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Capturing the breathtaking gray gloom that is life in the terribly thought through urban environments across the US, that in any sane world would be considered parking lots at the entrance to hell.  The story

Here is a nice video interview with a former US Military arabic language interrogator who realized that the enemy was no different from himself.

He has received some acclaim and apparently has a well received monologue performance dealing with his experience.

This is all well and wonderful, but wouldn’t it be better if all of our young men and women grew up in an environment that made it clear, without having to go to war, that killing people out of respect for authority, national pride, sense of duty, these are all deeply wrong.  Love of your fellow man and compassion in the face of wrong is such a simple message, espoused by all major religions, and yet people are shocked when someone actually listens.

I just loved the ending of this article, as the writers aim to provide some “balance” to an issue with obviously no second side:

Release of the report spurred some objections yesterday.

The causes of cancer are “extremely complex and involve factors like genetics, the environment, lifestyle, and a host of other issues,” said Randy Huffman, vice president of scientific affairs at the Washington-based American Meat Institute, in a statement.

Isaac Asimov wrote this, not more than a few tens of minutes to read.  It is… well, I was not particularly happy today yet it gave me a feeling of beauty.

Check out the photo gallery and be overwhelmed by 250 or so photos

Not sure anyone I don’t really contact frequently is reading this blog, or why they even would, but those of you I haven’t been in touch with recently: While not leaving Tokyo, I am on the lookout for a new place to live, maybe Ebisu or Meguro station.  Definitely on my own, for various reasons.  If you know anyone with a nice place that they don’t need anymore, let me know.

Well written and absorbing non-fiction recounting of terrible and inspiring events.

While Chicago has never been a terrorist target, the police in Chicago sound like they do a fine job terrorizing the people.

In the three years I have been living in Japan thus far, I have made solid progress learning the language.  I can with some confidence sit through a japanese feature film without my eyes glazing over, confident I have at least caught the gross outlines of a plot.

But subtitles are still preferable, and I usually just wait for a DVD release.

Conversely, for the japanese person sitting next to me watching a DVD, it is no great excitement to watch a brand new hollywood movie, because there is anywhere from a 3 month to two year gap between when most movies are released in the US and when they hit Japanese theatrical, let alone DVD release.

This means I usually end up seeing things very late, or I scour the internet looking for fan-generated subtitles (either english ones for new japanese releases, or japanese ones for new english-language releases).

Either way, the DVD format is lacking, and sure enough I can’t even contemplate watching say, a spanish language release with a japanese friend.

That was mildly unpleasant, making me watch Motorcycle Diaries twice, and so on.

But Babel, sigh.

I really really wanted to see Babel in a proper theatre, and here is a film that is reportedly in six languages.  I don’t know if that is accurate, but there was no way I could just watch it in a japanese cinema.  I couldn’t just watch it on DVD either, because I wanted to enjoy not alone, but together.

I love the irony of a film titled “Babel” being unviewable together by two people with different native tongues.

So I redoubled my efforts to find a way to watch a film with both Japanese and English subtitles at the same time.
I located a fan-generated Japanese subtitle stream.

I got ahold of the US release, which has english subtitles.

I found not a single program for the Mac that supports this concept.

However, to my surprise, in Bootcamp under windows XP, The KMPlayer, a free video player, not only functions perfectly fine (even running IN PARALLELS!) but it allows the playback of multiple subtitle streams, regardless of whether those streams are part of the original feature or are sourced from a separate subtitle file.

We sat through the film together, and while I won’t make any plot spoilers, it was well worth sharing the experience for once.

So I we were out shopping, and she was looking at some imitation bags, and I noticed sitting there a few ipod shuffles (the tiny tie-clip ipod) and they were in new apple boxes, and I was pretty surprised that they even had customers for such things.  The export-only oriented factory is indeed in china, so hey.  I had the store let me listen to it playing music, and after laughing at their iniital price of 3x japan retail, I explained that it was silly for me to pay any more than 50% of retail, when retail for the same item includes oh, a receipt and a warranty.  So I take it home and plug it in and look closer, and actually, it is an AMAZING fake.  Looks totally real, even plays mp3 files.  But it is actually just a flash memory mp3 (not aac compatible) player that looks and feels 99% like a real 2nd generation shuffle.  It cannot sync with iTunes, and it copies files very slowly.  But other than that it is damned hard to notice that it is not real.

Of course an economist would say that if I still want one, retail is a decent price, and I should not think of the price as retail plus the 50% retail I already paid, but that is what it feels like when it was an impulse buy that I barely need.  Foolish me.

I wonder if the guy selling it even knows it is fake, let alone what he is selling, considering his initial completely insane asking price of  about $300.