Non-believers

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who took notice of President Obama’s mention of “non-believers” in his inaugural address the other day. Brief recap:

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. …

I consider myself an atheist. My (non-)faith isn’t a driving force in my life, but once I did join the American Atheists just so I could call myself a “card-carrying atheist.” (That didn’t work out, as the card was laminated in a way that made it too big to fit in a standard wallet card slot.) As one of the “non-believers,” I greatly appreciate President Obama’s recognition, and I hope that he will maintain his pro-science stance, and uphold the separation of church and state.

In case anyone’s wondering, this is a big deal. I have a suspicion that atheists are probably the most hated group of people in America, certainly more than minorities and gays. Take this exchange between George Bush Senior and a reporter:

Sherman

What will you do to win the votes of the Americans who are atheists?

Bush

I guess I’m pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in God is important to me.

Sherman

Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?

Bush

No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

Sherman (somewhat taken aback):

Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?

Bush

Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I’m just not very high on atheists.

I don’t care if he likes atheists, but to say that “atheists shouldn’t be considered citizens?” That’s an unacceptable point of view from someone whose job was to lead the nation and uphold the Constitution (which says nothing about “belief in God” being a requirement for citizenship).

A 2007 Gallup poll asked what kind of candidate people would vote for for president. How did atheists fare? They’re at the bottom of the list, below Mormons, homosexuals, and all races, ethnicities, sexes, and religions. In fact, atheists were the only group that got more than 50% saying “no, would not vote for.”

So you can see how this is an important step forward.

Unsurprisingly, some people are quibbling over the particular word Obama used. “Non-believer” isn’t poetic by any means, but I think it’s reasonable given the options. “Atheists” and “agnostics” are both out because neither group encompasses the other. “Freethinkers” seems to imply some superiority over “non-freethinkers.” Ultimately, I’m just happy the issue is on the table.

Good luck, Mr. President. You have a hard road ahead.

Problems with the new ESTA

The US has just deployed a new weapon against those evil foreigners who hate our freedoms so much. Now we’re going to keep all you terrorists out by making it too annoying to enter the country.

Enter the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). In a nutshell, almost all non-US citizens from visa-waiver countries (including Japan) have to register online before entering the US. You can read all about the details elsewhere.

I took a look at the Japanese version of the website and noticed some very large holes in the implementation.

• The translation is confusing and broken in parts. There were sentences that just cut off halfway through.

• Due to the details of Japanese text input on computers, you have to specifically tell users to enter single-byte characters in text forms, and actually enforce the this requirement with proper input validation because many people don’t really understand the difference. This is unless, of course, you’re prepared to handle double-byte alphanumerics on the back end. (Example: ABC123 is single-byte, ＡＢＣ１２３ is double-byte. More info on Wikipedia.)

  Anyway, the form tells you to enter your info in the Latin alphabet (rōmaji), but nowhere does it specify single-byte. I wanted to test the form to see how well it coped with double-byte characters, but I didn’t want the DHS knocking down my door in the middle of the night.

• The website is not designed with mobile access in mind (or so I assume; I couldn’t even connect to the site on my AU phone). Many, many Japanese people don’t have PCs, and do all their internet activities on their mobile phones with very limited browsers.
• The website does no geo sniffing and ignores preferred language settings, defaulting to English and throwing up a giant legalese JavaScript popup. Talk about unfriendly.

Ultimately I suspect that people will end up leaving all this bullshit to travel agents, and very few people will personally deal with the system on any level (unless that’s not allowed for some reason).

Even if they fix the above problems, I think that this is yet another highly unnecessary act of security theater that will accomplish nothing but to annoy people, waste tax dollars, and serve as another potential vector for personal information to be lost or stolen.

USA! USA! USA!

