Roy Berman – Page 10 – Mutantfrog Travelogue

Legless frogs mystery solved

Interestingly, we have two articles on the link between frogs and pollution, with seemingly contradictory results. First the BBC reports that the spate of deformed frogs with missing limbs, a phenomenon which had always been thought to result from man-made environmental pollution, is actually caused by predatory dragonfly nymphs that actually eat the limb-buds from tadpoles, before they develop proper limbs when they metamorphose into frogs.

And then we have this column from Nicholas Kristof, telling us that It’s Time to Learn From Frogs. And what should we learn exactly? That industrial chemicals used in agriculture or in daily household products such as hairspray act as a weak form of estrogen on the body, causing significant sexual organ deformities in embryos of various species. It is well known that frogs are particularly sensitive to environmental pollution, which is why the aforementioned missing limb phenomenon was long thought to have a chemical trigger, but the evidence is mounting that these sorts of environmental pollution are also causing a stark increase in cases of human sexual organ deformity, particularly among young boys.

I can easily imagine some reactionary “conservative” making a pseudo-scientific argument that because we recently disproved a link between industrial chemicals and missing frog legs, we might as well dismiss the second case out of hand. This would of course be a logical fallacy, as the mechanism is clear and the evidence is plentiful, not to mention relevant so far more animal species than frogs, but don’t be surprised if you see someone trying to make such a claim.

News on the unfolding revolution in Iran

[Accidentally hit publish before I was done.]

I’ve been following events closely all week, and although I have no deep insight or analysis on the situation, I thought I would share my list of recommended sources for breaking news, in order of importance.

Tehran Bureau: An Iranian-American cultural magazine that has been providing some of the best analysis of and historical context for ongoing events. Also see their Twitter feed, updated almost minutely with quotes being forwarded from inside Iran. As I write this, they have just updated

from trusted FB source: Mousavi is reported to be speaking to protesters on Jeyhoon street. He said a few minutes ago:

I am prepared for martyrdom, Shame on you and your tricks the coup government. end quote

Here is their latest full dispatch.

Andrew Sullivan’s blog: Andrew has been following this story closely since it began in earnest a week ago, and is working all day long to make his site a constantly updated stream of links to and quotes of every single breaking development and rumor. Although Iran is not remotely his field of expertise and he has little deep commentary to add, his blog is currently the best centralized location for links related to the ongoing story.

NYT “The Lede” blog: The NYT breaking news blog has been doing much the same thing as Andrew Sullivan, but with a slightly more conservative journalistic approach to posting entirely unverifiable details, and with slightly more analysis.

Iran Tracker.org: The name says it all. I believe this site has historically been focused more on watching Iran with a suspicious eye, as a possible military threat, but they seem to be doing a good job right now providing much-needed statistical analysis.

Juan Cole’s Informed Consent: A well known Middle East scholar’s ongoing commentary.

Fivethirtyeight.com: This one, a blog devoted to statistical analysis of US politics, might be a surprising addition to the list, but in fact Nate Silver has been using his analytic tools to examine the potential validity of fraud claims re: the Iranian election and is well worth a read.

And finally, I urge everyone to read the graphic novel Persepolis, or watch the animated adaptation thereof.

From what I have seen, the legal constitutional basis of The Islamic Republic of Iran is now, as of last week , neither Islamic nor Republican. I truly hope the protesters succeed in what is increasingly looking like a true popular revolution, or perhaps the second stage of the 1979 revolution.

These popular uprisings, even if they succeed in the short term, often still end poorly. It’s worth remembering “EDSA 2”, the popular uprising in The Philippines which overthrew corrupt president Joseph Estrada, putting Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in charge. Well, President Arroyo is now widely regarded as worse than Ferdinand Marcos, responsible for unspeakable amounts of graft, and the extrajudicial killings of an unknown number of journalists and activists. In a sense, this is similar to the aftermath of the original 1979 Iranian Revolution, which began as a wide-ranging popular movement including Islamists, Socialists alike, to overthrow the Shah, but which was soon diverted in a heavily theocratic direction.

