For those who are curious, the old voting machines in my area looked very much like this one, color and all
The actual controls were a bit different, and significantly the big lever was vertical along the right side, but you certainly get the idea.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a photo of the new machines I could embed, but you can see a hilariously 1980s educational film style demonstration of them, courtesy of the Essex County Clerk’s office here on their web site.
I just came back from voting in my first presidential primary election. I did vote in both the 2000 and 2004 general elections, but I was living at college an hour away and voted through absentee ballot since I did not want to skip class to come back to my hometown, the only district in which I have ever been registered to vote. But absentee ballots are not available for the primary, and I didn’t even consider skipping class for that (I believe I was also in Japan during the 2004 New Jersey primary).
I have however voted in person before, during a couple of the less significant election years between the presidential race, and I also spent several election days in the polling location at Edgemont Elementary School around the corner from my house when my father held a Democratic party position involved with supervising the polling station during my childhood.
Voting today was nearly the same experience as before. I told the man sitting at the A-K half of the desk my name, signed the blank signature line next to the photocopy of my signature from my voter registration card, and was given a pink voting slip, which I also signed. I had brought my passport along to use as ID, since I did not remember if any documentation is required, but in fact the only verification is a signature check, and knowing your own name and address. I then proceeded to the curtain-encircled voting machine and handed the pink slip to the woman sitting next to it. Her job is to collect each slip, make sure it is properly filled-out, and then pierce it on one of those spiked receipt collector things one often sees next to cash registers and the like. She then presses the button on the rear of the voting machine to prime it for the next voter.
Next, I stepped inside the curtain. This is the point at which there was a slight variation from the old days. I had grown up with the awesome yet clunky great blue mechanical voting machine, which had now been supplanted by electronic ones. There was something viscerally satisfying about actually flipping each little mechanical switch into the correct position before locking and then through the pull of the oversized lever on the right of everything else, transmitting your choices through a series of gears into the hole-puncher in the rear of the machine, encoding your vote onto the long and wide paper feed spooling one line at a time through the apparatus.
Now it is electronic, but thankfully not one of the overcomplicated and eminently hackable touchscreen monstrosities used in many areas. The New Jersey machine, at least the one I used here in Montclair, Essex County, simply has a plastic insert printed with the exact same material as the sample ballot I received in the mail a week or two ago, laid over a series of light-up buttons. When the machine is activated by the attendant, a backlight comes on behind the applicable ballot portion: Republican, Democrat or both depending upon your registered affiliation (both is for people like me who register as unaffiliated). Today is only a primary vote and not a real election, so the sole choice was for choice of presidential nominee. I clicked the Barack Obama button, the names of his four convention delegates to the right, the little red light behind his name came on, and I pressed the finalize button on the bottom right. It took only a couple of seconds, and I was out of there.
But in my heart, voting will never truly feel like democracy to me if you don’t get to pull a big, blue, metal lever at the end.
Update: How did my vote do? Well, Obama and Clinton are currently looking like they’re tied neck and neck nationwide, Clinton won New Jersey by about 9%, but Obama won my Essex County by around 15%. I believe this means that, since delegates are more or less apportioned at the county level, the candidate I voted for technically won in the election which my vote directly counted towards.
At least, that is how it is described in the words of Carol Lloyd, blogger on women’s issues at Salon.com. Due to the centuries as a Spanish colony, The Philippines is a firmly Catholic country-one in which the Church holds a level of influence rarely seen in the western world. Although the Catholic Church has oddly never managed to have any appreciable effect on the Philippines endemic Southeast Asian liberalism towards homosexuality and gender identity, they have managed to keep abortion illegal in all circumstances but to save the life of the mother. (More information on abortion in SE Asia here.) Although pre-conception birth control remains legal throughout The Philippines, in 2000 conservative Catholic Mayor Jose “Lito” Atienza of Manila issued an executive order removing all contraception from free clinics within the city. Many women in the desperately poor slums of Manila find it impossible to fit contraception in with food and other basic needs into their family budget, which has the eventual effect of a larger and even harder to feed family. This is what has women living in three urban slums to file a lawsuit demanding revocation of the order. From Reuters:
Emma Monzaga, one of the petitioners, said she was getting injections once every three months to prevent her from becoming pregnant, but was told on her third visit to a public clinic that the treatment was no longer available. “I was asked to go somewhere else to get the shots because the city hall has stopped funding the family planning program,” Monzaga said, adding her family could not afford to spend extra for contraceptives. “We used to get it for free. It’s becoming a burden because we have to eat and send our six children to school.” She said she has given up the idea of saving some money from her husband’s 300 pesos ($7) daily wage as a construction worker to pay for the vaccines because of rising cost of basic needs.
