(identity 'myron)

Sun, 30 Nov 2003

Despair.com [/misc]

Checking out calendars for the new year and of course found myself going to despair.com, everybody's favourite demotivator. The calendar has some goodies this year, though: "Change: It's a short trip from riding the waves of change to being torn apart by the jaws of defeat." Cute photo for that one. Also, "Discovery: A company that will go to the ends of the earth for its people will find it can hire them for about 10% of the cost of Americans."

// posted at 21:16. permalink   comments

Sat, 29 Nov 2003

Japanese [/Japan]

Just some miscellaneous thoughts I've been having about the Japanese language lately....

Japanese seems particularly well suited for describing feelings and emotions. One particular construct does both, though, which I don't think occurs in common conversational English. The word is 感じ / kanji, which means something like feeling or sensation, but seems to simply capture everything felt at at particular moment whether sensory, emotional or whatnot. As an example, after having spent 15 months working in co-op, returning to school will be a sensation I haven't experienced in a long time, so I could say something like "久しぶり、こんな感じ" (it's been a long time, this feeling). In English, I'd probably say, "It's been a while", or "It's been so long since I've been in school". Notice, though, that the focus has changed towards highlighting the action rather than the feeling, as in the Japanese version. The word can also be used in a wide range of cases, anywhere from the mundane, like the way I eat, to very fine-graned situations, like describing the particular feelings I have after an exact sequence of events and comparing them with present feelings. Point is, the versatility of this generic feeling word just doesn't seem to exist in English.

However, this might not be so much an issue of language as it is of culture--it's possible that we never developed a commonly use word like 感じ simply because we don't talk about feelings as often as the Japanese do.

This cultural aspect comes into play again when it comes to cursing. Given that conflict is generally avoided and much more subtle in Japanese, there just aren't many strong swear words, particularly ones that would match up to the strength of, say, motherf*cker. As an amusing side-note, it seems animal names are used sometimes as invective in manga, such as calling someone a たこ / tako, or an octopus.

One last thought on the whole language differences thing is that Japanese can easily be used for obfuscation through vagueness. I can't really give specific examples, but this leads to very easy hand-waving, hyperbole, escaping direct conflict, and "mushy talk". The latter being obvious in a particular kind of engrish like "Let's be happy and enjoy this choco delicacy" on a candy wrapper or something. This occurs because of direct translation attempts of some vague sentence of well-meaning in Japanese to English, where such vagueness implies more that you haven't sorted out your thoughts well enough yet, rather than a general sense of good will.

All in all, Japanese is very interesting to learn, likely because the cultural gap is wide enough that what's considered natural to speak of in Japanese is very different from the norm in English. Likewise the large gap between the linguistic families of both languages makes for a lot of differences in vocabulary and constructs like 感じ. In the end, though, words are only what we come up with to divide and name the things we encounter in reality so that we can manipulate them in our heads. Words are second to the things they describe. And nowhere is this more apparent than in another language where they chose to divide the ideas differently, drawing the boundaries between ideas in different places than we did, as in the generic feeling-word 感じ, or the honorific and polite speech of Japanese.

*shrug* just a thought....

// posted at 19:49. permalink   comments

Here comes the sharia! [/World]

Haven't seen much about this in the mainstream news, but apparently Canadian courts are preparing to allow civil cases to be decided under sharia, Islamic law. Interesting development, but the story linked above prematurely rings alarm bells saying that this will "pav[e] the way to one day administering criminal sentences, such as stoning women caught in adultery."

Thankfully, Eugene Volokh debunks that statement here, with some wider discussion here.

// posted at 03:08. permalink   comments

Wed, 26 Nov 2003

BSOD [/tech]

Just reading over an older ask slashdot story about public bsod sightings, and someone posted a link to the famous Bill Gates video where a bsod occurred during a presentation for Windows 98. I have distant memories of laughing my head off at this with a friend in high school while we experimented with Linux and later, FreeBSD. Anyhoo, I tried searching this video out once or twice before, but couldn't find it, and now here it is. So if you haven't seen it, enjoy.

Update: Someone also posted a link to another famous video, an old Apple ad parodying the whole windows bsod thing. It's the one where some guy yells, "Buy a Mac!"

// posted at 18:32. permalink   comments

Tue, 25 Nov 2003

WikiWiki mania [/tech]

You probably all know I'm an avid wikipedia fan, so I hunted down some other wiki projects....

• wikiquote sister project to wikipedia, for quotes.
• wikitravel a travel guide written in wiki.
• disinfopedia a wiki about media disinformation and propaganda, mostly in the US. interesting stuff.
• javapedia wiki for all things java.
• infoAnarchy wiki lots of miscellaneous info about file sharing, copyright, internet, etc

Anyhow, they're all pretty cool from what I can tell, especially the disinformation one. Check 'em out.

