Fat-Pie Flash movies are some of my favorites in the world.

Meh. Dead bodies.

Drinking scotch on the rocks (as I have come to do) does two things:

1) As the right-minded water-adders say, it brings out the flavor. The subtleties of scotch (or other whiskeys) just plain don't come out neat. People who drink it neat think they are 1337, but they're missing a lot of the intricacies of the flavor. Ice melting adds the water that scientists have found to drastically increase tastiness.

2) Allows you to enjoy the same drink in a different way every sip, especially with these spherical ice cubes. The first taste is almost neat; by the end, there's just a whisper of scotch left. The change over time is what I really like about it.

So there!

I'm with #8. I'm adamantly pro-choice but personally would only be involved in one in very narrow circumstances. There's no disparity there. It's my choice how to define those circumstances.

This guy has nothing to feel bad about. Even if it were alive it would just be a mouse. We kill those all the time (which isn't to say I don't feel a tinge of guilt when I see a smashed baby mouse in a trap, but oh well--it was him or my cheese).

Not my country; not my problem.

You start making other countries' problems your own and you end up with Vietnams and Iraqs.

I don't mind the word "tard" one bit.

"Idiot" and "moron" used to be actual medical terms. We can't use those either? That would be idiotic, moronic, and retarded, all at once.

People who complain about GTA are stupid.

There. No big words needed.

GTA is some of the best satirical work out there, and it happens to be a video game. You're not required or even asked to shoot hookers. You just can. And you know what happens? The cops come.

And Jack Thompson... Ugh. He's just not even worth the keystrokes, but...

This is not a kid's game. It says so on the box. It has always said so on the box. Don't give it to your kids if you don't want them to play a violent game.

I will never understand why this is any different from a kid seeing, I dunno, Hostel. No one screams "This is an affront to children!!!" because kids aren't supposed to see it. Granted, kids will see it, just like kids will play GTA.

That is no one's problem or business but their parents.

I have a friend who only plays violent video games after his primary-school-aged kids go to bed, because he doesn't think they are appropriate for their age. And I think he's right.

Parenting! What a concept.

Finally, Women's Studies... Ugh. Actually, the whole liberal arts branch of higher education has been inundated with this "pile a bunch of big words onto an outdated outrage" line of thought. You get points for subverting the dominant paradigm instead of thinking rationally or clearly. I got into linguistics because it was the only part of the English department that I could go to to escape the onslaught of total and utter BS dressed up as an academic pursuit.

I'm going to say something and be vilified for it, but:

There is no patriarchy. Women hold the majority of political and social control, and always have. They lack power, to be sure, but they have always had the control. Control beats power every time. It's the pen over the sword. A man can beat his wife, but his wife instills values in his children.

This dichotomy has always existed, and has always favored women. Look to Lysistrata for the earliest example of this in literature (that I can think of). Even The Taming of the Shrew has this as a major theme. Kate is the one in control of that situation. Women vote more.

GTA is just a video game, folks. And a well-produced and interesting one at that. Put your shock away; it's boring me.

I write about one website a year, and I've always found programs like Dreamweaver kind of a pain. That's what I usually use, but, like #8, it's just to rough in the page. I always end up in the source editor eventually. It's the only way to get exactly what you want.

This post is not up to the normally family-friendly standards of Boing Boing! I am offended and want my money back!

--Because I'm offended!

You guys know that we have to have a major overhaul on our cars over here in Japan every 2 years because they are considered unsafe after 2 years of driving?

There may be more going on here than corporate stupidity. It may also just be cultural stupidity.

Y'know, I grew up getting the tail end of beers from my parents. I was allowed a glass of wine with Christmas dinner.

I have grown up neither to be an alcoholic or developmentally disabled.

In fact, I'm an academic.

I know what Mike's Hard Lemonade is, but that's just because I was in college when it came out and I had a girlfriend who loved 'em. If I were older or didn't drink myself, I can totally see how this could happen. "You want a lemonade? Sure, just a sec... SIR! Lemonade, please!" The rest is history.

And yeah, a lot of academics--the good ones, anyway--are totally out of touch with reality. As you can no doubt surmise, I'm not a very good academic. Anyway, oftentimes when chatting with the really hardcore researchy types around the university water cooler, I'll bring something up that I think is extremely well-known to people roughly my own age and will get total blank stares. E.g.:

"What's an Xbox?"

"You can download TV from the internet?"

"Have you seen any of these 'miniseries' I've been reading about on television?" ("Miniseries" pronounced as: mih-NIH-sur-eez)

They're clueless. If they weren't paid to fixate on something, they'd be totally useless in society.

This "protect the children"-ism must end. I was just out at a bar with my friend who have a baby. There was smoke in the air and alcohol everywhere else. I'm pretty sure the kid is going to be okay. In fact, her language development will probably be much improved, being out in adult society instead of having the Teletubbies coo at her and turn her into a moron.

The world isn't safe, but it's not particularly dangerous either. Let's all calm down just as soon as we publicly lynch everyone involved in this gross miscarriage of justice.

Antinous, you know about the crazy fan thing, too? Thank god! No one ever seems to believe me.

My wife (Japanese) also is deathly afraid of fans. Drives me nuts.

Sweet! I'm going to get some of those Vibram Five Fingers and ride around on my recumbent bicycle!

1) This butter shortage has been sucking for a few weeks now. My wife and I actually did stock up. It's no fun, and a lot of people are upset. The Japanese diet incorporates a lot of Western food now (not just specialty baked goods--the butter on the shelves isn't going to baking, I don't think).

2) A great summertime drink: Vodka, Calpis (sold as Calpico in the US--check your Asian grocer), soda water, ice. Mix to taste, but I like about 2oz of vodka, 1oz of Calpis, and about 9oz of soda. Refreshing and alcoholic.

I ate some of this food and died. It's toxic.

Really. I'm posting this from beyond the grave. No scaremongering in this idiotic title whatsoever. Who would ever accuse Cory Doctorow, of all people, of harebrained self-righteous scaremongering and dimly-understood economic evangelizing???

But here's the thing: Food is important. Make it yourself, from things you recognize. It won't be as pretty or abstain from rotting as long as what comes in a box, but it will probably taste better and be better for you.

That doesn't mean you can't dip into the lab from time to time, but come on. It's food, people. It's the most important thing in the world. It's the most basic. Spend a little time and effort on it, for chrissakes. It's fun, and it's good for you.

I am at my ideal weight and don't really exercise that much (save walking around a lot). I am healthy and pretty happy. I don't worry about food that much, I just make dinner and then eat it. Chomp. The end.

I'm with Takuan.

This actually doesn't go on long enough and isn't shocking enough.

"People don't need more trauma." Bullshit (I originally typed "Nonsense," but that didn't convey what I meant).

People need trauma. They need to understand these things in real and graphic terms. They need to see what war means. They need to see what torture means. They must not be allowed to deal with these things in the abstract. This is not academic; this is real people really being put through hell and it is your fault and it is my fault because we are not actively doing anything to stop it. We deserve all the trauma we can get.

I am not even a pacifist. I believe war is sometimes necessary, even as horrible as it is. But Iraq is proof that we (and yes, I will lump in every English-speaking country there, guys--we're all in the same club) have become the bad guys. But torture? Never need happen, never should happen, even IF it did render useful information, which it does not. You only get to wear the white hat if you take the high road every single time. Torture is the lowest of low roads.

If this makes people angry at Amnesty International for fucking up their fun at the movies, it's simple proof that people are evil morons.

Justice will not be served until the little club of sociopaths that dragged an unwilling and unwitting public into committing these crimes against humanity gets their last dance at the end of the rope. I'm not interested in any reform of the situation that doesn't see that as a key goal.

Amnesty is pussing out on this, too.

I don't think it's a good idea for anyone to hitchhike, especially women. I also don't pick them up.

Once upon a time when it was more common, maybe, but the thing about fringe activities is that the people who take part in them thin out until there are only fringe people as well. Simple normal distribution.

This was not a good idea.

I recently coughed up the cash for a Mac Pro (typing on it now). I really was tempted to go for a Hackintosh, because up until now I've been building my own Windows boxes, and like the freedom and savings associated with that, but ultimately, I didn't want to run the risk of getting my shit ruined when Apple brings the hammer down.

