Tonight Yuki and I went to a "Welcome to D.C." event for the alumnae of the Carnegie Mellon school of Computer Science... I'm certainly not one who usually would go to these things, but we're trying to meet people in the area, and there were actually some cool people there. :) We're going to try to do more of this sort of thing, just to meet people, but Yuki's not too keen on going to the "Blogger Meetup"... haha... I'm still having an internal debate over whether I'll go alone... ;)

I was talking to Peter Lee, who is now the Assistant Dean, about a lot of interesting trends within and without the school, and one thing he mentioned really struck me. I had never realized how few CS graduates there are from Carnegie Mellon... He mentioned that they were starting to organize these events because only now is there a sufficient critical mass of students to make it worthwhile. In my class, I think about 107 people graduated in CS. It's really very small when you think about it... It's grown a lot, but I think he said this year there were still only 150 or so.

Another thing that I found pretty cool was that they're having Stephen Wolfram come and speak about his new book on campus. I've been looking through it and, although I'm sure it's not quite as Earth-shattering as he probably thinks it is, it's nonetheless a great explication of the discoveries & implications thereof that he's made in the field of finite automata. So I'll probably drive up for that and get my tome signed by the master. (This book is huge — about 1500 pages!) It's only 5 hours or so by car. :) I miss Pittsburgh anyway... :'|

Hmmn... has been talking about his renewed verve to study Japanese. I learned Japanese there as a kid, I've learned Mandarin since, and studied many other languages as well. So why did I learn Japanese there, while others I know have lived there 17 years and only know how to say "ikura desu ka?" Many reasons, beginning with desire, social contacts, openness, and optimism. As a kid you don't know it's hard... :)

I was 10 years old. Before we moved there, my parents bought some books and we tried to learn some Japanese as a family around the dinner table. Needless to say, we didn't learn crap. ;) My next memory is walking around a supermarket in Tokyo with the daughter of my parents' expat friends (Maya Ravindranath). We got a sample from one of the little tables, and I asked her how to say it's good. She told me to reply "oishii."

But my first real sentence in Japanese was this: "Hyaku-en kashite..." This was the basis for my entire knowledge of the Japanese language. I don't know how it went exactly, but the other kids in my school (Nishimachi) always went to the corner store to get candy & snacks after school... They were always borrowing money from each other, so I picked this up and just started saying it in Japanese whenever I needed to borrow money... Soon this progressed to "Keshi kashite..." and "Empitsu kashite..." It was really very simple for my mind to absorb these quick phrases.

By this time, I was learning a bunch of nouns and some basic verbs in class. Basic school things, parts of the body, etc. I also got to know the train stations and some other words like ofuro and foods and stuff. But the key was that everything I learned, I turned right around and said to my friends. Even if I was speaking English, I usually used all the nouns I had learned in Japanese if I could. Why? Because all of them made fun of me for not understanding what they were talking about. We were in 5th grade, so of course they all thought it was hilarious to call me stupid in Japanese right in front of me... Here's how I think it usually went:

Hey, man... You're soooo baka. <all laugh> What? Omae baka dayo... Cho~baka...! <more laughs> What does baka mean??

So finally, I would get real pissed and turn to whoever seemed most likely to reply, usually my friend Tetsu, and ask what the hell they were saying. After about the 3rd time, he would let me in on it, and I never forgot a word learned like that!

So here's my basic theory on learning Japanese:

First, in the beginning, keep it simple. I don't mean "kore wa pen desu"... I mean "hyaku-en kashite..." You have to know the simple simple sentences you can use every day. And, you have to actually use them whenever you come to that situation. It doesn't matter if you're speaking English! Just insert Japanese words and phrases. Switch back and forth... Just start using it whenever you can.

Second, try to act, sound, and think Japanese. Forget everything, because YOU ARE NOW JAPANESE! You are a freaky albino Japanese, but that's it. Imagine that you're some weird gaijin that grew up there (I knew some), so you have just as much right to speak it as everyone else, even if they shun or don't accept you... You must pronounce everything exactly like they do, with the same facial expressions, mannerisms, everything... This is how you get it right. And don't worry if your mouth betrays you in the beginning — just say things more slowly, but make sure it sounds as absolutely correct as you can make it. Take time to make sure you pronounce aiueo and rarirurero exactly like they do... If you do it well enough, your English will start to sound weird too.

