Greg Sanders

Coping with exhaustion [Wed. 10-24 Afternoon]

The ride back was largely flat, but still a little much after the hike.  We got a bit lost in Yongshuo but were able to find the hotel and then drop the bikes off without too much trouble (to my chagrin, I forgot to return the bike key, I ran it over later).  Next activity was a Mandarin class that was reasonably fun but I probably could have skipped.  Still there was a useful handout.  Mick taught our educator some English slang in return.

The hotel was quite nice and finally gave me a chance to plug in.  I took a quick shower, lay down for a moment, then ran over some laundry.  I went back to take a nap after the aforementioned key drop and slept longer than I expected.  I woke up about seven and had to rush out to dinner at Rosewood.  It’s a good place, owned by another Aussie, and one that I ate breakfast at that morning.  We had a good buffet style meal (which is really the way to eat, it’s cheaper and there’s a lot of variety).  My favorite bit was some beef that reminded me of a particularly good pizza topping.  The rooftop was above the third floor, so there was a nice view of West street.  After that we ran off to catch the bus to the ‘Immersion’ show.

My love affair with karsts wears me out [Wed. 10-24 Midday]

We rented bikes for about 10 yuan each (~1.3+ $US) and headed out into the country side.  Biking in China is fraking amazing.  People do look out for you, although they will beep at you regularly, and it’s quite possible to manage tricky roundabouts or poorly lined Ys.  It made me want to start biking more often back home, although obviously I’d have to show more care.

After leaving Yongshuo the surroundings were mostly rural but with regular new developments, tourist sites, or villages.  I do firmly believe that even if I lived among karsts I’d still find them beautiful.  The diversity is key really.  If you’ve seen one karst you certainly haven’t seen them all.

We then stopped in a village, one small enough to actually qualify as village were it in America.  Around here I stopped taking pictures of people as they tend to want to be paid.  There were even some women who carried stuff and a baby in baskets they carried at two at a time thanks to a yoke.  The babies were quite cute and they were only asking 2 yuan, but we all passed.  I was later ripped off paying to see some Yao women lower their hair, so I’m now feeling more firmly against such things.  In fairness to them, it is certainly better than begging and quite their right to control their image.  But it also sort of distorts the economy and encourages the swarming of tourists.

Anyhow, we saw the elementary school, central blackboard, and official notices.  Arable village land is partitions to all the locals based on where they live and such.  Its still a centralized system, but definitely a vast improvement over communes.  In a way, it reminds me of the jubilee system described in one of the books of law in the Bible but at a family and not tribal level and happening more regularly. Anyhow, the board covers various town projects and lets people post how they’re using semi-arable land to see if they should be able to keep it or if someone is using it better.  [Side note, as I’m writing this on the way back to Guilin from Long Ji, we were just stopped as someone dragged a massive stalk of bamboo across the road.  Wacky.]

We wandered the rest of the village.  There was a mix of crops and we saw some of the plastic wrap that farmers poked holes in, put in a grain of rice per bubble, and used for planting.  There was a local farmer selling tomatoes, which is cool in my view, but they aren’t really a snack food. 

After the village we saw more karsts and the group split as most everyone went home and Katie and I decided to go to climb a karst that Bob recommended.  We biked down the road a bit and had a couple false starts, but found it soon  enough.  One oddity along the way, there was a guy on a scooter who was trying to sell us a map or something.  I’m really starting to think of these vendors like monsters you encounter in a role playing game.  This guy was tricky because you couldn’t just bike away from him.

There was a bit of a fee for the hike, but there were also toilets.  Much like my Japan trip years ago, I haven’t ever actually had to fully use an eastern toilet.  I’m willing to try, but I have a bit of a physiological block and Western ones come around often enough that it necessity hasn’t kicked in.  The stairs up were fairly demanding but each of us had an older woman following us, fanning us on occasion, and offering drinks.  I bought one half-way up when I saw my wbater was running out.  Bob had warned us about them and  mentioned that the prices tend to be higher the farther up the mountain you were.

We reached the peak of the stairs which had a lovely view including a mid-sized building sized hole in the karst we climbed.  After a second quick break we went on the dirt and limestone path up to the summit.  The climb wasn’t that long nor did it involve rock scrambling, but it was still quite tiring. [Side note: chicken just crossed the road in front of us, no clear explanation why]  The way down was much quicker, our old women had waited at the start of the dirt trail with their insulated drink bags.  They kept up with us on the way down, which is impressive as we went quite fast.  I bought a cheaper but in retrospect still too expensive drink on the way out. Between that and my experiences with the Yao, I think I’m slowly learning to take a harder line when bargaining.

Go West Street young tourist [Wed. 10-24 Later Morning]

Yonghshuo was an early popular spot for modern Western backpackers and travelers. West Street became known as a place where Chinese could come to see foreigners.A decade or two later the PRC starts actively promoting tourism and it becomes a full scale attraction.River side there’s rooms for hordes of stalls and the prices go way up when the boats are coming into town.

While not really authentic, the place is quite pretty.There weren’t really skyscrapers although there were some high rises on the far side of the river.It has a regularly bridged creek running through it and quite the scenic pond with a gazebo.The streets themselves are full of stores and on West Street in particular balconies abound.There’s a fair amount of English, much of it iffy, ‘wood-fried pizza’ anyone?The main unpleasant bit was the fair number of older women wandering actively hawking postcards and camera memory sticks and the like.Most would take no for an answer and the wandering shoe-shiners ignored me because my shoes weren’t appropriate for it.

All-in-all, as tourist traps go, it is quite the appealing one.Having a great breakfast topped off a nice arrival.

Highway-side trees aren’t necessary when the scenery is already beautiful [Wed. 10-24 Morning]

 

As I looked out the train morning I saw the limestone mountains of Guilin in the mountains for the first time.They’re tall jagged green and grey and the upper halves rise well faster than 45 degrees.The term is karsts and I love them.They have far more variety in shape than typical hills and mountains.On top of that there’s a mix of vegetation and exposed limestone that makes them all the more interesting to look at.They were formed back when this area was an inland sea and were subsequently shaped by the acid that forms when rain water and limestone combine.

Guilin itself was a fairly bustling city.Saw a few more of the caged balconies, but not too many since then.There weren’t as many chickens as I was lead to believe, still not that many smokers.Hordes of bikers and motorcyclists though.

 

Li river tours are a common way to see the karsts, but they’re also fairly pricey as the river is basically at capacity. So we just took a bus, which offered good views but was also lined with trees that gave pictures a 50% miss chance.Unlike the train ride out, this was often straight rural interrupted by towns.There’s apparently a new highway being built so they’re trying to beautify this one and have it be a tourist road.Sadly, it is quite hazy, some pollution mixed with burning of excess crop materials.The bus ride was around an hour and ended when we were dropped of at Yongshuo, a common drop off points for the Li river boat tours.To spread the business they have to take buses back so the boats ride down relative empty.

On careful reflection, I'm working too hard

Okay, I've gotten a bunch of posts in, so the day or two you'll have a fair number to read.  After that I'm dropping back to three posts a day (plus or minus), I'll set them for 5 am, 3 pm, and 11 pm Eastern.  This is probably going to mean that the travel blog will continue after I'm home.  That makes sense to me, no point devoting excess free time here to posting entries and photos when I could be, y'know, experiencing China.

So if the auto-programing works, there should be posts through when I'm home,  no trouble.  If it doesn't, sorry, but I'm not going to consider it an emergency.

How to fit six people in a room that isn't at a convention [Tues. 10-23 Evening]

We rode in a hard sleeper, third most comfortable of the four options (hard coach, soft oach, etc).There’s six people two a room, three bunks on each side.The bunks don’t fold up, the bottom bunk just functions as seats until people go to bed.The hallway and overall room lights are turned off at 10 pm to help ensure that you don’t get kept up by an evening-person.Since the beds are width-wise and not length-wise you only have rooms on one side of the train with a hallway with folding seats and tables on the other.

There’s common toilets and sinks, although the sink water is bad.There’s also scalding water for drinking, tea, or noodles.Nice young women in uniform wander with carts selling various drinks and snacks.I bought a giant cup of noodles which made for a fairly mundane meal.I was advised against the dining car, which looked nice enough but is apparently overpriced and not that sanitary.I’ll try it on the train to Beijing which is fully touristy, unlike the semi-touristy one from Shenzhen to Guilin.I didn’t notice the electrical plug in the hallway until it was too late.The one in the room didn’t work in the day and I didn’t have a chance to test it when bunk lights were on.

I had a mild bit of trouble getting to sleep because of ambient noise, but was otherwise fine.Top bunks don’t bother me, even when they don’t have straps holding you in (there was a hand rail at least).We kept much of our luggage in a special area above the hallway, which was certainly necessary but wasn’t that convenient for anyone but those of us in the top.The morning was a bit of a pain because we detrained early in the morning so had to deal with waking up, morning hygiene, and getting our baggage out in close quarters and a short amount of time.

The view from the train was interesting: some farmland but mostly urban or semi-urban.Not much that would qualify as suburbs though, far more apartment/condo oriented.Most disturbing feature was the fenced in balconies.Not sure if they’re to prevent theft or suicide but either way, not pleasant and really common.Didn’t see any in Yongshuo though.Bob later said they were just an anti-theft thing and sometime extended the available storage space of an apartment.