Points about the missing high-end consumer machine in the Apple lineup are all right on. However, I think the reason for this is that such sales would just cannibalize the MP sales and make it unprofitable. But they need the super-high-end workstations to keep hold of their video/music/photography/animation market. That is a key market for them.

I have no doubt they could sell a million billion prosumer towers, but it could cost them their long-term base, the base that has kept them running even when things were looking bad for them.

The MP is a great deal for what you get. It's just that... Well, no one needs all this crazy power. I love the machine and all, but c'mon.

Anyway, the point of the story is that I love the idea of a Hackintosh, but I wouldn't make that my main machine. Apple can sell its OS cheap and uninfected with copy protection / activation BS simply because they know that it's going to be installed on hardware that also makes them money. I switched to the Mac BECAUSE it was proprietary. I was tired of things not quite working, and I was tired of my OS treating me like I stole it when I actually bought it (and treating me like the king of town when I ripped it off!). I switched BECAUSE OF the smaller hardware pool. I switched because Apple does nice work and doesn't try to be everything to everybody which is how garbage like Vista gets made.

Good luck to the Hackintoshers. I hope your machine keeps working and that you don't compel Apple to screw the OS up.

When the whole category title is "from Poland and Berlin."

RTFA.

@#42:

Indeed. My mother, who pooh-poohs me as an angry young man (well, I am angry, but not so young anymore) when I tell her about things that are happening RIGHT NOW, will often come to me as much as a couple years later all in a huff about this terrible thing that happened TWO YEARS AGO and no one noticed.

"Yeah, Mom, I know. In fact, I told you about it. You said I was being silly. Do you want me to dig up the email to prove it?"

Even with all of the stunning developments in information dissemination and access, quite simply, the people can't keep up. They never could; that's why we have a republic with representatives. We trust the people we send to various governing bodies to represent our values and opinions. When they don't, people don't find out about it for a long time. When legislation goes as fast as it does these days, with so little time for public input, and no chance to fire people before they have a chance to vote on an issue the people don't support, the government can have its way with the people and, just as Gorring said, drag them along into any crazy-ass misadventure, be it killing off the rich people and taking their stuff (the Final Solution) or killing off the poor people and taking their stuff (the Iraq War). These are things that, when examined by individuals, no sane or thinking person (without a stake, of course) could support. But that doesn't matter, because they'll be involved before they even notice.

When this happens, you can't really vote your way out of the trouble. When the governmental system becomes so septic and virile that it spreads beyond the hallowed halls into every corporate boardroom and from there into every living room in the land, when violence and death become its primary mode of discourse, it may become necessary to enter into debate with it in a language it understands.

Just sayin'.

I still enjoy a good troll now and again. But there are ground rules:

1) Spell and punctuate correctly. You don't want to just look like an idiot wingnut and be (rightfully) dismissed as such.

2) Use foul language sparingly. Same reason as #1.

3) Strive for at least internal logical consistency. Don't leave claims unsupported (even if it's just anecdotal support), etc. Composition 101.

The point of a good trolling post is to not be an ass, as I see it. It's to upset people. It's to shock them. You don't have to totally believe what you are saying; you just have to make a contrarian case that is strong enough to expose the knee-jerkers in the crowd (when they can't defend their beliefs when challenged) and let the real thinkers rise to the top and either concede parts of your diatribe or utterly destroy it with superior writing and/or logic. Either way, sanity and rationality and honesty win the day.

To be honest, I don't really consider such posts as "trolls," but many disagree. I just think that, when arguing with strangers, there's no reason to cop to playing devil's advocate. We just do that face-to-face to preserve friendships with people we have to see again and again.

This guy, however, is not that kind of troll. He's just a moron. I've known a lot of moronic College Republicans. Okay, almost all of them. But out in the wild, I know a lot of really smart Republicans. I may disagree with them, but at least they have their facts straight.

Both parties have gone way downhill (or maybe we're just sophisticated enough to notice). The shit we argue about these days is ridiculous. There's room for social and economic conservatism, and there's room for social and economic liberalism. Democracy is supposed to let people find a balance among those four poles. But we don't even talk about those things anymore. We talk about flag burning and weather. Poli-tainment. (Retch.)

No, Beanolini, you don't get it. It's so much more than a mixture of compounds, man! It's like... A door. To another wooooorrrrlllld, man!

(Who invented Captain Bringdown anyway?)

The CBC did a nice 2-part show on Ideas a few weeks ago. "In Search of the Divine Vegetal" was the title. It's not on iTunes anymore, but worth a listen.

Basically, for enlightenment, I'm good, thanks. Same goes for any mind-altering drugs, too.

Here's the thing about drugs and the "understanding" they provide (and this comes from someone who was once known to trumpet them): It's all chemical bullshit. All of it. All of it. Not just the drug-based epiphanies, but the drugless kind, too.

There is no forest mother or whatever. It was a hallucination. You are not connected to everyone and everything else. Your brain was fucked up and you lost connection to the part that defines spatial boundaries for awhile. You don't love everyone. You just had a whole bunch of seratonin floating around in your brain.

I'm not saying there's something wrong with experiencing altered states. I actually do think they can be interesting and instructive. But there is something wrong thinking they are anything more than your brain being poisoned and ceasing to function properly for awhile. That's the lesson of drugs: You are meat and you can be changed by changing the meat. There is no truth. You do not exist. You're just a car crash away from never having existed, in fact.

This is a very freeing worldview, actually. It's enough to say the garden is lovely.

You mean those vegetables outside my apartment aren't free??? I thought they were someone's leftovers!!! My GOD!!!

Unicorn chaser, please. Both for the coffee and the shithead drinking it. Or, rather, the shitheads who wrote this.

That "how many 5-year-olds can you fight" thing is so old. I used that to order 5-year-olds to fight for an office party and it wasn't near enough. Everyone thought I was an idiot, which I was.

Stupid monkeys.

AWESOME!!!! That creepy silent laugh... Wonderful!

One evening I just watched plane crash videos while listening to the Blue Mars space music stream. It was beautiful.

Personally, I like McCain, and this Christo-wacko stuff seems just to be a means to keep the Christo-wacko-neocons behind him. I don't think he actually believes that a war with Iran is going to bring about the Rapture or any such nonsense. I don't think Bush does either--he's just a plain old run of the mill greedy murderous asshole.

I'm a strong Obama man myself, but McCain, even though I don't always agree with him, has and has had my respect. Either way this election goes, we'll be in a much, much better place.

Now if only we could get Bush et al into a war crimes court and see them swing, we'd be really getting somewhere.

Finally, even if this pentagram really is there on purpose, well, that's a Masonic symbol, and the Masons were an order that primarily did things like build cities, so... I have never been convinced that the Masons are/were anything more than a frat house for guys when they got out of college. No better, no worse. Just a club. Boys like clubs.

Yeah, I don't think they're necessarily for children. I would imagine that if anyone actually buys these things, it is for middle-aged women.

That being said, although almost every stoneworks place (and there are a lot of them!) has a display like this, I have never actually seen something like this in a cemetery (and there are a lot of those, too!). I think they serve more to brighten up the store and to display their stonework skills.

I have, however, seen a Doraemon statue like this out in the open. In front of a business. As a garden ornament. It's not necessarily even intended for a grave, I don't think.

In other news, now I'm getting hit by the "text entered was wrong" bug...

I lost a friend to EverQuest.

Is it a disease? By itself? No. But "addictive personality" may be... Sorta. I kinda think that most psychiatric "diseases" are just marketing ploys for drugs to make people stop doing them.

It's a problem, and I would never deny that. But... Um... Cancer is a disease. Being a choad and forgoing hygiene and diet and relationships to level up your Dark Elf is a character flaw.

We want so much to believe that "normal" is normal. But it's not. A lot of people aren't normal. Sometimes that makes them more effective; sometimes that makes them less. We hate to see our friends and family members wreck their lives, but some people just wreck their lives. Doping them up is fine if they want to be doped up, but c'mon. It's not "medicine," usually. It's dope.

I like to drink. Not a lot, but I try to have a drink every night. Why? Because if I didn't, I'd work all night and never spend time with my wife. That's a character flaw. But I trade some liver function for a temporary inability to work, and reap the benefits. I don't pretend that it's anything it isn't though: balancing a character flaw with a bad habit.

Mao is what happens when you hand someone too much power. He began as an intellectual poet revolutionary, and became a vile and ruthless despot. Story as old as the hills (of bodies).