Amazingly, it took almost eight years before a local NGO managed to file the lawsuit “because the women feared political reprisals.” Unsurprisingly, there is now a different mayor in charge, and many hope that he will revoke the previous order without the need for the lawsuit to proceed. The Center for Reproductive Rights has a 50 page report, full of testimony, on the issue entitled “Imposing Misery: The Impact of Manila’s Contraception Ban on Women and Families,” which may be downloaded in PDF from their website at the above link. The report claims that the executive order violates the Republic’s 1987 constitution, stating:
The 1987 Philippine Constitution guarantees the
rights to liberty, health, equality, information and education for all citizens,
as well as the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their
personal religious convictions. These basic principles, reinforced by
several pieces of legislation, create the foundation under national law for a
right to reproductive health, including access to contraception. [p. 9]
The report suggests that “The Manila City government should revoke Executive Order No. 003” as well as various further plans. [p. 11]
While many people look at issues such as these primarily in terms of individual rights and their effect on individuals and families, it is critical to consider the broader picture as well.
The Philippines today has a population of just under 90 million, a staggering number of whom live in poverty. I can attest from my own visit to the country that the cities are clogged with slums, illegal shanty-towns line the rivers and fill public parks, and the ratio of the population with no gainful employment appears to be easily several times that of anyplace else I have ever been. I have even heard that the unemployment rate in Metro Manila may be almost 50%.
Without high quality and aggressive family planning, that 90 million could nearly double in a generation- and the country’s scarce economic resources would be stretched even thinner. Could the unemployment rate rise even above 50%? Will The Philippines be plunged into a Malthusian crisis like Bangladesh or parts of Africa? Lack of birth control is hardly the only factor that has made Manila, and many other third-world regions, into dystopias, but it is one.
Following up on my post about three weeks ago on the movement to curb plastic bag use, the NYT has an article focusing on the success of the Irish campaign.
In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.
Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.
I think that imposing such fees, essentially a pollution tax being paid in direct response to the pollution itself, may be effective as a means to use market forces for environmental protection. While some libertarian hardliners claim that the only market which matters is the so-called “free market,” operating with no governmental interference whatsoever, in a completely unregulated market the costs of pollution and environmental damage are simply externalized, and born far away from either the producer or consumer of the offending product. By raising the cost of a polluting product, such as a plastic bag, consumers are not just made intellectually aware of the abstract cost which consumption of such a product imposes on the system as a whole, but are forced to make a choice whether or not they, as the responsible party, actually wish to pay the real cost.
Could this be a model for the larger market? It is essentially the same philosophy behind the proposed carbon emissions tax, in which industrial emitters of carbon dioxide are charged fees to encourage thrift and conservation, to reduce the production of greenhouse gases.
On a side note, the article said two more things of which I was not aware. First:
Whole Foods Market announced in January that its stores would no longer offer disposable plastic bags, using recycled paper or cloth instead, and many chains are starting to charge customers for plastic bags.
A positive development from a major US supermarket, and one whose up-scale yuppie customer base will doubtless embrace. Unfortunately, there is still no sign of a nationwide -or even statewide effort, but perhaps competitor supermarkets will be spurred by Whole Foods.
And on a related, yet surprising note:
While paper bags, which degrade, are in some ways better for the environment, studies suggest that more greenhouse gases are released in their manufacture and transportation than in the production of plastic bags.
Rather unfortunate news, I would say. I hope that recycled paper bags, such as the ones which Whole Foods uses, are in fact less polluting. Still, even if paper bags may pollute the air slightly more than plastic, they certainly don’t have as much impact on the sea.
I’m far too sick at the moment to think of anything clever to say about it, but I’d like to just make sure everybody noticed that Australia’s Liberal Party-led government is set to issue a national apology for wrongs committed against the Aborigines.
a decade ago the Victorian Parliament had unanimously passed a motion moved by then Liberal premier Jeff Kennett apologising to Aboriginal people for removing children from their families.
[…]
Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said the apology would be made on behalf of the Australian Government “and does not attribute guilt to the current generation of Australian people”.
[…]
But some prominent Opposition MPs defended the actions of churches and government agencies in removing children from their families.
Opposition health spokesman Joe Hockey said churches acted “only with good intentions”.
Queensland Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce went further, declaring that some indigenous people had actually benefited from the removal.
