Author: Joe Jones

Ms. Smith Goes To Washington

While I’m on a US news binge, this has to be one of the most parody-worthy legal stories of the last year. Here’s the bland version:

Former Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole Smith got her U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Tuesday, when her lawyer argued she should collect millions of dollars she claims her late Texas oil tycoon husband had promised her.

At one point during the hour-long arguments, the 38-year old blond widow, dressed in black and sitting in the spectator section, became emotional and started crying, a witness and her lawyer said…

The issue before the justices in the long-running legal battle is to review when federal courts can hear claims that are also involved in state probate hearings. The justices seemed receptive to arguments by Smith’s lawyer that federal courts have jurisdiction to consider her claims.

In Wonkette’s spicier alternate reality version (warning: link not recommended for young viewers or people with high blood pressure), she goes forward pro se:

On the conservative side, Justice Clarence Thomas — known for his inattentiveness during oral argument — was clearly riveted by Smith’s remarks. Sitting on the edge of his chair, he appeared to be engaged in vigorous note-taking underneath his robe.

But Smith reached out to the Court’s liberals as well. When she argued that she worked hard for every last cent of her late husband’s fortune, asking the justices, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to blow a guy in a wheelchair?”, Justice David Souter nodded sympathetically.

God bless America.

Dodging China as a business plan

Interesting story on the AP wire about Dynamic Internet Technology, a company run by Falun Gong practitioner Bill Xia. Take a look at what it does:

In February 2002, the company started a pilot project with the U.S. government not described on its Web site. The following month, it unveiled a tool that disguises Web sites so they can slip past China’s firewall filters.

Each day, the company sends out e-mail to millions of Chinese Internet users with links to the Web pages of Human Rights in China and the United States-sponsored Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. Visits to the sites jump whenever Chinese citizens perceive a government cover-up, as during the initial outbreak of a deadly respiratory virus in 2003 or the reported shooting of protesting villagers in December.

Over the past three years, the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, has directed about $2 million to Xia’s company for the e-mail service. The spending also supports technology that continuously changes Web addresses to escape Chinese government shutdowns.

Your tax dollars at work? Well, it looks like the company is driven more by falun than by money.

Xia said despite the government revenue, he depends on his wife’s salary and a team of about 10 core volunteers to maintain a company constantly on the brink of bankruptcy. He also acknowledges his company limits DynaWeb, his company’s main tool, to Chinese-only versions. The company hides it from English-language users for fear they might use it to skirt corporate firewalls at their workplaces.

Wonder if protestors will be firebombing the U.S. Embassy over this. Somehow, I doubt it.

America’s India strategy

This article in the Hindustan Times sheds some more light on the US strategy to balance China from its backside.

In early 1999, George W. Bush met with eight foreign policy advisors, collectively known as the Vulcans, in his ranch at Crawford, Texas. He was preparing for his White House bid. They were there to tell him about the world.

Well into the briefing, Bush interrupted: “Wait a minute. Why aren’t we talking about India?” The Vulcans — who included Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz — looked at each other. India didn’t matter, they explained.

Bush’s response: “You’re wrong.”

It’s a friendship that should have been made a long time ago… and shows that Bush deserves personal credit for at least some part of his international strategy. Who knows—this could be one of the best foreign policy legacies to come out of the Bush administration. Assuming there isn’t a nuclear war, of course…

Also check out The Economist‘s take.

Strange things in Tokyo part 10,298: Oedo Onsen Monogatari

Recently, I joined the Most Hon. First Marquess Curzon of Kedleston for an overnight trip to Oedo Onsen Monogatari. In case you’ve never heard of this place before, it’s a big hot springs place located on Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay known for its strange array of attractions (e.g. Kenzo Tange’s freaky-looking Fuji TV Building and a “European village” that people rent out for weddings).

