We will, we will shoot you.

I had been looking for this image for a while before I found it on Indrani Soemardjan's fLIckr page (in July). It is considered a Stick Figure in Peril as well as a Sign. It is one of my favorite signs of all time, along with the oversized hangman's noose poster that once welcomed people to Malaysia by reminding them of the local death penalty for carrying drugs. I guess I like it because of the multilingualism, the naked threat of state aggression, and incongruity of the juxtaposition of the two. It is nice of Indrani to make it a less restrictive (CC) license, since it is a photo of a public sign, after all. I might have my own copy on film somewhere.

It's been a good long while since I saw this sign in Singapore. I remember this sign as black or red on a white background, with the unarmed stick man being shot in the back and raising his arms as if startled to be shot without warning. That could have been an earlier version of this sign, or the original brain cells that held the memory may have been replaced and passed the memory on in altered form. Did my memory morph, or did the sign?

The Indrani family blog got a spate of hits during a moment of fame when Rani posted her failed attempts to create a (surplus) breast-milk-based cheese. That's probably been attempted before if not blogged. Actually, since that time, I have heard of an organization in California that donates mothers' milk. I think I may have seen it on cbs news. I wonder if it is Laughing Mothers' Milk. It sounds like Concerned Citizens's Milk to me, probably sour.

"Protected Place" might be translated better as "Secure Area". Of course, if you are being threatened with being shot, either in the back or in the chest, you don't really feel either secure or protected.

Nezushiki photos

I'm enjoying over 1000 pictures singlemindedly taken of Nezu by Nezushiki. These are scenes and places that I often see and walk by (like the VW!), as I walk in Nezu one to three mornings every week. Nezushiki has a great eye for the place.
I often walk up S-zaka in front of Nezu Jinja and always see this door. The great old house has holes in the windows and walls. The owner usually has communist party posters on the wall outside, a nice old commie, I guess. I've taken this shot of Nezu Jinja's inner gate over the wall many times until the foliage got too high this year. I like the stationmaster's aquarium in Nezu station. Gonna start counting and naming those fish.
Other ones I like (but sometimes don't recognize the location):
oMatsuri masks
old warning signs on an old wall regarding Earthquake, fires, and other safety measures.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/19049981@N00/583974140/
Jan 21 2006 snowfall
http://www.flickr.com/photos/19049981@N00/583628973/
funky sidestreets and alleyways
http://www.flickr.com/photos/19049981@N00/583960768/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/19049981@N00/476166205/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/19049981@N00/131908301/
baikinman in stone in front of a…temple?
Most of these pictures have been viewed once??? That's a shame. Mottainai! Thank you, Nezushiki!

Blogger's Template

I found that the (not-so-)new non-standard drag-and-droppable Blogger template is not as unfriendly as I thought. The only really unfriendly thing it does is drop most of the stuff in your sidebar when you upgrade, but not because it is a straightjacket format with incomprehensible code. Just to be mean and force you to think about cleaning up as a default setting, I guess. Everything is pretty straightforward, even the code. They just added the drag-and-droppable layer for ease-of-use and that complicated the underlying code a little, but they let you get in to tweak it.

Right now I want to do something about the font(s). I have a thing about ones, lower-case els, and upper-case Is being distinguishable. They should not all look the same, in fact, they should look different as if the reader were Mr OCR himself. The badly-designed grapheme sets reminds me of a typewriter that my grandmother had where the l also functioned as the 1. (111Ill lIl1s this is a test)

Update: I thought it was going to be Courier, but it looks like I should stick to Georgia or Verdana with the occasional resort to Trebuchet for the purposes of distinguishing I, l, & 1 as in the admittedly highly hypothetical and unlikely case of publishing and interview with a musician called 1Ill1 of a band called the KimJongIl1s. Those are just the fonts Blogger lets you choose now, but I assume it should be possible to change it to Lucida Sans Typewriter – a champion at this particular task despite some strangeness – by editing the html directly. Later. I'd like to meet Lucida-san and thank her personally for designing it right, maybe find out where I can buy her typewriter.

Blog-Ger Temp-late

I took some inspiration from a hexagonal lined paper at Incompetech and made a new header banner. That was one of the things holding me back from upgrading my template. The weatherpixies, clocks, counters, and anything else I can scrape out of the ruins of the old html will be back if and when possible.

