Adrift In the Happy Hills

Basement Jaxx Scars: Album Review

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:43:00 +0000

Better than the awful Crazy Itch Radio, still worse than any other Basement Jaxx album.

I don't usually go in for slagging off people's hard work when I don't like it, but the real shame is that I think Basement Jaxx still has it in them to make good music, and that something can still be done about it. So this is really an open letter to Basement Jaxx or their management, in the off chance they're scouring music blogs to gauge public opinion of their new release (and given the fact it entered the Billboard charts at 173 and is getting little press, they might well be reduced to that).

Basement Jaxx: Is there any particular reason why all but one song (the best one, by the way) on your new album Scars needs to feature outside vocalists as collaborators? Is there any particular reason why every track on it needs to sound like an attempt to track on BBC 1's Top 40? It's not that I have anything against British Top 40, necessarily, or that I would have a problem with you "selling out", so to speak...if you were good at it. But you're not, particularly.

Don't get me wrong, I still count myself as a fan. You make great dance music. And you have enough technical ability to see that anything you work on reaches a certain level of competence. There's nothing wrong with "Feelings Gone" or "Saga", really. There are certainly worse songs out there. But there are better ones in that vein, too, ones I and everyone else would rather spend our money on if we so desire that kind of thing. You're just not particularly good songwriters in the conventional 3-minute hit sense, and neither are any of the singers you can afford to have come on your album. I wanted a Basement Jaxx album, and instead I got a Basement Jaxx-produced album of attempted Top 40 featuring a bunch of people I've either never heard of or are fine with never hearing again. And that's just not enough to keep your fans happy.

Why all the collaborators over the past few years? Why the insistence on not just doing what you're good at? Let's look at the hits that made your career, and that your fans always fall back on when we rush to your defense- "Yo-Yo", "Rendevouz", "Getaway", "Romeo", and of course, "Where's Your Head At"

You are credited as the sole writers on all these songs. Most had vocals, but they were usually uncredited beyond the fine print, sampled, cut up and thrown in the mix. They were basically just instruments, along with the horns and synthesizers and everything else. None of them detracted from the general pandemonium of your music. None of them had egos and big ideas for what the second verse would be about. Your songs didn't even have second verses. They barely had first verses. They didn't have choruses either, really, just good parts you played again and again. They sounded like they only stopped because you had gotten tired or too drunk to twiddle the knobs any longer. And it was awesome.

Now even then, you had aspirations for "real" songwriting. There was that dreadful forgotten single on Rooty "Just 1 kiss", which we politely ignored. But you had enough good stuff to keep us happy. But these days, new material like Crazy Itch Radio and Scars are essentially full albums of "Just 1 Kiss"'s, despite the fact none of your fans have ever wanted them or asked them of you. And then you wonder why your american distributor dropped you, and you can't even crack the top 100 anymore. It's perplexing.

I know you must think I'm an armchair penny-critic prick for saying you can't write "real" songs. But ask yourself: does it really matter? You probably can't win Gold at the Olympics for the javelin-throw either. Neither could I. But does it matter?

And management: are you really sure your act needs this to make it the "next level"? Let's look at the big electronic acts of the past ten years, the ones selling millions, the ones commanding astronomical fees on sold-out tours: Daft Punk, Moby, Justice.

None of these acts insist on pop collaborators, at least not on every song and single. They do just fine for themselves. Much better than fine, actually: they earn millions for their labels. Why not be content to let Basement Jaxx rejoin their ranks, and return to doing the same thing?

The truth about Japanese politics

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:51:00 +0000

If you've worked in Japanese company, you know that official power and actual power are separate things. The nominal heads get the salaries and outward respect you would expect them to get. But meanwhile, other people usually run the show behind the scenes.

While you wouldn't know it by reading the Economist, which treats the goings on of Japanese elected officials in the same narrative as western politicians, the same is true of Japanese politics. Most of it is just for show; the bureaucrats run the show, and the elected officials count on them to do it. They don't even really delve into their matters much unless they involve money or re-election. Which is why you see Japan's finance minister speaking drunk at a press conference. Wonder how the world's second largest economy can have such an incompetent person in power? The answer is quite simple, really: he isn't actually expected to do anything. The bureaucratic machine has essentially run Japan since 50's.

Anyway, that's why I usually don't pay much attention to Japanese politics, and why I'm paying so much more now. If I had to bet, I would say the DPJ will fail at what it's trying to accomplish. But it's trying, and that's worth some attention.
Press home and read what else this guy is saying. He knows of what he speaks.

Japan's new first lady says she was abducted by aliens

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:58:00 +0000

Lots of attention being paid to this.

People here just don't seem to mind much. When I ask about it they just laugh it off and go "Yes, she's a little strange, isn't she?". When I ask if it would have changed how they voted, they pause and say no. Not in a partisan, "This is jolting, but I still have faith," way...more of a, "no, why do you ask?" way.

2 points- one, she's a tv personality, and they're expected to say ridiculous stuff to keep people entertained.

Two, most people in Japan believe in ghosts, so there's actually a fair amount of leeway for superstition, so long as you can go about your day after you tell your story. There isn't much religion here, so all kinds of little things fill the void. When you think about it, a sizable portion of the population in the US believes that the earth was created after 2 people talked to a talking snake, and that in the near future a man from the sky will descend and judge us all, one by one.

Not bashing Christianity, but let's face it...people all over believe some pretty outlandish things. But we sanction some of those beliefs as normal, and call others crazy. Elsewhere the distinctions differ.

The Big Election

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:54:00 +0000

The LDP, the political party that has run Japan almost undefeated since the 1950's, just lost in a landslide.
Background here.
More on last night and DPJ policy here.

I've covered it before, so I'll just recap. The LDP has had 3 Prime Ministers in 3 years, all of them around seventy, socially conservative and unwilling to enact any real reforms. The party just couldn't seem to get it in their collective head that people wanted some real changes. They just kept picking the same type of people with the same opinions from the same stock of cabinet members.

Japan's birth rate plummeted in the early 90's. Young people are too fearful to have children in these times of economic uncertainty, especially with the astronomical prices attached to raising children (you even have to pay for junior and senior high school here). The tax base is shrinking, and Japan is running out of laborers to fill its factories and maintain its economy.

There are two options in the face of this problem: allow foreigners to immigrate to Japan to make up the difference, or expand the social safety net so that young couples can afford to have kids. Xenophobic and socially conservative, the LDP has steadfastly refused to do either of these things for going on 20 years.

Traditionally, people in Japan have been indifferent to politics. When I arrived no young people took any interest in them. The LDP shelled out enough pork to keep key constituents happy and drum up some votes via the political machines, and everyone else just stayed away from the ballot box in indifference. But since the departure of Koizumi, the party's only credible reformer, The LDP has seemed to be do everything in it's power to get kicked out of office. They have done nothing to protect the newly emerging class of working poor. Instead of offering aid, they have chastised unmarried Japanese women as "baby making machines that refuse to meet their social responsibilities" (No, that actually is what one official said).

The prime ministers, usually from extremely wealthy families and the grandchildren of former prime ministers, seem incredibly out of touch with the concerns of the general population. When asked, the departing Prime Minister Aso had no idea how much a cup noodle cost, for example. When asked why a recent tax cut seemed to benefit the rich more than anyone else, he complained that the rich (him), needed tax breaks to, and that they shouldn't always just be for poorer people.

