Autopsy of Abraham Lincoln

This is an excerpt from Dr. Curtis' letter, the surgeon who performed autopsy on Abraham Lincoln on that fateful day in 1865. Very fascinating account!



"The room…contained but little furniture: a large, heavily curtained bed, a sofa or two, bureau, wardrobe, and chairs….Seated around the room were several general officers and some civilians, silent or conversing in whispers, and to one side, stretched upon a rough framework of boards and covered only with sheets and towels, lay—cold and immovable—what but a few hours before was the soul of a great nation. The Surgeon General was walking up and down the room when I arrived and detailed me the history of the case. He said that the President showed most wonderful tenacity of life, and, had not his wound been necessarily mortal, might have survived an injury to which most men would succumb….Dr. Woodward and I proceeded to open the head and remove the brain down to the track of the ball. The latter had entered a little to the left of the median line at the back of the head, had passed almost directly forwards through the center of the brain and lodged. Not finding it readily, we proceeded to remove the entire brain, when, as I was lifting the latter from the cavity of the skull, suddenly the bullet dropped out through my fingers and fell, breaking the solemn silence of the room with its clatter, into an empty basin that was standing beneath. There it lay upon the white china, a little black mass no bigger than the end of my finger—dull, motionless and harmless, yet the cause of such mighty changes in the world's history as we may perhaps never realize.…[S]ilently, in one corner of the room, I prepared the brain for weighing. As I looked at the mass of soft gray and white substance that I was carefully washing, it was impossible to realize that it was that mere clay upon whose workings, but the day before, rested the hopes of the nation. I felt more profoundly impressed than ever with the mystery of that unknown something which may be named 'vital spark' as well as anything else, whose absence or presence makes all the immeasurable difference between an inert mass of matter owning obedience to no laws but those covering the physical and chemical forces of the universe, and on the other hand, a living brain by whose silent, subtle machinery a world may be ruled.
"The weighing of the brain…gave approximate results only, since there had been some loss of brain substance, in consequence of the wound, during the hours of life after the shooting. But the figures, as they were, seemed to show that the brain weight was not above the ordinary for a man of Lincoln's size."

The Art of Travel

I really enjoyed reading The Art of Travel so much so that I just requested other books by

De Botton(what a strange name, does it mean something?). Thanks to Yomin for recommendi it! I think this will change the way I would enjoy my travels from now on.

Here are my favorite chapters, in the order I read them:

- On Anticipation

- On Habit

- On Eye-Opening Art

- On the Exotic

- On Possessing Beautiy

- On the Sublime

I think the title is sort of a mis-title. Travel surely is what the author took on; in such disguise, he brilliantly incorporated experiences of others’ travel, e.g. that of Flaubert, Van Gogh, Wordsworth, Xaxier. It is through the experiences of these, along with his sometimes witty, some piercing and always humble comments, we are shown a new way to travel through life. This new way is by appreciating Nature, Art and Life through discovering the light(spirit) that is within you. And that is the way to happiness. Many observations I agree with him, although sometimes I feel like he fell short. For example, I felt the message of what is experienced without is indeed unified with what is within in this book, but he never pointed it out. He merely suggests, he doesn’t exert, which is good also. The chapter on Flaubert truly amuses me(kind of understatement since I was laughing out loud – I didn’t know much about Flaubert’s life before). And the one on Van Gogh – quite an eye-opening one indeed.

He’s such a well-read person, and I felt like classics ought be to read this way – the way he does. This is reflected by the way he selected texts from various sources. He quoted Nietzsche a few times, all to my great delight.

The nature of what people desire

Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?

By DUNCAN J. WATTS
As anyone who follows the business of culture is aware, the profits of cultural industries depend disproportionately on the occasional outsize success — a blockbuster movie, a best-selling book or a superstar artist — to offset the many investments that fail dismally. What may be less clear to casual observers is why professional editors, studio executives and talent managers, many of whom have a lifetime of experience in their businesses, are so bad at predicting which of their many potential projects will make it big. How could it be that industry executives rejected, passed over or even disparaged smash hits like “Star Wars,” “Harry Potter” and the Beatles, even as many of their most confident bets turned out to be flops? It may be true, in other words, that “nobody knows anything,” as the screenwriter William Goldman once said about Hollywood. But why? Of course, the experts may simply not be as smart as they would like us to believe. Recent research, however, suggests that reliable hit prediction is impossible no matter how much you know — a result that has implications not only for our understanding of best-seller lists but for business and politics as well.

Conventional marketing wisdom holds that predicting success in cultural markets is mostly a matter of anticipating the preferences of the millions of individual people who participate in them. From this common-sense observation, it follows that if the experts could only figure out what it was about, say, the music, songwriting and packaging of Norah Jones that appealed to so many fans, they ought to be able to replicate it at will. And indeed that’s pretty much what they try to do. That they fail so frequently implies either that they aren’t studying their own successes carefully enough or that they are not paying sufficiently close attention to the changing preferences of their audience.

The common-sense view, however, makes a big assumption: that when people make decisions about what they like, they do so independently of one another. But people almost never make decisions independently — in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the “best” of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing.

There’s nothing wrong with these tendencies. Ultimately, we’re all social beings, and without one another to rely on, life would be not only intolerable but meaningless. Yet our mutual dependence has unexpected consequences, one of which is that if people do not make decisions independently — if even in part they like things because other people like them — then predicting hits is not only difficult but actually impossible, no matter how much you know about individual tastes.

The reason is that when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called “cumulative advantage,” or the “rich get richer” effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors — a phenomenon that is similar in some ways to the famous “butterfly effect” from chaos theory. Thus, if history were to be somehow rerun many times, seemingly identical universes with the same set of competitors and the same overall market tastes would quickly generate different winners: Madonna would have been popular in this world, but in some other version of history, she would be a nobody, and someone we have never heard of would be in her place.

Because it’s not possible in the real world to test theories about events that never happened, most of what we know about cumulative advantage has been worked out using mathematical models and computer simulations — an approach that is often criticized for glossing over the richness of real human behavior. Fortunately, the explosive growth of the Internet has made it possible to study human activity in a controlled manner for thousands or even millions of people at the same time. Recently, my collaborators, Matthew Salganik and Peter Dodds, and I conducted just such a Web-based experiment. In our study, published last year in Science, more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants. This second group — in what we called the “social influence” condition — was further split into eight parallel “worlds” such that participants could see the prior downloads of people only in their own world. We didn’t manipulate any of these rankings — all the artists in all the worlds started out identically, with zero downloads — but because the different worlds were kept separate, they subsequently evolved independently of one another.

This setup let us test the possibility of prediction in two very direct ways. First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions — that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs — the “best” ones — should become hits in all social-influence worlds.

What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.

So does a listener’s own independent reaction to a song count for anything? In fact, intrinsic “quality,” which we measured in terms of a song’s popularity in the independent condition, did help to explain success in the social-influence condition. When we added up downloads across all eight social-influence worlds, “good” songs had higher market share, on average, than “bad” ones. But the impact of a listener’s own reactions is easily overwhelmed by his or her reactions to others. The song “Lockdown,” by 52metro, for example, ranked 26th out of 48 in quality; yet it was the No. 1 song in one social-influence world, and 40th in another. Overall, a song in the Top 5 in terms of quality had only a 50 percent chance of finishing in the Top 5 of success.

In our artificial market, therefore, social influence played as large a role in determining the market share of successful songs as differences in quality. It’s a simple result to state, but it has a surprisingly deep consequence. Because the long-run success of a song depends so sensitively on the decisions of a few early-arriving individuals, whose choices are subsequently amplified and eventually locked in by the cumulative-advantage process, and because the particular individuals who play this important role are chosen randomly and may make different decisions from one moment to the next, the resulting unpredictably is inherent to the nature of the market. It cannot be eliminated either by accumulating more information — about people or songs — or by developing fancier prediction algorithms, any more than you can repeatedly roll sixes no matter how carefully you try to throw the die.

