Far East Cynic

Its been a couple of weeks since I got the Kindle DX. I thought I would pass on my observations of the device, and my recommendations of how I think it could get better. Like most things in life, its not 100% great nor 100% bad-it has things to like and things to dislike.

The Good:

     I like the screen size and the ability to change the type font size. I really think it allows me to read a book at a faster rate than I would with a regular book.  I’m not sure why. I don’t know if it allows me to scan more of a paragraph-or if I am just glancing at a paragraph and not really retaining its contents. Nonetheless, the little voice in me that says, "turn the page" appears to be working faster.

     It’s great to travel with on an airplane.

      The side buttons to select pages, table of contents, and to turn the electronic pages are well placed and easy to use. The biggest difficulty I have found so far is remembering to use the "mouse" button to select links and specific books and not the "next page" button for that. However the transition time is so quick-its not a big deal.

       The size of the device. I paid more money and bought the DX model with a 9" screen. I am glad I did.  It allows me to see the list of content I am subscribed to easily-and select what I want to read.

        The Kindle allows me access and the ability to absorb a lot of news content each day. Subscriptions to newspapers and magazines (real news magazines with thoughtful content-not sheer Fox News types of rubbish) are easy to group together and scan through over a 30 minute cup of coffee. ( Or a few beers at a bar on the way home from work.). However the subscriptions are a two edged sword as I’ll explain later. It’s a great news aggregator-especially if you want to understand content, not just hear stupid headlines that reinforce already held opinions like Fox  news, Townhall Harlot,  and Drudge readers do.

         The fact that it updates with the latest editions of the newspapers and magazines and blogs every time I turn it on is cool. I like that-it reminds me of what I think the "Newspad" of 2001 A Space Odyssey Fame would be like.

          Kindle books are significantly cheaper than hard back books. And really old books, like Machiavelli’s The Prince, are free. 

       The Bad:

      The DX comes with a web browser. I have to be honest-its not that great. Sure it will display web pages, but it takes longer to load than on my cell phone-even though it is using the same network. You can tell why in an instant-the bastards at Amazon want you to buy blogs et all through their paid content. The paid content I have subscribed to loads a lot faster than when I put my blog in the URL reader. I object to having to pay for content I should be able to get for free.

       Speaking of content-there is preciouos little foreign newspaper content available through Kindle/ Amazon. I have e-mail subscriptions to the Straits Times, Japan Times,and the South China Morning Post. It would be nice to have them on the Kindle.

       The Keyboard SUX! If you read a blog you want to be able to dash off a snarky comment or two, when you read something that gets your dander up. However, the way it does special characters like quotations and caps-leaves a lot to be desired.

        If you are not careful, the screen changes from portrait to landscape and back again.

       The device has a PDF reader that works just fine, and you can e-mail PDF documents to. It would be better if it had a Powerpoint feature, so that you could do the same with power point presentations. The larger screen makes it more effective than a Blackberry.

       And speaking of a Blackberry, having an Outlook function on the device-e.g read only would be nice.

My recommendation?  Its useful-but only if you are really an avid reader like me. Or you travel a lot. However its still a lot of money to shell out-and it does not pay itself back right away unless you read a lot of books. Oh and the subscription fees for newspapers etc-should be tossed out the window.  This idea that paid content is the only good content is crap. Make money through advertising if you must-but don’t charge me for content I can get free elsewhere.

On the whole, for me-who is a voracious reader-its a good buy.

 And knowing what to say and what not to say. Japan Probe chronicles an interesting event that occured at Yasukuni shrine where a Canadian forgot about where he was-when he opened his mouth:

From the translation provided by Japan Probe-(their words  not mine-their Japanese is better than mine! The rest of this post is their post-repeated):

The incident apparently took place on August 15th, the day on which people come to the Yasukuni Shrine to pray for those who died in the Pacific War. The Canadian, who is identified in YouTube comments as Pierre Pariseau, informs Tamogami  that the kind of speeches he was giving in Japan would get him arrested in Germany. His statements anger the crowd of right-wingers around Tamogami, and they start yelling at Pariseau.