To top it off, the LDP was stupid enough to insult its only reliable voting base, the elderly. A few years ago they lost millions of pension records. Recently Aso whined that the elderly contribute nothing to society. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

As a result, people here have become angrier and angrier, and large numbers of young people voted in this election. Kana went to vote yesterday expecting a quick stop, but faced long lines.

Our new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama isn't as much a break from the past as you might expect. Like Aso, he is from a rich family, and the grandson of a former prime minister and founding member of the LDP. But he became disillusioned with the LDP and founded the Minshuto (DPJ) along with progressives. He is described as a centrist, but that may be for the best. Japan moves slowly, and I suspect a truly radical party would be toppled quickly. The DPJ is in for a vicious fight with the bureaucrats that really rule the country as it is.

Still, the DPJ advocates immigration reform, giving parents $250 a month to help raise children, and making junior high school tuition free. How they plan to pay for all this in the face of Japan's huge debt while cutting taxes remains to be seen. But its refreshing to see a political party pushing policies that at least try to deal with these very basic, urgent issues of the day. Its remarkable how long things have gone on without even seeing that.

Scaling Michelle Malkin: A response to Krugman's challenge

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 03:18:00 +0000

Paul Krugman writes on his blog:

When I saw that Michelle Malkin will be on the Stephanopoulos panel this week, my first thought was that nobody as far to the left as she is to the right would ever appear on such a panel. But then I started to wonder (a) what I mean by that (b) if it’s true.

I don’t want to be like Bill O’Reilly, who considers anyone he disagrees with a “far-left” activist. So we need some objective metric. The most natural would seem to be voter opinion: what fraction of the American public is to Malkin’s right? Would somebody with an equally small number of people to his or her left get on a Sunday morning panel?

The trouble, of course, is how to measure that. In principle, it shouldn’t be hard. What I’d like to have is a Guttman scale of positions on political matters, such that almost everyone who gave the “liberal” answer to question 7 also gave liberal answers to questions 1-6, while almost everyone who gave the conservative answer to question 7 also gave conservative answers to questions 8-13. And we’d want population shares associated with each point on the scale. So we could then take known positions of public figures and place them on the scale: say, we might find that only 19 percent of Americans are to the right of Michelle Malkin, while 23 percent are to the left of Michael Moore.

But if there are any such data available, I don’t know about them. Anyone care to put them together?

It's an interesting challenge. I have my own scaling procedures to worry about, but as a lowly soon-to-be grad student mired in these kinds of concerns, this is how I would start to go about it....

Go to somewhere like Gallup and collect data on general public opinion on a number of political questions (e.g: "I support a public option"), and the likert scale replies that follow.

Use that data to draw out a tentative map of liberal and conservative opinions by general popularity and make a new questionnaire using them. Give that questionnaire to a number of people.

Run factor analysis on the results to see what responses correlate. There should be at least two distinct dimensions, liberal and conservative, but I suspect you would also see a libertarian scale in there, and quite possibly other items that fall less on party lines than you would expect, and don't fit the model.

You can use those results as a filter to isolate items for your liberal and conservative scales. You could also combine them into one scale by reversing the scale on the conservative items before analysis, so that everything moves in the same direction.

Test the refined questionnaire, and run rasch analysis on the results using winsteps. In IRT, questions are assigned a "difficulty" measure. In this case, "difficulty" would refer to the likelihood that an average person would agree. Winsteps will also show you what opinions "fit" the model, and which items (for example, "I think noise pollution is a problem"), don't. It will scale them in a guttman fashion, but in a way that estimates probabilities of agreeing to certain opinions rather than deterministically (as in,"woops, 10% disagreed, guess theres no scale to be found here"). This is usually a more robust model in general anyway, but when it comes to political opinions, which get particularly murky and complicated, I think that approach would be critical to getting a decent model up and running.

For predictive validity, you could run your item "difficulties" (likelihood of agreeing) against the original gallup poll results, and see if they correlate well. That could help demonstrate that the estimated likelihood of agreeing with a given opinion on your survey at least roughly matches the public at large.

Finally, try to estimate malkin's responses on your scale by picking through her writing and making educated guesses as to how she would reply. Putting her on likert scale would be difficult, but it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to score her answers as dichotomous data (simple yes/no responses)

You could also run an analysis on congressional votes to start the scale, but that would get tricky because there are so many different reasons to say yes or no to a given bill, and so many special interests swaying votes and polluting the raw ideologies.

The sound of the top 40 in 2009

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:15:00 +0000

In front of our big 40" TV in the new place. I've been in Fukuoka for 5 years and I'm seeing the American MTV top 50 for the first time in a long time.

It's funny...when you think about the music of 2009, or whatever the current year happens to be, you think of the cutting edge, of vocoders, auto-tune and fashions that piss off old people. You think of Lady GaGa and Kanye West and the rock album Lil Wayne is supposed to be making. You think of the 80's revival, techno and the fusion of hip-hop and club music.

That stuff is definitely out there, and becomes more common the further up the chart you go. But there's a whole other style of music on the charts that beats out the flashy urban sound by an almost 3:1 ratio. On one level, its so timeless, uneventful and generic it almost doesn't seem worth mentioning. But its so different from what you would have seen on MTV 5, 10, or 20 years ago that it deserves some notice.

Who are these artists? It's hard to say, I've never heard of most of them. The most famous artists I can think of that approximate it are maybe Kelly Clarkson and the newer Nickelback stuff. Kings of Leon, The Frey, that guy Daniel something or other. Jason Mraz? They're a bit more rock, but if you played that stuff next to what I'm talking about on the radio they would fit pretty well.

Thematically, the music almost has more in common with top-40 heartland country rock than it does with classic rock and roll or hip hop. If you turned the sound off the videos would look like country videos, even if the actors were younger and had longer hair. The singers are always white and the action is set in small heartland towns in the flyover states. No disco balls, flashy silver rooms or CG effects. No video chicks shaking their thang, save for a blond girl-next-door type that the singer weeps over. Like most genres the songs are usually about love, but they also tell stories of guys that are having trouble paying the bills and teens trying to tell their parents that their life is their own and they want to pursue their own dreams.

The music is guitar based, but strings often back the standard 4-piece band. They usually start out with an acoustic guitar or piano, and then break out into a harder chorus that puts a but of fuzz on the chords. There are absolutely no synthesizers or electronic elements.

A main difference from country rock is that the singers are pros that belt out the vocals with an intensity and passion you wouldn't normally here in country; it has the angst of rock even if the music itself is more conventional. Often in bands, the lead singer/guitarist gets to where they are off the strength of their songs or sex appeal, and the singing itself is just "good enough" level; in contrast, these singers often seem to have gotten to where they are off their pipes first and foremost.

In its own way its uniquely American. Its catchy and driving in a safe, unoffensive way. It doesn't conjure up images of nights of hard drinking on the road or loose groupies like an old Aerosmith or Big Star song would. It has the charge of rock without containing any of the darker messages that would make a politician single it out as what's wrong with society. It's a sound that seems permanent, even though its actually quite new as an MTV phenomenon, when you hold it up against the Backstreet Boys, Eminems, Nirvanas, Guns 'n Roses and Michael Jacksons of MTV past.

What do you call it, exactly? The best name I can think of is American Idol rock. Its top 40 music at a base denominator that has a shot at pleasing people in their 20's and farmers in their 50's at the same time. Its a uniquely appealable form of rock designed for play on major network television.

