This paragraph from the New York Times editorial page speaks for me:

This page has not hesitated to criticize the Bush administration over its policies in Iraq, and we continue to have grave doubts about the overall direction of American strategy there. Yet today, along with other Americans, whether supporters or critics of the war, we rejoice in a heartening advance by the Iraqi people. For now at least, the multiple political failures that marked the run-up to the voting stand eclipsed by a remarkably successful election day.

from: Message From Iraq

Respect.

There is an hilarious post on ESWN about why he doesn't write about Chinese politics. The punch line is, of course, that he does, but his logic is pure crack-up Crackpot joy. Go read it.

ESWN is always a great read. And so is the home site, zonaeuropa.

Celebrate diversity! Fight bigotry. Heal intolerance.

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

Rogers and Hammerstein (South Pacific)

Designboom , whoever they are, announced the winners of the Kitchen Is The Heart of The Home contest. First prize was awarded to Chinese designers: Cheng He, Liu Guang Kui and Zhou Dong for the Round Cupboard.

A larger picture with detail is here.

A rather bewildering setup from the picture, the designers' description, resplendent with Chinglish, does little to help;

(1). Creating the new concept of happy kitchen: Sharing the joy with relatives and friends face-to-face. (2). Cupboard adopts double-deck rotator structure, can rotate 180°respectively, the three major work center of washing, mixing and cooking can rotate in the front of the operator, let "zero" distance in each workflow; And can lift in certain distance in order to be suitable for the different operator. (3). Flume has two kinds of outlets: The parallel water outlets of induction type lie on both sides of flume; The holding type faucets with metal hose lie in the middle of two flumes, that can be suitable for operating under various environments. (4).Abandon the board type, slide rail and hinge of the traditional cupboard completely. This cupboard regards the structure frame of aluminium alloy and the combination of stainless steel pipe as the integer structure. Adopt level bearing, hydraulic pressure system, shutting system to realize lifting of cupboard and wall cupboard. (5). Integrative structures with operational table-board, flume and kitchen, cupboard distribute icebox, disinfector and oven symmetrically, other borders are closets. (6). Lower cupboard is drawing structure, can pull out wholly while using, and make the operation simplify. Hang the kitchen ventilator under the top cupboard with function of illumination.

Congratulations to the designers. Seems like a lazy susan kind of kitchen cabinet arrangement, but only one facility available at a time. I'll nominate it for a Crackpot Chinese Fire Drill runner-up award.

Haloscan comments and trackback on this site and the Haloscan website itself has been down (filtered? spammed? I don't know.) for over 3 days. I'm not sure what's up with this downtime, but I'll restore comments another way if the situation persists for much longer. Meantime, use the email link and if anything interesting comes along, I'll post it.

During a commentary break while CNN was broadcasting the Inauguration of President Bush the 2nd rate, they showed the results of a CNN/USA Today survey on Bush the Uniter/Divider.

Percentage of respondents who believe Bush is uniting the country:  49%
Percentage of respondents who believe Bush is dividing the country: 49%

America is divided about whether or not it is divided.

Mind boggling. Surreal. True.

All shows to go you that truth, often, is stranger than Onion.

UPDATE:
Last night's special-for-me broadcast of "Highway 61: the Dylan Hours," the show on WERU-FM from Bangor and Blue Hill, Maine has already aired and thank you staff, managers and DJ Charlie DuFour for this great pleasure. Some hightlights: ironic Dylanesque "Inagural Moments," hearing Memphis Blues (Again), something I've been aching for, and Don McLean's chilling version of "Masters of War," which I didn't even know existed.

Thanks to the internet and the magic of streaming audio, this international event, spanning four continents was truly a program for the heart and soul Dylan fans. The stream, except for a few blips, stayed strong for the entire two hours. I got email from Canada, L.A. and southern China during or right after the show from people listening with us. DuFour played all my requests, sent out some dedications from me and his collection of obscure Dylan tracks is a true treasure.

