The White Peril 白禍

Busy as hell here. I'm keeping up with the news as usual but don't feel as I had the mind space to write about it. One thing I noticed a few weeks ago that's become more relevant since this weekend's earthquake in Indonesia:

A simple and inexpensive method of minimizing earthquake damage by using plastic packing tape is being promoted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency through public demonstrations in quake-prone Pakistan.

...

The method was developed by Prof. Kimiro Meguro of Tokyo University's Institute of Industrial Science.

The polypropylene, which has good tensile strength, is applied in a protective grid on the walls of buildings. The tape is then coated with plaster for protection against ultraviolet rays.

The method costs only a few thousand yen per house and does not significantly mar the appearance of the buildings.

In March, JICA demonstrated the packing tape engineering in an area of Pakistan devastated by an earthquake last year that left 70,000 people dead.

Local engineers and administrators were impressed, as reinforced miniature structures stood unharmed while other buildings collapsed after receiving an intensity-6 jolt in the demonstration.

"The engineering is suited to many countries since polypropylene tape is available around the world and is consistent in quality," said a spokesman for the Global Environment Department of JICA.

The tape and plaster don't magically turn stacks of brick or mud brick into shear walls, obviously. I'm assuming that in a lot of cases, tape-reinforced walls would survive a strong quake just long enough for residents to leave a house before it crumbled, but even that's a major innovation when you're dealing with simple materials and inadequate framing. It also means that less manpower and other resources needs to be expended on rescue operations. Assuming the method performs as well in reality as it does in the lab, it's the kind of practical idea--realistic about what locals can get their hands on and simple enough not to require a whole lot of tech knowledge--that could turn into genuinely useful foreign assistance.

It's unfortunate that there's no packing-tape bandage for inadequate transportation infrastructure and distribution management systems, which always prove to be the major problems after the immediate exigency of rescue fades. Along with other countries providing aid, Japan has an advance medical relief team and SDF unit in Java now to assess how best to deliver relief.

Apparently, someone is a hypocritical bitch who needs to stop criticizing others for slamming people without substantiation. I just which I could figure out whether it's Wynken, Blynken, or Nod. Since Michael's a friend and we haven't gotten into a good argument lately, I will say that he'd make a better case for himself if he produced at least one example of Gay Patriot's coming down on the side of spinmeistering and partisanship rather than principle.

The issue beneath the sniping is an interesting one. What brought it all on was the announcement that Patrick Guerriero is leaving Log Cabin Republicans. I've often wondered just what LCR's priorities are in practice, as opposed to on its mission statement; and I've disagreed with choices it's made. (Not that it should be laboring to satisfy a non-member such as me.) But prioritizing among principles when real life requires compromise isn't an easy thing, and I don't know that harshing on people who make a good-faith effort but don't get it right is always the best response.

I don't think it's unfair to ask the guys at Gay Patriot, "Look, just how far would you be willing to go in sacrificing gay issues for the sake of party loyalty?" I go to Gay Patriot infrequently, but I generally read up on everything posted since my last visit, and I don't think I've really seen that addressed. It's not an unreasonable question, especially since the blog's original proprietor was only too happy to use the novelty of his gayness + conservatism to seek attention when he started out.

I've met plenty of gays who style themselves independents but are, on principles and issues, pretty much conservative down the line. They fear that, despite the "big tent" rhetoric, being a Republican in practical terms means buying into a culture of Red State reverse-snobbery and constantly conceding that now is not the time--close election coming up, social fabric still recovering from the 60s, more important to deal with Social Security, et c.--to push for explicitly gay-friendly policy. The war made the last presidential election a no-brainer for most of them, but there are plenty of future elections to worry about. (When I left New York for Tokyo, I re-registered at my parents' address in Pennsylvania, so I'll be able to join in the Santorum-Casey fun this year.) LCR made serious misjudgments two years ago in the run-up to the election. If its new leadership proves to be more savvy and consistent, who knows? It might get existing gay Republicans interested again and help reassure those who've balked at joining up until now.

Ross of Romeo Mike's Gumption says this after an extensive explanation of why he doesn't support same-sex marriage:

It's because of these kinds of people who shout the loudest for gay marriage that I'm so suspicious of it. They demand that they deserve "equal" respect, but look at them. Apparently for some, respect's not earned, just demanded through vile, childish narcissism.

He's not speaking in the abstract: There's a link to comments on the blog of a gay Catholic Australian blogger after he appeared on a television show to discuss his position against SSM. If you're at all familiar with these types of, uh, discussions, you probably don't need to click through to know what you'll find there.

Anyway, I know I've banged this gong plenty already, but I will never, ever get used to this stuff. When will people get it through their heads that you can't coerce people into approving of you? You can, possibly, coerce them into postures of approval, temporarily, through political machinations. But the current climate indicates that--and can you blame them?--they're not going to sit still for it for long.

