THE WAGES OF SIN
Who says crime doesn’t pay? Officials at the NPA estimate that about 70 percent of websites providing “illegal or harmful content” are also receiving advertising revenue.

A Saitama man was handed a suspended sentence for defrauding 15 people out of ¥11 million, which he said would be used for “developing and selling items to be used in a virtual city on the internet.”

Officials in Kamakura are combining three local beaches—including the popular Yuigahama—into a single entity and selling the naming rights for a cool million yen.

Meanwhile, authorities in Akita are looking for someone to “assume control” of a hot-spring hotel complex in the resort town of Yuzawa—for free.

stats

79 percent
Support rate for the resumption of a six-day week for public school students, according to a newspaper poll

26.3 percent
Increase in the number of overseas visitors to Japan in March compared to a year earlier, thanks largely to the stronger yen, according to the JNTO

¥5.4 trillion
Estimated cost to repair expressway bridges and tunnels nationwide over the next 100 years, according to industry groups

Welcome to the future: Control your computer with a wave of your hand
3 hours ago by Rachel Tackett
In recent months researchers at Japan’s largest IT service provider, Fujitsu, have collaborated with their Chinese research and development branch to engineer a new type of 3-D motion detection software that could revolutionize the way we use computers. It might not be long before the computer mouse is obsolete, as users will need only to flick their wrists and tap the air to navigate through links and menus.

Up until now, motion sensors of this kind only worked in two dimensions, up-down and left-right. 3-D motion detection was only possible with multiple cameras or special light emissions to measure depth. However, thanks to Fujitsu’s stellar engineering, computers can register the relative depth of an object using only a single lens camera.

Who You Gonna Call

Ghost Busters

All Japanese

Are Just A Number

God

Made Them Do It

Leading scholars launch group against revising Constitution’s Article 96

The Mainichi
A group of 36 professors of constitutional law and other prominent scholars have launched an organization advocating against the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s move to amend Article 96 of the Constitution.

The group, called “96-jo no kai” (Article 96 Association), has both supporters and opponents of constitutional amendments among its members. The group is specifically opposed to amending Article 96 to make it easier for the Diet to initiate constitutional revisions.

What may be the single most influential musical composition of all time, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s le Sacre du Printemps, premiered in Paris on May 29th, 1913.  The music, and its starkly iconoclastic ballet choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky so jarred many audience members, it produced an unprecedented demonstration, considered by many to have been “a riot.”

[T]here is general agreement among eyewitnesses and commentators that the disturbances in the audience began during the Introduction, and grew into a crescendo when the curtain rose on the stamping dancers in “Augurs of Spring”. Marie Rambert, who was working as an assistant to Nijinsky, recalled later that it was soon impossible to hear the music on the stage. In his autobiography, Stravinsky writes that the derisive laughter that greeted the first bars of the Introduction disgusted him, and that he left the auditorium to watch the rest of the performance from the stage wings. The demonstrations, he says, grew into “a terrific uproar” which, along with the on-stage noises, drowned out the voice of Nijinsky who was shouting the step numbers to the dancers. The journalist and photographer Carl Van Vechten recorded that the person behind him got carried away with excitement, and “began to beat rhythmically on top of my head”, though Van Vechten failed to notice this at first, his own emotion being so great.

{The premiere’s conductor, Pierre] Monteux believed that the trouble began when the two factions in the audience began attacking each other, but their mutual anger was soon diverted towards the orchestra: “Everything available was tossed in our direction, but we continued to play on”. Around forty of the worst offenders were ejected—possibly with the intervention of the police, although this is uncorroborated. Through all the disturbances the performance continued without interruption. Things grew noticeably quieter during Part II, and by some accounts Maria Piltz’s rendering of the final “Sacrificial Dance” was watched in reasonable silence. At the end there were several curtain calls for the dancers, for Monteux and the orchestra, and for Stravinsky and Nijinsky before the evening’s programme continued.

Although the ballet went on to become accepted by audiences as both dance and as a concert work, Nijinsky’s unique choreography disappeared after the 1913 Ballets Russes season, until it was reconstructed for the Joffrey Ballet in the 1980s, by a team led by Millicent Hodson.  There have been several other choreographic interpretations of Stravinsky’s music and scenario, and the publisher estimates the ballet has undergone 150 productions worldwide since its composition.