Regional Train and Breaking the rules and suffering the consequences: grape loss [Tues. 10-23 Afternoon]

Hong Kong does have the common problem that the subway stations and train station don’t always match as conveniently as one might like. So we had a ten minute trek to the nearby rail station and got on a train headed towards the Hong Kong-Mainland border.

The regional trains aren’t as fancy. They have a route map but it doesn’t light up. Similarly, there are no transparent walls at the stations. So not surprisingly the nifty gizmos are limited to Hong Kong proper. This wasn’t a real long distance train, there were seats on the walls with standing areas in the middle.

Going through customs was reasonably straightforward. However, I had a bag out, due to rather limited room in my packs, that happened to contain grapes. Bob thought they probably came from the mainland, but they were seized anyhow. That said, as a run ins with the law in China go that was pretty dang minor. I ended up breaking the rules a second time when two of us went back into the customs exit area to use the only ATM we could find. That time I suffered no consequences and finally got my hands on some yuan.

 

We exited into Shenzhen which has rapidly developed thanks to Mainland-Hong Kong trade and special economic rules. We hung in a mall adjacent to the train station and then headed on to a sleeper.

Want a Postcard from China? Send me your address by or on November 2nd

Sorry this post has been so long in coming. The internet wasn’t working at Ping An and wasn’t available on the train or boat. I’d have hit a internet café in Guilin but I didn’t see one. So, now that I’m in Xi’an which has a handy Starbucks.  I’ll be throwing up posts once every four hours, excluding the middle of the night, Eastern time, for a few days to clear out the backlog some.

As a way of apology for the delay, I’m throwing open the call for post cards. If you don’t know it, my gmail account is listed on the personal information section of my blog. Yes, I probably already have your address somewhere, but I probably don’t have it handy. A certain friend who has sent me postcards from

Africa is already covered.

If you have a preference, I can send a postcard from Hong Kong, Guilin (karsts), Ping An (mountain village), or Fengdu (the city of ghosts). Get them while they last.

Aberdeen (Not Maryland's) and Ginormous Flouting Restaurants [Tues. 10-23 Morning]

There's three young people on the group, myself, Mick, the Brit from Yorkshire, and Katie, a Canadian from Calgary.  Mick's my consistent roommate and I've done a couple of more adventurous options with Katie.

That morning we went to Aberdeen, a town on the far side of Hong Kong Island.  I'd gotten the impression it was a fishing village but it\s really a city in its own right with many a skyscraper.  That said, it's very water based with many people living on house-boats and with sampans, yachts, and other boats out the wazoo.  $50 HK (Bit less than $7 US) will get you a thirty minute sampan ride that tours the harbor and goes by the giant floating Chinese restaurant.  Total tourist trap but still awesome to behold and it truly earns the name Jumbo.  I think it could easily gobble up a certain restaurant in New Jersey.  Anyhow, I think it's the closest I've come to seeing anything like the inn in Spirited Away, which was also a tourist trap in the literal sense.

Katie was wiser about time than I am, so after catching the double-decker bus back from Aberdeen we rode the subway straight to the hotel stop.  Got another ample lunch, this time curry, flat noodles, and ox bristle.  Good stuff and a bit spicy.  Unfortunately I ran out of time before I could change any money.  Long lines at the Bank and doing a travelers check seemed to take 10+ minutes.  The ATMs were quicker, but were only giving out HK dollars.

Gathering the Party [Mon. 10-22 Evening]

Met up with the group that night.  I was a bit late because I took the ferry back from Hong Kong Island.  I had incorrectly thought that it was a very quick transfer to the subway and I抎 just gotten lost last time.  It was quite an adventure making it through the subway at rush hour with a full backpackers bag on my back and a substantial normal backpack on my front.  I managed to scoot in on the first train, but it was hard.

We've got ten people.  An Aussie, Bob, who sometimes reminds me of my friend Ryan, is our group leader.  The group is half men and half women with one couple.  There's one other American, some Canadian-Americans, a few straight Canadians, a Brit, and two Irish.  Funny being a minority in my tour group, although not ethnically where there's no real diversity.  Many of them are here as part of longer trips.

I'm at the higher end of packed stuff, including the people on longer trips.  I'm quite convinced I've brought too much.  I should have relied more on laundry and tried to cut down my cloths by a fifth to a third.  Also its been quite warm in the south, I probably could have switched at least one pair of pants out for another pair of shorts.

Anyways, the company, Imaginative Traveler, basically handles the logistics, recommends some activities, but leaves up to you what exactly you want to participate in.  That's how they keep the costs real low.  I feel good about my choice.

Anyways, some of us went out for dinner and we shared our entrees around.  That seems like it will be standard practice, one Bob will be following as well, and I'm glad to hear it.  We then hit a Kowloon night market that was overflowing with cheap stuff.  I bought a watch for about $2 and was rather amused by one product with Hello Kitty in pictures but Mickey in text.

Commuting via escalator and Not so ancient antiques [Mon. 10-22 Later Afternoon]

One of the more random features of Hong Kong's infrastructure are the escalators to Mid-Level (a part of the town between central and the Peak).  There's first a set of inclined conveyor belt like escalators followed by a conventional ones.  They operate in series, down in the morning and up the rest of day, with about 21 in total.  It's a fun ride up, the view is that of a pedestrian bridge at an incline and the districts they go through are interesting.  Notably there's Soho, a caf?district (presumably named after the one in NYC), an antique district, and a mosque along the route.  The higher levels seem mostly housing and hold the workers who commute down to Central or spots along the way in the morning.  My favorite picture of this clump was a tree growing out of the middle of a fairly steep wall.

On the way back down, the escalators no longer went my way so I headed down to the antiques district on Hollywood road.  There was a lot of statuary, relatively few landscapes which are my collectible of greatest interest.  I saw only one, but it was in a store where you had to ring the bell to get in and I didn't think that actually buying something was a realistic possibility so I passed.  I've later seen a lot of cheap landscape wall scrolls but they抮e nothing that special and I can probably get them in Beijing. 

Another of Hong Kong's temples was along the road.  I should also mention before I forget that Hong Kong has a lot of parks and greenery for such a dense city, really adds to the livability.  That and the occasional public restroom, which can be a welcome site as the malls in Hong Kong often don't have them.  Anyways, the temple and antiques district were all nice enough, but nothing ever really felt that old.  Hong Kong was around before the Brits won it in the Opium Wars but it only grew dramatically under them making it a fairly young city.  Also there's been a lot of replacing and rebuilding of buildings and fairly little use of stone, so even the older districts often don't feel as old as some probably equally old areas in Maryland such as Ellicott city.

I've got some political posters in the pictures so I'll talk about them briefly.  There was some sort of local election coming up and banners and signs were quite common.  All the ones I noticed had the candidate's face on them (mostly middle-aged Asian males).  A few of the ads were almost all in Cantonese but most of the rest had a mix of that and English.  There was also a voter participation banner with some attractive young people that was fairly common.  Most odd thing I saw was the massive banner on some government buildings that advertised the rules of standing for election.  There were the usual residency stuff but also a requirement that the candidate can't have a passport for anywhere else, so no dual-citizens with Britain.  Hong Kong's current parliament is not truly representative, but it is certainly prominent.

I love Trams or Looking Down on the World [Mon. 10-22 Afternoon]

Hong Kong, properly reflecting its British legacy, has scads of double-decker busses.  But it also has double-decker streetcars (called trams) with a single line running the length of the massive core city in Hong Kong island.  They're only $HK 2 (about $US 0.30 to ride) and you get a good half-hour trip if you go the length.  Being street cars, they're quite thin.  There's a spiral staircase at the front and end so the entering and exiting traffic doesn't get jammed up.  The seat configuration is one on the left and two on the right, with several seats facing one another in the back.  As you get closer to central the top fills up. 

I felt guilty about not immediately giving my seat to one older man, but I rationalized waiting until the next stop when he got one of his own.  There had been at least one spare seat up top if he'd wanted to sit and I'm guessing the bottom wasn't as full.  Hong Kong doesn't actually have handicapped seat, but on the subway (but not the trams) they have signs saying to give up your seat if someone needs it.  Fair enough, although I actually prefer just having a reasonable number of dedicated seats.  It means that most of the time if you just avoid them you don't have to worry about the matter unless someone is in obvious need.

Anyhow, enough guilt.  I loved riding the tram.  I've long been a fanatic for riding in the second story of any form of ground transport.  Part of that is the unique thrill of a relatively rare experience, but I think the majority of it is just the fun.  You get to look at the second level of buildings and glance down at passers-by.  There’s a bit more rocking, but I consider that bonus.

More cities need two-story street cars.  They have good capacity despite being incredibly thin.  Since each car is separate, they have an easier time navigating city streets than would a multi-car train.  And, while they tend to clump up, this isn't as big of a problem as with busses since you have to deal with intersections but not pulling into or out of traffic.