From my perspective as a resident of Japan, one of the saddest things about idiot gay-lefty rhetoric is the way its campus proponents manage to infect foreign students with it. Then they bring it back here and are thrown off balance when it doesn't square with reality, often on more basic levels than that of the SSM debate. A close American friend recently described how a rather clingy Japanese employee, having been essentially disowned by his father after coming out, asked him for advice about how to fix things. My friend is a patient, gentlemanly guy and responded on the order of, "Well, I can tell you what I would do, but I'm from a different culture, and the way I see my choices is different."

I wish I were more patient and gentlemanly myself. When asked similar questions, I've generally responded along the lines of "Why didn't you think about this before coming out to him?" Western-style individualism doesn't, after all, guarantee that you'll get everything you want; it just allows you to prioritize things for yourself--as opposed to having them prioritized for you by the clan, village, or state--and go after what's at the top of your list without impediment. I can empathize with the belief that candidly coming out to your parents is preferable to a lifetime of question-dodging and waffling, but if you decide to do so without preparing mentally to deal with the worst-case scenario, you're asking for trouble. I'm not defending parents who disown their children for being gay, only making what should be the common-sense point that you can't control other people's behavior, let alone their feelings. Having the backbone to follow through on your beliefs even if you're despised for them is part of being a free citizen.

And likewise with relationships themselves. Positions of the "if you don't respect us as mature, centered adults, we'll hold our breath until we turn blue" variety are incoherent. They're also counter-productive. In external terms, whininess is a PR disaster. In internal terms, signalling to young gay people just getting their lives in order that it's okay to blame all their problems on the failure of straight society to confer "dignity" on them stunts their growth. Adult resilience is attained by confronting obstacles and testing your own strength in the course of overcoming them. Until SSM advocates learn to focus on practical obstacles to keeping relationships together and learn to keep a lid on the self-pity, they're not helping anyone except anti-gays on the far right.

There were a bunch of books I'd wanted to pick up in the City--yes, you can order on Amazon, and I do, but it's not the same as the delicious feeling of wandering through a bookstore with loads of shelves of books you can touch--but the books got crowded out by bookish conversations with the college crew. Not that that was a bad thing. I enjoyed it. But it meant that I confronted the airport with very little to read on the plane and was looking for something heftier to supplement the magazines I'd picked up.

Well, airport newsstands being what they are, there was nothing remotely interesting but Mary Cheney's new memoir Now It's My Turn. So I picked it up and figured that for once I'd read the book everyone's talking about while everyone's talking about it.

One thing that's struck me as weird: Am I the only one who's noticed the similarity in title with Nancy Reagan's My Turn? Maybe I really have just missed it, but I've been waiting and waiting for people interviewing Cheney to ask her, "So, when you were writing your memoir of being a member of an executive branch Republican's immediate family who had to undergo a lot of public speculation you thought crossed a line or two, you chose a title that echoed that of Nancy Reagan's book. Was that intentional?" Isn't that an obvious question, especially considering the implied vengefulness of the phrasing?

Cheney, of course, doesn't have fun, gossipy stuff like borrowed couture, scheduling by astrological counseling, and chilly parent-child relationships to talk about (or to give readers the wicked fun of watching her carefully avoid). Her strength is that she comes across as genuine, thoughtful, unassuming, and centered. Her book is a good corrective to the image of gays--especially lesbians--as grim, humorless, squallingly resentful of parents, and inclined toward groupthink.

Gay Patriot West thinks It's My Turn may be the most important book addressing a gay topic in the last few years. I think he may be right--though he doesn't put it this way--in the sense that Cheney focuses not really on policy points (I found her a bit squishy in the way she presented her reasoning on the issues myself) but on the ways contact with reasonable gay people can affect people's thinking. And, to a lesser extent, on the ways gay political figures work out the compromises they have to make when competing issues come into play. (Instapundit's newest podcast features an interview with Cheney, BTW.)

The weakest aspect of the book, in my view, was the depiction of the nuts and bolts of political campaigning. Politics junkies have heard most of it before. And if you have any queeny friends who work in event planning, they probably had more amusing venue-related emergencies over the last weekend than Cheney dredges up over two national campaigns lasting months each. That's a credit to her in the sense that it may simply mean the campaign staff knew what it was doing, but as reading it gets kind of samey.

Then again, this is the sort of book that was probably targeted at conservatives who want an insider look at household life with Lynne and Dick Cheney and may be curious about Mary's lesbianism. In that sense, the mild tone, PG-rated expression, and family-oriented subject matter were probably a wise choice in addition to probably being the way she genuinely experienced the campaigns.

So my friends Jon and Margaret are married now. Jon was the one I lived with here in the City when I was in grad school; he's visited me in Japan a few times. Of course, you have a special relationship with each of your friends, but Jon and I did a lot of the sort of talking-about-your-hopes-for-yourself stuff you do in college and immediately afterward. Seeing him get together with Margaret--who not only got everyone's approval but has become a trusted friend in her own right--has been wonderful over the last few years. Now they're all official and stuff.