My mom always said this was a stupid movie. Then, one night when I was in junior high, I saw that it was being run, uncut and without commercials, in the middle of the night. I sneaked into the family room to watch it, beginning to end, in the silence and darkness and cold, all alone.

And then I realized the truth.

It was my mom who was stupid.

I'm a university lecturer. When a student who missed an important lecture (I don't really "lecture" that often) comes up to me and asks what she missed, what do I say?

"See if you can get the notes from someone."

Why would I care if that someone charged her?

Um, yeah... WoW... It's not a violent video game.

I still feel that way after playing an actual violent video game. That's why people do it.

But this is a pretty dumb study.

Yeah, he's being pulled. He's learned how to stay up on a bike, but that's it.

I usually come down pretty hard on cops, but I actually think these two did the right thing. It was obstructing traffic, and was unsafe. Not as in, it could hit someone, but as in it was moving so slowly that it was likely to be hit, and that would be extremely unsafe for the bike-car passengers.

Of course he wouldn't be LEGALLY responsible if there was an accident after he let them go, but I can imagine his superiors would give him an earful. He wasn't rude or abusive; he just got an obstruction out of traffic.

I'm also glad the charges were dropped. The cop was just being prudent.

#5:

I had EXACTLY the same response!

Back to the story, it would be one thing if he were selling these drivers. He wasn't. He just hacked them together. Creative still makes money off the hardware (they're a hardware company!). I am often on the fence with IP things, but this seems perfectly okay with me.

It's interesting to see a dead friend or relative. I never understand why some people make such a fuss over the body and "want to say goodbye." It's clear, even to an atheist as myself, that the person you know is gone. You might as well say goodbye to their overcoat.

People are what they say, do, and how they say and do it. It's the way the move. It's their functioning brain. The rest is just a puppet.

@ #8:

Beat me to it.

I love stuff like this, but yeah, please do it in chalk.

Okay, here's more of that subtle Orientalism I rant about all the time (no offense to anyone--it's easy to do).

This is not about looking white. Get over (y)ourselves.

Most Japanese women (and some men) really want that "double-eyelid," but the reason is simple: Look at the photos on the page. When your eyelid folds back on itself like that, your eyes open wider; you look more alert/attentive/alluring, and your eyes look bigger. All of these are universal attraction points for humans.

Something like 80% of Korean women have surgery for it.

So, please, please, please, for the love of god, when you see something strange in Japan/Asia, please do not let "they're trying to be like us!" be your first thought. They might just want bigger, sexier eyes. They might just really like pasta. They might be totally intelligent and autonomous people who don't have the slightest interest in you, your culture, or whether you do something similar to something they are doing.

As an observer of this trend, however, I have these notes:

1) Tape comes loose, and you might walk around with one eyelid down and with a weird sticky line over your eye.

2) Glue pretty much looks like you put glue on your eyelid. It doesn't move right.

3) Your eyes are probably just fine; don't worry about trying to look like a gravure model; just be yourself and your inner beauty will probably shine right through. Unless you're an awful person. Then you should get surgery. Or, hell, even if you're a nice person who is just really bothered by her eyelids, get them done anyway. They're your eyelids; you can do with them as you please!

I was just surprised to read "heteronormative male gaze" written by someone under 50.

I think a lot of this nonsense is slipping away with the tiresome baby boomer generation.

We can only hope.

Wow! Stunning! Sanity! Wow! Wow!

Just... Wow!

I wish I had more to say, but every sane thing has already been said by multiple people!

I have #4's back.

Women have reproductive rights; men have reproductive responsibilities.

This, of course, stems from personal experience. When I was much, much younger, my girlfriend had a miscarriage. This was shocking and painful enough, because she was so hardheaded she wouldn't go to the hospital until she had lost so much blood she passed out. Then when we found out what it was, I was terrified, guilty, but a little relieved. Until she said: "It doesn't bother me that much. It's like someone said 'you won $100, but it's gone now.' You had a good thing, but lost it before you even knew about it."

I continued to comfort her, but it ultimately led to our painful breakup (she was wonderful, but all this was way too heavy for me at the time), partly because that comment ran through my head for weeks.

My education, my plans, my dreams, my future could have all been wiped out with a big child support bill, just because my girlfriend couldn't remember to take a pill every night.

I have been afraid of accidental pregnancy ever since. Terrified. To the point that it becomes clear to my partners that I don't, when push comes to shove, trust them.

I didn't want--couldn't handle--that kid, if it had been born. If I were a woman and felt that way, I could do something about it. But as a man, I had no say. I had practiced due diligence in avoiding conception, but due to circumstances out of my control, it had happened nonetheless. Circumstances have never been out of my control since.

And to #12: I think some hardline male reproductive rights folks actually say that, but it seems like madness to me. The point is to achieve parity. Both should be allowed to opt-out. Ideally there would be a window of time from knowledge of the event wherein you could do so, with the default position being one of support. Furthermore, of course, once you opt-in, you should only be able to opt-out with the legal consent of both parental parties.

Do guys skip out on support? Yeah, all the time. But it's illegal, and rightly so. I'm just arguing that it should be legal for a male to state at the beginning whether he will be supporting or not. "Deadbeat dads" are not what we are talking about.

Heheh, yeah, another thing I've gotten used to, but used to think was strange...

#15 nailed it, I think. By telling people to search for the actual name of the company, instead of guessing at the romanization of the name, they are much more likely to get it.

#22 isn't far off either. Japanese computer users are not very savvy.

I'm pretty sure that Yahoo owns Japan. Portal site like that are most people's first stop, and actually seem to do a large share of ecommerce. What my wife and I often do if we are going to buy something online is compare prices on a company's Yahoo storefront to the one on their Rakuten storefront. They're different sites, and sometimes have different deals!

...sensible tantricks...

Let's just let that hang there for awhile...

I actually gave away a lot of stuff via the net when I moved here (Japan). I was struck (and pretty amused) by how rude a lot of the people were who had come to collect basically all my possessions for free. The funniest thing was that while they were in my house, a lot of them would just point at stuff and say "What about that?" even though it wasn't on the list of things I was giving away.

I can't really imagine going into someone's house to get one thing he offered, and trying to turn it into an all-you-can-carry free shopping spree.

Wait a minute... What am I saying? I ended up carrying a lot of the stuff myself. Guy came for my full-size sofa alone and just kinda looked at me when I smiled and said, "Well, there it is! I hope you get many years of use out of it!" ...Oh, I see. This stuff I didn't want to bother with moving? I'm guess I'm still moving it.

Bah! People!

I can always tell I'm back in the states because I suddenly become a woman, I guess. Evidently the stubble and male clothing style isn't enough to let Americans know I am (and always have been, between ears and legs) male. And heterosexual.

However, when I walk up to get my clam chowder at SFO, and the woman behind the counter refers to me as "miss" as she hands me my order, I do not explode in a tirade. I don't say "excuse me?" I don't even correct her.

I just say "thank you."

It's annoying to be called by the wrong pronoun, but, at the end of the day, who cares??? I'd only be concerned if someone I saw every day did it. Otherwise, I'd really just like to eat my soup.

@Tom

So... How is someone getting a free, unlicensed, and legal copy of a piece of software advertising? They install the software. They use it (or don't), and never think about it again.

Here's advertising:

I do a conference presentation which partly shows what you can do with a great piece of statistical software by a tiny publisher. People ask me what I use. I tell them and show it to them. I do not give them the installer and my site-license password, even though the tiny publisher would never know. That's not advertising; that's pirating. Advertising is when the person who sees it is encouraged to go out and buy it.

Not being concerned about being ripped off for 7 installs for every two you've accounted for? People who will either like it and use it or won't and won't --but will pay nothing either way?

Yes, that is indeed cause for concern. Especially if yours is a niche product (which, with few exceptions, unless the first half of your company's name is "Micro" and the last is "soft," it most certainly is). Some products benefit from a network effect. Most do not.

I like the Constitution for the very reasons you would like to get rid of it.

(Stealing from Gore Vidal) The founding fathers were afraid of two things: Tyranny and democracy. And I think that those are good things to be afraid of.

We all know the problems with tyranny. It adversely affects rich and poor alike.

But democracy? Well, that's a problem too, because most people are pretty dumb. Look no further than what ad-supported "news" brings us. People aren't interested in difficult subject matter. They are drawn to shock and human interest. One isolated incident gets everyone's dander up and it sometimes results in some ridiculous sweeping draconian law, and that is with the buffer of a representative-based government. I shudder to think what would happen if the people were given direct control. Good lord that would make the media conglomerates the government. I think any true democracy would quickly devolve into an oligarchy.

