Month: August 2005

The most badass story I’ve seen all month

Scientists Rescued as Polar Bears Closed In

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Three unarmed Polish researchers stranded on a remote Arctic island were rescued as polar bears were closing in on them, officials said Wednesday.
[…]
The men were rescued by helicopter Tuesday after 15 hours shipwrecked at the edge of a tiny bay between two glaciers, he said.

The three were aboard the Polish research ship Horyzont when they set out in a small inflatable boat to pick up equipment on one of the islands.

“Their boat capsized, and they lost all their equipment and weapons,” Braaten told The Associated Press. He said they swam and clambered over chunks of floating ice to get to the island of Egdeoya.

Braaten said the ship repeatedly tried to send in another small boat to pick them up, but conditions were too rough. He said the ship finally used a harpoon canon to fire a rope to land, so it could send the researchers food and water. Then it called for help.

“They managed to start a fire, to keep warm and keep the polar bears away,” he said, explaining that the men used the spark plugs from their capsized craft’s outboard motor to get the fire going. The island has some dried grass and scrubby plants.
[…]
Polar bears have no natural enemies in their frozen domain and regard all other living things, including humans, as potential meals.

Funny stuff

I am so sick and tired of reading “serious” stuff that I need to laugh. Behold Something Awful, the site that points out all the ridiculous shit on the Internet:

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3136

This is their feature, FASHION SWAT, where two clever people trade riffs on bad fashion. Read it. Funny excerpts include:

Dr. Thorpe: God, I wish I was raised with a soul. The only thing we get to weep at is particularly affecting Sprint commercials with guys calling their dads to tell them “it’s a boy” or something. There’s no mystery in the world when you’re a white, secular, liberal shithead like you and me.

Zack: I’m pretty sure our soul is composed of a series of toy commercials that ran from 1984-1988. When we die Hasbro does with us what they please.

Dr. Thorpe: I can’t recite the Lord’s Prayer, but I can remember the tune to the “My Buddy” jingle. “My buddy, my buddy, my buddy, my buddy… my buddy and me!”

Zack: Yeah, Matt from X-E will start running a series of Pop Churches for our generation. “For penance say three ‘GI Joe’ themes and one ‘Jem and the Holograms’ theme.”

Dr. Thorpe: That would be truly outrageous.

Forgive the lack of formatting. I’m too tired to think.

My personal favorite is this one.

Tibet in exile

Following my post yesterday about the Dalai Lama’s upcoming visit to my former university of Rutgers, I thought this very recent Time Asia article describing his government in exile.

Around me, matrons from Lhasa are buying bread from vendors outside the temple, and walking their children to the Tibetan school down Temple Road. Recent escapees from Tibet are setting up tables and preparing lattes and chocolate cakes at the sleek Moonpeak Café and at Chonor House, the elegant guesthouse run by Tibet’s government-in-exile. Everywhere are monks in red, reciting sutras, sweeping their temple grounds, streaming into Internet cafés, and just whiling away their day in the shadow of Himalayan foothills, almost as if they were at home. What I’m seeing, improbably, is a vision of Tibet that you can never see these days in Tibet itself.

Also see a brief post I did earlier about Tibetans in Taiwan.

Dalai Lama coming to Rutgers

Reposted from an email I just got. If I were still in Jersey instead of Taiwan I would definitely try to finagle my way into this event for free. Take note of the fact that the Dalai Lama is here actually adressed by his personal name before his title-something that I believe I have never seen before. In fact, I didn’t even know his name.

It’s not too late to order tickets for the upcoming lecture by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet!

Rutgers will welcome His Holiness the Dalai Lama, recipient of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prizeand an internationally respected advocate of peace, to deliver a public lecture entitled “Peace, War, and Reconciliation” on Sunday, September 25, 2005, at 10:30 a.m. at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway, NJ. Because of the great public interest in this major Rutgers event, we have secured a section of tickets reserved specifically for alumni, family and friends of Rutgers.

Tickets are available by phone or in person from the Rutgers Ticket Office. To purchase tickets, please contact the Rutgers Ticket Office at 866-445-4678 and ask for tickets in the “Alumni” section. The ticket office is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m in the Louis Brown Athletic Center.

Please note that in order to secure seating in a group, all tickets in that group must be purchased in the same order. Payment by credit card (Visa, Mastercardor Discover) is expected at time of purchase. Those wishing to pay by check may submit a ticket request form with payment to the ticket office, but no orders will be held without payment. Ticket requests will be fulfilled when the check and completed form are received by the ticket office. A copy of the form is included at the bottom of this email. Anyone needing handicapped or wheelchair services (including deaf attendees requiring a view of sign language interpreters! ) should call the ticket office.

TICKET PRICES:

Tickets are $10 each.

Groups of 20 or more, traveling by school/charter bus, pay $7 per ticket (a bus parking pass will be required).

Children 2 and under are free.

Rutgers students pay $5 per ticket with a valid student ID (maximum of two $5 tickets per valid ID, additional tickets will be at the regular price of $10).

Please visit the web site (www.president.rutgers.edu/dalailama) for more details. This web site will be updated as more information becomes available. If you have already placed your order, please know that the Ticket Office will begin mailing tickets in late August. If you have other questions or needs, please reply to this email.

To print out an order form with which to submit a check payment for tickets, please click here: http://www.alumni.rutgers.edu/news/dalailama.htm.

Walmart to Open in Japan

All these history posts are making my head hurt! Now let me depress you big time:

Seiyu To Open ‘Wal-Mart’ Supercenters Next Year

TOKYO (Nikkei)–Seiyu Ltd. (8268) will in 2006 start opening stores developed with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and named after the U.S. retail giant, The Nihon Keizai Shimbun learned Tuesday.