Of course, with my usual absent-mindedness, I had to go and make things exciting for myself. I bought a new formal shirt last week and figured I'd pick up a new tie at the same time. I could've sworn the one I bought at Isetan was the one I'd just tried out. But apparently not. At 16:45 on Saturday, getting ready for the 18:00 wedding, I realized that even when I lengthened it all the way, my tie was too short. (Is a size 15 really that big even for Japan? Doesn't matter in any case now.) Luckily, I used to live in Murray Hill, so I know I could shoot down from my hotel on 49th to Brooks Brothers a few blocks away and be back in twenty minutes if I kind of jogged it.

But you know how it is when you're in a hurry: Life gets a sense of mischief. So I get on the elevator from the 15th floor, and there are two women around my parents' age already aboard. The buttons for the 9th, 8th, and 7th floors are pressed. One of the women smiles gaily and says, "Sorry--I'm a little preoccupied because my daughter's getting married today, and we just kept pressing the wrong button until we finally managed to hit 7!" The sort of thing that would have been adorable during any other five-minute period of the weekend. I managed to smile back and wish Mother of Bride the best through my teeth, and we descended (very slowly) lobbyward.

When I got to the shop, the guys in formalwear were merciless. "Cutting it a little close, huh, buddy?" Yeah, no kidding. To the point that as an insurance policy, I got a pre-tied number, too. Men in the audience will know this, but bow ties don't necessarily come in standard sizes--the gourd-like bulges that you fold to make the bow are off a little from tie to tie, so it can take a few tries before you get a new one to look right. I didn't have time for a few tries.

I did, however, manage to get to the ceremony on time and with all parts where they were supposed to be. I didn't even flag and start falling asleep during the reception, despite the evening hour and flowing alcohol. And the dancing.

Between the wedding and the rest of the walking (we must have crossed the park four times yesterday) and the eating out and drinking, I certainly hope I can sleep on the plane back home to Tokyo today. Luckily, I'm still on Japan time, so I was wide awake at 5 a.m. I didn't...this is how busy I was...have a chance to go to the bookstore even once, so I may be at the mercy of Hudson News for in-flight material when I get to JFK. Oh, or I could pop down to Grand Central in the time before my ride comes, I guess.

Hope everyone else has a good Monday.

There have been a few comments over the last few days that I want to respond to, but life is interfering. I just got into New York for my friend's wedding and am refreshing myself with a Bloody Mary in the hotel lobby while I wait to check in. It would be a perfect opportunity to snatch some time to post, but I'm feeling, you know, just a bit out of it. (I'm also mildly worried that I forgot to pack all components of my dinner jacket. I'm good at that kind of screw-up. I also once left my bag of souvenir green tea--about two dozen sachets for the various homefolks--sitting in the middle of my tatami room when I left for Narita Airport.) I'm kind of hoping not to get over my jet lag, since I have to fly back on Monday; the problem, of course, is that the danger hours for sleepiness when you go Tokyo > NY are around 7:00 or 8:00 p.m.--exactly when I want to be alert so I can enjoy quality time with my friends who are gathering. I see a series of desperate naps in my near future.

Brokeback Mountain was the in-flight movie, BTW. While I'd kind of resisted seeing it (though a friend had basically convinced me to go this coming week when I get back to Tokyo), I figured, hey, I can spare two of my twelve hours in this fuselage. I liked it much more than I'd expected. I never thought I'd live to see the day when I said this, but I thought Jake Gyllenhaal was just as convincing as Heath Ledger. I didn't think the movie revealed many fresh angles on the short story, but the one moment that did move me in a big, bad way was at the end when Ennis fastens the button on the shirt. There are few things more tender, sexy, and intimate than buttoning your man into his shirt. It's like you're putting on his armature before you send him out into the great, wide world. (For straight women, too, I'd assume?) I thought the moment was beautifully handled.

Okay, before I start getting truly incoherent, I'm going to sign off for a while. Post-shower and nap, I may be in better condition to make a point about something or other.

So that remark by John Stossel in the last week or so has drawn the predictable response (via the Washington Blade):

Promoting his new book "Myths, Lies & Downright Stupidity," Mr. Stossel said: "There are these groups like Exodus International that says, 'We can fix you. If you just pray, if you turn your life over to Jesus, we can make you straight.' And I've talked to lots of people who supposedly were cured, and they were not."

"John Stossel's assertion that homosexuals cannot change is an affront to the thousands of individuals, like me, who have experienced it," said Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International.

Mr. Chambers, who describes himself as a former homosexual, called Mr. Stossel's remarks a "mischaracterization of our views and oversimplification of this issue."

Well, there are plenty of affronts to go around, there, Mr. Chambers. Plenty of us gays aren't too happy about having it implied that our lives are about promiscuity, addiction, and bitchy exploitation.

