Japan is struggling to find ways to meet its obligations. A report this month by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry showed that 11 of 30 top Japanese industries — steel and power among them — risked failing to reach targets unless they take drastic steps.

It makes me wonder whether many of the other countries that signed on really have a plan.

The 6-party talks are still going on, of course:

At the opening ceremony of the six-way talks, which resumed after 13 months of suspension at the the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said concerned parties were required to have political will and make strategic decisions if they intended to make progress toward the denuclearization of the peninsula. He added that North Korea was fully prepared to do so.

...

But the North Korean chief delegate went on to say that he believed the United States and other participating nations should also be willing to make strategic decisions.

The delegates were again struck by Pyongyang's unyielding stance.

By referring first to its readiness to make a strategic decision, a course of action U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had urged Pyongyang to take, North Korea showed a positive stance apparently aiming at preventing other nations from increasing pressure on Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear program.

North Korea argued in the July 24 editorial of the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Workers' Party of Korea, that the United States had transformed South Korea into a nuclear arsenal by bringing in various nuclear weapons. South Korea has denied the allegation that any nuclear weapons are deployed in the nation.

In February, Pyongyang declared it possessed nuclear weapons. Denuclearization of the peninsula means that Pyongyang's own nuclear programs and nuclear weapons, and those held by the U.S. military stationed in South Korea, must be abandoned at the same time. North Korea therefore insists that the United States, which drove Pyongyang to develop its nuclear programs by bringing the weapons into South Korea, also should make a strategic decision to abandon its nuclear weapons.

Retaining this view, North Korea is able to argue that the two nations, as equal nuclear powers, can then proceed with direct negotiations.

Right...which means that the probability of the DPRK's actually disarming (what leverage would it have left then--economic might?) is around zero.

Everyone seems to agree that it would be a bad idea for Japan to push the abductee issue at this week's talks. Not everyone agrees on how the talks themselves could be "productive," but perhaps it really is possible for a sort of Dilbert-ish chain of never-ending committees and conferences and inquiries and stuff to be established and kept lamely going until the DPRK actually does collapse.

Joe has his thoughts up on Jon Stewart's Rick Santorum interview last night:

My belief is that we can win the debate, we don't have to denigrate. So that's what Sanotrum believes and I don't agree. I don't believe that good parenting requires one man and one woman and I find that the studies back me up.

I also don't agree that the only societal interest in marriage is children. It's one interest, even a primary interest, not the only interest. Stable relationships are themselves an interest. They foster a stable society, public health and safety, and better economics, which are all in our societal interest.

Joe also links to a transcript of the interview at Towleroad. I thought the infamous man-on-dog comparison from a few years ago was just silly--not only insulting but also poorly judged because it gave shrieky political activists an excuse to excoriate Santorum without paying the slightest attention to any distinctions he actually did make usefully.

Some people may find their brain fried at this segment of the interview:

Santorum: I would say that certainly people who are homosexuals can be virtuous and very often are. The problem is that when you talk about the institution of marriage as the foundation and building block of society which I say the family is, and the marriage is the glue that holds the family together. We need to do things to make sure that that institution stays stable for the benefit of children.

Joe disagrees in specific ways with Santorum that I do not, but his comments are, as always, respectful and worth reading.

Would everyone please keep the following in mind:

1. No one is ethically obliged to sleep with you just because you invited him to.
   
2. If you've flattered someone incessantly and he still won't sleep with you, refer to item 1.
   
3. If you've pointed out that you think someone's refusal to sleep with you constitutes a rejection of your shared gay heritage and is a manifestation of buried shame, self-loathing, and pathetic hetero-imitating...and he still won't sleep with you, study item 1 REAL HARD.
   
4. If you've pointed out that his refusal to sleep with you is, when you stop and think about it, a repudiation of the very principles of personal liberty and autonomy that make our civilization great...and he still won't sleep with you--hello? Item 1.
   
5. By this point, the poor guy may be laughing so hard as to need CPR. If you take this opportunity to put the moves on him yet again, you risk getting decked. *

Alice is thinking about Martha Stewart and the 80s:

It [Entertaining] is a great book, from a time when being completely over the top extravagance was just about to become more socially acceptable than it has ever been since (the 80s), and I wish Martha had just continued right into that stratosphere instead of becoming more small-scale domestic, but then everyone else downsized too, so one can hardly blame her for that. "The most sumptuous book on entertaining ever published" says the back cover, and when I read it as a teenager teaching myself to cook it seemed entirely fantastical and extraordinary: who were these people who threw "A sit-down country luncheon for one hundred seventy-five" in their back garden? Who would make eleven kinds of tiny weeny cocktail snacks for fifty guests? A gingerbread mansion for "The holiday party", complete with pediment, finials and cupola plus internal lighting? The mile-high lemon meringue pie- "My mother and I baked it when we had extra egg whites on hand, and made a meringue as high as the oven would allow"- went on my mental list of lifetime ambitions, along with plenty of other things nobody in England had heard of in 1982- pissaladiere, tabbouleh, filo pastry, tempura, and on and on.