“If you are rescuing a child from a violent or from a threatening situation then that is the right thing for a state to do,” Mr Hockey told Radio 2UE.
Senator Joyce said an apology would be “an empty rhetorical statement for the chattering classes in the inner suburbs”.
An article in today’s NYT on the uniqueness of the United States commercial bail bond system includes this very interesting tidbit.
Commercial bail bond companies dominate the pretrial release systems of only two nations, the United States and the Philippines.
Although the article does not actually say, I think it is safe to assume that this is a direct result of the fact that the Philippine legal system was constructed during the period of US colonial rule. Those non-American readers who may be unfamiliar with the commercial bail bond system may with to read the explanation in the NYT article to fully appreciate the global oddity of the system. From my brief perusal of some Philippine web pages, it certainly looks like both countries share the institution. For example, look at this page from a Manila metro area attorney’s office:
Paying Bail
You can pay the full amount of the bail in Cash. If you are acquitted, you can withdraw the Bail that you posted. You can also buy a surety bind or post your property to pay for your bail.
Bail bond is like a check held in reserve: it represents the person’s promise that he or she will appear in court when required to. The bail bond is purchased by payment of a non-refundable premium (usually about 15% – 35% of the face amount of the bond).
A bail bond may sound like a good deal, but buying a surety bond may cost more in the long run. This is so because you have to renew the surety bond upon its expiration otherwise, upon motion of the prosecution, a warrant of arrest will be issued for failure to renew the surety bond. If the full amount of the bail is paid, it will be refunded (less a small administrative fee) when the case is over and all required appearances have been made. On the other hand, the 15%-35 premium is nonrefundable. In addition, the bond seller may require “collateral.” This means that the person who pays for the bail bond must also give the bond seller a financial interest in some of the person’s valuable property. The bond seller can cash in on this interest if the suspect fails to appear in court.
The curious may also want to see the amounts of bail set for various crimes under Republic of the Philippines law.
Now that I no longer have to spend all my waking hours translating, Mutant Frog will soon be filled once again with Adamu posts. Between moving to Japan from Bangkok, adjusting to a new city and a new job, taking on way too much work than I should, getting married, and settling into my new apartment in the ghetto, Mutant Frogging and my other hobbies have been essentially on hold. But now the last of my side work is done (the last two months have been dominated by a project involving a certain Japanese-run bank in Indonesia… more on that later) so I plan on having much, much more free time.
Over the nine months that have passed since I arrived in Japan, my interests have shifted quite a bit. Living in Tokyo and working in the finance industry tends dominate my thinking these days, even if I am anything but a financial expert. I try to avoid issuing opinions on things I know absolutely nothing about, but perhaps you will start seeing more finance related posts. Tidbits from my studies and independent research will also hopefully figure in.
I’ve told some that blogging rots your brain, and to an extent it does (at least my brain anyway). To be honest, I hardly remember many of the posts after I do them. The months I spent blogging the Abe administration from Bangkok are mostly a blur, for example, and at any rate they were little more than idle prattling with no real point. One thing that is different from my previous blogging activities is that my free time, while increased now that I am concentrating on my day job, is quite limited. I want to make sure I blog more time efficiently.
But I have certainly missed the best part of blogging – interacting with readers as a sort of sounding board for ideas and debate. The occasional debates in the comments section are especially edifying and exhilarating. Now that Mutant Frog is entering its third year, I hope we can keep building a fun audience and keep doing what we enjoy.
After a long post a few weeks ago on candidates for word of the year 2007, I’ve just noticed an important addition. The American Dialect Society announced about three weeks ago that “subprime” was voted word of the year bu their members.
Subprime is an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment. Subprime was also winner of a brand-new 2007 category for real estate words, a category which reflects the preoccupation of the press and public for the past year with a deepening mortgage crisis.
After seeing all the headlines about stock market crash and recession, I’m well convinced that “subprime” is a solid choice. We’ll be hearing a lot more of this word in the months to come.
The Oxford University Press USA blog has a post responding to this announcement, with some valuable information on the history of the word.
In its earliest attested usage, subprime simply meant “substandard” or “below top quality” in a very general sense. A 1960 article in Operational Research Quarterly referred to “sub-prime material” that can cause delays in automatic data-recording equipment. And in 1970, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Armco steel company was introducing a “subprime” line of cold-rolled sheet metal, “intended for users that don’t need surface qualities 100% free of defects, principally for use in unexposed parts, including the back of a refrigerator.” Over time, this sense of subprime was extended in all sorts of directions, such as this Toronto Star critique of a cinematic performance by Madonna in 1993: “her ‘work’ in Body Of Evidence is sub-prime.”
