Monthly Archives: September 2009

Oh dear Jimmy

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“You lie!”

Poor behaviour, certainly.  But if indeed the accusation is as ridiculous as people are trying to make it out to be, then surely a refutation (based on facts, not bald denial) should be a simple matter, and we could all move on.  Instead, we have former President Jimmy Carter weighing in on matter, proclaiming the remark racist, and many alleging a racist undercurrent that won’t tolerate a black president, an undercurrent that just broke to the surface with that outburst of Wilson’s. 

Possible.  He may be a racist; he may not be; certainly Jimmy Carter has no corner on the judgment of that question.  Unfortunately, there was apparently plenty of racist mail to black politicians following the incident, which is a shame, because it gives credence to the claim that “You lie!” is racist sentiment.  I wouldn’t mind discussing that, if it didn’t also detract from the real issue: whether President Obama is correct in what he has said. 

I give our president enough credit that I don’t think he is intentionally stating a falsehood.  I do think it is possible that he may be wrong, however sincerely he believes he isn’t, and that deserves to be examined.  It ought to be examined despite disrespectful heckling and regardless of the underlying motives of such heckling. 

And let’s not forget that for about eight years BUSH LIES! T-shirts have been tolerated, if not welcomed, by the same people who are now incensed that the public sentiment so openly expressed against our former president has now made to jump to congress to be expressed there against his successor.  If Joe Wilson is guilty of racism, are wearers of Those abovementioned T-shirts guilty of bushism? texism? republicanism? 

I wish Jimmy Carter had stuck to foreign policy. 

(Disclosure: I voted for Kerry in ’04 and for Obama in ’08.) 

A Gallery for Uncle Jay

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Dave Barry stopped writing his humor columns a while ago, but that hasn’t stopped the Miami Herald from reprinting old ones, dubbing them classics.  The most recent one was about the Art Basel Miami Beach and mentioned Rodney McMillian’s “chair.”  Clearly, Uncle Jay could have done better – and if indeed McMillian’s art was on sale for $2’800.00 then it could be a wise business investment to get Uncle Jay a gallery.  I can volunteer to write the pretentious copy. 

I suppose the real question is if anyone ever bought the artwork. 

Supernova and Milky Way

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I’m in Japan again, and it’s another short trip, where the total travel time isn’t much less than the time spent in the country.  I neither slept much on the planes (Zürich-Bangkok-Tokyo) nor last night in the hotel, but I was surprisingly awake this morning when I got up for church.  I went to Tokyo Union Church this time, instead of out to Chiba, because I hoped to meet Mindy and her fabulous engagement ring – I mean, her fabulous Ryotaro. 

I got there with some time to spare, even though a film crew stopped pedestrian traffic for a while just in front of the toy store, where I encountered the Rubix 360°, which is like a cross between the Rubix cube and those annoying put-the-ball-in-the-hole coordination games.  From the film crew I learned that (a) the crowded street scenes are shot with a telephoto lens, with the crowds removed where the actors are, and using the background crowds down the street for the crowd effect, and that (b) one need not be a good actor to make it on TV. 

After church I stayed on for the young adults group, where I wasn’t the only newcomer.  I don’t know how I would have dealt with a newcomers group for a small group study – I found it somewhat awkward to answer personal questions in front of total strangers – but it seemed to work alright for most participants.  At least one person wasn’t a Christian, which surprised me a little.  Maybe Asians are more likely to actively explore another faith than Westerners. 

I went shopping afterwards.  Harajuku was crowded, and a store opening with the attendant lines at the entrance didn’t help.  Although my Harajuku source was out of black toe socks, the girl there pointed me to their Ikebukuro branch, which I found without too much difficulty.  They had the right socks, and that’s where the galactic references begin.  I suppose it’s appropriate that in the Sunshine city complex I came across the band ChoShinSung (Supernova) greeting fans, and snuck in a photo before some frantic guy came to tell me it wasn’t allowed. 

From there I went across the street to a supermarket to purchase a number of Japanese food items.  I’d been asked to buy green tea, which brought me to the second floor, where to my surprise I found a couple cans of Ginga Kogen beer, which translates into Milky Way Plateau beer.  It’s the only Japanese wheat beer I can think of and probably my favorite Japanese beer.  I support good quality, so I bought a few.  (I drink responsibly, so I don’t expect to see stars…) 

In closing, a few pictures of Tokyo, and one from the Munich airport from my last Asian trip. 

ADHD airplane
Here’s hoping the pilot isn’t what the plane ID says. 

Mydentity Converse Ad
I thought the ad was clever – and subtly frightening. 

10 Fashion rules, contradicted
Note how the rules (where they make quantifiable sense) are contravened by the mannequin’s garb. 

Fashion Rules in Harajuku
Standing in line to shop for clothes. 

No Smorking
Harajuku cracks down on crime – and smorking. 

ChoShinSung greet their fans
The girl in red got in line about five times, to the amusement of the bystanders. 

Krispy Kreme Tokyo
Oh, look, another person who must have stood in line today. 

The view from the Grand Prince Hotel Takanawa
I don’t know of many other places with as clear a view of the Tokyo tower.  I can also see a part of the Rainbow Bridge (not on the picture). 