// posted at 20:29. permalink   comments

Mon, 24 Nov 2003

Tokyo pics reprise [/personal]

More pics from last month's trip to Tokyo taken from Awa Ken's camera. That's four more for a grand total of 10 photos from that weekend. So many eh?

In other news, I've been procrastinating all weekend from writing a stupid report for work. Feels like school all over again. It's now 23.10, night before the first draft is due. Am I working on it yet? No I'm blogging. *click* BANG! That's the sound of Myron shooting himself in the foot.

// posted at 06:12. permalink   comments

Thu, 20 Nov 2003

Istanbul [/World]

Not gonna comment on this one, because someone else has done it quite well already.

// posted at 17:23. permalink   comments

Wed, 19 Nov 2003

Japanese Emoticons [/Japan]

Found a list of Japanese emoticons. The 2-byte ones are a little strange to look at though, cause they contain non-ascii characters. Example from the page: "Expressing defeat" is parens - parens - set intersection symbol - underscore - set intersection symbol - semi-colon - parens - capital pee. Take a look for yourself, the ninja one's even more interesting.

// posted at 16:46. permalink   comments

Tue, 18 Nov 2003

Seething with rage [/tech]

I'm about to go homicidal right now, as the problems I've been running into for the past few days have all been because another person's code is linked against an older version of a library while mine is using a newer one. I couldn't see this because I'm building my project as a dll, and the other guy's project simply calls my functions. So of course when his dll loads my dll, the common library that both link against presents a problem as mine calls newer, seemingly non-existant functions.

The stupidest thing is that the dll is being loaded as a plugin at runtime through a third party closed-source app whose debugging messages amount to, "Failed to load x.dll", which totally hides the fact that there's a dll version mismatch.

So no one can be blamed for this directly but I'd say it's 10% my fault for not thinking of this earlier, 20% the 3rd party's fault for not making any decent debugging facilities available, 70% my stupid fscking coworker who never fscking updates his code with the rest of the fscking group and is too fscking stupid to tell me anything when I ask him if there's anything fscking special about his fscking crappy-ass code. I guess I should take more blame for even asking him or trusting his code at all. Stupid me.

// posted at 17:00. permalink   comments

ARGH [/tech]

Sometimes programming just simply sucks. After 3 days of battling with a bug that's almost impossible to pin down, I'm almost ready to change professions. I'm not all that experienced quite yet, but I'm quite sure of the following:

• Program with people you trust. Everyone from third party outsourcers (if you use them) to the person right beside you to the people above you. The sucky code of today is the code you'll be staring at on the screen, banging your head against the monitor tomorrow. And crappy boses too removed from technical aspects are useless.
• Do not trust people who do not evaluate their options before developing on Windows, especially those that go straight for Visual C++. Again, can't trust 'em, don't program with them. Remove them with cold war social tactics or remove yourself and find another job.
• Avoid working with closed source libraries/projects/products. If your project depends on something and it's closed source, you're completely at the mercy of some impersonal company or anonymous programmer if you run into problems with their code.

I'm sure there's more but I'm too annoyed at the moment to think of them.

// posted at 03:19. permalink   comments

Mon, 17 Nov 2003

Myron vs the network admins [/tech]

So for whatever reason, the network admins decided to fiddle around with the proxy here at work, denying ssh access through the http proxy. Mind-boggling considering that ssh is a pretty useful tool with fairly legitimate uses. Anyway, with a little googling and creativity, I've got the connection up again and some nifty tricks up my sleeve should I ever end up in another cubicle job with a near-nazi proxy policy. IMO, proxies are for security and efficiency reasons, not for denying access to resources. Shame on those who think otherwise.

In case you're wondering, it turns out any proxy that enables ssl connections is forced to open a tunnel through the proxy so long as you are, or are pretending to be doing an ssl session. There's a nice program written for it for convenience called ProxyTunnel. The programmer also wrote up a nice paper that explains how it works. I ended up rolling my own solution just to fix some other problems I've had dealing with the damned proxy.

Meh. Myron 1, admins 0.

// posted at 16:12. permalink   comments

Thu, 13 Nov 2003

Pork [/Japan]

Mike, of "see you the matrix" fame, has pointed out a really neat economics blog/site at mises.org. It's an interesting site for how completely exhaustive their articles seem to be on the topics they cover. And so, the topic of choice today? *drum-roll* Japan's economy. And yes, I tend to blog about the bad sides of Japan a lot, but this time, it ain't me, it's Mike who brought this up.

Explaining Japan's Recession. I'll admit to not having read the full article yet and skipping to the interesting part it alludes to in the intro: the explanation according to Austrian economic theory.