Where to go for photos

http://flickr.com/photos/gregsanders

I'll try to better integrate them with my posts as time goes by, but for now here's the place to go.  My posts are a bit ahead of my photos at this point.

Does the city of Hong Kong ever end? Not really [Mon. 10-22 Midday]

I caught the train down to central and noting the time decided to catch the firing of the Noon Day gun.  I failed at this by getting off a stop early.  I hopped into a bus to try to make up for the mistake, but it was actually going the wrong way.  Fortunately, the driver caught my mistake.  This is fairly easy to do because for the busses you have to specify your destination and pay a variable rate based on how far you're going.  Also the rate is a bit lower if you get on later in the route.

So, I decided to walk from Wan Chai station through another commercial district. The skyscraper filled parts of Hong Kong do of course end, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it.  There’s always a new skyline to see as you get further away from Central. Getting further east in the city things weren’t quite as nice as Central but still stayed pretty classy.  To my amusement, one of the streets I wandered was a home decorating district, so there were bath shops, handle shops, and the like.  After navigating a few pedestrian bridges, some giving good views, I reached Victoria Park.  It’s a large park with substantial sports sections that is also known as the location of Hong Kong’s annual commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre.  One random neat thing, a little pond area dedicated to model boats (sadly empty at the time). 

There were a quite a few people doing Tai Chi and also a lot of uniformed students.  Apparently they get off for a few hours midday but then go back to school until 5 pm.  I checked out one temple that was neat but not amazing and an arcade which was rather lame.  In fairness to it, it seemed at least half dedicated to gambling and even had an old mechanical horse race game.  I’m unlikely to be too impressed by any gambling area no matter how good it is, but still I was hoping neat arcades might not just be a Japan thing.  Finishing my sightseeing in the causeway area I grabbed a tram back to Central.

So these are the markets I was expecting [Mon. 10-22 Morning]

After getting checked out, I left my bags at the Rent-A-Room and decided to explore Kowloon more.  First, on the advice of some fellow tourists, I hit a great bakery where I got some herb covered crackers for later and a terrific pastry with a whipped potato center.

I walked to a local temple, which the guidebook told me had banyan trees.  On the way, I passed through a neat market district and saw lively stores dedicated to fruit, dried groceries, and a bit later on butchered meat.  The experience is definitely more visceral when they aren’t all joined up in a shopping market.  The temple had the trees and was a neat gathering area for the elderly, but otherwise wasn’t that remarkable. 

At the temple square a few people were violating the “No Smoking in this Venue” signs, but they were respected.  Hong Kong’s apparently had a public smoking ban recently and it really shows, there were far less (obvious) smokers than I expected.  Jumping ahead a bit, even the mainland so far has had less than expected, albeit more than Hong Kong.  Part of that is probably that not everyone is a chain smoker.  Also, the areas I’ve hit so far are more tourist oriented and thus may have tougher rules.

Next I hit a few street markets with booths galore.  By and large they were pedestrian thoroughfares, although there was one that still had some traffic meaning you had to stick to the edge of the stalls at the sidewalk ran behind them.  I also hit the jade market, but aside from some hideously expensive landscape statues, nothing really caught my eye.

I have the power! (Finally) [Wed. evening 10-24]

So, I never actually found an adapter or a European or American plug in Hong Kong (the use these weird -_- things). So just as well I didn't use my laptop much on the plane, because I ended up using most of my juice covering my first day and wrapping some unfinished business. But now that I'm on the mainland and off the train I'm back in action. I expect to lose contact again during the upcoming boat ride, so I'll be stretching these entries out a bit. I wouldn't want to overwhelm you after all.

So, just realize that posting time isn't that related to when things happened. I'm going to space these entries once every 8 hours for now (with the first real one following in an hour). If I start to get more regular access, I'll drop the spacing. I'm going to write up some more of the Hong Kong entries tonight then catch some sleep and finish in the morning. My hotel has a second-story balcony overlooking Yongshuo, so it's a great place to write.

By comparison, the first computer I used in this net cafe effing shocking me when I tried to reach around back to plug in my USB.  Not cool net cafe.  Not cool at all.

Real X-ism never has been tried, and never will be.

Ezra Klein breaks out a strong argument against the Bush wasn’t conservative enough movement:

This probably gets into all sorts of philosophy of language concepts that I don’t really understand, but when deciding what "real" conservative policies are, I don’t know how you distinguish between the policies conservatives are supposed to have, and the policies conservative politicians actually seek to enact. I think the normal workaround is to call the former set of perfect-world concepts "libertarianism," but Tyler Cowen seems to merge the two in this post.

In any case, Greg Anrig is right. The basket of policies pushed by recent conservative politicians have done very poorly. And they’re sort of the basket voters need to be evaluating when trying to judge conservatism and the candidates who pledge fealty to it. Any Marxist will tell you that "real" Marxism was never tried. That said, just about every time something called Marxism was tried, it traveled down much the same course, and failed in much the same way. Which is what you should be passing judgment on. Similarly, conservatism isn’t ending up in this mess by accident. The constellation of interest groups and donors who fund the movement, when mixed with the preferences of the electorate (no, you can’t take away my Medicare or cut my Social Security), tend to produce a fairly predictable and similar set of policies -- tax cuts without spending restraint, corporate welfare, weak energy policy, no health care program to speak of, etc, etc.

I think a similar case can be made for the Washington Consensus set of neo-liberal economic policies.  They were tried by many countries, particularly in Latin America, during the 90s.  They were fairly unpopular and didn’t result in a lot of growth.  They were certainly imperfectly implemented, but that will always happen.

Anyhow, point is I think that liberalism has been tried.  See the 90s for an example.  Clinton certainly deviated from the liberal agenda often enough, but on the whole he got some good things done and the country did alright. We may have to go to older school models to actually get health care and deal with inequality, but those were tried too and that’s how we got Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.  Are there problems with those programs? Sure, Social Security needs fine tuning and we’ll need cost management, ideally via universal health care, to make dramatic changes to Medicare and Medicaid.  But liberalism has been tried, it has a legacy, and it’s one I’ll stand behind and defend.

That said, I think in fairness to Tyler Cowen, he seems to acknowledge much of this argument in his last line: "But the biggest problems faced by conservatism or libertarianism are
along the lines of ’won’t ever be tried,’ not ’we just tried it and it
failed.’"  The fact that he said ’won’t ever be tried’ and not ’haven’t been tried’ to me is an acknowledgement that there’s not some achievable political agenda here. 

(Note, I’m postdating this, so if Cowen responds to Klein I won’t see it until later).

Now you too can easily lie using pictures

The Post’s tech column has a review of cameras that will automatically Photoshop your pictures so you look better.

When they work, both can generate a photographic likeness that looks more attractive than the real you -- a SuperYou that you can post on Facebook, MySpace,  Match.com or any other site.  HP’s photo alterations are more ambitious than Fuji’s (and probably more in demand, given the hefty state of many Americans). To use the slimming mode, you take a picture as usual, then switch to the camera’s playback mode.

Bring up the photo, tap the "Design Gallery... " button on the screen, tap "Enhance Photos," and then choose "Slimming." There, you can then select one of three levels of shrinkage to determine how much narrower the person in the shot will appear. The camera will save a new copy of your shot, allowing you to compare the original and the edited version back on your computer....

The camera will then slightly soften the appearance of any faces that it detects in the image. This doesn’t always work out: In many of my tests, either I couldn’t see any difference, or the "enhanced" shot merely looked a bit out of focus.

With the right kind of photo, though -- a close-up portrait with the subject centered or nearly so -- this mode made people’s faces look slightly smoother and younger. Think of it as the reverse of what high-definition TV does to actors: Where one adds five years to a person’s appearance, this feature can knock five years off...

So why not build cameras that know more of the editing tricks creative
photographers have used on their computers? If a camera can make people
look thinner and younger than their physical selves, why not have it
also whiten their teeth, dye their hair and blot out their birthmarks?

On the whole, I’m willing to chalk this up as a good thing.  We’re constantly bombarded by prettied up images of people that are already beautiful.  Meanwhile, almost everyone feels they look bad in photos.  I think this is in part because they do, on average I think people look better in person than in snapshots. 

The ability to edit our own pictures with incredible ease will both make people more attuned to the edits on magazine covers and let them have pictures that look as good as they do in person, if not better.  Admittedly, this is a rather bourgeoise solution and in present form it won’t be available to those with self-esteem issues but not money.  However, if this works, I’ll bet we’ll see it in photobooths and disposable cameras within a few years.  The techniques are widely known and the software should be fairly cheap to replicate.

Fun sounding modern art in Moscow

Odd museum review from the Post:

There is no coat check and no bag check and a palpable absence of grumpy elderly women on the staff. There are no guards at all. To prove the casualness of the space, aptly called Art4.ru, Markin provides felt-tip markers for writing on the bathroom walls...

Nearby, a skateboard lies on the floor. Asked if a visitor could actually skateboard through the museum, the woman behind the cash register replied: "Of course. You can do anything you want."

There are no names or titles attached to the works. The curious can peruse the catalogue over coffee or go online to the museum’s Web site, http://www.art4.ru. Visitors get two stickers, reading "Za" (For) and "Protiv" (Against). They are encouraged to vote for their favorite and least favorite piece in the museum by placing the appropriate sticker preferably near, though sometimes on, the art.