At Ex-Gay Watch, Mike Airhart has a fuller transcript of Stossel's remarks, which are more carefully qualified than the soundbyte above would make them appear. Also at XGW, Daniel Gonzales has a post that indicates why it's so difficult to take ex-gay advocates at their word on the efficacy of their programs. Melissa Fryear, who apparently spoke at a Love Won Out conference, defended her assertion that thousands of men and women have overcome homosexuality as follows [excerpted, of course]:

One, organizations like Exodus International have been in existence for several decades. Currently, for example, there are over 125 member ministries throughout the world. Each of these individual ministries have participants ranging in number of a dozen to hundreds. Given the longevity of Exodus and its breadth of referral ministries, again, thousands of men and women have participated and overcome their struggle with homosexuality.

...

In addition to Christian organizations, secular organizations and secular therapists such as Masters and Johnson and the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) have also been working for decades with thousands of men and women seeking to overcome their same-sex attraction. The therapists and clinicians associated with NARTH alone, for example, have seen over 1,000 clients since its inception.

...

Finally, while you and/or your readers may not hold to a biblical worldview, as Christians our biblical witness of former homosexuals dates back to the first century. 1 Corinthians 6:11 states, "And such were some of you..." referencing men and women who once lived homosexually. Needless to say, in the millennia following, many have followed in those same footsteps.

An XGW commenter named Joe Brummer responds with a point that should be obvious to anyone with so much as a modicum of understanding of statistics (about halfway down the thread): "She states in her email how she came up with the numbers, but then explains only how people have signed on to the programs. While millions of people sign on to weight watchers, a much smaller number stick with the program and actually succeed. I see this as the same." Exactly. Plenty of organizations exist long-term without being able to offer strong evidence, let alone proof, that they're helping people to achieve their aims. Zen Buddhism has been trying to help people attain enlightenment for far longer than Exodus has been around, but I'm guessing that Fryear would not take that as an indication that it's actually doing so (even if its adherents claim to be satisfied with the results).

And that last paragraph has to be one of the most astonishing displays of disingenuous PR-maneuvering I've ever seen...and remember, darlings, I follow Japanese politics. Who on Earth would listen to a statement that "thousands of people have made that decision [to leave the practice of homosexuality]" and assume that it included everyone in the last two millennia? There is simply no way to take that as a good-faith statement made in the expectation that its auditors would understand what was being omitted. If we're going to be consistent in our math and it's just a few thousand people since AD 1 we're talking about, that's a handful a year worldwide. Not exactly encouraging (assuming your idea of "encouraging" is the possibility that you can leave homosexuality behind).

And yes, I know: Gay activists massage statistics all the time, too. It's just as wrong when they do it. My point is that this quackery is bad no matter who does it, and it frustrates the search for the truth. As things stand now, no one appears to have reliable data. The figures that are offered always rely on testimonials, which are notoriously unreliable when used by themselves.

To judge from the commentators whose tone suggests the lowest level of axe-grinding, it's at least possible for a tiny percentage of highly-motivated people to change their behavior long-term. Whether that's just a behavioral adaptation or an actual change in sexual orientation as experienced by the subject is probably impossible to prove. And perhaps it doesn't matter much to those who succeed in learning to function as heterosexuals if their goal is getting behavior that they consider sinful or sick under control. But it matters if "reparative" therapists and ex-gay support programs are going to make flat statements of the "Change is possible" variety. I'm not much moved by arguments predicated on the idea that selling people false hope is okay if it's for a worthy cause.

The Washington Blade has an op-ed by an American who's living in the Netherlands with his Dutch partner:

I'd like to come home to live in America. No, let me be clearer. I'd like to be able to live in America. But I cannot.

Even though I am a native-born U.S. citizen who lived in America until I was 42 years old, I have been exiled by U.S. law. I am a "love exile." Because I am gay, I am a second-class U.S. citizen, lacking the basic right to live in America together with my non-U.S. partner.

The use of "second-class citizen" in the context of the gay marriage debate makes me curl up at the edges. I do think it's more apt in this case.

The problem is two-fold: (a) We who are abroad are politically invisible, and (b) a lot of Americans simply do not believe that it is difficult to bring someone to live in America. Even my well-informed friends in the U.S. will say to me, "But you can marry in Massachusetts!"

That is irrelevant, because immigration is a federal issue. Or, "Surely Rik can get a green card!" or "There are so many foreigners here, I’m sure you can find a way for Rik." But we can’t.

Moreover, current U.S. policy is causing a massive brain drain. Thousands of our best-educated and experienced professional people are leaving the U.S. as love exiles, and we are taking our U.S. earned qualifications with us.

"Massive" may be an overstatement, but the number of gays taking their credentials and productivity abroad to be with their partners is certainly considerable. (People really do seem to be blown away by how difficult it is for a highly-qualified foreigner to get a green card.) In East Asia, the issues are somewhat different from in Europe; here, what makes things easier is just that there are a lot of jobs for foreigners. It's certainly not the presence of partnership rights. But if the pull factors are often different, the results are often the same.

Of course, immigration is a complex issue (something you could easily forget listening to people bellow past each other over the last several weeks). If nothing else, Robert Bragar's story (website for his advocacy group here) is a good corrective to the idea that gay unions are all "transient." You don't leave a comfortable life and career trajectory to spend the rest of your days in an unknown country for someone who just happens to be a good lay.