Do no evil. We have server farms for that. (GoogleWatch'07)

I was shocked last month to find out that when I clicked the "Share this calendar" button in Google Calendar, a personal e-mail, in the first person, appearing to come from me, was written to the person I designated without any dialog box or confirmation of any sort by me.

I just received a similar notification and it seems that the poorly worded and implemented old message may have been retired; Google Calendar has changed their old obnoxious first-person impersonation notification e-mail to one less offensive. Either that, or their invitation e-mail from members to non-members is written by a moron, (engineer;-), or cyborg, and their letters from members to members are written by a human or more sophisticated cyborg. Either interpretation could be correct, and I wouldn't know for sure unless I sent a test invitation to someone to find out.

Note also the abrupt change from first person to third person, as if the google microchip implanted in my brain wasn't satisfied with just forcing me to write and send the mail, but had to override and repeat in its own voice that the being formerly known as "I" was recommending this service.

The old message:

Subject: XYZ recommends that you use Google Calendar
Date: October 11, 2007 6:53 PM JST

I've been using Google Calendar to organize my calendar, find interesting events, and share my schedule with friends and family members. I thought you might like to use Google Calendar, too.
XYZ recommends that you use Google Calendar.

To accept this invitation and register for an account, please visit:

XYZXYZ

Google Calendar helps you keep track of everything going on in your life and those of the important people around you, and also help you discover interesting things to do with your time.

Here's the newer style message:

Subject: J has shared a calendar with you
November 10, 2007 10:10 PM JST

Hello,

We are writing to let you know that J has given you access to view events on the Google Calendar called "J's… ".

We have automatically added this calendar to your Google Calendar account. You can hide or completely remove this calendar at any time.

- The Google Calendar Team
View Your Calendar .

Manhole Covers

I stumbled across the links to manhole covers at Pink Tentacle the other day. I was happy to see the fLickR photo pool. I have taken a few such photos myself, but I always felt a little stupid doing it, like a tourist who photographs all the post boxes, fire hydrants, telephone poles, and so on.

Two photos I had taken were at Tokyo University, where the waterworks bear the imprint of the Imperial University, or Tei(koku)Dai(gaku). That runs top to bottom, and Ge-Sui (Under-Water) runs right to left, imperialist style.

The one that follows that says Tokyo Imperial University, fully spelled out, with the character Den, for electron, 'lecticity, lightning, etc in the middle.

I thought that it was interesting how the waterworks of empires always survive the empires. That may hold for some electrical systems, too. Not sure how PVC piping will affect that equation.

I see that Pink Tentacle's post was picked up by BoingBoing. My two ¥en: search google images for the Japanese expression (mannho-ru no futa), マンホールの蓋, instead, to get away from the derivative links and get closer to Japanese sources of such photographs.

I am uploading two other contributions here.

template tweak

Autistic Hiker

Autistic hiker back with family in W.Va.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - It was the wilderness — a cascade of mountain laurel and rhododendron flowing over loose rock and steep cliffs — that posed the greatest danger to a missing autistic hiker. But in the end, that dense foliage kept Jacob Allen safe.

Autistic Hiker. Would have been a great name for a band. In concert October 19. SOLD OUT.

Update: Autistic Hitchhiker?

BLACKWATER ‘07

Based on Black Water by Patrick Simmons (The Doobie Brothers)

Well, I GOT TO IRAQ and she’s ready for FIGHTIN’
MESOPOTAMIA callin’ my name
CONTRACTS ARE jumpin'
That GRAVY TRAIN RUNNIN’
BLACKWATER keeps rollin’ on past just the same

Old BLACKWATER, keep on rollin’
MERCENARY moon, won’t you keep on shinin’ on me
(X3)
Yeah, keep on shinin’ your light
Gonna make everything, AL-SISTANI
Gonna make everything all right
And I ain’t SHOT no SUNNIS
’cause I WAS OUT IN THE BOONIES ALL DAY

Well, if IRANIANS, I don’t care
Don’t make no difference to me
TAKE OUT that streetcar that’s going TO town
I’M IMMUNE TO LEGAL PROSECUTION
I GET DRUNK AND I KILL FOR SPORT
And I’ll be SHOOTIN’ ev’rybody DOWN all ’roun’

Old BLACKWATER, keep on rollin’
MESOPOTAMIAN moon, won’t you keep on shinin’ on me
(X3)
Keep on shinin’ your light
Gonna make everything, AL-MALIKI
Gonna make everything all right
And I ain’t SHOT NO SHIA
’cause I WAS DOWN BY THE PIER ALL DAY