Some of the most challenging works, such as a large-scale photograph of trampy-looking models hanging out in a cemetery near a funeral in progress, are peppered with "Protiv" stickers...

The playful atmosphere of the museum prepares visitors for works such
as the archival films of the provocative Oleg Kulik, who is best known
for playing a dog in the performance art piece "I Bite America and
America Bites Me." Kulik’s aggressive art was so successful he was
frequently arrested, and he once bit an art critic on the ankle...

Read the whole thing to also find out about their fundraiser to tear down bad art.  It sounds like the owner, Igor Markin, is doing great work here.  I wonder if he’s going to face a crackdown from the government.  That said, sounds like he’s using all private and foundation funds (including a foundation run by Yeltsin’s daughter) so he’d be immune to the worst of the fights we get in America.

Hong Kong Transit Blogging [Sun.-Mon. 10-21-22]

[Hong Kong Transit Photos]

Hong Kong trains are nice.  They have transparent walls with doors separating you from the tracks in the subway and at the airport express, so there’s no risk of falling.  This also means that the train doors are at predictable locations.  There’s a smart card, called the Octopus card, that I’m half tempted to get but at $30 HK I’m not sure it’s worth it.  Although now that I think about it some more, I may just splurge, not a bad souvenir for less than $5US The fare card machines have an amazing interface, there’s a station map, you press where you’re going, and it tells you the price.  I don’t think even Japan had it that good.

Overall the signage was very nice.  The walls had lists of the stations on that line.  Inside the train cars there were light-up station lists that showed where you were going and in which direction.  The express train even showed how far you were along.  Only thing I didn’t see was a guide to how long until the next train, although there were announcements at the airport station.  Another neat feature was that the exits were all labeled by letter and there were a fair number of street maps to allow you to easily pick which exit you wanted.  While the letter labeling may have been less descriptive than street name labeling, if you don’t know the geography it was a bit simpler.  Even I get my Metro exits wrong on occasions because the street maps aren’t nearly common enough.

Finally, subway apparently does not only refer to transit.  There’s also a reasonable number of interlinked pedestrian tunnels for navigating major roads.  The city has been pretty pedestrian friendly aside from construction.  You just need to remember that there’s no flashing stop for pedestrians, it goes from walk to flashing walk, to stop.  In another coup of labeling, each pedestrian crossing notes which way to look for oncoming traffic.  You can tell this is a truly international city that has taken a lot of steps to be friendly to all sorts of tourists.  Another sign of its cosmopolitan nature was that people would often stand right and walk left on the escalators, despite announcements that you shouldn’t walk on them.

Morning in Hong Kong [Mon. 10-22 early Morning]

[See the pictures for this post]

I slept just fine. I got in around 11 pm and initially planned to get a few things done when I got in but ended up falling asleep pretty quickly. Other than that, no signs of jet-lag. I actually forgot to turn the light on when I got to bed and its off now which perhaps they don’t provide power for it in the morning or perhaps it burned out. Regardless I’d turned off the AC so it wasn’t like I was wasting scads of energy. 

Around 6 pm last night I headed out and took the subway one stop South from the nearby Jordan station. The Rent-A-Room is further South than my next hotel, the Kowloon Newton, which is two stops North. I’ll cover the subway in a subsequent transit-blogging post. 

Dense, high-tech, but a bit grittier than I got off at Kowloon’s harbor stop and wandered around that area some. Kowloon felt a bit like a combination of New York and Tokyo. By comparison, Hong Kong island was a bit more Tokyo/Montreal (the big building parts of Montreal and the mountain, not the red-light parts). The guidebook criticized the Hong Kong cultural center which blocked the view of the harbor and bizarrely had very few windows to enjoy the view itself. It was pretty on the inside, but I tend to agree that it was a mistake. Once I hit the neighboring Star Ferry I did see a good number of pillars adorned with Falun Gong political protest material. There was also a table with some video and newspapers, I’m not sure if they were Falun Gong associated or another protest group. However, nothing was in English at that table, although if I pass them again I may snag a free paper anyway.

That said, the one thing the Cultural Center does is make the Hong Kong Island skyline more of a reveal. It’s simply amazing, hordes of tall buildings, many of which have their own special lighting or giant LED boards. Per the guidebooks recommendation I took the ferry over which at 2.2 HK$ is a steal for the view. It was a great way to approach the city, I only regret that it didn’t have an open-air upper-deck available (although there were open windows on the enclosed deck, I was just thinking of AMG-TV).

I wandered Central for a few hours. It wasn’t that crowded (as big cities go) but that may have been a function of it being a Sunday evening. There were lots of skywalks near the water and as I got closer to the mountain there were a wide range of nice little parks, trees and the like. In particularly, there were banyan trees, I love their free hanging roots, so I’m always glad to see them. While wandering around looking for the funicular to the Peak I got lost and headed into the zoological park. The scenery was nice, but it was too dark to actually see any critters (aside from a couple of humans whose make-up spot I discovered and then quickly left).  

Eventually I found the tram to the Peak and took it up. The journey was faster than the average funicular, at times I think I felt an extra G or two. The views on the way there were exquisite, they pause at the best one, as was the view from the tower on the top. You could probably get by without paying to go up the tower as well, but it was just $US1 so I splurged. The whole Peak location is a monument to capitalism, there’s a mall that you take escalators up to, another adjacent mall, and if you look away from the city you can see the houses of rich tycoons both adjacent to the peak and on neighboring mountains. I wouldn’t say the view from the harbor or the Peak is better, both were unique and well worth it.

After heading back down I swung by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, which according to my guide book cost $1 billion US to put up. The cost is due in good part to it being raised some three stories on pillars to allow direct walking access from the harbor to the Governor’s mansion, the traditional seat of power. It was neat, although by that time it was late enough that the view up into the atrium wasn’t that special. I then walked by the LegCo building, Hong Kong’s old parliament which wouldn’t look out of place as an American legislative building, and has a lot of neighboring art.  

I took the subway back to Jordan Road and then wandered around looking for a place to eat since it was getting on 10 pm local. (I would have eaten up on the Peak, but it was pricey). Most of the places on the street with my hotel are cheap but had fairly little English on their ads. I ended up getting pulled in when a waitress from Cherry Garden, a dinner type establishment, invited me in. She was hovering a bit after giving me an English menu and so I hurried to pick my entrée: Chicken with goose noodle soup.  

There was no real spice to speak of, so I’m guessing this wasn’t a Cantonese specialty. It was more than ample, although to my surprise the Chicken (both white and dark) still had bones. Point seemed to be to dip the chicken in the soup, and it tasted alright then and was easier to get off the bone. I made it through the chicken but I was full with a lot of soup and noodles still left. This seemed to amuse the wait staff. I paid my $28HK (less than $4 US) left $2HK as tip (the guidebook recommended just leaving small change if there wasn’t a service fee), and headed up to sleep.

As I side note, I hate word, I need to remember to save these things as text rather than word format.  I'll post picts later today since this is taking too long.

Arrived in Hong Kong [Sunday 10-21 Afternoon]

[Pictures for both Underway and Arrived in Hong Kong (posted with both entries)]

Took the Airport Express railway, which was quite nice, to Kowloon, the peninsula north of  Hong Kong island. Cool things of note on the ride: individual volume control for the news/ads in the train and a light up sign that showed how far you have left to go. I hadn’t realized just quite how many mountains surround this area. That and a lot of the high rises in the area around the airport look quite similar. I now think of Katamari Damacy far too much when flying. The station had a neat roof-top garden that I found while trying to leave.

I probably should have taken a bus, but in part out of habit I just walked the dozen blocks or so to my hotel, rent-a-room I’ve ended up with a tiny room with a bathroom around the corner, which was a bit less than I expected (a tiny room with a bathroom inside) but not so shabby. I continue to be haunted by a specter “free public wi-fi’ network that never actually seems to be acceptable. I wonder if my computer is just seeing things.

I’m now off to catch the ferry to Hong Kong island, which I’m told is a lovely ride, although best at dust and I managed to miss that by being a tad too slow. I might have time tomorrow if I go right before my tour group meets for the first time.

I’m typing this up on my laptop but will be posting it from a public internet terminal in the hotel lobby. Yay USB stick.  Saves me money.

Are we the new Rome? Tax cutting edition

There’s been a reasonable amount of talk lately about whether America is the new Rome.  In one way, we’re moving away from a recently adopted Roman practice: contracting our tax collection.

As of a week or so ago, the House rejected an IRS pilot program to use contractors to collect some taxes while letting them keep 25% of what they gathered. 

House Democrats portrayed the program as a contracting failure by the Bush administration, with start-up costs of $71 million, five times higher than initially projected. "It is high time we repeal an abusive and misguided debt collection program," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), one of the bill’s chief sponsors, said

Republicans said the private collectors had come up with $32 million in gross revenue and predicted that junking the program would cost the government $1.1 billion over the next decade. The program "is making money for the government," Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) said, noting that it provides the IRS with funds that can be used to beef up tax enforcement in other areas.

