No disrespect intended to one or two particular people who have devoted a lifetime to the pursuit of a specialized art and succeeded at the pinnacle of their fields of endeavor. But can anyone justify why a group of millions of people should feel better about themselves because one person from their country has won first prize in a regularly scheduled sporting event?
Ms. Arakawa should be congratulated for her patience, endurance, grace and skill.
Mr. Davis should congratulated for his speed, determination and power.
Everyone not actually on the ice should be happy for them. Then shut the hell up or find something of their own merit to to puff themselves up with. The achievements of humans performing at the highest levels can enrich us all with a sense of what is possible. But nationalistic flag-waving cheapens their successes and leeches off of their efforts.
24 February 2006
15 February 2006
Frame of Reference
I'm sure that the Japanese Imperial Family is a subject that occupies a lot of your time. I mean, I can't go a day without devoting at least a couple of hours thought to their Y-chromosome problems. Specifically, that the Japanese family hasn't produced a boy since 1960-something.
Now, the country I was born in didn't have anything in the way of official royalty. Elvis and Michael Jackson excepted, of course. But I don't have any real sense of why a royal family is worth all the effort and expense. What with the Magna Carta and all, non-royal types are admitted to have the same basic human value as blue-noses. Or blue-bloods. Whatever.
My point is, most royal folks these days just hold symbolic posts, with a few exceptions like that guy who seized power in Nepal or the Saudi royal family. But the Japanese royal family is prohibited from exercising any actual power outside of officially endorsing parliament's choice of Prime Minister. Yet there is a nearly venomous debate over the future of the royal family and whether or not the Imperial House Laws (the part of Japan's legal codes that control what the royal family can and can't get away with) need to be changed.
As things stand now, there are a couple of people in line to succeed the current emperor. But they are all men over the age of 40. There's no sign of a male heir to the throne, and the current law specifically limits succession to males. While this seems like an easily solved problem, it has, in fact, exposed all sorts of rather disturbing opinions floating loose in modern Japanese society. Like the minister who theorized that if a woman was allowed to become empress, she might marry a strong-willed man of poor morals who would manipulate the throne for his own nefarious ends. Like, uh, presiding over the wrong sorts of charity galas and receiving honorary degrees from universities with departments of evil studies. Or the far sighted Cassandra who pointed out that an empress-to-be might follow and imperial tradition and study abroad, but come back with a "blue-eyed foreigner" and want to have his ungodly half-breed babies, which would then ascend to throne, bringing about the end of, er, whatever.
Now, let's forgo that fact that they seem to think that no woman, not even one raised as the heir to the chrysanthemum throne, could possibly refuse the wishes of her husband. The end-all fear is that she might come down with a case of Wonder Bread fever and bring home some honky? All this time I was under the impression that there was more depth, more resilience, and just more will to survive in the Japan's cultural heritage. Consider, for a second, that the English royal family has been regularly infused with German blood for the last couple centuries. Is there any reason to think that the Japanese family couldn't find some Asian nobility hanging around somewhere? Even if that isn't an option, are we to believe that the thread of nobility is so thin that it can't cling to blood without a y-chromosome?
Sorry. I'm going on too far here. The idea of a royal family strikes me as being fairly pointless in the first place. But all this sexist bullshit trying to pass itself off as tradition and heritage makes me sick. If you want to hang on to believing in an outdated ideal, fine. But don't expect it to apply to people who actually live in the present without being mocked.
Now, the country I was born in didn't have anything in the way of official royalty. Elvis and Michael Jackson excepted, of course. But I don't have any real sense of why a royal family is worth all the effort and expense. What with the Magna Carta and all, non-royal types are admitted to have the same basic human value as blue-noses. Or blue-bloods. Whatever.
My point is, most royal folks these days just hold symbolic posts, with a few exceptions like that guy who seized power in Nepal or the Saudi royal family. But the Japanese royal family is prohibited from exercising any actual power outside of officially endorsing parliament's choice of Prime Minister. Yet there is a nearly venomous debate over the future of the royal family and whether or not the Imperial House Laws (the part of Japan's legal codes that control what the royal family can and can't get away with) need to be changed.