If the economy is operating on its production possibilities frontier, consumers can consume more and invest less, or invest more and consume less, in the short run. The economy was both consuming and investing more in the late 1980s because the central bank was distorting the interest-rate price signals from consumers to producers. This can only be sustained in the short run while the central bank pursues ever increasing rates of monetary inflation. Once the monetary inflation slows or contracts, the boom abruptly ends and a recession begins. During the recession, the boom's malinvestments are liquidated and consumer time preferences are restored to the structure of production. This began to happen in Japan in 1990. When the central bank stopped the monetary expansion, the stock market dropped, investment dropped, and recession followed--as Austrian business cycle theory predicts.

Now, if you're still with me and haven't run off at the sight of economic terms like PPF, the article continues the analysis and even drops an almost Taoist line, "In Austrian theory, the contraction is necessary to restore balance to the real economy--the preceding expansion is the problem." Continuing on:

In Austrian theory, the recession is necessary, and once it sets in and bad investments are liquidated, the economy will self-correct. After 10 years, there are still no signs of economic correction. Austrian theory recognizes that time is required for economic self-correction but that the correction can only occur if the market process is allowed to work. [...] Japan's government has done everything but leave the economy alone and allow self-correction.

The article then goes on to list the interventionist policies of the Japanese government bailing out companies and propping up an inflated construction industry, that in turn helps assure the LDP's continued political power. The latter, I believe, is exactly what vocal Diet member Tanaka Makiko refers to when she repeatedly says that current politics of the LDP are dragged down by private concerns, and thus they have to be ousted from power (story). Continuing with the economics side of things:

[T]here is one thing the government can do positively [during a depression], however: it can drastically lower its relative role in the economy, slashing its own expenditures and taxes.

And then once more, it goes on to show how the government is doing almost the opposite of exactly that. A good article for a sample of this is "Waste Puts Japan on Road to Nowhere", an article that describes government spending on "roads to nowhere and ghost-town airports". The best? Some of the quotes by the Japanese citizens: "It is among the most stunning examples of pork ever in Japan," said Naoki Inose, head of a committee studying the privatization of Japan's four road-related public corporations.

// posted at 20:12. permalink   comments

Tue, 11 Nov 2003

UVic [/misc]

Ah, another year, another university ranking from Maclean's. Suck it, SFU.

// posted at 17:42. permalink   comments

Mon, 10 Nov 2003

Stuff happening around the world [/World]

Just felt like posting some interesting stuff that seems to be happening in the world:

• Paul Bremer says that attacks in Iraq will get worse unless intelligence improves, as several hundred terrorists have slipped through the borders from neighbouring contries. (link)
• Saudis expect another attack at any time and have sent troops into Mecca. (IMO, it makes no sense if fundamentalists attacked the holiest city in Islam. But ok, anything can happen I guess.... link)
• Survivors of the massacre in Srebrenica are suing the UN and the Netherlands for $850 million for failing to protect the muslim enclave. (link)
• Bush's public image is reputedly falling as casualties rise in Iraq. (link)

Oh, it's a little late, but Japan's general election, as expected, came out in favour of Koizumi, but saw a major shift in seats over to the Democratic Party (link). Analysts say this is the first step towards a full two-party system, and that a strengthened opposition might cause trouble for plans to send SDF troops to Iraq.

// posted at 16:45. permalink   comments

Sun, 09 Nov 2003

Iraq pt 2 [/World]

Case for war confected, say top US officials. Hmm.

// posted at 22:09. permalink   comments

Wed, 05 Nov 2003

SVO [/misc]

I've been asked a few times here about some aspects of English grammar, which I don't really think is ever formally taught to native speakers (do you know what the past perfect tense is off the top of your head?)... and now I've been prompted into looking into things a little deeper. Turns out we have twelve verb tenses with 6 of them being pseudo-tenses, more like aspects, that are continuous.

The interesting part of English grammar is, I think, word order. In English, it's probably the most important thing to get right in order to sound natural and convey the correct meaning. There's the famous example of, "What are you doing fucking in my bed," and, "What are you fucking doing in my bed". And yet at the same time, order can often be quite fluid. Normally we use Subject-Verb-Object, but meaning isn't lost if you flip to another order say, a la Yoda. In fact, when speaking informally to one of my friends, Mike, I've noticed we both routinely flip the order and use the wrong tense either for comic effect or just to relieve the monotony. Example: "See you the matrix?" (Have you seen the matrix yet?)

It's also not impossible to use the other orders listed on the wikipedia article, although it works better if you're posing a question, and the order is more fluid by nature. Ex:

• Verb-Subject-Object: "Seen you yet the matrix?"
• Verb-Object, Subject: "Seen the matrix yet, you?" (this is cheating though, cause you becomes vocative). Much more natural using a proper name: "Seen the matrix yet, Mike?"
• Object-Subject-Verb: "The matrix, [have] you seen it yet?" (a bit contrived, but not impossible in spoken English, especially between me and Mike)
• Object-Verb-Subject: "The matrix, seen you yet?" (again, contrived and unnatural, but not totally impossible). This one's also special because it's the transformation used in the famous meme, "In Soviet Russia..." Eg, "In Soviet Russia, car drives you!" of Family Guy fame.