Actually, if you gross $32 million after spending $71 million, you’re losing money.  That said, the contractors only kept $5 million as their take, so I’m not sure where the $66 m in start-up spending went.  Anyways, near as I can find, this still awaits action in the Senate.  But since this is an IRS pilot program, "the IRS, which is operating with an acting commissioner, might decide to keep it going as a pilot and not expand it in hopes of avoiding "storm clouds" on Capitol Hill."

What’s the Roman tie in?  Well I was always told at Sunday School that the tax collectors had a particularly bad reputation in the New Testament because they were basically contractors.  The job was dolled out by auction, with each contractor bid how much they thought they could collect.  Anything they collected on top of that was their profit.  At least according to Wikipedia, it sounds like I heard the history right.

Underway [Saturday 10-20 Morning]

[Pictures for both Underway and Arrival in Hong Kong (posted twice)]

After a late night of last minute packing, I got a ride from my parents to Dulles Airport at 6 am. Caught a flight to Chicago O’Hare where I am now with my flight to Hong Kong leaving in an hour, assuming it stays on time. Then I’ll have a 15+ hour flight to Hong Kong.

Dulles is my least favorite DC area airport. Its far from Silver Spring, unlike BWI isn’t near places I’d go anyways, and unlike National it isn’t on the Metro. They’re working to fix that, but it’ll be a few years at least until construction is done.

I don’t go to O’Hare that often, I’ve been a few times to hit Anime Central, but my usual Chicago airport is Midway because that’s where Southwest flies. I used to hate Midway, but it got much nicer after a rennovation. Now you still walk through a parking garage to get to transit, but there’s walls and decorations separating you.

O’Hare is pretty swan: not just stations where pillar outlets and specially designated tables where you can plug in your laptop, paper recycling, lots of conveyor belts, neat neon light decorations in the causeway I hit.

Dulles barely competes: there’s no recycling or even pillar outlets and minimal art. The bus-tram system to get to far terminals is distinctive so I’ll give it points for that. But the main amenity of note are smoking lounges.

Oh, and a freaking brachisaurus replica skeleton in Chicago, nothing like that in Dulles. Advantage O’Hare.

O’Hare also does have $6.95 a day wifi available., I didn’t take out my laptop at Dulles so I don’t know if that’s an option there too. Boarding started around 10:10, so I wasn’t here long enough for it to be worth considering.

Human trafficking is not a huge issue in the U.S.

This is the first of my post-dated China trip entries.  I’ll just be grabbing various articles of interest that aren’t overly timely and doing quick commentaries or the like.  So if they seem oddly out of sync with current events, that’s why.  But at least you’ll have some content.

The Post did an article on human trafficking and found that in the U.S. it’s really not as common as initial claims made it out to be. 

In the United States, activists say that trafficking has received far more attention than crimes such as domestic violence, of which there are hundreds of thousands of documented victims every year.

We estimated 50,000 some victims a year in the U.S. back in 2000 and more recently estimated 14,500 to 17,500 but even that may be tall.  We’re now spending 28.5 million a year on this but have only found 1,362 total victims since 2000.

That said, our international work is more appropriate (although I have heard some controversy over how we classify prostitution):

Few question that trafficking is a serious problem in many countries, and the U.S. government has spent more than half a billion dollars fighting it around the world since 2000.

I think this is just an easy case for people to come together.  As the Post says "
Yet the anti-trafficking crusade goes on, partly because of the issue’s uniquely nonpartisan appeal."  is obviously a horrible crime and is also a way of dealing with the U.S.’s historical guilt over slavery.  And, unlike the pedophile scares, this doesn’t seem to be particularly distorting the justice system, it just is perhaps not the wisest way to allocate resources.  That said, I wish the also non-partisan appeal of dealing with loose nukes would get more resources.

Oops

If you noticed the flurry of posts earlier today, that was a mistake. Apparently the client I download can post-date but doesn’t actually delaying the posting until the time comes around. So if you read those already, I apologize that you’ll see that content again later. I’ve fixed it now, so everyone else will just have to wait.

Bad news from Pakistan

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto just returned and was attacked, apparently via grenade and suicide bomb. She survived but as of last count 120 at the rally were dead.

Body parts were strewn for hundreds of yards around, and men walked away from the scene covered head to toe in blood. Dozens of ambulances, sirens wailing, ferried the injured and the dead to hospitals. Survivors sat by the side of the road, weeping. The sweet smell of rose petals -- revelers had tossed them into the air to welcome Bhutto -- mingled with the heavy scent of death.

After the explosions, Bhutto’s supporters reported hearing gunshots, and there were three indentations in the glass screen of her truck that appeared to have been caused by bullets.

Raja Mubasher, a party activist, said the attack came as members of the crowd were shouting slogans of celebration. One minute, he said, "people were jubilant. They were happy. Our leader had come back after eight years." The next, he said, "their legs were broken. Their heads were broken. Their hands were broken." In an instant, he said, the ground was littered with more than 100 bodies...

Karachi’s police chief, Farooqi Ahmed, denied that his forces were anything less than vigilant and noted that among the dead were a large number of police officers. Ahmed also said Bhutto would have "definitely" been killed had it not been for extra security efforts provided by the government, including a bullet- and shock-resistant container that Bhutto was riding in, and jamming devices designed to keep blasts from detonating near her vehicle. Bhutto was evacuated quickly after the attack.

Thank God she survived, but this is worse than the already pessimistic Pakistan briefing I heard two weeks ago which didn’t even list a major Taliban/Al Qaeda attack as possible escalating scenario. I buy the idea that the government did their best to protect her. They were involved enough in her protection that if this were an inside job she’d probably either be dead or we’d have a government-loyalist fight.

There’s really not that I can see the U.S. can doing here aside from not make the situation worse. (There’s a lot we could do in Afghanistan to take some pressure off, but that’s a different post) I just hope the Pakistani government is able to unify the people enough to take on this challenge. I don’t think that’s going to be possible if they continue to exclude Nawaz Sharif. This isn’t to say I favor a unity government (although I obviously favor free and fair elections) but they should let him return and be part of a loyal opposition.

Using birth control to reduce the number of abortions

I’ve been reading discussion of the new study by the Guttmacher Institute that was published in Lancet. The study found that the legality of abortion didn’t correspond with abortion rates. Instead it corresponded with whether the abortions were safe.

"The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute."

Via YglesiasI saw that Ross Douthat argues:

"[W]e don’t have is any evidence that increasing government funding for sex ed and birth control in a rich country like the United States, has an appreciable impact on the rate of unintended pregnancy, and thus abortion. I’ve seen suggests that it doesn’t."

Two of his pieces of evidence suggest that most sex-ed programs, lime abstinence-only programs, don’t really work. He had only one source that subsidizing birth control and that source mentioned that these programs increased contraceptive "we might increase the number of students using birth control regularly by 22%" (and that’s percent, and sadly not percentage point)." The source, Jane Galt, found this underwhelming and figured it was an outlier study, but unless she’s got a meta-study of her own or can find methodology flaws, that’s hardly a killer argument. In my book, 22% is appreciable assuming you’ve got a fair sample size (I do wish these articles would throw out p-values or r^2s).

That said, she’s on more solid ground with the AGIstudy when she points out that liberal states do seem to have higher abortion rates, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all subsidizing birth control. More importantly, I can buy the argument that non-monetary factors may often have a greater influence in explaining why people don’t use birth control. I think that’s a great argument for R&D to increase convenience though. Also, none of that data covered emergency contraception, which only recently became available over-the-counter (a terrific way of increasing the convenience of usage).

So Douthat seems to have a fair amount of support (without seeing argument from the opposition) on the limitations of sex-ed programs. His case on birth control isn’t really there though. Subsidized access might not be enough, but on its own it seems to help.

Preparing for China

In addition do dealing with my job and this blog, I’ve spent the past month working out logistics for a trip to China. I’ll be leaving this Saturday and aside from getting to Hong Kong a day early I’ll be sticking to a China Discovery tour.

I’ve just got my new laptop and will be writing up blog entries and posting photos while in China. I’ll be able to post at internet cafes and such, although there will probably be some stretches of days when I’ll have no access. Not sure if I’ll run into any censorship problems while posting there, but if I do I’ll just make the posts in question when I get home.

To keep a steady stream of content, I’ll try to queue up some posts before hand including updates on where I am if the trip goes as planned.

Do zoning laws give too much power to the people?

Interesting bloggingheads between Matthew Yglesias and Megan McArdle covering a range of topics, notably including zoning. That’s at the start.

They both agreed that most city-dwellers seem to like the benefits of high-density developments: more stores, low-income housing, transit, etc. However, they don’t want it right near them. Classical Not In My Backyard (Nimby) behavior. This kind of thing shows up even in liberal neighborhoods.

Yglesias proposes that part of the problem is the level of government, specifically zoning is far too atomized. It’s far too easy to make separate rules for your block than the rest of the area. Thus hypocrisy is really easy. So moving it to a slightly higher level of government will make it harder for each block/area to come up with rationalizations why they need special rules. I think a lot of the problem here might also be that its easy to make rules that affect current and future residents differently. For example, you can say ’no more houses’ right after your house gets built. So it’s easy to be harsh because you’re making rules for other people.