Third, when you encounter something in the grammar or idiom that confuses you, grill someone about it until you understand, then use it. If they can't explain, you need to ask for examples. When do you use it? In what situations? If you can't understand it, in my opinion it's probably just one of those things that people get used to using in a certain way, and that's all there is to it. Just use it in the same way, and eventually it will just sound right... ;) Your amazing brain will eventually just get it, so don't stress over those bits, just use them the way they do...

Fourth, watch Japanese TV and try to catch whatever you can, even though it'll suck. Try to make out characters and words on the screen as well. When you get tired, just close your eyes and rest with the TV still on... Limit your English TV viewing to once every week or two. Try to spend significant amounts of time (at least 2-3 hours) just bathing in Japanese language, with absolutely no English to be heard...

And for the first 5 years or so, that's just about it. :) Learning reading and writing are really almost a separate thing in my opinion. You'll be doing it at the same time, but I think that in terms of learning to speak fluently, the above points are absolutely the most important...

I have a lot of opinions about this, so please ask me if you're someone trying to learn and you have questions or get stuck somewhere... I'd always be glad to help! :)

So my Mom bought an iMac after I suggested it. She had been using an ancient PC up to then, and it was thoroughly hosed. Here is my impression so far:

Store experience:	Quite good
Out of box experience:	Good
Using digital camera:	Good
OS Stability:	Awesome
Installing printer:	Crap
Using external floppy:	Fair
Appleworks:	Absolute Crap

Fairly mixed, isn't it... Well, let me tell you the whole story...

My Father and I went to the Apple store to pick it up. I love just about everything about the Apple retail stores, except the tax. We picked up a good photo-printer and a USB floppy drive as well.

So we get home, and of course the packaging is awesome. Just like most Japanese products, the instructions are in cellophane packages sealed with that medium-sticky glue that's easy to open. It all looks great, so I hook up the Printer. Nada. To make a long story short, I needed to download the latest printer drivers for the printer. Not something I think a new iMac user should be expected to do. Strike one.

By the way, by this time I've realized that it's sweet to be able to get a unix prompt just like a NeXT machine, but the "Help" system absolutely sucks rocks. I honestly don't even know why they bothered with it. Another thing — the browser for the help system has the forward and back buttons on the lower right of the window... yeah, real intuitive... Anyway, the help system is crap.

So I plug in the floppy thinking that it will just work. Guess what? I get nothing. So I pull it out and plug it in again — a little whirring and the drive finally shows up. This was pretty nice. No drivers or anything... But why didn't it show up the first time? Hmmm. Well no big deal right? So I unplug the drive thinking it will automatically unmount, being the smart iMac that it is... ;) Guess what? Everything froze, and I had to do a hard reboot. Totally counter-intuitively, you must drag the drive to the trash can to eject it, or you crash... Now I don't care about the dragging part to eject disks, but the machine should not crash if you don't do it... Very bad for beginners, or even people like me who are Windows/Unix people...

Finally everything is working, and my Mom starts using the machine daily. iPhoto rocks, and she has no trouble using it, but still there's almost no useful help! I don't get it. It even lacks tooltips on the inscrutable graphically labelled buttons you need to use... I just had to click them and see what happened! I'm thinking "This is easy to use?"

So now we get to Appleworks (or should I say 'Crappleworks'). The first problem is that with our beautifully anti-aliased fonts, the default size that documents pop up in (100%) is too small to see well. If you hit the zoom-in button, it goes to 150% which is way too big. So you actually have to open a dialog and type in "120%" to get the stupid thing to resize to a workable level.

But all this pales, pales, in comparison to using the Crappleworks spreadsheet software. I spent over an hour trying to print a simple spreadsheet for my Mom. There is absolutely no easy way to transfer a spreadsheet to a table in a document. You see, tables in documents don't split across pages! So you have to make a separate table for each friggin' page!! Well, I won't go into it all, but it's horrible. The default behavior in printing a spreadsheet is totally broken too. You actually need to select your cells that have data, choose "Set Print Range" from the menu, and hit ok in the dialog, just to prevent it from printing pages and pages of blank cells...