Seiyu plans to open large outlets that combine supermarkets and discount stores. All of these so-called supercenters — Wal-Mart’s mainstay — will be developed jointly by the two companies, with some of them bearing the name “Wal-Mart Seiyu.” Candidate areas to host new supercenters include Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture.

These supercenters will offer discount prices on a regular basis under Wal-Mart’s everyday-low-prices concept. Although this marketing method is not widely popular among Japanese consumers, Seiyu will emphasize that the stores are operated under the Wal-Mart philosophy.

Personally, I am not the type to beatify Japan’s traditional culture or superior egalitarian values, but Walmart, I hope you agree, just sucks the big one. I went in there late at night the other weekend just to get soda and I was almost run over by some shitty teenager messing around on the fat-people-scooter they keep around. I mean, I go there to buy razors, but every time I’m there I silently pray that the big ugly Walmart will one day cease to exist, much as the Iraqis are friendly to American troops to their faces but secretly pray for their country to go back to normal as soon as possible.

Imperial Japanese propaganda and the history of Kodansha

Boingboing linked to scans of a Japanese propaganda booklet for kids from the Japanese Imperial period. The low resolution of the scans (not to mention the old-fashioned katakana orthography) makes it a bit hard to read, but that hasn’t stopped two different bloggers from posting translations before I even saw it. Kyle Goetz and Paul Battley both have translations, but Paul Battley’s, in which he places the translation in captions around the original images, is far more readable. Kyle Goetz’s translation, which has more comments and translation notes, is recommended only for those who also know some Japanese. Kyle theorizes that the booklet was written for foreigners, but I believe it is quite clearly a children’s book.

Unfortunately, the book seems to be undated, but from the cover we can see that it was published by Dai-Nihon Yuubenkai Kodansha (大日本雄弁会講談社). Anyone who has even a passing acquintance with Japanese media or publishing will probably recognize Kodansha, which is still a major publisher of magazines, comics and various types of books.

According to the history section of Kodansha’s English language site:

Seiji Noma, the founder of the company, published his first magazine, Yuben (Oratory) in 1909. This was followed in 1911 by Kodan Club, a monthly collection of kodan or traditional stories from which the company was to take its name. The success of Kodan Club assured the future of the new company and, by the mid-1930s, Kodansha had taken a leading position in the magazine publishing industry through the publication of nine magazines.

Looking at the timeline in the more detailed history section of their Japanese language website, we can see that Dai-Nihon Yuubenkai and it’s spinoff, Kodansha, were merged in 1925, creating a company with the combined name of Dai-Nihon Yuubenkai Kodansha. Since this remained the companies name until 1958 (when it became simply Kodansha Corporation) and this booklet is very much a product of the Imperial era, it must have been published between 1925 and 1945.

The Wikipedia article also contains a fun piece of trivia about Kodansha. Before World War II, the company attempted to branch out into other industries, marketting a nutritional beverage called Dorikono. However, due to a wartime sugar shortage, they were forced to cease production of the drink, and completely withdrew from the food industry.

Tabloid Journalism Trumps Politics in Taiwan

After reading the summary of Taiwan’s 2004 media space, make absolutely sure to read this translated article (plus comments) at the blog ESWN.

The most important thing to remember when reading this article, which is not made clear until the very end, is that the Libery Times (as well as its English languge subsidiary the Taipei Times) are ideologically in the pan-green, or pro independence, camp.

A detailed analysis of the Apple Daily-versus-Liberty Times consumer markets showed that the differences occurred in certain age groups and between urban-rural areas. Within the 30 to 34 age group, Apple Daily has 21.8% versus Liberty Times at 18%; within the 40 to 60 age group, Liberty Times is ahead. In the metropolitan areas, Apple Daily leads at 21.2% and Liberty Times only leads in the smaller towns and villages. Overall, the readership of Apple Daily is concentrated in the 12 to 39 age group, and that was the first time that Liberty Times got defeated in this group.

According to industry analysts, the traditional ecology of Taiwan newspapers has been thoroughly disrupted after Apple Daily entered the market two years ago. The two traditional large newspapers — United Daily News and China Times — were completely beaten by Apple Daily and Liberty Times in this survey. The “excellent tradition” of those two newspapers are slowly fading. The measures taken by the two newspapers in terms of editorial improvements have proven to be totally effective, so that the youth advantage of Apple Daily will continue to hold in the future.

Detective novels take on the world

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Huang fell for 2004’s widely lauded “The Coroner’s Lunch” and its tale of septuagenarian coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun’s struggle to find the truth behind a series of murders. First-time novelist Colin Cotterill “makes us understand what the system allows [Paiboun] to do, what the system prevents him from doing, and what he manages to accomplish anyway,” says Huang, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Carmel, Ind.

An academic tome might have accomplished the same goal of enlightening readers about Laotian culture. But detective novels are usually easier to read, and now, to a greater extent than ever before, they’re shedding light about the world outside the United States and Britain.

U.S. paid Unit 731 members for data

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) The United States paid money and gave other benefits to former members of a Japanese germ warfare unit two years after the end of World War II to obtain data on human experiments conducted in China, according to two declassified U.S. government documents.

It has been known that the Allies offered to waive war crime charges at the tribunal for officers of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Unit 731 in exchange for experiment data.

But the latest findings reveal Washington’s eagerness to obtain such data even by providing monetary rewards, despite the horrific nature of the unit’s activities, in an attempt to beat the Soviet Union in the arms development race.
Continue reading U.S. paid Unit 731 members for data