I’d like to HIT some funky CIVILIAN VEHICLES
BABYLON’LL take me by the hand
By the hand, take me by the hand pretty SADR
Come and dance with SISTANI all night long
I’M IMMUNE TO LEGAL PROSECUTION
BABYLON’LL take me by the hand
By the hand, take me by the hand pretty BADR
Come and dance with MALIKI all night long
I want to ………… you all night long

60 MINUTES: Colbert

There are many comments posted complaining of the advertisements interspersing these videos, but I didn't see a single one, perhaps because of using a Mac or my foreign IP address.

http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/98/stephen_colbert

The Shins

The Past and Pending


So Says I



Phantom Limb



Thr3e vid3os from thr3e albums. I love the influences James Mercer cites:

"It was an attempt to do traditional Pop/Rock songs," says Mercer. "I was listening to The Beatles, and I was so impressed with those little gems of songs, and the crafted way they put things together. I wanted to try and do that. I'd always listened to a lot of Jesus and Mary Chain, and the Cure. I loved Echo and the Bunnymen in high school, particularly Ocean Rain. All that reverb and stuff, I love it."

… Too bad I cannot find a decent live video version of Girl on the Wing, but there is this dodgy video of the first 1:20 of the song combined with another that picks it up from about 1:00. Not much for a video editor to work with there.

Wordcount

An online word-frequency check. I have the same information in book form, but having it online is more convenient. Apparently this was the coolest thing in 2005.
http://www.wordcount.org/ Enter
http://www.wordcount.org/index2.html Explanation
http://www.wordcount.org/main.php The actual search page
This will be a good tool to use alongside Vocab Profiler .

Mt Fuji in Engrish

Attached to the door of the toilet stall at the fifth station on the north side of Mount Fuji, a lovely sample of Engrish. Eight sentences, actually comprehensible, although it sometimes accidentally says the opposite of what it is trying to say, and sometimes you have only vocabulary to guess the meaning, no grammar at all. Two of my favorite expressions: DIES FROM THE STRONG WIND WHICH DOES NOT ATTACH ANTICIPATION, and the unnecessarily superfluous redundancy of INSUFFICIENT SHORTAGE OF TECHNOLOGY.

The Planet Formerly Known as the Planet of the Great Apes -OR- The Great Ape Society

"Great apes are our closest living relatives and very special creatures," Russ Mittermeier, head of IUCN's Primate Specialist Group, told The Associated Press. "We could fit all the remaining great apes in the world into two or three large football stadiums. There just aren't very many left."

It's a bold and imaginative new plan, but housing all of the world's remaining great apes in football stadiums is probably less effective than protecting their existing habitat. We know they like football, OK, but would they be able to use the toilet facilities without creating a filthy human-like mess? How would they pay for concessions like hot dogs, nachos, candy and peanuts? How would they be treated for the resulting obesity and health problems? Can vendors provide their traditional diet? What teams would be willing to take to the field for the ape audience in the stands? Who would they root for? Too many questions remain unanswered, Mr Mittermeier. I know you have good intentions, but if we are to take the desperate measure of forcing our ape brothers and sisters to abandon their traditional habitat and integrate into human society, shouldn't we take their special needs and abilities into consideration?

Waterboardin' USA

It's not torture if I say it ain't!
Those conventions are so old and quaint!

Thanks, Harry!

This was a lot of fun, but actually, Harry's work doesn't really benefit much from all the extra production to make it into video on MyDamnChannel. He has so much great material (which is not musical, but voice and imagination) that just needs to be re-packaged to keep it alive. The episodes of "41 Calls 43" or "Dick Cheney…CONFIDENTIAL" that are in his Le Show should be edited out and archived somewhere, maybe even made into a CD if that's what people want, but at least be archived so they don't vanish or get buried inside a week's radio episode.

Earth, Wind, and Water

I keep watching the projected amount of rainfall from the current typhoon (#9) increase, from 200 mm to 250 mm, to 300, 400, and now 500mm, half a meter. Typhoons usually whisk by us pretty fast by the time they get to this latitude, but this one is being blocked by two areas of high pressure. We have had 2 days of rain already, so another 18 inches or so on top of that could be a problem. Fifty meter per second winds don't sound good either.