Le Sacre‘s influence on composers during nine decades of the 20th century, and into this one, has been substantial.  What Stravinsky did in the music, was to combine new harmonic ideas, bordering on atonality, with a rhythmic freedom which was unprecedented, all portrayed symphonically by a very large orchestra of 110 players, with a huge rhythm section.  In terms of composers’ approach to rhythmic units, there is BLS and ALS (Before Le Sacre and After Le Sacre).  American composers as diverse Aaron Copland and Frank Zappa described encountering the work’s jagged sonic and metric vistas as having changed their lives.

In a brief period of time, less than a decade, when the shock of new music was represented by Richard Strauss’ sensually depraved Salome (1905) and Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal Pierrot Luniere (1912), Le Sacre stood out.  Because it led so many composers and other musicians in so many searches for freedom of expression, in so many different ways, I regard it as the most influential composition, not just of the 20th century, but of all modern history.

Happy 100th Birthday, Le Sacre du Printemps.

Here is the definitive performance of this masterpiece in the original (reconstructed) choreography.  The orchestra and dancers of the Kirov Ballet are directed by Valery Gergiev:

As former NSC Chief(under GHWB), Brent Scowcroft, notes…

“If al-Assad left tomorrow, it would not be all peace and quiet”

…Americans think “instinctively” they ought help put an end to the civil war, Mr. Scowcroft said in a video interview on WSJ.com… But, he added, “I don’t see how we can help. If we actively participate, as many say, in Syria, then we’re going to own Syria. And we don’t know how to solve the Syrian problem.” Asked whether he is advocating arming rebels or setting up a no-fly zone, Mr. Scowcroft replied, “No, I’m not. This is a very difficult situation. If (Syrian President Bashar al-Assad) left tomorrow, it would not be all peace and quiet.”

Instead, he endorsed an effort by Secretary of State John Kerry to work with Moscow, an ally of and arms supplier to the Syrian government, to work out an end to the violence…

And, truly, most Syrians just want a cease-fire, period…

Syrian refugees in Jordan unmoved by peace bid

…“To be honest, we’re fed up with these conferences, there have been many … without results. We want a radical solution,” says Saleh, a laborer from Syria’s southern Deraa province.

The efforts by Washington and Moscow to organize a peace conference next month mean little to the 120,000 residents of the dusty camp, where daytime temperatures hover around 40 degrees Celsius.

“We either want to go back or to know what is going to happen to us, we’ve been waiting for so long,” Saleh adds…
Fatigue is etched on the faces of the residents, particularly when journalists ask about the possibility of a conference to discuss a political solution to the conflict which has left more than 94,000 dead since March 2011.

“Why another conference? To agree deals that ignore the blood that is shed by the children? We have no hope for anything,” says Adel, a former car dealer who lost everything when he left Deraa.

For most of the camp’s residents, peace remains nothing more than a dream, and the overriding sentiment is one of abandonment by the international community…

“If they had wanted to do something, they would have done it from the beginning,” says Aziz, another resident…

Now, seriously, Jabhat al-Nusra has no intentions for any sort of Political and/or Religious Resolution…

How has Jabhat al-Nusra become so powerful?

The reason is the weakening of the other groups. Jabhat al-Nusra gets the advantage because of our ideology. We are not just rebels; we are doing something we believe in. We are not just fighting against tyranny; Bashar Assad is only part of our fight. The other groups are only a reaction to the regime, whereas we are fighting for a vision.

What is that vision?

We are fighting to apply what Allah said to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. We are fighting so people don’t look to other people but only to Allah. We don’t believe in complete freedom: it is restricted by Allah’s laws. Allah created us and he knows what is best for us.

What future do you see for Syria—or do you even see a Syria in the future?

We want the future that Islam commands. Not a country with borders but an umma [worldwide Islamic community of believers] of all the Muslim people. All Muslims should be united.

Syria has long been known for its sectarian diversity. How do you view the other sects?

The other sects are protected by the Islamic state. Muhammad, peace be upon him, had a Jewish neighbour, for example, and he was always good to him. But the power and authority must be with the believers [Sunnis], not the unbelievers.

What about other Sunnis who are more moderate than you?

We will apply sharia law to them.

Many, maybe most, Syrians do not share your views. Do you care?

