The White Peril 白禍

More cracks showing in Japan's post-bubble educational system. (For once, the English article isn't much thinner than the original Japanese.)

The survey, conducted in November and December last year, covered professors, assistant professors and lecturers at universities and junior colleges belonging to the association.

About 28,000 full-time teachers, or 36 percent of those at all of the nation's private universities and junior colleges, responded.

Inadequate academic ability was cited as a problem by 60.1 percent of teachers at four-year course universities and 66 percent of those at junior colleges.

They were 24.8 and 22.1 percentage points, respectively, higher than the responses in the same survey in fiscal 1998.

The sense of crisis was especially deep among teachers of science and technology.

...

Many university lecturers said some of their students could not solve linear simultaneous equations that are taught in middle school, and some medical students did not take biology as a subject in high school.

Japan may be heading where the US is now: substandard high school instruction will have to be redressed at the level of community college equivalents such as the junior colleges and trade schools. Of course, it's important to note that only 36% of instructors responded; there's a SLOPs issue here. Also, only instructors at private colleges were included. That leaves out the public colleges, which include the super-exclusive Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, along with many of the other top institutions.

At the same time, most Japanese students don't get to go to 東大, so the experiences of instructors at modest tech colleges who are desperate to help their students catch up to high-school level proficiency may be more representative than the 36% figure would make it seem.

BTW, there's been quite a bit of interesting discussion of math teaching going on. Joanne Jacobs, as always, points to several good links, especially this post by Moebius Stripper about what skill and knowledge set should be required for high school graduation.

Joanne also posted about a boneheaded theory a few weeks back that math learning is extra-hard because of the way words are used. Though I was a literature major and expended quite a bit of energy memorizing the names of various seasonal plants and birds in Japanese, I have to say that math vocabulary is one of the more fun aspects of the language to learn. Many terms you can basically translate directly. Some of the more fun ones you can't, but they make sense once you get used to them: 負の数 (fu no suu: "owed number" --> "negative number"), 数珠順列 (juzu junretsu: "Buddhist rosary" + "order" + "line-up" --> "key ring permutation"), 放物線 (houbutsusen: "release/throw" + "object" + "line" --> "parabola"). Okay, fine, I only think they're fun because I'm a big dork. They still aren't that hard if you're also learning Japanese as an everyday language.

Added on 31 July: People sometimes ask me about the fabled Japanese math education system, whereby, it is assumed, a mystical blend of Zen and Euclid are employed to produce a new cohort of Karl Friedrich Gausses every year.

Don't you believe it. The Japanese (and Korean and Singaporean) systems are successful because they don't proceed until the kids know what they're doing. [Earthquake! Feelable but mild. I hope as always that it wasn't feelable and non-mild a few hundred miles away.] Two articles about a New Jersey school in deep trouble that used textbooks from Singapore and structural approaches from Japan to revamp their math classes show what I mean. If you're an American who sailed through a good school system and got a 5 on the AP Calc AB or BC test for your trouble, you're probably wondering what the fuss is about. Of course, the teacher introduces a concept by giving you a problem to solve and seeing whether you can figure out a profitable approach. Of course, you work alone or in groups so that, through trial and error, you can figure out the bone and sinew of what you're doing and why some plans of attack are bad or waste time. Of course, the lesson in the textbook is a point of departure and not a script.

But those aren't of courses anymore. The sad irony is that a lot of American public schools teach math the way Japan teaches other subjects: as an exercise in memorization with minimal imagination.

Added later: A while back I posted about one of the ads on my train line--from a cram school, not a public school--that was indicative of one of the ways the Japanese reinforce numeracy.

Added on 1 August: So AXN is showing this here Canadian movie from about ten years ago called Cube. I have no idea how popular it was; I do know that it assumes no one in the audience knows the first thing about math. The math genius chick keeps looking at three-digit numbers and trying to determine whether they're prime. Understandable for some numbers, but she lingers over every single one. You know, like, 548. Hmm...that would be an even number greater than two. I WONDER whether it's prime. Oh, the SUSPENSE. [pause...pause...gears turning in math genius chick's brain] Oh, it's not prime. Goody! No trap in that room! Next one: 153. Uh, 15 seconds for math genius chick to go 1 + 5 + 3 = 9? Pretty slow genius if you ask me. Especially now that it's toward the end and they're running out of time--why are we asking the autistic-savant how many factors the even numbers have? Who cares? 512 is the highest power of 2 with three digits, and if you haven't memorized all the values up to 2^9, what kind of math genius chick are you, anyway?

