Recently, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed resolution 1973 that authorized the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya (Full text from the Guardian “>here). As of this weekend, planes from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France have targeted Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi’s ground forces near the coastal city Benghazi, currently one of the remaining rebel strongholds. US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen told CNN on 20 March, “I would say the no-fly zone is effectively in place” and added that the current strategy is to cut off logistical support for Qaddafi’s forces.

However, reaction has been mixed, and the overall end goal of the operations remains unclear. Not surprisingly, US proponents of the use of force as a foreign policy strategy (such as Senator John McCain), complain that the passing of resolution 1973 is too little too late and that it would have been more useful back when the rebels controlled a larger part of the country. Likewise, Republican senator Lindsey Graham commented, “I don’t know what finally got the president to act, but I’m very worried that we’re taking the back seat rather than a leadership role.”

At the same time, war critics have spoken out against any military involvement in Libya. long-time critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Michael Moore expressed disappointment over the decision and poked fun at Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. And the New York Times pointed to the realities of the United States’ current overseas commitments: “The airstrikes against the Libyan government crystallized the complexities and risks of addressing the multifaceted uprisings in the Arab world and could leave the administration stretched thin as its heads toward a budget showdown with Republicans in Congress and a decision by summer about how quickly to reduce the American military presence in Afghanistan.”

Without dwelling on the retrospective (whether or not we should have authorized military force against Qaddafi in the first place), we need to solidify our objectives going forward and determine what end results would qualify as “success.” In a separate article, the New York Times lays out the problem as: “Is it merely to protect the Libyan population from the government, or is it intended to fulfill President Obama’s objective declared two weeks ago that Colonel Qaddafi ‘must leave’?” If Qaddafi cannot be dislodged with airpower alone, will the allied powers be willing to commit ground forces?

The bombing campaign against Qaddafi, appears to be drawing criticism from regional actors such as the Arab League, and I can’t help but wonder if we’re now sliding that slippery slope toward using force against other unsatisfactory leaders in the region.

A poll by the University of Washington grouped respondents’ answers to a series of questions based on their stated affinity to the Tea Party — and came to some disturbing conclusions. (Keeping in mind that the sample size in this poll was too small to be representative of the Tea Party movement nationwide) What disturbed me the most was that a full 73% of people who self-identify as “true believers of the tea party” (335) said they disagree with “Barack Obama’s policy of engaging with Muslim countries.” How can the United States be expected to exist in the modern world if it doesn’t attempt to repair relations with the Middle East (and other countries with significant Muslim populations)?!

American isolationism sprung from a reluctance to become entangled in European alliances and wars and dates back to the colonial period where many colonists [yes, immigrants] viewed the US as a sanctuary from religious persecution and poverty. However, the last strong bout of US isolationism came in the wake of WWI — so much so that the US refused to endorse the Treaty of Versailles or the League of Nations. Isolationist policy kept the US out of WWII until it was brought to us in the form of Pearl Harbor.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that immigration makes a country stronger (just look at the problems that Japan is currently facing with its aging population due to low birth rates and strict immigration policy) and isolationism makes more enemies than friends — The most isolationist countries today such as North Korea and Burma aren’t wining very many points on the popularity charts.

I recently received an email that owners of the thejapanshop.com published their first Kindle ebook, a beginners’ level Japanese language text called “Hiragana, the Basics of Japanese.” They’ve asked mailing list subscribers to download the book (available for free here at least for the moment) and review it on Amazon’s website. I haven’t loaded the PDF on a Kindle to see how the formatting looks, but each page appears small enough (horizontally and vertically) to appear well on the Kindle’s screen.

As far as hiragana books go, this one looks straightforward enough. However, I wonder at the viability of this type of book for an e-reader interface. Isn’t the point of a workbook to actually take your pencil and practice drawing the characters in real life? This text includes spaces to write characters, fill-in-the-blank exercises, and crossword puzzles… but Kindle isn’t a good platform for this type of activity. Perhaps an iPad or iPhone app would make more sense…

Still, if you have a printer and want to learn the basics of Japan’s hiragana writing system, grab the free download while it lasts and work your way through the book the old fashioned way.