He does it every Thursday night, so listen in at 10PM U.S. Eastern Time --- and check out the other extroardinary alternative programming on WERU-FM as well. You can email him your own requests as well. Great show, Charlie. Many thanks. I remember who I am now.

Last but not least, thank you Brad Williams for making this all happen! And thanks, Bob, if you're reading this. (wink)

To honor and reflect




Martin Luther King 1929-1968

Now in his mid-eighties, the former Chinese government offical seen as a pro-democracy advocate sympathetic to the "student" demonstration in Tiananmen Square in 1989, hovers near death under house arrest in his Beijing villa. Here is what the mid-day news broadcast today on CCTV-9, the English language station televised about his condition:

(nothing)

Chinese newspapers have been more forthcoming with reports, usually saying not much more than that he is very ill but still alive.

Each day at sunrise and sunset the Chinese gather in large numbers in Tiananmen Square to watch the red five-star flag raised and lowered. These days, there are more guards on duty at that time, for it was the death of Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party chief fired in 1987 for allowing pro-democracy student unrest that sparked the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989. Should Zhao (pronounced "joe") expire, as seems likely, both the official and the independendent eulogies will reveal a great deal about the contemporary Chinese political temperement---more, as typical for Chinese public expression, by what they don't say than for what they do.

From the AP comes more details::

Deposed Chinese Leader Said to Be in Coma

Sat Jan 15, 4:14 PM ET
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING - Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese Communist Party leader deposed after tearfully sympathizing with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, was hospitalized in a coma Saturday and may be near death, a human rights activist said.

snip ...

Zhao has spent more than 15 years under house arrest since he was purged from the party leadership. He was accused of sympathizing with hunger strikers in Tiananmen Square who, for seven weeks, had demanded democratic reforms and the resignation of then-Premier Li Peng.

He was last seen in public on May 19, 1989, when he visited the square to talk to student hunger strikers, one day before martial law was declared.

Richard of The Peking Duck says, "with today's economy I can't imagine another widespread student rebellion taking shape." He's a more experienced China hand than I. It'll be interesting to see if China's robust economic development has affected the public's sensibilities about democracy, transparency and freedom.

UPDATE:
Beijing, January 17, 2005

Zhao passed away yesterday morning 7 A.M. Beijing time. There were notices in the press and at the office of the magazine for which I work, the Executive Editor in Chief sent around a notice of his passing by network message. Since then, all quiet in Beijing. There were reports that CNN's coverage of Zhao's death was blacked out yesterday, but it's mid-day in Beijing and I just saw a short piece as a "headline story" fronting the Insight program.

The New York Times ran China Gives Zhao's Death Scant Notice in the International section today. A short excerpt:

Whatever people think of Zhao as a leader, there is no question that he was the living symbol of Tiananmen," said a newspaper editor in Beijing, who spoke on condition of anonymity, referring to the central square in Beijing where democracy protests took place.

"Leaders may feel that if the verdict on Zhao changes, people will use that to reassess the crackdown," he said.

Some have already begun using Mr. Zhao's death for that purpose. Among quiet expressions of support for Mr. Zhao on Monday was an impassioned statement from a group known as the Tiananmen Mothers, whose members lost relatives during the violent suppression.

"It was a blessing to have a leader who could lead the public peacefully toward freedom, democracy, wealth and strength," the statement said. "The only ray of hope for our troubled nation was extinguished" when he died, it said.

And today, on Martin Luther King's designated day of honor (the third Monday of January), a U.S. holiday in all 50 states, we Americans can reflect on how short of his dream we still are.

Candles go out but the light of hope is eternal. Everywhere.

I sure hope the Chinese, latecomers to the nuclear power club, learn the lessons from nations that've had accidents. Short of a terrorist attack (to which China is not particularly vulnerable) you can build a safe nuclear power plant if you're willing to foot the bill for safeguards.

Maybe they could take a look at the air pollution caused by the millions of cars that Chinese are buying. There's no requirement for smog control devices on cars sold in China. The air quality in urban areas demonstrates all too unclearly what leapfrogging initial environmental concerns in the headlong race for prosperity can lead to. Maybe they could see a lesson in that? Doesn't sound like it.