The 6-party talks are still going on, of course:

At the opening ceremony of the six-way talks, which resumed after 13 months of suspension at the the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said concerned parties were required to have political will and make strategic decisions if they intended to make progress toward the denuclearization of the peninsula. He added that North Korea was fully prepared to do so.

...

But the North Korean chief delegate went on to say that he believed the United States and other participating nations should also be willing to make strategic decisions.

The delegates were again struck by Pyongyang's unyielding stance.

By referring first to its readiness to make a strategic decision, a course of action U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had urged Pyongyang to take, North Korea showed a positive stance apparently aiming at preventing other nations from increasing pressure on Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear program.

North Korea argued in the July 24 editorial of the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Workers' Party of Korea, that the United States had transformed South Korea into a nuclear arsenal by bringing in various nuclear weapons. South Korea has denied the allegation that any nuclear weapons are deployed in the nation.

In February, Pyongyang declared it possessed nuclear weapons. Denuclearization of the peninsula means that Pyongyang's own nuclear programs and nuclear weapons, and those held by the U.S. military stationed in South Korea, must be abandoned at the same time. North Korea therefore insists that the United States, which drove Pyongyang to develop its nuclear programs by bringing the weapons into South Korea, also should make a strategic decision to abandon its nuclear weapons.

Retaining this view, North Korea is able to argue that the two nations, as equal nuclear powers, can then proceed with direct negotiations.

Right...which means that the probability of the DPRK's actually disarming (what leverage would it have left then--economic might?) is around zero.

Everyone seems to agree that it would be a bad idea for Japan to push the abductee issue at this week's talks. Not everyone agrees on how the talks themselves could be "productive," but perhaps it really is possible for a sort of Dilbert-ish chain of never-ending committees and conferences and inquiries and stuff to be established and kept lamely going until the DPRK actually does collapse.

Thanks, Eric. I can understand why everyone wanted to jump on this story so quickly, but there are so many possible variables--the chief ones being Persian culture and the opportunistic thuggishness of the Islamic Republic in Iran. It made me wonder--the Iranian government is notorious for bringing sex-related offenses into cases in which its real motivations lie with other behavior.

"Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi"
To: "Eric Scheie"
Subject: Re: Photos of public execution of two youngsters in the city of Mash'had
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 12:08:00 -0400

The story does not change...the info that the Mullahs gave out first was one thing and then activists outside Iran were informed that there was more to it than those two boys being hung for theft. ALSO, please note that they were not gay in the way people in the west would think of "gay" 'cause people in our part of the world have sex with men and women and in that part of the world, it's common for men to sleep with men and women...but to us, it's all sexuality and sexuality in and of itself, to the Mullahs is not acceptable. There are many dichotomies that one cannot properly explain for westerners; like the Eunuchs in our part of the world, etc. To people in the west, they're disgusting and bizarre...to us, they're wonderful and we love our Eunuchs! However, un P.C. that may be in this part of the world.

These two poor boys did have sex with each other but that was never what they were officially charged with and that is a fact. The reason WHY in fact they were executed, underneath it all was because the Mullahs often make an example of youngsters who are unruly and apparently these two had been also raped and sodomized by a local Mullah whom they wanted to expose. Like those two innocent 16 year old and 19 year old girls they executed last Oct. and Dec...Atefeh Rajabi and Leila Mo'aafi...they said that they were whores but it turned out that they had both been molested by the local Mullahs and
when these two poor girls had come to expose them, they got executed.