The following goes down:

• Pariseau keeps ranting about how this kind of speech would be illegal in Germany. Satoru Mizushima rants back about how he is being disrespectful, etc.
• As Pariseau is trying to walk away, Mizushima keeps grabbing him. A cop shows up and gets in the way. The cop then grabs Pariseau as Pariseau insists he is going home.
• Right-wingers with cameras follow Pariseau as he leaves the area. At one point he tries to walk into the middle of a busy road. (To catch a taxi?)
• Police completely surround Pariseau and force him against a wall. They question him about what happened. He keeps pointing at the camera, possibly because he does not want to be filmed. The camera footage ends with Pariseau being escorted down the street by a bunch of cops.

This site claims that police made Pariseau apologize:

Canadian Pierre Pariseau questions former Gen. Toshio Tamogami during commerations for the 64th anniversy of end of World War Two at Yausukuni shrine in Tokyo, Japan on Aug 15th 2009. Gen. Toshio Tamogami was dismissed after publishing an essay asserting that Japan was not the aggressor in World War Two. Long term Japan resident Pierre Pariseau was attempting to leave the shrine after being grabbed and shoved by supporters of the General as he attempted to get a taxi he was prevented from doing so by police. He was taken to a police box near Ichigaya station for 2 hours. He was released after writing a letter of apology to Yasukuni shrine,Channel Sakura and Gen. Toshio Tamogami. Mr Pariseau asked the General if he knew “That he would be arrested in Germany for doing what he was doing?” Established in 1869 by the Meiji Emperor to commerate those who died in the Boshin War. The shrine now houses the souls or ‘kami’ of Japan’s war dead including 14 A-class war criminals who were interned among the 2.5 million war dead in 1978. Visits to the shrine by Japanese Prime Ministers create tensions with Japan’s Asian neighbors.

It was really dumb of Pariseau to start an argument with a crowd of right wingers in the middle of their most sacred territory on the day they gather to honor the war dead. He could have been seriously injured.

The Yasukuni Shrine is not a public forum. It is a privately owned and operated religious site and it has the right to ask police to make troublemakers leave the grounds of the shrine. The shrine is not under an obligation to allow dissenters to come in and challenge its supporters. Pariseau would have been a lot safer if he’d joined the left wing protest going on outside the shrine that day. That being said, however, it seems that the police went a bit overboard in surrounding and detaining him.

Japan is not Germany. It does not restrict free speech by outlawing certain historical views. People are allowed to share opinions on history, even if those opinions are stupid.

Sometimes you just have to take a break and laugh a little……..

The S.O. is at an estate sale this morning. She awoke at the crack of dawn-the better to get stuff early. I rolled over with a muffled moan-and told her, "to have a good time! I’m sleeping in".

Ah but once it was not so. A long time ago and in a galaxy far away, the sun would come up on a Saturday, by virtue of being the only boy, I would wake up in the house, in my room,  by myself. Quietly, I would pad down the steps and park my butt ever so close to the TV to watch: SATURDAY  MORNING CARTOONS!

Fortunately for me-my parents tended to be late sleepers on a Saturday-probably as a compensation for having to lose sleep on Sundays as they performed the thankless task of dragging all us kids to church. ( Fat lot of good it did them it would seem).

Anyway-its sheer joy this morning because with the S.O. gone, I can sit here and listen to some of my old music CD’s, without her whining about either content or volume.  And, quite by accident, I stumbled across this one that my son had given to me about 12 years ago:

I don’t remember how he came to get it for me- but the first time I listened to it, I was hooked. The CD  contains 18 really rocked out versions of theme songs for popular Saturday Morning Cartoons, including my personal favorite-The Underdog Theme done by the Butthole Surfers ( Yes, I have a weakness for punk rock and always have.) Turn up the volume!

It would have been  a better video if they had just spliced in clips from the old Underdog cartoon.

When I first got it, I only liked about 40% of it-but now in the light of misty eyed reflection I’m up to about 80% that I like. Excerpts are here:

Who the heck were the Bugaloos anyway? The Spiderman theme by the Ramones is pretty cool though-as is the tricked out version of the Johnny Quest theme. I even like the HR Puff N Stuff song at the end:

Here is a bonus question ( prizes to be figured out later)-Who did the voice of Hong Kong Phooey? You know him-but I’ll bet you can’t remember his name.