It may seem like its been around forever, but when you think about it, it didn't really exist at all until this decade.

I'm so glad my netbook came with Windows Vista!

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 04:38:00 +0000

I needed a light, cheap computer to take with me to Canada for work. What I really wanted was the exact same laptop I got 4 years ago for about $750, a cheap HP laptop with a 40GB hard drive, 1.6ghz processor and a 750 megs of ram, but in a smaller package (the current one weighs a ton) and for less money. Seeing how fast technology moves, that shouldn't be a problem, should it? AFter all, 4 years prior to that, I paid three times as much for a dell with a smaller screen, half the processor power, a 1/4 the hard drive space and 1/8th the ram.

But cheap computers are hard to come by in Japan. Stores push $2000+ monstrosity laptops with HD screens, and almost seem to deliberately not stock the low-end computers that dominate the market in the US. It's true netbooks have introduced a new, low-end market, but they seem like overkill on the form factor end of things. How much work can you really get done with a ten inch screen and a 5-centimeter track pad?

I went to Yodobashi camera and finally found a "Dell mini" which is halfway between a budget notebook and a netbook. It has a 12" screen, big for a netbook, a 1.33 processor, a 60GB hard drive, and 1GB of ram. In other words, it's about what I got for 750 4 years ago, but small and light...about what I was looking for going in the store.

But for how much? The one with XP was $600, a bit out of my price range. But there was an otherwise identical notebook with Windows Vista which was $400, making it easily the cheapest in the store. I asked the clerk if I could just get that one without Vista, and he told me Vista was the whole reason it was so cheap. They couldn't sell any.

I told him I would take my chances and got it. It was easy to see why no-one wanted it- the thing barely moved. Just turning it on ate up close to 80% of the RAM. So I wiped it clean with a copy of XP from my old computer and now it works great.

So in the end, Vista knocked the price of my computer down by a third. Thanks, Microsoft! Vista rules!

New Place

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:23:00 +0000

Wow, it's been so long I don't even know where to start. Got into a Phd program. Taking lots of stats classes. Preparing for finals with the classes I teach rather than take, and getting the curriculum set for next semester. Busy in a way I've never really known...when I get free time from my job I get excited because I can read up on fit statistics and test equating. Yay! That's what counts as downtime now.

Anyway, I'm moving in with my girlfriend and we got a bigger place. Its near Takamiya, in the same range of hills I live now, but a lot bigger. Here's a floor map-

Looking at it now, it wouldn't be a big deal in Canada. But by Japanese sizes, 90m2 like this is enormous. Most places like this in the city go for at least 1000 a month, on the low end, and up to 2500 and 3000 on the high (and those are Fukuoka prices out in the Kyushu wilderness. In Tokyo? Forget it!)

We had one thing going for us though...one, its 25 years old, which in the lifespan of Japanese apartment buildings is ancient people want to live in places no more than 10. In the 80's, it was probably a really swank place. It has an electric toilet with a warm seat, bidet, etc, and a professional gardener comes by to work on all the plants surrounding it. But it's been rendered obsolete by the newer steel and glass buildings with electrically heated floors, and so down goes the price.

More importantly, some houses had been built in the area behind this building, blocking the incredible view and casting the east end into shadow. And the tenants, who as far as I can gather are mostly old people with a lot of time on their hands, FREAKED OUT. They put up protest signs outside their balconies threatening people thinking of moving into the houses and telling them to contact their lawyers. It doesn't seem to have done much to stop the building of the houses (which is totally legal), but they did an excellent job keeping new tenants from moving in to their own building. This new place has been vacant over a year.

The original price was 900 a month, probably down from 1000 earlier. It was a bit out of our budget, so I asked for 800, and they agreed. To top it off when we said we wanted to move in August, they said "Well hell, its vacant now, so you might as well start moving in in July, a free month of rent on us!" So that saves us the stress of having to move in on the very last day of our current leases.

Its gonna be great, shaded back yard or not. I actually like the privacy it gives. See that long balcony on the left? I want to put out beach chairs and little tables for coffee, and lie there in the morning reading the paper on my laptop. We've got a proper living room for guests, a master bedroom, a den for the projector when we do some serious movie viewing, and a guest room when people come in from out of town.

PhD

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:35:00 +0000

Where've I been? I've been busy. Looking to start a PhD soon. The University I have my sights on read one of my papers, and off the strength of that seems to want to squeeze me in to the cohort starting in October (it would be a very late registration). Failing that, they'll let me in next year. Which is fine by me, because I need the time to prepare.

Aside from Thailand spent the spring learning statistics. Started with single variable and worked up to ANOVA and multiple regression. This summer I'll be doing Rasch Analysis and MANOVA and factor analysis courses online. So much for my vacation...I'll have to take my texts with me to Canada when I go back and do the readings during downtime.

Then, between this fall and next spring, I'll be learning data mining through more online courses (probably). The neural networks I was interested in have commercial applications for marketing researchers now (they feed the models reams of data about their customers and try to get the networks to figure out, say, how many of them would be likely to buy a sit-on lawn mower), which means there's lots of books out now to teach people without PhDs in mathematics how to do it, and relatively user-friendly software with graphical interfaces that don't involve command lines.

That isn't to say I don't need to have a firm handle on statistics to do it (logistic regression, multivariate stats, etc), but working with and understanding the models in a basic way has moved from something over my head to something that will be manageable with a lot of work. I think I can find some interesting applications for text and data mining in my own field, and perhaps even for my doctoral thesis eventually. You never know. But putting that aside, I'm interested in learning it for the sake of it.

About a year ago, I wrote about age and limitations, and about reaching that point in your life where you've gone as far as you can without hard work. To my surprise, I've been crossing that threshold and moving beyond what I thought was the peak of what I was capable of. It's been good, and I have a pretty good idea of how much further I can go, and what I need to do to get there.

But it takes up all my time.

Bartering in Thailand

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:09:00 +0000

Went to the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar and got a wood elephant sculpture for Kana. You learn pretty quickly that prices here are higher for foreigners at the markets. You can get it down a lot by speaking Thai, or even just by asking “how much?” in Thai, partly because they appreciate the effort, and partly because they know you must know your way about a little more. But the bottom line is, if you’re visiting you’ll often be paying a lot more for things than the locals.

I think a reaction from some people is to try to “win” at bartering. They feel like they’re being taken advantage of or being played as fools, so they try to hardball negotiations a bit. This just doesn’t work, particularly if you give off the vibe that you think the seller is trying to scam you. It’s insulting, and everyone goes away just feeling terrible. Most people here will take offense to the insinuation they were trying to cheat you, and stubbornly keep to the first price out of pride.
The goal of bartering isn’t to win, it’s to come to an agreement that you’re both happy, or at least satisfied, with. Here’s what I suggest-

-In a market, don’t come to them, let them come to you. Just by starting the bargaining you’re showing you already want it, which puts you at a disadvantage. Just stand around idly looking at the goods as if it’ s more scenery. Make it look like you’re about to move on. (Obviously, this won’t work if there are other people the seller can stay busy with who do seem interested. In that case, come back later, or wait until you get to another stall selling the same thing).

-When they ask you if they can help you, ask how much what you want is in thai, as if its just one of many things there, and you’re just curious about a price since they asked. When they reply, whatever that price may be, just sort of look at it doubtfully. Don’t look insulted by the cost or complain it’s too much, and don’t do anything to suggest you’re entering negotiations with them. Just give off the vibe that it’s not really your kind of thing.