I hope this explains it. I cannot explain any more than this because if you aren't from that part of the world you will NEVER understand or grasp the height of the Islmo-Fascist mentality. Their psychosis is something HITLER could not even imagine and yet no matter what we dissidents try to explain to westerners...people refuse to believe what we impart...simply because your part of the world is not ancient (or the archaic'ness' was shed many moons ago) and your values entirely different AND at odds with what those people over there, do, say and think.

Actually, I think I do come closer to understanding this issue than many Westerners. I have heard about Muslim mullahs raping young men they've sentenced to death for "sodomy." And clearly Iran today is a country run largely by such sociopaths.

As to sexuality, we in the West have a different way of processing these things, and as I have said many times, in my opinion we have come up with unnecessary divisions based on "sexualities" which are as varied as the individuals. But the bottom line here should not whether anyone is homosexual or heterosexual, or should be labeled "gay" as we do in this country. It's the human freedom to be left alone in matters of one's bedroom.

Japan has normal relations with Iran, and you meet Iranian businessmen in the bars here occasionally. Eric's right about unnecessary divisions, but I think it's important to point out that there really are homosexuals as we think of them in Iran, too. As one (drop-dead gorgeous--good grief, was that man beautiful) guy put it to me a few years ago, "In Iran, it's not uncommon for men to marry and be bound to their wives while also being attracted to men or boys, but [conspiratorial smile] I'm like you." Also, setting artificial but meaningful boundaries is one of the most important things an advanced civilization does.

None of this means that I don't think we should protest against laws on the books that allow teenagers to be executed for sodomy. Nor do I think that gay leftists shouldn't be clobbered hard for the way they constantly make excuses for illiberal non-Western regimes and treat the Bush administration as the greatest threat to liberty for gays and lesbians. (Of course, given their own tendency to mewl that all their problems are everyone else's fault, their affinity for the Palestinians, at least, is pretty understandable.) It's just that in all the point-scoring, something gets lost: these people hate imagination and free thought and idiosyncrasy in all forms. Their hatred of homosexuality may be sincere, but in practice, they frequently invoke it as a means to the end of maintaining power and strongarming people back in line. Ms. Zand-Bonazzi has a final point to make:

The west is hugely to blame and in my opinion not so much the U.S. (though the U.S. has managed to make a mess of a few things big time), EUROPE...those European plutocrats are the ones at fault and though I hate the idea of those innocent people dying (there were also Iranians among the people who died on the bus on 7/7 in London), I'm sorry but I believe the U.K. government brought it all onto themselves...and NOT by backing the war on Iraq but by NOT backing off from doing business with CORRUPT Islamists, LIKE, the Mullahs for all these years. They were warned that the Islamo-Fascists have no good intention to ANYONE in the west...but the Euro bastards like to act like it's only the U.S. and Israel.

Well, the US could stand to be less cozy with the al-Sauds, but point taken.

The number of deaths from yesterday's terrorist bombing in Egypt is up to 88. I've been wondering--if terrorism experts thought this was possible, surely we'd be reading it by now, so I'm probably wrong--whether the plan wasn't similar to that of the Bali bombers: set off an explosion or two to get people pouring into the street, then nail them with bigger explosions once they're out there.

A group claiming links to al Qaeda said Saturday's bombings were revenge for "crimes committed against Muslims," said an Internet statement. But the statement did not appear on major al Qaeda Web sites and it was impossible to authenticate the claim.

Egypt's biggest "crime against Muslims," from the perspective of Islamofascits, is probably being a reasonably functional democracy. It also has a cultural heritage of world-enamoring brilliance that predates its contact with Islam. Of course, the resort that was hit was popular with foreign tourists as well, so there are people of many countries among the dead; but naturally most of the victims were Egyptians.

Sincerest condolences to the Egyptian people, and best to President Mubarak and his government in the fight to keep the terrorists at bay. As Dean says, if we assume the flypaper strategy (which I have my reservations about), is working, it means that terrorist cells are going to be striking more frequently in the most Westernized Muslim countries. It's going to be a trying time.

Ghost of a Flea brings up one of the more annoying Anglospheric gaps in communication about the races:

Let us clear this up. In English-speaking North America the word "asian" is generally used to refer to people of East Asian descent while in the UK the word "asian" is generally used to refer to people of South Asian descent. Both terms are gross generalizations that obscure fantastic regional, ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity within the groups for whom they act as shorthand and either shorthand ignores well over a billion people who are just as asian. If I was, say, Armenian both abbreviations would be a source of ongoing annoyance.