Well, that’s that-I  got to go cut the grass. We want to play golf tomorrow.

Speaking of health care, here are some women who look pretty healthy to me!

Natsuki is a Japanese gravure idol. Here she is sitting on the steps:

And this is Kana Tsuighara:

And if you really want to see some healthy people -go here! (NSFW!)

Jeff Goldblum (Michael): Amazing tradition. They throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can’t come.

There are lots of reasons I read Hemlock every day. Now visiting the US, he’s penned another one:

Hemlocks assemble in the clan’s Appalachian residence.  Matriarch Lucy is sadly no longer with us, but new arrivals have turned up since the last filial piety tour, one of whom needs baptizing – with the most inappropriate and least qualified godfather specially flown in all the way from Hong Kong.

Anointment of the cherub complete, and devout family members happy, the gathering proceeds with food, drink and talk of health care reform, which is emerging as the greatest threat to the liberty of the American people since King George III asked subjects wanting protection from French and Indians to cough up a few bucks for it.  Put briefly… The US spends over four times as much of its GDP on health care as Singapore, yet ends up with worse life expectancy and infant mortality.  The costs of health care are expanding far faster than the economy – even when the economy was growing – and are becoming a serious drag on competitiveness for companies and nation.  The winners from this system are health insurers and providers of needless medical procedures.  The declining proportion of people whose employers can provide good coverage have few complaints, but are too scared of exposure to health care costs to change jobs.  Everyone else, including the taxpayer, loses.  Cancer or a heart attack can wipe out many people’s life savings.

President Barack Obama’s proposed reforms will improve things for most people and make no real difference for those already well-covered – but will pull the plug on the tax-subsidized over-charging that makes certain vested interests rich and accounts for the far higher level of health care spending in the US.  It is not surprising that the vested interests are fighting back.  What is fascinating is the way opposition has broken out among swathes of the population who have everything to gain from the diversion of health funding from waste to more accessible coverage. The vested interests raised the alarm about ‘socialization’ and ‘rationing’ but might as well not have bothered.  Magnificently bad losers among the Republican camp, still frothing at the mouth over the victory of the good-looking and smarter-than-they-are uppity Negro in November, have declared that Obama’s reforms will mean compulsory euthanasia for everyone’s grandmothers and the establishment of a Soviet state over the entire hemisphere.  Next thing, hordes of impressionable folk who build replicas of Noah’s Ark on hillsides as a hobby turn up at Town Hall Meetings on health care with their guns, burning UN flags and denouncing Obama as a Godless baby-eating Nazi Commie. 

Older Hemlocks, indulging in barbecued, freshly killed goat, conclude that with so many useful and gullible idiots supporting their cause, insurers and for-profit health care providers remain a good investment.  Health insurers and providers of unnecessary medical procedures are to the US what the property cartel is to the Big Lychee – a parasite that costs the general populace wealth and quality of life.  The difference is that Hong Kong’s dimmest and poorest wouldn’t take to the streets threatening to shoot the Chief Executive if the Government decided to reform the land and real estate system.  As for the hysterical trailer-dwellers denouncing affordable health coverage, we can only look forward to their painful, lingering demise from a pre-existing condition with some amusement.

An unfortunate cat that fell into Tokyo’s Sumida River is saved by firefighters with a rescue net:

nihilism (uncountable)

1. (philosophy) Extreme skepticism, maintaining that nothing has a real existence.
2. (ethics) The rejection of all moral principles.
3. (politics) (capitalized by protagonist Turgenev) A Russian anarchistic revolutionary doctrine (1860-1917) holding that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake, independent of any constructive program or possibility.
4. The belief that all endeavors are ultimately futile and devoid of meaning.

   "…the band members sweat hard enough to earn their pretensions, and maybe even their nihilism" (rock critic Dave Marsh, reviewing the band XTC’s album Go)

5. Contradiction (not always deliberate) between behavior and espoused principle, to such a degree that all possible espoused principle is voided.
6. The deliberate refusal of belief, to the point that belief itself is rejected as untenable.

Joe Klein has an interesting article up at Time about the descent of the Republican party to swimming in the sewer.

Now its often brought up that the left had its crazies too-and the arguement is correct save for one fact that Klein highlights. In previous years, the loons did not have the keys to the car. Even during the 70′s when the Democratic party was very liberal. If the Blue Dog Democrats can get some more of their number elected-the Democratic party can save it self from its more extreme elements-at least moderate Democrats stand a better chance of being elected than their Republican counterparts:

An argument can be made that this is nothing new. Dwight Eisenhower tiptoed around Joe McCarthy. Obama reminded an audience in Colorado that opponents of Social Security in the 1930s "said that everybody was going to have to wear dog tags and that this was a plot for the government to keep track of everybody … These struggles have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear." True enough. There was McCarthyism in the 1950s, the John Birch Society in the 1960s. But there was a difference in those times: the crazies were a faction — often a powerful faction — of the Republican Party, but they didn’t run it. The neofascist Father Coughlin had a huge radio audience in the 1930s, but he didn’t have the power to control and silence the elected leaders of the party that Limbaugh — who, if not the party’s leader, is certainly the most powerful Republican extant — does now. Until recently, the Republican Party contained a strong moderate wing. It was a Republican, the lawyer Joseph Welch, who delivered the coup de grâce to Senator McCarthy when he said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" Where is the Republican who would dare say that to Rush Limbaugh, who has compared the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler?

Gimmebreakman reaches 100 videos in his Japanese for Morons series. Check out the rack on the Wagamama girl!

That the Philippines is still very screwed up: 

I recieved one of those Glenn Beck inspired diatribes in an e-mail today. About how the country was going to hell in a hand basket, Nazis were at the gates of Birmingham and the hoof beats of the Apocalypse were just around the corner. 

Please-can we just all take a deep breath and calm down? 

Maybe if we Americans had an attitude of gratitude instead of an attitude of whining about what may or may not be taken away from us-we might get along better.

I drove home from work today with out getting blown up. True, I should have been able to take decent public transportation, but hey-one step at a time.  In three different countries today alone-that was not the case.

Right now, in my beloved Hong Kong,  145,000 Filipina maids will already be at work, scrubbing floors, cooking food, some of them getting beaten by their arrogant Chinese employers for having the audacity to ask for a Saturday off. Their reward for their labor-a whopping 600 dollars a month.  Some of them need the money so bad that they are willing to go to Laguna’s on Sundays and rent-to  a schmuck like me on holiday- the use of their bodies for a few hours thereby upping their income by 33%. How many American women have to do that?

A whole lot of Americans get to live in houses that by any objective standard, are HUGE.Especially compared to what people have to live with in other countries. We have yards,-I mean , Christ, I live in a house right now that is bigger than any house I ever owned before. And I was able to pay what I consider to be an obscene price for it. ( And that’s cheap compared to what people in DC and California pay for their houses.). Instead of whining about “socialism”, I should be down on my knees thanking God every day for the ability to make the house payment each month. Or praying to God that my heartless employer does not lay me off-solely so that it could make the stock price of my company go a up a few bucks. I don’t know about you-but I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. 

Even assuming, for argument’s sake, Obama is 100% wrong-it does not make him a Nazi, a Socialist, or any of the other names that have been conjured up for him. I looked back on all my old blog posts-as much as I hated Bush for the unforgivable sin of starting an unwinnable war for worthless Arabs-I never called him that.

I’m tired of the ungrateful bastards we seem to have become.  Try living the life some of the folks in : (insert third world country here), and then complain. We’ve got it pretty good compared to them. 

Maybe all of us-left or right-should try remembering that. 

Thus endeth the rant for the day.

Robert Novak is dead. And for that-we are that much the poorer.

That Novak would hire a leg-man to go around Washington sniffing out news reflected the virtue at the heart of his work:  His columns, while they resided on the op-ed pages, were built upon previously unreported facts that revealed and explained the machinations of government, the men and women in power, and the politics behind it all.  His job demanded he get a constant flow of new information, but curiosity and a thirst for knowledge were natural traits for him. 

Bob Novak was, above all, a reporter. Watching him work was a delightful education in reporting.  