It would be great if the Syrians were with us but the kuffar are not important. Abraham and Sarah were facing all the infidels, for example, but they were doing the right thing. The number with us doesn’t matter…

If anyone still harbors any doubts about Jabhat Al Nusrah… Despite word of split over al Qaida, Nusra Front still key in Syria fighting…

So, just shut up already and pass us the damn ammo…

“I’m in shock, I’m embarrassed to go back to my men empty-handed…”

…Some field commanders expected a working plan to come out of the meeting, or tangible support in the form of money or weapons they could return to Syria with. The only support that was offered – 300,000 bullets, an undisclosed number of rocket-propelled grenades and tank shells – was earmarked for the raging battle in the rebel-held city of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, where government troops backed by fighters from Lebanon’s Shi’ite militia Hizballah were battling to wrest control of the strategically important city.

The participants in the meeting were also reportedly given $5,000 to cover their expenses, much to the chagrin of several of them who said while they appreciated the Saudis covering their costs they had more urgent uses for the donated funds, including medical care for their wounded — and weapons.“I’m in shock, I’m embarrassed to go back to my men empty-handed,” said one. “I need ammunition. It’s always promises, promises, but this time I was hoping for something more from the Saudis. Sometimes the Qataris offer you support immediately“…

Now, to be sure the Neo/Ziocons are screeching for direct action… Gen. Keane: Take Out Assad’s Airfields… And, from AEI’s public blog, Paul Wolfowitz, the least credible voice on the planet, had to open his foul trap… Obama’s Syria fantasy…!

Interestingly, tho… Senior officials’ chatter on Syria proves that Israel is running scared…

Within the space of 48 hours, much of Israel’s military and political leadership spoke about the Syrian civil war – but there’s still no coherent government policy…

Really…?

Honestly, while everybody is fretting about the potential spillover, across all of Syria’s borders, it’s actually happened… US signals alarm over Syrian conflict destabilizing Lebanon…

…The United States warned Friday that Lebanon’s stability was at risk from the Syrian conflict that has spawned clashes in Lebanon, and condemned the Lebanese militia Hezbollah for sending fighters into Syria, dpa reported.

The mounting deaths in clashes in Lebanon’s port city of Tripoli were symptoms of the broader threat to the country from the Syria conflict, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said.

He noted the death toll in the Tripoli clashes had risen to at least 23 in fighting between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The deaths “constitute a stark reminder that the conflict in Syria poses an increasingly dangerous threat to Lebanon’s stability and security,” Ventrell said.

The clashes, which broke out Sunday, saw the use of mortar shells. Schools and most businesses were closed all week.

“Hezbollah leaders’ decision to escalate the group’s role in the fighting in Syria violates and undermines Lebanon’s dissociation policy and risks dragging Lebanon into a foreign conflict, to the detriment of the interests of the Lebanese people,” Ventrell said…

On the Northern borders of Syria… Turkey: Tension Between Government and Opposition Heats Up over Syria Policy…

…Erdogan’s accusations against the CHP may be just another round in the slugfest between the AKP and the CHP, but they also tell us the election season in Turkey has officially begun. The next two years will see local, national and presidential elections in Turkey and the parties are already jockeying for position, with Syria clearly emerging as a major wedge issue. In the wake of the Reyhanli bombings, which left many Turks wondering if Ankara’s Syria policy is dangerously drawing Turkey into the Syria quagmire, the Syrian issue has become a domestic political liability for the AKP. That said, The CHP, as its March visit with Assad and Kilicdaroglu’s off-base comparison of Erdogan and Assad shows, has yet to figure out what it means to have a coherent policy regarding Syria or how to use the AKP’s own failures regarding Syria to its advantage.

There have been recent warnings that the conflict in Syria could soon spill over into Turkey. As the fight between Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu show, in the political sphere, it already has…

Hello peeps…! It’s already a regional Clusterfuck conflagration…!

*gah*

Today at 5pm, ET

Who Owns The Future?

Chat with Jaron Lanier about his new book. Hosted by John Nichols.

The Dazzling New Masterwork from the Prophet of Silicon Valley

Jaron Lanier is the bestselling author of You Are Not a Gadget, the father of virtual reality, and one of the most influential thinkers of our time. For decades, Lanier has drawn on his expertise and experience as a computer scientist, musician, and digital media pioneer to predict the revolutionary ways in which technology is transforming our culture.

Who Owns the Future? is a visionary reckoning with the effects network technologies have had on our economy. Lanier asserts that the rise of digital networks led our economy into recession and decimated the middle class. Now, as technology flattens more and more industries—from media to medicine to manufacturing—we are facing even greater challenges to employment and personal wealth.