This is an excerpt from the January 15, 2005 N.Y. Times. The last article on nuclear power that China Daily ran was over six months ago and there was not one word about attention to safety in it.

China Promotes Another Boom: Nuclear Power

DAYA BAY, China - The view from this remote point by the sea, with lines of misty mountains stretching into the distance, is worthy of a classical Chinese painting. In the foreground, though, sits a less obvious attraction: one of China's first nuclear power reactors, and just behind it, another being rushed toward completion.

...snip

There has been almost no public discussion of the merits and risks of nuclear energy here, as the government strictly censors news coverage of such issues. But critics question whether such a small payoff warrants exposure to the risk of catastrophic failures, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and the still unresolved problems of radioactive waste disposal.

"We don't have a very good plan for dealing with spent fuel, and we don't have very good emergency plans for dealing with catastrophe," said Wang Yi, a nuclear energy expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. "The nuclear interest group wants to push this technology, but they don't understand the risks for the future. They want to make money. But we scientists, we want to take a very comprehensive approach, including safety, environment, dealing with waste and other factors, and not rush into anything."

Chinese nuclear operators, like the people who run the Daya Bay plants here, scoff at such concerns.

...snip

Daya Bay's location less than 50 miles from Hong Kong, where the proximity has become a political issue, only reinforces the environmental and safety concerns. That may sound like ample space, but it is not much different from the distance from New York City to the Indian Point nuclear plant in Buchanan, N.Y., which has become an issue since the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Of the technologies that exist today, you have to look at what can happen on the worst day," Mr. Lochbaum said. "With wind power, you can go bankrupt. With a dam burst, lives can and have been lost, but it's fairly localized. The cost of cleaning up after Chernobyl, though, is greater than all of the benefits of the entire Soviet nuclear power industry combined, and it could have been worse."

This from the New York Times. Not to be taken tongue-in-cheek or read with a grain of salt. #6 finally answers my most pressing question of Why doesn't the middle east make an effort to manage their own regional problems?

Op-Ed Columnist: Ballots and Boycotts

January 13, 2005
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

In trying to think through whether we should press ahead with elections in Iraq or not, I have found it useful to go back and dig out my basic rules for Middle East reporting, which I have developed and adapted over 25 years of writing from that region.

Rule 1 Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a cease-fire; it will always be over by the time the next morning's paper is out.

Rule 2 Never take a concession, except out of the mouth of the person who is supposed to be doing the conceding. If I had a dime for every time someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasir Arafat, I would be a wealthy man today.

Rule 3 The Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure that they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.

Rule 4 In the Middle East, if you can't explain something with a conspiracy theory, then don't try to explain it at all - people there won't believe it.

Rule 5 In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way,and the moderates tend to just go away - unless the coast is completely clear.

Rule 6 The most oft-used phrase of Mideast moderates is: "We were just about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing, we would have stood up, but now it's too late. It's all your fault for being so stupid."

Rule 7 In Middle East politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one side is weak, it will tell you, "How can I compromise?" And the minute it becomes strong, it will tell you, "Why should I compromise?"

Rule 8 What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in Arabic, in Hebrew or in any other local language. Anything said in English doesn't count.

It is on the basis of these rules that I totally disagree with those who argue that the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections should be postponed.

Read the rest for some spot-on (as usual) Friedman commentary.

On Wednesday stories started breaking (here , here and here)about a press conference held for foreign correspondents in Beijing by South Korean "legislators" on a fact finding trip mission "raided" by Chinese "government agents" who cut the lights and the microphones, shoved and ejected foreign reporters and locked the doors. The story got surprisingly light coverage.

The South Korean delegates were investigating a spate of recent incidents, as well as the ongoing situation, of North Korean refugees who had escaped over the border to China trying to make it to South Korea. In December, North Korean refugees entered a Japanese school seeking asylum to avoid deportation to North Korea by the Chinese. In North Korea, they face harsh punishment or even execution.