When looking at the world, analysts tend to focus on factors that can be changed — Worldviews, political institutions, counter-narcotics, pollution, military spending, education, etc. Even statistics such as the availability of natural resources can often be offset by importing the needed goods. However, it’s population patterns that leave an indelible mark on a country’s future. Once a generation has been born, only mass calamity (such as war or disease) can change the shape of a nation’s population pyramid.

There are many visible way in which demographics play themselves out in society, but most stem from the balance of workers vs. non-workers (either the young or the elderly). Generally, a country with more than 30% of its population under the age of 14 and less than 6% over the age of 75 is considered a “young population,” and is a situation most often found in developing agricultural societies without adequate health services (i.e. lower life expectancies). See Pakistan, for example.

The opposite problem is that of an aging population, a phenomenon observed across much of the West but also acutely apparent in Japan. The odd-man-out in terms of typical population shifts (from the youth-heavy pyramid of developing counties to graying tendencies of more developed ones), is China.

A recent Economist article commented:

China is known for its plentiful, pliable workers. But these incidents have cast doubt on that caricature… China’s labour supply is still growing. Its working-age population will increase from almost 977m in 2010 to about 993m in 2015, according to projections issued in December by the US census bureau (see left-hand chart). But the number of youngsters (15-24-year-olds) entering the labour force will fall by almost 30% over the next ten years… The ageing of China’s labour force matters, because older workers are less willing to move to the coastal factories that depend on migrant labour.”

Not that imbalances in China’s demographics are anything new. The coming reversal of the country’s youth-heavy workforce, the coming of age of a male-heavy generation (due to a male-biased culture, the one child policy, and the arrival of ultrasound in the countryside), and other patterns have been well-documented. But the effects of these are somewhat more opaque than that of a shrinking labor-force.

Will a decline in available labor enable Chinese workers to demand higher pay, better working conditions, or more benefits? Will it force Chinese companies to raise the prices of their finished goods, and will the brands selling these products then pass the cost onto consumers? Could labor strikes such as the recent one at a Chinese parts supplier give rise to a broader workers’ movement? Who knows for sure… As much as behavioral economists would like to be able to predict how people will respond to certain economic conditions, history has shown that the reactions of Chinese populations is particularly hard to predict…

In a typical summer filled with high-cost blockbuster productions, the documentary “Sweetgrass” was a welcome break from the normalcy of film. Described by the Washington Post as “part documentary, part western and part anthropological study,” it is the un-narrated story of Montana sheepherders who take their herd up the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains for summer grazing — the last Montana ranchers took their sheep through the Absaroka-Beartooth Pass on a federal grazing permit in 2005, signifying the waning of a traditional way of life. After eight years of filming and development (begun in 2001), it premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2009.

Although some critics complained of the long scenes of the Montana landscape (The New Yorker commented that the directors “hold the camera on a ruminating beast, or a noisy shearing, dare you to get bored, wait for you to grow hypnotized, and then, just as you enter a sort of trance, abruptly cut”), media were generally positive on the film’s “classic observational documentary style” and “breathtaking panoramas.”

At the end of the showing, I couldn’t help comparing it to the 2005 (non-documentary) Ang Lee film “Brokeback Mountain,” which focused more on the relationship between the main characters Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist than the fictional Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming. Clearly, the stars of Brokeback are its characters and their lives, while those of Sweetgrass are the sheep and the Montana landscape — two completely different genres of film and two unique takes on the dying sheepherding lifestyle out West. (One thing to note is that Brokeback is set from 1964-1983, while Sweetgrass was filmed in the 21st century — still, the process of summering sheep up in the mountains looks remarkably unchanged).

The concept of car-sharing is no newcomer to the DC region — Massachusetts-based Zipcar opened its DC office in 2001, and Seattle-based Flexcar was also in the area (before its merger with Zipcar). However, bicycle-sharing for commuters (as opposed to tourists) hasn’t been as quick to catch on. SmartBike DC is a self-service public bike rental program operated by Clear Channel Outdoor and the DC’s Department of Transportation. It consists of 100 bikes and 10 rental stations in downtown DC — Dupont Circle, Farragut Square, Foggy Bottom, Gallery Place, Logan Circle, Judiciary Square, McPherson Square, Metro Center, Reeves Center, and Shaw.