This, obviously, presents challenges for producers and publishers — but it also has a more general significance for our understanding of how cultural markets work. Even if you think most people are tasteless or ignorant, it’s natural to believe that successful songs, movies, books and artists are somehow “better,” at least in the democratic sense of a competitive market, than their unsuccessful counterparts, that Norah Jones and Madonna deserve to be as successful as they are if only because “that’s what the market wanted.” What our results suggest, however, is that because what people like depends on what they think other people like, what the market “wants” at any point in time can depend very sensitively on its own history: there is no sense in which it simply “reveals” what people wanted all along. In such a world, in fact, the question “Why did X succeed?” may not have any better answer than the one given by the publisher of Lynne Truss’s surprise best seller, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves,” who, when asked to explain its success, replied that “it sold well because lots of people bought it.”

This lesson is not limited to cultural products either. Economists like Brian Arthur and Paul David have long argued that similar mechanisms affect the competition between technologies (like operating systems or fax machines) that display what are called “network effects,” meaning that the attractiveness of a technology increases with the number of people using it. But even in markets that don’t exhibit obvious network effects (like markets for low-carb or organically produced food, fuel-efficient vehicles or alternative energy technologies), sudden shifts in consumer demand can still arise, persist and then shift again. These shifts often come as surprises but are soon explained away as mere reflections of changing public sentiments. Yet while in some sense these markets do reflect what people want, that is true only of what they want right now. If markets not only reveal our preferences but also modify them, then the relation between what we want now and what we wanted before — or what we will want in the future — becomes deeply ambiguous.

Our desire to believe in an orderly universe leads us to interpret the uncertainty we feel about the future as nothing but a consequence of our current state of ignorance, to be dispelled by greater knowledge or better analysis. But even a modest amount of randomness can play havoc with our intuitions. Because it is always possible, after the fact, to come up with a story about why things worked out the way they did — that the first “Harry Potter” really was a brilliant book, even if the eight publishers who rejected it didn’t know that at the time — our belief in determinism is rarely shaken, no matter how often we are surprised. But just because we now know that something happened doesn’t imply that we could have known it was going to happen at the time, even in principle, because at the time, it wasn’t necessarily going to happen at all.

That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to anticipate the future, any more than we should stop trying to make sense of the past. But it does mean that we should treat both the predictions and the explanations we are served — whether about the next hit single, the next great company or even the next war — with the skepticism they deserve.

Some thoughts on the movie "Into Great Silence"

I saw this movie last Friday.

I think it must be my current mental state, but when the old blind monk in the documentary movie said(paraphrasing): “there is no need to fear death. No fear……I am happy to go, to rejoin Him. Life is happy, that is what it is meant to be. That is what God wants for us; so many times I thanked God that He made me blind, so many times”, I started to feel something inside me is opening up; it is dissolving.

I know not what is the God he is speaking of, and I am too reluctant to even use the word since I don’t know it, but I still, I feel something. This unspeakable joy springing up from the silence they dwell in which give them peace and perhaps something beyond makes life full and beautiful. Look at that aging of the body, the wrinkle skin, the old man lay dying on the wooden bed, then you see the spirit shining through his eyes. I felt not sorrow, but peace, at him being part of Nature. He came into this conscious existence, then he goes away. We came as well, and in some time, we shall go. But this ecstatic love, the irresistible seduction, only we could surrender to and rejoice while here, this moment on earth.

Mind Power

Here's the link to the original article.

note:

1) the word 'Master' means 'Pure Consciousness, Void, Nothingness, God, It, That', basically any name you would like to give to the un-nameable, formless, and yet all inclusive and pervasive existence.

2) sadhana = practice

3) sadhakas = practicer

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Master has said that "A powerful will made at the very first step and maintained all through shall never fail to achieve complete success." We also were told by our well wishers that 'where there is a will there is a way,' The only problem in this is that no one really ever told us how to make that ' will ' and we always found ourselves no wiser for the advise. Master also advised us to think or imagine that there is a Divine Light without luminosity and meditate. He advised that we should ignore all thoughts while meditating. He assured that the suggestion given at the beginning of meditation will continue to work at the sub-conscious level through the period of meditation.

He was here revealing the power of the Mind. He was saying that we can achieve our objective if we instruct our mind and subconscious mind properly. Unfortunately most of us don't know how to instruct the mind or subconscious mind. Therefore we end up getting the mind and subconscious mind creating things we really don't want. That is the problem of many aspirants which the Master himself has clarified in many of his articles. However I thought I can share some practical points in this regard.

If we don't get our mind and subconscious mind to focus on what we want, we will surely end up getting what we do not want during meditation in particular and life in general. Most of us do not control our mind, nor do we instruct our subconscious mind because we do not control our thoughts; it would not be wrong if I say that most of us are not even aware of the thoughts we have everyday. One more important factor is we do not seem to choose our beliefs.

Everyone wants to be successful and happy but we do not have thoughts that reflect success and happiness. Very few of us choose our thoughts and majority of sadhakas, leave their mind on autopilot accepting whatever thoughts it conjures up and then they begin to worry about them. Master only advised us to ignore the thoughts. If we do that there is no problem. Instead we seem to believe in the reality of these thoughts and wail over such a situation. What we should believe is the Master whose presence is felt as awareness of nothing and many a time non awareness of anything. When we become aware we do not give importance to the presence of the Master by believing him, instead we give importance to the unwanted thoughts and believe in their reality. We thus do not choose our beliefs based on experience and instead we merely accept what our minds tell.

'Mind is its own enemy' and Lord Krishna was emphatic about this as we see in the Bhagavad Gita. Master also says this but adds the same mind has to be used to control the mind. When we hear sadhakas who are intent on being successful in their spiritual pursuit and try to analyse their thoughts we find them entertaining thoughts which are in their very nature exact opposite of what they seek. While they want to be successful they do not show any evidence of having thoughts and beliefs that promote their cause. Whatever we want to we can surely achieve if we have a belief system that corresponds to our goals.

Master has suggested that three faiths or beliefs are a must for successful completion of our spiritual journey. The first belief or faith that he listed relates to faith in one self that he can achieve the goal. If we have faith that we will get a proper and competent guide we will surely get one. This is what he said when he stated the guru will come to the doors of a sincere seeker. This faith is a must to succeed in sadhana. It would be erroneous to doubt ones deservancy for realisation not withstanding what the Sanyasins have said.

The main point for focus now is how to keep our belief system in alignment with the goals we want to accomplish.As Master has stressed we should be clear about the goal from the beginning. Master has emphasised the need fix up the goal first. "It is very essential for every one to fix his thought at the very outset, upon the goal which he has to attain so that his thought and will may pave his way into it." Having fixed the goal of attainment of the highest good, we should really believe that we can accomplish the task and reach the goal. If this clarity is not there from the beginning and we have belief systems that work for other goals we should change our belief systems accordingly and change to the desired belief systems. We cannot while pursuing one goal seek the rewards of another.

To change a belief system that is not in congruence with our goal we have to analyze our thoughts. We need to list all the thoughts and beliefs that we have about achieving that goal. For example: if we want to make speedy progress in spiritual life we should list first why we think we cannot make such a progress and what is the cause of this lack of faith in making speedy progress. We need to change our notions and thoughts to correspond with what we want. This can be done by persistent efforts and by regular monitoring of our thoughts and beliefs and making amendments whenever required.

If we want to achieve success in our endeavour then we have to create thoughts and beliefs that will allow us to achieve the goals. We can think of our mind as a station that sends out energy signals: these energy signals are our thoughts and beliefs. These energy patterns are picked up by our subconscious mind. It then works out and creates situations, circumstances, and events to help us achieve whatever our thoughts and beliefs seek. It also attracts the people to us and guides us to the people who can help us achieve our goals.