As things stand now, there are a couple of people in line to succeed the current emperor. But they are all men over the age of 40. There's no sign of a male heir to the throne, and the current law specifically limits succession to males. While this seems like an easily solved problem, it has, in fact, exposed all sorts of rather disturbing opinions floating loose in modern Japanese society. Like the minister who theorized that if a woman was allowed to become empress, she might marry a strong-willed man of poor morals who would manipulate the throne for his own nefarious ends. Like, uh, presiding over the wrong sorts of charity galas and receiving honorary degrees from universities with departments of evil studies. Or the far sighted Cassandra who pointed out that an empress-to-be might follow and imperial tradition and study abroad, but come back with a "blue-eyed foreigner" and want to have his ungodly half-breed babies, which would then ascend to throne, bringing about the end of, er, whatever.
Now, let's forgo that fact that they seem to think that no woman, not even one raised as the heir to the chrysanthemum throne, could possibly refuse the wishes of her husband. The end-all fear is that she might come down with a case of Wonder Bread fever and bring home some honky? All this time I was under the impression that there was more depth, more resilience, and just more will to survive in the Japan's cultural heritage. Consider, for a second, that the English royal family has been regularly infused with German blood for the last couple centuries. Is there any reason to think that the Japanese family couldn't find some Asian nobility hanging around somewhere? Even if that isn't an option, are we to believe that the thread of nobility is so thin that it can't cling to blood without a y-chromosome?
Sorry. I'm going on too far here. The idea of a royal family strikes me as being fairly pointless in the first place. But all this sexist bullshit trying to pass itself off as tradition and heritage makes me sick. If you want to hang on to believing in an outdated ideal, fine. But don't expect it to apply to people who actually live in the present without being mocked.
13 February 2006
Suddenly, a shot rang out!
Local ranch owner claims Vice-President Dick Cheney is "a very safe sportsman."
Of course, this is after Mr. Cheney, using a shotgun, nailed a fellow hunter in the face. Admittedly, it was only quail shot. He didn't even put anyone's eye out.
Of course, the fact that a fellow was shot in the face by the vice-president of the United States, on Saturday and the news only broke on Monday seemed a bit odd to me.
But hey, I guess we should be grateful that the information was let out at all. I mean, it's not like this administration has left much doubt about the public's right to know anything...
Of course, this is after Mr. Cheney, using a shotgun, nailed a fellow hunter in the face. Admittedly, it was only quail shot. He didn't even put anyone's eye out.
Of course, the fact that a fellow was shot in the face by the vice-president of the United States, on Saturday and the news only broke on Monday seemed a bit odd to me.
But hey, I guess we should be grateful that the information was let out at all. I mean, it's not like this administration has left much doubt about the public's right to know anything...
12 February 2006
A word about your author
I heard, indirectly, that somone who had read this, but that I don't generally communicate with individually, was surprised to hear from someone who heard from someone who was reading over someone else's shoulder that I was doing things which weren't mentioned directly in these posts.
I never presumed that my life was interesting enough to merit detailed entries about my daily travails.
Gee, that's a swell word, isn't it? "Travail." Not entirely accurate, though. I do very little hard labor these days, apart from occasionally hoisting a kid upside down by his ankles and shaking him to see what falls out of his pockets.
Anyway, here is a brief update that's only stuff to do with me. No politics or anything.
I'm in the process of applying to grad school. This working schtick is for the birds. It's high time to get back to the bosom of academia.
I went to the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum again yesterday. That makes my ninth visit in four years, and my seventh time going specifically to take somone else there for the first time.
My bicycle, which I got for free, has a flat tire.
I can make a pretty good Japanese-style curry. Which I did on Friday. It was great, and I'm going to eat the leftovers tonight.
In my opinion, the song "Papa Was A Rolling Stone", by The Temptations, is simply excellent. You should have a copy of it.
Gotta go. More later.
But I ain't promising when.
I never presumed that my life was interesting enough to merit detailed entries about my daily travails.
Gee, that's a swell word, isn't it? "Travail." Not entirely accurate, though. I do very little hard labor these days, apart from occasionally hoisting a kid upside down by his ankles and shaking him to see what falls out of his pockets.
Anyway, here is a brief update that's only stuff to do with me. No politics or anything.
Gotta go. More later.
But I ain't promising when.
02 February 2006
This is what a dogma will fetch...
People offering to kill other people over a bunch of comics. Seriously.
This story about protests concerning a bunch of cartoons that are considered blasphemous ought to be laughable. Do you remember when one particular holy man from a dusty desert town decided that something which didn't jive with his view of the world needed to be...dealt with?