The announced expansion, according to the Washington Post, will create the largest regional network in the United States — Arlington will add 15 bike stations while DC will add 90, bringing the total number of available bikes to a whooping 1,100. James R. Sebastian, a city transportation planner in DC says that 1,500 current members take about 100 trips a day on the present system, and Chris Hamilton, Arlington’s commuter services chief, praised the expansion, saying: “We join the cities where people enjoy the urban core without a car… and that is the future. That is where we are going.”

The expanded network will be called “Public Bike System” (or Bixi) and will utilize solar power and wireless technology — the system has been running in Montreal since 2009 and will also be coming to Minneapolis, Boston and London. Unlike Zipcar, the pay scale will focus more on annual fees rather than fees for individual rides: Annual membership will be $80, monthly membership $30, or daily $5. All of these memberships allow for an unlimited number of rentals — After the first 30 minutes of free use, members will be charged a usage fee for each additional increment of 30 minutes.

But although it looks like DC will be getting more bikes this Fall, the reality still remains that the city lacks a good network of bike lanes (compared to some other urban centers), and in the Central Business District, it’s illegal to cycle on DC sidewalks.

• Click here for a PDF map of DC bike routes.
• Click here for more resources on where to bike in the DC area
• Click here for some common commuter routes

See also:

• Borderstan: DC, Arlington Launch Regional Bike Sharing Program

ASEAN and the Obama Administration: Views from the Region
SPFUSA Asian Voices Seminar Series

Monday, March 30th, 2009
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (lunch will be served)

The Cosmos Club
Powell Room
2121 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.
(business attire required)

Speakers

Bambang Harymurti, Corporate Editor-in-Chief, Tempo (Indonesia)

Mr. Bambang Harymurti is Corporate Editor-in-Chief of the news magazine Tempo Weekly and the newspaper Tempo Daily. He is also CEO of PT Tempo Inti Media and member of the Press Council in Indonesia. He has also worked as a Deputy Chief Editor of Tempo Weekly, Executive Editor of Media Indonesia Daily, and Editor of the Sunday Edition of Media Indonesia. He graduated from Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia, majoring Electrical Engineering (1984) and from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (1991). In addition to receiving the Knight International Press Fellowship Award, he is a winner of the Mason Program’s Vernon Award at Harvard and the Excellence in Journalism Award given by the daily Indonesian Observer. His publications include, “Indonesia, Challenges of Change” in Journal of Democracy.

Kavi Chongkittavorn, Executive Editor, The Nation (Thailand)

Mr. Kavi Chongkittavorn is Assistant Group Editor of Nation Multimedia Group, responsible for The Nation, Krungthep Turakit, and Kom Chat Luek, Nation TV Channel. He has been a journalist for more than two decades, covering Thailand and regional affairs. He was bureau chief in Phnom Penh (1986-88) and Hanoi (1989-91). From 1993-94, he served as a special assistant to the ASEAN Secretary General. In 1993, he was a Reuters Fellow at Oxford University and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2001. He was named the Human Rights Journalist of 1998 to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of UNDHR by Amnesty International, Thailand. From 1999-2003, he was the president of the Thai Journalists Association. He has also chaired the Bangkok-based regional free media advocacy group, Southeast Asian Press Alliance.

Yuli Ismartono, Executive Editor, Tempo

Ms. Yuli Ismartono is Executive Editor of the English edition of Tempo, Indonesia’s largest circulating weekly news magazine, and concurrently the Managing Editor of AsiaViews, a regional online publication, a collaboration between Tempo and four other Southeast Asian news publications funded by the Tokyo-based Sasakawa Peace Foundation. She is also a senior advisor at APCO Jakarta, a media relations consulting agency. Ms. Ismartono has been in media and communications since 1970, following her undergraduate studies at the University of India where she studied political science and where she met and befriended Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She did her graduate studies at the Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse University. As Tempo’s Bangkok-based Asia bureau chief from 1983 to 1993, Ms Ismartono reported on issues and events ranging from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam to the Sri Lankan civil war and the first Gulf War. She returned to Jakarta in 1993, only to have Suharto close down Tempo in June 1994. Ms. Ismartono rejoined Tempo when it re-launched in 2002, after a stint in public affairs and corporate communications.