A close English buddy of mine and I were just having this discussion a few weeks ago. He was bewildered at the way a lot of Americans look at you as though you'd committed a hanging crime if you use the word Oriental, which, Edward Said's hex not having gained traction in the UK as it did in the States, is still the polite way to talk about the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese there. Of course, even in the States, people of East Asian descent who haven't gone through PC colleges still blithely refer to themselves as Oriental all the time, but you'd never hear a newscaster use the word.

Now that I think about it, the topic may have come up the night of the first London bombings. I do know that on 7 July we were sitting at our hangout when the video for Kylie's "Giving You Up" came on: a twelve-foot-tall woman in curve-hugging black strides through London as if she owned the place, good-naturedly vamping at guys of various races (there's an Asian, in the English usage, about 3/4 of the way through) along the way. It was very bolstering--the kind of sassy I can get behind.

More from Irshad Manji, the Muslim lesbian from Toronto, in last week's Sunday Times:

Britain, she says, has been slow to introduce tests for imams on their mastery of the Koran. She recalls asking Mohamed al-Hindi, political leader of Islamic Jihad, where the Koran glorifies martyrdom; he insisted it was there, but even after looking up books and phoning colleagues, he couldn’t find one reference.

"His translator suggested I better go if I wanted to leave alive," she recalls. "I asked why he had even given an interview, and the translator said, 'Oh, he assumed you would be just another dumb westerner'."

Muslims, adds Manji, must find positive role models rather than jihadists: "Martyrs are the rock stars of the Muslim world, shown on the internet against a background of funky music. They feed on the self-esteem crisis of young Muslims." That could be addressed by history lessons paying greater tribute to the Muslim contribution to the Renaissance.

She denounces terrorism and the response to terrorism, which is not sufficiently robust. It is no good, she argues, for respectable Muslims to say "violence is not the Islamic ideal" if violence has become Islamic practice. And she attacks the proposed religious hatred laws, saying: “Society needs people who offend, otherwise there will be no progress."

Manji thinks Islam needs a reformation.

Walter Olson reports at Overlawyered that a new frontier in save-people-from-themselves-ism is being explored. This from one of the Guardian articles he links to:

According to Dr Judith Reisman, pornography affects the physical structure of your brain turning you into a porno-zombie. Porn, she says, is an "erototoxin", producing an addictive "drug cocktail" of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin with a measurable organic effect on the brain.

Some of us might consider this a good thing. Not Reisman: erototoxins aren't about pleasure, they're a "fear-sex-shame-and-anger stimulant". Reisman's paper on the subject The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography Restructuring Brain, Mind & Memory & Subverting Freedom of Speech has helped make her the darling of the anti-pornography crusade, and in November last year she presented her erototoxin theory to the US senate.

...

[Reisman and her fellow researcher] foresee two possible outcomes: if they can demonstrate that porn physically "damages" the brain, that might open the floodgates for "big tobacco"-style lawsuits against porn publishers and distributors; second, and more insidiously, if porn can be shown to "subvert cognition" and affect the parts of the brain involved in reasoning and speech, then "these toxic media should be legally outlawed, as is all other toxic waste, and eliminated from our societal structure".

Not being addicted to porn, I still have enough imagination to be stoked at the mere mention of a cocktail of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin. Where's that glass of iced water? [gulp...sigh] Okay.

Toxic waste is outlawed? Oh, excuse me--"legally outlawed"? I thought you just couldn't leave it lying around, not that it was illegal. Olson also links to this post at Nobody's Business:

Indefatigable at 70, Reisman continues her crusade against "the sexindustrial complex" mostly by trying to prove the existence of those elusive "erototoxins." Right now, only she knows what those are — she coined the word herself, and it seems it has yet to make it into anyone else's medical vocabulary. In fact, though she consistently identifies herself as "Dr. Reisman," that title refers to a degree in communication, not to any expert medical knowledge. (This echoes her fondness for reminding people that her maiden name, Gelernter, is German for "learned one." Indeed.)

Cheese and crackers, what a 24-karat quack. Of course, in a world after world-renowned agricultural chemist Meryl Streep's 1989 lecture to Congress about Alar, I supposed it's not a big shock that Reisman has given testimony before the US Senate about the neurological effects of pornography.

What's so annoying here is that there are real issues to be addressed. We expect teenagers to grow through adolescence to strike out on their own and choose their own life partners, often without much assistance from family and community elders. What does it mean to have recordings of live, impersonal sex acts cheaply and readily available when they reach adulthood (if not before)? I don't hold with the hard anti-porn line that pornography "causes" sexual dysfunction, and I'm against its criminalization. It's also patently untrue that you can't consume porn without spiralling helplessly into addiction. But you can't evade questions about social effects just by pointing out that there's no inherent shame in nakedness or sex; what you're exposed to does affect your attitude.

On the other hand--give me a break! The sex impulse doesn't obliterate free will. With all her blather about subverting freedom of speech, Reisman sounds exactly like the MacKinnon-Dworkin axis of feminism, with its line about how the power of the patriarchy means no woman in our society can ever give authentic "uncompromised" sexual consent. Another case of extremes meeting in the anti-pornography crusade.

This is good news:

Japanese researchers discovered a colorful, centuries-old Buddhist mural in a stone cave in Afghanistan that somehow escaped the destructive rampage of the Taliban regime in 2001, officials in Tokyo said.

The cave, about 3 meters wide, 3 meters deep and 2 meters high, is located at the west end of Bamiyan Valley, according to officials at the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties.

Parts of the mural are still covered with dust, but the painting is believed to cover all sides of the cave as well as the ceiling, the officials said.

The west wall depicts Buddha and other sitting Buddhist deities drawn with bold strokes.

We love bold strokes! The paintings could apparently help researchers determine how certain motifs in Buddhist art were transmitted through central Asia.

More evacuations on the London Underground. Let's hope no one's been hurt.

This is one of the many reasons I love Susanna:

I just don't think they're [leftists, of course] being very realistic about the threat, which is not the same as questioning their honesty, morality or intelligence. I know a lot of people who I consider exemplary on all three counts who disagree with me on the WOT, both liberals and conservatives. So it's not that either. But there are a lot of liberals and leftists who do give cover - just consider any of your garden-variety pseudo-intellectual Hollywood types like, oh, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Susan Sarandon, etc. And consider the leadership of the Democratic party as well as the nattering leftists in the US and Europe, whose primary solidarity is built on anti-Americanism arising from their own sick envy. I consider them the rankest hypocrites, demanding the freedoms and excesses of the West while succoring the fascists of radical Islam whose first activity on taking over any country would be to end the freedoms and excesses Western civilization provides. And finally, I'm not parroting a party line - I'm a lot harsher than the party line tends to be.

Yeah, we only wish the party line were that uncompromising. Susanna quotes Peter Tatchell's statement on Unite Against Terror. In my opinion, Tatchell is one of the few lefty gay voices consistently worth listening to. He may stage wacko demonstrations and support "international socialism" [shiver], but he knows how to make arguments applicable to Earth and not Planet Clare.

Re. US-Japan security ties, the Yomiuri reports that the Department of Defense has asked Japan to give us a heads-up if, say, the DPRK fires a missile at us:

The United States, as part of its missile defense program, has asked the government to share any information obtained by advanced radar systems in Japan as soon as they detect a U.S.-targeted ballistic missile attack launched from such countries as North Korea, government sources said Tuesday.

Any such missile launch would probably first be detected in Japan by an advanced early warning radar system known as FPS-XX.

The next-generation high-performance radar system, which is in its final stage of development by the Defense Agency's Technical Research and Development Institute (TRDI), will be a pivotal component of the nation's missile defense system scheduled to be deployed 2007.

The government is set to accept the U.S. requests for assistance saying there would be no problem in sharing information in the event of a missile attack on the United States, the sources said.

The pattern for new gizmos with "next generation" attached to them is one of delayed roll-outs and lots of debugging after release, in my experience. Nevertheless, despite its trouble launching rockets and satellites, Japan's ground-based surveillance is very good.

Ambassador Thomas Schieffer has also asked Japan to extend the deployment of SDF personnel in Iraq again:

Schieffer told reporters at the National Press Club of Japan that it is Tokyo's decision, but countries in the multinational force are expected to make tough choices to help establish democracy in Iraq.

"We know that that was a threshold to cross for the Japanese government and the Japanese people. It is not an easy thing for them to be there," Schieffer said.

"But we think that their contribution is making a difference, and it is a contribution that they can proudly say they are making on behalf of the international community, and not because the United States is there," he said.

"All of us have to do things that we would prefer not to do from time to time," he added.

Schieffer's comments came as Tokyo and Washington have begun working quietly on how to interpret U.N. Security Council Resolution 1546 to allow an extension beyond the Dec. 14 expiry stipulated under the basic dispatch plan approved last year by the Cabinet.

With the brouhaha over Japan Post reform, other issues before the Diet and cabinet aren't really getting much play in the news here. It seems unlikely that Koizumi will be inclined to pull out early.

I still don't really know what to make of Schieffer. He's far less a media presence here than Howard Baker was. Not that the old ambassador was all over the society pages, or anything, but he was quoted very regularly in news reports. Schieffer is much quieter. Perhaps he's getting his bearings--he's not a really seasoned politician as Baker was. Or perhaps he simply finds it politic to shut up, given the topics there are to opine on lately: anti-Japan sentiment in China, friction over politicans' pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine, Japan's push for permanent UN Security Council membership. These aren't exactly easy shoals to navigate, and Schieffer has only been on duty here since April.

Hmmm.... Morning.... Cup of strong tea, scrambled eggs with way too much butter.... Classical Values.... WHAT?! [splutter]

Does this sick phenomenon called "outing" know no bounds? I mean, it's bad enough to go after a politician for "hypocrisy" when his personal life runs afoul of his stated political views. But to go after a family member? This was the kneejerk reaction of certain Daily Kos regulars, who wasted no time in calling for an investigation to determine whether John Roberts' son is gay.

This is now being dismissed as absurd because, of course, the son happens to be four years old.

Disgraceful. In fairness, two Kos commenters did have the decency to point out that going after Roberts's son was at least ignorant. (I would have preferred to see them point out that it was outrageous, but you can't have everything.)

Frequent commenter John has had his own blog for a few months--it's very good stuff.

There have been a lot of posts about math education floating around lately. His two (here and here) are great additions to the pool. Something that he says that more people need to understand (and that is pertinent to comparisons of American and Japanese educational systems):

So being Americans, and enamored of the idea that everyone can become a genius, we came out with systems that emphasized creativity over memorization, forgetting that in order to be creative you need at least a few facts in your head, otherwise you live in a world of make-believe.

Somehow, the conviction that your progress in life needn't be limited by the circumstances you were born into has changed into the belief that you can bluff your way through anything. (That actually doesn't work much better in literary study than it does in math, BTW, as anyone who's lost hours of life to an assigned "critical theory" reading of zero meaning can attest. It's just less noticeable because there's at least some fudge room in interpretation and criticism. And misinterpreting a poem doesn't make bridges fall down.)

Bush's nominee for the US Supreme Court seems to have surprised everyone. For those of us who don't believe the Constitution is a mirror, he sounds like a great choice. The Washington Blade cites this AP report:

"The court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion … finds no support in the text, structure or history of the Constitution," the brief [from Roberts] said.

In his defense, Roberts told senators during his 2003 confirmation hearing that he would be guided by legal precedent. "Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. … There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."

Of course, the usual spokespersons are saying the usual things, and they'll all be paraded across the news channels for the foreseeable future--I know some people like that aspect of politics, but I frankly find it wearying. One thing I would like to see, though, that I haven't come across in the news reports yet: Arlen Specter's reaction. He's a triangulating moderate himself, and he was fond of Sandra Day O'Connor. I mean, obviously, he's going to say something politic. When does he not? Still, Roberts looks more consistently conservative than he'd hoped for.