Curiously, at the moment I can't think of any way to use the typical Japanese word order, Subject-Object-Verb. "You, the matrix, seen yet?" is sorta pushing it in terms of naturalness.... Also, it's interesting to note that Mike's native language, Polish, uses noun declensions which frees up the word order, and lets you fluidly rearrange things at will to change emphasis. :P

// posted at 17:33. permalink   comments

Matrix Revolutions [/misc]

Looks like the venerable rottentomatoes.com has got the review count at about 38% for Matrix Revolutions. The last movie earned a generous (imo) 78%, and already had critics rather undecided about the direction the trilogy was heading. The latest addition seems to have only worsened the effect, polarizing the opinions to frank, "it sucks", and high praise like "visual poetry".

However it has turned out, don't spoil it for me--I'm seeing it next month. :P

// posted at 17:07. permalink   comments

City of Angels [/personal]

Just watched City of Angels. I gotta say, the ending was uncalled for. I shoulda pulled a Phoebe and turned it off before it ended. Thankfully I've got the original movie it's based on and apparently that has a happy ending.

I'm a sap, eh?

// posted at 05:02. permalink   comments

Mon, 03 Nov 2003

ASCII art [/misc]

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// posted at 22:46. permalink   comments

Hmm [/Japan]

Looks like that son of a bitch is at it again.

Korean people "chose" to be annexed to Japan. (link 1, link 2, link 3)

The Chinese are ignorant, so they are overjoyed. That spacecraft was an outdated one. If Japan wanted to do it, we could do it in one year. (link)

How is this moron governor of Tokyo? *cough* What's the point of a democracy if the people can't stand up to keep their government in check? *cough*

General elections are approaching here too. Financial Times editorial has an interesting take on it: oust the LDP, empower the opposition--democratize Japan.

// posted at 18:30. permalink   comments

Sun, 02 Nov 2003

Japan Tobacco [/Japan]

Japan out of touch on tobacco. A few weeks ago, the Japanese courts ruled against a lawsuit filed by six smokers seeking compensation from Japan Tobacco for contracting cancer and emphesyma. While it sounds ludicrous that people should sue for falling to their own vices, the ruling is just as silly as the suit given that claims of nicotine being highly addictive were denied: "Nicotine is addictive, but it is not strong enough to override the free will of each smoker," Presiding Judge Asaka said. From the link above:

The Japan Times itself referred to "mounting scientific evidence" that smoking harms health. There is "mounting" evidence that smoking is harmful only in the same sense that there is "mounting" evidence that the world is round.

Another Japan Times article points out that "[f]oreign cigarette makers simply hook 'em young and leave it at that. JT wants to help its customers smoke throughout their lives, but the customers have to be responsible." Indeed. Well, in need of moral guidance? Talk to your local tobacco company, surely they're full of it.

Now, you might be thinking, what's my point? Every tobacco company denies adverse effects on health, big deal. No, not quite, because most tobacco companies aren't two-thirds owned by the government. Even Yahoo! Finance's company profile provides a tongue-in-cheek description of JT:

Japan Tobacco has plenty to puff about. It controls more than 70% of the cigarette market in a country where half the men smoke and warning labels suggest, "There's a risk of damage to your health, so let's be careful not to smoke too much." A state monopoly until 1985, Japan Tobacco is two-thirds owned by the Japanese Finance Ministry.

World's third largest tobacco company, controlled essentially by a country's government. The Finance Ministry, no less. IMO, they shoulda put it under the control of the Health Ministry, cause that would make even more sense. Well, once again, kudos to the government of Japan.

// posted at 17:56. permalink   comments

Sat, 01 Nov 2003

Japan and its Gaijin [/Japan]

I've stumbled on a veritable bonanza of essays and articles on living in Japan as a gaijin here, the personal website of an American who actually became a citizen of Japan and gave up his American citizenship.

So far, digging through the hundreds of bits and pieces he's written, a lot of it confirms things I've observed. Everything from issues of nationality and discrimination to a hilarious parable of American and Japanese corporate culture which really hits the nail right on the head.

This stuff is likely not as interesting to you as it is to me, but there's some great writing in there if you really dig through it. The man seems to be an admirable activist fighting for social justice and equality, especially relating to the treatment of foreigners here. And he's in it for the long haul too--there's no returning home now that he's given up his American citizenship.

In other news, I've discovered my local supermarket carries ready-made beef tataki (raw beef slices, seared at the edges). So far it's the one thing I like even more than sashimi. Better keep that health insurance card ready, eh? :P

// posted at 20:57. permalink   comments