Post Computex Photo gallery. Part 1 – Gear

There are a lot of candidates for the center of the world’s IT industry: Cupertino, Redmond, Palo Alto, Tokyo, Seoul, – but these days it seems to be Taipei.

The definitive expression here is DIY, widely known in English speaking countries as an acronym for Do It Yourself, but here in Taiwan adopted as a uniquely specific lexical item referring just to the homebrew computer industry. If you walk into any of the many, many, many expansive computer stores in Taipei you will be overwhelmed by a selection of parts unavaliable at all but the rarest of US computer stores, and more interesting struck by the odd lack of brand name desktop systems.

“Here in Taiwan, if you can’t make your own PC you’re not a man,” I was told earlier today by a Taiwanese guy named Kevin. This is a sentiment that I can imagine evoking a kind of cultural jealousy in hardware geeks throughout the entire planet.

This little number from Foxconn has the distinction of being one of the coolest and best looking PC case designs I have seen. They also have the fine distinction of having provided one of the exhibitor ID tags that was used to sneak me into the show.

On Sunday I had the pleasure of attending Computex, Taiwan’s trademark computer and technology expo, the largest in Asia and the second largest of its type in the world after Hannover, Germany.

Of course I took a number of photos, and here is a sample of them. I have divided photos into two parts: Gear and Girls, since as everyone knows the motivation for attendance at these tech industry shows is based almost equally on both of those things.


Some of the literally hundreds of case designs on display.


This is exactly what we’ve all wanted for all these years! Screw laptops, next time I buy a portable I want something that looks like Q cobbled it together.


This isn’t an ipod shuffle, but an unreleased prototype product of the socalled iVogue mp3 player line from Jetway. They estimated a July release date, but the website doesn’t even have a listing for these products yet, much less pricing information.


Easily the most impressive piece of actual new technology I saw at the show. This is an experimental prototype CPU cooling system, from Korean manufacturer KM Korea. The demo had a chip of some kind running at about 50 celsius, quite hot to the touch. You press the button and it activates their cooling device, and the heat instantly drains away from the chip surface, cooling it to about 15 celsius in only a couple of seconds. I have no idea how it works, and where the heat is being dissipated to. Perhaps the table concealed some kind of wormhole, through which the heat is sent into whatever dark dimension in which Cthulhu waits.

A horse is a horse of course of course

Japan may have a reputation for bizarre incidents of perversion, but they certainly have no monopoly on it.

I’m sure this has been reported all over the US political blogs that I have no interest whatsoever in following. I found the most amazing post on the blog News Hounds (slogan “We watch FOX so you don’t have to.”).

Last night, anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley was a guest on The Alan Colmes Show, a FOX News radio program. The topic was an interesting one – whether or not an internet service provider should allow Horsley to post the names of abortion doctors on his website. Horsley does that as a way of targeting them and one doctor has been killed. In the course of the interview, however, Colmes asked Horsley about his background, including a statement that he had admitted to engaging in homosexual and bestiality sex.

At first, Horsley laughed and said, “Just because it’s printed in the media, people jump to believe it.”

“Is it true?” Colmes asked.

“Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I…”

AC: “You had sex with animals?”

NH: “Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.”

AC: “I’m not so sure that that is so.”

NH: “You didn’t grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?”

AC: “Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?”

NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality… Welcome to domestic life on the farm…”

Colmes said he thought there were a lot of people in the audience who grew up on farms, are living on farms now, raising kids on farms and “and I don’t think they are dating Elsie right now. You know what I’m saying?”

Horsley said, “You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You’re naive. You know better than that… If it’s warm and it’s damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it.”

At first I wasn’t even convinced that this was a real interview- it was just too absurd, but then I heard it for myself. Thanks to Matt for extracting this audio clip from the bowels of the Fox News website.

Clicking on the link may not work, so select “save link as” or “save target as” depending on your browser.
Horsley the horse lover.

I don’t want my bandwidth allowance for the month being sucked up, so if any heavily trafficked sites want to spread this clip, please mirror it yourself instead of downloading it from this tiny blog.