The subconscious does not distinguish between what is good and bad for us: it simply acts on our instructions. Those instructions are our energy signals which are as we mentioned earlier our thoughts and beliefs. So while we may want to achieve realisation, if we don't believe that we can and if we regularly maintain that notion either as a mark of humility or fear of incapacity that we can not achieve the same we should know we are instructing our subconscious to create situations for us that will not enable us to achieve our goals. This is why it is so important to eliminate negative thinking and create a positive thinking pattern in spirituality. It is in this context we should understand the value of being happy under all circumstances. Nitya santushti is a necessary attitude for spiritual progress.

It becomes clear that if we want to achieve our goal and live the life of natural cooperation that we want we have to send the right messages to our subconscious mind.

It is a matter that is not readily acceptable to us because this appears to be naive and simple. But that is the method suggested by our Master. Many persons changed their lives and achieved perfection in their life based on these principles. If we examine whether the entertaining patterns of negative thinking is helping us we find that it does not. That type of defeatist mentality enables only to get defeated. When we get calmness and peace during the meditation if our attention goes to these states of divinity we progress faster. If instead we complain about the thoughts of no consequence that visited us during meditation and feel discouraged, the result also would be disagreeable and many times disastrous. If such negative thinking pattern got reflected too often negative thinking pattern will start shaping our life.

The importance of having one method, one master and absolute faith in our own deservancy to reach the goal cannot be over emphasized in sadhana. These statements of the Master are based on very sound principles of the science of mind.

In Japan, a Historian Stands by Proof of Wartime Sex Slavery

This is a good article on the subject.
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The New York Times
March 31, 2007
The Saturday Profile

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

TOKYO

IT was about 15 years ago, recalled Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a mild-mannered historian, when he grew fed up with the Japanese government’s denials that the military had set up and run brothels throughout Asia during World War II.

Instead of firing off a letter to a newspaper, though, Mr. Yoshimi went to the Defense Agency’s library and combed through official documents from the 1930s. In just two days, he found a rare trove that uncovered the military’s direct role in managing the brothels, including documents that carried the personal seals of high-ranking Imperial Army officers.

Faced with this smoking gun, a red-faced Japanese government immediately dropped its long-standing claim that only private businessmen had operated the brothels. A year later, in 1993, it acknowledged in a statement that the Japanese state itself had been responsible. In time, all government-approved junior high school textbooks carried passages on the history of Japan’s military sex slaves, known euphemistically as comfort women.

“Back then, I was optimistic that this would effectively settle the issue,” Mr. Yoshimi said. “But there was a fierce backlash.”

The backlash came from young nationalist politicians led by Shinzo Abe, an obscure lawmaker at the time in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who lobbied to rescind the 1993 admission of state responsibility. Their goal finally seemed close at hand after Mr. Abe became prime minister last September.

Mr. Abe said he would adhere to the 1993 statement, but he also undercut it by asserting that there was no evidence showing the military’s role in forcing women into sexual slavery. His comments incited outrage in Asia and the United States, where the House of Representatives is considering a nonbinding resolution that would call on Japan to admit unequivocally its history of sexual slavery and to apologize for it.

To Mr. Yoshimi, Mr. Abe’s denial sounded familiar. Until Mr. Yoshimi came along 15 years ago, the government had always maintained that there were no official documents to prove the military’s role in establishing the brothels. Mr. Abe was now saying there were no official documents to prove that the military forcibly procured the women — thereby discounting other evidence, including the testimony of former sex slaves.

“The fact is, if you can’t use anything except official documents, history itself is impossible to elucidate,” said Mr. Yoshimi, a history professor at Chuo University here.

The emphasis on official documents, according to Mr. Yoshimi and other historians, has long been part of the government’s strategy to control wartime history. In the two weeks between Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, and the arrival of American occupation forces, wartime leaders fearing postwar trials incinerated so many potentially incriminating documents that the Tokyo sky was said to be black with smoke. Even today, Japan refuses to release documents that historians believe have survived and would shed light on Japan’s wartime history.

Although Mr. Yoshimi found official documents showing the military’s role in establishing brothels, he is not optimistic about unearthing documents about the military’s abduction of women.

“There are things that are never written in official documents,” he said. “That they were forcibly recruited — that’s the kind of thing that would have never been written in the first place.”

John W. Dower, a historian of Japan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Mr. Yoshimi’s “extremely impressive” work has “clarified the historical record in ways that people like Prime Minister Abe and those who support him refuse to acknowledge.”

MR. YOSHIMI grew up in Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan, in a household with fresh memories of the war. He traces his interest in history to a junior high school lecture on the nation’s American-written, pacifist Constitution and its guarantee of human rights. He was impressed that the Constitution “even had something to say about a kid like me in the countryside.”

After completing his studies at the University of Tokyo, Mr. Yoshimi concentrated on Japan’s postwar democratization. It was while searching for documents related to Japan’s wartime use of poison gas in the Defense Agency’s library that he first stumbled upon proof of the military’s role in sexual slavery.

Mr. Yoshimi copied the document but did not publicize his finding. At the time, no former sex slave had gone public about her experiences, and awareness of wartime sex crimes against women was low.

But in late 1991, former sex slaves in South Korea became the first to break their silence. When the Japanese government responded with denials, Mr. Yoshimi went back to the Defense Agency.

Of the half-dozen documents he discovered, the most damning was a notice written on March 4, 1938, by the adjutant to the chiefs of staff of the North China Area Army and Central China Expeditionary Force. Titled “Concerning the Recruitment of Women for Military Comfort Stations,” the notice said that “armies in the field will control the recruiting of women,” and that “this task will be performed in close cooperation with the military police or local police force of the area.”

In another document from July 1938, Naosaburo Okabe, chief of staff of the North China Area Army, wrote that rapes of local women by Japanese soldiers had deepened anti-Japanese sentiments and that setting up “facilities for sexual comfort as quickly as possible is of great importance.” Yet another, an April 1939 report by the headquarters of the 21st Army in Guangzhou, China, noted that the 21st Army directly supervised 850 women.

Mr. Yoshimi went public by telling Asahi Shimbun, a national daily newspaper. The attention led to years of harassment from the right wing, he said, including nightly phone calls.

These documents had survived because they had been moved 25 miles west of central Tokyo before the end of the war, Mr. Yoshimi said. The postwar American occupation forces had then confiscated the documents, eventually returning them to Japan in the 1950s.

DESPITE the government’s efforts to hide the past, Mr. Yoshimi succeeded in painting a detailed picture of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery: a system of military-run brothels that emerged in 1932 after Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, then grew with full-scale war against China in 1937 and expanded into most of Asia in the 1940s.

Between 50,000 and 200,000 women from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere were tricked or coerced into sexual slavery, Mr. Yoshimi said. Thousands from Korea and Taiwan, Japanese colonies at the time, were dispatched aboard naval vessels to serve Japanese soldiers in battlefields elsewhere in Asia. Unlike other militaries that have used wartime brothels, the Japanese military was the “main actor,” Mr. Yoshimi said.

“The Japanese military itself newly built this system, took the initiative to create this system, maintained it and expanded it, and violated human rights as a result,” he said. “That’s a critical difference.”

Mr. Yoshimi said he was unsurprised by the most recent moves to deny the wartime sex slavery. He said they were simply the culmination of a long campaign by nationalist politicians who have succeeded in casting doubt, in Japan, on what is accepted as historical fact elsewhere.

In 1997, all seven government-approved junior high school textbooks contained passages about the former sex slaves. Now, as a result of the nationalists’ campaign, only two out of eight do.

“Mr. Abe and his allies led that campaign,” Mr. Yoshimi said, “and now they occupy the center of political power.”