なんちゃって中国語

遊びに行く約束をしていた友達にこんなメールをさっき送ってしまった。

宛先

T さん

件名

挨拶

本文

本日遊戯未決定無礼要謝罪。先方意見拝受意欲多々。昨日大量飲酒睡眠不足本日運転不随心配。

文体不可思議要謝罪。解読可能不可能疑惑。

そして返事が来た。友達は疲れたと言って、今日の予定をキャンセルしてしまった。しかもなぜか返事は完璧な英語で書かれていた。また僕が返信。

宛先

T さん

件名

Re: 返信挨拶

本文

打破約束落胆。不特定未来期日再度同行遠足願望。本日休養堪能命令。

先方通信驚愕英語達者。話術隠蔽狡猾。少々不信湧出（米国的冗談）

少しでもお解りいただけたでしょうか？　これだから僕はモテない男です。

9月18日に更新：２日後、まったくコメントなし。インターネットまでシラケてしまった。これはちょっとすごい。

Fascists against drunk driving

First of all I’d like to state that I am not in favor of drunk driving.

However, I read something in the paper today that made me mad: Japanese auto makers, particularly Nissan, are apparently moving to introduce devices that prevent a car from starting up if the driver has consumed alcohol. Suggested devices to be made requirements for starting the car:

1. A brethalyzer tube on the dashboard into which you must blow, or
2. inputting a long, complicated PIN that would be too difficult to enter while drunk.

This is just stupid. I’m not going to take a goddamn breathalyzer every time I want to start my car, and I’m not memorizing some obnoxious password.

The impetus for these draconian measures is the “skyrocketing” DUI-related death rate in Japan. The actual numbers listed in the article? About 1200 cases in 2002 or 2003, and a full 700-some cases in 2005. Let’s compare with the US: According to MADD, there were 17,448 people killed in alcohol related crashes in 2001. Unless 14.5 people were killed in every single incident in Japan, I don’t think they’re even freaking close. Yes, Japan has half the population of the US; yes, we’re not comparing apples to apples here (number of drunken driving incidents that led to death vs. number of drunk driving deaths), but first of all, this is clearly not a pressing social problem. And drunk driving deaths are not skyrocketing if, as the article stated, there was a 38% drop over the last 3 years.

Won’t somebody please think of the children!?! Let’s give up our personal freedoms just to appease a bunch of knee-jerking soccer moms and some auto manufacturers that want to sell us yet another must-have feature next to the LCD TV, DVD player, CD player, GPS navigation system, collision detection, backup camera, automated-parallel-parking, satellite-hookup black box / Big Brother surveilance system, and so on.

There is already a zero tolerance policy for drunk driving here. Everyone knows that. This is already overkill (how about something a little more reasonable like in the US?) Is inconveniencing every single non-drunk driving person in the country worth it? Is it going to stop the misanthropes who knowingly get behind the wheel while tipsy? How about the research that says driving while talking on a cell phone is worse than driving drunk?” Are we going to have anti-cellphone devices installed in cars too? Speaking of which, that’s one of my pet peeves. Shut the fuck up and drive, asshole. If you’re so important you have to use the cell and drive at the same time, you can afford a goddamn chauffeur.

“They can go fornicate themselves with an iron stick”

I’ve been saying this for years. Amen, brother. Note, however, that Alex provides a rebuttal: America is not Red and Blue, it’s actually purple. It looks like the Mountain Standard Time zone is the “real South.” Or is it just the rural folks from every state out in Buttfuck County? Probably a combination of both.

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Bush in Japan

My aunt works for or is somehow otherwise tied to Barack Obama, who trounced his opponent in the race for Illinois US Senator. I fired off a congratulatory email to my aunt in which I systematically misspelled “Obama” as “Obana.” Go me.

The point of all this is that she asked how Japan is reacting to Bush’s reelection. Here is what I told her:

No one I know here is interested in politics, so it’s hard to guage Japan’s reaction on the individual level. What I’ve heard, though, is that Japanese people like Bush because he and Koizumi are buddies. Also, I imagine it’s because

• he is “tough on terror” (North Korea is, understandably, a big concern here),
• because the Christian Right’s bullshit is largely a foreign concept here,
• and because Japan always seems to be afraid of challenges to the status quo.

