Quotulatiousness

September 7, 2011

A bit more on the Lacey Act

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Environment, India, Law, USA, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

The Economist has a brief mention of the Gibson raid:

Agents barged in and shut down production. They were hunting for ebony and rosewood which the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) alleges was imported from India in violation of the Lacey Act, a 1900 law originally designed to protect fauna from poachers. This law has metastasised: it now requires Americans, in essence, to abide by every plant and wildlife regulation set by any country on Earth. Not having heard of an obscure foreign rule is no defence. Violators face fines or even jail. FWS claims the ebony sent from India was mislabelled, and that Indian law forbids the export of unfinished ebony and rosewood.

[. . .]

Guitarists now worry that every time they cross a state border with their instrument, they will have to carry sheaves of documents proving that every part of it was legally sourced. Edward Grace, the deputy chief of the FWS’s office of law enforcement, says this fear is misplaced: “As a matter of longstanding practice,” he says, “investigators focus not on unknowing end consumers but on knowing actors transacting in larger volumes of product.” But Americans have been jailed for such things as importing lobsters in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes, in violation of a Honduran rule that Honduras no longer enforces. Small wonder pluckers are nervous.

Original report on the Gibson guitar raid here. Rules like the Lacey Act are tailor-made for petty bureaucrats to exercise immense amounts of judicially unsupervised power. It’s hard to believe that this kind of rule is being enforced evenhandedly, and rather easier to believe that it is being used selectively as a way of paying off scores, providing a “service” to certain firms at the expense of others, and creating lots of opportunities for bribes, “protection money”, and the like.

August 27, 2011

More photos from Japan’s abandoned “Battleship Island”

Filed under: Asia, History, Japan — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:42

I blogged about this last year, including a few photos of the island’s skyline. This post at How to be a Retronaut includes lots of interior photos:

August 10, 2011

English in India

Filed under: History, India — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:55

An interesting post at The Economist‘s Johnson blog looks at the evolution of “Hinglish”:

Once the British left India, Anglo-Indian died a natural death. In its place came a chutnified Indian English that mixes American and British versions of the language with vernacular words and syntax and direct translations of phrases.

A glimpse of the breadth of influences in contemporary Indian English can be found at the delightfully-named Samosapedia. A cross between Hobson-Jobson and Urban Dictionary, the website modestly describes itself as “the definitive guide to South Asian lingo” and invites users to “catalog and celebrate the rich, diverse and ever-evolving landscape of this region’s shared vernacular”. Over 2,500 words and phrases have been added since Samosapedia was launched at the end of June.

Samosapedia is a lot of fun. It is also fascinating. Many phrases it lists are common across India: A “chaddi buddy” (lit: underwear friend) is someone you’ve known since childhood; “kabab mein haddi” (lit: a bone in the kebab) is a third wheel with better imagery; an “enthu cutlet” (lit: an enthusiastic mincemeat croquette) is an overly earnest soul. But then there are those that come from regions, sub-cultures and even neighbourhoods. “Talking-shalking” highlights the Punjabi fondness for rhyme. “Sandra from Bandra” is a stereotype from a predominantly Catholic suburb of Mumbai. “Send it” refers to smoking pot.

The entries at Samosapedia also offer an insight into how Indian culture is changing. “Traditional with modern outlook”, often found in matrimonial ads, encapsulates the evolving nature of arrange marriage—or “love-cum-arranged marriage”—where the prospective bride and groom have far greater say in their partners than earlier generations did. “Behenji-turned-mod” is a condescending term for a traditional woman transitioning from fusty and oily-haired to a more urban, socially acceptable version of herself. It is telling that these undoubtedly modern but widely-used phrases exist in Hinglish, a portmanteau of Hindi and English.

Lots of links in the original post to various entries in Samosapedia.

China’s second-hand aircraft carrier puts to sea for initial trials

Filed under: China, Military, Pacific — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:45

The Shi Lang, formerly the Varyag, is undergoing a set of sea trials:

China’s first aircraft carrier began sea trials on Wednesday, the state-run Xinhua news service reported, a highly symbolic step in what is certain to be a years-long effort to create a carrier presence in the Pacific waters off its coast.