Statement of Jan Ruff O’Herne AO

Statement of

Jan Ruff O’Herne AO

Friends of “Comfort Women” in Australia

Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment

Committee on Foreign Affairs

U.S. House of Representatives

Hearing on

Protecting the Human Rights of “Comfort Women”

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Chairman Faleomavaega and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for this holding this congressional hearing on the plight of “Comfort Women”. I am pleased to join with survivors Ms. Yong-Soo Lee of Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Japanese Military Sexual Slavery and Ms. Koon-Ja Kim of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium to share our stories before you today.

I would also like to thank Representative Michael Honda for introducing House Resolution 121, which demands that the Japanese government “officially and unambiguously” apologize and to “take historical responsibility”. And I thank Chairman Eni F.H Faleomavaega for inviting the witnesses to speak, to tell our stories to the world in the hope that it will bring us justice.

My experience as a woman in war is one of utter degradation, humiliation and unbearable suffering. During World War II, I was forced to be a so-called “Comfort Woman” for the Japanese military, a euphemism for sex slave.

The Forgotten Ones

I was born in Java, in the former Dutch East Indies (now known as Indonesia) in 1923 of a fourth generation Dutch colonial family. I grew up on a sugar plantation and had the most wonderful childhood. I was educated in Catholic schools and graduated from Franciscan Teacher’s College in Semarang, Java.

When I was 19 years old in 1942, Japanese troops invaded Java. Together with thousands of women and children, I was interned in a Japanese prison camp for three and a half years. Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps. But one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the “Comfort Women”, the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army.

I had been in the camp for two years, when in 1944 high ranking Japanese officers arrived at the camp. The order was given: all single girls from seventeen years up, had to line up in the compound. The officers walked towards us, and a selection process began. They paced up and down the line, eyeing us up and down, looking at our figures, at our legs, lifting our chins. They selected ten pretty girls. I was one of ten. We were told to come forward, and pack a small bag, as we were to be taken away. The whole camp protested, and our mothers tried to pull us back. I embraced my mother not knowing if I was ever going to see her again. We were hurled into an army truck. We were terrified and clung to our bags and to each other.

The truck stopped in the city of Semarang, in front of a large Dutch Colonial house. We were told to get out. Entering the house we soon realized what sort of a house it was. A Japanese military told us that we were here for the sexual pleasure of the Japanese. The house was a brothel.

We protested loudly. We said we were forced to come here, against our will. That they had no right to do this to us, and that it was against the Geneva Convention. But they just laughed at us and said that they could do with us as they liked. We were given Japanese names and these were put on our bedroom doors.

We were a very innocent generation. I knew nothing about sex. The horrific memories of “opening night” of the brothel have tortured my mind all my life. We were told to go to the dining room, and we huddled together in fear, as we saw the house filling up with military. I got out my prayer book, and led the girls in prayer, in the hope that this would help us. Then they started to drag us away, one by one. I could hear the screaming coming from the bedrooms. I hid under the table, but was soon found. I fought him. I kicked him with all my might. The Japanese officer became very angry because I would not give myself to him. He took his sword out of its scabbard and pointed it at me, threatening me with it, that he would kill me if I did not give into him. I curled myself into a corner, like a hunted animal that could not escape. I made him understand that I was not afraid to die. I pleaded with him to allow me to say some prayers. While I was praying he started to undress himself. He had no intention of killing me. I would have been no good to him dead.

He then threw me on the bed and ripped off all my clothes. He ran his sword all over my naked body, and played with me as a cat would with a mouse. I still tried to fight him, but he thrust himself on top of me, pinning me down under his heavy body. The tears were streaming down my face as he raped me in a most brutal way. I thought he would never stop.

When he eventually left the room, my whole body was shaking. I gathered up what was left of my clothing, and fled into the bathroom. There I found some of the other girls. We were all crying, and in total shock. In the bathroom I tried to wash away all the dirt and the shame off my body. Just wash it away. But the night was not over yet, there were more Japanese waiting, and this went on all night, it was only the beginning, week after week, month after month.

The house was completely guarded, there was no way to escape. At times I tried to hide, but was always found, and dragged back to my room. I tried everything, I even cut off all my hair, so I was totally bald. I thought if I made myself look ugly, nobody would want me. But it turned me into a curiosity object; they all wanted the girl that had cut off her hair. It had the opposite effect.

Never did any Japanese rape me without a fight. I fought each one of them. Therefore, I was repeatedly beaten. In the so-called “Comfort Station” I was systematically beaten and raped day and night. Even the Japanese doctor raped me each time he visited the brothel to examine us for veneral disease. And to humiliate us even more the doors and windows were left open, so the Japanese could watch us being examined.

During the time in the “Comfort Station”, the Japanese had abused me and humiliated me. I was left with a body that was torn and fragmented everywhere. The Japanese soldiers had ruined my young life. They had stripped me of everything. They had taken away my youth, my self-esteem, my dignity, my freedom, my possessions, and my family. But there was one thing that they could never take away from me. It was my religious faith and love for God. This was mine and nobody could take that away from me. It was my deep Faith that helped me survive all that the Japanese did to me.

I have forgiven the Japanese for what they did to me, but I can never forget. For fifty years, the “Comfort Women” maintained silence; they lived with a terrible shame, of feeling soiled and dirty. It has taken 50 years for these women’s ruined lives to become a human rights issue.

The war never ended for the “Comfort Women”. We still have the nightmares. After the war I needed major surgery to restore my body.

In 1992 the Korean “Comfort Women” broke their silence. Ms. Kim Hak Sun was the first to speak out. I watched them on TV as they pleaded for justice, for an apology and compensation from the Japanese government. I decided to back them up. I broke my silence at the International Public Hearing on Japanese War Crimes in Tokyo in December 1992 and revealed one of the worst human rights abuses of World War II, the forgotten holocaust.

For the past 15 years, I have worked tirelessly for the plight of “Comfort Women” in Australia and overseas, and for the protection of women in war. Now the time is running out. After sixty years the “Comfort Women” deserve justice. They are worthy of a formal apology from the Japanese government, from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe himself. The Japanese government must take full responsibility for their war crimes.

In 1995 they established the Asian Women’s Fund, to compensate the victims. This Fund was an insult to the “Comfort Women” and they, including myself, refused to accept it. This fund was a private fund, the money came from private enterprise, and not from the government. Japan must come to terms with its history, and acknowledge their war time atrocities. They must teach the correct history of the mistakes made in the past.

It is important that the surviving “Comfort Women” tell their stories. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I thank you for this opportunity to share my story. I hope that by speaking out, I have been able to make a contribution to world peace and reconciliation, and that human rights violation against women will never happen again.

Thank you.

A Fighter for Colleges That Have Everything but Status

By ALAN FINDER
The New York Times
February 28, 2007

BAILEY’S CROSSROADS, Va.

LOREN POPE has been bucking convention nearly all of his life, which is to say for a long, long time.

Mr. Pope, who is 96, grew up in northern Virginia, a Democrat in a family he describes as “hard-core Republican.” He worked as an editor at Washington newspapers and a local radio station, but left the news business for a while in the late 1940s to farm and raise cattle, largely because he thought the press was failing to stand up firmly to anti-Communist bullying. A decade later, he left The New York Times after a year as its education editor, discouraged, he says, by factionalism and bureaucracy.

So naturally, when he opened shop as an independent college counselor in Washington in 1965, Mr. Pope quickly developed a maverick’s view of college admissions.

He helped some clients get into the country’s most selective colleges and universities, but that was not where his passions lay. Instead, he began vigorously promoting to high school students and their parents the virtues of small, little-known liberal arts colleges.

“I’ve got egalitarian instincts, and that’s why I’m opposed to the elite schools’ status and prestige,” Mr. Pope said.