In the end, I have to say it's not all bad — iPhoto and other things work great, even sans help. But I'm definitely disillusioned with Apple's marketing about it all being so easy to use. It's not. It's not even easier than a PC sometimes. It is much more stable and reliable though, and hopefully they'll continue to improve everything... I'm just hoping that I won't be taken to task for suggesting an iMac. ;)

I've been posting about a lot of films lately, but I think they are one of the best mediums we have to convey intangible feelings, so I tend to watch a lot of them. Yesterday, I watched one called "Joint Security Area," at once both profoundly endearing and disturbingly tragic, it hammers home the ubiquity of human compassion, and the tragedy of manufactured distinctions.

Lately I had been thinking about how similar Japanese and Korean culture and language really are, but I still know little about the situation between North and South Korea except what I've gleaned mostly from textbooks and magazines over the years. I think I actually did a paper on the whole situation in Junior High, but it was mostly a rehashing of conveniently categorized events: skirmishes, border clashes, violations...

But the situation is vastly more complex, because the humans involved are complex creatures. No one serving alongside Americans day after day can look across the border at a North Korean soldier, and not feel some sort of kinship, and some sort of strange unsettling twilight-zone discomfort at how strange the situation is. I'd like to learn more about it, but it's hard without going there.

This movie conveys very well some of the more complex human aspects of this cold conflict. It's about 4 border troops who fall into an unlikely friendship which inevitably ends in tragedy. Unfortunately, it's tragedy of the worst kind, so don't watch this movie unless you're ready for something heavy. But I do recommend you watch it, if you're at all interested in one of the most important aspects of Korean society since WWII.

I've come across a review on Salon of an intriguing new movie about Hitler: "Max." (Also being discussed on Plastic)

It seems to be the first film to take a more realistic look at Hitler as a human being, and how he might have become the man he did. Very few investors were willing to take on the film, and a large number of groups were against it. But Cusack had great faith in the film, and had resolved early on that this was the next film he was doing, even without pay. Finally, they were able to pull together the $10 million to produce the film, and I can't wait to see it.

There's nothing wrong with seeing Hitler in shades not clearly black or white, except that it scares us a tad. That's not such a bad thing, eh? ;) Maybe it will keep us all a bit more vigilant.

The New York Times has published an amazing interactive look at a conceptual project for ground zero, developed by well-known architechts unsatisfied with the city's efforts so far. This article describes the project illustrated by the flash presentation (click image).

The architects criticize the process put in place to develop the new ground zero plan, saying that it's too bureaucratic and doesn't involve architects at the fundamental stages where they really need to be involved. They came up with the plan as a hypothetical scenario just to see what they could do together. It involves a memorial at the actual site, two huge twisting towers adjacent, a number of museums, and the conversion of a huge length of West St. into a long park and pedestrian mall.

This plan sounds orders of magnitude better to me than any I've seen yet. I'm sure the entire plan would never get made, for political and other reasons, but maybe the city will be smart enough to at least consider some of the ideas... particularly the towers. :)

I made only one entry yesterday, an entry of silence, in commemoration. But I've deleted it now, because we all have to move on, and get beyond the whole thing. We won't forget it. We don't have to worry about that.

But we do need to achieve a new state of mind. We need to lose our fear, and gain back our courage and resolve. We need to be hopeful about the future... :) Let's get on with it. :)

Finally, they're taking serious action. I've been more and more worried lately that our government may not have the gumption to actually protect us. This article from MSNBC hopefully indicates that I was wrong. You can also see how prepared the biggest U.S. cities are here.

It seems that Al Qaida is planning another attack or series of attacks, and this time, we're not going to sit back and take it. Check this out from the MSNBC article:

Military jets also were patrolling the skies over New York and Washington around the clock and Defense Department strategists recommended to Rumsfeld that he order deployment of 300 troops with Avenger ground-based air defense batteries and shoulder-fired stinger anti-aircraft missile systems for several days to protect several key sites in the capital from air attack, according to the Pentagon officials, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity. Rumsfeld was expected to formalize the decision on Tuesday, they said.

Maybe I should go downtown and have one more look at our national monuments... I hope my kids will be able to see them.

Copyright legislation has gone too far in the U.S., and finally some people are proposing just what we need. They are making the effort to create an organization dedicated to protecting the fair-use rights of the average citizen. A proposal for the organization has been posted here on kuro5hin.

Everyone knows by now that the way you get things done (politically) in the U.S. is with an organization that can magnify the voices of a certain group, and lobby for them. Anyone who has a cause should learn from this. :) Hopefully this new group can gain enough of a following to make a difference. The EFF has certainly been a great force for good on the net.

This article, being discussed here on Plastic, really got me thinking... Have you ever heard anything as disturbing as the term "Designated Free Speech Area?" This implies to me that everywhere outside this zone is designated for censorship...

So here's the story — Bill Neel decided he wanted to protest against Bush while the President made a speech to a carpenters' union. It turns out that the cops herded all the protesters into a baseball field, behind a fence, away from Bush's motorcade. Of course, people with pro-Bush signs were allowed to line the street right while the motorcade passed... Bill was arrested because he refused to stay in his 'designated' area.

Every time something like this happens, I think "Maybe this is it — maybe the country really is going to pot..." But then I remember all the horrible problems we've overcome in the past, and I think that the people of the U.S. will pull us out of this one too, eventually. This scene is deeply disturbing to me though. It's reminiscent of something that would happen in China. Hard-core pro-administration PR, supressing dissent in a not-so-subtle way... I'm just glad that we live in a country where this sort of thing produces an outcry from the citizens. :)

After reading this review on Salon a while back, I was anxious to get a chance to see "The Fast Runner", or "Atanarjuat." Finally on Sunday we were able to go see it at the Bethesda Row Cinema, a relatively new independent theatre in Bethesda, Maryland, north of Washington.

This movie is based on an old Inuit legend, about a young man named Atanarjuat, and I believe it was shot in Inuktitut, the huge new Inuit province of northern Canada.

It's an amazing trip back to a primitive culture and way of life that we may think we've forgotten, but really lives on in our subconscious. Watching this movie, I realized how much of our primitive culture we bring across into our so-called modern lives. Men hunt, women nurture, and everyone plays sometimes... :) That's why these legends and stories feel so good to us — they simplify everything, and make things very clear because they put them in our real language: the language of our instincts, and our natural and primitive culture.

The story is good for us, because it shows us how much we depend on one another for survival. This fact is made starkly obvious in the harsh arctic climate the characters must contend with. But it's true in our society nonetheless; just harder to recognize and easier to forget.

It's also good because it reminds us how important to our daily lives our perception of good and evil is. The group in the film contends with great evil, in the form of a couple of people, but they also must contend with the effect of that evil on their minds and hearts. They must try to banish the evildoers, but must also try to banish the cloud of darkness from their spirits.

The film also may bring up a number of other questions in viewers' minds — how much have we progressed compared to this version of life? Is our advancement meaningful? Are we better off? As for relations between women and men, maybe we've improved things, but have we ignored or neglected subtle aspects of our nature as well? Maybe. And what is a leader, a chief? What qualities must our leaders posess, and how can we choose them? I think after watching this, that democracy is far less effective at choosing leaders than a small group who can see the spirit of a man in his eyes...

This was a really great movie... :)

Yet more disturbing information about literacy in the U.S. This article describes an incredible situation. Students who can read, but cannot understand the meaning behind the text. They are the victims of fad-based education. Victims of teachers who believe that tests and high standards serve only to hurt the self-esteem of kids. I have news for those teachers. They're morons.

Don't we all know by now that competition is what drives people in this world? The economy does not run on self-esteem. People are not motivated by platitudes. They are motivated by competition: the challenge to be better than yourself, better than others, better than everyone. People don't try to improve themselves when they're told they're great the way they are, or they should be satisfied with themselves whether they can read or not...

So am I saying that people shouldn't be happy with themselves? In a way, yes. People should always be striving to improve themselves and everything around them, because only in striving can humans be truly happy. Complacency and laziness may sometimes seem to fulfill our desires, but this is only temporary. The longer you lay on the couch, the stiffer you get, and the less interesting the TV becomes. People need to have struggles, because they give our lives meaning.

This is why competition is the key to everything in society... not because we're selfish, but because striving is living. Isn't it the height of irony that this nation, the leader of the capitalist world, doesn't apply this principle to its education system?