A summary of Japan’s Superfree incident, now concluded with the former leader’s conviction (part 1)

Two days ago it was reported that an appeal by former Superfree leader Shinichiro Wada has been rejected, and his previously imposed 14-year sentence for gang rape will be upheld. This case first broke in 2003, while I was in Japan, and was easily one of the most significant news stories of the entire time I was in Japan. As in the media worldwide, there is a certain voyeuristic pleasure taken in reporting horrible crimes, in this case a multi-year campaign of highly organized gang rape carried out by members of a social club named Superfree under the personal direction of their leader Shinichiro Wada, but even for this case received an unusual amount of media attention. There are some interesting reasons why I think this case became such a public spectacle, but before discussing that it is important to summarize the grimly fascinating details of the entire long incident.

Superfree was a very unusual difficult to catagorize organization. In many ways it reminds us of the worst stereotypes of the American college fraternity, and in other ways of both a cult and a pyramid scheme. Its only existence as a legal organization was as a student organization at Waseda University, which was used by Wada as a front for all of his various activities. Superfree began as a Waseda organization, but eventually contained affiliate members at other prestigious universities throughout Japan. Despite this official existence as a Waseda University organization, it was really the personal domain of its leader Shinichiro Wada, who seems to me a classic egomaniac.

Wada first enrolled in Tokyo’s Chuo University in 1993, but aspiring to attend the more prestigious Waseda University, continued to study for that school’s entrance exam for a year while being a Chuo student. He was finally expelled from Waseda after his arrest in 2003. Wada, in his late 20s, was himself only just barely a student at Waseda, nominally enrolled in whatever part time non degree classes required the least amount of effort to keep his Waseda ID and continue to use the school ‘circle’ to recruit new members to the real Superfree club, which was organized outside of the school. When Wada was expelled from university, official recognition of the club was also withdrawn, but by then it had a life of its own.

Superfree’s primary activity was organizing parties in Tokyo nightclubs, particularly in the nightlife heavy Roppongi district. Wada was the primary organizer. He would distribute tickets to his trusted friends and high ranking members, who would pass the tickets on to their own network of lower level cronies and affiliate members, generally much younger university students, who looked upon the older Superfree members with a kind of stupid awe. The tickets were ultimately sold to the public, primarily other university students. With a long history of throwing such parties behind them, demand for Superfree entrance was high and they had no trouble making a significant profit on their events, the bulk of which filtered back up to Wada. He was reported to have made 10 million yen (currently the equivalent of about US$100,000) per year, easily enough to support a very comfortable single lifestyle, even in Tokyo.

Profit was not the only goal however; while money was key, the other goal was to attract as many attractive, young, and most importantly impressionable and naive, women as possible to the parties. This was hardly a difficult feat. Many young women in Japan, particularly those who were only able to attend lesser quality universities, are easily impressed by the name of a a top-rank university such as Waseda. The tenuous, yet official connection to Waseda was key to their ability to recruit vulnerable girls.

A Japan Times article from April of last year explained the Super Free system in these words.

Judge Sugiyama said that when Wada, a Waseda University student, became Super Free leader in 1995, a hierarchy was established that classified members as “first string,” “reserves” or “boys.” Each level was allotted quotas for selling tickets to parties organized by the group.

Wada is believed to have made more than 10 million yen a year from ticket sales. The parties sometimes drew more than 1,000 people.

Judge Sugiyama said it was under this power structure that group members began to routinely gang-rape young women attending their parties. The judge alleged that Wada encouraged members to rape with comments such as “gang rape creates solidarity among members” and “those who do not participate in gang rapes are not members.”

At the Superfree events the club members would scout out likely targets, and invite them to more private after-parties, usually held at a kind of Japanese pub known as an izakaya. As the organizers of the event, they were able to easily find someone willing to join them later on. At the afterparty they would give the girls alcoholic drinks until they “were no longer able to resist” and then have sex with them, sometimes individually, sometimes in a group. There were reports of Superfree gangrapes taking place inside izakaya, outdoors on stairwells or alleys, in hotels, and in the home of the group’s leader, Wada-and possibly the homes of other members as well. There were also reports that in some cases where alcohol was not enough, drugs were used to render the girls unconcious.

That’s enough for tonight. Tomorrow or the day after I will write the second half of this piece, summarizing the criminal cases brought against specific members of Superfree, culminating in last week’s final appeal by Shinichiro Wada himself.

Pagishikinda! Pagishikinda!

