It’s been ages since my last post, but strangely enough, I’ve had 3 comments in the past week on various topics – even heard from an old friend that I haven’t talked to since high school.  Like usual the post about squid ink pasta remains popular, and according to Google Web Tools, I’m ranked around number 7 when you type in that key phrase.  Guess not many other people have written about it.  Anyway, I thought it might be nice to write again and keep everyone up to date on what is going on.

Tonight I sat back to enjoy the third presidential debate.  The first two were pretty boring, but this last one had a sense of urgency that made for good viewing.  Both candidates seemed to be surrounded in a cloud of pressure forcing them to get their message out much more forcefully, and I can only ask why this didn’t happen before.  I felt that this third one was pretty evenly matched, but unfortunately McCain came across as being a little whiny.  I used to be a huge McCain fan so it’s pretty disappointing to see how far he’s fallen in this campaign.  I’m sure a lot of it is the work of his campaign team, even his brother told the press to let him be him, but you’d think he’d have more control over what is going on.  Obama’s policies just make more sense to me this time around – especially in areas such as health care, which I was without while living in the US.  I will say this though: even if Obama wins, I’m still disappointed in his Yes vote for telecom immunity.

As for other going ons, there’s more after the jump:
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I was reading around on the net again like usual and found a pretty disturbing piece of information that I was previously unaware of. I can’t really say if this was an accident or on purpose (I will let you decide for yourself), but apparently the person who blew the whistle on the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture scandal was outed on television by Donald Rumsfeld despite his wishes to remain anonymous.

This link is for an article on the BBC website that describes the incident in more detail, but it seems that after Joe Darby (the whistle blower) was named on TV in front of his peers, he was then flown out of Iraq and put under protection for six months out of fear of retaliation. His house in the US was vandalized by people angry over the whistle blowing and his wife, after learning what her husband had done, fled to her sister’s house to avoid any repercussions.

Those who are anti-Bush tend to say it was on purpose, as does Joe himself, but what I find more disturbing about this whole issue is that there are actually Americans who would be angry with Joe Darby’s actions. To be fair I don’t know if this reaction was by acquaintances from his home town or complete strangers, but it makes me angry to think that doing the right thing would make you a target. Call me naive, which I readily admit I am, but when a crime has been committed I have always been under the impression that it needs to be dealt with properly. Strangely, I wrote about a similar topic in a letter to the editor of the Japan Times. It’s scary times we live in when people in the right are subject to wrong.

Originally the internet was created to transmit information from one scientist to another. This goal has obviously been met, but what the internet has become is, for better or worse, so much more. Anything you can possibly think of is available at your fingertips, and it’s really hard to imagine what this world would be like without this easily accessible source of information waiting to be accessed. The only problem with this is that the access never stops. The mind becomes dependent on this constant flow of input, and much like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, the ultimate quest becomes less about quality and more about quantity.
With that said, I find myself searching web sites late into the night on that journey to become more informed. I don’t even care about the topic, to be honest, as long as I understand what is being said. It’s never static either. One minute I’ll be reading about Marvel super heroes and the next I’ll be investigating the principles behind flight. Does anyone else find themselves craving more knowledge?

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I’m posting two entries today. I actually wrote the one below a while back, but I was lazy and never got around to posting it. Scroll down the page to see that other entry.

For now however, I’m going to talk about videogame politics and also try to clear up some misconceptions. I mostly want to focus your attention on a crazy lawyer by the name of Jack Thompson. The name probably isn’t familiar to most people, but if you have heard any news linking video games to violence in the past 10 years you might be surprised to find out that it’s, for the most part, the work of this one individual.

I hear over and over (especially from my mom) about the concerns related to video game violence. Obviously there are violent games out there, but there is one crucial factor that seems to be ignored – games also come with ratings. Video game ratings are exactly the same as movies only with different lettering. For example, G (General) in movies is the same as E (Everyone) in games, and R (Restricted) is the same as M (Mature). The reasons why these ratings are given for each particular game are detailed on the back of every box, and in most stores now, you can’t actually buy M games without a parent present or unless you’re 17 or older. The ratings are done on a voluntary basis by the ESRB in the United States and there are similar groups all around the world making sure parents know what to expect when buying games. Video game violence is exactly like movies. If you would never take your child to see a Rated-R movie, then you should never be purchasing an M-Rated game. This distinction needs to be clearly made and especially if you are under the impression that games = children. For most people my age (late 20s) games have almost entirely replaced television as a source of entertainment. We are not children and as such have come to expect adult oriented content that maintains our interest, that doesn’t necessarily mean sex and violence, but also doesn’t rule it out. The same could be said for watching Disney’s The Lion King versus watching Friday the 13th. If I want to be entertained as an adult I watch Friday the 13th, if I want to enjoy family-friendly fare I watch The Lion King. I would never take a young child to see Friday the 13th. Period.