Moderator

David Steinberg, Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies, Georgetown University

Professor David Steinberg is Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies, Georgetown University. He was previously a Representative of the Asia Foundation in Korea; Distinguished Professor of Korea Studies, Georgetown University; and President of the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs. Earlier, as a member of the Senior Foreign Service, U.S. Agency for International Development, Department of State, he was Director for Technical Assistance in Asia and the Middle East, and Director for Philippines, Thailand, and Burma Affairs. He spent three years in Thailand with the USAID Regional Development Office. Professor Steinberg was educated at Dartmouth College, Lingnan University (Canton, China), Harvard University, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of thirteen books and monographs, including: Turmoil in Burma: Contested Legitimacies in Myanmar; Burma: The State of Myanmar; Stone Mirror: Reflections on Contemporary Korea; and The Republic of Korea: Economic Transformation and Social Change. He has authored numerous articles, book chapters, and op-eds.

Summary

To state the obvious, Barack Obama is the first President of the United States with deep ties to Southeast Asia. But what might that mean for U.S. relations with ASEAN and its member states? This panel will discuss three general topics: the potential for American cooperation with Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority state, and how that can serve to address America’s problems in the Islamic world; how the U.S. and ASEAN can address issues in the region relating to Burma, China, and India; and the changed perceptions and expectations of the U.S. under the Obama administration.

Invitation (PDF Format)

I don’t know why system developers tend to take a good (or at least passable / workable) system and make it completely unusable. It seems as though every time they’re tasked to create a new build, they sit down with a list of features and try to incorporate them into the new system without addressing the critical questions of — how do users generally access or use the information on the website, and how will the systems changes affect the overall usability of the interface?

Look, for example, at the new Georgetown University registration page. There are in general two main ways to use a schedule of classes: (1) search for a particular class (by name, subject, teacher, credits, class time, etc), or (2) browse though the list of classes to find the one(s) you’re looking for. Obviously the designers of the new system favored the former and decided give people who prefer the latter, myself included, the short end of the bargain. In the previous system, I liked being able to click on a department (JAPN, for example) from the list of departments on the schedule front page and view a list of all the classes in that department. Now, in order to get the same list you have to choose a department name from a select box (that only displays three course names at a time), then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen and click on “class search.” When the list comes up there’s no way to bookmark the results page (variables not contained in the URL).

On the other hand, I definitely approve of the ability to filter classes by instructor or class time — so the new build isn’t all negative. I just wish they’d left the ability to browse through classes as well.

New York Times: Abstract City Blog
By Christoph Niemann

“During the cold and dark Berlin winter days, I spend a lot of time with my boys in their room. And as I look at the toys scattered on the floor, my mind inevitably wanders back to New York….”

(Niemann creates a series of highly-imaginative NYC-related items using legos. Follow the link to view the images)

Being an NPR addict, I’ve had an earful and then some of debate on the economic stimulus package — ask a question about money, and suddenly it seems like everyone’s an expert. I’ll make no such claims here, but I’ll still add my own two cents to the ongoing debate:

(1) Some Republicans in the House have claimed that programs such as Pell grants shouldn’t be part of the stimulus package because it’s unclear how such spending would immediately help our economy. My response to this argument is that as families fall on hard times, it’ll become more and more difficult for students to pay for tuition (or even get side jobs while they study). Without federal support, there’s a good chance that some of these students will end up dropping out of school and joining the ranks of the unemployed (7.2% in Dec 2008).

• Young people receiving unemployment compensation instead of attending college would further strain state governments in a time when some state, such as California, are in deep financial trouble.
• Regardless of whether continuing/increasing federal scholarships for higher education will have an immediate, direct effect on the US economy, it’s in the best interest of our nation for students to continue their schooling instead of being forced into the lousy job market.