-at this point, they’ll either come back with a testament to the items’ quality, at which point you can repeat step two, or ask you how much *you* want to pay for it. Look like you’re thinking about how much its worth to you for a minute, and offer a fifth what they asked for. Plan to pay about two fifths, but make it look like its give and take when you meet around that range.

-Finally, keep in mind you don’t necessarily need to get the cheapest possible price, just a price that’s cheap for you. Sure, maybe a Thai girl could walk in and get something that you paid $3 for for $2. Well guess what? She probably earns about $150 a month, and the seller knows that. At that point it’s just nitpicking for the sake of it. Relative to your income, you’re getting a better deal, So let it go.

Thailand again

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:55:00 +0000

Back in Chiang Mai. From Fukuoka flights here cost $700-1000, as opposed to $500 for Bangkok. Seemed like a lot for an extra 1000km/1:15 of flight time. I suspected that once I was in Thailand, things would get cheaper as usual. Kevin agreed and told me to just buy a ticket at the airport.

So I got through immigration and customs (completely walked by it actually, without any check whatsoever- They seemed to have other things on their minds) and went up to the domestic departures area. Bought a ticket from Air Asia for the next flight out...for 45 dollars, $60 with tax! Unbelieveable. It was like buying a bus ticket. But cheaper.

So if you go to Thailand, and that beautiful remote little beach is so much more expensive to get to than the nearest smog filled city, don't even worry about it, just deal with it once you're here, in the pricing twilight zone.

Two Train Station Stories

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:38:00 +0000

On the way back from an Onsen with my girlfriend, then I pack and head to Thailand. Yesterday while I was waiting to meet her at the train station, I saw a man, maybe mid 30s, dressed as a school girl, with one of those short brown plaid skirts. Mannish face, though with a wig, and very mannish legs, though shaven. It wasn't completely obvious it was a guy, but clear enough with a second look.

That kind of thing isn't so common in Fukuoka, so I looked at people passing him expecting expressions of shock. But there weren't any. So uncommon is it that no-one did a double take. They just took it at face value that it was a not very attractive woman.

Kana came a moment later, and I mentioned it in passing. It turned out that at about the same time, she had seen something interesting on the other side of that station. When she was waiting at the crosswalk she saw an old man waiting on the other side of the road with a pigeon perched on his shoulder, like a parrot. This was getting a reaction from passersby. He stood with such confidence, such poise...as if it was perfectly natural for one to have a such a magnificent pet at ones' side.

Then the walk light turned green, and the man began to move, the pigeon flew off, and the man recoiled and flailed in terror, unsure of what was happening. He had been completely oblivious that it was there. That was a better story, as people watching stories go.

So I bought an iphone in Japan

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:29:00 +0000

People in Japan were as impressed by the touch technology as anyone else, but overall, the iphone hasn't done very well in Japan. In North America, where the only other things to compare it to are Nokia and Blackberries, it's considered "The Jesus Phone". But here, its just an interesting contender with some fatal flaws. For a long time it didn't have emojis, the animated emoticons that play such a vital role in Japanese text messaging. Second, the camera is lower quality than the ones on phones many carriers give away. And third, it doesn't have a digital 1-seg TV tuner, meaning people with an iphone are missing out on the hottest new cell application here.

And fourth- it just costs too much. Even in America the iphone bills are steep. But then, so are most cell phone bills in general. But in Japan, unlimited data rate plans hovering around $40-50 a month have been common for about 5 years. I went to the carrier's store to look into getting one, and they wanted me to pay $300 for the phone and what would likely work out to be about $90 a month total, even if I never actually used the phone and just used it for web browsing. Why bother? In short the iphone is good...but just not so much better than the run-of-the-mill cell phones here that you would willingly pay double to get one. I know some high-income foreigners that have it, but for the most part, the iphone is just kind of curiosity here, like maybe an antique car, or a craftmatic adjustable bed- everyone is interested to see you have one, but that doesn't mean they would ever seriously consider buying one themselves.

So Apple, or at least their carrier in Japan, Softbank, did something you rarely see- they compromised. The iphone is now available at a reduced rate- free. And the basic unlimited data plan has been reduced from extortionary rates down to about 4400 yen, $40 a month. Now that's more like it! I pay about $45 a month, or 5000 yen for unlimited web browsing on AU (the PC site viewer). The Softbank sales rep worked his way through the Byzantine cell phone plans and figured out a way where I only pay 980 yen for the phone end of the service (and get free calls anywhere in the country to other softbank customers, should I ever use the phone). All told, it'll run me 5711 yen a month for service. That's less than 6 bucks a month than what I pay for web access now, and I get a free iphone for giving them my business.

Side note- Obviously the iphone has less memory than by current ipod classic, I don't have to worry about storage space either, because with the simplify media app, I can stream all the
music on my own computer, and since I have unlimited data I don't even have to worry about racking up charges. Cool eh?

Are students entitled to a good grade if they work hard?

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 06:49:00 +0000

So researchers at the University of California noticed what they described as an "increasing sense of self entitlement" among their students, who increasingly expect a good, or at least decent grade if they show up to all the classes, do all the assignments, do all the readings, and work hard. The researchers, and many other teachers, see doing those things as the bar for a C, or basic pass, with higher grades going to students that demonstrate exceptional ability.

Many students feel they should at least get a B for all those things. As one student says in the article above, “I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade. What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

For many professors, an A is almost a theoretical, something they would give if the luminaries of their field took their class. I understand that in general the humanities are a difficult field to assign grades in. But I'm going to give my own take on what I think should constitute a good grade.

I think its great when teachers to ask a lot of their students. But if your default grade is always C, I think you need to ask yourself an important question as an educator. Having high expectations for students is well and good. But what expectations do you put on yourself as a teacher? Is higher education really simply a matter of students doing whatever they can, and you judging their efforts with your expert opinion? If that's the case, and you see higher education as simply a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff and the mediocre from the bright, perhaps you could just assign readings, and then give students a norm-referenced test at the end of the year to rank them on a bell curve. That would work about as well. And relieve you of any responsibility for your students education at all.

Or is it possible that you should be taking more responsibility for your students' education on the subject, that you have a responsibility to see to it that what you're teaching is quantifiable, tangible and meaningful, and that you're placing reasonable expectations on students given their existing level?

What you should be aiming for is mastery of whatever material you're teaching. One would hope that you have an idea about what you think is reasonable for them to take away from your lectures after 2 semesters. Lay out those goals for students. If you're teaching statistics, work out precisely what it is that you want students to be able to do by the end of the year. In my own classes, I have a set of expectations for content mastery by the end of the course. I set them based on what I understand to be possible given 28 90-minute meetings, plus an average of 2 1/2 hours of homework/independent study per week. If they meet them, they all get A's. If they don't, they know precisely why...and know precisely what they'll need to do to get an A in the future.

Now, I'm not saying teachers should start giving all students A's for effort. But they should be able to tell students what it takes to get one in clear, obtainable terms. If you consider an "A" to be some kind of ephemeral construct, something that requires some kind of je ne sais quois element that can't merely be described by a checklist of expectations...well, perhaps that says more about your abilities as an educator than it does about your students' senses of self-entitlement. If you can't tell an eager student willing to work what it takes to get an A, consider what it says about you and your ability to teach the course competently, not just what it says about them.