He sees as false the assumption that the selectivity of Ivy League and other elite colleges translates into the best education. Instead, he advocates colleges that accept a broad range of students, not just the top academic performers. And he argues that colleges with fewer than 3,000 students offer the best educational experience because students will have more opportunities to get to know professors well, both inside and outside the classroom.

“The smaller the school, the more impact it can have on a kid,” he said. He added, “My mission in life is to change the way people think about colleges.”

He has largely succeeded, and far beyond his expectations. In books, magazine articles and countless lectures over the last three decades, Mr. Pope helped to redefine the admissions landscape.

His last two books — “Looking Beyond the Ivy League” (Penguin Books, 1990) and “Colleges That Change Lives” (Penguin Books, 1996) — are required reading in many high school guidance offices. “Colleges That Change Lives” has sold more than 100,000 copies, and a revised edition was published last summer. The book has spawned group tours by many of the 40 colleges Mr. Pope identified as less-than-well-known institutions that provide memorable educations.

At a time when ranking guides have fueled an obsession in many families on the top 10 or 20 colleges and universities, Mr. Pope was among the first to encourage students and parents to think more broadly about what they want from a college education and where best to get one.

“Loren Pope has been a wonderful breath of fresh air,” said Jon Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School. “What he does and what the book does — I use the book all the time — is to say, here are all these little schools, you’ve never heard of most of them, like Hiram College and Juniata College and Allegheny College, and these are really wonderful places. These are places that really can, as the book says, change your life.”

MR. REIDER and other college counselors say there is nothing wrong with Stanford or Swarthmore or the Ivy League universities. Mr. Pope takes a harder line, though. Unafraid of broad generalizations and uninterested in diplomacy, he dismisses elite universities as too big, too impersonal and too selective.

Asked if a student could get a good education at Harvard or Yale, he said, “I think you’d have to work harder for it” because the professors are more focused on their research and it is harder to get to know them.

He is skeptical about why students and parents pursue admission to brand-name colleges. “I think all they are thinking about is status,” he said.

He even argues that B students ask more probing questions than A students, who he thinks are too caught up in trying to curry favor.

“I’m preaching the virtues of the unselective small colleges, the ones that are inclusive rather than exclusive,” Mr. Pope said in an interview at his apartment in a retirement community here in the suburbs of northern Virginia.

“A good school is an extended family,” he said. “The learning is collaborative, not competitive. It’s a community of learning, and values are central — that’s important.”

On visits to scores of colleges over the decades, Mr. Pope developed his strong, if highly subjective and contrarian, sense of what he liked.

He found these institutions across the country, from Clark University and McDaniel College in the Northeast to Centre College and Rhodes College in the South to Reed College and Evergreen State in the Northwest.

When many of the 40 colleges singled out by Mr. Pope decided to go on tour together nine years ago, to market themselves under the banner of Colleges That Change Lives, they stopped at eight cities and drew crowds of as many as 150 students and parents. Now they tour together nationally four times a year, with a total of about 30 events. Some nights, 500 to 700 people show up.

“What a major, major impact it has had for most of these colleges,” Steve Syverson, dean of admissions and financial aid at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., said of the book. Lawrence is one of Mr. Pope’s 40 colleges.

“The real underlying message is that there are lots of very good and interesting places that can serve a lot of students in good ways,” Mr. Syverson said. “It’s not one size fits all, and we should be celebrating the diversity of opportunities.”

It was probably inevitable that the heightened attention Mr. Pope brought to his favorite colleges would eventually worry him. Some have become too popular, in his mind at least. Between editions of the book he eliminated several colleges, including Bard, Grinnell and Franklin & Marshall, because he thought they had become too selective and were not admitting a sufficiently broad range of students. They were replaced by Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., and New College of Florida in Sarasota, Fla., among others.

Mr. Pope continues to enjoy remarkably good health, but he has made some concessions to age. He retired from his college consulting business when he was 93, under pressure from his wife, Viola, he said. He stopped touring with the colleges shortly afterward, and he has spent considerable time in recent years caring for his ailing wife. (DePauw University, his alma mater, did not make his group of 40 colleges; he thinks it has become too big, too prosperous and too selective.)

But he remains vigorously at work on several projects: preparing a new edition of “Looking Beyond the Ivy League” and writing a book about a small house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for him in 1940, in response to a letter from Mr. Pope, then a newspaper copy editor. The house is now a museum near Mount Vernon in suburban Virginia.

These days, he is frequently lauded with awards and honorary degrees for his contributions to college admissions. He requires little prodding to tell funny and often self-deprecating tales of his varied careers as a newspaper editor, radio news editor, education columnist, farmer and college administrator.

Mr. Pope did not truly find his niche until he opened his college counseling business at the age of 55 (selling timber from his farm to finance the venture). He cemented his reputation with his last book, published when he was 86. Looking back, is he surprised that it took so long?

“No, I’m not surprised,” he said. “Given my personality, that’s the way it had to be. I’m an evangelist, and I was hunting for a cause.”

FUNNY article

From the ever reliable Onion.

LOS ANGELES—This year's Academy Awards pre-ceremony red carpet display has analysts worried that the divide between the nation's best and worst dressed is only growing, forcing thousands to live well below the taste line while a lucky few see their glamour levels skyrocket.

"Every year it's the same story, with the flashy getting flashier and the trashy getting trashier," said red carpet fashion expert Melissa Rivers, who brought attention to the issue Sunday night in a special post-Oscars report broadcast on the TV Guide channel. "If nothing is done to level the playing field, we may never see members of the fashion underprivileged, like Lindsay Lohan and Pamela Anderson, make the transition from sham to glam."

Oscar night fashion, which many experts use as a bellwether for the state of celebrity gorgeousness nationwide, has shown in recent years a high concentration of couture in the hands of a few, with Halle Berry alone commanding over 57 percent of the nation's supply of sexy yet exquisitely tasteful gowns.

"We can't just assume that because Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, and Kate Winslet look amazing, everything is okay," said Rivers, as celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch and In Touch magazine fashion commentator Goumba Johnny nodded in solemn agreement. "For every Sarah Jessica Parker, there's an overdressed underclass of Mary-Kate Olsens and Paula Abduls."

While fashion moguls have long predicted that investing in designer dresses would have an impact throughout Hollywood, little style has actually trickled down to those most in need. Fixtures of the fashion elite like Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Lopez, and George Clooney, and younger taste mavens Reese Witherspoon and Anne Hathaway continue to occupy the highest strata, while Helena Bonham Carter, Mariah Carey, and Diane Keaton perennially personify the depressing lack of upward mobility, Rivers said.

"The best-dressed, worst-dressed divide is also a generational problem, as the children of worst-dressed celebrities are less likely to encounter the same glamour opportunities as children of best-dressed celebs," Rivers continued. "Just look at the Osbourne children. It's tragic. It's tragic."

Some celebrities, such as Jennifer Love Hewitt and Heather Graham, are accused of pursuing fashion beyond their fame. Moreover, a growing number of style analysts, including Rivers' counterpart and TV personality Jay Manuel, place blame for the current state of elegance squarely on the shoulders of the devastated celebrities themselves.

"It's all about personal responsibility: pull yourself up by your own Choo straps," Manuel said. "Courtney Love has her choice of any Versace gown she wants, but she chooses to look like she just stumbled out the back door of a methadone clinic. You just have to want to work hard and apply yourself."

Others insist that celebrities do not choose their worst-dressed fate, but are victims of recent fashion disasters from which they have not yet recovered.

"I don't believe for a minute that any of this is [the celebrities'] fault," said longtime red-carpet presence Joan Rivers, Melissa's mother. "Who in the world chooses to present themselves like Sharon Stone? Who goes out and dresses like Tori Spelling on purpose? No one, that's who! Gawd! It makes me sick!"

Rivers then simulated the act of forcing herself to vomit to emphasize her disgust over the accelerating fashion disparity.