I'm with her--aspiration is a good thing. They're broadcasting Nigella Lawson's show here in Japan now. It's fun to watch. Well, I don't think it's necessary to put green chilis in every freaking main dish. I also tire of her constant need to use olive oils "infused" with leafy green crap. And the I'm-just-bopping-around-my-home-kitchen-as-I-do-every-day vibe is ruined by the way she, like, makes raspberry sauce while wearing a pink cashmere twinset with no apron.

But the most annoying thing is the way she's always talking about how informal and easy and spontaneous cooking can be. I realize that she (and Martha and Delia and the others) are dealing with an audience that's used to living on prepared food. You'll just scare the bejeezus out of such people if you start at service à la russe; even so, must we go full tilt in the opposite direction and make everything out to be so accessible all the time? Atsushi and I entertain a lot--I cook and he socializes. (Imagine the disaster that would ensue if we switched duties, huh, darling?) It is indeed nice to have people over for drippy, luscious comfort food that can be pitched into bowls any old way and enjoyed while the wine and conversation flow all relaxed-like; but it can also be a real pleasure to deliver something to the table that's clearly been in the works for a week.

Anyway, Alice has more to say about inquisitiveness and inventiveness in general.

So, you know, Google Earth is kind of cool, but just how old are those images of Japan? For those whose lives are also 渋谷中心, check this out:





That section labeled "WTF?!" is the site of the Cerulean Tower Hotel. As you might imagine, that means the parking lot shown...





...has been gone for quite a while. The darned thing is 40 floors. It opened in 2001. Not even in Japan can they bring two halves of a modular skyscraper on flatbed trucks down National Highway 246, upend them on the foundation, and rivet them together. Maybe I'm seriously missing something, but I'm guessing the image dates from around 1997 or 1998. (The Infos Tower nearby is already there.) I mean, it's a free service--I'm not being ungrateful, and it's actually kind of cool to see things where they were right after I'd come to Japan. It's just odd. Maybe the version you have to shell out for has more up-to-date stuff?

I would just like to point out that it's not irresponsible of me to be sitting here reading and posting and eating cookies when I should be cleaning the bathroom, because, see, I'm thinking about the fact that I should be cleaning the bathroom. And that makes it all better.

The bathroom is funky by this point. Well, okay, since I'm a neatnik, by most people's standards it's probably not very funky at all. It's just that, having been at Atsushi's last weekend, I didn't get a chance to give it a really thorough scrub-down. In July in Tokyo, just spending five minutes wiping everything with Top Job does not count as bathroom cleaning for the week.

It's been very mild this year, though. Yesterday was kind of gross, but not as kiln-like as you often get. That was fortunate, given the number of people who were stranded by suspended train service after the earthquake. I haven't felt any aftershocks, though I probably wouldn't have been awakened by mild ones. Things seem to be back on track now.

Via Ace (Happy birthday!), this post Jason Kuznicki is a must-read...uh, must-view. It's both moving and understatedly hilarious. Ace points out something that cannot be repeated too often:

If there are folks who cannot accept themselves as homosexuals, or reconcile their faith with their orientation, then I support their desire for a heterosexual life and wish them happiness, however they have to accomplish that. However, I am beginning to notice a trend amongst "ex-gays." Just like Rev. Grace Harley, the testimonials at PFOX and Exodus, most of them had other problems: unhealthy sexual addictions, drug abuse, physical or sexual abuse, infidelity, mistrust. Remove these factors - ones that will cause discord in any relationship, gay or straight - and find that there are more and more gay people out there living happy, healthy, productive, emotionally and spiritually satisfying lives. Sometimes I wonder if the ex-gays' problems are not who they are, but what they were doing. They might actually agree with me on that statement since the program teaches you to view being gay as something you do, not something you are. I see the gay as who they are/were and the bad habits as what they were doing to bring them down.

You know it, girlfriend. When people claim to have found the key to beatific happiness, my suspicions are immediately aroused if they go on to insist desperately that no one living differently could ever anyway anyhow possibly be happy. It always sounds to me (when from ex-gays) like a need to seal off their own unvanquished need to find a same-sex mate lest it erupt again at any moment.

To Ace's suggestion that the ex-gays find a new marketing strategy, I would add this: Knock it off with the moist-eyed, unctuous, quivering-with-sympathy, soppy, sappy, sodden tone of patronizing helpfulness. (Jason Kuznicki captures it with truly frightening proficiency.) To even-keeled gays with a healthy sense of mischievous humor about the realities of life, it's like Lee Press-ons across the world's largest chalkboard. No one who truly feels he's found the path to rectitude needs to talk that way.

Thanks, Eric. I can understand why everyone wanted to jump on this story so quickly, but there are so many possible variables--the chief ones being Persian culture and the opportunistic thuggishness of the Islamic Republic in Iran. It made me wonder--the Iranian government is notorious for bringing sex-related offenses into cases in which its real motivations lie with other behavior.

"Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi"
To: "Eric Scheie"
Subject: Re: Photos of public execution of two youngsters in the city of Mash'had
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 12:08:00 -0400

The story does not change...the info that the Mullahs gave out first was one thing and then activists outside Iran were informed that there was more to it than those two boys being hung for theft. ALSO, please note that they were not gay in the way people in the west would think of "gay" 'cause people in our part of the world have sex with men and women and in that part of the world, it's common for men to sleep with men and women...but to us, it's all sexuality and sexuality in and of itself, to the Mullahs is not acceptable. There are many dichotomies that one cannot properly explain for westerners; like the Eunuchs in our part of the world, etc. To people in the west, they're disgusting and bizarre...to us, they're wonderful and we love our Eunuchs! However, un P.C. that may be in this part of the world.