The carrier, once known as the Varyag, left Dalian, its northeast China port for what analysts said would be a test of its rudder, propulsion system and other basics. Xinhua’s two-sentence report stated only that the carrier would make a short voyage before returning to Dalian for further tests.

The Chinese Defense Ministry said last month that the carrier would be used largely for scientific research and training. Foreign military analysts say it could be a decade or more before the Chinese can deploy and operate a true fleet of carriers, the most costly and complex weapons systems in any nation’s arsenal.

August 8, 2011

China discovers that “You can’t stop the signal” again

Filed under: China, Government, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:32

Strategy Page looks at the way news was disseminated about the high speed rail crash despite the Chinese government’s attempts to quash the story:

Since July 27th, China got another reminder that it no longer can control the news. On July 27th, China’s high-speed “bullet train” had a fatal accident, leaving over 30 dead and many more injured. The cause was inadequate safety and communications systems. In this case, one train was halted by a flaw in the signalling system and another came up from behind and there was the collision that sent four train cars off the tracks, and a bridge. The government immediately tried to keep the accident out of the news. This effort failed because of the ingenuity of Chinese Internet users, despite the government ban on Twitter in China. The ban was meant to impede the rapid spread of news the government wanted to control. Given enough time, the state controlled media could get out a story the government could live with. But blog, RSS and other Internet tools have been tweaked to do the same thing Twitter does. This was especially true of “micro-blogs” that quickly distribute the same 140 character messages Twitter does. Not as well, but good enough, and the news the government wanted to control spread uncontrollably. This included pictures and video of the accident, which the government planned to keep out of the news.

August 7, 2011

Trawling a virtual economy to support a non-viable “real” economy

Filed under: Asia, Economics, Gaming, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 14:47

Give North Korea some credit for finding a viable source of revenue:

What’s a dictator to do when his third-world economy is wheezing along on its last legs? Hack some video games, of course! According to a report in the New York Times, North Korea’s Kim Jong-il unleashed an army of young computer crackers on popular South Korean online gaming portals to find ways to make quick cash.

South Korean authorities claim that a squad of approximately 30 hackers operated from a base in China and were given the mission of breaching online gaming servers (including those of the immensely popular Lineage) to set up bot factories and automated farming collectives. The digital booty was then sold to gamers for a reported $6 million over two years.

July 28, 2011

Signalling failure blamed for high speed rail crash

Filed under: China, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:32

This sounds a bit fishy, as this kind of error has been known in railway signal systems for over 100 years: signals that fail to show stop as a default whenever power is lost:

After it was struck by lightning, the signaling device at the Wenzhou South railway station malfunctioned and failed to turn from green to red, An Lusheng, chief of the Shanghai Railway Bureau, told the news agency. He also said workers on duty were inadequately trained and failed to notice the malfunction.

Xinhua’s report, the first official explanation of the cause of the crash, raised further questions about China’s high-speed rail system, one of the world’s largest and most costly public works projects. The accident occurred when one high-speed train rear-ended another that had stalled on the tracks near Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province. High-speed rail has an excellent safety record elsewhere, especially in Japan, which has never had a fatality.

Chinese have flooded microblogging sites with furious complaints about breakneck development without heed to safety. Many also expressed fears of a cover-up, especially after reports that one train car was buried at the site despite the ongoing investigation and only later excavated.

July 27, 2011

Okay, everyone relax: China says aircraft carrier to be used for “research and training”

Filed under: China, Military, Pacific — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:44

That’s the latest story from China, which has finally acknowledged that they are rebuilding the former Soviet aircraft carrier Shi Lang:

China has officially acknowledged that it is rebuilding an aircraft carrier it bought more than a decade ago, but says the refurbished ship will be used only for research and training.

A defence ministry spokesman, Geng Yansheng, told reporters on Wednesday that work was under way on refitting an old carrier, a reference to the Varyag, whose stripped-down hull was towed from Ukraine in 1998 and has been under reconstruction for the best part of a decade.