From smh.com.au (Australian)

Four members of South Korea's opposition Grand National Party had called the news conference on Wednesday to urge Beijing to show leniency towards refugees from North Korea and to release South Korean activists jailed for trying to smuggle them out of China.

The MPs refused Chinese orders to leave the room, bringing about a stand-off that lasted more than eight hours and continued late into the night.

From the Washington Post:

Four legislators from the [South Korea's opposition Grand National Party] on a fact-finding mission to China called a news conference Wednesday to urge Beijing to show leniency toward refugees from North Korea and to release South Korean activists jailed for helping them. But Chinese security agents cut the lights in the hotel meeting room, then shoved and pushed dozens of journalists out of the room. The men struck at least one photographer on the head.

...snip

As many as 200,000 North Koreans are believed to be living in China after fleeing repression and starvation in their homeland. Beijing says they are economic migrants, refuses to grant them refugee status and routinely sends those it apprehends back to North Korea, a communist ally.

"I plan to recommend scientists and engineers go to the U.S. where their abilities are reflected in their income."'

--Shuji Nakamura, inventor of the blue light-emitting diode (LED), who reluctantly agreed to a 840 million yen settlement in a patent dispute with Nichia Corp. He says Japanese corporations don't respect their employees' contributions. (Asahi Shimbun)

This quote, pulled from a news story in Japan Today, drew some sensational comments from readers. Samples:

If Nakamura has the urge to travel, he should take his invention directly to the people who will put it to work - next door in China. Why waste fuel going clear around the world. There is nothing worthwhile made in the USA anymore. All imported from China. The only things the USA produces and exports these days is war and more war courtesy of its pentagon and worthless dollars from the federal reserve.

While I don't necessarily agree with you comment about Japanese companies respecting their employees, I think you are pretty spot on about how US companies screw over their staff when they appropriate the technology and then offshore it. And what's worse, yep, they practically give it to that rotten Commie behemoth China, which has no respect for intellectual property at all.

So in Japan Nakamura gets an insulting 20,000 bonus, but in the US his technology might have been shipped out under his nose. I think this time he was damn lucky.

[a previous commenter] has the same opinion as anyone with mediocre talent. Japan is gold for those people. The incompetent can work in Japan until they're 65, rising up the ladder the whole time. In the US those people would be sweeping the floor and suffering a pay freeze. My boss forgets what happened five minutes earlier and he can barely speak. He does have some positive attributes, though. He can make copies and he's pretty good at applying his hanko. He also has a knack for smoking.

For every America-bashing American living in Marin County California and elsewhere in America...

... there are probably hundreds of non-Americans, like the good Dr. Nakamura, who appreciate the fact that America, while not perfect, is a great country.

I say let's make a trade. Let's take in all the America-loving Chinese, Cubans and Vietnamese and so on, and send the America-hating Americans to their countries.

I'm sure the lefty America-hating Americans will be much happier living in one of those dictatorial communist "paradises" anyway.

Owch! I resemble that remark, as my beloved old bud Doug Whitney used to say.

read the rest

Fahrenheit 9/11 won "Best Movie of the Year" at The People's Choice Award, in which 21 million people voted.

He's a buffoon and an eternal amateur, but he, and the disaffected Americans who supported the controversial "documentary" have made an indelible statement. Congratulations, Michael and---thanks!

From a letter from Michael Moore to his email list:

It was a stunning moment for us. And, somewhere inside the Bush White House, someone there must have been stunned, too.

...snip

I can think of no greater honor for us this year than the award bestowed upon us last night by the American people. On live television, with no threat of my remarks being censored or cut short, I thanked all of you and the rest of our fellow Americans and dedicated the prize to the parents of our servicemen and women in Iraq, the Lila Lipscombs of America who suffer so profoundly by the reckless actions of the Bush administration.

(If you'd like to see what I said -- this time, no riot! -- you can click here. I even dressed up!)

It was an historic moment as no documentary had ever won the People's Choice Award for Best Picture. And I thank each and every one of you who voted and made that happen.