That said whole neighborhoods do make stupid decisions, College Park fought getting the Green Line for a while and Georgetown notoriously opposed getting a Metro stop (and has paid for it other since, ha ha).

Also, bizarrely, Gossip Girls, about a high class Manhattan school, apparently doesn’t have any Jews or even Catholics. (Despite the fact that apparently the Producer is Jewish). That just seems odd.

Your questions, answered!

Today’s query is from Matthew Yglesias (perhaps he meant it to be rhetorical):

Question: Which do conservatives hate more, Soros or immigrants?

Answer: Elites: Soros. Base: Immigrants.

I’m not sure there’s a similar divide on the Democratic side in terms of hated figures on the right. It could involve religion, but that’s more a moderate/radical divide than a base/elite divide. The elites are generally more pro-trade, but I don’t care that much about the enemies of trade on the other side. Ditto with intervention at this point.

The South Korean military watches too much anime

Odd story from Reuters via Slate’s Human nature column:

A South Korean court on Friday ordered the military to reinstate one of its first women helicopter pilots, discharged after she had a double mastectomy to treat breast cancer...

The Seoul Administrative Court ordered the Defence Ministry to reinstate retired Colonel Pi Woo-jin. She had been told she could no longer serve because army regulations require soldiers who are missing body parts to be discharged.

"Her attending physician at Asan Medical Centre says she is fit to serve normal army life," the court said. "Therefore it seems there is no reason to believe the plaintiff has any disabilities that would prevent serving in the army."

I’ve really got to chalk this one up to anime or manga. I can’t see why else anyone would think that breasts have something to do with piloting ability. That said good to see the court back common sense and let the Colonel get back to flying.

Climbing the Phone Tree

In preparing for my trip to China, I’ve been making a fair number of calls. Not surprisingly, this has involved some waiting on hold. Beyond a short wait time, usually the best you can hope for is that the ads or music won’t be particularly annoying or repetitive. I also place a premium on not being told repeatedly how much they care about my business.

Up to this point, the I was most impressed by call centers that gave time estimates and notified me of my position in line. Bonus points for having tracking numbers that helped me jump past the telephone tree and get working immediately on my problem. But today, my call to Blue Cross-Blue Shield managed a whole new level of call center technology: call backs.

Instead of waiting on the line for someone to pick up, I gave them my number and they had an automated program call me back. I picked up the phone, pressed one to verify that it was me, and talked to someone. There phone tree was hellish and I still had to regularly re-enter information, but good-bye waiting on hold. Obviously, just giving somebody a number and waiting to be called back isn’t some huge break through, but when we’re talking about an automated system that gives fairly accurate time estimates on the wait for a call back, I’m happy to see it.

The only downside is that you do have to repeat some information when you get the call. I don’t think that’s just an IT problem, so one else could answer the phone, particularly if there’s a long wait, so security probably demands at least one or two questions. However, it seems like everyone asks anyways, so this is hardly a step back.

A new musical revolution...

Slate’s Machinist blog has some weakly sourced numbers on Radiohead’sname your own price album sale: 1.2 million digital copies sold. "The figure dwarfs first-week sales of"Hail to the Thief," released in 2003, racked up 300,000 sales in its first week; "Amnesiac" managed 231,000 copies in 2001; and "Kid A" hit 207,000 in 2000." Of course, 1.2 million doesn’t mean much if everyone paid nothing. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case:

But we may have a clue. The British music newsletter Record of the Day conducted a poll of 3,000 purchasers of the album. People paid an average price of £4, about $8, the newsletter found.

Because the band isn’t working with a record label, it gets to keep all that money. If it had sold its songs instead on iTunes, it would likely have seen less than $1.50 per album.

There’s some incentive to lie and inflate the amount you paid, but even at £2 per album they’d still be beating the pants off going through iTunes. I bought it paying £5. I meant to actually only pay half that, I didn’t notice immediately that it was in Pounds and then didn’t figure out how to lower the amount without starting over. I thought the album was alright, although I tend to find heavily electronic albums a bit muddy. That said, it was still kinda neat participating in the experiment.

Shadi Hamid over at Democracy Arsenal highly praises the whole idea:

This is, as far as I can tell, the first time a band as big as Radiohead has completely superceded and subverted the whole infrastructure for selling records. If Radiohead pulls this off, they’ll be sure to pocket much more profit, paving the way for other artists to follow suit. Everyone benefits: we get our music for cheaper; Radiohead gets more money; the middle man gets cut out; and the music world suddenly becomes democratic in a way it never was - or could have been - before.

So you say you want a revolution? Get on with it, then. Go right ahead and buy the new album.

That said, a commenter notes that they didn’t manage to cut out the credit card companies, who are charging ~$1 a sale. The main disappointing thing about the whole experience for me was that they didn’t take Paypal. I figure the next attempt probably will.

Turning down $75 million

Via Greg Djerejian and Matthew Yglesias the Washington Post reported that Iranian Democracy advocates are calling for a cut in funding support form the U.S.

The U.S. program, launched in 2006, backfired in its first year, undermining democracy efforts in Iran and leading to wider repression against activists as foreign agents or traitors, the groups said. Among those detained were four Iranian Americans, all charged with "crimes against national security" linked to the U.S. program. A second year of funding will further endanger democracy efforts, the groups added.

"Iranian reformers believe democracy cannot be imported and must be based on indigenous institutions and values. Intended beneficiaries of the funding -- human rights advocates, civil society activists and others -- uniformly denounce the program," according to an open letter organized by the National Iranian American Council, the American Conservative Defense Alliance and the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. The letter was signed by 23 other liberal and conservative pro-democracy groups.

I would certainly listen to the Iranian democracy advocates here. I’m not sure we should abandon direct democracy aid (rather than more generally focused human rights promoting aid). I think such an approach has worked to a degree in post-cold war Eastern Europe, but I think that’s probably because regimes there didn’t have as free a hand to crush opposition. But even when it can work, publicly tying aid to democracy promoters to militant regime change talk is going to be counter productive.

Reviews for "Young Avengers" 1, 2, Civil War (Complete series) and Black Summer (1-2)

I'm going to try to keep the spoilers minimal, but since I'm covering later issues you can obviously deduce some of what happens in the earlier ones.

My girlfriend bought Young Avengers for the Runaways cross-over so I got to read them for free, mooch that I am.  The story starts out with a new team of teens that each ape one of the Avengers.  By the second book they've established their own identity, and by the cross-over they're a solid team.  On the whole, I think the stories are good but not great.  The series has apparently been cancelled, I'd keep reading it if it hadn't been, but I'm not sure I'd buy it if I couldn't just mooch of my girlfriend's copies.

Part of my problem is that Runaways has covered this ground before, in fact some of the parallelism between the two series is erie.  That said, this parallelism is mocked during the cross-over, so points for that.  I quite like the art of the first two books.  I found the cross-over a bit too stylized and I think the character design of the Young Avengers particularly suffered.  I do like their character design once they've established their own identity, so that is a real loss.  Still, it was a great cross-over, lots of good battles against rather tough baddies.  That's an advantage of ensemble books I suppose, you can have chunks of the team go down when they're a bit outmatched.  [That said, the Runaways were basically charicatures of themselves, and thus fairly out of character.  Although perhaps less out of character than default for Civil War.  There's actually a funny line that notes some of the main Avengers were acting OOC.]

I think my main problem with runaways is that a solid ensemble book with some characters I rather like (Cassie and Billy notably although Eli has definite potential) isn't enough to sell me on a series.  I tend to either need a good political angle or a hook, (like Runaway's children of super-villains thing).   Also, Young Avengers has ton of tie-ins with the Marvel universe, and I just don't get most of those references.   That said, while I'm kinda bleh on Tommy, a later character, I don't think the series has an outstanding flaws.  Also, the comic has done a particularly good job of handling the Other.  For a detailed study on that ground, check out a guest column on Girls Read Comics by Todd Harper. While he's more taken by the series than I am, I don't think he oversells it at all, so if you're interested he'd be a valuable second perspective.

I haven't actually directly read many Civil War books and according to the Evil Avatar review of the last comic in the cross-over I still haven't.  I actually do want to read more of the cross-over at some point so I can do a proper critique of that series.  That said, the whole registration fight doesn't really resonate
with me.  Hell at this point I'd be happy if we effectively registered our military contractors in Iraq, let alone free-lance vigilantees.  Now if you want a real superhero civil war, read Black Summer.

Black Summer is an indie comic by Warren Ellis based roughly off our universe except with seven tech-based superheroes called the Seven Guns.  The core setup of the series is a massive spoiler but it's revealed nigh immediately so I'm just going to go with it.  For a single image summary of the setup check out the cover for the preview issue (warning, violent imagery and the NSA may not approve).
  In short, one of the superheros has killed President Bush in the lead-up to the to the 2006 election.  The preview issue / issue #0 is pretty dang short, but augmented by concept art and a good essay by Ellis.  The second issue is normal length and deals with the consequences, the military coming down on the rest of the superheroes hard and what they decide to do about it.  As the Evil Avatar review says "This is the ‘Superman rounds up all of the world’s nuclear weapons’ story cranked up to eleven."