Outpost Gallifrey reports:

“Pagishikinda! Pagishikinda! Now the Daleks take on Doctor Who in Korea. In the first deal of its kind, BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, has concluded a contract with Korea’s biggest public television station, KBS, for the smash hit BBC One series, Doctor Who.

This is the first time a UK drama series has been sold to a Korean public station, and KBS will launch Doctor Who on KBS 2 in a primetime, two-hour slot on Sunday 5 June. Viewers will be introduced to ‘Dacter Who’ (Doctor Who), his companion Rose, and enemy, the Daleks, who blast, ‘Pagishikinda!’ (‘Exterminate!’). KBS will broadcast two episodes per week, and the series will be dubbed for the Korean audience.

Russell T. Davies, writer and executive producer of Doctor Who said, ‘The Doctor has travelled far and wide and knows no boundary and now the programme is doing much the same! We are delighted that Korea has embraced this wonderful adventure.’

Jungwon Lee, Executive Director, KBS Media, said: ‘We are very excited to launch Doctor Who on our network. For the first time in a primetime weekend slot, we are bringing the latest hit BBC drama to our Korean audience and anticipate a great reaction from all age groups.’

Linfield Ng, Korea and Taiwan Territory Manager, BBC Worldwide (Asia) added: ‘We are delighted that one of Asia’s largest public broadcasters, KBS, is supporting one of the most recognised BBC brands. We thank KBS for being so ambitious in launching Doctor Who in such a great time slot.'”

Doctor Who has been my favorite television program since I was about eight years old, and I can’t wait to hear what Daleks sound like dubbed into Korean. Still though, I find it infuriating that the Doctor will be shown on Korean TV while no American station has yet decided to purchase airing rights to the series. It was reported that Scifi channel turned it down before the premiere of the new Doctor Who series, which after having seen the ten episodes so far I find utterly unfathomable. The show is fantastic, and has had some of the highest viewer ratings and media reviews in UK television history, and they had better be kicking themselves hard for having passed it up.

The Tokyo premiere of Steven Spielberg’s film War of the Worlds has been cancelled due to security fears.

The BBC reports:

Film distributor UIP decided to shelve the gala screening on 13 June amid concerns about protecting the picture’s stars, including Tom Cruise.

There were also worries about pirate copies of the film being made from illegal recordings at the event.

Some 7,000 Japanese fans who won seats at the premiere are likely to be offered alternative prizes.

I have trouble imaging how security could be such a problem in Japan that they cann’t guarantee Tom Cruise’s safety. Who would want to hurt him? Unless there is of course some kind of secret war brewing between the Scientologists and Japan’s Alpeh cult (formerly known as Aum Shinrikyo).

What does this say about us and our readers?

I just noticed that in the “recent comment” section our two most popular posts, with 12 comments each, deal with Sino-Japanese pedophilia and mechanical pencils. I also noticed that neither was authored by me.

Hmm…

Perhpas my next post should be on the economics of mechanical pencil weilding East Asian sexual deviants.

More beef with the Japanese government

Well, it wasn’t hard to see this one coming. Although I must admit, I thought it wouldn’t happen until shortly after the ban on U.S. beef imports was lifted.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation today ran this story on fears that Japan would raise the tariff on frozen beef imports 11.5 % to 50%, up from the current 38.5 %.

If any of this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it’s all been done before.

Following Japan’s first mad cow hysteria a few years back, Japanese beef consumption fell, for domestic beef at least. To compensate for the fall in supply, more beef had to be imported. (Those of you in Japan at the time might remember Yoshinoya’s now sadly ironic 100% American Beef campaign.) The resulting increase in imports triggered the tariff, which took effect on August 1, 2003 and lasted until the following April.

Now there is talk of that same tariff taking effect this August as well.

How can Japan get away with this you ask?

Well, it’s easy. Under the Uruguay Round, Japan agreed to lower tariffs on imported beef from 50% to the current 38.5%. However, it retained the legal right to reinstitute the 50% tariff in the event that imports increased 17% or more on a quarterly basis.

The reasoning behind allowing such recourse was to safeguard domestic producers against sudden surges in imports, which is very much the idea behind other types of safeguards also allowed under WTO regulations.