Better than the swarms of earthquakes we had in mid-August, a few dozen of which were in Chiba or close enough to feel.
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/quake_singendo_index.html
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/quake_local_index.html

Issued at Occurred at Region Name Magnitude Maximum Seismic Intensity (JMA)
17:11 JST 18 Aug 2007 17:07 JST 18 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M4.0 3
17:04 JST 18 Aug 2007 16:55 JST 18 Aug 2007
E OFF CHIBA PREF M5.1 4
17:00 JST 18 Aug 2007 16:55 JST 18 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M5.1 4
13:40 JST 18 Aug 2007 13:36 JST 18 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M4.6 4
05:59 JST 18 Aug 2007 05:54 JST 18 Aug 2007 NIIGATA KEN CHUETSU CHIHO M2.2 1
05:16 JST 18 Aug 2007 05:11 JST 18 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M2.6 2
04:56 JST 18 Aug 2007 04:52 JST 18 Aug 2007 CHIBA KEN NANBU M3.4 3
04:43 JST 18 Aug 2007 04:38 JST 18 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M2.5 1
04:40 JST 18 Aug 2007 04:36 JST 18 Aug 2007 NEAR MIYAKOJIMA ISLAND M3.8 1
04:36 JST 18 Aug 2007 04:30 JST 18 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M2.7 2
04:19 JST 18 Aug 2007 04:14 JST 18 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M4.8 5-
19:14 JST 17 Aug 2007 19:08 JST 17 Aug 2007 TOCHIGI KEN NANBU M2.5 1
19:11 JST 17 Aug 2007 19:05 JST 17 Aug 2007 NEAR NIIJIMA AND KOUZUSHIMA ISLANDS M2.0 1
09:48 JST 17 Aug 2007 09:43 JST 17 Aug 2007 AKITA KEN NAIRIKU HOKUBU M3.3 2
02:16 JST 17 Aug 2007 02:10 JST 17 Aug 2007 TOCHIGI KEN HOKUBU M3.4 2
00:30 JST 17 Aug 2007 00:25 JST 17 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M3.4 2
00:26 JST 17 Aug 2007 00:22 JST 17 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M4.3 3
09:26 JST 16 Aug 2007 09:22 JST 16 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M4.7 3
08:37 JST 16 Aug 2007 08:32 JST 16 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M4.5 2
08:35 JST 16 Aug 2007 08:30 JST 16 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M3.2 2
08:24 JST 16 Aug 2007 08:20 JST 16 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M5.0 3
07:51 JST 16 Aug 2007 07:47 JST 16 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M4.5 3
07:46 JST 16 Aug 2007 07:41 JST 16 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M4.0 2
06:26 JST 16 Aug 2007 06:20 JST 16 Aug 2007 IWATE KEN NAIRIKU NANBU M2.9 1
05:09 JST 16 Aug 2007 05:04 JST 16 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M4.0 2
04:26 JST 16 Aug 2007 04:15 JST 16 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M5.3 4
04:19 JST 16 Aug 2007
04:15 JST 16 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M5.3 4
03:37 JST 16 Aug 2007 03:32 JST 16 Aug 2007 IRIOMOTEJIMA ISLAND REGION M3.8 1
00:17 JST 16 Aug 2007 00:11 JST 16 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M2.7 1
20:39 JST 15 Aug 2007 20:34 JST 15 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M3.8 1
19:40 JST 15 Aug 2007 19:34 JST 15 Aug 2007 IWATE KEN ENGAN HOKUBU M4.2 2
18:48 JST 15 Aug 2007 18:44 JST 15 Aug 2007 TOKACHI SHICHO CHUBU M3.4 3
18:16 JST 15 Aug 2007 18:11 JST 15 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M2.6 1
12:13 JST 15 Aug 2007 12:09 JST 15 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M3.0 1
11:13 JST 15 Aug 2007 11:08 JST 15 Aug 2007 OFF MIYAGI PREF M3.8 2
09:28 JST 15 Aug 2007 09:23 JST 15 Aug 2007 E OFF AOMORI PREF M3.8 1
07:43 JST 15 Aug 2007 07:38 JST 15 Aug 2007 OFF JO-CHUETSU NIIGATA PREF M2.5 1
03:44 JST 15 Aug 2007 03:39 JST 15 Aug 2007 AKITA KEN NAIRIKU NANBU M3.0 1
02:48 JST 15 Aug 2007 02:43 JST 15 Aug 2007 NARA KEN M2.7 1
02:33 JST 15 Aug 2007 02:28 JST 15 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M2.8 1
21:38 JST 14 Aug 2007 21:33 JST 14 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M3.0 2
16:52 JST 14 Aug 2007 16:45 JST 14 Aug 2007 OFF IWATE PREF M3.6 1
13:22 JST 14 Aug 2007 13:14 JST 14 Aug 2007 W OFF SAKHALIN M5.9 2
15:53 JST 13 Aug 2007 15:47 JST 13 Aug 2007 SE OFF TANEGASHIMA ISLAND M4.3 1
12:39 JST 13 Aug 2007 12:34 JST 13 Aug 2007 OFF MIYAGI PREF M4.0 1
11:21 JST 13 Aug 2007 11:16 JST 13 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M2.6 1
09:35 JST 13 Aug 2007 09:30 JST 13 Aug 2007 E OFF CHIBA PREF M3.0 1
07:27 JST 13 Aug 2007 07:22 JST 13 Aug 2007 NEAR NIIJIMA AND KOUZUSHIMA ISLANDS
M1.9 1
06:28 JST 13 Aug 2007 06:22 JST 13 Aug 2007 SE OFF TANEGASHIMA ISLAND M3.8 1
15:22 JST 12 Aug 2007 15:17 JST 12 Aug 2007 NEAR OKINAWAHONTO ISLAND M4.0 2
10:02 JST 12 Aug 2007 09:56 JST 12 Aug 2007 OFF FUKUSHIMA PREF M3.8 1
08:19 JST 12 Aug 2007 08:13 JST 12 Aug 2007 NEAR IZU-OSHIMA ISLAND M2.0 1
01:58 JST 12 Aug 2007 01:49 JST 12 Aug 2007 HIROSHIMA KEN HOKUBU M2.6 1
01:54 JST 12 Aug 2007 01:48 JST 12 Aug 2007 E OFF OSUMI PENINSULA M4.3 1