Guarana in Japan

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:28:00 +0000

Japan's localities all have their own special foods. When you go to a given region, you're supposed to get that specialty as a souvenir for everyone back home. So they can go, "Oh wow, [specialty food]! A uniquely [area name] treat! It's not very often you can get this- only when someone we knows travels to the farway prefecture of [area name]!

In reality, a lot of the specialties are manufactured, and limited to sale in that region precisely because its good for sales and the local economy. If a company comes out with a regional-ish snack, it can make more money by packaging it as a souvenir item at a premium price and keeping it semi-exclusive to the area. Every major airport has little stands making a killing selling the local treat to tourists looking for last-minute omiyage.

Japan's northernmost main island, Hokkaido, plays this game more than anywhere else I can think of. Chocolate covered strawberries, butter snacks, chocolate drinks, even their own potato chips ("WARNING:", the sign states wherever the chips are sold, "limit of 2 bags per person!") Realistically, though, the Hokkaido foods have a way of trickling down to the rest of the country if they're really good. You can find the chocolate covered strawberries at import stores, and the limit on how many bags of Hokkaido chips you can buy seems outstripped by the lack of limits on places you can buy them ("WARNING:", the sign by the chips states at the airport shop, your last chance to buy them, "limit of 5 bags per person!")

Interestingly though, there really is a common product that is only available in Hokkaido, not so much because its used for tourists, but simply because its popularity in Hokkaido truly outstrips any interest outside the islands. Elsewhere in Japan, its a rarity. But in Hokkaido, it's ubiquitous. Its called Guarana.
Guarana is a South American plant that produces beans with a powerful stimulant similar to that of it's far more famous cousin from the same region, the coffee plant. While coffee took over the world, Guarana-based sodas are hugely popular in Brazil, to the point where even Coca-Cola has began to market its own Guarana soda in that area. I loved it the first time I tried it. It gives a huge rush of energy that makes regular caffeine pale in comparison. People can't seem to make up their mind what makes it as powerful a stimulant as it is. By some accounts, the active ingredient, Guaranine, is a powerful analogue of regular caffeine derived from coffee, and that its effects are more powerful in humans. By others, the base caffeine chemical is the same, but there just happens to be a much higher concentration of it in the Guarana plant, and any additional effects felt are brought on by other chemicals found in the plant. But whatever it is, it's great! Mike, the guy who introduced me to it, used to use it before playing soccer. He would proceed to blaze across the field in a guarana-induced frenzy, only to crash several hours later. I, being the huge dork I am, used it before writing term papers instead. I'd pound away at the kepad non-stop, and papers that I had been putting off near indefinitely would get written in record time.

Mike had learned about Guarana during his travels in Brazil, and was trying to make some money selling it (among other Brazilian products) here in southern Japan. It seemed natural that it was ready to spread overseas. But southern Japan would have none of it. He wound up giving away bags of guarana extract powder because no-one would bite.

It's too bad he hadn't tried to sell that extract in Hokkaido, because it's everywhere up there. And its not just one company- I counted at least 4 competing brands. Here's a couple pictures. (the makers of the "bear" guarana extract above also market a soda).

Why does it do so well in Hokkaido but not elsewhere? Even the Japanese internet seems mystified. One website theorizes that back in the day, it took a while for Coca-cola to make it up to Japan's most barren, least colonized region. Guarana colas filled the void, and by the time coca-cola made it up there, Hokkaidoans had acquired a taste for it and it stuck.

Come to think of it, in Japan's southernmost area, Okinawa, Root Beer is widely popular. And just like Guarana, it has failed to gain popularity on the mainland. So both of Japan's outlier islands seem to have their own regional cola alternatives. My own observation is that Guarana cola tastes a lot like Dr.Pepper, which, like Root Beer, repulses most mainland Japanese. They all say they taste like medicine. I guess some soda flavors are acquired tastes. If they're established and you have them as a kid, you get used to it and acquire the taste. But if you're used to Coke and have it for the first time in adulthood, they just taste...weird.

City Gas vs. Propane in Japan

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:27:00 +0000

Okay, this is pretty long, but if you're ever in this situation yourself, you'll probably find it pretty useful to know. I know I would have...

I grew up in Canada during the dark ages of electric stoves (what was that all about, anyway?), so using and paying for gas was new to me when I came to Japan. All I really knew was that it powered my stove, and perhaps the hot water for my showers, and at the end of the month, I got a bill for it. One more thing- I knew that it was fairly expensive, and that therefore it wasn't a good choice for heating in the winter. So instead, like most people, I heated my places with kerosene.

But Kerosene has its problems. Its a gasoline product, and your clothes and belongings stink as such throughout the winter (you may get used to it and not notice, but trust me, it's there). You have to buy it elsewhere and lug it to your place. Have to periodically sit on your cold kitchen floor and fill the tank using an awkward plastic pump with a squeeze bubble, getting gas on your hands in the process. To top it all off, with gas prices rising, its not even all that cheaper. So I decided to make the switch to gas, which burns clean and has a dedicated pipe running into my place.

Only one problem- There are only 2 gas outlets in my place, and I was already using them. So I need to get permission from my landlord to install another. I went to the real estate office with my girlfriend, and found out that they didn't want to do it, because the building would be switching from City Gas to Propane soon. (We also found out from the ads out front that the apartments on the floors beneath me, identical in every respect, were going for considerably less than the rent I pay every month. But that's another story).

Back to the propane switch- why? The official reason was that propane had "more power". But that seemed thinner the more I looked into the matter. Essentially, city gas is a public service, and named such because its usually only available in the city, where its practical to build lines for it, as are done for other utilities. A private company runs it, but the city subsidizes it and ensures that like water, its available for a reasonable price.

Propane, on the other hand, is private industry and brought to houses via trucks, which fill tanks outside the buildings. In short, propane is usually used by people out of city limits, who don't have direct lines of city gas leading to their house. Its use is usually analogous to septic tanks for homes in the country. And consequently, its nearly always more expensive. Since propane is entirely free enterprise, the prices range wildly. People out in the country away from city lines obviously pay a good deal more. Within the city, it could be a lot cheaper. But overall, the odds of paying a comparable price seemed pretty low. Online people said they usually paid about 12,000 yen a month ($120) for their propane, whereas I pay on average about 3000-5000.

So why did the building manager agree to it? The short answer is we still don't know. But I can speculate -I do know that city gas requires a fixed monthly fee for the building owner, and that propane doesn't necessarily. So the owner could be saving money, and passing the cost on to the tenants by selling out their city gas to private enterprise. Also, the propane people offered to switch over the hot water heaters for free, giving the apartments a much-needed renovation that would have cost the owners a lot out of their own pockets (this was another bone to pick- I paid for those upgrades out of my own pocket last year. Now they were going to install a new heater, take out the one I'd bought for city gas, and I'd be out $300). It reminded me of in junior high school, when Pepsi paid for new curtains for the school auditorium in exchange for letting them put Pepsi machines in the school. Only in this analogy, the Pepsi costs more than the coke did, and the students are stuck with the increase.

I got a permission form in the mail that I needed to sign stating that I no longer wanted city gas, and would switch to propane. I sat on it. When the building custodian came by asking when they could come into my apartment to switch the lines, I raised my concerns. What's really weird is that my place is just 15 minutes from the city center. Why on earth switch to propane if we don't need to? What's the point? And most importantly- exactly how much more is this going to cost me, anyway? No-one would give me a straight answer, and kept asking me to consult someone else. She told me someone would come see me and alleviate my concerns.