I took Congresswoman Maxine Waters and her husband as my guests last night. My family was there, too, as was some of our crew. ...

Some Miss. Libraries Ban Jon Stewart Book

Sun Jan 9,10:03 PM ET U.S. National - AP

GULFPORT, Miss. - Library officials in two southern Mississippi counties have banned Jon Stewart's best-selling America (The Book) over the satirical textbook's nude depictions of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices.

"I've been a librarian for 40 years and this is the only book I've objected to so strongly that I wouldn't allow it to circulate," said Robert Willits, director of the Jackson-George Regional Library System of eight libraries in Jackson and George counties.

...snip

The book by Stewart and the writers of "The Daily Show," the Comedy Central fake-news program he hosts, was released in September. It has spent 15 weeks on The New York Times best seller list for hardcover nonfiction, and was named Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, the industry trade magazine.

Former English teacher Tara Skelton of Ocean Springs said the libraries shouldn't decide what is in poor taste.

"It just really seemed kind of silly to me," she said. "I don't think the Supreme Court justices have filed any defamation of character or libel suits. It's humor."

Hooray for Ocean Springs, my husband's home town! Ocean Springs, as lovely a coastal American town as you'd ever want to see, doesn't make the news very often.

Census Lists Renamed Lake As 'Butthead'

(Associated Press)

LAKE STEVENS, Wash. - Someone in the Census Bureau may be watching a little too much MTV. Bevis Lake, a 5.7-acre body of water in a forested area about 25 miles northeast of Seattle, is now appearing in Bureau records with a different name: Butthead Lake.

Those two names - Bevis and Butthead - are almost identical to the 1990s MTV cartoon show "Beavis and Butt-head," which featured a pair of slacker teenagers who watch music videos and make bad jokes.

Someone at the Census Bureau must have gotten bored and made a joke out of naming the lake, said Ken Brown, a land surveyor with the state Department of Natural Resources.

"It's got to be," he said.

It's not unusual for small lakes in out-of-the-way places to have different names because of variations in county, state or other official records, but there are no such indications in this case, Brown said.

"That means someone is playing a joke, I think," Brown said.

I wonder if the neighbors know about some English living on Butt Hole Road?

Boing Boing reports: "In an interview on news.com, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates described free culture advocates as a "modern-day sort of communists."

In response, some insouciant netheads immediately created "copyleft" logos reminiscent of communist flags, giving a symbolic finger to efforts to thwart new models of free, paid and alternative distribution of creative product.

Also read: We're Creative Commonists, Bill on Wired news.

Copyleft is an actual intellectual property model defined by wikipedia here, which allows wider use and modification of original work while still keeping the owner, who chooses to voluntarily participate in the program, in the loop. This experiment in distribution is promulgated by Creative Commons. Creative Commons, a non profit internet campaign, offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists. They expand upon the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright. All of their tools are free.

If corporate copyright holders don't take notice and learn, they'll suffer a worse fate than that which they're currently and uselessly fighting.

The Copyleft and Creative Commons models of intellectual property protection offer flexibility in distribution and copying while retaining the creater's ownership. This is a vitally necessary consumer-driven intermediate methodology that takes the internet into account. Science Commons, due to launch early this year, extends this philosophy to science. I look forward to similar developments in technology. The Open Source movement (where developers freely share code and modifications) is enormous progress in this direction.

The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.

Corporate copyright and patent holders are bucking the tide by imposing technological restrictions and launching legal actions against file trading on the internet instead of coming up with creative solutions for working with these irrepressable trends.

Entertainment corporations are suing internet file traders and now consumers are suing back. This can't be healthy for business, unless you're a patent or copyright attorney.

Created in response to free music trading, the Apple iTunes store sells music tracks online for 99 cents and lets the buyer burn them onto CDs but they are in a propietary format that can only be played on an Apple iPod. A user is now challenging Apple's right to limit what player music purchased on the internet can be heard on.

An iTunes user is suing Apple under US anti-trust laws for locking non-iPod players out of playing back iTunes music.