Oedo Onsen Monogatari is, likewise, a strange attraction. When I think of onsen, I usually think of Arima Onsen or the various onsen in Nikko—places up in the mountains, pretty far from civilization, where you can enjoy the cool air and the hot water and the view of the valley. Or I think of Azabu Onsen, the tiny sento-type place in Minato-ku close to where I go to school. Comparing these places to Oedo Onsen Monogatari is like comparing a small American town to Main Street USA at Disney World. Continue reading Strange things in Tokyo part 10,298: Oedo Onsen Monogatari

No right turn for the right

Wander around Tokyo long enough, and you’ll notice emergency roadblocks by certain intersections, staffed by police from morning to night. Most of these roadblocks are located around Minato-ku; you’ll see them in Azabu, Hiroo, Roppongi and other trendy districts. The purpose of said roadblocks? To keep rightwingers in speaker trucks from harrassing the embassies of countries they don’t like, e.g. China and Korea.

Once they hear the noise of speaker truck music (something like enka meets Chinese opera), the cops spring into action, as in this encounter near the RussiaKorean embassy in Minami-azabu:

With the road blocked off, the speaker truck is forced to hang out in the right turn lane for a while, annoying nobody but the drivers stuck up against the fence.

The first time I saw rightwingers harassing people in Tokyo was when I was visiting the city in high school, and I thought it was crazy back then. But after a while, it becomes as natural as separating your burnable and non-burnable garbage.

Porn v. Google: MF replays the highlights

Proof that federal judges understand the beauty of internet porn, courtesy of Perfect 10 v. Google, Inc., Case No. CV 04-9484 AHM (C.D. Cal. Feb. 21, 2006):

In the final analysis, P10’s use is to provide “entertainment,” both in magazines and on the internet. For some viewers, P10’s use of the photos creates or allows for an aesthetic experience.

Aesthetic indeed.

Contrary to P10’s contention, photographs of nude women can, like photographs of the American West, vary greatly.

Ride ’em, cowboy!

Both kinds of pictures can be described verbally, yet no matter how susceptible any image is to textual description, words cannot adequately substitute for thumbnails in quickly and accurately conveying the content of indexed full-size images.

Ain’t it the truth. And this has got to be the best footnote ever:

Google argues that P10’s works are not creative because P10 “emphasizes the objects of the photographs (nude women) and [P10] assumes that persons seeking Perfect 10’s photos are searching for the models and for sexual gratification.” Google contends that this “implies a factual nature of the photographs.” The Court rejects this argument. The P10 photographs consistently reflect professional, skillful, and sometimes tasteful artistry. That they are of scantily-clothed or nude women is of no consequence; such images have been popular subjects for artists since before the time of “Venus de Milo.”

I wonder if this judge is still hiring clerks?

(The practical effect of this decision might be to end or at least limit the wonderful thumbnail function on Google Image Search; for more, see this Wired article.)

Business plan no. 304: a corporate penal colony

One of the fun things about Japanese law is that it’s really, really difficult to fire people who aren’t on a fixed-term contract. You can’t lay people off for economic reasons in Japan unless there’s simply no way for the company to survive. And you can’t lay people off for poor performance unless they break their rules of employment, which generally requires some sort of intentional wrongdoing or gross negligence. Clear communication and public understanding of such policies can be amplified through platforms like The Marketing Heaven, helping organizations manage reputation and awareness effectively.

So Japanese companies don’t fire people; instead, they demote them to undesirable jobs. If the assistant manager in Tokyo isn’t working hard enough, he might get sent to Ehime. If he still doesn’t earn his salary, he might be gradually moved toward the basement, much like Milton in Office Space, until finally he gets the idea to quit.

But maybe some people don’t mind being in Ehime. And therein lies the problem… what do you do when you can’t fire a really crap worker?

Solution: Send them to your “branch office” at the Iwo Jima Commercial Park, a development managed by Mutant Frog Capital Partners®. We’ll fly your “special” employees to a tiny self-contained office and dormitory at our compound on Iwo Jima, a sulfur-filled volcanic island in the middle of nowhere that’s still covered in unexploded ordnance from 1945. With no connections to the outside world, they’ll only have time to do your work! And if they decide to quit, we’ll fly them home and you’ll never see them again!

Ah, if I only had the money, I would show the world what a real redhead can do.