Okay, Jun'ichiro Koizumi isn't technically a lame duck because he's leaving his post as head of state by choice, but anyway....

The news outlets here, naturally, have been keeping close watch on how things are developing within the LDP, given that Prime Minister Koizumi plans to step down in September. Most of the updates are pretty boring, so I haven't been commenting on them. The Yomiuri has a nice summary of things to date up today, though:

Even members of the Mori faction, headed by former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, which has managed to maintain a semblance of unity, are having difficulty reaching a consensus on fielding one candidate in the election, indicating that the influence of the faction on their membership is declining.

At a press conference Friday, LDP General Council Chairman Fumio Kyuma said it was no longer in agreement with the recent trend for factions to choose candidates or take members' opinions into consideration to field a single candidate, referring to the failure of the Mori faction, the largest in the party, to reach an agreement on fielding a single candidate.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe and former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda of the Mori faction are seen as increasingly likely to run in the LDP presidential election, which could signal a split of the faction. But the Mori faction may not be the only faction that will have two candidates competing for the top LDP post.

Oddly, the article doesn't mention that Koizumi himself was once a member of the Mori faction; his relationship with his former mentor has been strained at times. (Mori ticked the Prime Minister off by commenting against the perceived rashness of his threat to dissolve the lower house last year over Japan Post privatization.) Koizumi has been signaling that he wants factional string-pulling to be kept to a minimum in the selection of the next party leader:

"It's no longer easy to unify (a factional candidate). The old LDP is gone," Koizumi told reporters Tuesday night. "There is no way to stop them if they wish to run."

The comment was widely viewed as a move to keep former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori in check as Mori was moving to select a candidate who will have the unanimous support of his faction.

Both Abe and Fukuda are members of the Mori faction, to which Koizumi once belonged.

...

Mori had apparently wanted to avoid rivalry between Abe and Fukuda as it could split his faction, and thus chip away his clout.

Whatever you may think of Koizumi's policies, the man has charisma; few other politicians gunning for the LDP presidency and prime ministership do (though I've always liked Fukuda and was disappointed two years ago when scandal forced him to resign as Chief Cabinet Secretary). Many of Koizumi's brash promises of reform have been abandoned for the sake of political maneuvering, and those that have gone through have usually been watered down. There's a lot of political time between now and September, and whether Koizumi's approach will live on after him remains to be seen.

A well-intended proposal was introduced by some concerned citizens yesterday:

The annual number of persons who commit suicide having topped 30000 for seven years running, some non-profit organizations and families of suicides began on 13 May to collect signatures on a petition seeking the institution of a society-wide suicide prevention law, provisionally called "The Fundamental Measure Against Suicide." Signatures were collected in seven places nationwide: Akita, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Kyoto, Osaka, Fukuoka, and Saga.

The plan is to collect 30000 signatures, to match the annual number of suicides, and to submit the proposal to both houses of the Diet next month. Supporters plan to work on Diet members of both ruling and opposition parties to get the fundamental law enacted through the legislative process.

Tokyo wants to decrease the number of suicides by at least 5000 annually by 2015, and the proposed law would make suicide prevention a federal responsibility.

Given the Dr. Phil-ization of American culture, this may be hard for some of my compatriots to register, but psychotherapy is seriously underdeveloped in Japan. There are any number of reasons for that. Japanese people learn from a young age to brazen their way through sadness and depression without letting them show. Let alone talking about them directly. Let alone talking about them directly with someone who's not a family member or teacher. Of course, people will admit to feeling kind of blue or being in a bad mood every now and then, but people aren't taught to identify signs of serious trouble in either themselves or others.

Could some kind of federal initiative help with that? Possibly on that last point, in the sense of providing education and maybe more trained counselors in known pressure cookers such as schools. (I don't know that simply bringing more attention to the issue would help much; Japanese citizens are already plenty aware that they have a high rate of suicide, not all of which can be attributed to noble attempts to save the family or company honor after some massive screw-up happens.) For people to feel okay about seeking help, acculturation probably needs to change at the household and neighborhood level, and those sorts of shifts don't play to the federal government's strengths.

The governor of Okinawa has caved, at least provisionally:

Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine on Thursday gave broad agreement to a government plan to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station to Camp Schwab's coastal area as part of plans to realign U.S. bases in Japan.

...

Inamine, however, stressed he had yet to fully approve the government plan, saying, "There is no change in the basic stance." He then said, "I'd like to make efforts to incorporate the prefecture's concerns in the discussion process with the central government," indicating the prefecture would again ask the central government to build a temporary heliport at Camp Schwab as a measure to alleviate the dangers connected with the Futenma base until the relocation is completed.

...

Inamine initially opposed the government plan, but changed his position as he judged that it would be better to push the prefecture's demand for government subsidies and development programs ahead of Cabinet approval, sources said.

Of course: nothing like subsidies to motivate you to play ball, huh? Okinawa being Japan's least-rich prefecture, it has particular incentive to be pragmatic.