(2) Another sore spot for some legislators in the House package is money to re-seed the National Mall. Perhaps I’m biased (being a former DC resident), but I’ve seen the Mall post-inauguration, and it’s essentially a frozen dust bowl — bereft of grass and looking pretty bad.

• On the one hand I’ll make the argument that redoing the lawn will be done with US labor using US supplies and that it’s essentially shovel-ready once the ground thaws in the spring.
• On the other hand I’ll also argue that regardless of whether re-doing grass or building a new road is more useful in the long run (no, that’s not a trick question; in most cases the answer here’s the road), the National Mall is part of our public face to the rest of the world.

In the same vein as how the NYCPD’s crack down on petty crime such as window-breaking and graffiti arguably helped decrease violent crime too, if our National Mall looks like a dump when visitors from overseas come to DC, isn’t it the same as just putting up a huge screen and broadcasting our economic weakness to the world? Of course, we shouldn’t seek to disguise the problems in our credit markets or mis-portray the value of of currency — global markets are build on trust, and deliberate lying won’t get us anywhere. But just as a taxi driver with peeling paint and no hubcaps might find it more difficult to pick up passengers, it’s my personal opinion that the US would find it harder to maintain its image as a global superpower if it can’t even keep up its national lawn.

NPR listeners submitted what they thought were the best songs of the year, and NPR compiled the results here: NPR Listeners Pick The Year’s Best Music. You can also see the complete poll results.

Maybe I’m just out of touch with pop culture, but I actually hadn’t heard of a fair number of the songs on this list. Or maybe it’s just that I’m one of those annoying people who contentedly listen to the same ten tracks day in and day out. I have a car mix I’ve been cycling through for the past two months or so — just add or subtract a song every now and and…

Oh, and if you need a little holiday fun, here’s a great rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas from the a capella group Straight No Chaser. Nice.

I thought I’d written about Japan’s crazy vending machine costume before, but perhaps it was back in the archives of my blog that disappeared in the server debacle awhile back. Anyhow, I’m posting (or reposting?) it on request.

There are a couple of cultural details you have to be familiar with in order for this story to make any sense — (1) Japan is a very safe country, but people tend to be paranoid. (2) Even deep in the Japanese countryside there are vending machines everywhere in Japan. You’ll see rows of them lined up on the street, near train station, or even apparently in the middle of nowhere. (3) Especially in certain areas of Tokyo, you can see people wearing some of the craziest things… and somehow it’ll see perfectly normal.

Essentially, the vending machine costume is designed to be something a woman could carry in her purse and hide in if she felt threatened (most likely in an urban environment). It is supposed to be realistic enough to fool an attacker and easy enough to unfold that a woman could do so in seconds.

This video shows what appears to be an earlier prototype of the vending machine costume — it’s just two-dimensional but has a pattern similar to that on the three-dimensional costume. It also shows the manhole cover purse (I think the best part is when the man actually trips over the edge of the purse):

Apparently the rationale behind the costume is that people in countries such as the US might fight back against an attacker, but women in Japan are more timid and don’t want to make a scene, so it’s “easier for them to hide.”

Here’s a longer story about the vending machine disguise (via Reuters). You can see a glimpse of the 3D costume at the end. It seems to be for two people. The clip plays after the commercial.

I’m not sure what he is smiling about in the background as they’re taking the journalist away… In many parts of the Middle East, shoe-throwing is one of the harshest gestures one can make. Note that shoe-throwing also made news in 2003 when Iraqis threw their footwear at the toppled statue of Saddam Hussein.

See also:

• BBC: Bush shoe-ing worst Arab insult
• Reuters: Iraqi shoe-throwing reporter becomes the talk of Iraq
• IHT: Shoe insult against Bush resounds in Arab world

The Vocaloid program sounds best in Japanese (what else would you expect from a singing synthesizer from Yamaha?), but it’s actually pretty entertaining to hear it sing in English. It definitely sings English with a classically Japanese accent. The clip above is from the song “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”