So some propane guys came to my place, waving the permission form. I think the owners needed all of them before they could switch the whole building away from city gas. I raised my concerns and got the usual "more power" spiel. Finally I just asked- "look, give this to me point blank. Measured objectively, how much does city gas cost, and how much will propane cost me?" They cadged for a bit, but eventually came out to an equation that showed propane cost 1300 yen a cubic meter. City Gas, they insisted, was weaker, and twice as much was required to do the same things. "Well okay," I replied. "So how much is 2 cubic meters?" They fumbled with the calculations for a bit and came out with 1100 yen.

I was still dubious that 2 really equaled one, and even if that was true, it was still going to run me almost 20% more by their own calculations. One of the propane guys lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and said, "look, just for you, we'll cut you a special deal, but you have to promise not to tell your neighbors, because they'll be paying more. Just for you- 468 yen a cubic meter."

I felt bad about the secrecy, but having the cost cut by two thirds seemed like a good deal. Reluctantly, I signed the permission...but couldn't help notice that the propane guy looked just a little too satisfied when I shook his hand. Who looks that smug when they just had their asking price slashed by two thirds?

I went back inside and messaged Nick, who has propane and was researching this very topic. "Hey Nick...how much is propane by cubic meter, and how does it compare to city gas?" The answer-

"City gas- about 199 yen a cubic meter.
Propane- It varies. 220-760, with an average of about 450"

They completely lied about the prices...and then "negotiated" down to a price that was STILL above average!!

I called the guy and told him the deal was off. They said they were coming back. I more or less called them complete liars and got the permission form back. They offered 370 yen this time. I said no deal. They insisted that was a great value, and that they couldn't possibly go any lower, but I had no reason to trust them at that point. They went back into their "more power" spiel, and my eyes glazed over. I told them to come back the following week, after I had time to do more research.

Someone posted the following comparison numbers on Yahoo Answers Japan-

12.9m3×2.2(都市ガスとプロパンのガス熱量の差)＝28.38m3(都市ガスの場合の使用量)
1092円(基本料金）＋28.38m3×199.12円＝6743円(西部ガスの場合)

福岡市のLPガス平均価格は、
1821円(基本料金)＋12.9m3×456.2円＝7705円です。
(他に設備代金として、平均220円～760円程度必要の場合あり。)

translation-

City Gas base price 1092 yen plus 199.12 per cubic meter. Used 28.38m3, for a total of 6743 yen for the month.

Propane base price 1821 yen plus 456 per m3 (average rate). Propane is 2,2 times as strong, so the equiv of 28.3m3 is just 12.9. Accounting for that, the price is 7705...on average.

So in other words, the 370 they were offering was a fair, if not spectacular deal. But the propane people had thrown away a lot of good will with that stunt, and I didn't want to take any chances. Once they had my permission to switch, the leverage I had with my existing city gas would be gone and I'd be stuck with the agreed rate. If there was a time to get it down, it was now.

When they came back, they asked me how much I wanted to pay. I said, "same as what I pay now- 200 yen." I finally got it down to 270, and an agreement that I wouldn't pay any "base price" at all.

To top it off, I found out from city gas that my rate is actually 238 per m3, with a base price of about 860, and that I currently use about 12 m3 a month. So even if the "more power" argument had no truth to it, I would be paying about the same. And if it is true, I'll wind up paying about half what I pay now. And I get an upgrade to my heater for free, which the servicemen are installing right now. It's no fun dealing with these people, but if you have to, get the facts and do it right.

Japan's Economy is Falling off a cliff.

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:04:00 +0000

We're talking about 400,000 jobs being cut soon, and the biggest shrink in GDP since WWII. This is going to get very, very ugly.

Japan beginning to encourage immigration

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 06:42:00 +0000

Good article here.

Japan has long used foreign immigrants, of which they have very few, as a scapegoat for their social ills. As Fukuda, the last of a long uninterrupted string of conservative prime ministers said, "There are people who say that if we accept more immigrants, crime will increase. Any sudden increase in immigrants causing social chaos [and] social unrest is a result that we must avoid by all means."

The Japanese media almost seems to promote the idea that foreigners bring crime with relish, trumpeting any crimes committed by them on the front pages, as if foreign crime is a rampant epidemic happening everywhere, ignoring the fact that by and large, immigrant are actually less likely to commit serious crimes than Japanese citizens. Not more. The same is true in America; for all the heat they get for the country's problems, the threat of immediate deportation makes for a pretty good deterrent.

As I've said before, this kind of attitude may have been safe when the population was growing, but with the declining birthrate, the country can not afford to maintain these prejudices. The population is scheduled to drop by a third in a generation. Japan doesn't even have enough workers to care for its increasing numbers of elderly, let alone fill its factories and companies. So its good to see that even the conservative government is beginning to wake up to the idea that they need to support immigrants and provide them with language training and help them assimilate into the population.

Keeping an entertainment franchise alive

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:30:00 +0000

I've been watching the Tina Fey sitcom 30 Rock, and been disappointed by how stale its seemed this year. In the first season, it was about a single female 30-something producer struggling to keep together an NBC comedy show, and who has sexual tension with her boss. 3 years later, its...about a single female 30-something producer struggling to keep together an NBC comedy show, and who has sexual tension with her boss.

That was fine before, so why not now? Well, in the beginning, the show was a pretty good loosely autobiographical take on the early career of Tina Fey, who was the head writer of Saturday Night Live. But the problem is that nothing ever progresses. My favorite episodes were when she had the boyfriend from Ohio, who was in the running for a big job at NBC. But soon he was gone, and everything was back to square one. That's okay to see once, but after a while it gets frustrating. Its obvious now that she's never going to find the right guy, or get a better job, or move on to movies, or have a baby, or become a star in her own right. At this point, I'd much rather see a show based on Fey's current life than her previous one, or at least a show that gradually moves in that general direction and keeps some kind of momentum. But that will never happen. Life is frozen in one spot, and after a few years it gets old.

This seems to be a problem with a lot of TV shows. It's almost as if they have a reset button at the end of every episode; no matter what happens in 30 minutes -a new job, a rival lover- by the end, everything is back to the way it was. The Seinfeld gang remained in their single early 30's for 10 years, hanging out in the same coffee shop talking about nothing. Bobby on King of the Hill comes close to reaching puberty, getting a girlfriend and coming out of his shell, but never quite seems to move beyond the sixth grade. Other shows change things with a reckless abandon that breaks the dynamics that made them interesting to watch in the first place. Soaps like Melrose Place have the characters coming and going, changing jobs and families and sleeping with one another in every mathematical combination.

The similarity with both types seems to be that neither seemed to have any plan of where to go beyond the first season. Its seems like the producers put all their energy into getting the pilot made and on the air, and none into what they would actually do with it if it was a success and lasted for more than a couple seasons. Perhaps the most famous recent example of this in recent times is Lost. JJ Abrams spiced up the pilot with all kinds of bizaare, unexplainable mysteries. When the show became a success, they had no choice but to invent new mysteries to keep the atmosphere the same. Trying to figure out the mysteries in Lost is like trying to chase a rainbow. No matter how far you follow it, you never quite reach it.