And now, for an exciting change of pace, a data leakage from a Self-Defense Force Internet site. Sheesh.

Instructional materials related to a surface-to-ship guided missile (the SSM-1) in the possession of the Ground Self-Defense Force were leaded over the Internet, it was learned on 12 April. The leak was reported to have occurred through file-sharing software called Share. The position of the GSDF's Ground Staff Office is that "no information that would cause security problems to arise was included."

...

Included in the instructional materials were a system summary, information related to launch preparations, and the locations of deployed personnel units. Information with an impact on security, such as the range of the missile, was reported not to have been included.

The SDF is getting together a plan to prevent the recurrence [of such a leak], having just suffered the leak of classified information through file-sharing software such as Wini in April.

I feel much better.

Go Fug Yourself is too funny for this world...yet again. Of course, Jessica Simpson's an easy target. But still, it's worth reading and guffawing through to the very end.

I realize that trying to decide which of the music videos of the last few years has been the absolute nadir of stomach-churning, un-provocative sluttiness is pretty futile; but I did think there was something egregiously demeaning about that "These Boots Are Made for Walking" clip, right about the point at which Simpson was shaking her moneymaker in that orange bikini and whooping, "Can I get a 'Sooooweeeee!'?" Sheesh. I'll take Veruca Salt any day.

Speaking of exposure of dubitable shock or aesthetic value, if you're the last person on Earth who hasn't ever seen Madonna's boobies, she's decided to take 'em out again, this time for W (via Beautiful Atrocities). Is she afraid we've forgotten what they look like?

I don't see why a middle-aged woman can't pose for nude photographs. Madonna has a naturally luscious figure--to my mind at peak attractiveness in the "Open Your Heart" video, when she was sculpted through martial self-discipline at the gym but still had a flirty softness to her. Madge is very shrewd about her plastic surgery, and to judge from the Confessions on a Dance Floor videos, she hasn't made the mistake of getting clearly fake Mariah-style inflata-dugs, if she's had work done there at all.

But sexiness is as much about attitude as about skin, and the attitude Madonna's been projecting lately is desperation. The woman may have the single most well-tended body on the entire planet, but she seems to know less and less what to do with it. But then, that applies to her work in general.

A few Sundays ago, I was walking toward Shinjuku for a drink or two with friends. Atsushi had just flown back to Kyushu, so while it had been a good weekend, I was in a somewhat melancholy mood. It was cloudy and a little chilly. Perfect for Madonna ballads.

Remember when she seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of gorgeous, somber slow songs? There are the famous ones like "Crazy for You" and "Live to Tell" and "This Used to Be My Playground" and "Frozen," but there are plenty of not-so-famous ones, too. She collaborated with Massive Attack on an unexpectedly wonderful version of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" ten years ago. "Look of Love," from the Who's That Girl? soundtrack, doesn't deserve to be forgotten and should, in my view, have been on her ballad retrospective Something to Remember. On her slow songs, she played the role of a self-controlled diva risking herself to extend an offer of love or reveal sentiment. It was a stately but emotive persona that would have been perfect to mature into through her forties.

It's not that she should never sing uptempo pop or disco again, but the frantic look-how-fast-I-can-still-dance vibe shuddering through her new songs and videos does not bode well. And I'm sure it's distorting her work in other media, too. I find it very difficult to believe that she approached the W photo shoot was as a relaxed matron who still knows how to enjoy being playfully naughty...as opposed to an aging party girl who feels the need to prove she still has sex appeal. That sort of thing always seeps into the final product.

This article in the English Asahi is promisingly headlined "Ministry gets tough on transport safety." Unfortunately, the truth appears to a little less cheering:

Currently, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport issues suspensions only if transport companies accumulate a certain number of penalty points for employee traffic violations.

Not only does it take a large number of violations to draw a suspension, the ministry's shortage of inspectors means that many are not counted.

In most cases, suspensions are imposed only after serious violations, such as fatal traffic accidents, the sources said.

I added emphasis to that one clause above because it conveys one of the problems that lead to lax safety enforcement in other sectors (the nuclear power industry springs to mind) also: lots and lots of bureaucrats, very few inspectors out in the field. The Asahi reporter doesn't do much with it, instead shifting to a discussion of how more market competition after deregulation of transportation industries has encouraged companies to overwork and underprepare their vehicle operators.

Did deregulation contribute to the increase in the number of accidents? That's certainly plausible. It's hard to judge from the statistics provided by the Asahi, though. Restrictions on entrants to the trucking industry were relaxed in 1990; to bus and taxi in 2002. The increase in the numbers of accidents caused by different types of vehicles was measured over the period from 1995 to 2005. What correlates with what is difficult to divine.

But in any case, one of the main points of having a government at all is to protect citizens--from external enemies and, sadly, from compatriots who want to harm or exploit them. If existing safety regulations are being enforced slackly or arbitrarily, there are systemic problems that instituting tighter regulations probably won't address. On the other hand, the government may be more willing now to take a firm line in enforcing safety standards precisely because the increase in the number of competitors means it's not just dealing with established giants that have long-standing connections to a lot of federal agencies. Cozy relationships tend to facilitate cover-ups.