In the dumb people's defense, however, I'd like to point out that all of us are dumb. I think I'm pretty well-informed on foreign policy matters, but that has taken many years of education. I don't, however, know jack-diddly-squat about economics. I have opinions on it, but, to be honest, no one should listen to them.

I think we definitely need to address the influence problem in Congress, because it is also pushing us toward an oligarchy, but the fundamental design of the system is pretty good. In fact, many of the problems we have are due to the fact that we don't adhere to it enough. The founding fathers deliberately made an ineffectual, underfunded federal government. This was an attempt to keep most power at the state level and avoid the problem of the very few bossing around the many. You could focus on your own region, on the things that mattered to you and your neighbors. And if you didn't like the way your state was going, you could move.

A strong federal government is bound to have the problems we see today. It's just too much power in too few hands with too little oversight and too much money!

Only weirdos sign their posts.

I have tears running down my cheeks. Brilliant!

RE: #86 by Takuan

(We disagree on much of this Tibet business, but you're still one of my favorite chronic posters.)

Are you really sure the future is "more advertising than possibility?" The world--not just the US--relies on China not only for manufacturing, but for food. Here in Japan there was a recent problem with poison gyozas coming in from a single Chinese factory (it was a pesticide which is banned in most countries--that's the bad news--the good news is that someone had to have put it in there on purpose, so it's really just a run-of-the-mill tampering case). The public was, of course, outraged and terrified. Only then did it become clear how much of our food here in Japan comes from China. Many people have tried to just stop eating Chinese exports, but it is nigh impossible. Without China, I don't think Japan could feed itself.

What would happen if the US defaulted? No matter, China just opens the RMB to public trading instead of pinning it at 8 to the USD. The RMB is, as you may know, artificially devalued to keep doing business there cheap. China doesn't want to raise it (yet) because right now they're just soaking up the world's money. When they time is right, they are going to open the currency and the RMB is going to squash every other currency on the planet (save, maybe, the Euro).

Suddenly we won't be able to afford Chinese products, but will rely on them totally. Suddenly the tables will be turned and the US will be the once-great nation reduced to poverty, forced to beg for crumbs from those who have--while we sat idly by--taken over the world. The payback is gonna be a bitch, but I don't see any way out of it.

So that very likely informs my unfashionable forgiveness of many of the PRC's many sins. I assume I will be pulling their rickshaws before I make it out of this life of ours.

Okay, this is preposterous. I have stayed out of the fray since I was vilified as a troll when this first hit Boing Boing.

Let me preface this by saying my BA is in Asian Studies--emphasis on Chinese history. Granted, it's just a bachelor's, but I'm not speaking from a position of abject ignorance.

The Chinese government responds brutally to dissent. They understand how dangerous it is, being that they were created by dissent. The KMT were kicked out of China down to Taiwan simply because Mao was able to rally the support of the rural farmers who felt like they were being used by the current regime (they were). They have always done so, and I don't expect them to ever stop. Remember that China is simply a very old collection of individual states forcibly incorporated, mostly during the Han Dynasty. This activity is par for the course. The new boss is always the same as the old boss.

That being said, and this was wholly misconstrued last time I said it, Chinese governments, when operating at capacity, are very good about raising the standard of living for the entire gigantic country. It's just that it comes at a price. Tibet has benefited from incorporation with China. The fact that they don't want to be is not to be ignored, but overall, having a real government has been a step forward for them.

NOTE: I am not defending the actions of the PLA in this case. I am merely trying to put it in historical context.

Now, what irks me about all this anger over Tibet are the following points:

1) Western liberal respect for the Dalai Lama and Tibet is just dressed up Orientalism. The idea that there was this magical Shangri-Lah run by a benevolent philosopher king is just plain madness, largely spread by guys like Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac in the 50s. Read Dharma Bums to see if you think these people were anything other than ignorant Americans who were looking for a religion that let them fuck and do drugs sans guilt. How people can simultaneously venerate the DL and his theocratic legacy in Tibet and vilify Ahmadinejad in Iran is beyond me. Iran is a democracy too.

There is no such thing as the noble savage, and there is no such thing as the mysterious East. The West has done terrible things, continues to do terrible things, but we do get some things right and all cultures get a lot of things wrong.

And that leads me to my second point:

2) We are talking about a crackdown that will probably have a body count in the hundreds when all is said and done.

Our nations have murdered approximately 1 MILLION PEOPLE in Iraq since 2003 in what can only be called a vicious oil and power grab, with no benefit to the people whatsoever.

We.

Us.

It doesn't matter if you don't support it--very few people do!--the simple fact of the matter is that we bear the responsibility for the wholesale slaughter of the Iraqi people--a truth made all the more horrific when you remember that we are a democracy. At least the PLC is a one-party state and the people don't have much say in what happens.

Write letters about China? Boycott China? Oh, you arrogant fools. Is the log in your eye so large as to have struck you blind?

WE are the evil empire. WE are the bad guys. China is no paragon of justice or civility, to be sure, but there is one world injustice which towers over all, and that is Iraq. If you want to be angry at someone (and you are a citizen of one of the countries in the "coalition of the willing"), be angry at yourselves.

The Tibetan situation is unfortunate, for sure, but you have no power and no right to tell China what to do. Not true of your own nations.

Every day those responsible for plunging us into Iraq walk free is another day you (we!) have failed.

Divert this energy elsewhere, for the love of all mankind.

Writing one's congressperson is a good way to get a form letter.

I doubt they even read them. Something like this:

STAFFER: We're getting a lot of letters complaining about the TSA.

CRITTER: Yeah, I hate those assholes?

STAFFER: I'm sorry? Who, the TSA or the constituents?

CRITTER: Take your pick.

Japan has these "theme" holidays, too (typically 3-day weekends these days). Basically, it's not a good day to actually go do the thing in the name of the holiday, because so many other people will be doing it it will just be a day of fighting the crowds.

...Just what is the sanitation worker who finds a trashcan labeled "Danger Bees!" supposed to do?

Best story ever. Should be a Boing Boing story in itself.

Bricology is mostly right. The reason Japan is a nice place to live is the polite conformity. Compromise on a grand scale.

The reason, however, that it's a shitty place to live is the polite conformity, the compromise on a grand scale.

As for whether there is a return to "Japanese-ness" going on now or not... I don't know. I see these farmer dropouts on TV, living life more like their Edo-period ancestors, and have a tinge of envy.

That being said, to argue that that is a salient trend is, I think, overstating it a bit. Young Japan is becoming more Western/individualistic, I think, not going the other way. I cite my wife's 15 years' experience teaching high school, and her witnessed degradation of any ability to retain a sense of wa at the school at all. Many Japanese high schools are more chaotic, I think, than their US counterparts (certainly more than mine). The young have bought the "personal freedom" line, but, in my opinion--and god this makes me sound old--not the "personal responsibilty" part.

They want to screw around and bleach their hair and get tribal piercings and defy authority (all things that I did more of than most), but they also want to just waltz into some stable job that takes care of them forever like their parents and grandparents had. They don't see the flip side of having a culture where you can be different--and that is that you're on your own. You have to build yourself up.

The society has taken parts of the Western / North American mindset, but not all. Our societies work because we have balances. Japan is in a kind of transition state where they're not sure what to do. Teachers can no longer strike pupils who talk back. Hell, I found out long ago when I was teaching high school that they're not even allowed to just ask them to leave if they're being disruptive (that is denying them their education--despite the fact that their antics deny the entire room of theirs). The parents have been empowered in their children's education (a good thing, I think) but they still expect the school to do the grunt work of raising them and instilling values--all within 8 hours a day, and with no ability to discipline them.

My wife says it all the time: 日本は終わっている。Nihon wa owatteiru --Japan is finished. She doesn't mean the country's economy or importance or independence. She means that what Japan traditionally meant is gone. And I basically agree.

I teach a lot of Japanese history in my classes (I teach academic English via content), and do my best to illustrate, from an outsider's perspective, the really great things about Japan. These kids (and this might be a sampling error--they are studying at a foreign language university!) have grown up always looking out, always thinking being 国際的 kokusaiteki--"international" meant eschewing Japanese-ness, but that's just plain the last thing they need to be doing. All they have to do is not freak out or deny service when a gaijin walks into their business (heheh).