In the mid-1970s, subprime began to be used in the banking sector, but in a context that is just about the opposite of current usage. Rather than relating to the risky credit status of a borrower, subprime originally described a “below prime” lending rate — in other words, below the prime rate that banks and other lending institutions offer to qualified customers. So in this sense, a loan with a subprime rate is a good thing for the borrower, who is allowed to pay an interest rate lower than what is typically offered. That explains this quote from an August 1975 Associated Press article: “Isn’t the prime supposed to go only to the most credit-worthy customers? Why, therefore, they might ask, was subprime offered to a municipality whose credit standing is suspect?” Similarly, a March 1978 article in Institutional Investor told of banks “offering sub-prime rates to lure back customers.”
It wasn’t until the mid-’90s that the currently popular sense of subprime became widespread. Now it was the borrowers themselves who were being classified as “less than prime” based on their credit histories. Customers in this high-risk category were increasingly able to borrow money from established lenders, particularly to pay for mortgages, automobile loans, and the like. Whereas the older sense of subprime implied a loan with a low interest rate, the subprime loans of the ’90s and ’00s have rates much higher than standard. An April 1995 article in Retail Banker International described auto-lending companies offering “loans of new and late-model cars to consumers with imperfect (’sub-prime’) credit histories.” And a February 1997 New York Times article heralded the coming crisis: “A Risky Business Gets Even Riskier: Big Losses and Bad Accounting Leave ‘Subprime’ Lenders Reeling.”
The two competing senses of subprime, referring either to favorable low-interest loans or to unfavorable high-interest ones, would seem to be in direct opposition. You might even call it a “Janus-faced word” or “contronym,” i.e., a word that serves as its own antonym, like cleave or sanction. But the surrounding context should be enough to establish whether it’s the lending rate or the borrower that is considered subprime. Consider another sub- word, subpar. For a golfer, a subpar score is a good thing, but in its more general sense subpar typically characterizes an inferior performance. Only context can resolve the conflict.
As the word subprime becomes more widely known, we can expect many new extensions of meaning. A recent MSNBC report on business buzzwords claims that the word is already in use as a verb “loosely defined as the ability to completely dig one’s self into a hole and then expect a bailout,” as in “I completely subprimed my Algebra test yesterday.” As far as I can tell, that kind of usage is a figment of the reporter’s fertile imagination, since even Urbandictionary, that student favorite, is thus far unaware of subprime as a generic verb. (When the word does show up as a verb, it tends to be in punning formations like “subpriming the pump” or as an ad-hoc reflexive: a columnist for the Aspen Times wrote that “homeowners have subprimed themselves into an economic disaster.”) But let’s hope that the subprime crisis subsides before it spawns too many new additions to our vocabulary. Even if it’s enriching to the lexicon, it’s hardly enriching to the economy.
When you consider that this is the kind of historical, etymological and contextual usage information that goes into almost every entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, I think you’ll see why I consider it unambiguously the best dictionary in the world.
Everyone reading this is familiar with the tasteless paper-filled, paper-textured fortune cookie right? Long thought to have originated as a gimmick desert in one of California’s Chinatowns sometimes in the late 19th or early 20th century, new research strongly suggests that, despite being popularized by the Chinese, fortune cookies were actually invented by Japanese immigrants, who had gotten their inspiration from snacks sold at a Kyoto bakery. The New York Times has an excellent article detailing the whole story, which I must say I find surprisingly convincing. I think anyone else familiar with the wide range of tasteless Japanese traditional snacks (八ッ橋 anyone ? ), the Japanese love for fortunes, and of the tasteless fortune-filled “fortune cookies” distributed inevitably in American Chinese restaurants will also, upon reflection, find the resemblance highly suggestive.
Jade OC, a long time reader and commenter of MFT, has graciously posted a detailed comparison of his experiences passing through both US and Japanese airline security and immigration checkpoints as a comment on an earlier blog post on the subject. As I suspect that many of our readers look only at the actual posts and not the comments, I thought I would promote this one to the front page.
As promised, here is my short report on the fingerprinting-immigration process in the US and Japan from the POV of a non-citizen of either (though a resident of Japan).
First big complaint. I never wanted to go to the US at all, at least not the first time. But you cannot bloody transit in the US – there’s no such thing as a transit lounge. Everyone who enters a US airport from outside the country, even if, like me, you are just taking a flight to Canada in about 90 minutes, needs to go through Immigration and Customs. This is seriously Fucked Up.