According to the WTO:

safeguard measures are defined as “emergency” actions with respect to increased imports of particular products, where such imports have caused or threaten to cause serious injury to the importing Member’s domestic industry.

The catch is that these temporary measures were meant to protect against unfair trade practices. They were never intended to be used as an unfair trade practice.

Theoretically, safeguards give domestic producers of cattle or any other traded good time to restructure the industry or take some other sort of defensive measures to increase competitiveness. But the fact is that the competitiveness of Japanese cattle farmers is not the issue here.

The issue here is that domestic beef consumption is rising to once normal levels, and that has automatically triggered the tariff. Ironically, as pointed out by an article in yesterday’sAsahi print edition (sorry, I couldn’t find this online), imports of frozen beef are actually 28% below 2004 levels!

Clearly the danger here is not for Japanese cattle farmers, but for Japanese consumers who will inevitably have to bear the cost of the tariff and its misuse by their government. The cost of beef has already risen by 20% wholesale and 10% retail since the ban on U.S. imports. Now consumers face another potential price hike because of the tariff.

As for the winners, we have the domestic beef industry, in spite of turning up 15 cases of BSE in recent years, and agriculture interests within the government, which doesn’t make out too badly itself, given the destination of those potential tariff revenues.

Philly Cheesesteaks Suck — My trip to Philadelphia


First, let me tell you why I’m writing this: THE HYPE SURROUNDING PHILLY CHEESE STEAKS IS A LIE AND MUST BE STOPPED. They are disgusting and deserve none of the fame that they have gained. Now let me explain:

I recently had the chance to visit beautiful Philadelphia with Mrs. Adamu. The first capital of the United States includes a major monument to its role in the American Revolution in the center, which was certainly very impressive but not quite impressive enough to actually make me wait in line to see the liberty bell. Mrs. Adamu and I were soon bored, on our way home we decided to try the famous Philly Cheese Steak at Geno’s Steaks in South Philly — the biggest mistake I’ve made in a long time.

I felt betrayed as soon as I took the first bite and was greeted with hot blandness. All the hype, all the anticipation amounted to this:

Listen to the ingredients: Steakums, cheez whiz, and chopped onions on a soggy Portuguese roll. WTF? That’s it? This is the same crap I’ve been heating up in the microwave as a last resort food for years! What gives, Philadelphia??

The only thing that made it edible was the hot sauce that was available in the condiments section. At least then there was something to taste.

Initially I blamed myself. Had Japan tainted my taste buds so that I can no longer enjoy classic American food? Mrs. Adamu, a native Japanese, supported this initial suspicion. But then, no, I reasoned, I still like root beer, cheeseburgers and pancakes, so I must still be American enough to have an objective opinion.

So how could this have happened? Millions of people must be cheated out of their money each year based on the false assumption that something is different about Steakum sandwiches in Philadelphia. What a scam.

Clearly the cheese steaks are popular — there were stands all over the historical district and both Geno’s and the place across the street were lined up. Why weren’t more people spitting out their food and demanding their $6.50 back? I mean that’s a lot to pay for what’s basically the equivalent of peanut butter and jelly.

The answer came to me in a message from God. Without warning someone in a car shouted “NAZI FUCKS!!!!” in our general direction and sped off. Were they talking to me? (I shave my head so who knows) I looked around:

(Read here for more about this guy and Mumia)

(Note the tribute to 9-11 next to the Freedom Fries — aside from us and some other tourists, the rest of the customers were cops and firemen)

It was at once obvious that this place that serves its dubious delicacies with a heaping help of local pride and admiration for the most prominent local heroes, cops and firemen. These people don’t come here for good food, they come here because it’s part of their identity.

Now, that’s all well and good, but why must cheesesteaks then become something pawned off on unsuspecting out-of-towners? Perhaps because without cheesesteaks and the liberty bell, there isn’t exactly much to differentiate Philly from, say, Boston, DC, or other second-tier American cities. Yet I can’t accept the idea that any claim to fame is better than none. You might as well brag about having the world’s best green beans. These things are BLAND, BORING, AND SHAMEFUL. All Philadelphians with any self-respect would do well to shut these scheisters down before they can do any more harm. Besides, I hear they’re run by Nazis.

