Category: Current Events

TSA to Offer Shorter Lines if You Bare it All for them: MF Has a Suggestion

The TSA (Transportation Security Agency or as some people call them “Thugs Standing Around”) has officially announced its Registered Traveler Program:

New travel plan would require in-depth checks

Beyond shorter lines for airline passengers, benefits are vague.

WASHINGTON – The government is asking airline travelers to give up potentially a huge amount of personal information for what, at this point at least, could be little more than shorter waits at airport security checkpoints.

The Transportation Security Administration announced details of the Registered Traveler Program on Friday, but officials said the benefits for travelers were still being worked out and might not include an exemption from security searches.

Under the voluntary program, which begins in June, travelers would have to submit fingerprints and allow officials to conduct in-depth background checks, including in some cases providing access to personal and financial histories, to prove they aren’t terrorists.

No incentive, you say? Why not integrate this new background check with the government’s security clearance process? If I could put government clearance on my resume without actually having to work for the government, that would be more than enough reason to give up my personal information.

Thoughts?

Some recommended background reading on Aum

If you’re interested in reading some more about Aum Shinrikyo, the easiest place to turn would be this fairly long article on Court TV’s Crime Library web site.

Additionally, I can’t strongly enough recommend Haruki Murakami’s book, Underground The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. It’s actually a compilation of what was published as two separate volumes in Japan. The first volume, also named Underground, consists of a brief history of Aum, a description of the attacks, and a series of edited interviews in which survivors of the attack (and If I recall correctly, in one case a relative of a ‘survivor’ left in a coma, and a relative of a fatality). By interviewing some of the transit workers alongside a variety of ordinary commuters, interspersed with his own narrative, Murakami paints a vivid and complete picture of how the attack unfolded throughout the day, as well as giving the best overall impression of the Tokyo subway’s geography that I have ever seen in print.

The second (and much slimmer) volume, originally titled “To the place that was promised,” consists of interviews with former members of the cult, whose reactions range from regretful, to disbelieving, to resentful. Of course, at that time he was unable to gain access to any of the cult members who had actually been involved with or known in advance about the attacks, who were all either in prison or hiding (which is still the case).

At least one convicted Aum member has told his story since though. Ikuo Hayashi, a former cardiologist who was arrested and subsequently confessed shortly after the sarin attack, has written a 575 page memoir entitled “Aum and I.” It has not been published in English, but I have a copy sitting right here and it’s a damn good read.
As an aside, I read Murakami’s Aum book about a year before I first went to Japan, when I had just started learning Japanese and was only starting to become interested in learning about the country. It was the first thing by Haruki Murakami that I had ever read, and only after reading Underground did I even know that he was a popular novelist.

Asahara not fit for trial: psychiatrist

Lawyers for Shoko Asahara, founder of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, released portions of a psychiatrist’s report Monday stating that Asahara is unable to stand trial because of his confused state of mind.The report of Masaaki Noda, a professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, will be submitted to the Tokyo High Court, the lawyers said.

Asahara, 50, who has been sentenced to death and whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, is in the midst of an appeal.

Based on the report, the lawyers will ask the high court to suspend the appellate trial. Asahara has been found guilty on 13 counts, including the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system.

“If competency to stand trial is defined as understanding the meaning of the trial and the ability to defend oneself, then (Asahara) should be deemed lacking in such competency,” Noda said in the report.

He also stated in the report that Asahara’s symptoms may improve in about six months if he is given immediate psychological treatment and that reopening the trial after his recovery would be more practical than arguing over whether he is pretending to be ill or is actually confused.

Three of the four psychiatrists, including Noda, who have interviewed Asahara have expressed doubts about his competency to stand trial. Another is drafting a report stating that Asahara is suffering from a mental disorder caused by his long stay in prison.

The Japan Times: Jan. 17, 2006

I’m currently in the midst of a job translating some Aum related documents into English so I know something about this Mr. Asahara. You’d think that someone who was supposedly such a master meditation guru would be able to cope with a prison stay. I mean, one of the training techniques he used on his followers was making them meditate for periods of time in an isolation cell! Didn’t he ever practice that one himself? Or maybe the fact that the prison isn’t feeding him the “Aum diet” of vegetables and natto is wreaking havoc with his charkas and inhibiting the flow of Kundalini energies. How could he possibly be expected to remain sane with his Kundalini energies locked down like that?