Jack Thompson is trying to confuse this issue however. He has spent his whole career trying to lump all games (whether they are for children or not) into one large violence-causing category. He was the person that got everyone to believe Columbine was caused by video games, he was again seen trying to prove that the Virginia Tech shooting was caused by video games (despite the shooter not actively playing games), he was the one creating unnecessary publicity concerning the “Hot Coffee” scandal related to Grand Theft Auto, and he continues to aggressively pursue any game company with litigation simply for the purpose of publicity. He is repeatedly used by the media in an attempt to create a link between violence and games and has actually sunk to threats and litigation against those who have criticized him. Jack Thompson’s role in strengthening the rating system of video games is a good one, but aside from that, it becomes a parenting issue. Any publicity regarding violent video games and high-profile shootings is merely a play by Jack to keep his name in the news and ultimately makes it harder for uninformed parents to figure out what is really going on. There has been no direct correlation found between games and violence (it may be one of many factors but not the sole one), and the idea that games are only for children needs to be fixed in order for this whole topic to move forward responsibly.

Before I go, I might remind you that Jack Thompson is the same man who actually gave a note to Janet Reno in order to learn if she was a homosexual, the same man who actually tried to get the Florida Bar Association voted unconstitutional because he felt they had a vendetta against him and his religious beliefs, and also the same man who has had disbarment proceedings filed against him due to his inappropriate behavior as a layer. I recommend checking out his wikipedia page to see everything he has done over the years. It’s very interesting and actually only the tip of the iceberg. It doesn’t negate that violence and video games needs to be evaluated, but it does show you that you can’t always believe everything you read or see in the news.

Well, things in Japan certainly have become interesting. If you check out your favorite news site like cnn or foxnews or whatever, you may see a tiny blurb about the prime minister of Japan quitting. It may seem like no big deal in the foreign media, but over here politics have entered into meltdown mode. Everyone was pushing for the prime minister to resign, but the timing at which everything happened is akin to a laxative finally working during a rush hour traffic jam. I mentioned previously the election in Japan and how the ruling party was massively defeated. To recap, this was mainly because of a variety of scandals as well as a complete botch-up of the social security payment system. People were pissed and they let the ‘Old Guard’ know their feelings through a lack of votes. What I didn’t mention was that because of this defeat, the part was essentially backed into a corner and they were trying to regain their lost position – in other words, their position in the government was tenuous at best. Abe (who is the prime minister) was under a great deal of pressure to resign but he said he was going to stand his ground and decided that a complete reshuffle of his cabinet would be the best way to start repairing his party’s reputation. However, just a few days after his new cabinet had started work, more scandals came to light regarding his new appointees and there were more resignations – I think the running total for one year is at 5 resignations and one suicide. Still, Abe continued to say he would hold his ground, and boldly stated that if his anti-terrorism plan wasn’t voted into law that he would possibly resign. Which brings us to yesterday.

Only 3 days after giving his equivalent of the State of the Union Address Abe suddenly announces he’s quitting. No one, including his party members, was prepared for this. It’s completely out of the blue, and as such, the usual stoic Japanese politicians have begun venting their anger openly in front of television cameras around the country. Some are saying that the timing of this resignation couldn’t have been worse, and I read today that Abe is either having possible health problems or that there could be a breaking story this weekend talking about how Abe was involved in a financial scandal. This is all merely speculation, but I think as the next few days go by I will learn more details about this situation. So, when you read that small article on your favorite news site this weekend about the prime minister in Japan, you might reconsider what it actually means – and just for some extra perspective, the ‘Old Guard’ that I mentioned before, the ones who got voted out of the upper house of the Diet, have always been conservative and the US’s staunchest allies. What effect this will have on America’s ability to function in Asia is something I’m interested to see. For more information, you might check out this article on time.com.