Ghost of a Flea is driving himself crazy trying to get The Guardian's coverage of the London bombings to make some kind of sense. Looks like he's doomed to failure, but he has lots of links, and his own comments are good as always.

Secretary of State Rice was here yesterday to talk with Prime Minister Koizumi and Foreign Minister Machimura. (Japanese version)

"I recognize the importance of continuing to implement anti-terrorist measures," Koizumi told Rice at their meeting in Tokyo.

The prime minister, however, made no mention of what his government plans to do later this year on the status of the Self-Defense Forces dispatched to Iraq. The basic plan for the SDF dispatch expires on Dec. 14.

...

Japan and the United States agreed they would seek "concrete progress" from Pyongyang toward abolishing its nuclear weapons development program during the six-way talks.

At a joint news conference held after their meeting, Machimura and Rice said their two countries confirmed agreement on three points concerning the six-way talks expected to start on July 27:

*Concrete progress is needed in the discussions;

*Japan and the United States want North Korea to deal with the issues seriously and constructively; and

*Coordination between Japan, the United States and South Korea is crucial.

Japan and the United States will hold a trilateral meeting on Thursday in Seoul with South Korea to synchronize their stances for the six-party talks in Beijing, the first since June last year.

The diplomat-speak in that passage is, BTW, just as exquisitely devoid of content in the Japanese as in the English (though at least the Japanese reporter knew not to use the word synchronize).

Everything else was basically a reaffirmation of diplomatic ties: the US supports Japan in its pressure on the DPRK to resolve the abductee issue, supports Japan in its push to become a permanent United Nations Security Council member (just not yet), and wants the beef import ban lifted.

Japanese news shows are so...cute is the only word I can think of. TBS (not Ted Turner's, obviously) has just been discussing the London bombings with the commentators sitting around a pop-up book model of London, complete with fluttering Union Flag printed in the upper right corner. Of course, there are all kinds of electronic bells and whistles crowding the edges of the screen, too--that mixture of hokey low-tech and hokey high-tech is very characteristic of news programs and yak shows here.

The number of deaths doesn't seem to be climbing rapidly, which is a relief. The Nikkei doesn't have any statement from Prime Minister Koizumi, who just arrived in Scotland yesterday, but it does quote other higher-ups:

Minister of Foreign Affairs Nobutaka Machimura revealed that he had sent a telegram to Jack Straw and said, "The crimes that have been committed today are detestable. From the bottom of our hearts, we extend condolences [to the United Kingdom] and our deepest sympathies." [It's impossible to translate the set phrases he used, but that's essentially what he meant.--SRK]

...

DPJ Secretary General Tatsuo Kawabata also issued a condemnation: "Acts of terrorism violate principles of humanity and justice, and they are absolutely impermissible. One can hardly suppress one's outrage." Social Democratic Party Secretary General Seiji Mataichi also spoke [publicly]: "I am very angry; we condemn these acts."

Kawabata expressed his anger as 強い憤り (tsuyoi ikidoori: "powerful" + "indignation"). Mataichi used a more common, informal expression: 強い怒り (tsuyoi ikari: "powerful" + "rage"). Like the US, Japan has raised its terrorism alert level. Station police are apparently sweeping through stations doing extra-thorough checks of trashcans and toilets. Otherwise, it's not clear what increased security measures may be implemented.

One final thought before I really do take off: the reaction of the world's self-consciously-hip leftists is going to be interesting, in a nasty way. Preening leftists like New York, but it is...well, there's no getting around it, is there? New York is American. Manhattan is cordoned off from the rest of the country by a few rather narrow rivers, but it's surrounded by America, and even New York's working class is mostly very patriotic.

The left doesn't have to have such misgivings about London, however, and its love for the place is, in my experience, unreserved. There are lots of little reasons it's okay to love London more than New York *: London paid its dues by actually being bombed by the Germans. Contemporary UK policy is comfortingly collectivist, but England also has a history of pioneering democracy. England is close to the European Continent that we're all supposed to bow down to, but being an island nation at the edge, it has its strain of funky non-Euro-conformism. Most lefty types I know think, even if they don't say so outright, that London is the center of contemporary civilization (in the intellectual and social, if not the aesthetic or culinary, sense).