That being said, what is happening in my classes when I do that? Again, a Westerner is telling Japanese how to act! Eeek! But I continue regardless. I don't know what else to do.

Finally, though, I have a friend who is a musician who is in label negotiations, and they're telling her that there really isn't a market for singer/songwriters who sing in English anymore, and can't she write some songs in Japanese (which she doesn't want to do--her English is perfect and she's more comfortable writing in English)? So perhaps there is a move to more Japanese-ness. I guess I just don't think it's so simple and straightforward as a "pendulum."

The house is indeed atrocious, but I'd be delighted to have it nearby. It'd make giving directions to my apartment much easier.

Heheh, there's a hard rain a-comin'. (I hope)

...Yeah. That's the bizarre thing about crap like this.

I just can't bring myself to pay more for something that cost less and looks like ass.

I agree with Jim.

Okay, time for me to poop on the party.

This sense of expansiveness, of one-ness, of nirvana was a symptom of catastrophic brain damage. It's not spiritual. It's not magical. It's honest madness.

Just like psychedelic experiences.

I think you can learn from these states and use what you learn to effect positive change in your actual life. But they're just tricks of the brain.

That being said, the logical world is also a trick of the brain. You are a trick of the brain. You don't really exist. You have no spirit. There is no life force. You're just a cloud of noise kicked up by the genetic machine, and when you die the noise will be silenced and you and the universe will cease.

We are not connected. We don't exist.

Professors don't make that much. Low 100s at the high end.

While we're at it, most doctors and lawyers don't make that much either.

Yeah, it doesn't come up in the archives as far as I can tell.

I'll try LexisNexis at work.

We'll get to the bottom of this!

Yeah, it was also on the X-Files in a joke episode written by David Duchovny.

Crap...

I just outed myself, didn't I?

I will never figure out the Western middle-class fascination and obsession over Tibet.

It is a horrid little backwater of China, which suffered under millenia of abuse at the hands of a fascist theocracy and which can barely feed itself. The Communists sweep in to "liberate" them. They feed and clothe the people, but also try to quash nationalist opposition within Tibet. The dictator abandons his people and runs to a neighboring country, where he foments opposition to the government doing a better job than he and his ilk ever did, all while claiming to essentially be God. He retains his title and forces his believers to make the dangerous trek to see him (dangers both natural and the bullet kind).

We never hear the Chinese side of the story in the West, so I encourage you to find an actual Chinese person and see what they think. No love from me for the Chinese government, but in all honesty, they're the best government China has ever had, and the best Tibet has ever had.

I think any country that wants to be independent should be, but Tibet is not a special case, and isn't even a terribly compelling case. The issue is a lot more complex than the guy at the headshop would lead you to believe.

This is the stupidest conversation ever.

Only idiot city people don't understand that all buildings belong to someone. Just because your environment growing up was made of buildings doesn't mean that those are naturally occurring. You don't have the right to even touch them, let alone "decorate" them.

I'd love some of you to go out into the country and try painting on someone's barn.

Shotgun wounds can be nasty.

This is the single best thing ever. Ever. I wish I could have played.

@ Gornzilla:

Me too! Wow they can be depressing. There was one I will never forget. A husband called to leave a message that he'd be out late. He sounded angry. Partway through the message, his wife picked up and she asked him when he'd be back, to which he replied noncommittally. They weren't abusive or anything, but they were just very cold. The woman was very guarded, clearly wanting him home, but not wanting to upset him further. Finally the guy says "Okay, well, I'll see you later. Bye." She says, "Okay," but the guy hangs up a split second before she says "I love you." Pause, sigh, click.

I wonder where that tape is... I used to have a lot of wonderful found tapes.

These were invented by Jef Raskin, the inventor of apples.

One time in the 70s we went out to his ranch in Montana and before we could come in, we had to fight our way through a squadron (or perhaps 2 squadrons!) of fierce papercraft tigers. When we finally made it to the ranch house, it was totally made of Bloxums and his fierce apprentice Ava made us cast lots for the early print catalog of Boing Boing. We lost, but Ava went on to sell boxes on the internet.

No one knows what happened to Jef Raskin. Some say he was taken into the night by the tigers; some that he was trying out a special shrinking lazor on one of his apples, but due to an error he was zapped into a computer where he has to subsist on giant oatmeal cookies and ride around on ants and such, but either way I miss him.

True story.

Who cares if a hawk dies? Fine him and be done with it.

It's not like he was hitting balls at a baby.

To those of you recommending asking questions or just saying no:

Try it. No really. Next time you're being illegally searched by an ex-Wal-Mart employee in a fake policeman's uniform, just ask to speak to a supervisor or ask why you have to do this.

It's fun, as long as you're cool with possibly missing your flight and losing all that money. Because you're going to be there awhile.

My wife doesn't allow me to do it anymore, but I used to. Basically, asking any questions, even if you are as polite as you possibly can be and assure them you're fine with taking a seat and waiting to hear the answer, your bag will be opened and everything pulled out and re-scanned; you will be wanded; you will go through the air-puff machine; you will be approached by huge middle-aged woman and asked loudly 'are you male or female;' you will be publicly humiliated.

Me, I don't mind, because it really just makes these thugs look worse. But it can really eat up a lot of time.

No, the only way to solve these --and many other-- problems is armed revolt. But those always just end up getting you killed, either by losing, or by winning and running afoul of the military government you've accidentally ushered into power.

So the best bet is to just get used to it. We're heading into a new Dark Age.

I worked in tech support (for Apple! I think I've heard this CD!!!) for a few years, and I have to throw my 2 cents on the pile of pennies here.

There was always a policy that if someone swore or became abusive, you could end the call if you were offended. 99% of the techs used this as an excuse to dump troublesome callers. See, in my mind, you can't disconnect a call for someone saying "fuck," then turn around and say "I disconnected the fucker." You're obviously not offended by bad language, and neither am I.

The other problem is that if you disconnect someone who's angry, what are they going to do? You've just wasted 45 minutes of their time on hold (those were the hold times then--good lord). They still have whatever problem they originally had, plus they are now out 1.5 hours because they have to call again. This, remarkably, does little to assuage their anger.

Furthermore, when you disconnect people for being upset, or dump them when something is going to take a long time to solve on the phone and tell them to call back, you end up getting longer and longer wait times, because all the people in the queue are calling for their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 8th times. You're just making your job harder and their lives worse.

So here's what I started doing: Listen. Scan the tirade for useful information, and let the rest (even the abuse!) just roll right off of you. This person doesn't know you and isn't really angry at you. They are angry at another tech who screwed them up, or a design flaw, or the fact they didn't back up their dissertation and it's gone, or at their husband, or at who knows what. They're just angry, and who hasn't been there? Just let them go!

When they calm down (and they will, and it actually won't be that long--5 min tops), let go of the mute button (that you were using so you could chat with your cube neighbor while the customer got all this off their chest), and recap: "Okay, so let me see if I've got this right..." Just having the tech list back the essence of the problem (usually like one or two things--just time and frustration blew them our of proportion) calms most people right down. Someone has done the human thing and listened to them, and has also showed them that the problem is totally surmountable and that we can handle this together.

You do that, and you find that the angriest callers turn into the sweetest callers, because you have given them what they really wanted: a sympathetic ear from someone who can help. You have shared a personal moment, and are now socially connected, and regular rules of social engagements apply. Politeness, courtesy, and -- for North Americans, anyway -- no power distance. You are two people, on the phone, working to solve the same problem. Together.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that 100% of the people I treated like this left the call satisfied and happy to be Apple customers. Maybe they were still upset about losing data, or about their laptop dying a week out of warranty, but now they saw that that was the entirety of the problem. A giant, faceless corporation did not have it in for them.

Treat customers like people and you will make your job easier, more satisfying, and will make your company more successful.

Say what you will about the evils of the Nazi regime, but those guys had the aesthetics of power down.

Best vehicle ever.

Wow, I'd never actually seen Buckley speak.

Total closet case.

I've said it here before and I'll say it again:

The extent to which I disagree with someone's post seems to be a reliable predictor of their ability to spell.

NikFromNYC, is it just me or do you not really make much sense? I've only seen your comments since today, but I've already learned to skip over them, because my day is crazy enough as it is.