Its funny, because movies, which are usually one-shot deals and have much less incentive to worry about these things, seem to be figuring it out. Let me list off a few famous movie franchises-

Rocky, Rambo, Police Academy, The Karate Kid, Back to the Future, Scream

The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter

What's the difference between them? In the first case, you had a single movie that did really well and stood on its own. Then, they attempted to milk it by making more, with diminishing returns. In the case of some of them, you probably forgot that they were even supposed to be franchises, because history has forgotten all but the first. Occasionally a sequel will beat the original, but its up and down, and in the end, they all trail off into nothing. In the other, you have movies that had an overall arch that followed the characters for more than one movie. This is the reason star wars held up so well through the first two sequels, because the story had a momentum to it.

TV series, which are designed to last several years and for several hundred more hours of footage, have much more reason to think this way, not less. Obviously, the writers cant script out 3 years of shows before it even gets picked up. But they should at least have a general idea of where its going to go in advance, even if it takes years and years to get all the way there.

I think the best way to do it is to dole out small, incremental changes every other season or so, just enough to give the show fresh material to draw off and give the sense that the characters' lives are progressing, but not enough to break the dynamic that made the show a hit in the first place. The best example of this that I can think of right now is Entourage. Slowly, Eric is branching out on his own and finding other clients, Ari has started his own company, Johnny has gotten a part on a pretty successful TV show, and Turtle has a girlfriend. But the show still revolves around Vincent and the ups and downs of his career, which moves along at a satisfactory rate, but never quite takes him to a level of fame where he doesn't have to worry anymore.

Japan sees biggest population fall yet

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:25:00 +0000

Here at the Guardian.

Actually, Japan saw its lowest birth rate about 18 years ago, and its up this year by 0.02% or so. The difference now is that the large pre-war generation is aging and beginning to die off at a faster rate than babies are being born. Caring for the disproportionately large numbers of elderly is now big business in Japan. There are far more of them than there young people to support them or pay their social security. And it will only get worse as the boomers age.

Now, the advanced nations of the west have abysmal (if not quite this bad) birth-rates too. So why is it such a big deal in Japan?

Because unlike Japan, those countries have aggressive immigration policies. People from India with engineering or medical degrees can become Canadian citizens really easily. The province of Alberta goes to England and tries to entice people with medical backgrounds to emigrate.

Japan just won't hear that. While in theory its possible and legal, in practice almost no foreigners ever become Japanese citizens. The only immigrants they accept are phillipino hostesses for the nightclubs, and poor chinese to do the drudge work in factories for lower pay and worse conditions. A servant class. And to add insult to injury, they're all here on temporary work visas.

Japan desperately needs to replenish its labor force. This country's economy relies on skilled labor, but they have a serious shortage of engineers, and it will only get worse. They can:

A) Instead of blaming single women for not marrying and having kids (and "not fulfilling their duties as baby making machines", as one government official put it), they can invest in Japanese education and offer enormous benefits to couples that have children. The cost of raising kids in Japan is astronomical, and few want to do it in times of economic uncertainty. The government should be forking over something to the order of 2 or 3 million yen per child in benefits, tax breaks and baby bonuses. Sounds ridiculous, but when you consider each child is a future worker, its a pretty sensible investment.

B) Attract educated, skilled foreigners to move and work here, and grant them citizenship and a path into the society.

Something tells me neither option is forthcoming.

Timbaland steals a lot of samples

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:16:00 +0000

Check out this song Courtship Dating by the Toronto band, Crystal Castles, which has been getting critics excited this year. They use sounds from old 8-bit nintendo games, and give it an electro bounce and really spooky, grating vocals. It's really good-

Penguin Swimming Hole wrote,

Courtship Dating”...could be the beat to next year’s number one hip-hop song

Actually, Timbland is way ahead of her- he already sampled it last year. Check this out.

Looking into it, this isn't the first time he's done it, either. I discovered that one myself, but check these out from youtube-

Sampling an artist that works with video game sounds, like Crystal Castles-

Sampling Arabian music-

What I've heard is that he's very lazy about clearing his samples. He just steals the pieces of music and puts the tracks out, and if anyone complains, he lets them settle it with the label's legal department. It probably costs him more to do it this way than it would be to just get permission in the first place, but he earns so much he doesn't care.

People into the video game culture are outraged, but actually, this is pretty par for the course for hip hop, which builds almost every thing out of samples. The difference being, most producers stick to sampling soul records, James Brown or Parliament. Timbaland samples some really out there stuff. Its one thing to be James Brown, who already had a deal and a name, and have to deal with this stuff via lawyers. An aggravation, but you have the team to deal with it and see you get paid. But if you're just a guy doing music as a hobby, it must feel like a punch in the stomach to hear someone stealing your music and making half a million dollars off it.

Edit: just found a comment by someone who talked to Ethan Kath of Crystal Castles, who says that the Timbaland isn't a sample, but appears to be a re-creation of the riff using the same SIDstation synthesizer:

I spoke to Ethan about it and he said that neither one is sample.
He said it sounded to him like Timbaland listened to the CCs song and wanted to imitate that sort of sound.

Ethan uses a sample of ETHAN playing a SIDstation on his track.
Timbaland probably used a SIDstation to create the similar sound on his track.

(from Gameboy Genius)

Live forever- Aubrey De Grey

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:44:00 +0000

Merry Christmas! Its been over a month since I last posted. Have lots going on and lots to say, actually...just no time to write it. But its Christmas break now, so I'm posting on what's on my mind at the minute, which is Cambridge biologist Aubrey De Grey.

De Grey says he has tracked the main causes of aging -which can essentially be defined as the gradual failure and decay of the body after long periods of continuous metabolism- and gives his ideas on what can be done to prevent that decay from happening. In other words, he believes that through science people could live for hundreds, if not thousands of years, in a relatively "youthful" state without ever dying of old age. He offers a prize for anyone who can disprove his proposition.

The ideas are interesting, though I notice the documentary stops short of describing those cellular processes in any serious detail, opting instead to compare De Grey to Da Vinci, and focus on character and personality issues of the man. On his website, you need to become a member before he'll even venture to explain.

Even assuming the cellular arguments are sound, I can think of one thing that he can't stop from aging without some negative consequences- the mind.

"Maturation" and "aging" are two different things. Aging involves the death of cells, etc, which can be replaced. Maturation is another matter. Unlike your physical body, which is bound to have 4 limbs in adulthood regardless of what you do (and regardless of what little use they might be of in the alien terrain of a dramatically different future), the mind has some plasticity in its youth that allows it to adapt to novel circumstances. That's why kids around the world grow up to learn very different languages with ease. Its also why its nearly impossible for anyone through adolescence to learn a second language completely fluently, without the slightest trace of an accent, and why blind people can't comprehend what they "see" if surgery corrects their eyes some time in adulthood. You only have a window of time in childhood to master these tasks, when your mind is still new and malleable.

But once that development is complete, or in its later stages, it is difficult to go back. As an analogy, imagine that a young mind is like a pan of wet clay, and that the pattern required to adapt to life in the US resembles a starfish.

Now imagine that a person is transported back to ancient Mongolia and must now live under Genghis Kahn or something. The pattern required to deal with that requires a seahorse. But now what option do you have to change? Its not just a matter of health. Neural Network models that have no issues with decaying cells have the same problem. Early in their life they can adapt to accommodate a new operation. But as time goes on they reach a point of no return.