And thus ends my obligatory election commentary. Now for some hilarity: I Love Egg! and The Perry Bible Fellowship (don’t worry; it’s comics, not Jesus).

Bitter

At this point (19:15 JST) CNN remains unrealistically optimistic about Kerry’s chances, reporting Ohio as being “too close to call.” I don’t doubt that this could drag on for days, hinging entirely on how much bacon the lawyers can make with the provisional vote issue, but I don’t think it should. I think that, disappointing as it is, we have a Bush Lock™.

This is very bad news, but probably not for the reasons you’re thinking.

• We will have to endure (at least) four years of Democrats whining about the loss.
• We will have to endure (at least) four years of self-congratulatory Republican circle-jerks and chest-pounding.
• Americans living abroad now have to apologize even harder for being American. “Don’t blame me—I voted for Kerry” will become our new motto.
• [Obligatory serious point] Al-Qaeda can now justify their attacks on civilians by saying that America elected Bush fair-and-square.

Let’s try to look at the bright side:

• According to CNN’s exit polls, female voters solidly favored Kerry.

Democratic males! This is the time when your Democratic female friends need the most emotional support. Be there for them; go forth and get your mack on! Make the pale, sweaty Republicans jealous.

In closing:

It’s bitter, oh so bitter.

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2004 US Presidential Election Drinking Game

Keio won the second game today, so classes aren’t cancelled for tomorrow. That doesn’t matter, though, because I’m going to a Do As Infinity concert! Too bad it’s way the hell out in the boonies.

The election is tomorrow, which actually means the day after tomorrow for Japan. Wednesday is a national holiday here, so I plan on playing the 2004 US Presidential Election Drinking Game. The rules are (tentatively) as follows:

• Whenever they predict that a state will choose [candidate] with [x%] confidence margin, take a drink of beer. (If the state is a swing state, finish your beer.)
• If the prediction is reversed for any state, take a shot.
• Whenever they show any candidate’s election HQ party thing, take a sip of beer.
• When a candidate mispronounces something or screws up a saying, finish your beer.
• When a candidate thanks his or her supporters, take a sip of beer.
• When they ask an “expert” about anything, take a sip of beer.
• For reports about election fraud, finish your beer.
• And finally, if Dubya wins by a clear margin, drink all of the booze in the house and move to Canada.

This could be a dangerous election.

P.S. Huzzah, computerized voting machines!

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“What is he talking about?”

I have officially rocked the vote. I predict a landslide win for Kerry with 100% of the vote in Sunrise Tode.

The other day the emperor gave me a hat. I didn’t like it, so I gave it to Ben. It was too small for Ben, so he gave it to Henry. Henry already has a hat, so he gave it to Charles. Who has the hat? Just think about it.

That’s right, I have the hat.

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Frustrations abound

This is fucking ridiculous.

But what’s even more fucking ridiculous is the rain. The 23rd goddamn typoon is bearing down on the Tokyo area and the rain has been nonstop. Not only is it nonstop, but I have to walk outside for about an hour just to get to and from where I need to go every day. My bag is soaked and my books are ruined. My shoes are sopping wet, which means they won’t be dry by tomorrow so I’ll have to wear sandals. What is this, fucking Seattle? This isn’t even the rainy season! Japan needs to get this fucking typhoon thing under control because it’s absolutely fucking ridiculous.

While we’re on the subject of ridiculousness, Tomoko had this to say about Viagra and the scarcity of the contraceptive pill in Japan:

「それは政府のお役人たちが頭の固い、古い男尊女卑を良しとする色惚けジジイ集団だから。しかも奴らはピルを認可すると性行動の低年齢化に拍車をかけて性病が蔓延すると思ってる。あんな奴らさっさとバイアグラの使いすぎで腹上死してしまえばいいのに！」

Translation (spiced up to my liking): “That’s because the government officials are just a bunch of hard-headed, misogynistic old leches. They think that if they approve the pill it will encourage young people to have sex and that STDs will spread as a result. I hope they all die of a Viagra overdose while fucking.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself.