Author: Heather Meadows

In horrifying news today:

Priest unrepentent after crucifying of nun (via Drudge)

A Romanian Orthodox priest who ordered the crucifixion of a young nun because she was “possessed by the devil” and now faces murder charges was unrepentant on Saturday as he celebrated a funeral mass for his alleged victim.

“God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil,” Father Daniel, 29, the superior of the Holy Trinity monastery in north-eastern Romania, said before celebrating a short mass “for the soul of the deceased”, in the presence of 13 nuns who showed no visible emotion.

He insisted that from the religious point of view, the crucifixion of Maricica Irina Cornici, 23, was “entirely justified”, but admitted that he faced excommunication as well as prosecution, and was seeking a “good lawyer”.

Just…o_o

In the “was that really a good idea” department:

Michael Jackson’s acquittal celebration was attended by one of his jurors! (Also via Drudge.)

Among the approximately 400 people who arrived at the Chumash Indian Casino was juror Pauline Coccoz. When she walked into the casino and heard Jackson’s music playing, Coccoz said, the enormity of what had transpired hit her.

“They were playing ‘Beat It,’ and I almost started to cry,” she said as she waited to enter the showroom.

Uh, yeah. Was that the best thing to say?

In Oops! news:

Plane crashes on California freeway

A small plane crashed onto a heavily traveled freeway, clipping a vehicle and injuring two people aboard the plane, authorities said Saturday.

The 1952 Beech Bonanza V35 had engine failure late Friday due to a fuel problem on its way from Sacramento to Fullerton and crashed onto the Ventura Freeway, fire Capt. Ed Cowan said.

I have it on good authority that MacGyver hates flying light planes. Just so you know.

In “well, hmm, I could have told you that” news:

Most prefer to watch movies at home

Hollywood is in the midst of its longest box-office slump in 20 years, and 2005 is shaping up as the worst year for movie attendance in nearly a decade, if theater business continues at the same lackluster rate.

While 73 percent said they preferred staying home to watch movies on DVD, videotape or pay-per-view, 22 percent said they would rather see them at a movie theater, according to the poll conducted for The Associated Press and AOL News by Ipsos.

I saw the results of a study earlier today that discovered that larger brains lead to higher intelligence. Modern research is so impressive!

This part of the movie poll article stood out to me, though:

But the poll found that people who use DVDs, watch pay-per-view movies on cable, download movies from the Internet and play computer games actually go to movies in theaters more than people at the same income levels who don’t use those technologies. That suggests the technology may be complementing rather than competing with theatergoing.

Damn straight. I likes that kinda result! :D

Finally, in Star Wars news:

I guess the sextet will be released in 3D in a few years. (WTF?) Also from that article, concerning the TV series,

one of the shows would follow the adventures of a young Luke Skywalker, and reveal how certain characters ended up together.

I wonder if “certain characters” might include Han, Chewie, and/or Lando…

I like how the original article states that its source is “www.www.mainichi-msn.co.jp.com”. That’s, like, a ridiculous URL, that doesn’t even exist. I can only assume they mean www.mainichi-msn.co.jp. (I had no idea, by the way, that Mainichi and MSN had teamed up!) Anyway, I can’t find that article on the site, but that’s probably because 1) their search sucks; 2) my Japanese skills suck. Alas! I did find this article about the Revenge of the Sith premiere (did you know that Star Wars in Japanese is スター・ウォーズ?), and starwars.jp, which is…interesting. Is it official? :>

Oh! I found it! :D スター・ウォーズ：１００時間テレビドラマ化 Funny, that’s a lot shorter than the FlixnJoystix article.

I like how they refer to the new TV series as a “100 hour television drama”. Very precise!

The Cynical Traveller went to Tokyo Disneyland! Oh, the humanity.

Of course Disneyland isn’t just about rides;

unfotunately.

There’s also the chance to take in a choreographed parade, eat an overpriced microwave meal or buy a graven idol of an anthropomorhic mouse.

The picture captions are hi-larious.

I’ve maintained the same weight for over a month now, with no sign of ever losing weight again. Plus, I keep trying to eat healthy, and then pigging out on snacks like Hershey bars. It’s getting ridiculous. I don’t know why I’m in this self-destructive cycle and why I can’t seem to break out of the rut, but I’m tired of looking at my weight every day and seeing that I’m stuck.

I had no idea until Tracy Saylor (another Jessamine County High 1996 grad) emailed me and mentioned she saw him. I haven’t heard from Willie in aeons, so this video was pretty funny. He looks (and sounds) so different!

Here’s the page where I found that video. There’s a picture of Willie there, too, but I don’t know how long it’ll stay there so I’m putting it here:

Willie and I went to the Homecoming dance together our junior year. We’d been friends since middle (elementary?) school, too; he and I and Eddie used to hang out, and I was in a lot of classes with him. We were on the same bus route, when I took the bus to school.

Sure brings back memories.

Bleh, bleh, bleh.

Bleh.

Derik linked to this story in his supplement with the comment, “Two words: Who cares? This is supposed to be CNN.” ;D

I’m interested, of course, because after seeing how great Mari’s PT Cruiser is, I’ve been coveting one for myself. The small changes and various improvements listed in the article sound fine to me.

Now, if only I could get it in pale purple, blue, or pink. Something pretty and pearlescent, like those special Playstations Sean and I saw in Japan…

From Asahi.com:

Washington proposed adding two nations–including Japan–to the permanent membership club of the [United Nations] Security Council. But Japan wants to give priority to a resolution on Security Council expansion drawn up by the Group of Four nations–Japan, Germany, Brazil and India.

The United States supports Japan’s desire to become a permanent member, but it opposes the G-4 proposal because it would add six permanent seats to the council and could dilute U.S. influence in the world body.

With the United States making public its opposition to the G-4’s plan, it will be that much more difficult for the resolution to be adopted at the United Nations.

When asked about U.S. support for Japan’s bid, Koizumi said: “It’s good for Japan, but not for the other nations. We must think about the international community as a whole. I’d like to ask for more understanding from the U.S.”

I have to say, I’m glad Japan isn’t just turning its back on its partner nations so it can get that coveted Security Council seat. That loyalty is really impressive. It makes me wonder if/why the White House thought Japan would go along with it, and how the White House’s stance towards Japan might have changed if Japan had actually taken them up on the offer.

Japan has been asserting its independence from the US for some time now. To back away from an alliance with peer nations and cheerfully accept a handout from the US would undermine everything they’ve accomplished.

From Japan Today:

Japan’s parliament decided Friday to extend the current Diet session by 55 days until Aug 13 to enable the passage of bills to privatize Japan Post.

This is something Koizumi has been working towards for a long time. It’s nice for him that it’s going to happen before he leaves office next year.

Proponents of privatization here in the US argue that it will improve quality and reduce overhead to run the postal service like a regular business–that the postal service will be better able to compete for customers if it isn’t tied to the government and its bureaucracy. I tend to think that the idea makes sense, but you never really know how something will work out until you try it. It will be interesting to see, therefore, how privatization goes for Japan. Will the proposed benefits become reality? What sorts of problems will they encounter? How might we avoid the same problems?

Every now and then I like to check Technorati to see if anyone’s linking to me. Usually I’m disappointed.

Today, though, I discovered that I’m in Japundit‘s blogroll! O_O!!! That is so cool!

From there, I thought I’d just google for “pixelscribbles” and see what happened, and I came up with the following:

NetNewsWire Lite 2.0b37 Change Notes

NetNewsWire no longer refuses to parse Atom feeds with Shift_JIS encoding. (It used to be that Shift-JIS reliably made the XML parser crash, but it doesn’t appear to be the case any more.) For instance, the following feed now works: http://pixelscribbles.com/journal/rss/atom.xml

Wow, I didn’t know that Shift_JIS caused a problem in Atom with NetNewsWire. Though I guess it doesn’t anymore! And I’ve apparently been linked by them since April. Dude!

Also, I seem to be listed by blogdirectory.com and everyfeed.com…whatever those are. In addition, I come up in these weird results of searches on Jennifer Wilbanks ;P

That’s pretty much it for links to me, other than people in my blogroll and the occasional trackback from where I’ve linked to someone else. And really, that’s what I expect–it’s not like I’m writing anything gripping here.

And that is why I’m so psyched to be linked from Japundit!

To tell you the truth, I’ve been thinking about trying to be a contributor over there. I don’t know if I’m really qualified, as I haven’t lived in Japan, but I do spend a lot of time thinking about Japan, don’t I? And if they linked to me…maybe that means they think I say stuff that’s worth saying about Japan.

So…we’ll see.

Hate her, hate her, HATE. HER.

Global Voices Online has been abuzz lately with discussions of MSN Spaces’ Chinese blog service, and how it censors words like “freedom” in blog titles. Rebecca MacKinnon has been especially prolific on the subject, with the following posts:

China Update: more on blog registration and censorship 6/12

Microsoft has launched a Chinese-language version of it’s Spaces blog hosting service, and guess what? Users are banned from using the word “democracy” and other politically sensitive words to label their blogs – although it does appear possible to use those words within blog posts, for now. (As noted in my interview with Isaac Mao, people who set up blogs under this service don’t have to register with the authorities because MSN is already obliging the government by policing their content.) But then, MSN is already in the censorship game even in the U.S., as Boing Boing discovered soon after the service’s launch.

My response to Scoble [on her own blog] 6/14

I lived in China for nine years straight as a journalist, and if you add up other times I’ve lived there it comes to nearly 12. I don’t know what students and professors Scoble met with, and what context he met them in. But to state that Chinese students and professors have an “anti-free-speech stance” is the biggest pile of horseshit about China I’ve come across in quite some time. And believe me, there are a great many such piles out there these days.

In my experience, most Chinese, like all other human beings I’ve ever met, would very much like to have freedom of speech. This goes for students, professors, workers, farmers, retirees, religious practitioners, and even many government officials. Many said so to me in on-the-record interviews. Many more told me so privately, in trusted confidence over beers (or something stronger) among friends.

What they don’t want is to lose their jobs and educational opportunities by pushing too hard at the restrictions their government has placed on their ability to speak. They work within the bounds of the possible, and since people in China can say a lot more now than they were allowed to say 20 years ago, most take the long-term view.

How To Hack Chinese MSN Spaces to Use Banned Words 6/15

Thanks to Bennett Haselton of Peacefire.org for the following public service instructions for Chinese users wanting to circumvent the word filters on MSN Spaces China to put e.g. “democracy” in the title of their blogs.

[…]

WARNING! Even though you can use these instructions to insert banned words into the title of your Chinese blog, Internet access in China is still monitored and controlled by the government. If you use these instructions to post banned material, you should not publish your blog from an Internet terminal where your actions could be traced back to you personally, and you should not publish anything on your blog that could be used to identify you. You should also use a HotMail.com address that doesn’t identify you by your real name (create a new HotMail.com account if necessary).

Screenshots of Censorship 6/16

Some Chinese bloggers have said that they were able to set up Chinese language MSN Spaces blogs using the “forbidden” political words. To clarify the situation I tried to set up my own freedom loving Chinese blog. I went into the MSN Spaces Chinese interface at: http://spaces.msn.com/?mkt=zh-cn, and tried to set up a blog titled 我?言?自由人?和民主, which means “I love freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy.”

Chinese Bloggers on Censorship, MSN, Etc. 6/17

One thing many people may not realize is that Microsoft has a long history of p.r. problems in China, and that the “anti-Microsoft monopoly” sentiment is very strong both in parts of the Chinese government bureaucracy (who don’t want to be overly dependent on foreign software and thus prefer Linux-based systems for national security reasons) as well as amongst independent Chinese techies and bloggers who are concerned about the concentration of too much power in one foreign software company – which many believe is stifling the emergence of a homegrown software industry.

I have to say, her argument against Microsoft’s Scoble makes sense:

I agree with Scoble: no outsiders, including Microsoft, can force China to change. But nobody’s asking Microsoft to force China to do anything. The issue is whether Microsoft should be collaborating with the Chinese regime as it builds an increasingly sophisticated system of Internet censorship and control. (See this ONI report for lots of details on that system.) Declining to collaborate with this system is not “forcing the Chinese into a position they don’t believe in.” Declining to collaborate would be the only way to show that your stated belief in free speech is more than 空?: empty words. If you believe that Chinese people deserve the same respect as Americans, then please put your money where your mouth is.

This is an interesting situation to watch develop. In the meantime, won’t you join me (and others) in boycotting MSN Spaces? There’s no good reason to use the service, anyway.

[Please excuse the question marks in the Chinese characters in this post. When I switch to WordPress, hopefully I will be able to display all characters correctly. As it is now, if I change the charset to UTF-8, all my Japanese posts come out wonky, so I’m not going to mess with it until the shift.]

John Hewitt has some advice for me.

If you want to have a career as a freelance writer, you need to view it as a business.

Freelance writing involves making sales. Being a salesperson means risking rejection.

There will always be better writers than you, and there will always be writers who are worse than you but make more money. Concentrate on your own career.

There’s plenty more great stuff in the article. And after that one, Hewitt goes on to write another one, this time filled with handy business tips:

Always keep a calendar. It should include such things as a writing schedule, upcoming meetings, assignment deadlines, submission response dates (expected replies), upcoming payments, upcoming publication dates and tax deadlines.

Track all of your submissions and replies. You can use a program such as Microsoft Outlook or simply keep a notebook or planner. There are plenty of planning / scheduling books at any large bookstore. Look around until you find one that seems to suit you. Read a book about time management while you are there. Time management is crucial for professional writers.

Start a filing system. Keep copies of all of your manuscripts and publications. Keep research files on the topics you write about. Keep all of your receipts and invoices. Keep all of your tax records.

Sid posted today:

The Mainichi Shimbun has a special today about the lost articles of Pulitzer Prize-winner George Weller – the first Western journalist to see Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing 60 years ago. Weller snuck in despite a Gen. MacArthur ban, and wrote 25,000 words detailing what he saw. He sent them to Tokyo by hand, where the military refused to release or return them. Weller thought they were lost forever, but his son, Andrew, found carbon copies a year ago in his father’s Rome apartment.

An Editor & Publisher article quotes Weller’s son saying that Weller thought he was censored because MacArthur wanted all the credit for winning the war, while others suggest the U.S. didn’t want details of the horrific effects of radiation affecting world opinion. At the time, the standard line was that anyone not killed in the blast of the bombs was fine – there was no such thing as radiation sickness, which Weller named “disease X” in the pieces.

The Mainichi has four of the articles online. The second and fourth go into disturbing detail about what’s happening to the people who “survived” the blast.

It’s not an unheard of comparison (hell, George Lucas made it quite blatantly) but Neal Stephenson gets there in an odd way. It’s like the article starts out being about one thing, but by the end, it’s a political statement.

There could be some merit to the idea that the American dream is to be able to “veg out”, but Stephenson’s conclusion assumes that eventually no one will want to “geek out”. We’ve still got plenty of geeks…people who find vegging out boring. I, personally, prefer a mix of both.

Because of that, while I found the majority of the article somewhat interesting, the ending smacked to me of yet another doomsday-for-America prophecy.

You know, the kind of tired rhetoric that people who hate America can veg out to ;>