Japanese Semantics as seen in Media coverage

Japan is infamous for the careful attention it pays to its national image. As a result, some interesting semantic situations can arise. For example, the Japanese media will often try and introduce a Japanese word into the English language in order to put a Japanese spin on a certain issue. Case in point: in February the Kenyan Deputy Minister of Environment’s official visit to Japan held a surprise for PM Koizumi (found via FG):

Last Friday, I met with Professor Wangari Maathai, Kenya’s Deputy Minister of Environment…Prof. Maathai told me how during her visit to Japan she had learned the word “mottainai,” which could be literally translated as “don’t waste what is valuable.” I completely agree with Prof. Maathai on the importance of this concept of “mottainai.” I had thought that it was a concept that foreigners would not fully be able to grasp, but as I listened to Prof. Maathai I realized that I too should do my best to spread this “mottainai” spirit around the world.

However, one poster to the FG forum had something interesting to say about the incident:

This “mottainai” caper has me baffled.
I was at the interview with Maathai hours after she first arrived here. Earlier in the day, I had been asked about “mottainai.” When it came up in the interview, the interpreter used the word “wasteful” (correctly), even though the interviewer had strongly pressed Maathai to use “mottainai.” When Maathai replied, she used “wasteful.” She was then whisked away to another room and I returned to my office to write the story. I received a message that I had to use the word “mottainai” in the lead, even though what she’d had to say about waste was among the least interesting parts of the interview.
I notice every environment story Kyodo is putting out on the environment features the word “mottainai.”
Apparently, the Environment Agency is putting pressure to have the word become widely used in English. It’s not a particularly effective replacement for “waste,” which I think does a fine job in English. My personal opinion is the Environment Agency should worry more about protecting the environment than try to force a new word into the language, which will probably include more pressure on ODA recipients.

It seems the government was putting words in the Deputy Minister’s mouth! I read this and thought little of it until I read an interview with famous Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and HE USED IT TOO!

For his part, Ban says: “I always thought architecture had to be respected. We have the power and the skill.”

Ban worries about waste.

“Mottainai,” he said suddenly, grabbing a reporter’s notebook to write the word. The Japanese expression means something is too good to waste. It is as close as he would come in an hour of conversation to explaining what motivates his work.

He was giving the reporter a tour of the 45,000-square-foot Nomadic Museum on a frigid day last month. Jet-lagged after a flight from Tokyo, he nevertheless was eager to explain his Nomadic design.

Despite being less than talkative at the interview he at least knew the right buzzword to say.

Now let’s look at this Al-Jazeera report which expresses sour grapes over the positive portrayal slain mercenary Akihiko Saito got from the Japanese media:

Japanese media glorifies Iraq hostage

The abduction of Akihiko Saito in Iraq after an ambush on 5 May has sparked an entirely different reaction to the one that greeted the three Japanese who were taken hostage there one year ago.

While Saito, an armed private security officer, has been treated with respect and admiration at home, the two humanitarian workers and a photojournalist were subjected to a sustained attack on their actions, motives and personal lives.

When Noriaki Imai, Nahoko Takato and Soichiro Koriyama returned to Japan this time last year after their hostage ordeal, there were no celebrations and certainly no hero’s welcome.

They were criticised for their stupidity for being in Iraq, the wasting of government money on efforts to secure their release, and dirt was dug up on their families and backgrounds.

True enough. But what’s interesting is their analysis of the language gap in covering the story:

There has been much talk of the large salaries paid for this kind of work as well as the high level of skill and experience required.

The Japanese media has been happy to use the term “youhei”, which translates as “mercenary” or “hired soldier’, to describe Saito, although the image conveyed has been of an exciting and glamorous world.

Interestingly, in the English-language Japanese media, the word “mercenary”, with its negative connotations, has been avoided.

There is a belief in some quarters that the presence of Saito in Iraq helps to legitimise the activities of the Self-Defence Force (SDF), whose members are engaged mainly in guard duties in the most active deployment of Japanese troops since the pacifist constitution was imposed by the US after WWII.

Doshisha University’s professor Watanabe says the Japanese government has been keen to show Saito in a positive light as if he has been working for the security of Japan itself.

Not exactly an easy message to swallow coming from al-Jazeera (I’m sure they’d support mercenaries for the other side), but I’m always fascinated with the subtleties of characterizations like this.