No Apology Needed

This is by far the strongest defense for Hilary's war support vote in 2002. And it came from a moderate Republican. Does it surprise anyone?

~ ~ ~
No Apology Needed

By DAVID BROOKS
February 15, 2007

Far be it from me to get in the middle of a liberal purge, but would anybody mind if I pointed out that the calls for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her support of the Iraq war are almost entirely bogus?

I mean, have the people calling for her apology actually read the speeches she delivered before the war? Have they read her remarks during the war resolution debate, when she specifically rejected a pre-emptive, unilateral attack on Saddam? Did they read the passages in which she called for a longer U.N. inspections regime and declared, “I believe international support and legitimacy are crucial”?

If they went back and read what Senator Clinton was saying before the war, they’d be surprised, as I was, by her approach. And they’d learn something, as I did, about what kind of president she would make.

The Iraq war debate began in earnest in September 2002. At that point Clinton was saying in public what Colin Powell was saying in private: emphasizing the need to work through the U.N. and build a broad coalition to enforce inspections.

She delivered her Senate resolution speech on Oct. 10. It was Clintonian in character. On the one hand, she rejected the Bush policy of pre-emptive war. On the other hand, she also rejected the view that the international community “should only resort to force if and when the United Nations Security Council approves it.” Drawing on the lessons of Bosnia, she said sometimes the world had to act, even if the big powers couldn’t agree.

She sought a third way: more U.N. resolutions, more inspections, more diplomacy, with the threat of force reserved as a last resort. She was triangulating, but the Senate resolution offered her a binary choice. She voted yes in order to give Powell bipartisan leverage at the U.N.

This is how she’s always explained that vote, and I confess that until now, I’ve regarded her explanation as a transparent political dodge. Didn’t everyone know this was a war resolution? But now, having investigated her public comments, I think diplomatic leverage really was on her mind. I also know, from a third person, that she was spending a lot of time with Powell and wanted to help.

On Nov. 8, 2002, the Security Council passed a unanimous resolution threatening Saddam with “serious consequences” if he didn’t disarm.

The next crucial period came in March 2003, as the U.S. battled France over the second Security Council resolution. Clinton’s argument at this point was that inspections were working and should be given more time. “It is preferable that we do this in a peaceful manner through coercive inspection,” she said on March 3, but went on, “At some point we have to be willing to uphold the United Nations resolutions.” Then she added, “This is a very delicate balancing act.”

On March 17, Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to disarm or face attack. Clinton tried to be critical of the Bush policy while being deferential to the office of the presidency. She clearly had doubts about Bush’s timing, but she kept emphasizing that from her time in the White House, she knew how unhelpful it was for senators to be popping off in public on foreign policy.

At one press event in New York, she nodded when Charles Rangel said Bush had failed at the U.N. But when reporters asked Clinton to repeat what Rangel had just said, she bit her tongue. On March 17, as U.S. troops mobilized, she issued her strongest statement in support of the effort.

Clinton’s biggest breach with the liberal wing actually opened up later, in the fall of 2003. Most liberals went into full opposition, wanting to see Bush disgraced. Clinton — while an early critic of the troop levels, the postwar plans and all the rest — tried to stay constructive. She wanted to see America and Iraq succeed, even if Bush was not disgraced.

When you look back at Clinton’s thinking, you don’t see a classic war supporter. You see a person who was trying to seek balance between opposing arguments. You also see a person who deferred to the office of the presidency. You see a person who, as president, would be fox to Bush’s hedgehog: who would see problems in their complexities rather than in their essentials; who would elevate procedural concerns over philosophical ones; who would postpone decision points for as long as possible; and who would make distinctions few heed.

Today, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party believes that the world, and Hillary Clinton in particular, owes it an apology. If she apologizes, she’ll forfeit her integrity. She will be apologizing for being herself.

This blog is dying...

To slap some spirit into this sagging blog, I decided to repost an article by Maureen Dowd. This is a very true trend that I've mused over too, as I "cruised through Borders."

Heels over Hemingway, by Maureen Dowd

I was cruising through Borders, looking for a copy of “Nostromo.”

Suddenly I was swimming in pink. I turned frantically from display table to display table, but I couldn’t find a novel without a pink cover. I was accosted by a sisterhood of cartoon women, sexy string beans in minis and stilettos, fashionably dashing about book covers with the requisite urban props — lattes, books, purses, shopping bags, guns and, most critically, a diamond ring.

Was it a Valentine’s Day special?

No, I realized with growing alarm, chick lit was no longer a niche. It had staged a coup of the literature shelves. Hot babes had shimmied into the grizzled old boys’ club, the land of Conrad, Faulkner and Maugham. The store was possessed with the devil spawn of “The Devil Wears Prada.” The blood-red high heel ending in a devil’s pitchfork on the cover of the Lauren Weisberger best seller might as well be driving a stake through the heart of the classics.

I even found Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” with chick-lit pretty-in-pink lettering.

“Penis lit versus Venus lit,” said my friend Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, who was with me. “An unacceptable choice.”

“Looking for Mr. Goodbunny” by Kathleen O’Reilly sits atop George Orwell’s “1984.” “Mine Are Spectacular!” by Janice Kaplan and Lynn Schnurnberger hovers over “Ulysses.” Sophie Kinsella’s “Shopaholic” series cuddles up to Rudyard Kipling.

Even Will Shakespeare is buffeted by rampaging 30-year-old heroines, each one frantically trying to get their guy or figure out if he’s the right guy, or if he meant what he said, or if he should be with them instead of their BFF or cousin, or if he’ll come back, or if she’ll end up stuck home alone eating Häagen-Dazs and watching “CSI” and “Sex and the City” reruns.

Trying to keep up with soap-opera modernity, “Romeo and Juliet” has been reissued with a perky pink cover.

There are subsections of chick lit: black chick lit (“Diva Diaries”), Bollywood chick lit (“Salaam, Paris”), Jewish chick lit (“The J.A.P. Chronicles” and “The Matzo Ball Heiress”) and assistant lit, which has its own subsection of Hollywood-assistant lit (“The Second Assistant”), mystery lit (“Sex, Murder and a Double Latte”), shopping lit (“Retail Therapy”), the self-loathing genre (“This Is Not Chick Lit”) and Brit chick lit (“Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging”).

The narrator of that last, Georgia, begins with a note to her readers: “Hello, American-type chums! (Perhaps you say ‘Howdy’ in America — I don’t know — but then I’m not really sure where Tibet is either, or my lipstick.) ... I hope you like my diary and don’t hold it against me that my great-great-great-grandparents colonized you. (Not just the two of them. ...).”

Giving the books an even more interchangeable feeling is the bachelorette party of log-rolling blurbs by chick-lit authors. Jennifer “Good in Bed” Weiner blurbs Sarah Mlynowski’s “Me vs. Me” and Karen McCullah Lutz’s “The Bachelorette Party.” Lauren Weisberger blurbs Emily “Something Borrowed” Giffin.

I took home three dozen of the working women romances. They can lull you into a hypnotic state with their simple life lessons — one heroine emulated Doris Day, another Audrey Hepburn, one was the spitting image of Carolyn Bessette, another Charlize Theron — but they’re a long way from Becky Sharp and Elizabeth Bennet. They’re all chick and no lit.

Please do not confuse these books with the love-and-marriage of Jane Austen. These are more like multicultural Harlequin romances. They’re Cinderella bodice rippers — Manolo trippers — girls with long legs, long shiny hair and sparkling eyes stumbling through life, eating potato skins loaded with bacon bits and melted swiss, drinking cocktails, looking for the right man and dispensing nuggets of hard-won wisdom, like, “Any guy who can watch you hurl Cheez Doodles is a keeper,” and, “You can’t puke in wicker. It leaks.”

In the 19th century in America, people often linked the reading of novels with women. Women were creatures of sensibility, and men were creatures of action. But now, Leon suggested, American fiction seems to be undergoing a certain re-feminization.