I'm waiting for the servers to catch up. Got kicked just after starting the DL of the Apple Lossless file, and I have the CDs coming as well.

I would love the tracks for remixing, but $75 is more than I want to pay, even as much as I love NIN.

I also bought the Saul Williams album. I read that Trent was bummed about the response to that and worried that he'd been wrong about people. Way more people pirated it than bought it, you see. But the reason for that, I think, is that Williams was basically an unknown. Who wants to spend money on someone they've never heard? So what do you do? You pirate it and see what you think. And when you do that with Saul Williams, you hear a terrible pile of nonsense crap that can't decided if it's a joke or serious.

So it's not the model that failed; it's the fact that Niggy Tardust is a terrible, terrible album. I think Ghosts is going to make Trent a mint, and good on him!

I do not understand why you have to sign something saying you do not hold the airline or the TSA responsible for what they do to your things. I really don't. What is this crazy system where you are required to hand stuff to someone and say "whatever happens while it's in your possession is not your fault." Of COURSE it's their fault!

How did that even happen?

On a recent flight back from the US, when we returned, one of our bags had obviously been dumped on the floor, contents rifled through, toiletries opened but not closed, and then just thrown back in. There was makeup all over everything. My wife opened the bag, pulled out the top we'd bought for her sister, mangled and stained (along with much of the rest of the bag's contents), collapsed to her knees, and sobbed.

That is the last time we went to the US, and despite wanting to go there for more schooling, I just find it difficult to bring myself to go. It is not the place I grew up in anymore.

That's no moon, that's an art museum!

Or, rather:

That's no art museum, that's a little card with some squiggly lines on it!

Where I come from, "fighting back" is done with a shotgun.

Read your Conrad, folks. The darkness whispers to all of us.

There was an autistic kid in school who knew everyone's birthday in school, and would say while passing in the hall, "Happy Birthday."

He had many other social problems as well.

You gotta wonder about a country when the national food that they insist on having with every meal, despite the ethnicity of the cuisine, is rotten cabbage with hot peppers to mask the smell/taste.

That being said...

I love kimchi.

As for the stomach cancer business, Japan has a serious problem with it as well. Here they attribute it to too much salt, which I am inclined to believe. I'm worried about my sodium intake because when I first came here I couldn't stand how salty everything is and now I like it saltier than most.

Also, it is my understanding that most of these fermenting bacteria (like in yogurt, kimchi, and natto) are very good for the digestive tract. If I were looking for a culprit in Korea, I'd have to wonder about how much capsicum they are eating, because my god the food over there is hot.

Finally, I get really tired of Korea and Japan's culinary inferiority complex (Korea's is worse, I'd say) that leads them to constantly point to their magical food as the reason this bad thing didn't happen or that bad thing didn't happen or it wards off colds or it keeps you from getting fat or whatever it is. It's food. My culture has food, too. It's different food, but for some reason, it hasn't led to the collapse of Western civilization or mass immune-system failure.

Whenever I see pictures like this, I'm amazed that any of it works at all. For me, the inherent messiness and inefficiency of the "design" basically precludes the existence of any "designer." It could be done much better if it weren't just a slowly-developed pile of kruft, like an organic version of Windows.

@Noen:

Well... It is their restaurant...

It's pretty simple economics. Would you eat at a restaurant that said "Whites Only" on the door? Me neither. Neither would the vast majority of people. The problem takes care of itself.

1) If I were a bar owner, I would fight this law tooth and nail, because I don't like the idea of the government telling me what legal activities I can and cannot allow at my establishment.

2) Shark feeders don't complain that there are sharks in the water or that they can't breathe normally when they are doing their job. They knew that when they applied. I have never worked in a bar, and the only reason is the smoke. I don't smoke and I hate the stuff. Similarly, I am afraid of water and sharks, so I would never apply for a job as a shark feeder either.

3) Smoking is a nasty, filthy, stupid, and pathetic habit (like all addictions). As a customer, I love smoking bans. I go out so much more frequently and spend so much more money at restaurants and bars in the US than I do here in Japan where everyone lights up. And I'm not alone. That same episode of Bullshit! also noted that wherever smoking bans were put in place, restaurant and bar business went up. It used to be that most of the people going out were that 25% who smoked and the people who didn't mind; now it's everyone. So, as a bar owner, I'd fight it on principle, but happily go along with it after it passed.

4) As a non-smoker who hates smoke, though, I still don't see what the fuss is about just making the smoking section outside. I've never understood these towns that make it illegal to smoke in front of the door or whatever. It doesn't bother me in the slightest, even to sit out there. Even to sit at the same table. When there's a law like that, it smells an awful lot like a moral condemnation as opposed to an attempt to protect the public health, and I like the government to stay out of the morals business.

An almost-useless, underpowered laptop with a tiny, dim screen is also a low-power laptop??? No way!

Chimps aren't people. I don't know how many times I have to point that out here. You can tell people by the way they can interbreed with each other. If you can't impregnate it (or it, you), then what you've got there is an animal.

Now, allow me to save some time:

1: BUT WHAT ABOUT INFERTILE PEOPLE?????// ARE YOU SAYING THAT THNEY ARE UST ANIMALS????? ARGARGARG IM SO ANGRY!!!!1

No.

2: ANIMALS HAVE BRAINS AND COMMUNICATE LIKE DOLFINS AND STUFF!!!1

That's very nice for them. Still not people.

3: YEAH WELL SLAVE OWNERS THOUGHT THAT AFRICANS WEREN'T PEOPLE AND D SO YOU MUST BE RACIST!!! DO YOU SUPPORT SLAVERY???

No, because I believe in human rights. We're not talking about humans, though; we're talking about monkeys. And stop typing as fast as you can with your eyes closed.

Done and done.

Hey, what's all the hate directed at fascists? Fascists are people too!

I guess I'm on the fence here. On the one hand, not putting a polling place on a college campus--one of the places they usually are, and one of the places that makes the most sense--smells fishy to me. I'm inclined to believe it was done for a reason.

However, if I was driving to work and got stuck behind a mob of people, even if I agreed that what they were protesting was, indeed, bullshit, it wouldn't actually do anything to help the situation. It'd just piss me off. Walking along the side of the road would have been an effective way of calling attention that did not inconvenience people who couldn't do jack shit about it.

And that's the problem I always have with protesting. It is largely masturbatory. Real power brokers don't give two shits about protesting poor people (students, in this case), so all it really does is inconvenience would-be allies and may even turn them against the protesters. This was one of the biggest problems during the Iraq protests. So much of the population was so against the war, but when you saw people protesting, you saw the people who are ALWAYS protesting: Dred-headed deadheads. Young ones, mostly. The ones who can't seem to get it into their heads that the 60s are not only over, but they were never invited, and the people responsible for the bullshit they are protesting are the very ones who invented it.

It puts off the people who actually could effect change--people with money and influence--because those people are not into hanging out with filthy potheads who decry their way of life (until they themselves embrace it, anyway).

No, if you want to effect change, you need the ears and minds of the people who can make it happen. Failing that, you can always just kill the people causing the trouble, but then you're going down a nasty road to something like opposition Iraq.

Protesting does nothing but make you feel better and others feel worse.

I'm with Jeff. Sex is boring. It's cool for the first few years you do it, but after awhile you realize that it's never going to be appreciably different (especially if you're married--and that's not a complaint about marriage--I am giddily married), and you find other things to occupy your time and mind.

Middle age and the hormone dips it brings couldn't go a long way to explain these feelings, I'm sure. Yeah. That's it. It's just boring. I'm not getting old.

@ Detractors:

I didn't really get irritated until I moved to Japan. There literally is next to nothing that doesn't have fish stock in it. Add to this that I've never known a proficient Japanese speaker vegetarian, and what you get is them asking me what is in everything. It falls to me to find something that they can eat that doesn't trigger their psychosomatic illness "'cause I can't even digest meat anymore, man" that only seems to affect them when I tell them that the miso soup they are enjoying is made of smoked fish flakes, for example. If I smile and lie when they ask if X, Y and Z have meat in them, they're happy as the clams in the broth they're drinking.

But even back in the states, it irritates me if I'm hosting. I'm hosting. There's going to be meat on the menu. You are more than welcome to bring something else, but I'm not cooking something I don't want to eat just because you grew up in a city and didn't know hamburgers came from cows until you were 20 years old.

It's largely a Western eating disorder, vegetarianism is, and I don't see why I should accommodate it.