These two poor boys did have sex with each other but that was never what they were officially charged with and that is a fact. The reason WHY in fact they were executed, underneath it all was because the Mullahs often make an example of youngsters who are unruly and apparently these two had been also raped and sodomized by a local Mullah whom they wanted to expose. Like those two innocent 16 year old and 19 year old girls they executed last Oct. and Dec...Atefeh Rajabi and Leila Mo'aafi...they said that they were whores but it turned out that they had both been molested by the local Mullahs and
when these two poor girls had come to expose them, they got executed.

I hope this explains it. I cannot explain any more than this because if you aren't from that part of the world you will NEVER understand or grasp the height of the Islmo-Fascist mentality. Their psychosis is something HITLER could not even imagine and yet no matter what we dissidents try to explain to westerners...people refuse to believe what we impart...simply because your part of the world is not ancient (or the archaic'ness' was shed many moons ago) and your values entirely different AND at odds with what those people over there, do, say and think.

Actually, I think I do come closer to understanding this issue than many Westerners. I have heard about Muslim mullahs raping young men they've sentenced to death for "sodomy." And clearly Iran today is a country run largely by such sociopaths.

As to sexuality, we in the West have a different way of processing these things, and as I have said many times, in my opinion we have come up with unnecessary divisions based on "sexualities" which are as varied as the individuals. But the bottom line here should not whether anyone is homosexual or heterosexual, or should be labeled "gay" as we do in this country. It's the human freedom to be left alone in matters of one's bedroom.

Japan has normal relations with Iran, and you meet Iranian businessmen in the bars here occasionally. Eric's right about unnecessary divisions, but I think it's important to point out that there really are homosexuals as we think of them in Iran, too. As one (drop-dead gorgeous--good grief, was that man beautiful) guy put it to me a few years ago, "In Iran, it's not uncommon for men to marry and be bound to their wives while also being attracted to men or boys, but [conspiratorial smile] I'm like you." Also, setting artificial but meaningful boundaries is one of the most important things an advanced civilization does.

None of this means that I don't think we should protest against laws on the books that allow teenagers to be executed for sodomy. Nor do I think that gay leftists shouldn't be clobbered hard for the way they constantly make excuses for illiberal non-Western regimes and treat the Bush administration as the greatest threat to liberty for gays and lesbians. (Of course, given their own tendency to mewl that all their problems are everyone else's fault, their affinity for the Palestinians, at least, is pretty understandable.) It's just that in all the point-scoring, something gets lost: these people hate imagination and free thought and idiosyncrasy in all forms. Their hatred of homosexuality may be sincere, but in practice, they frequently invoke it as a means to the end of maintaining power and strongarming people back in line. Ms. Zand-Bonazzi has a final point to make:

The west is hugely to blame and in my opinion not so much the U.S. (though the U.S. has managed to make a mess of a few things big time), EUROPE...those European plutocrats are the ones at fault and though I hate the idea of those innocent people dying (there were also Iranians among the people who died on the bus on 7/7 in London), I'm sorry but I believe the U.K. government brought it all onto themselves...and NOT by backing the war on Iraq but by NOT backing off from doing business with CORRUPT Islamists, LIKE, the Mullahs for all these years. They were warned that the Islamo-Fascists have no good intention to ANYONE in the west...but the Euro bastards like to act like it's only the U.S. and Israel.

Well, the US could stand to be less cozy with the al-Sauds, but point taken.

Poor North Korea. All it wants is to get along with everybody, and then what do the democracies of the world go and do? Kim Il-sung's people abduct a few Japanese citizens from moonlit walks on their own beaches, and a quarter-century later the Japanese are still freaking out about it. It's not like it just happened yesterday, or anything. Can't people focus on the big picture?

The DPRK's Democratic Choson published statements on 23 July that, given that Japan plans to bring up the issue of Japanese abductees at the 6-party talks when they reopen for the fourth time in Beijing on 26 July, "Our definite feeling is that it is not necessary for us to sit in face-to-face meetings with Japan, given that it is determined to use its cunning to make a hindrance of itself at the 6-party talks." The statements indicated yet again the DPRK's position that it will not agree to direct talks with Japan for the duration of the meetings.

The CNN report is here. Check out the part about the flower. Good grief.

Oh, uh, if you're trying to keep a running count of slush funds in the Japanese federal government, you're going to have to increase your total by two:

Trade minister Shoichi Nakagawa admitted Friday that two more slush funds exist at his ministry, including one now containing 52 million yen that was created with payments from UNICEF.

The other slush fund came from money that was obtained for the wages of part-timers who never worked at the ministry. A total of about 1.4 million yen has been put into the fund at the Trade Policy Bureau's Americans Division, Nakagawa said.

Last month, the ministry said its policy-making office secretly kept unused research subsidies to build slush funds.

...

Over the past 30 years, only one payment, in November 1975, has been made from the slush fund, when 2 million yen was used to buy a membership to an exclusive restaurant. The membership was canceled four months later, and the money was returned to the fund.