Moving on now, I thought that I might mention one more thing to those technology lovers out there. I’m a pretty jaded computer user/gamer, but two days ago I found an absolutely amazing technology that takes completely random sets of pictures and can form basically 3-d models out of them. Not only that, but no matter how high the resolution of the pictures is, there is no slow down related to viewing the pictures. It’s hard to describe accurately with words alone, but if this kind of technology sounds interesting to you I suggest checking it out. This is currently being developed by Microsoft’s tech lab, and right now the technology is being mainly used for showing buildings. One thing that I need to stress before you view this is that the pictures that form the 3-d images are taken by completely DIFFERENT people. This means, for example, that you could download all of the pictures of the Eiffel Tower off of Flickr and generate a 3-d image of that structure.

On the website there are a few photo sets including historical sites in Europe, but my favorite is probably the really high resolution photograph set taken at the launch pad of the space shuttle. They also have one more set that actually allows you to see the extent of tile damage found on the bottom of the shuttle while it was flying around in space. The detail is so extreme that you can actually zoom in and almost make out the serial numbers on EACH tile. Needless to say, the potential for this is out of this world. The technology is called Photosynth.

I thought that it might be worthwhile going back through some old topics and updating everyone about various odds and ends.

The hunter’s moon: If you remember in August I mentioned briefly about the total lunar eclipse of the moon. I had been looking forward to it for quite some time and the weather in weeks preceding the event was perfect for viewing. However, on the day of the eclipse Japan fell back into cloudiness and I was left pondering the vileness of my luck. Of course I saw some pictures on TV, and I even found out that some parts of Japan were lucky enough to see it, but I was really disappointed. Guess I’ll have to wait until the next one which is supposedly going to happen in about 6 years or so.

Squid ink pasta: I got a lot of response related to this article – it seems that lots of people can’t stomach the idea of eating squid ink – but strangely enough, my blog ranks very high in Google’s search results for things like ‘squid ink pasta’ and ‘black ink pasta.’ Guess there’s no better way to increase your popularity than to write about totally obscure topics. I just feel bad for the person that’s actually excited about trying the pasta and comes across my blog entry.

Election coverage: My sister will probably be happy to hear that based on her advice I’ve put self-imposed limits on my campaign interest. There were a number of factors, but I think the biggest was that there are still candidates that have not yet entered, and there are other candidates that are deciding whether to drop out of the running. It’s kind of silly to make any kind of decision at this point since everything will probably be different in three months.

Blog topics: I’ve had some requests to write more about what my wife and I are doing lately. I’ll try to cover some various things, but I’m still not sure how much personal information I’m going to post. A lot of privacy is lost with these blogs, and even though you probably know the inner depths of my perverse mind we’ll see how much more I feel comfortable with.

Sorry for the delay since my last blog post.  I have been in Germany for the last few days on business and I just got home last night.  To be honest, I have no idea where to actually start this post.  I feel like I have a lot of ground to cover and rather than make you read a 4-page summary of my last 3 days, I figure I’ll just try to sum up everything.

First of all, Germany (or a related story).  It was kind of a strange feeling heading to Germany.  I’ve always wanted to visit the country, but after 3 trips to Korea and a trip to the Maldives (roughly 13,000 miles) in the past two months, you can’t really blame me for being sick of flying.  The trip to Germany is only around 11 or 12 hours from here, but once you pass the 10-hour mark, life on an airplane becomes a challenge.  It was a first for me to fly on Lufthansa and I actually really enjoyed the airline company.  After riding on Asiana and then on Lufthansa you really start to see how pathetic most of the American airlines are in areas of service and meals.  Lufthansa had actual silverware (no sporks here, I’m afraid) and in addition to two choices you were given food that was actually edible.  American companies have reduced passengers to cardboard selection A or B and no matter what you choose it tastes basically the same.  I will say that in terms of personal luxury, Americans have the advantage.  Most of the international flights that I’ve been on out of the States have the built-in TVs.  Neither Asiana nor Lufthansa had these – a very sad thing indeed.  I have to also say that I probably wouldn’t be complaining so much if I hadn’t read on the exact same flight that airlines are operating at their highest profit margin in quite some time. Perhaps they could use that money to improve the overall flying experience.

As for Germany (getting back to it), it exceeded all of my expectations.  The country is beautiful, the people are extremely friendly, the food is amazing, and the architecture is extremely impressive.  I was only there for three days but I would easily move there if given the chance.  I’ve finally started feeling at home in Japan (after six years of living here) and I felt a million times more comfortable in just my first day of being in Germany.  I realize that there a million factors at play here, but I truly could not get enough of how personable everyone (including store owners, passengers, drivers, etc.) was.  There’s really so much to say about why I enjoyed the trip that it’s actually hard to write about it.  I will say that one of the highlights of the trip was drinking German beer.  I’m not sure what it is about their brews, but they’re good…really good.  They are a bit tastier than normal, and especially the ales and dark beers were great.  More than anything, if you make it to Germany, you HAVE to try the beer.  I might get into more about this trip in future posts, but if anyone has questions let me know!  Make sure to check out more info about the church you’re seeing in the attached photo.

