Category Archives: Readings

Charlie Stross, the science fiction writer, describes his visit to Japan:

Tokyo left me feeling like an illiterate Albanian shepherd teleported without warning to the UK, staring slack-jawed in wonder at the vast, gleaming, powerful public works of metropolitan Huddersfield, reeking of wealth and efficiency and a goat-free future. From the thirty-seventh floor of a skyscraper I looked out across the high rise skyline, red lights blinking fretfully in the grip of a typhoon as winds strong enough to blow sheets of rain up the glass of the window rumbled around me, and I realized: this future has no place for goats.

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On our last day in Kyoto, Feorag and I left our hotel and headed for downtown Kyoto. As we descended the steps into Shichijo subway station, an elderly fellow rushed over. “Hello! Remember me?” He called. (Apparently we'd met him a couple of days earlier, in a haze of shrine-going that ended with us both getting templed out.) “Here, please can you help me?” His spoken English was heavily accented. He dug around in his belt pack and pulled out a a sheaf of papers which he thrust under my nose. “Can you proof-read?”

It took us a quarter of an hour to disentangle ourselves from his polite but insistent demands that we check the English vernacular in his papers, which turned out to be part of the second edition of a huge Japanese-English dictionary — which, as Professor of English at Kyoto University, he was editing. Self-effacing politeness is a fearsome weapon: between us we checked at least five pages before we realized escape was possible.

In self-defense I have to admit that I'm not used to being mugged on the subway by feral English professors and forced to proof-read Japanese-English dictionary entries: I have entirely the wrong reflexes for such social situations and so, as one is trained to do when confronted with a situation that promises embarrassment, one tends to go with the flow.

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In the UK, with a few exceptions — the uniformed services of government, police and military and fire services — we respond poorly to being placed in a uniform; it's a sign of depersonalization, stripping us of individuality. In Japan, however, uniforms are everywhere. Even people who don't have to wear them seem to gravitate towards workwear that's uniform in its appearance: taxi drivers in dark suits, peaked hats, and white gloves. Uniforms confer status — a uniform is a sign that you belong to some greater social context, to a corporation or a shop or a school or something important.

And so, we have an island safe for eccentric English professors: an island where outward conformity provides an ill-fitting disguise for social experimentation and strange subcultures. An island where people live like the crew of a generation starship in flight towards the future, nevertheless dragging the scars of ancient history behind them.

Lots more good stuff where that came from. (Spotted via Boingboing, Charlie Stross on Japan)

Erc Muller's new book “American Inquisition”: A New Study of the Inner Workings of the Japanese American Internment is being published today, and he'll be blogging about it all week at Is that Legal? and Prawfsblawg.

Here's a bit from the first post:

I'm happy to announce that Monday, October 15 is the official publication date of my new book “American Inquisition:  The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II.”  It's an account of the secret inner mechanisms of racism within the episode we call the Japanese American internment of World War II.

I ground the book in extensive new archival research in the records of the civilian and military agencies that passed judgment on the loyalties of American citizens of Japanese ancestry.  As historian Roger Daniels says, the book presents a new story of “bad news from the good war.”

I'll be blogging about the book's claims here over the next several days.  Today, I'll start things off by offering a very brief account of how the federal government ended up in the business of passing judgment on the loyalty of more than 40,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry between 1943 and 1945.

Anyone familiar with Eric's work or his blogging will know that this will be a painstakingly careful book — and a good read. I'm looking forward to it.

Ken MacLeod, one of the best science fiction writers out there, blogged a link to this science fiction short-short story because it mentions his name.

I'm linking to the story because it's short and funny.

I like this new phrase, “stink tanks” — organizations masquerading as think tanks but which don't pass the smell test.

Bruce Kushnick, Nieman Watchdog, Corporate-funded research designed to influence public policy, It is clear that we are in the age of “stink tanks,” in which corporate-funded think tanks and well-paid, credentialed academics are hired to make corporate arguments and give the appearance of being independent experts.

…

The think tanks often describe themselves as non-partisan, independent, free-market, free-enterprise, limited-government, or market-oriented. Their expert witnesses often bear credentials such as “professor of” or “former” FCC, FTC, state commissioner, Congressman, staffer.

Some have good reputations for serious studies on economic, political and foreign policy issues, albeit perhaps with an ideological slant. But good reputation or no reputation, when it comes to the telecoms and such issues as broadband, often these groups are nothing more than consulting firms that pursue the goals of the large corporations that are their clients and financial supporters.

This was a new one on me, but I like it. In an uncharacteristically grouchy recent post the The Phantom Professor mentions “trustafarians”.

Interestingly, definitions of “trustafarian” vary. I would have guessed a meaning like this one from False Positives:

Trustafarians : trust fund babies who live supported solely by the trust fund income (i.e. they don't work for a living): Paris Hilton, various members of the Kennedy clan, the characters of The Talented Mr. Ripley, or Hugh Grant's character in About a Boy come to mind. Down market Trustafarians would be those with a bohemian lifestyle, but with hipper accessories, living off he money of parents. (ski bums who don't have to wash dishes.)

But apparently, there's other somewhat different meanings about, as seen from these proposed definitions in the Urban Dictionary,

1. trustafarian

a. a spoiled rich white kid who smokes pot.

b. a person who, in an act of rebellion has taken to smoking pot, pan-handling, and following grateful dead rip-off bands during the week, and then returning to his or her parent's cozy home in the suburbs during the weekend.

c. one who lives with poorer people in an attempt to gain credibility, or street-cred, while disguising the trust fund they actually live off

Don't let that guy smoke any of your stash, he's a trustafarian, and never has his own to share.

2. trustafarian

priviliged white kids who subsribe to the hippie lifestyle (because they can) since they have no worries about money, a job etc. They can then devote their lives to eating organic, following Phish, and wearing dreadlocks (no need for job interviews).

Sarah is a trustafarian. It's totally evidenced by the combination of her brand new car and nice digs with her “earthy” clothes and dreadlocks.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Tor fame has won a Hugo.

He deserves it. Thanks in substantial part to him, my eye has been trained to look for the Tor symbol in the bookshop. I may not buy each one, but I think about each one. The only other publisher who's come close to this is Baen, and I buy a lot fewer of those.