The other slush fund revealed Friday was created from the wages of fictitious part-timers. The slush fund started in fiscal 1995.

A total of 1.39 million yen was put into the slush fund from fiscal 1995 to fiscal 2002. But 1.07 million yen had been withdrawn by June 2005 to pay real part-timers hired for busy periods, such as during Japan-U.S. trade negotiations, leaving 321,290 yen in the fund.

The ministry plans to return all of the 1.39 million yen plus interest to state coffers.

The number of deaths from yesterday's terrorist bombing in Egypt is up to 88. I've been wondering--if terrorism experts thought this was possible, surely we'd be reading it by now, so I'm probably wrong--whether the plan wasn't similar to that of the Bali bombers: set off an explosion or two to get people pouring into the street, then nail them with bigger explosions once they're out there.

A group claiming links to al Qaeda said Saturday's bombings were revenge for "crimes committed against Muslims," said an Internet statement. But the statement did not appear on major al Qaeda Web sites and it was impossible to authenticate the claim.

Egypt's biggest "crime against Muslims," from the perspective of Islamofascits, is probably being a reasonably functional democracy. It also has a cultural heritage of world-enamoring brilliance that predates its contact with Islam. Of course, the resort that was hit was popular with foreign tourists as well, so there are people of many countries among the dead; but naturally most of the victims were Egyptians.

Sincerest condolences to the Egyptian people, and best to President Mubarak and his government in the fight to keep the terrorists at bay. As Dean says, if we assume the flypaper strategy (which I have my reservations about), is working, it means that terrorist cells are going to be striking more frequently in the most Westernized Muslim countries. It's going to be a trying time.

Ghost of a Flea brings up one of the more annoying Anglospheric gaps in communication about the races:

Let us clear this up. In English-speaking North America the word "asian" is generally used to refer to people of East Asian descent while in the UK the word "asian" is generally used to refer to people of South Asian descent. Both terms are gross generalizations that obscure fantastic regional, ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity within the groups for whom they act as shorthand and either shorthand ignores well over a billion people who are just as asian. If I was, say, Armenian both abbreviations would be a source of ongoing annoyance.

A close English buddy of mine and I were just having this discussion a few weeks ago. He was bewildered at the way a lot of Americans look at you as though you'd committed a hanging crime if you use the word Oriental, which, Edward Said's hex not having gained traction in the UK as it did in the States, is still the polite way to talk about the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese there. Of course, even in the States, people of East Asian descent who haven't gone through PC colleges still blithely refer to themselves as Oriental all the time, but you'd never hear a newscaster use the word.

Now that I think about it, the topic may have come up the night of the first London bombings. I do know that on 7 July we were sitting at our hangout when the video for Kylie's "Giving You Up" came on: a twelve-foot-tall woman in curve-hugging black strides through London as if she owned the place, good-naturedly vamping at guys of various races (there's an Asian, in the English usage, about 3/4 of the way through) along the way. It was very bolstering--the kind of sassy I can get behind.

FLAMIN' NORAH! Now, that was an earthquake. Nothing fell (here at my office where high bookshelves are ranged behind our desks), but man, did we feel it. I hope it wasn't a hell of a lot stronger anywhere else.

Added at 16:41: Looks like it was a weak 5 at the epicenter in northwestern Chiba Prefecture and in parts of Saitama and Kanagawa Prefectures. It was a 4 here. No tidal wave warnings.

Added at 17:58: The Nikkei says it was actually a strong 5 in Adachi Ward (northern part of the 23 wards of Tokyo proper). That's the JMA scale that measures surface vibrations, of course, not the measure of energy released provided by the Richter scale. (The estimated magnitude is 5.7.) It was strong enough to cause rides at Tokyo Disneyland to shut down automatically (elevators, too--those in this building are still closed until they can be inspected). Service on runways at Narita and one of the Shinkansen lines was interrupted, but everything appears to be back to normal. There don't seem to be any reports of actual damage.

Added at 19:42: I spoke too soon. Shibuya Station was a madhouse: the inner ring of the Yamanote Line (runs counter-clockwise) is still being inspected. Yikes.

Added at 21:36: Anyone who was in a coma this afternoon and missed the quake may be relieved to hear that the JMA is telling us to expect aftershocks of up to 4 in surface intensity. The magnitude of today's quake has also been revised upward to M6. I'm assuming train service is up and running everywhere again?

More from Irshad Manji, the Muslim lesbian from Toronto, in last week's Sunday Times:

Britain, she says, has been slow to introduce tests for imams on their mastery of the Koran. She recalls asking Mohamed al-Hindi, political leader of Islamic Jihad, where the Koran glorifies martyrdom; he insisted it was there, but even after looking up books and phoning colleagues, he couldn’t find one reference.

"His translator suggested I better go if I wanted to leave alive," she recalls. "I asked why he had even given an interview, and the translator said, 'Oh, he assumed you would be just another dumb westerner'."

Muslims, adds Manji, must find positive role models rather than jihadists: "Martyrs are the rock stars of the Muslim world, shown on the internet against a background of funky music. They feed on the self-esteem crisis of young Muslims." That could be addressed by history lessons paying greater tribute to the Muslim contribution to the Renaissance.

She denounces terrorism and the response to terrorism, which is not sufficiently robust. It is no good, she argues, for respectable Muslims to say "violence is not the Islamic ideal" if violence has become Islamic practice. And she attacks the proposed religious hatred laws, saying: “Society needs people who offend, otherwise there will be no progress."

Manji thinks Islam needs a reformation.

Walter Olson reports at Overlawyered that a new frontier in save-people-from-themselves-ism is being explored. This from one of the Guardian articles he links to:

According to Dr Judith Reisman, pornography affects the physical structure of your brain turning you into a porno-zombie. Porn, she says, is an "erototoxin", producing an addictive "drug cocktail" of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin with a measurable organic effect on the brain.

Some of us might consider this a good thing. Not Reisman: erototoxins aren't about pleasure, they're a "fear-sex-shame-and-anger stimulant". Reisman's paper on the subject The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography Restructuring Brain, Mind & Memory & Subverting Freedom of Speech has helped make her the darling of the anti-pornography crusade, and in November last year she presented her erototoxin theory to the US senate.

...

[Reisman and her fellow researcher] foresee two possible outcomes: if they can demonstrate that porn physically "damages" the brain, that might open the floodgates for "big tobacco"-style lawsuits against porn publishers and distributors; second, and more insidiously, if porn can be shown to "subvert cognition" and affect the parts of the brain involved in reasoning and speech, then "these toxic media should be legally outlawed, as is all other toxic waste, and eliminated from our societal structure".

Not being addicted to porn, I still have enough imagination to be stoked at the mere mention of a cocktail of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin. Where's that glass of iced water? [gulp...sigh] Okay.

Toxic waste is outlawed? Oh, excuse me--"legally outlawed"? I thought you just couldn't leave it lying around, not that it was illegal. Olson also links to this post at Nobody's Business:

Indefatigable at 70, Reisman continues her crusade against "the sexindustrial complex" mostly by trying to prove the existence of those elusive "erototoxins." Right now, only she knows what those are — she coined the word herself, and it seems it has yet to make it into anyone else's medical vocabulary. In fact, though she consistently identifies herself as "Dr. Reisman," that title refers to a degree in communication, not to any expert medical knowledge. (This echoes her fondness for reminding people that her maiden name, Gelernter, is German for "learned one." Indeed.)

Cheese and crackers, what a 24-karat quack. Of course, in a world after world-renowned agricultural chemist Meryl Streep's 1989 lecture to Congress about Alar, I supposed it's not a big shock that Reisman has given testimony before the US Senate about the neurological effects of pornography.

What's so annoying here is that there are real issues to be addressed. We expect teenagers to grow through adolescence to strike out on their own and choose their own life partners, often without much assistance from family and community elders. What does it mean to have recordings of live, impersonal sex acts cheaply and readily available when they reach adulthood (if not before)? I don't hold with the hard anti-porn line that pornography "causes" sexual dysfunction, and I'm against its criminalization. It's also patently untrue that you can't consume porn without spiralling helplessly into addiction. But you can't evade questions about social effects just by pointing out that there's no inherent shame in nakedness or sex; what you're exposed to does affect your attitude.

On the other hand--give me a break! The sex impulse doesn't obliterate free will. With all her blather about subverting freedom of speech, Reisman sounds exactly like the MacKinnon-Dworkin axis of feminism, with its line about how the power of the patriarchy means no woman in our society can ever give authentic "uncompromised" sexual consent. Another case of extremes meeting in the anti-pornography crusade.

If we don't show solidarity with London by buying lots of stuff at Fortnum & Mason, the terrorists win. Take that, Islamofascists!

And that!

Mmmm...and maybe some of that.

In all seriousness, I'm just very grateful that this week's crew of bombers only succeeded in displaying their incompetence to a media-saturated world. The police are apparently marshalling all their brain powers to figure who--who on Earth--might be behind the failed bombings:

Security analysts said the obvious carbon-copy attacks could have been masterminded either by the same group or by less sophisticated sympathisers — maybe young, disaffected Muslims.

"There is a resonance here," police chief Blair said, but he cautioned it would take time to tell who was to blame.

Fine, let's keep an open mind. But at this point, I'm thinking the probability that the bombers were not young, disaffected Muslims is pretty darned low.

A propos of nothing: it was at the Shepherds Bush Empire that I saw Alison Moyet perform ten years ago. One of the best concerts I've ever been to. I happened to stand next to a dyke couple who kept looking at me with expressions that clearly said, "Shouldn't you be at a Madonna concert instead, Mary?" But it was great; it was the tour for Essex, and the songs were flatteringly toughened up a bit for live performance. It's a shame Alison's career never really, really ignited internationally (especially since Vince Clarke went on to find major success after hooking up with that grating, self-pitying, quivery, histrionic, braying gay donkey Andy Bell and forming Erasure), though it's nice that she does well at home still.

This is good news:

Japanese researchers discovered a colorful, centuries-old Buddhist mural in a stone cave in Afghanistan that somehow escaped the destructive rampage of the Taliban regime in 2001, officials in Tokyo said.

The cave, about 3 meters wide, 3 meters deep and 2 meters high, is located at the west end of Bamiyan Valley, according to officials at the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties.

Parts of the mural are still covered with dust, but the painting is believed to cover all sides of the cave as well as the ceiling, the officials said.

The west wall depicts Buddha and other sitting Buddhist deities drawn with bold strokes.

We love bold strokes! The paintings could apparently help researchers determine how certain motifs in Buddhist art were transmitted through central Asia.

Congratulations, Canada:

Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin signed the legislation making it law, hours after it was approved by the Senate late Tuesday night despite strong opposition from Conservatives and religious leaders.

...

Churches have expressed concern that their clergy would be compelled to perform same sex ceremonies. The legislation, however, states that the bill only covers civil unions, not religious ones, and no clergy would be forced to perform same-sex ceremonies unless they choose to do so.

Charles McVety, a spokesman for Defend Marriage Canada and president of Canada Christian College, said he was "very sad that the state has invaded the church, breached separation of church and state and redefined a religious word."

Well, buddy, this is what you get when the religious word in question is closely tied to a government goodie bag. I still think there's reason for caution about a blanket extension of the legally designated category of marriage to cover gay relationships, but not all the opportunism in argument has been on the pro-gay side. And the sense of entitlement that has animated many gays in this debate is something that's been picked up from the general culture, not invented by our team and foisted on it.

More evacuations on the London Underground. Let's hope no one's been hurt.

I'm not sure whether it's the most depressing song ever, but Dolly Parton's "Down from Dover" is one of those country songs that play on the emotions very cunningly. From the very first verse, you know exactly what's going to happen:

I know this dress I'm wearing doesn't hide the secret I have tried concealing
When he left he promised me that he'd be back by the time it was revealing
The sun behind a cloud just casts a crawling shadow o'er the fields of clover
And time is running out for me--I wish that he would hurry down from Dover

It's not just that the story is as old as time--it's that Parton sets it in the autumn, when things begin to chill and die. Of course, real babies are born in fall all the time, but within the universe of symbols in the song, Parton's choice of season is significant.

He's been gone so long--when he left the snow was deep upon the ground
And I have seen a spring and summer pass, and now the leaves are turning brown
And any time a tiny face will show itself 'cause waiting's almost over
But I won't have a name to give it if he doesn't hurry down from Dover

My folks weren't understanding--when they found out they sent me from the home place
My daddy said if folks found out he'd be ashamed to ever show his face
My mamma said I was a fool, and she did not believe it when I told her
That everything would be all right 'cause soon he would be coming down from Dover

I found a place to stay out on a farm taking care of an old lady
She never asked me nothing, so I never talked to her about my baby
I sent a message to my mom with a name and address of Miss Elvah Grover
And to make sure he got that information when he came down from Dover

I loved him more than anything, and I could not refuse him when he needed me
He was the only one I'd loved, and I just can't believe that he was using me
He couldn't leave me here like this--I know it can't be so, it can't be over
He wouldn't make me go through this alone, oh, he'll be coming down from Dover

My body aches, the time is here, it's lonely in this place where I'm lying
Our baby has been born, but something's wrong--it's much too still--I hear no crying
I guess in some strange way she knew she'd never have a father's arms to hold her
And dying was her way of telling me he wasn't coming down from Dover

Look me dead in the pixels and tell me you're not depressed. The fourth verse was omitted from the original version on The Fairest of Them All, but Parton reinserted it on her wonderful remake a few years ago on Little Sparrow. She changed the phrasing in places, too. In either version, the story is beautifully paced--each step at which the protagonist is further isolated from people and still doesn't get what's going on positively hurts to listen to. Dramatic irony at its most devastating. And unlike many of the old ballads from which Parton (among a lot of other country songwriters, of course) drew inspiration, the poor girl doesn't end up dead and at least out of her misery.

This is one of the many reasons I love Susanna:

I just don't think they're [leftists, of course] being very realistic about the threat, which is not the same as questioning their honesty, morality or intelligence. I know a lot of people who I consider exemplary on all three counts who disagree with me on the WOT, both liberals and conservatives. So it's not that either. But there are a lot of liberals and leftists who do give cover - just consider any of your garden-variety pseudo-intellectual Hollywood types like, oh, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Susan Sarandon, etc. And consider the leadership of the Democratic party as well as the nattering leftists in the US and Europe, whose primary solidarity is built on anti-Americanism arising from their own sick envy. I consider them the rankest hypocrites, demanding the freedoms and excesses of the West while succoring the fascists of radical Islam whose first activity on taking over any country would be to end the freedoms and excesses Western civilization provides. And finally, I'm not parroting a party line - I'm a lot harsher than the party line tends to be.

Yeah, we only wish the party line were that uncompromising. Susanna quotes Peter Tatchell's statement on Unite Against Terror. In my opinion, Tatchell is one of the few lefty gay voices consistently worth listening to. He may stage wacko demonstrations and support "international socialism" [shiver], but he knows how to make arguments applicable to Earth and not Planet Clare.

Re. US-Japan security ties, the Yomiuri reports that the Department of Defense has asked Japan to give us a heads-up if, say, the DPRK fires a missile at us:

The United States, as part of its missile defense program, has asked the government to share any information obtained by advanced radar systems in Japan as soon as they detect a U.S.-targeted ballistic missile attack launched from such countries as North Korea, government sources said Tuesday.

Any such missile launch would probably first be detected in Japan by an advanced early warning radar system known as FPS-XX.

The next-generation high-performance radar system, which is in its final stage of development by the Defense Agency's Technical Research and Development Institute (TRDI), will be a pivotal component of the nation's missile defense system scheduled to be deployed 2007.

The government is set to accept the U.S. requests for assistance saying there would be no problem in sharing information in the event of a missile attack on the United States, the sources said.

The pattern for new gizmos with "next generation" attached to them is one of delayed roll-outs and lots of debugging after release, in my experience. Nevertheless, despite its trouble launching rockets and satellites, Japan's ground-based surveillance is very good.

Ambassador Thomas Schieffer has also asked Japan to extend the deployment of SDF personnel in Iraq again:

Schieffer told reporters at the National Press Club of Japan that it is Tokyo's decision, but countries in the multinational force are expected to make tough choices to help establish democracy in Iraq.

"We know that that was a threshold to cross for the Japanese government and the Japanese people. It is not an easy thing for them to be there," Schieffer said.

"But we think that their contribution is making a difference, and it is a contribution that they can proudly say they are making on behalf of the international community, and not because the United States is there," he said.

"All of us have to do things that we would prefer not to do from time to time," he added.

Schieffer's comments came as Tokyo and Washington have begun working quietly on how to interpret U.N. Security Council Resolution 1546 to allow an extension beyond the Dec. 14 expiry stipulated under the basic dispatch plan approved last year by the Cabinet.

With the brouhaha over Japan Post reform, other issues before the Diet and cabinet aren't really getting much play in the news here. It seems unlikely that Koizumi will be inclined to pull out early.

I still don't really know what to make of Schieffer. He's far less a media presence here than Howard Baker was. Not that the old ambassador was all over the society pages, or anything, but he was quoted very regularly in news reports. Schieffer is much quieter. Perhaps he's getting his bearings--he's not a really seasoned politician as Baker was. Or perhaps he simply finds it politic to shut up, given the topics there are to opine on lately: anti-Japan sentiment in China, friction over politicans' pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine, Japan's push for permanent UN Security Council membership. These aren't exactly easy shoals to navigate, and Schieffer has only been on duty here since April.

Hmmm.... Morning.... Cup of strong tea, scrambled eggs with way too much butter.... Classical Values.... WHAT?! [splutter]

Does this sick phenomenon called "outing" know no bounds? I mean, it's bad enough to go after a politician for "hypocrisy" when his personal life runs afoul of his stated political views. But to go after a family member? This was the kneejerk reaction of certain Daily Kos regulars, who wasted no time in calling for an investigation to determine whether John Roberts' son is gay.

This is now being dismissed as absurd because, of course, the son happens to be four years old.

Disgraceful. In fairness, two Kos commenters did have the decency to point out that going after Roberts's son was at least ignorant. (I would have preferred to see them point out that it was outrageous, but you can't have everything.)

Frequent commenter John has had his own blog for a few months--it's very good stuff.

There have been a lot of posts about math education floating around lately. His two (here and here) are great additions to the pool. Something that he says that more people need to understand (and that is pertinent to comparisons of American and Japanese educational systems):

So being Americans, and enamored of the idea that everyone can become a genius, we came out with systems that emphasized creativity over memorization, forgetting that in order to be creative you need at least a few facts in your head, otherwise you live in a world of make-believe.

Somehow, the conviction that your progress in life needn't be limited by the circumstances you were born into has changed into the belief that you can bluff your way through anything. (That actually doesn't work much better in literary study than it does in math, BTW, as anyone who's lost hours of life to an assigned "critical theory" reading of zero meaning can attest. It's just less noticeable because there's at least some fudge room in interpretation and criticism. And misinterpreting a poem doesn't make bridges fall down.)

Bush's nominee for the US Supreme Court seems to have surprised everyone. For those of us who don't believe the Constitution is a mirror, he sounds like a great choice. The Washington Blade cites this AP report:

"The court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion … finds no support in the text, structure or history of the Constitution," the brief [from Roberts] said.

In his defense, Roberts told senators during his 2003 confirmation hearing that he would be guided by legal precedent. "Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. … There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."

Of course, the usual spokespersons are saying the usual things, and they'll all be paraded across the news channels for the foreseeable future--I know some people like that aspect of politics, but I frankly find it wearying. One thing I would like to see, though, that I haven't come across in the news reports yet: Arlen Specter's reaction. He's a triangulating moderate himself, and he was fond of Sandra Day O'Connor. I mean, obviously, he's going to say something politic. When does he not? Still, Roberts looks more consistently conservative than he'd hoped for.

What's the latest trend in Japan? Class consciousness, according to Time:

Japan, a country that prides itself on social harmony, homogeneity and an equitable distribution of wealth, is bifurcating along geographic and social lines into camps of permanent winners and perpetual losers—the former a highly educated and trained core of élite employees and entrepreneurs working for internationally competitive companies, the latter an increasingly marginalized yet growing sector of society comprising primarily elderly rural poor and despairing urban youths like Ijiri. "In the past, people believed that the whole nation was getting wealthier, and the rich were simply the people who got there quicker," says Toshiki Satou, a sociologist at the University of Tokyo (U.T.). "But that is changing. People are becoming more aware of class."