Yule Tide Watch

Monday, August 13, 2007: Makuhari Costco. Christmas trees and ornaments sighted. They could have been there for a month for all I know, because I haven't been to Costco for a while. Note that this is only seven weeks after the June 25 "Antichristmas", and leaves an ample 133 shopping days (or shipping days –or just days) before Christmas. Costco is a wHoleSlayer, so they need to sell these things to other businesses so that other establishments can have these decorations up by late September.

George Carlin stand-up

Presidential candidate George Carlin on the YouTube-CNN debates. Actually, he is not a Presidential candidate, and being 70 (??) would probably make a better Supreme Court Justice, in my opinion. However, I would like to see him go head-to head with Mike Gravel in a debate. Carlin goes a little overboard with how he loves disasters (hasn't suffered enough?) and his language seems too f*ing obsessively f*ed-up at times, but he is surely one-of-a-kind and a bit of a philosopher, social critic, and teacher, as well as a nut and perhaps our greatest living stand-up comedian.

Downsizing and reform of the Ten Commandments

That's classic.

Life is worth losing (recent)

Great introduction. This is a long show.

On Pride and the Pledge of Allegiance

Crappy video but the audio is OK. He makes a good point about pride. Is it true that only the US, Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's Italy have had a "Pledge of Allegiance"?

Earth-sheltered house

This earth-sheltered low-impact home was built in Wales. I like what the builder said: "built mostly from imagination, optimism and rubbish…" Actually, for people who live in the country and have a little extra land, it would be worthwhile to experiment with various construction techniques and build some test houses. He didn't need much money to build it.

I was thinking that different places would have different ways of using the local materials most effectively to make homes that shelter people from the local climate. In the central areas of North America, and places that have extreme cold and heat, earth-sheltered housing makes a lot of sense. There is a similar tradition in the plains --the sod house-- some of which have been preserved and updated, such as this site in Saskatchewan. The Addison sod house is also at wikipedia. Wikipedia's earth-sheltering page is good, too, and points out some potential problems like condensation.

Other places have different ways of sheltering and adapting to the local climate. Places with monsoon rains have stilt houses, which should be adapted for New Orleans and incorporated into the building codes there. Japanese traditional houses also do not use earth-sheltering, possibly due to earthquakes.

Information Architects Web Trend Map 2007v2

This is NOT the Tokyo subway map. You don't have to know Tokyo to use this.
The clickable start page with the snap-shot previews is amazing. Bookmark it!

Made by Oliver Reichenstein at Information Architects.
Read about it at:
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/ia-trendmap-2007v2