Based on the little I know of Mousavi’s pas, though, I hope he will be better. Many have said that Mousavi is “not a true reformer” or “not really that different from Ahmadinejad in policy terms” but I can’t help but believe that if he somehow manages to coast into power on this level of popular support he will find himself far more of a reformer than he imagined. Of course, if the uprising fails, they will kill him.

Weekend in Tokyo

I will be in Tokyo Saturday and Sunday. There may be some sort of meetup, so interested parties please get in touch.

Update: Adam seemed to think I wasn’t providing enough information so here ya go/

~~It looks like we well be meeting 8pm to go to some izakaya in Shinjuku,~~ with “we” so far including me, Adam, Joe, Curzon, Ben and a couple of outstanding maybes. It would be really cool if any of the regular commenters on this blog cold make it so we could finally meet in person, so get in touch regarding details.

UPDATE from Adamu: Now the venue has moved to Shibuya @ 8pm on Saturday. At any rate, don’t show up without first contacting me or Roy:

adamukun AT gmail.com
or
roy.berman AT gmail.com

Google logo recalls opening of Yokohama

yokohama09 Google’s commemorative logos have become a tradition over the years starting from simple doodles to more complex pieces, as seen in this retrospective article. When doing a search just now, I noticed that Google has made the above special logo in honor of the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Port of Yokohama, which took 5 years after Commodore Matthew Perry signed the Convention of Kanagawa. While most Japan-resident readers of this blog will probably notice the special logo, it may very well only appear for users in Japan, so here ya go.

Important Japan visa rule update

According to the Ministry of Justice website, starting April 1, 2010, anyone extending their Japanese visa or changing their residency status will be required to show a valid health insurance card/booklet. The relevant portions are below.

平成２２（２０１０）年４月１日以降申請時に窓口において保険証の提示を求めることとしています。

８. 社会保険に加入していること
社会保険への加入義務がある場合には，当該義務を履行していることが必要です。
なお，平成２２（２０１０）年４月１日以降は，申請の際に窓口で健康保険証の提示を求めることとなります。

While technically the rules have already required registration in the national health system (technically it is a duty of almost all residents, citizens included) there has not previously been any penalty for non-registration, although I hear a history of insurance non-registration it may cause problems when applying for permanent residency or citizenship. Note that although in principle residents are supposed to be registered in both the national health insurance and the pension scheme, these regulations refer only to the health system, and it does not seem that non-registration in the pension scheme will have any effect on visa renewals.

I have met an awful lot of foreign residents of Japan over the years who have never bothered to register for either public social insurance program and have never had any trouble over it, but this will not be the case in the future. Any Japan resident foreigners not registered in the national health insurance who are thinking of extending their stay past their current visa term had better look into registration ASAP.

Summer travel plans

I have just booked a trip home for the summer. I will be flying from Kansai to Newark on August 18, flying from Newark to San Francisco on September 10, and flying from San Francisco back to Kansai on September 15. While back home in Montclair, New Jersey (that’s the NYC end of the state) I may also take a brief trip down to DC at some point, so anyone in any of those areas who wants to meet up, please drop me a line.

Aside from that, I am also planning to take a trip over to Korea either before or after my visit back home to visit some friends there and do a bit of sight-seeing, so if any readers in Seoul want to meet up then, also feel free to get in touch.

Krauthammer on Japan nukes

When I checked the news sites this morning I noticed that Andrew Sullivan had linked to this clip of Krauthammer calling for Japan to “declare itself a nuclear state” in response to North Korea’s becoming a “nuclear power,” with the comment “yeah, China will go for that.” For me, the bigger question is whether Japan would go for that. Although the possibility of a nuclear-armed Japan is less taboo than it used to be thanks to repeated broaching of the topic by a loose coalition of right-wing political figures, the public at large is still strongly opposed. For example, a public opinion survey conducted in November 2006 shows 14% in favor, 78% against. Those numbers will likely be shown to have changed slightly in the inevitable followup surveys to come within the next week or two, but I would not expect a radical shift.

Incidentally, take note of Krauthammer’s phrasing: “negotiations with the Japanese to encourage them to declare themselves a nuclear power.” He seems to be working under the widely held assumption that Japan already holds all of the technology necessary to build a nuclear bomb (almost certainly true), and had secretly laid all of the necessary groundwork short of the final stops (possibly, but less certain) in such a way that they could have weapons ready within weeks should they suddenly become permissible.