It's funny that the writer, Jim Frederick, who happens to be Time Asia's Tokyo bureau chief, should say that. Long-term Asia residents may remember the puff piece from a few years ago in which he fawned over Japan and its resilience with embarrassing sycophancy:

In the wreckage of Japan's increasing inability to compete against the lower labor costs and rekindled ambitions of its rivals, however, a number of observers both inside the country and out are turning to the nation's creative and cultural enterprises as a source of potential salvation. For this has been one of the greatest Japanese ironies: even as Japan's economic leadership has been slipping for more than a decade, its cultural hegemony has only swelled. "Japan has changed from being a corporate manufacturing and industrial society to a pop-culture society," says Ichiya Nakamura, a visiting scholar at Stanford Japan Center and M.I.T. Media Lab. Pokémon has supplanted Astroboy in the hearts of schoolkids in more than 65 countries, and 60% of the world's animated-cartoon series are made in Japan. Games running on PlayStation 2 and (to a lesser degree) Nintendo's Game Cube rule the video-game universe just as tightly as before, despite a frontal attack from none other than Microsoft and its sinister-looking black Xbox. And high-end Japanese fashion designers such as Hanae Mori, Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake are not only as vital as they once were; they have also been joined by a generation of young turks such as A Bathing Ape, Jun Takahashi and Naoki Takizawa who set the style for hipsters from Berlin to Bangkok and beyond. Japanese films, TV series, music acts and lifestyle magazines, meanwhile, routinely spark fads all over Asia. (Turn on MTV in Singapore or Hong Kong and you are just as likely to see Ayumi Hamasaki as J. Lo.) According to Tsutomu Sugiura, director of the Marubeni Research Institute, an economic think tank, Japanese cultural exports—such as from the media, licensing, entertainment and other related industries—have tripled over the past 10 years to $12.5 billion, while manufacturing exports have increased by only 20%. Granted, $12.5 billion seems like a rounding error in Japan's $4 trillion economy (Toyota alone hauls in nearly $11 billion in sales every month), but it's still the result of a growth rate almost unheard of anywhere else.

Note that in the article from this past week, it is exactly the imaginative/arty fields that he's pointing to as unable to take up the slack of Japan's domestic conventional industry. Of course, smart people discard prior assumptions as reality refutes them; I'm not finding fault with Frederick for changing his mind. The obnoxious part is the flat learning curve. His succession of articles over the past few years, each pushing the latest funky-news-from-Japan-of-the-week line, shows little to no ability to judge, based on long-term patterns in Japanese society, which trends are likely to last and why.

He also fails to ask some glaringly obvious questions:

Even if he could find work, Ijiri says he feels unprepared to join the winner-takes-all rat race of postindustrial Japan. He longs for his father's era, the heyday of Japan Inc., when young adults were whisked directly from college into a womblike corporate career, where they would be sheltered by a paternalistic business culture for life. "People like me who aren't particularly talented at anything are happier with the old system of lifetime employment and seniority-based salaries," he says. "The supposed 'chances and opportunities' that a competitive economy offers is for those who are already steps ahead." Ijiri later found work as a security guard, hardly the future he once envisioned for himself.

Frederick lets these observations pass without comment, but they are hardly self-evidently true. The most uncharitable interpretation is that, now that Japanese workers are being assigned their true market value, many of them are discovering that they were meant to be security guards rather than engineers. But even that isn't necessarily the case. Someone who wrote so rapturously about Issey Miyake and Hanae Mori and their successors must be aware that the post-War Japan, Inc., system worked by squeezing everyone into the mediocre middle. That meant that uninspired low achievers were lifted up, but it also meant that imaginatively brilliant oddballs were tamped mercilessly down. It may be, in fact, that Ijiri has talents that the educational system, bent on making him a good, noiseless cog, didn't help him to discover, much less develop.

A related point:

To get a glimpse of the wealth gap, travel 400 km from prosperous Tokyo to the Shimane prefecture town of Ohda, a listless burg struggling to support its aging population of 33,000. Along an incongruously wide, modern superhighway linking Ohda with the nearest train station, the only signs of economic activity are abandoned construction sites. Shimane is one of the poorest and least populated regions in Japan and has no industry to speak of save public-works projects; one out of eight residents is tied to the construction industry. But because of fiscal austerity measures implemented by the Shimane prefectural government, even public-works jobs are under threat.

Note the way a bottomless supply of public works jobs, even those that involve building unnecessary superhighways and other construction boondoggles, is considered normal, with any throttling back deemed a mark of "austerity." In fact, the river of concrete that washed over Japan's rural areas simply disguised what's been true for decades: Japanese citizens have urbanized and to a great extent abandoned the remote countryside. They've taken with them the need for most public works projects; facilities built in outlying areas have mostly served pork-barrel politicians and helped the LDP to mobilize its important rural supporters.

The 12.5% of Shimane residents in construction were laboring under an illusion long before the bubble burst. Taking the sensible abandonment of white elephants as a sign of some new "wealth gap" is just wacko.

I think my, uh, favori