I've added a forum to my site now, powered by the XMB system. Hopefully (hint, hint), my friends across the world will come and post something there, so we can shoot the shit just like the old days at Kiva Han in Pittsburgh, while procrastinating on school projects... ;)

It's too easy to lose touch. I'm hoping that if the people I know hang out here sometimes, it'll be a little easier not to. That means you. ;)

Ok. This is just a straight out rant. Can we just banish the phrase 'in a bid to' from the media already? "In a bid to influence the WTO, ..." I have heard this phrase way too often, and I'm sick of it. Why can't anyone just say "Yesterday, Finance Ministry officials attempted to influence the WTO by...?"

Why do those in the media feel it necessary to always use the same tired old clichés?? This is one reason I like to read the Wall Street Journal, and the few remaining publications where reporters just write what they mean, rather than gluing together clichés... Argh.

I think the AP and Reuters are probably largely to blame for this shoddy McCrap. Is it really that hard to write something in your own words, guys? Argh².

Somehow, for some reason, many Japanese people blow a fuse when confronted by a foreigner speaking Japanese to them. I have an anecdote, and a theory about this I'd like to share with you...

So a while ago we went back to Tokyo to visit my friend Paul and have some fun, on the way to visiting Yuki's family in Nagoya... We decided to take the subway from Narita airport to his place, and ended up at Tokyo station, where we had to change lines. At some places in the massive tangled Tokyo subway system, you have to actually leave the station and walk down the street a bit to find a connection to another line... This happened to be one of those cases, so I stopped at the booth to ask which way I should walk to find the subway entrance.

My wife Yuki had never been in Japan with me until this time, so I knew that she was about to see something she had never seen before — the raw shock of a Japanese accosted by a gaijin with fluent Japanese...

So I ask this guy how to find the line we're looking for, in Japanese of course, and the festivities begin. He fidgets, looking back and forth... He starts trying to tell me in Japanese, but then stops to ask me if I speak Japanese. I confirm, and he proceeds to try to give me directions in his extremely broken English. I can't figure out what the hell he's saying, so I ask him to say it in Japanese. He then proceeds to give me the directions by alternating Japanese and English words. Yuki's eyes are wide open in surprise at this point (I think she started to laugh too), as she's new to the phenomenon...

Remember, every word I've said has been in perfect Japanese up to this point. So finally, we gather that the entrance is just around the corner that-a-way, and thank him and take off...

So why does this happen? My theory is that Japanese people cannot hear. That's right, they're actually all deaf. Sure, they play a good game with their "language", but it's a sham! It's all just a show! The way they actually communicate is solely through body language, i.e. bowing, raising eyebrows, etc. They can also sense the vibrations from the louder groans or grunts they sometimes make, as well as the air-flow changes caused by the common air-sucking maneuver...

So first of all, when you speak Japanese you can only be understood if you use proper body language. Luckily, I don't have a problem with this one...

Secondly, you must look Japanese (or at least Asian-flavored), or this so-called "listener" will assume you're actually speaking English, and reply appropriately...

This guy has experienced it too. I'll be looking for more similar stories — if you see any, please be sure to let me know... <grin>

I was thinking today about how interesting it would be to read someone's blog back to the '20s or '30s, if they had existed at the time... The obvious follow-up question is "How many of today's blogs will still be around in 40 or 50 years?"

It's an intriguing question. How many really have the tenacity to write regularly about their comings and goings for their entire life? The kids who are blogging now will probably give it up when they go to college, maybe when they move somewhere and take their first job... Who knows what percentage of them will take it up again...

All I know is that if people continue these sites, at least some of them will be an incredible trove of introspection for future generations. Imagine being able to read hundreds of differing accounts of September 11, 50 years hence...

The potential of this medium is not only in connecting people in the here and now, but also in documenting the feeling of a particular moment in history, according to individuals... A chorus of unique voices that will inevitably convey something much more nuanced than AP or Reuters ever could.

I remember when my Grandfather was in his last days. My mother set up the video camera, brought me into the sunroom of my grandparents' house, and told me to ask him about what his life was like... What was life like during the infamous great depression, which he had lived through, seen with his own eyes? He talked about a number of things that had struck him, especially about helping the many homeless migrants get by, even while he was struggling to make ends meet.

The more voices we can save for posterity, the better. The human stories that we can tell are what bring meaning to our lives — not technology or science, or even progress. Let's not waste the opportunity we've been given, to pass on some of the meaning we find in our lives. Let's embrace it.