The world needs more reporters-reporters who actually understand what that term really means. Novak was one of those folks.

Check out Japanese-Filipina and voice actress Megumi Nakajima, a hot new star in the anime scene best known for her role as Ranka Lee in the hit series Macross Frontier, just opened her own YouTube channel. She hasn’t uploaded much yet, but if the viral success of her dance clip on a Japanese video-sharing site last year is any indication, we can look forward to some fun stuff. You have got to love how she combines Filipina expressiveness with Japanese cuteness.

If I did not know better I’d would assume she is Japanese only.

We got home yesterday-barely making the connection in Charlotte.  The plain arrived late and we literally were the last one’s on the plane. The S.O. was not amused. Flexibility does not come easy to her-especially when traveling. She does not suffer the serving class well. We boarded the plane and someone – a US Airways pilot-wearing a tag that said " Union Pilot" -was in our seat. The flight attendant said , " Just take any open seat".

"We have these seats assigned to us-and we need to sit together".  Its not our fault the damn plane was late.

Something about bumping the "Union Pilot" gives me just a tinge of satisfaction.

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I love my father dearly. I respect him more than I can ever tell anyone-he’s my hero in many ways. Probably most of all of because I could never make the sacrifices that he has made throughout his life. My father is a great man. He’s been through a lot in the past year. And he got gypped by all of us kids-two of whom are now dead, while the rest of us have become creatures of our own times-and not reflective of the values of the generation he grew up in.

Yet, for a whole host of reasons, I don’t get to tell him how much I love him and respect him.

You see, my father is not a talker. Not about deeply emotional things. He’s a worker-a man who gets things done. In the values set he was raised in-his job was to work hard and provide for his family. It was Mom’s job to handle the emotional stuff. Except now, as I have gotten older, I’ve come to realize that her background never quite brought her to a level where she could deal with it all. She dealt with a lot-but we were not the dynamic sucesses that she hoped we all would be. Particularly me. As the only son-she had it in her mind that I would accomplish great and lofty things.  And, from my point of view-I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot in my life-but it will never be the kind of public success, I think she longed for. Dad, however, I think better understands the arcs and curves that our lives have taken. And he’s always been there for us.

The S.O. made dinner for him on Friday night. I helped. And while in the kitchen getting things out and on the table, my father and I crossed paths in the kitchen. We looked up and into each others eyes. For a long set of seconds we simply stared at each other. And not a word passed. The moment seemed begging for it-but neither of us knew what to say. So we broke the gaze and went on about the kitchen tasks.GRRRRR! I want to tell him what’s in my heart-but is not his way.

Coming back I thought about that particular instant hard. I’ve got to let him know how much I love him. But even if I do-he will simply shake it off. Its not his way.

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 For all the complaining I do about the S.O, its on a visit to my home where I learn to appreciate her again. She keep conversation going-which us family folks can’t do. Too many hidden rocks to navigate around. However the S.O. can talk with anyone. She picks some very simple subjects to ask questions about-and in so doing draws my father out. Its quite a thing to watch-and its not something she had to do.

But she did. And I am appreciative of it.

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Tomorrow, I have to go to a trade show. To "man the booth" and pass out literature about my company. I don’t mind it so much-a day out of the cube is a day out of the cube. But as I told my co-worker today-its too bad we don’t sell automobiles instead of instruments of death.

Automobiles get pretty models to stand in front of the car.

No such luck for us.

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 The news-it will have to wait for another day. I want to finish Shanghai Girls:

This is the first  fiction book I have read this year. I downloaded it to the Kindle as an experiment to compare reading it on the Kindle versus reading 1959 which I have as a "real book". I was able to finish this book faster on the Kindle.

But its still a "chick" book-sickeningly so. Pap for the feminine set. Its a good book and I enjoyed it, which is embarrassing enough-but it kind of makes me mad. She can get published writing this nonsense-and here I am, still blogging in obscurity?

There is no justice in the world.

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 Maybe I can get a job writing for Bikini Cinema!

That’s an idea I have always agreed with. Hell, if I had my way, most of Africa would still be colonies. And we would be discussing outsourcing of jobs to India with the Viceroy. Since that’s not happening anytime soon, check out what we could do.