Our reputation for bitchiness notwithstanding, I'm always touched by the way homos make a welcoming, nurturing, non-judgmental safe space for anyone who's taking the difficult step of coming out. Ball's in your court, Nick. ;)

It's the end of the Golden Week holiday today. Atsushi's birthday is this week, and he won't be home for it, so I made dinner for him today. He wanted (can you guess?) broiled chicken with pan gravy. My man is nothing if not reliable. But then, a quiet afternoon at home was almost an exotic undertaking after the last week.

In addition to the usual getting together with friends, we finally went to see the Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo exhibit. Like a lot of exhibits here, it was pretty well edited (though the continuity was sometimes a little sketchy) but wretchedly designed. When are Japanese curators going to start getting lighting design from people who know what they're doing? As things are, they may as well hang flashlights from bell wire and be done with it. The effect would be the same. How is it that institutions in New York, London, and Vienna can figure out how to display old, fragile works so that they're being preserved while you can actually see them well enough to drink them in...but every artwork on display in Tokyo is either begloomed to the point of near- pitch dark or cursed at by light bright enough to perform surgery by? It's a real shame. So is the omnipresence of little appliances--humidity sensors and the like--plunked openly in corners right under the artworks. Does a lot, don't you know, to enhance your ability to wrap yourself completely in the world depicted by the pieces on display.

We also had a wedding present or two to pick up--nothing makes you feel more in touch with your fag self than casting a critical eye over everything in the housewares department. And Atsushi got his birthday iPod early. I'm not sure how much music he'll be throwing on it, but he's been looking pretty hungrily at the various news-site podcasts.

It's kind of windy and rainy here, so I'm hoping his flight doesn't get thrown around too badly. I'm figuring I'll get his "I'm back in Kyushu" e-mail in a half-hour or so. Then it's back to the usual. Hope everyone else had a great weekend.

Michael explains his support for the Fair Tax. (I kind of understand why that choice of name is shrewd, though it seems to me that the old designation National Sales Tax was more transparent and not all that scary. Reason solicited a bunch of opinions about whether the Fair Tax or the Flat Tax was a better replacement for the current Income Tax a decade or so ago. It's still worth reading.)

You won't be surprised to see libertarian me endorse the idea. You also won't be surprised to see Japan-resident me wonder whether it's realistic to expect to be able to extirpate a deep-rooted bureaucracy that's used to exercising a great deal of arbitrary power over citizens' money and privacy and knows how to play the system (largely because in a significant way it is the system). In that Reason piece, the Cato Institute's Edward R. Crane articulates the chief worry:

Critics of a federal retail sales tax who point to the danger of politicians simply adopting the retail sales tax on top of reduced rates for the present system have a very legitimate concern. The last thing we should want would be a sales tax in addition to the taxes we already have. The movement for the sales tax must reject any deal that allows the income tax to survive even at one-half of 1 percent.

The danger of a monstrous hybrid "reform" is very real, in my opinion. People bitch about income taxes, and everyone hates the IRS, but we're used to them. A lot of Americans who don't understand much about math and money could probably be pretty easily scared away by warnings that they'll end up poorer under the new system. A lot of Americans who are affluent and keep track of their money have a stake in keeping their own constellations of deductions just as they are...and finding ways to get others to pay in more. A lot of tax lawyers and accountants (not exactly groups that lack connections) would not quietly resign themselves to being forced to look for a new line of work.

Of course, defeatism isn't part of the American mindset, and as Michael says, gays in particular have reason to bestir ourselves over the income tax issue:

Much of the discussion surrounding the marriage equality debate has been focused on the more than 1000 tax benefits married couples receive that gay people cannot. And that's a big point. Not to diminish the debate over marriage equality, but when it comes right down to it, the difference between a married couple and a gay unmarried couple comes largely down to money.

Those of us with partners who are foreign nationals have issues that come into play a bit before the money part, but Michael's essentially right.

Speaking of the federal government and money, am I the only one who LAUGHED OUT LOUD at that proposal to give citizens a $100 rebate for gas money? I mean, people have been saying it's stupid, but it was so...rube-ish. The legislative branch of the US government looks forward to serving you ($100 that you yourself earned, anyway) again!!!! Sheesh.

An interesting window on Japan's group-over-individual culture as it applies to the practice of medicine--I may have mentioned this before in a post related to health care before, but I don't remember--is that if you're gravely ill, they don't tell you what's wrong. They tell your family. It then becomes the responsibility of the ranking party (such as your eldest son) to tell you and take the lead in deciding what kind of treatment you should get. The Asahi has a new survey with some figures. Of course, surveys have to be swallowed cautiously, but the results here ring true:

The survey was conducted by a Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare research group in October and November 2004. Questionnaires were sent to 1,000 randomly selected hospitals with between 50 and 300 beds, since many terminal patients die in such hospitals rather than hospices or palliative care units. A total of 145 hospitals responded.