“Building an aircraft carrier is extremely complex and at present we are using a scrapped aircraft carrier platform to carry out refurbishment for the purposes of technological research, experiments and training,” Geng said.

July 26, 2011

Chinese government announces safety review after high speed rail crash

Filed under: Bureaucracy, China, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

In the wake of the deadly collision between two high speed trains, China announced a safety review of the high speed railway system:

Mr Sheng said railway officials would be deployed at frontline rail operations across the country to overhaul maintenance standards and checks on power connections to pre-empt outages.

All local railway bureaux were to draw lessons from the accident, a statement on the railways department website said.

Public fury and scepticism have been expressed in China’s blogosphere, both about the death toll of 39 people — suggesting it is too low — and the safety of China’s rail network.

State newspapers have also expressed concern. The Global Times ran a headline: Anger mounts at lack of answers.

“As the world is experiencing globalisation and integration, why can’t China provide the same safety to its people?” an editorial read.

July 25, 2011

More on that Chinese rail crash

Filed under: China, Government, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:49

The official story has changed a few times since the accident, and at least some Chinese feel they are entitled to the truth about the accident:

Internet users attacked the government’s response to the disaster after authorities muzzled media coverage and urged reporters to focus on rescue efforts. “We have the right to know the truth!” wrote one microblogger called kangfu xiaodingdang. “That’s our basic right!”

Leaked propaganda directives ordered journalists not to investigate the causes and footage emerged of bulldozers shovelling dirt over carriages.

Wang, the railways spokesman, said no one could or would bury the story. He said a colleague told him the wreckage was needed to fill in a muddy ditch to make rescue efforts easier.

But Hong Kong University’s China Media Project said propaganda authorities have ordered media not to send reporters to the scene, not to report too frequently and not to link the story to high-speed rail development. “There must be no seeking after the causes [of the accident], rather, statements from authoritative departments must be followed,” said one directive. Another ordered: “No calling into doubt, no development [of further issues], no speculation, and no dissemination [of such things] on personal microblogs!”

Electronic weapons to destroy other electronics

Filed under: China, Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:05

Strategy Page looks at some interesting developments in the electronic weapons area:

A U.S. government report (from the National Ground Intelligence Center) indicates that China has developed useful weapons for disabling the electronics on American aircraft and warships. This is done using high-powered microwave (HPM) devices to create something like the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) put out by nuclear weapons, which damaged or destroys microelectronics.

[. . .]

Then there’s the EMP bomb, a legendary weapon that is much talked about, but has never actually been seen. Throughout the 1990s, information came out of Russia that a weapon had been developed that could generate a short range EMP (electromagnetic pulse) similar to that created by nuclear explosions. All computers within the range of the EMP bomb would be ruined. This is a truly devastating capability. Microprocessors are found everywhere these days; in automobiles, appliances, industrial equipment, medical devices and many other devices. Military microprocessors are often shielded to protect them against EMP, but the shielding is not thoroughly tested and even some military equipment will probably be disabled by an EMP attack.

A decade ago, a British military research team announced that they had duplicated the rumored Russian device and produced an EMP bomb that can fit in a 155mm artillery shell, small rockets or bombs. Such a device was supposed to be inexpensive and could be used to destroy civilian electronics that might be useful to nearby enemy troops. What is particularly worrisome about this new development is that, in the hands of terrorists, it could do a new kind of damage. While not killing people directly, the destruction of all electronics within an urban area could cause casualties and much economic loss. But none of these EMP bombs has ever actually reached the stage where they were actually ready to use. There was always some kind of flaw discovered in testing. Naturally, China is thought to have developed an EMP bomb.

July 24, 2011

No, that’s not suspicious at all . . .

Filed under: China, Government, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:39

. . . when you use backhoes to bury the wreckage before determining the cause of the high speed rail crash:

The wreck on Saturday night killed 35 and injured 210 after a high-speed train lost power for more than 20 minutes and then was rear-ended by another train, according to the Xinhua news agency. Six cars derailed and two fell off a viaduct near the city of Wenzhou.

[. . .]

Photos on the popular Weibo microblogging service showed backhoes burying the wrecked train near the site. Critics said the wreckage needed to be carefully examined for causes of the malfunction, but the railway ministry said that the trains contain valuable national technology and could not be left in the open in case it fell into the wrong hands.

Foreign companies maintain that some crucial technology was stolen from their imported trains. But more importantly to domestic audiences is the perception of a coverup. Initial reports of how the accident occurred are already being partly contradicted by reports in the official media.

July 23, 2011

Today’s drive-by smear courtesy of the Globe & Mail

Filed under: Asia, Cancon — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

The Globe‘s Steve Rennie must think he’s blown the lid off a dark, sordid conspiracy, the way he reports on the booze tab of the Canadian embassy in Kabul:

Canada’s diplomatic corps in Kabul did not go thirsty.

Hospitality forms show embassy staff and dignitaries drank plenty of booze while posted to Afghanistan, an Islamic country where imbibing is not just taboo, it’s against the law.

But aren’t the grounds of an official embassy are considered to be part of the country whose embassy it is? If so, then the embassy grounds are under Canadian jurisdiction, where alcohol is quite legal.

The embassy consumed close to 3,000 bottles of alcoholic beverages from mid-2007 to last November. The tab for the beer, wine and hard liquor was at least $20,000.

Unfortunately, no numbers of people are provided — we’re invited to imagine all this booze being consumed by a few red-nosed diplomats with livers the size of Etobicoke. No, later in the article, he mentions that it was more than just a couple of soused embassy officials keeping the bar open:

There were sendoffs for departing staffers and shindigs to welcome new ones. The embassy entertained visiting generals, diplomats, journalists and politicians.

At about this point, after sneering at the diplomat’s choices of beer, Rennie realizes perhaps he needs to heighten the contrast, by showing that the soldiers and civilians operating in Kandahar had it tougher:

It was not the same for Canadians serving in the country’s restive south. Booze was banned at Kandahar Airfield and at Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar City. Soldiers, diplomats and civilians stationed there had to wait until holidays or special events for a cold one. And there was little danger of getting tipsy with a strict two-beer limit.

But as Rennie had already pointed out, the Kandahar installations were in the middle of an Islamic country that formally prohibits booze. Even if it’s a Canadian Armed Forces base, it has to observe the laws of the country in which it’s situation — it’s not Canadian soil in the way the embassy is. Not to mention that Kandahar was a fricking war zone: armies that drink booze while on active operations against an enemy are less effective armies.

Oh, but then we’re back to those awful alcoholics in the diplomatic corps, who were drinking in “an Islamic country where imbibing is not just taboo, it’s against the law”. Rennie must have forgotten writing that in the first few paragraphs, as it doesn’t mesh well with this later assertion:

Beyond the fortified walls of the embassy, there is no shortage of watering holes around Kabul for the many diplomats, aid workers and journalists who call the city home.

At one time, some popular hang outs included the Tex-Mex restaurant La Cantina and the Gandamak Lodge, a guest house with a British pub in the basement set up by a BBC journalist a decade ago after the Taliban regime fell.

Under Afghan law, anyone caught drinking alcohol can be fined, jailed or whipped. But these punishments are rarely handed down.

Didn’t you just trump your own ace there?

H/T to Chris Myrick for posting the link to this article on Google+, saying “I don’t blame them at all. I imagine Kabul would be intolerable otherwise.”

July 21, 2011

Perhaps I’ll skip the tour of China after all

Filed under: China, Food — Tags: — Nicholas @ 13:39

I’ve always been a fussy eater, so David Sedaris’s account of a few meals during his visit to China have probably deterred me for good:

Most restaurants had quit serving lunch, so we stopped at what’s called a Farming Family Happiness. This is a farmhouse where, if they’re in the mood, the people who live there will cook and serve you a meal.

One of the members of our party was a native of Chengdu, and of the five Americans, everyone but Hugh and I spoke Mandarin. Thus we hung back as they negotiated with the farm wife, who was square-faced and pretty and wore her hair cut into bangs. We ate in what was normally the mah jong parlour, a large room overlooking the family’s tea field. Against one wall were two televisions, each tuned to a different channel and loudly playing to no one. On the other wall was a sanitation grade — C — and the service grade, which was a smiley face with the smile turned upside down.