But there is an alternative to allowing technology to own our future. In this ambitious and deeply humane book, Lanier charts the path toward a new information economy that will stabilize the middle class and allow it to grow. It is time for ordinary people to be rewarded for what they do and share on the web.

Insightful, original, and provocative, Who Owns the Future? is necessary reading for everyone who lives a part of their lives online.

Jaron Lanier is a scientist and musician best known for his work in Virtual Reality research, a term he coined and popularized. He lives in Berkeley, California. (Simon and Schuster)

Towel Day

Today is Towel Day. That little known fact may show more than any other, that Douglas Adams was an influential author. An author does not need to be the second coming of Will Shakespeare to be influential. Adams gained his influence through his humor.

I spent most of one year specifying that I was the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” then got a bit perturbed when people did not immediately recognize and understand that I was 42. Geek humor with a side of absurdity.

Both “Towel Day” and “42″ are side notes from Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ,

… which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a “trilogy” of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams’s contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy’s Hall of Fame.[1]

I stumbled on the Hitchhiker’s Guide television show first but didn’t get far. Then I found the book and the entire increasingly misnamed Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy offered some fun and brain candy.

The original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Life, the Universe, and Everything

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Mostly Harmless

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (movie)

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (television)

So grab your towel today – but DON’T PANIC! (even if you do get stuck having to listen to Vogon poetry)

And because I can:

Photo from Giorgi Logua licensed under Creative Commons

Written by Sarah Posner for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

A subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Thursday on a bill that would impose an unconstitutional nationwide ban on abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization. Four witnesses sat at the table during that hearing, but there was really only one person who mattered for the Republican lawmakers—whose aim, ultimately, is to outlaw all abortions. That person was Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the Pennsylvania physician now serving a life sentence for murder and manslaughter.

US Capitol Building

According to Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, under whose jurisdiction the hearing was called, Gosnell is “not an anomaly in this gruesome Fortune 500 enterprise of killing unborn children.” The rogue doctor, who was roundly denounced by pro-choice activists as soon as the horrific conditions of his clinic came to light, is, for Franks, “the true face of abortion on demand in America.”

Using Gosnell as justification, Franks has retooled his proposed “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act”—previously introduced as a measure specific to Washington, D.C.—to apply to all 50 states. A D.C. 20-week ban has also been introduced in the Senate, although it is highly unlikely to come up for a vote.

If all abortion providers were like Gosnell, of course, they could be prosecuted under existing criminal laws, as Gosnell was. But they’re not—and that’s why House Republicans want to create a way to prosecute them. The Pain-Capable Act would subject doctors who perform abortions after 20 weeks to criminal prosecution, jail time, and monetary penalties. It would provide a cause of action for a woman who has an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy—or her husband, boyfriend, or one-night stand, as well as her family—to sue the doctor, including for punitive damages.

By pegging the gestational time-limit to disproven claims about fetal pain (which medical experts agree is not possible before the third trimester), the bill would lay the basis for limiting abortions even earlier in pregnancy, based on even more questionable science, as demonstrated at Franks’ hearing.

Maureen Condic, a University of Utah scientist who also opposes embryonic stem-cell research, testified that it is “uncontested that a fetus experiences pain as early as eight weeks.” By continually arguing that fetal pain is experienced far earlier than the established medical evidence, Condic did provide proof of something else: that Republicans’ ultimate goal is to outlaw abortion far earlier than 20 weeks.

The bill proposed by Franks contains no exceptions for the health of a woman who needs an abortion after 20 weeks, raising the specter of a woman (or the parents of a minor) suing a doctor who, in an emergency, saved her from horrific health consequences. It also provides no exceptions for rape or incest. The woman, the man by whom she is pregnant, or the woman’s family members could even seek a court order barring the doctor from performing abortions in the future.

Another of the Republicans’ three witnesses, anti-choice activist Jill Stanek, claimed that the Gosnell case is “evidence that the lines between illegal infanticide and legal feticide, both via abortion, have become blurred.”

By equating Gosnell’s criminal activity with all abortion, Franks and his supporters attempt to elide the fact that their bill is patently unconstitutional, as Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), noted. Just this week the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a similar law out of Franks’ home state of Arizona.