This gets to a real Civil War story.  What happens when people, particularly people with a lot of power like super-heroes, decide that the government has gone rogue.  The guy that assassinates Bush in this series doesn't suspend the elections, but I'd still consider him to be way over the line.  But that's okay, he's not the protaganist, he's just the first shot.  The rest of the team have far fewer choices and don't have an easy way, short of surrender, to de-escalate from an outright war.   By the end of Issue 2 they've made an initial choice, I'm quite curious where it will go next.

This isn't just a thinker's series, there's a lot of action and some neat tech powers.  The artwork is middling but assists the storytelling rather than getting in the way, which is key.  If you like political allegory in your comics and aren't holding out for the trade paperback, I'm not sure how you could not be reading this.

[Update: Added note that in the cross-over the Runaways were definitely out of character.  Less of a problem if you're reading YA for its own sake, but it is if you're a Runaways like I've advised you to be.]

Television Criticism by Paul Krugman

Funny how art imitates life:

I’m pretty sure the original, 1970s Bionic Woman worked for a government agency. But this version works for a private contractor - she even gets assigned to protect the daughter of a tycoon who gives the company a lot of business. Yet this private company seems to be empowered to go around killing people. And nobody seems to consider this at all unusual, or legally dubious.

I guess TV writers just pick up on the Zeitgeist.

On that note, a development that seems straight out of Neil Stephenson [Probably because it turned out to be a fake]. The first non-depressing assassination to come out of Russia in some time:

Alexey Tolstokozhev (btw, in Russian his name means ’Thick Skin’), a Russian spammer, found murdered in his luxury house near Moscow. He has been shot several times with one bullet stuck in his head. According to authorities, this last head shot is a clear mark of russian hit men (known as "killers" in Russia).

Who hated Tolstokozhev so much as to hire a hit man to assasinate him? Well, I guess you have about one billion e-mail users to suspect. Tolstokozhev was a famous spammer who sent millions of e-mail promoting viagra, cialis, penis enlargement pills and other medications. Links in these e-mails usually led to some pharmacy shop, which paid Tolstokozhev a share of its revenue. This is a well known affiliate scheme employed by spammers worldwide. Tolstokozhev is estimated to be responsible for up to 30% percent of all viagra and penis enlargement related spam...

This is a second murder of a spammer in Russia. Another russian spammer, Vardan Kushnir, was assassinated in 2005.

Via Sullivan.

[Updated: A fake apparently]

Insult of the Day, National Mall edition

Matthew Yglesias trash talks the national mall points out an article by Joshua Green in the Washington Monthly that does the same:

As I approached the Lincoln Memorial, I spotted a water fountain shimmering in the distance beyond a cluster of parched and deserted baseball diamonds, but arrived to discover it was broken. So was the next one I encountered. And the next...

These days, the experience of visiting the National Mall is a lot like a junior high school civics class--there’s lots of history and statesmanship in the air, but it’s more pedantic than enjoyable, and going to the bathroom is all but out of the question....

Most of the people I encountered in late August were tourists, many of them foreigners, or unlucky folks who, like me, were forced either through ignorance, filial obligation, or a misplaced sense of patriotism to attempt the Bataan Death March from Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol....

Rather than mirror the great capitals of Europe as L’Enfant wished, the Mall mirrors the culture of Washington workaholism, promoting the belief that nothing of interest occurs after dusk and reinforcing the "state capital" quality from which the city suffers. As Richard Guy Wilson, chairman of the architectural history department at the University of Virginia, points out, "Politicians view the Mall as no more than a backdrop for national pageantry." In other words, they don’t actually use it. Consequently, the Mall is not a symbol of America so much as of the average American congressman--stately, aloof, and not much fun after 6 p.m.

Ouch. I hate to say it but this can be true. Water fountains are hit or miss, there’s far too little shade, and there’s not a lot of options in terms of food. Moreover the museums do all close down at 6 pm. Now there are some awesome museums, I often hit downtown to go to them, but the mall itself is often a parade ground for various events. I think it’s critical that we allow for large events, particularly marches and protests and such. However, much of this could be improved without adversely effecting such events. The other day I hit the National Book Fair to get a Terry Pratchett signature or two and the wait in the sun was not that pleasant.

From an analytical perspective, I suspect this happens because there’s a fair amount of demand to see the Mall regardless of how inviting it is. There’s consistently going to be a lot of tourists, so there’s not that much impetus to cater to them aside from quick and easy ways to get their money that don’t violate existing norms.

That said, the Tidal Basin does alright.. although you have to deal with some roads.

Insult of the day

Eve Fairbanks on Ann Coulter’s latest (emphasis mine):

In other words, are you more likely to rile people up for being a racist? An anti-Semite? A misogynist? A homophobe? She is all of the above, so her whole life is like a kind of Freakonomics experiment in bigotry.

Fun facts about cell phones

Via a Gene Weingarten Chat. Have you ever wondered why the message is so long when you leave a voice mail? Dial X to leave a call back number (what does that even do? Has anyone ever done that) etc. Seems like a real waste of time, right?

Months ago, a NY Times tech columnist found the answer (emphasis added):

(P.S. … As longtime Pogue’s Posts readers know, my biggest cellular pet peeve is the endless recording you hear when you reach someone’s voicemail: “To page this person, press 2 now. You may leave a message at the tone. When you finish recording, you may hang up. Or press 5 for more options”—and so on.

At the conference, I asked one cellular executive if that message is deliberately recorded slowly and with as many words as possible, to eat up your airtime and make more [Average Revenue Per User] for the cell carrier. I was half kidding—but he wasn’t fooling around in his reply: “Yes.”

On the upside, VOIP is hurting them. Go Skype!

The cellular industry is going through insanely rapid change. Almost everyone there—800 attendees from 200 phone companies in 65 countries—was running scared of VOIP. That’s voice over I.P., better known as Internet phone. VOIP includes cheapo unlimited home-phone service like Vonage, as well as absolutely free computer-to-computer calling with programs like Skype. It’s all growing like crazy, which is making a huge dent in these companies’ ARPU.

Immigration enforcement via Social Security numbers halted

Remember the Bush administration’s attempt to enforce immigration laws by forcing employers to fire those with social security number problems? A federal judge ordered an injunction yesterday.

"The government’s proposal to disseminate no-match letters affecting more than eight million workers will, under the mandated time line, result in the termination of employment to lawfully employed workers," the judge wrote. "Moreover the threat of criminal prosecution . . . reflects a major change in DHS policy."...

Chertoff said the ruling underscores the need for Congress to overhaul
its immigration laws, a point that was echoed by Deputy White House
press secretary Scott M. Stanzel early this morning.

Or maybe, I dunno, you could clean up the database? I realize this is all just a gambit to force the business community to lobby harder for immigration reform. But really, as is it’s a toothless gambit. If you actually want to up the stakes you’re going to have to try governing. Crazy I know.

Hillary Clinton backtracking on torture?

Kevin Drum notes a troubling response that also disturbed me when I read it in the Post today.

[HRC’s Quote]

"It is not clear yet exactly what this administration is or isn’t doing. We’re getting all kinds of mixed messages," Clinton said. "I don’t think we’ll know the truth until we have a new president. I think [until] you can get in there and actually bore into what’s been going on, you’re not going to know."

Politics is politics. Spin and ambiguity are part of the game. But if
you can’t even take a full-throated, non-weasely position against
torture and abuse of prisoners in American custody, what the hell good
are you?

Hillary Clinton has actually been pretty good in the past, so I’m not sure why she’s being weasely now. I think she might be reserving the right to keep doing some cruel, inhuman, or degrading, procedures that are not as widely known. But that can’t be how you lead the argument. Drum earlier noted that Obama got it right quickly and forcefully.

The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security....It’s time to stop telling the American people one thing in public while doing something else in the shadows.

UPDATE: Drum was actually commenting on Sullivan, who to put it mildly, is no fan of Hillary Clinton. Also I threw in this link to a time when she made a strong stand in the debates. If she was misrepresenting in the interview I hope she’ll clarify.

Quick update on S-Chip to avoid strawmanning

Quick update to my other S-Chip post to make clear who I’m talking about. There’s an important distinction on the S-Chip fight from the NY Times article:

Republicans on Capitol Hill, who were gearing up to use Graeme as evidence that Democrats have overexpanded the health program to include families wealthy enough to afford private insurance, have backed off.

An aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, expressed relief that his office had not issued a press release criticizing the Frosts.

In this case, we have Malkin and allies going nuts but politicians choosing not to follow along as the situation developed. Good for the politicians. The argument that the Frosts’ demographics don’t need public insurance isn’t supported by the facts, but would have been a valid argument if the Frosts were millionaires or something. I personally support universal health care, so I think that argument is wrong, but that doesn’t make it illegitimate. Aside from the lying, the problem here is the ad hominem attacks and invasions of privacy which are always iffy and definitely not appropriate for non-public figures let alone kids.

S-CHIP and use of children

The NY Times covers Republican tactics in the latest fight over S-Chip.