If you don't eat meat for health or safety or the environment, I wish you well. Those who don't for moral reasons, however... Those people are crazy. Those are the people who, at parties, rather than politely refusing food with animal products in it, run around going "Is there meat in that? Is there meat in that? Oh, I'm sorry, but I don't eat meat! Didn't you prepare something special just for me? Let me tell you about meat..."

Awful, annoying, joyless, rude, and ultimately, let's face it, superstitious and self-righteous people, those moral vegetarians. And here in Japan? There is virtually nothing that doesn't have bonito flakes in it somewhere.

And if you don't drink, on top of it? Why are you even at my house? Go sit in your house and sip chai and weave baskets or whatever. Don't come suck the joy out of me and my guests because you have to construct your identity out of negatives.

I love the way cooking for engineers organizes recipes. I have a lot of them in my kitchen. They are so easy to read.

The cops never pull that shit here in Japan. They may elicit false confessions under torture and arrest, convict, and sentence the first name they find that is involved with whatever they're "investigating," especially if it's a dirty foreigner, but at least they're polite about it.

It's always amazing how quickly these stories' comments fill up. We've all dealt with this guy.

Basically, here's what you can all look forward to when I'm dictator for life: "Violating the public trust" will be a capital offense for police officers. Obviously the law will have to be roughed out a little more than that, but someone who is hired solely to be the good guy, but uses that latitude to be the bad guy, is a very bad guy indeed and should probably be put out of our misery.

@ Takuan #8:

Yup. People are sick and horrible. We build laws and religions to protect ourselves from the evil that lurks only within ourselves. Once you think that only the other guys are evil, you are open to letting the evil out of yourself.

And it feels good.

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is the only book on the human condition you ever need read.

I don't think Outback has ever claimed to be authentic. It was just born during the Crocodile Dundee-inspired Australian love affair.

Aussie food, as far as I can tell, is beer, yelling, and inappropriate touching.

I can forgive everything but the hair. Yes, even the terrible spray tans. But American hairstyles are shit. Just shit. It stems from the fact that most American stylists (except at the super-expensive level) are also shit.

Your hair should not be hard. You look like a junior high kid.

@#16

Thank you. You saved me the trouble.

I live here. It's a country. There are people here. It's mostly not very strange at all.

I think a lot of the fascination is just a kind of dunderheaded ethnocentrism. Here's this country, second-biggest economy, thoroughly developed, and yet they aren't white and have a different character set. Seriously. I think that's it.

Because people just guess at what is said and written, it seems strange, but after staying here for awhile, when I go back to the US for a visit or whatever, I realize that our commercials, etc. are every bit as bizarre; we just have seen the various fashions and trends that led up to them.

The USA is a bad country. And I'm an American, living abroad. Most of my American colleagues are just not planning on returning. It's just not really worth it.

I miss the country I thought I grew up in.

Global warming deniers can't spell.

...And yet when you try to do the same for a human, you go to jail for a long time...

Re: Apple vs. MS comments:

I recently switched to the Mac, and it was because of their draconian OS licensing schemes. Here's a company that could basically make home installs free (I'm not saying they SHOULD do that; I'm saying they COULD) and still be the biggest software company on the block, and yet every time I reinstall my legitimate copy of XP Pro, I have to call them and explain why I've installed their OS again (I.e. It's because it only works for about 6 months before it suffers massive registry bloat and slows to a crawl).

I don't put up with any of that from Apple.

I know Cory moved to Linux because he thought Apple was too proprietary, and I certainly see his point, but for me, it's the much-less-evil-but-still-viable OS option.

As for the "whole different way of thinking comment," um, yeah, it is. Whether its better or not is kind of up to you, but I've found it to be extremely efficiency-enhancing. YMMV.

I'm with Roach.

This is not a big-budget game. I'm a fairly serious gamer, and I've never heard of this game or the developer or the publisher. Call me when Bioware or something is doing it. Then it's big-budget; then it's interesting.

Moneyless societies have a lot of infant mortality. It is not really all that normal, historically speaking, to reach adulthood. All this hippie nonsense fails to recognize the basic fact that the only reason we have the opportunity to whine about The Man is that He created and protects us.

My musical output, since getting enough money in my late 20s to buy the recording stuff I always wanted, and even now, when I have even more money, has dwindled to exactly zero. I used to just jack my guitar into a Big Muff into a direct box into the 8-track and put my drummer through the 12-track mixer and into the 8-track, and lay down vocals and maybe some synth and/or bass in the next few tracks, and put together a pretty good song in a few hours. With the addition of more flexibility, I've found that--what's the saying?--the better is the enemy of the good?

I actually use my equipment fairly frequently, but never for my own projects anymore. I don't care about others' as much and just go for "good enough." So it gets done.

It's a bummer.

Algebra was developed by Indian scholars, as was most of what Europe got from the Arabs. Arabs have basically always been barbarian conquerors, just like the Anglo-Saxons that make up most of my family tree.

So... Is there a reason why I should care if elephants are hit with sticks?

Next tip: Empty the trash/recycle bin. It'll BLOW YOUR MIND.

@Takuan:

(eyeroll)

Hallucinogens are no good. No good. No good. The one trip I took (on WAY too many mushrooms) took 6 months to get over. I was still waking up in the middle of the night terrified that I was back there, that it wasn't just a trip, that it really was something there inside me, that I wasn't normal, that I'd never have a normal life, that I was doomed to walk the streets alone as a schizophrenic or something...

Most people stop using hallucinogens after their first really bad trip. Mine was the only one, and that's all I ever, ever, ever need. Anyone who continues after that bad trip is out of their mind. Nothing is worth going back there.

That being said, once I pulled my life and confidence back together, the very real and sudden realization of my own mortality has done wonders for me getting my life underway. I spent way too many years puttering around doing nothing in particular. There were definite positive benefits, but I never want to do it again.

Mmmm... Chock fulla eating disorder goodness! And by that I mean "sawdust."

Um, I like most of it.

Yes, this is part of the problem with vigilance. A lot of people are stupid.

I get tissues with my gasoline on Wednesdays. And not crappy ones, either. A big box of Kleenex. Full size. People just hand you pocket tissue on the street. The packages have ads for various things from banks to seedy phone clubs. Japan's pretty good for promos.

Oh, and canned coffee from the vending machine is how I kept my hands warm on the walk from uni to my apartment when I was a poor student with no bicycle. It's pretty great.

I'm all for rising food prices. That will push us (as someone else pointed out) to local food again, which we can have better control of, and which will nurture our own local economies, and will give rise to regional variation again, and will help the environment. Also, um, it's FOOD. It's the most important thing in the world, and we've somehow made it an afterthought and taken it for granted. It's all good.

Here's the problem with encouraging your kids to be goths as children:

When they're teenagers they'll rebel and you'll end up with, I dunno, football players or something.

I think we need some "You Suck at Discerning Humor" tutorials. Sheesh. Reminds me of the "long horse."

That was actually very beautiful.

He has completely lost his mind. He doesn't even make sense. He's just really angry all the time.

And yeah, I have known (okay, full disclosure: been) many, many Christian fanatics. They aren't this bad. For one, if you want to know what a Christian or Mormon or Jew or Muslim or any other religious person believes, you can just go down to your library and read their texts. Hell, they'll probably even give you their texts. They won't act like they've got secret knowledge hidden away behind a wall of money. It keeps them honest.

Scientologists are worse than most, because these are people who have self-selected to be gullible to the point of financial ruin. Note how few of these people are highly educated, despite all their huffing about "study tech." It's insane. Cruise is a dumb high school jock who would fall for anything. Well, and he has.

My coworker, who is of Chinese descent and speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin and Cantonese fluently, worked in China for a few years. Her take on these things is that communism has ruined the country. It has made a nation of poverty-stricken, greedy people, with no particular respect (only fear) of authority, and an attitude that everything is someone else's (the state's / society's) problem. So there's no problem poisoning your food products, because, hey, the welfare of your customers is someone else's problem. And what if the customers are in another country? Well, what can you possibly expect from a country whose name in the local language is "The Central Country" ("Middle Kingdom" is a cute mistranslation--that's not the nuance of those characters)?

I love Chinese history. I like Chinese people. I've been to China a few times, and always have a good time (and amazing food). But that is a country with severe problems that they didn't use to have, and (in my opinion, anyway), it's all on account of Mao, who was a vile dictatorial despotic bastard masquerading as one of "the people."