Next up, I would like to welcome some new visitors to my site. I can’t really say how many there are (I don’t know), but it’s always nice to have some new faces around. I hope you can put up with my constant ranting to find something you enjoy reading. I promise that I’m only complaining 90% of the time. However! Like I promised on my friend Matt’s blog, I’m actually going to open myself to some critique and post my first of two short stories. I’d love it to hear what everyone thinks – even if you hate it – scratch that, especially if you hate it. My writing is prone to some pretty heinous grammar mistakes, but if you can get over that just let me have it. I’m one of those types that learn more from criticism. Oh, and just so you can prepare yourself, the story is a mix of sci-fi and horror.  It’s called On the Edge.

Next up, I found an interesting site that everyone should check out. It supposedly determines your political leanings – although I can’t really vouch for its accuracy. I took the test as honestly as I could and I’m apprently as Liberatarian as Ghandi was (although unless you’re counting Ghandi 2 we’re not quite the same personality wise). Give it a try and see how it turns out. Maybe you’re the next W. – or in anime terms WX.

Oh and last, I just wanted to give everyone the heads up of a great short story I found. It’s called Northwest Passage by Barbara Roden and it’s a short little ditty that will screw with your preconceptions about a lot of things.

Today I’m going to take the opportunity to write a post about a comment that my sister wrote for my last blog. I’ve been talking a lot about the election lately, especially the debates, and my sister posted that it was still too early to think about who is running. Actually, I found a similar blog about this on Time.com. I actually think she’s right, but it’s interesting to think about what’s happening right now. It seems that I’m not alone in wanting the current administration to disappear… and soon. I think that overall people are looking for answers and not finding them, and this is in turn leading people to speed up the election process. I suppose I should just take a breath and see how things turn out for the time being. I’ve seen some progress made in Japanese politics and that should tide me over for a while.

This video is great! It’s Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners at his finest. If baseball was more like this I would watch it all the time. Then again, if baseball was more like this, I’d be dead.

Recently I’ve been swept up in following the presidential debates. Living in Japan I have very little access to the normal stuff that people in the US see on a daily basis but luckily with more and more progress being made with the internet framework, I’m finally getting a taste of the good stuff.

I mentioned in my last blog report about how much I liked the democratic debate that was shown on YouTube, and I think last week or so there was another Republican debate shown on ABC (which I also saw on YouTube). Unfortunately the Republicans won’t be having the same kind of YouTube style debate (I heard it was because they were afraid of the questions), but in this most recent one they did have a few poor attempts at trying to duplicate it. For the most part, I have to admit that the Republican debate was a hell of a lot more interesting than the Democratic one. To me it seems as if the Democrats are deathly afraid of saying what they really believe in order to avoid offending one group or another and on the other hand the Republicans are in damage control mode trying to portray an image of strength to the people. Surprisingly enough, the Republicans on display at the debate had a wide variety of opinions about the topics, and even more surprising, a few of the people seemed quite appealing.

Like I mentioned before, I think the time has really come for us to analyze the candidates based on what they say and do rather than by looking at their party affiliations. The Democrats are usually more in line with my way of thinking, but I’ve really started to believe that just voting for them because they’re Democrats is actually a waste of a vote AND a failure in my part as an American citizen. The reason politics are so bad right now is because some time in the 70s or 80s it became popular to vote along party lines. I’m sure it started in the 70s but it was probably solidified in an anti-Republican backlash during the Reagan administration.

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On a slightly lighter topic, I wanted to mention one more thing I forgot about my honeymoon to the Maldives. At the resort we stayed at, I finally got the chance to meet C-3PO. Can you believe it?! Seriously though, it was pretty strange seeing the embodiment of C-3PO asking me how my day was and what I wanted to drink with dinner. As for why I thought he was the reincarnation of a robot from a sci-fi movie – well, that’s an easy one. First of all, his posture was immaculate…humans were never meant to walk as if their spine was a metal bar. Second, he moved his head and arms very little (and independently from the normal flow of his body motions), and his arms were always held out to his sides with his arms slightly bent. It was just bizarre. That and when he spoke, he had absolutely zero emotion. I only wish I got a picture of him, but it’s kind of strange when you ask to pose with a waiter…I suppose.