As far as I know there wasn’t a menu. Rather, the family worked at their convenience, with whatever was handy or in season. There was a rooster parading around the backyard and then there just wasn’t. After the cook had slit its throat, he used it as the base for five separate dishes, one of which was a dreary soup with two feet, like inverted salad tongs, sticking out of it. Nothing else was nearly as recognisable.

Of course, after visiting Japan with their renowned degree of cleanliness, his arrival set the tone rather too well:

This was what I had grown accustomed to when we flew from Narita to Beijing International, where the first thing one notices is what sounds like a milk steamer, the sort a cafe uses when making lattes and cappuccinos. “That’s odd,” you think. “There’s a coffee bar on the elevator to the parking deck?” What you’re hearing, that incessant guttural hiss, is the sound of one person, and then another, dredging up phlegm, seemingly from the depths of his or her soul. At first you look over, wondering, “Where are you going to put that?” A better question, you soon realise, is, “Where aren’t you going to put it?”

I saw wads of phlegm glistening like freshly shucked oysters on staircases and escalators. I saw them frozen into slicks on the sidewalk and oozing down the sides of walls. It often seemed that if people weren’t spitting, they were coughing without covering their mouths, or shooting wads of snot out of their noses. This was done by plugging one nostril and using the other as a blowhole. “We Chinese think it’s best just to get it out,” a woman told me over dinner one night.

And that’s without quoting any of the learned discussion of bodily wastes . . .

July 20, 2011

Another aspect of China’s amazing economic growth

Filed under: China, Economics, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:28

Steve Jobs might want to look at the Chinese market a bit more carefully . . . something’s happening that he may need to pay closer attention to:

The Western news media is replete with pithy descriptions of the rapid changes taking place in China: China has the world’s fastest growing economy. China is undergoing remarkable and rapid change. This represents a unique moment for a society changing as quickly as China.

You probably read such things in the paper every day — but if you have never been to China, I’m not sure you know quite what this means on a mundane level. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, in the 2+ years that RP and I have been in our apartment, much of the area around us has been torn down, rebuilt, or gutted and renovated – in some cases, several times over. I had the thought, only half-jokingly, that when we returned from a couple months abroad, we might not be able to recognize our apartment building. Or that it might not be there at all.

As it turns out, my fears were baseless — our scrappy little home remains. The neighborhood, however, has definitely kicked it up a notch or seven. Starbucks has opened not one, but THREE branches (that I encountered) within a 10 minute walk of one another. An H&M has opened across from our apartment building. These are the kinds of major Western brands that were previously only represented in Kunming by fast food chains like McDonald’s and KFC. Our neighborhood has quickly become the swanky shopping center of the city.

Update, 21 July: Andrew Orlowski thinks I’ve been taken in by a non-story:

Some stories are so unusual, you immediately wonder if they’re too good to be true. On Tuesday, a Western NGO in China posted a remarkable tale, reporting that ingenious Chinese retailers in a medium-sized provincial city called Kunming had cloned an Apple Retail Store, faithfully reproducing the staff T-shirts, furniture, display material, and name tags.

[. . .]

But another 10 seconds with Google would reveal that in China, as in the UK and many other countries, Apple has a network of authorised resellers. Apple lays down very strict guidelines on how the resellers must present the gear. The sales material is Apple’s, and the specifications are extremely precise. And to be an Apple “Premium Reseller”, you have to look a lot like an Apple Apple Store, but naturally, you can’t call yourself one. There are hundreds of these, with Apple manufacturer Foxconn’s brother Gou Tai-chang planning 100.

[. . .]

Think of it like this: if you had a Jaguar showroom, anywhere in the world, would you operate from a dodgy lock-up and advertise it with a hand-painted sign? I thought not. You’d want it to look as slick and expensive as the real thing. I’m not sure why we expect Chinese Apple resellers not to do so, too.

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