Here's the thing about the history of food:

We have it so good now that we just plain don't know how to deal.

For most of human history, populations ate one thing, usually some sort of grain, with some other stuff for kicks, when it was available. Most of European history was dominated by "daily bread," as in, you ate bread every day. Meat was for rich people (Ever wondered why pig meat is pork? Cow meat is beef? The former are Anglo-Saxon words, the latter Norman French. The former the words of the people who raised it, the latter the words of the people who ate it. The former the poor occupied slaves, the latter the rich conquerers.). Most of Asian history, it was rice. You can live on it, and we did for a very, very long time.

However, we are so healthy now precisely because of nutritionism, I think. We understand that there are compounds that our bodies if not "need," then certainly "benefit from." Here in Japan, very old people, who grew up in the days before Japan had taken on the Proto-Indo-European cultures' proclivity for consuming other animals' milk, are literally bent-backed. They walk at 90 degrees, with a cane. Calcium deficiency.

So, on the one hand, a more diverse, nutritious diet is absolutely better for you than the old, carbohydrates-only diet. But we should also recognize that that is the basic diet of our species--carbs. They turn into glucose easily. That's why they make you fat. They're just full of easily-accessible energy.

So don't eat so damned much. Adults need very, very little food. Eat carbs for energy, other stuff (including animals--they're made of meat) for flavor, fun, and, most importantly, nutrients to keep your body strong.

The. End.

(I have absolutely no qualifications to be saying any of this, so take it with a small quantity of NaCl, please.)

Yeah, I have a very hard time believing the conversation went down as he said. H ws prbbly bng prck r hldng p th ln r bth. When you buy a ticket, you buy the privilege of sitting on that plane until it arrives at the place you're trying to go. If you get the seat you want, you're lucky. If you don't, well, provided the plane doesn't fall out of the sky, you'll probably have many more chances.

I just got done taking two flights over the last couple days. Both times I was seated in the middle seat, when I always ask for an aisle because I hate bothering people when I need to pee, which is often on airplanes for some reason. But do I kick up a fuss? No. I just go, "Oh. That's too bad. Oh well, thanks for checking anyway." Because, believe it or not, I'm a civil person.

Maybe someone got overzealous, but I have a hard time believing they'd call in the mall cops just because a guy didn't like his seat.

1) This is absolutely the right ruling. The police do not have the right to force you to testify against yourself. That is abundantly clear in the Constitution. They can appeal all day and night, but I don't think it's going to go anywhere, and thank the gods.

2) I know this is not a popular viewpoint, and I understand and appreciate why, but I would like to point out that there is a difference between a child rapist, a statutory rapist (as in with someone physically mature, but under 18), and someone who has infinitely-reproduceable, electronic copies of pictures or fictitious depictions of either of those crimes. The pictures are several orders of magnitude less damaging to society than the second, and many more less than the second. Most law seems to reflect this. If he's "defiling" anything, it's his own mind.

Moreover, I don't think it's at all right to refer to victims of child abuse as "defiled." There's nothing wrong with them; they didn't do anything wrong, and that thinking and terminology is what causes the problem in their lives, more than the abuse, actually. It's the way people look at them. It's the way people think about them if they find out. We have control of that part of the process. Don't use words (or, rather more importantly, concepts) like "defile," and you'll solve the worst part of the abuse.

#10: What, so wars over banana fields or apricot orchards are just fine??? Hmpf!

Damn, I have always said, "Well, the Nazis may have been evil genocidal monsters, but god damn did their uniforms look hot." And now I know why!

There's that gray officer's wool longcoat (don't know what rank--only seen it in movies) that has the red-lined lapels that fold out. Just awesome. I'd wear a coat like that today, if I thought I could do so without upsetting Jewish and/or gay friends. Just wonderful.

Great colors. Great lines. Useful, but classy. Damn. Oddly enough, this may serve as a recommendation of Boss stuff for me, as opposed to a discouragement! I need a new really nice suit sometime this year...

I like books with drawings in them. It's not that I'm illiterate and have bad taste; it's that I'm "illiterate" and have "bad taste."

Evolutionarily speaking, being sexy is much more important than being comfortable.

#2 I am giddy, lately, to see more and more comments like this. I have very literally been saying this since September 11, 2001. Those planes were taken down with words and a mean social hack; box cutters just let people know they were serious.

What kind of world do we live in when where an entire world is afraid of 19 assholes with stationery supplies?

When I first started saying that, people accused me of being callous. Those brave souls and all that. But the people on the flights that hit the towers weren't brave. They were passive. But they were passive because they didn't know they needed to be brave. If they had known, they would have been brave. Just look at the PA flight. 45 minutes after the first plane hit, those people knew the score. It was too late to save the plane, but they saved who knows how many other lives in a moving display of bravery and self-sacrifice.

We all come pre-equipped with the tools of anti-terror. We understand the game being played, and people, when confronted with an actual situation, respond appropriately. We don't need all this other stuff. We are the first and last line of defense, and yet we are being treated as the enemy.

Yeah, I agree too. Death is all in our heads, man. All those billions and billions of people who died before me? Weak-willed suckers.

Yes, I, too, avoid anything tainted by human ingenuity. I subsist entirely on fruits and nuts which have fallen to the ground. It's the only way to make sure the food is pure. I understand some of my colleagues have taken to inserting a blade of grass into an ant hill and licking up the ants produced upon extraction, but this seems like sheer folly to me.

If it's ants you want, first you must lie under a fruit tree and wait for a fruit to fall in your mouth. You may need to wait a few more days before it rots enough to attract the ants, but your patience will be rewarded with a string of nutritious visitors crawling right into your mouth, as nature intended.

All these technological "quick fixes" are sure to lead to disaster and the end of the species itself!

I walked out of my apartment the other day and saw a middle-aged man peeing in the gutter as he was out walking his dog. Full penis view.

Men's bathrooms are sometimes designed so that the door opens to the side of the urinals. You open the door, you see peeing penises, as does everyone outside as well.

Kids change for PE classes in their classrooms (just the boys).

Women clean men's restrooms, while they are in use.

And yet, somehow, all these visible penises have yet to have crumbled Japanese society.

This is why you can all look forward to a change to the first amendment that stipulates that the press is free, but also must be non-profit when I become king.

It isn't people's fault if we find some stupid stories more interesting than important stories. No one likes being bummed out and enraged all the time. Paris Hilton's antics are much more entertaining than global warming. We all click on stupid news items (even if we feel bad for doing so).

It is simply an economic reality, therefore, that media outlets have to pander to our stupid, stupid whims. If they were non-profit, they wouldn't have to. No one goes into journalism dreaming of getting the scoop that Paris Hilton is cozying up to K-Fed (there's my stupid followed-link of the day). They usually want to do the things we really want the press to do. But we don't let them.

Because we're morons.

Those little fish are eaten pretty regularly over here. I don't like them, but that's not uncommon. They seem to be a love/hate kind of food.

#12: This has been my problem ever since all this MP3 business came out.

Luckily, my favorite band, NIN, is no longer signed and it sounds like from now on I can just kick Trent a few bucks via PayPal when new stuff comes out (actually, I'll probably buy the physical copy--I like having CDs) and he'll make so much more than if I'd bought it at the store, and I'll get it for so much less.

I really think that what we're waiting for is for a company or companies to spring up that rethink the label model. Bands just starting out really do need the infusion of venture capital the labels offered. The labels have a lot of risk, and that is mostly not shared by the band itself. If we had a system where a company offered financial services (loans) and distribution services, and PR services, all a la carte, I think we'd see the important benefits to artists that the label system provides minus the artist-and-customer-raping. Everyone makes money; no one gets rich.

Fans of an artist are usually very happy to pay. It's a democratic patronage system, like the patronage of old, but this time without the slavery aspect of having a single master.

I really think this could work, and I wish I had more capital to start such a thing. I love music and musicians and think there's tons of money to be made under the new paradigm in a way that is so much better, fairer, and diverse and exciting than ever before. We just need the infrastructure!

This is actually part of a major problem with our civilization now. The rich are getting richer, regardless of the work they do, and the poor are getting poorer, again regardless of the work they do. Our meritocracy, which we struggled as a society so hard to establish, is currently under fire by the same old feudal tyrant types as those who plunged us into the Dark Ages.

These idiots are p