“These books do not seem particularly demanding in the manner of real novels,” Leon said. “And when we’re at war and the country is under threat, they seem a little insular. America’s reading women could do a lot worse than to put down ‘Will Francine Get Her Guy?’ and pick up ‘The Red Badge of Courage.’ ”

The novel was once said to be a mirror of its times. In my local bookstore, it’s more like a makeup mirror.

Tapping Solar Power

I think this is an amazing trivia fact. Not to get all scientific and nerdy on you, but think of all the energy that is readily available from our favorite star, the Sun.

Photosynthetic microorganisms can capture solar energy, a free, abundant and under-used energy source. The amount of solar energy that strikes the Earth every hour (4.3 x10^20 Joules) is approximately equal to the total amount of energy that is consumed on the planet every year (4.1 x10^20 Joules). Therefore, capturing even a small fraction of the available solar energy could make a significant contribution to global energy needs. Despite its availability, however, a study carried out in 2001 found that sunlight provided less than 0.1% of the world's electricity.

- Nature Review, Vol 11, Editorial.

The New 7 Wonders

www.new7wonders.com/

Go Vote!

The New 7 Wonders of the World

New 7 Wonders of the World

I just voted for the new 7 wonders of the World, which are to be revealed on 07/07/07 in Lisbon. Needless to say, there are the usual suspects, i.e. the Great Wall, Pyramid of Giza, Taj Mahal etc. But I was somewhat surprised to find that some are among the finalists, for example, the Sidney Opera House, a temple from Japan, and the Statue of Liberty. While I can certainly appreciate the symbolic importance of Lady Liberty, but I wouldn't go so far as to list it among the others which have stood the test of time and still convey a sense of grandeur and majesticity. In order for something to be a "wonder," to me at least, it has to represent a significant human endeavor, something that inspires awe to whomever sets their eyes upon it for generations to come.

Rereading Persuasion

I have been re-reading Jane Austen's PERSUASION over the last few days. It's a book I have read several times before, but I keep finding newly delightful passages. The main character, Anne Elliott, is so thoroughly sympathetic. I absolutely adore this book!

And there is something so familiar about taking up a favorite book. Oddly comforting, like seeing an old friend.

Not too much insight here, just wanted to gush a bit about the joys of reading!

Master of Time: Wong Kar-Wai in America

Posted here from the New York Times, written by Dennis Lim.


On a SoHo film set last August, Jude Law and Norah Jones were getting intimate. Repeatedly intimate. To be precise, they had kissed upwards of 150 times in the past three days.

The occasion for this outbreak of passion was “My Blueberry Nights,” the first English-language film by Wong Kar-wai, the maverick Hong Kong director turned avatar of cosmopolitan cool. This particular night was stifling as the crew spilled out of Palacinka, a small cafe on Grand Street that was the principal New York location, preparing for yet another take of the scene known as “the Kiss.”

It’s closing time, and Ms. Jones, the only remaining customer, is slumped on the counter, her eyes shut. A smudge of cream rests on her upper lip, the telltale sign of a dessert binge. Mr. Law, cleaning up behind the bar, gazes at her, slowly leans in and steals a lingering kiss. When he surfaces, the cream on her lip is gone.

The shot lasted less than a minute, but the number of permutations that Mr. Wong and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, devised — 15 set-ups, by the count of the script supervisor — suggested it would play a central role in the finished film. The Kiss was being shot at different film speeds and from a multitude of angles: a wide shot, his point of view, hers, through windows, with objects in the foreground.

“I’ve never worked with someone who’s put so much emphasis on a single moment,” Mr. Law said between takes one night. “It’s extraordinary how he’ll take a moment and replay it and slice it up.”

The consecration of a fleeting, fugitive moment is one of Mr. Wong’s specialties. Perhaps more than any filmmaker since Alain Resnais, his great subject is time — or more specifically lost time. His rhapsodic movies, haunted by voice-over ruminations and swathed in lush regret, seem to transpire in the realm of memory. People and places are mourned even as they are captured on camera.

Mr. Wong, 48, is keen to describe “My Blueberry Nights,” a road movie shot in New York, Memphis, Las Vegas and Ely, Nev., with a cast that also includes Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz and David Strathairn, as a new beginning. His last film, “2046,” was planned as science fiction but demonstrated the gravitational pull of the past as well, succumbing to the hothouse delirium of 1960s Hong Kong. A kaleidoscopic head rush, “2046” quoted so extensively from Mr. Wong’s earlier work that it felt like a midcareer retrospective unto itself.

To a notorious degree Mr. Wong finds his way as he goes, often plunging into production with little more than an outline. His exploratory method gives his films a unique shape and intensity; the result is inseparable from the process.

In the mid-1990s, with Hong Kong’s reversion to Chinese sovereignty looming, Mr. Wong directed three films — “Chungking Express,” “Fallen Angels” and “Happy Together” — in quick succession. Made as if on deadline, they have a brash Polaroid-like immediacy. The films that followed, “In the Mood for Love” and “2046,” are period reveries rooted in the melancholy of transience. It’s only fitting that he had a hard time letting go; each took a seeming eternity to complete. “In five years you can make five films, but I spent five years making one,” he said in his Manhattan hotel room soon after the shoot, referring to “2046.”

“My Blueberry Nights” — repeat kisses notwithstanding — is a conscious attempt to pick up the pace. For one thing, Mr. Wong shot it in just seven weeks. “We thought of this as a vacation film, spontaneous and contemporary,” he said. “Making a film under the best conditions, it’s like a rock band on tour,” he added, ever the rock-star director: his trademark sunglasses stayed on through the New York night shoots.

For another, Mr. Wong said that the project “happened overnight.” He was in New York last year researching another movie, “The Lady From Shanghai,” a period drama (no relation to the Orson Welles film noir) that would star Nicole Kidman and shoot in Russia, Shanghai and New York. When that was postponed, he decided to make a smaller, off-the-cuff film, which he conceived as a vehicle for Ms. Jones, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, who had never acted before.

“She’s a natural,” he said, adding that he had instructed her not to take acting lessons.

As he sees it, “My Blueberry Nights” is in a sense about Ms. Jones’s face as it reacts to different environments. “In Memphis there’s something very classic about her presence,” he said. “In New York it’s very contemporary.”

Ms. Jones seemed less confident than her director. “I have no idea what he saw in me or where he saw it,” she said on a coffee break one night. “When I got the call, I thought he wanted some music for his movies. It’s weird because I feel like I’ve looked uncomfortable in every music video I’ve been in.”

William Chang, who has been Mr. Wong’s editor, production designer and costume designer from the start, is with him on “My Blueberry Nights,” but for the first time in 15 years Christopher Doyle, the iconoclastic Australian cinematographer, is not. Together Mr. Wong and Mr. Doyle invented a much copied visual shorthand for romantic alienation, a mix of neon-smudged kinesis and slow-motion contemplation. But their relationship has been strained of late, with Mr. Doyle’s Hollywood workload and Mr. Wong’s erratic schedules becoming incompatible. In Mr. Doyle’s place is Mr. Khondji, the French cinematographer best known for the dank atmospherics of David Fincher’s “Seven.”

Just as striking as Mr. Doyle’s absence from the project is the presence of Hollywood actors. Over the years Mr. Wong has built up a repertory of Hong Kong luminaries who learned to thrive under his impulsive demands. “My Blueberry Nights” subjects its starry ensemble to an open-ended process that would be inconceivable on a studio movie. (The film was acquired for American distribution by the Weinstein Company earlier this month.)

Mr. Wong was also working for the first time with a screenwriting partner, the crime novelist Lawrence Block, who had written some scenes based on an outline. While shooting, Mr. Wong constantly revised and added new scenes, often at the last minute. He said he was surprised to find that the actors were not only ready for the challenge — his reputation preceded him — but even excited.

“I wish we had endless time and endless money,” Mr. Law said. “It’s not often you get to be part of something like this — a living story that’s still being decided.”

There is a pragmatic side to Mr. Wong’s seemingly reckless method. Entire subplots are planned, cast and even shot, only to evaporate. But he recycles ideas as often as he abandons them. A stray segment from “Chungking Express” became “Fallen Angels,” while “2046” bloomed from a kernel first planted in “Days of Being Wild,” his 1991 breakthrough film.

Similarly “My Blueberry Nights” grew out of a planned omnibus called “Three Stories About Food.” One chapter became “In the Mood for Love” (2000). Another, the basis for “Blueberry,” was filmed as a short with Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, and has only been screened once, at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.

That short, called “In the Mood for Love 2001,” contained the blueprint for the Kiss. As Mr. Wong expanded the scenario, it turned into a road movie partly because it would cost too much to shoot entirely in New York. So he contrived a romantic predicament to send Ms. Jones’s character on a trip. “She needs time to think so she takes the longest road across America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” he said.

The next step was to map her route and find at least two pit stops. Crew members went on three cross-country location scouting trips, accompanied twice by Mr. Khondji and once by Mr. Wong. Both took copious photos of highways, diners, motels: slices of Americana in the style of Robert Frank and William Eggleston.

Mr. Wong considered post-Katrina New Orleans, but the logistics were daunting. He opted instead for Memphis, where Ms. Jones would encounter Mr. Strathairn and Ms. Weisz’s unhappy couple. (Mr. Wong called the Memphis segment a tribute to Tennessee Williams.) He discovered Ely while driving along Highway 50, often called the loneliest road in America, and decided to place Ms. Portman’s story line there.

Mr. Wong asks for complete trust from his actors, but he’s also willing to customize their roles to suit them. This was especially so with Mr. Law’s character, the cafe proprietor, who started out as a quiet type but grew more boisterous when the actor’s charisma and energy became evident. “I kept telling him to get louder,” Mr. Wong said.

More than a month into the shoot, despite the breakneck pace and permanent uncertainty, the atmosphere on set was relatively serene. “There’s an incredible calmness to him,” Mr. Law said of Mr. Wong.

Even so, there are some basic aspects of production in this country that run counter to his prized spontaneity. Permit applications must be filed well in advance. Union regulations stipulate penalties for long days, precluding the marathon sessions that he has been known to hold.

In Hong Kong “we make films like a family business,” he said. “Here everything has to be quite specific. I have to explain to the crew that even though I respect the rules, there’s certain things I want to keep my way.”

As Ms. Jones put it, “He’s open to everything, but he knows what he wants.”

BETWEEN takes of the Kiss, Mr. Chang, the production designer, was fussing over Ms. Jones. He rearranged her hair, fanning her curls out on the countertop, and reapplied the spot of cream on her lip. Compared with the exertions of “2046,” which called for period re-creations, futuristic sets and a heaving wardrobe of traditional and android couture, this was a breeze.

“I really needed a break from period,” Mr. Chang said, smiling.

The cafe location had only been minimally altered. There were hand-painted inscriptions on the glass windows and a new sign outside with Cyrillic lettering. Mr. Chang had also installed a pair of columns to break up the tiny space and mounted mirrors to maximize the angles.

That night Mr. Khondji was working out a complex shot that required him to pan, track and shoot the Kiss through a vase, a cake dish and some beer bottles on the countertop.

After a few takes Mr. Wong asked if the shot would work better if Mr. Law, before swooping in for the smooch, extended his hand to touch Ms. Jones’s face. Or, as he put it, “Foreplay or no foreplay?” A vote was taken among those present; the former prevailed. Mr. Law incorporated the maneuver into the remaining takes.

Later Mr. Wong jokingly explained: “I had to ask because in America, sometimes they prefer things macho. I wasn’t sure if it should be too tender. In Hong Kong I don’t have to ask. I know what a guy would do.”

Most nights the mood music was “The Greatest,” the latest album of dreamy downer ballads by Cat Power. For Mr. Wong the on-set soundtrack was mostly for the benefit of the cinematographer. “The best way for the camera to pick up the rhythm is music,” he said.

Mr. Khondji said that he and Mr. Wong had intended to adopt a casually alert, near-documentary style, using a small crew and natural light. But once they got under way, perhaps through force of habit, the shots became more stylized. Still, Mr. Khondji added: “It’s not as perfect as his last two movies. There’s no time for perfection.”

Mr. Wong left for Hong Kong in September with almost all of “Blueberry,” his ninth feature, under his belt and — it would not be a Wong Kar-wai film otherwise — questions surrounding the ending. He said he would likely return in the winter to shoot the concluding scenes.

Reached by e-mail recently, he said he was editing with Mr. Chang and would not make any decisions about additional shooting until he had a first cut. The plan had been to balance the completion of “Blueberry” with preproduction on “The Lady From Shanghai,” but Ms. Kidman announced last month that she was pulling out of that film. “None of those reports have been confirmed by anyone involved with the project,” Mr. Wong wrote. Without Ms. Kidman, though, he added, “There is no reason to do it.”

Over tea shortly before he left New York, Mr. Wong said he was exhausted from the grueling shoot. But far from being fazed by the sense of incompletion, he seemed invigorated: the door remained open, no alternatives had been lost, the story was still alive.

And how might “My Blueberry Nights” end? “I think there will be a second kiss,” he said. “But I don’t know where.”

Amazing Caves

This is a story of the Ajanta Caves, located at 300 miles inland from Bombay, India. These caves, inside which have statues of animals, ornate pillars, Buddha figures, soaring roofs, are purely man-made by digging into huge piece of stone on a cliff. They were carved for the worship of Buddha 2000 years ago. Then the local Indians totally abandoned the Law of Buddha for the rule of Hindu. For 1600 years Mr. Buddha sat inside the cave in serenity and solitude, ignoring all the outside world with its wars and battles. And then this dude, captain John Smith stumbled upon the cave in 1819.

ALERT: Don't be a slave to TECHNOLOGY

T Friedman of NYT has a column up titled The Taxi Driver and it got on the top 10 mail email list. It is about how technology (e.g. cell phone, iPod, laptop etc) constantly interupt our lives and ceaselessly divide our attention that they are dividing humans as much as they bridge them.

I do agree with him to a large extend. There is one thing however he didn't mention in the article and is worth mentioning: all these gadgets that fill up our surrounding space with one type of sound or another, one thought or another; then there is no more silence left! Where is the quiet time when you can sink back and with yourself, just you and yourself? And not attend to emails, music, etc?

Then I think it's really not technology's problem. It's really up to those who use it. You can't be a slave to a piece of laptop if you don't want to give them your attention. But then again, whenever my computer is open, I usually end up wasting time on it. Can't help it!

An Unwelcome Discovery

I just read an interesting article about a scientist sentenced to a year in federal prison for his fraudulence and scientific misconduct. It was particularly interesting to me now that I've worked in a research lab for 10 months. I can understand why it's tempting to make up data to support your own hypothesis. However, this scientist's conduct seemed to be egregious. Over a span of 10 years, he managed to make up false evidence, become a superstar scientist, and secure millions of dollars in grants for his "research."

Read the article in the New York Times Magazine, titled, An Unwelcome Discovery.

It's a tragic story, but it's also a very interesting and fascinating character study. It also highlights the universal truth that weaving a life or career based on a web of lies will eventually lead you only to self-destruction.

I want to be an archeologist!

I was just reading articles in the Times on the IAEA and archeology and new tombs discovered in Syria. They kept making me think how cool it would be to be an archeologist. I like my present job - where else would I get paid to look at photos of cute baby seals and google "monster trucks" - but sometimes I wish I did something else. What random alternate careers would the rest of you opt for?