Franks’ obvious aim is to test that conclusion, by forcing yet another legal challenge to Roe v. Wade. But he also seeks to enhance his position—at least in the court of public opinion—by attempting to persuade the public that if Gosnell, who performed illegal abortions and killed infants born alive, was found guilty of murder, all providers of abortion services must be similarly guilty.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the subcommittee’s ranking member, strongly voiced his opposition to Franks’ claims. “[W]hat Dr. Gosnell did had nothing to do with abortion; it was murder,” Nadler said.

Calling the hearings a “farce,” Nadler noted that the Democrats, as the minority in the House, were not permitted by Franks to call more than one witness, while the three witnesses called by Republicans presented what Nadler called “false and misleading” medical evidence.

The one witness Democrats were permitted was Christy Zink, who recounted the heart-rending story of how she and her husband were informed during her 21st week of pregnancy that the fetus she was carrying had a lethal abnormality, agenesis of the corpus callosum. Zink said that if brought to term, her baby would have been born missing a part of its brain.

Maoi from Easter Island

Small Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean contains figures grouped through the whole land that have been a source of fascination to visitors for many ages.  Solemn and monumental, they hover over the land with their mystery and majesty intact.

As the island became overpopulated and resources diminished, warriors known as matatoa gained more power and the Ancestor Cult ended, making way for the Bird Man Cult. Beverly Haun wrote, “The concept of mana (power) invested in hereditary leaders was recast into the person of the birdman, apparently beginning circa 1540, and coinciding with the final vestiges of the moai period.”^[32] This cult maintained that, although the ancestors still provided for their descendants, the medium through which the living could contact the dead was no longer statues, but human beings chosen through a competition. The god responsible for creating humans, Makemake, played an important role in this process. Katherine Routledge, who systematically collected the island’s traditions in her 1919 expedition,^[33] showed that the competitions for Bird Man (Rapanui: tangata manu) started around 1760, after the arrival of the first Europeans, and ended in 1878, with the construction of the first church by Roman Catholic missionaries who formally arrived in 1864. Petroglyphs representing Bird Men on Easter Island are exactly the same as some in Hawaii, indicating that this concept was probably brought by the original settlers; only the competition itself was unique to Easter Island.

European accounts from 1722 and 1770 mention standing statues, but Cook’s 1774 expedition noted that several moai were lying face down, having been toppled in war.

(snip)

The large stone statues, or moai, for which Easter Island is world-famous, were carved from 1100–1680 CE (rectified radio-carbon dates).^[14] A total of 887 monolithic stone statues have been inventoried on the island and in museum collections so far.^[61] Although often identified as “Easter Island heads”, the statues have torsos, most of them ending at the top of the thighs, although a small number of them are complete, with the figures kneeling on bent knees with their hands over their stomachs.^[62][63] Some upright moai have become buried up to their necks by shifting soils.

Almost all (95%) moai were carved out of distinctive, compressed, easily worked solidified volcanic ash or tuff found at a single site inside the extinct volcano Rano Raraku. The native islanders who carved them used only stone hand chisels, mainly basalt toki, which lie in place all over the quarry. The stone chisels were sharpened by chipping off a new edge when dulled. The volcanic stone was first wetted to soften it before sculpting began, then again periodically during the process. While many teams worked on different statues at the same time, a single moai took a team of five or six men approximately one year to complete. Each statue represented the deceased head of a lineage.

Only a quarter of the statues were installed, while nearly half remained in the quarry at Rano Raraku and the rest sat elsewhere, probably on their way to final locations. The largest moai ever raised on a platform is known as “Paro”. It weighs 82 tons and is 9.8 m (32.15 ft) long.^[64] Several other statues of similar weight were transported to several ahu on the North and South coasts. It is not yet known how they transported the statues. Possibilities include employing amiro manga erua, a Y-shaped sledge with cross pieces, pulled with ropes made from the tough bark of the hau-hautree,^[65] and tied around the statue’s neck. Anywhere from 180 to 250 men were required for pulling, depending on the size of the moai. Some 50 of the statues were re-erected in modern times. One of the first was on Ahu Ature Huke inAnakena beach in 1958. It was raised using traditional methods during a Heyerdahl expedition.

In 2011, a large moai statue was excavated from the ground, suggesting that the statues are much older and larger than previously thought.^[66]

These powerful figures represent ceremonial ancestors that protected their people, research has shown.

(Picture below courtesy of ndecam at flickr.com.)

Line of carved figures, Easter Island