In a way, that's in line with what he's saying- you can't reverse aging, just slow/stop it. But you never know when circumstances will change in such a way that the mind could need to change. A brain that appears to be the picture of youth and eternal resilience can encounter great difficulties as the terrain changes. In a way that a young, still immature brain will not. That's why innovations come with youth and future generations. Because their minds have the flexibility to adapt to these new circumstances, and view the new terrain in a fresh light.

There are some brilliant older people that still jump on the latest technology and buy and understand the marvels of computers and iphones. But they are few and far between. That kind of flexibility is a testament to their great intelligence, which most people do not have, regardless of what you could do to them to cease aging. And even in these cases, using novel technology is a rather trivial, superficial change in the times. It would pale to the changes in circumstances that a thousand years would produce. Sure you could live forever. But remember- you may not be able to live the way you're accustomed to. You may have to speak a different language and live by very different social mores. If the great men of the 1830's (to say nothing of the 1200's, or 300 BC's) were all still alive, even frozen at a youthful 40, they would still hold the traditions, mannerisms and convictions of the past. And they would be incredibly tiresome bores.

People living in Japan, marveling at the snail-like pace of its politics- You think its difficult for things to progress and change in Japan now? Just imagine if the emperor-worshiping crowd that got japan into WWII were all still alive, and still running the show (and given Japan's respect for the elderly, they all still would be). Good lord.

The Japanese economy is now officially in recession

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:50:00 +0000

It's official.

My Japanese teacher applied to teach English at my university. We thought she had a shot, but the college was inundated with resumes, over 100. Even the lousiest part time jobs in town get far more applicants than they can possibly accommodate.

Glad I got full time work before this kicked it. It'll be long, it'll be nasty, and it'll be worldwide.

How to make a home theater in Japan on a budget

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:12:00 +0000

So you're in Japan teaching English, and making do with hand-me-down furniture and appliances from the last teacher. You really wish you could get a big screen TV, but they cost a fortune, and besides, you may not even be in the country for more than a year, and you'd just have to give it away anyway. What to do?

One thing I've learned about technology in the past few years is that a little extra money goes a long way. The bicycle is a good example. The standard, gearless model in Japan is 10,000 yen, or 100 dollars. If you go up to 350-500, you can see enormous improvements, including front wheel suspension, gears, and a much lighter weight. These additions improve your bike by 100%. The next step up is to over 100,000 yen or $1000, where you can get a lighter frame and disc breaks...which are nice, but don't add anywhere near as much value relatively when you consider that the price just doubled. Finally, when you double the price again to over 200,000 yen or $2000, you find yourself reduced to miniscule improvements, like using a titanium alloy to reduce the weight by an extra 5% or so.

The moral is that while the very best thing may cost a heap of money, the next best thing, or even merely the next next best thing, delivers nearly as much quality for a fraction of the price. And the law applies to home theater as much as anything else.

So here's what you do-

1. Buy this Acer DLP projector currently on sale at Yodobashi camera for 45,000 yen, or about $450. Despite its powerful 2000 lumen, 4000-hour bulb, Its small, lightweight, portable, and comes with a carrying case, so you can take it over to a friend's place to watch a movie or play some video games, and of course, take it home with you if you leave. It's designed for use with computers to give power point presentations and the like, but its about as good as you could possibly need it, and delivers a very crisp and bright picture up to 300", even in the middle of the day. When I show people pictures of the image they can't even tell its a projection not a normal television. You can use an old VCR, which all have TV tuners, to see standard TV. And you can hook it up to your laptop and use it as a separate monitor. You can watch The Daily Show via the free online stream on the big screen, and keep on using the original screen to surf the net, like I'm doing in the photo above. In this photo the screen is 60" wide, with the picture taken on the other side of the room, about 3 meters away. The picture looks grainy due to the quality of the net stream, but TV and DVDs look much better.

If you go online, you'll see home theater aficionados turning their noses up at this because its not every bit as good as 10,000 dollar plasma TVs that give a picture the same size, or high-end, 130,000 to 300,000 yen projectors specifically designed for 1080p HDTV. But the resolution rate is still well beyond what a standard TV signal or DVD requires, and will display all those shows you download with as high a resolution as you can possibly see them in. It can show HDTV too, though scaled down. If you upgrade a step to the 65,000 yen model, you can get a resolution rate very close to the HDTV format American broadcasters use for shows like Lost and 24.

Remember, just 6 or 7 years ago, projectors with far worse specs were considered near top of the line, and sold for $4000 dollars. Today, when the same thing is twice as bright with 5 times the contrast for nearly a tenth the price, the Home theater critics that review this projector turn their nose up at it a bit for not being every bit as good as the brand new $5000-10,000 systems, but concede that, "for someone who just wants a projector to invite people over to see the odd DVD or sports game, this should certainly be adequate." Be that guy! Use the extra 950,000 yen you save to spend time out of your darkened TV room enjoying Japan.

2. While you're down in the basement computer section of Yodobashi Camera, pick up a computer speaker system that has tweeters and a subwoofer for around 3000 yen. Again, not as good as a home stereo system for 50,000 yen plus. But very good for the money.

3. Need a screen? Most cost 10,000-50,000 yen, all for what essentially amounts to an expanse of flat white material. To hell with that- Go to an art supply store or bookstore and get some sheets of white A3 poster paper. Duct-tape about 8 sheets together, keeping the edges as tight together as possible. Now reverse sheets to the clean side, and thumbtack it to the wall. If you squint when the color on the screen is white, you may be able to detect thin lines between the sheets. Other than that its essentially no different from a commercial screen.

4. Like I said, the screen is surprisingly bright even in the day (we're watching it now), but to get full quality, go to Muji Ryushi . This store is getting popular overseas and considered a stylish, Japanese answer to Ikea. But don't be fooled by the appearance- it can be surprisingly cheap. You can pick up some expensive-looking curtains that block 99.7% of all sunlight (literally, according to the specs) for just 1300 yen each.

And that's it. Enjoy!

Taking the train

jeffjrstewart@gmail.com (jeffjrstewart) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:29:00 +0000

Public transport is big in Japan. The cities are packed too deep for cars to be of much use. But the population is very centralized and subways and trains are extremely efficient and run like clockwork. Everyone uses them.

Every Monday I take the rush hour morning express train to Kurume. They only run every half hour (as opposed to every 5-10 minutes for local), so the lines for them build up. Its a long trip difficult to get a seat.

On the platform, there are markers to show where to stand and wait. A sign by the platform instructs people to line up in 2 rows. And 90% of the time, that's what everyone does. But sometimes I go in the morning, and there's just a single line, sprawling snake-like down the platform. Why?

Apparently, early on, just one person was standing there. Another person came along, and instead of standing beside them to form the second row like they're supposed to and like everyone usually does, they stand behind them. I have no idea why.

So then a third person comes along. They know that they're supposed to form a second row, but that would mean cutting in front of person two. This being Japan and everyone being extremely considerate, person 3 gets behind them. And so it continues single file, the grip of shame increasing with every new person added to the line. If people feel bad about cutting in front of one person, think how bad it is cutting in front of five.

Until of course, I the foreigner come along and start the second row like the sign says to. And immediately, half the people in the long line move behind me. Nobody wanted to be the first to do it, but if someone initiates, the dam breaks and everyone else does it too.

Being the initiator can incite bad behavior in others, too. Sometimes I park my bicycle in a zone downtown where no other bikes are. When I get back from shopping my own is surrounded by ten others.