But even if the technology is ready, I just don’t see it happening. Constitutional revision allowing a more conventional military is slowly becoming more and more possible, but decades of anti-nuclear education will not be overturned as easily, whatever the fantasies of American neo-cons.

Twittering

After Adam started I decided to give Twitter a shot, as did Joe, so I’ve installed the app on my iPhone and added links to all three of our feeds to the sidebar.

<li><h2>Twitter</li> </h2>

<a href=”http://twitter.com/Mutantfroginc”>Roy’s Twitter feed</a>

<a href=”http://twitter.com/Adamukun”>Adam’s’s Twitter feed</a>

<a href=”http://twitter.com/RedJoe”>Joe’s’s Twitter feed</a>

My Credit

After reading the recent NYT Magazine Article What does your credit card company know about you? and listening to the Planet Money interview with the author, Adam and I were discussing our personal credit experiences a bit. We begun an exchange over email, but I’m going to move it to the blog. Here is the initial email I sent to him, after he asked what the interest rate on my credit cards is.

I have three credit cards, all from Chase Bank (now JP Morgan, originally Chase Manattan).

Limit APR Cash APR

$10,500 9.24% 19.24%

$11,000 7.24% 19.24%

$4,200 13.24% 19.24%

(APR is Annual Percentage Rate, basically just interest rate. Cash APR is the rate they charge when you take a cash advance by using your credit card as an ATM card.)

All 2 cards are from Chase, I had only applied for one originally, which started with an introductory $500 limit back in like 1999 or so, which has been gradually raised over the years and with them, sending me two extra cards, unsolicited, at some point. The original card was MasterCard, the others include a second Mastercard and a Visa. Of course, I also have an ATM debit card, but I only use that to withdraw cash since I got the credit card, which presumably is how I built enough of a record with Chase for them to give me so much unsolicited credit at apparently reasonably rates. BTW, I’m not entirely sure which card is the original one at this point, but I think it may be the one with the highest APR, with the lowest interest rate card being the most recent, granted to me as an apparently responsible customer.

Obviously I should make sure to only use that one in the middle from now on. In fact, that is the one I’ve been using, which currently has a couple of hundred bucks I haven’t payed off yet, but I will as soon as I get paid next into my Chase account. BTW, I hadn’t even noticed my credit limit had been raised again sometime in the past year. Last time I looked my total credit limit was around $20,000 but now it’s up to $25,700.

Kyoto’s 縁切り神社 (The Shrine of Cutting Bonds)

Shinto Shrines (Jinja:神社 or sometimes Jingu:神宮 in Japanese) tend to be full of wooden prayer tablets (ema:絵馬), which can generally be bought for a few hundred yen, allowing the patron to write a prayer to the kami (神god, spirit) of that particular shrine, hang it on the ema rack, and hope for the best. Although some shrines are known for having specialties, such as education (specifically, passing exams), romance, health, etc. most shrines tend to have a pretty repetitive mixture of prayers based on these commonplace themes. There are exceptions though, with the best I have run across being Kyoto’s Yasui Engiri Jinja (安井の縁切り神社, official name is Yasui Konpiragu:安井金比羅宮).

While you may find an occasional prayer for good grades or such by someone who doesn’t quite realize where they are, the majority of ema at Engiri Jinja, appropriately enough, contain prayers related to the theme of engiri, literally meaning “cutting of bonds”-which is commonly used today in reference to the ending of relationships, especially romantic ones. The first part of the word, en (縁) has a few different meanings, including “edge” or “porch-like area in old Japanese buildings”, but most importantly the Buddhist concept of pratyaya which I have not read up on but has something to do with causation, and by extension is taken in reference to such concepts as “fate”, “destiny”, “familial bond”, or “relationship”. The second part, giri or kiri (切り) simply means to cut or sever. This concept of severing “en” originally meant something more along the lines of cutting away the threads of negative destiny to relieve one’s bad luck, but today has come to refer primarily to the more conceptually simple act of severing personal relationships.
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