In only 45.9 percent of the reported cases, hospitals said they informed a terminal patient--generally considered someone with less than six months to live--what disease he or she was suffering from.

In contrast, they told the patients' families 95.8 percent of the time.

Occasionally (and not mentioned in this survey), doctors seem to lurch in the opposite direction and raise the possibility of truly frightening diagnoses without more than iffy information. Several years ago, a friend of mine returned from a trip to Thailand. She was weak and feverish and went in for a blood test. They told her she might have leukemia. She spent a few agonizing days before suddenly returning to her usual hale and hardy outdoorsy self. Must've been one of those things you pick up in Thailand. You know, oops.

Okay, so she was a foreigner, and maybe the doctor figured he was supposed to be as frank as possible. But a few months ago, a friend was told that he might have liver cancer. He was--and do you wonder?--seriously spooked. I couldn't get anything out of him but that his blood sugar level was elevated, according to the doctor. He went into the hospital for more tests. It turned out to be...well, I'm not sure what it is. He didn't use the word for "diabetes," but he definitely said it wasn't cancer. Given his former drinking habits, the shock may have been for the good; he's been sober since then. Still, his doctor gave him a real freak-out.

Ghost of a Flea is, naturally, the source of this article about a new Kylie monument to be erected in her hometown of Melbourne. Apparently, her antipodean assets will be fittingly framed with her famous "Spinning Around" lamé hotpants. I haven't seen anything really recent, but word seems to be that her recovery from cancer treatment is going well.

By way of the Nikkei, a South Korean newspaper reports that a US embassy in Southeast Asia may be harboring some North Korean refugees:

On 3 May, the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo reported that, according to American government sources, 5 or 6 refugees who are DPRK nationals are under protection at a US embassy in Southeast Asia and that procedures to move them to the US are in progress. For safety reasons, the name of the country and the planned arrival time in the States are not being disclosed.

The US government has adopted a policy that would allow it to accept North Korean refugees through the North Korea Human Rights Act passed in 2004, but there have been no instances of asylum actually granted within the US to such refugees since the establishment of the law; when the current group enters the US, it will constitute the first such case.

Good move, of course--it's hard to imagine anyone who deserves a chance to start over in the States more than a North Korean who's managed to get out through the northern border and tough it out afterward. (The PRC is the DPRK's primary backer; it's not exactly hospitable to refugees.) It could complicate the 6-party talks, I suppose, but it's not as if there were any pretense of amity between us and North Korea anyway.

The Lucie Blackman case is well-known in Japan and England; US readers may not be familiar with it. Blackman was a British woman who quit her job as a BA flight attendant to take an under-the-table job at a hostess bar here in Tokyo. Several months later she was murdered, or killed accidentally in the course of a Mickey Finn, by a customer of the bar where she worked. This article from around a year later lays on the apocalyptic atmosphere a bit thick--as if Japan were a month away from sinking into Third World conditions--but it's a pretty comprehensive discussion of the development of the case. Blackman's family had to push hard and publicly to get police to investigate when she went missing.

The Asahi reports that Blackman's father helped launch a safety-minded service two years ago:

The idea bore fruit in July 2004 with the launch of Safety Text, through which users send details of their plans for a day to registered recipients back home.

Messages are stored for up to 24 hours, allowing users to cancel the text once they arrive at their destination. If they do not make contact, the alarm is raised.

Facial photographs and contact details that are stored in the system would be then transmitted to the police to ensure a prompt investigation.

"If Lucie had such a service, she might have wished to disclose that she was going off with this Japanese businessman (just in case)," Blackman said. "Then she might have been found in several hours, not seven months."

...

As part of the campaign to raise awareness of personal safety, the trust has distributed "personal safety information packs" for travelers to more than 650 educational establishments across Britain. It also warns women to make sure their drinks aren't spiked with date-rape drugs.

That poor family. You can see how they'd look for solace in trying to prevent what happened to their daughter and sister from happening to anyone else. But I'm not sure a system such as Safety Text is likely to help much. There's an inherent risk in going back to the apartment of a lascivious-minded stranger, and no messaging system can exercise judgment on someone's behalf. Blackman, after all, called her roommate several times after meeting up with Joji Obara on the day he killed her. (I guess I should say "allegedly," but there appears to be next to no doubt.) She probably wasn't out of contact until very shortly before being drugged. And given that she hadn't been in Japan long, she might not have been entirely aware of which municipality she was in.

Besides, whatever information is given to police, they need to feel a reasonable need to act on it before they're going to go searching for someone. Blackman told her roommate she'd be back in about a half-hour and then didn't show up. If it were my friend, I'd be worried, but I doubt I'd be all that worried until the next morning. People in their early twenties do get sidetracked and end up staying out all night. The first serious cause for alarm was the phone call the next day saying Blackman had joined a cult, but it's pretty certain she was dead by then. The Safety Text system might have accelerated the recovery of her body, which is worthwhile in itself, but it seems unlikely to have prevented her death. (Given the wording Blackman's father used in that quotation, he may be aware of that himself.)