Or maybe it’s just the aftereffects of a little too much second-hand smoke from the sarin factory.

In case of earthquake, don’t even think of running

One of the shows on NHK this morning was talking about earthquake preparedness. Recently there’s been something of a boom in literature about what to do in the event Tokyo spontaneously falls down. If you go to bookstores around here, you see competing lines of evacuation maps, survival guides and the like.

The blurb I caught on my way to work was about evacuation. After a major earthquake, the trains stop running and the elevated expressways are likely to have fallen down in places (think Kobe, 1995), so the only way to get out of the city is on foot, taking surface routes.

This doesn’t sound too bad until you realize how many people are in the city, how narrow many of these surface routes are, and how likely they are to be blocked in places by falling power poles and other debris. One think-tank wonk made a computer simulation of an evacuation of downtown Tokyo, and figured that the streets in shitamachi (i.e. the area around Tokyo Station and Ginza) would be crowded to the extent of about 11 people per square meter. That’s about the maximum number of people you can squeeze into a square meter; imagine the worst Tokyo subway cars at rush hour, expanded to the size of an arterial street.

Yet another reason why we need flying cars NOW.

Quick Koizumi Awesomeness

  • Koizumi rides in Keio University-designed electric car, loves the “awesome speed.” (For video, go here in Internet Explorer, wait for it to load, click “skip,” click “1ch,” then click the 3rd link down with the picture of the car. Worth all the effort I promise!)
  • Koizumi has to teach notoriously unsophisticated former PM Yoshiro Mori how to do the Japanese tea ceremony while wearing awesome kimono. (Click “300k” for video)

Jenkins Pulling a Debito!

Looks like he’s had it: Charles Jenkins, the American who defected to North Korea 40 years ago and wound up marrying Hitomi Soga, a Japanese woman there against her will, has decided to turn his back on America once again, only this time he’s doing it legally. As early as next week, the former US Army Private (who is living on Japan’s Sado island with his wife and children) intends to apply for Japanese citizenship.

Note: Check out the video (will probably be taken offline shortly because TBS sucks) for great footage of him doing some weird thing in a swimming pool.

(Japanese story follows)

Continue reading Jenkins Pulling a Debito!

Taiwan’s pigs grow ever more fearsome

You may have already heard that researchers here in Taiwan have just perfected the technology of genetically modifying pigs to glow in the dark. This is apparently going to be very useful for research, since every scrap of pig material also glows green, and I imagine lets you more easily locate bits that you’ve dropped on the floor.

According to the report, “In daylight the researchers say the pigs’ eyes, teeth and trotters look green. Their skin has a greenish tinge.”

There is no word yet on how bioluminescence will affect the God Pig industry. According to a report last year in the Taipei Times “some farmers even pour metal into their pigs before a contest in order to increase the swine’s weight.” All said, we seen to be well on the way to one-ton partially metallic bioluminescent god pigs. All it takes it one minor lab accident and we’re in the middle of a 1950’s horror movie.

More Kabuki

Meaningless charade

The moribund hearings have been as predictable as a Kabuki drama. Barring a major miscue, Alito’s inscrutability will carry him to the Supreme Court

As predictably as a Kabuki drama, the media is using the metaphor of a kabuki drama to describe boring politics.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Daniels/Eichwenwald Kabuki dance reflected a conscious effort to avoid invoking the homosexual angle in the story.

Newsbusters refuses to watch gay kabuki.

“Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time”

That’s what my fortune cookie once told me. And despite being a flavorless and generally unneccessary part of my Chinese food experience, it’s right. So keep it real folks.

I turn 24 this year, and if the Chinese zodiac is any guide, when your age is a multiple of 12, you’re supposed to have an unlucky year.

So far, 2006 has been pretty good, actually. I started the year in Japan, seeing my precious Mrs. Adamu for the first time in three months (She currently lives in Thailand doing world things).

Hm, that’s all I’ve got for now. Expect some pictures of Japan among other personal posts I’ve got lined up including a trip to New York I took a few months ago to eat ramen that ended up being really crappy.