So when Democrats enlisted 12-year-old Graeme Frost, who along with a younger sister relied on the program for treatment of severe brain injuries suffered in a car crash, to give the response to Mr. Bush’s weekly radio address on Sept. 29, Republican opponents quickly accused them of exploiting the boy to score political points.

Then, they wasted little time in going after him to score their own.

In recent days, Graeme and his family have been attacked by conservative bloggers and other critics of the Democrats’ plan to expand the insurance program, known as S-chip. They scrutinized the family’s income and assets - even alleged the counters in their kitchen to be granite - and declared that the Frosts did not seem needy enough for government benefits...

As for accusations that bloggers were unfairly attacking a 12-year-old,
Ms. Malkin wrote on her blog, “If you don’t want questions, don’t foist
these children onto the public stage.”

Use of children, as part of a non-violent movement, can be a legitimate tactic when you’re fighting for those children’s interests. The civil rights movement certainly did it, not just at Little Rock but also in marches in Birmingham which were met with a brutal crackdown (due disclosure interestingly Malcolm X was critical, so not everyone does buy this argument). Counter argument against a movement that uses children is also certainly legitimate, but it does force opponents to decide whether or not to go after the children or to stick with attacking the adults or, in an ideal world, the actual arguments. It’s also reasonable to complain about the tactic if you think it is being
misused or overused. However, given many examples of recent behavior by Malkin and her allies, its no surprise that many on the hard right went rhetorically and creepily after the kid (but not violently, unlike the responses to the civil rights movement).

But do Republicans use these tactics? What happens when they do? Ezra Klein has the answer.

Anyone remember Ashley’s Story?... And here’s another question: Does anyone remember DailyKos launching a feeding frenzy trying to smear or discredit Ashley? Anyone hear of Markos Moulitsas camping out outside her house to see if Ashley was really grieving?... Or did the Left raise some questions about the political appropriateness of the ad without trying to destroy the family’s name and reputation?

A benefit to support the Purple Line this Wednesday night

Sorry for the lack of warning. I really fell down on the job here. Anyhow, for those of you who live, work, or play in the northern D.C. suburbs, then you’ve probably already heard of the Purple Line. It’s an attempt to connect the spokes of the Metro system to allow for travel between the burbs without going downtown.

More information is available on the purplelinenow website.

Battlestar Music Video

Michelle Cottle over at TNR did a tribute to modern country:

Even (or maybe particularly) some of the most swaggering Nashville stars do self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek numbers about what losers they are with the ladies or how old they’re getting. The New York Times did a mildly condescending piece about this phenomenon back in June, pointing to Brad Paisley’s "Ticks" and Toby Keith’s "High Maintenance Woman" as prime examples.

Kind of an odd trend, but then everything seems more meta these days. Regardless, I wouldn’t be blogging about it unless the Youtube link she chose as an example was a Battlestar Galatica music video.

Update: For the record, I’m not remotely a fan of country music but I am a huge BSG fan and this combo actually works in my view.

Matthew Yglesias versus Homeownership

Matthew Yglesias has of late been promoting a slightly different version of the American Dream. He’s backing Hillary Clinton’s proposed Baby Bonds which would give a $5,000 bond to every child born in the U.S. He gives a pretty good support for it:

One of the main policies that made the United States we know and love was the Homestead Act of the 19th century. The question this was intended to address was how to dispose of the vast land mass that the country was in the process of stealing from its native inhabitants. One way to do this would have been to auction it off to the highest bidder. Wealthy investors would have bought large estates and hired overseers and tenants to farm the land while living back home in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, wherever. Instead, the congress guaranteed a small farm to anyone willing to move west and live and work on the land, building a property owning democracy of smallholders wherein ownership of the means of production (viz. land) was widely distributed.

Baby bonds could and should be a step toward creating a 21st century version of a society lack that -- one in which every citizen who works hard and obeys the law gets to share in the prosperity that’s created by everyone’s labor together.

In a post a month ago he favored capital ownership over homeownership as a way of helping the people achieve the American

If we didn’t subsidize howmownership, people would own less home and own more stocks and bonds instead. Some of that owning "less home" would come from people renting rather than buying, and some would come from buyers simply buying smaller houses. That’s be good for the environment, and more capital would be available for business operating in non-housing sectors. Meanwhile, I feel like if we weren’t specifically encouraging an ideology of home ownership ("American dream" and all that), you might get less of the risky behavior that seems to be causing trouble of late.

I think he’s got a point. The data he throws out on homeownership shows that many of the poorer states have higher rates. Thus its obviously not a panacea. Fair enough. I think the trouble is that he’s only half right. Homeownership matters because of the three basic needs, shelter, clothing, food and drink (health care may well count too, but that’s a separate issue). Michelle Singletary of the Post did a budgeting story a while back and recommended that housing should probably be the largest chunk of your income at 27% (food comes in second at 21%). If you own a house or condo, a good percent of that is going to your assets (with the rest going to interest). Even if half of the payment is going to interest, that’s still a bonus of 13% savings which beats what you’ll get on capital investments.

That said, Yglesias is certainly half right. The mortgage tax deduction should be capped (perhaps set off the median price of housing in the area in question). Helping people buy a house makes sense. Helping them by more house is a poor use of tax policy and makes it less economical to build low-income housing. Happily, Chairman Dingell does have a cap proposal (set at 30,000 square feet houses) which is a bit arbitrary but is a vast improvement over the current situation. Happily, that cap would free up resources that could go towards other ends, such at Baby Bonds.

Military Research

Following up on research to defeat IED’s(Improvised Explosive Devises) Eve Fairbanks had an post fairly critical of the research approach (read it for a few funny bits from the Post article):

Insurgent techniques are formed in-theater, where there’s a sense of extreme urgency, and deployed as soon as they can be dreamed up. Ours are too often concocted by showboating legislators or scientists ensconced in the Pentagon, both used to putting a premium on the kind of cleverness and wacky originality that gave birth to the anti-IED poncho -- the Post tells of a Defense Department meeting where a picture of a light bulb was shown with the caption, "Does anybody have a bright idea?" And then the bright ideas are vetted through the Joint Staff, Centcom, General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, etc, and put through a procurement process designed, lamentably, by my personal hero Chuck Grassley to prevent incredibly expensive wastes like the Mako drone.

One wonders how different the results would be if a tenth of the resources that went into the making of one Mako were used to teach more soldiers Arabic so they could benefit from the most successful IED-fighting technique presented in the Post story: The ability to ask locals the question, Weh-nil kun-boo-leh? "Where is the bomb?"

In general we need to get smart about counter-insurgency, but that’s a bigger post. On the technology side, I’d suggest two possible approaches to adapt to this problem:

1. Put more techies into the field with authority, equipment, and some money for improvising. This did apparently help on electronic warfare. Obviously there’s severe limits on what you can do in even well equipped bases. And we shouldn’t build full labs or the like in the field, that would be a logistical nightmare. However, in the field they can better implement tech and jury rig and improvise. Then they could be rotated back to the R&D oriented areas with more exact knowledge of what’s going on.
2. Let the field direct research via a prize system. The girlfriend considerably contributed to this idea. As a pilot program, give several levels of officers in one province of Afghanistan or Iraq vouchers they can put towards prizes for new discovers (start out with a bunch of existing projects that are on the more achievable end). Once every month, they could put the money into wherever they thought was the highest priority. Anyone could compete to solve the research problem and they only get paid on delivery, so you avoid having to deal with a lot of the problems with acquisition,

A big problem with research and acquisition these days is that everything is highly complex leading to many year projects and lots of coordination cost. Putting more resources to the field allows people to improve on smaller increments given by the customers demand. That said, universality of equipment will be hurt, but standards could still be put to use much as they are in the commercial market.

Saturday Cheap Shot Blogging

 The new Republican Convention logo is out:

Pandagon has a good range of parodies based on some amusing aspects of this one.  My favorite below the cut:

Rare praise for the Justice Department

Considering I’ve been trashing the Justice Department for the past few days, when I saw an article showing good performance in today’s post, I figured I’d give them a pat on the back.

They managed to resolve a tax standoff via trickery and not violence

Refusing to "surrender," in February they barricaded themselves in their estate in this New Hampshire town of 2,200, warning that any attempts to arrest them would end in bloodshed. They said they could sustain themselves "indefinitely" with solar and wind electricity generators, after federal agents cut their power and phone lines...

Late Thursday, U.S. marshals posing as supporters entered the Browns’ property and arrested them on their porch without incident. "They invited us in, and we escorted them out," U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier told the Associated Press.

At a news conference, Monier said officials found booby traps in the woods on the 100-plus-acre property and weapons, ammunition and homemade bombs inside and outside the house. He said more charges are likely.

Well played. I was young at the time and perhaps insufficiently critical when Ruby Ridge and Wacohappened. I don’t buy most of the conspiracy theories about Waco, that said, the raid was still an obvious disaster. The death toll in Ruby Ridge is even less excusable as while the Weaver family were radical separatists they seemed to have been goaded by an informant in much the same way those morons in Miami got made into a terrorist group bent on attacking the Sears Tower. Regardless, this could have gotten real ugly. Props for avoiding that. It’s good to see Justice using lying as a force for good for a change.