Things still really haven’t let up at work and so updating this blog has become more of a challenge than I was expecting. I’m getting home anywhere between 9 and 11pm every night now, and between eating and sitting on the couch (sometimes both at the same time) there’s not much time to do anything else. I’ve been trying to catch up on some games that I’ve been really interested in completing, but even that is hard to do. I will say this now and probably as long as I live, but I’ll never figure out why Japanese people work as much as they do. Obviously extra work comes with the territory of being in a marketing company, but even with tight deadlines it still amazes me how late everyone stays. I once heard somewhere (can’t remember where) that American’s consider work to be part of their lives and Japanese people put emphasis on work first – I think this says a lot about the difference in cultures. Here’s an example: in the US, people usually wear sneakers to work and put on their nice shoes when they get to the office. However, in Japan, workers usually (in older offices anyway) wear nice shoes to the office and change into slippers when they get to work. Supposedly, from what I understand, this was to signify the fact that the office was more like your home. This is a pretty antiquated practice now, but the fact that it exists is pretty interesting. I guess what I’m really saying is that when I look at workers throughout the country, I see very little importance placed on spending time with friends and family, and even less on the actual well-being of the workers as long as it helps the company. I’m actually very lucky because my current office has been very supportive in letting me visit the doctor and other various things that need to be done.

Since I’m on the topic of Japan today, I really need to talk about the election that happened this past weekend. It was great! The ruling party, the party that has been in power since World War 2 (with a brief lapse in 1993) was absolutely crushed. What makes this so wonderful is that the people in power were made up of a bunch of old farts who had very little interest in bettering Japan (from a liberal perspective anyway) and they continued to follow the status quo regardless of how much damage it was doing to anything. You might be asking why they have been in power so long, and the answer is really simple. Most of the people who are voting are elderly folks in need of security, and as a result they have continued to stick with the conservative party to secure that peace of mind. However, as if in some kind of Shakespearean comedy, the ruling political party made mistake after disastrous mistake. You probably have heard of some of these on the news, but there have been a number of financial scandals, one in which a politician (and also cabinet member for the prime minister) killed himself, there was the politician who called women “baby-making machines,” there was the politician who said that the atomic bomb attacks were inevitable (a big no-no in Japan), and to top things off there was the disclosure of the existence of 50 million social security accounts with no owners despite the fact that they were being funded by the social security money of tax payers. This last fact basically hosed the ruling party because if you remember, since most of the voters are elderly people, anything that actually puts their potential to receive social security money at risk is the same as political suicide. So the end result – the ruling party ended up dropping from around 65 seats in the upper house to 37 overnight. They still have the majority in the lower house of the Diet, but with this balance of power it will make it harder to pass bills; as a side note, up until this election (i.e. for the last 50 years or so) if they wanted something passed they just passed it – there was plenty of opposition, but since they have always had the majority vote, there was nothing anyone could do about it. Can you imagine the Bush administration passing bills without opposition – oh, wait…

On a side note about games, currently I’m working on finishing my career in Fight Night Round 3 and also playing Vampire Bloodlines for the second time. Both of these games are truly great games, and if you have the chance to get either of these, I highly recommend it. FNR3 is available for Xbox 360 and PS3 I think, and Vampire is available for the PC. Vampire is a few years old now and should run pretty well on slightly older machines – plus, it is available on Steam so you can get access to it very easily. It’s nice hearing from people about my blog, and since my updating frequency has been kind of strange, you should subscribe to this blog using the RSS feed links found on the page.

Oh yeah, one last thing…I finished the newest Harry Potter book so if you’d like to talk to me about the series, feel free to send me an email. Please don’t include spoiler information in the comments because I don’t want anyone to read them. I will remove anything concerning the book that might be considered a spoiler. I really liked the last book, and I felt it was probably the best way they could have ended the series. It’s hard to forget that the books are essentially written for kids/teenagers so having an ending like the Dark Tower by Stephen King would pretty much be impossible. I’ve been reading like a madman lately having finished the 4th book in the George R R Martin series, Old Man’s War, and now this Harry Potter book. I’m going to move to Cell by Stephen King next. Please feel free to send me some ideas for books to read. My brother-in-law has given me an awesome book-list and I’ve been working my way through that lately. Also, no fantasy. The GRRM series has really spoiled me and I would rather read something in horror or sci-fi for the time being.