Although there is nothing wrong with the tenet of Islam that says images of the prophet Muhammed are blasphemous, that is, like most Judeo-Christian rules, intended to be applied only to members of the tribe. All that crap in Leviticus about who needs to be put to death for what sort of fornication is specifically prefaced with the line "say unto the children of Israel," which means the members of this group exclusively. That part of the bible/Torah is a historical text that refers to the government of a specific group of people (frequently living as expatriates/refugees in a foreign land).
As swell as the US constitution claims to be, it doesn't have anything in it that allows its regulations to be enforced in other countries. There's nothing in the Magna Carta that allows parents from outside the British Kingdom to give away their heirs in marriage and claim authorization from the crown. These sorts of rules are only meant to apply to members of the groups that they were written for.
Religious intolerance is indefensible, but intolerance in the name of religion is no better.
Just keep your peanut butter out of my chocolate, your laws out of her uterus and everyone's dieties out of my face. Besides, don't people have more important things to worry about than some obviously inaccurate caricatures?
This story about protests concerning a bunch of cartoons that are considered blasphemous ought to be laughable. Do you remember when one particular holy man from a dusty desert town decided that something which didn't jive with his view of the world needed to be...dealt with?
Although there is nothing wrong with the tenet of Islam that says images of the prophet Muhammed are blasphemous, that is, like most Judeo-Christian rules, intended to be applied only to members of the tribe. All that crap in Leviticus about who needs to be put to death for what sort of fornication is specifically prefaced with the line "say unto the children of Israel," which means the members of this group exclusively. That part of the bible/Torah is a historical text that refers to the government of a specific group of people (frequently living as expatriates/refugees in a foreign land).
As swell as the US constitution claims to be, it doesn't have anything in it that allows its regulations to be enforced in other countries. There's nothing in the Magna Carta that allows parents from outside the British Kingdom to give away their heirs in marriage and claim authorization from the crown. These sorts of rules are only meant to apply to members of the groups that they were written for.
Religious intolerance is indefensible, but intolerance in the name of religion is no better.
Just keep your peanut butter out of my chocolate, your laws out of her uterus and everyone's dieties out of my face. Besides, don't people have more important things to worry about than some obviously inaccurate caricatures?
Parallels
Think carefully about this. The US government has told you that it needs to protect its citizens from dangerous outside aggressors, and that the way to do that is by being able to listen to their phone calls and read their mail without consulting any kind of court, and without leaving any sort of public record to allow for accountability, because the president has said he wants to make sure a public inquiry "doesn't tell the enemy what we're doing."
Fact: this government has demanded to know what its citizens read, and has taken the broadest possible definition to claim what is reasonable.
Fact: the executive branch of this government has constructed an extra-legal prison in which it can detain people who fall within the ill-defined "Enemy Combatants" group, without access to outside oversight or appeal, and has demonstrated a willingness to detain its own citizens in defiance of the rulings of American courts. (Yale Law Journal, Policy Comment...)
From what I can see, this policy is different from China's, Libiya's, Pinochet-era Chile's, Saddam-era Iraq's, and the Stalinist USSR's in only two respects: it's being enacted internationally, and for some reason the people who are most certain to be targeted don't seem to mind.
Fact: this government has demanded to know what its citizens read, and has taken the broadest possible definition to claim what is reasonable.
`DEFINITION. -Section 2510 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by...
(C) by inserting at the end the following:
��(19) �foreign intelligence information� means...
��(B) information, whether or not concerning a United States person, with respect to a foreign power or foreign territory that relates to:
��(i) the national defense or the security of the United States; or
��(ii) the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States.��.`
(Source, Deparment of Justice, Text of the USA PATRIOT Act.)
Fact: the executive branch of this government has constructed an extra-legal prison in which it can detain people who fall within the ill-defined "Enemy Combatants" group, without access to outside oversight or appeal, and has demonstrated a willingness to detain its own citizens in defiance of the rulings of American courts. (Yale Law Journal, Policy Comment...)
From what I can see, this policy is different from China's, Libiya's, Pinochet-era Chile's, Saddam-era Iraq's, and the Stalinist USSR's in only two respects: it's being enacted internationally, and for some reason the people who are most certain to be targeted don't seem to mind.
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