 

Travel Promotion Act

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It’s not yet made it to law, but it’s waiting.  In the Visa Waiver Program, there’s a passage that allows the US to collect a fee to pay for administrating the Visa Waiver Program.  To wit:

(3)Electronic travel authorization system

(A) SystemThe Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall develop and implement a fully automated electronic travel authorization system (referred to in this paragraph as the “System”) to collect such biographical and other information as the Secretary of Homeland Security determines necessary to determine, in advance of travel, the eligibility of, and whether there exists a law enforcement or security risk in permitting, the alien to travel to the United States.

(B) Fees

The Secretary of Homeland Security may charge a fee for the use of the System, which shall be—

(i) set at a level that will ensure recovery of the full costs of providing and administering the System; and

(ii) available to pay the costs incurred to administer the System.

That much is law.  Now, tourism to the USA has been dropping, so the US Travel Association has had to think about how to counteract this.  They could have had a look at Australia, which recently dropped the AUD 20.00 fee for their equivalent of the Visa Waiver Program as one incentive to visitors.  But no: that would be to straightforward for the land of innovative business models.  The clever folks at the US Travel Association figured that since the US is levying a fee anyway, they might as well make visiting aliens pay a little more to finance promotion for travel to the US.  Yup, they’ll pay to get in so that the US can tell their friends they should come, too, probably with slogans such as “America: Where Travel Security Is Less Of A Pain In The Rear Than You Thought,” judging from the wording.  (See Sec. 5 for the fee bit.)

Note, however, that the US aren’t the only country to make visitors pay for promotion of the place they’re visiting.  Some Swiss cities levy a “city tax;” many towns levy a “Kurtaxe,” which is meant to pay for infrastructure that benefits the tourism industry.  It seems like an odd form of subsidy, no matter how you turn it.

All the good ideas are taken

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Last Saturday I somehow came to thinking about solar cells – probably a combination of the science fiction book I was reading and the recurring nature of that topic at work (atomic force microscopes are used for solar cell R&D).  Then I thought, hmm, wouldn’t it be cool to have transparent solar cells so that we could make solar collectors at the beach under which we could enjoy the sun without the sunburn?

Turns out the idea’s at least six years old, but I still don’t see my sunbrellas on any beaches…

T G Wheeee!

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For once my business travels took me to France, and I had the luxury of not spending significant chunks of time at either end of my travel waiting.  The TGV takes about three and a half hours from Basel to Paris, making it more convenient than a flight.

The trip and the preparation leading up to it reminded me of the various names for high-speed trains the world round.  The Japanese call theirs “Shinkansen,” which means “new main line.”  The Germans, “ICE” – “inter city express.”  Many of these designations are functional relative to the entire train network, referring to some sort of connectivity.  The French are among those who refer only to speed and call theirs “Train à Grande Vitesse” – “Train of Great Speed.”  (The capitalization I feel is warranted: it is extraordinarily fast, almost to the point of discomfort.  And after some research I know why: I was on the fastest TGV stretch.)  Unfortunately, that name turns into irony every time there is some kind of delay, like on my trip, where roughly an hour outside of Paris the train slowed to a crawl due to some signal trouble.  Fortunately, traffic in Paris was also rather fubar, so my partner there didn’t have to wait for me for too long.  Unfortunately, my arrival didn’t change the traffic situation and we spent an hour crawling from the Gare de l’Est to Saint-Denis to get to the A1 north.  And what a blessing it was to get out of Paris.  A more intimidating spectacle for a poor little Swiss like me than traffic happening in Paris is hard to find, as is a bigger miracle than not having witnessed any accidents there.  (No traffic accidents, that is – I don’t know what was the reason for three police officers standing around a supine man bleeding from his mouth at the train station exit.)

The next day we went to a lab in the Lille area for a demonstration of our instruments.  We ran two microscopes in parallel and measured a good number of samples with surprising efficiency: the customers knew their samples and the machines behaved impeccably.  I have rarely had a more satisfying customer demonstration, though of course their satisfaction is what really matters.

We left the lab at about three o’clock and headed for the highway to the center of Lille.  The lights at the intersection just outside of the science complex were green, but my partner slowed down because one of the cars – a Renault or a Citroën – in the oncoming traffic was turning across our lanes.  As we slowed, a black VW Golf sped past us on our left, heading straight for the Renault, then veering to the right in an effort to zip past it before it turned completely.  The Renault kept turning, either distracted, unable to fathom such stupidity, or assuming the Golf would try to pass behind him.  Or maybe the Golf was just too fast to allow a normal person to react, as it continued to bear right and without the brakes ever lighting up smacked the front right fender of the Renault, sending it spinning like a bumper car.  The Golf ended up on a traffic island, and before we’d crossed the intersection ourselves the driver (male, of course) had gotten out of the Golf and started prancing around it.  I really hope he doesn’t get away faultless because the light was green…

After witnessing my first ever real accident I’m not unhappy to take the train back to Paris and then to Basel, even if it does involve lugging thirty kilograms of microscope down the stairs between Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est.  It began to rain on the way east, which I noticed first by a crackling sound and then, as we slowed, the rivulets running down the windows.  The rain had not quite let up when I arrived in Basel, but I was welcomed with a kiss and a large umbrella, so no matter.