The bombing of London is going to hit these people where they live, at least psychologically. If only to distract me from my rage at whoever planned this morning's attacks, I look forward, in a mirthless sort of way, to seeing them pulled in 50 different directions by their emotions over the next few weeks.

Once again, best wishes to the people of London for minimal death and damage.

* I don't want to give short shrift to the bombings in Bali and Madrid. Of course, they were appalling and they matter. But Bali is a faraway resort island, and Madrid is not a considered an iconic center of progressive thought and policy the way London is.

I hadn't looked at the news services for a while; Michael says there's been a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in London. CNN and Reuters are, naturally, taking forever to load, but the Nikkei already has a translated report up. It looks as if the Underground was the biggest target, though Reuters seems to be saying three buses were blown up, too. (As my English colleague just said, between this and the Olympics, expect the British National ID to attain Big Brother proportions very quickly.) It looks as if there may be 100 dead and injured at Aldgate alone, and those numbers always go up.

The IRA likes bombs, of course; you don't have to spend much time in London to get used to the signs that show abandoned bags with stern instructions to notify the authorities at once if you see one. But this looks very big, and London is one of our closest allies and a society that exemplifies everything the Islamist terror groups hate. It won't be surprising in the slightest if one of them takes...uh...credit. (Yes, there's the G8 summit, but London seems kind of far afield from Scotland for that to be the irritant.)

In addition to being a close kin of our American society, England is my grandfather's homeland. He emigrated as a teenager, and we still have family and friends there whom we visit frequently. I love London. And of course, being a foreigner in Tokyo, I have British friends all over the place here, too. And Japanese friends who live there, for that matter.

It looks as if all there is to do now is to wait for more news. Condolences to the people of England and to the family and friends of the dead and injured. London being a cosmopolitan city, they're certain to come from a number of different countries.

Just went to CNN Japan. A fuller report (in Japanese) is up.

Added a few minutes later: My prediction--a rather obvious one--is that this is going to be a BIG story in Japan this week. The tenth anniversary of the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway was months ago, and being packed into to tight, hard-to-escape spaces on public transport at morning rush hour is part of reality here. (Well, at least in Tokyo, but we are the largest population center and news market.) There will be lots of CGI reenactments on NHK and a great deal of yak-show discussion about what the implications are for Japan. I hope it doesn't seem callous to say this already, but one of the things I try to do here, when feasible, is to give a sense of how world events are covered in Japan and seen by Japanese people.

Added a few more minutes later: Dean has a BBC link (in English this time). It gives a map that shows points of attack. It also clarifies something I'd wondered about: the major station in question is Aldgate East (an interchange) and not Aldgate (which is on the circle line but not, I don't think, any kind of interchange).

Time to get on my packed commuter train and go home. I'm sure there are continuous developments to come.

I don't know whether this woman has a legal case--is freedom of religious expression usually interpreted to mean that an instructor can be punished for assigning an individual paper with some weird criterion, even at a community college?

I do know that the instructor in question is a ninny:

Hauf's teacher approved her term paper topic — Religion and its Place within the Government — on one condition: Don't use the word God. Instead of complying with VVCC adjunct instructor Michael Shefchik's condition Hauf wrote a 10-page report for her English 101 class entitled "In God We Trust."

"He said it would offend others in class," Hauf, a 34-year-old mother of four, said. "I didn't realize God was taboo."

I'm an atheist, and I'm offended at the idea that a college instructor would seek to limit rather than expand his student's inquiry into a topic he approved. Well, okay, sometimes a student tries to bite off more than she can chew and has to be encouraged to focus, but that's a way different issue. One of Joanne Jacobs's commenters suggested another possibility: the teacher was trying to force each student to delve more deeply into his chosen topic by leaving out a word or two that he might be inclined to overuse. The part about "offend[ing] others in class," assuming Ms. Hauf is recalling correctly, makes that seem unlikely.