"Apple has turned an open and interactive standard into an artifice that prevents consumers from using the portable hard drive digital music player of their choice," the lawsuit states...

"Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and vice-versa," the lawsuit said.

[The plaintiff] called himself an iTunes customer who "was also forced to purchase an Apple iPod" if he wanted to take his music with him to listen to.

more here

Copyright protection has escalated into a technology and legal war which consumers and netizens will eventually "win," due to the simple fact that law lags behind technology.

Popular culture only thrives when there is a strong sense of mutual adventure between artist, art and spectator. Using technology and law to restrict the flow of information and entertainment basically throttles the fluid interaction between art and society by pitting media and fans against each other. This will inevitably erode the passion and loyalty that create a market for the arts.

When I was a teeniebopper, a friend took me to radio station WMGM and introduced me to Peter Tripp, a popular rock and roll radio DJ in New York. He was the first person I ever met in the music business. While he was playing records, he told me that he thought the music business was going to die in its boots because personal tape recorders had recently gotten so inexpensive. That was in the late fifties. The music business had it's greatest growth over the following decades.

DVD players sold in America and Europe are region-coded and will only play DVDs coded for the region in which they're purchased. Here in Asia, they manufacture the players to play any region code and the pirate DVDs are usually code-free.


I doubt customers will put up with VCPS, now being touted at the Consumer Electronics Show. It's a copy protection scheme for digital video that limits copying and foils internet distribution. DVD players sold after July 1, 2005, by FCC regulation, must recognize the copy protection flag. It requires new equipment to play any DVD so encoded. It doesn't take too bright a bulb to predict that someone will just come up with a way to break it (probably the Chinese). When customers need to spend time investigating or circumventing strategies to enjoy the entertainment they acquire, they're just going to find other means of recreation and that's what will injure business, not the extensibility of distribution.

I guess necessity is the mother of evolution as well as invention and humans are not the only and perhaps not even the primary combatants of human-produced destructive waste. It just may take more time than humans have for nature to cope with our toxic mess. A reminder that life -itself- is pretty amazing.

Pollution-Eating Bacteria Gives Up Genetic Secrets

Science - Reuters Thu Jan 6, 4:46 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A pollution-eating bacteria first found in sewage sludge may have evolved its talents in response to human contamination of the environment, researchers said on Thursday.

...snip

The researchers, including teams at Cornell, Johns Hopkins University and Technical University in Berlin, found genes for 19 different reductive dehalogenases, enzymes that help D. ethenogenes microbe "breathe" chlorinated solvents.

A story in the Washington Post reports that the infamous Chinese counterfeits (clothing, accessories, watches) are now showing up in U.S. department stores and on the online auction site, eBay. One of China's great shopping attractions is now becoming one of China's notable exports.

Counterfeiting is endemic and becoming more entrenched. The entertainment business is pulling its collective hair out over counterfeit CDs and DVDs of popular music and film. In addition to current movies, legacy American films are counterfeited in abundance as well. We've seen DVD copies of Fort Apache, Citizen Kane, Rebel Without a Cause, and Gone With The Wind (an extremely popular movie in China) and hundreds of other classics that are even branded with the name of a Chinese distributer in the credit roll, all for around a dollar apiece. I can't imagine how cartons of counterfeit DVDs get through customs and on to the streets of Los Angeles, but they somehow do, hawked by vendors in various parks. Los Angeles, a car city, doesn't have much street traffic, but these disks still somehow sell.

The counterfeits aren't just from China, but from South America and other places in Asia. They are pressed in the U.S. as well. In 2003 a L.A.P.D. captain (later suspended) was arrested for possession of pirated DVDs and sued in 2004 by major studios. Her boyfriend had a connection with a local post-production house.

I remember when I was active around the record business how perpetrators of in-house pirating--a legitimate pressing plant adding a shift to press more hit albums than had been ordered and supplying the overage to record stores through back channels--were caught supplying much anticipated major releases ahead of the record companies. Distributers somehow noticed that the albums were in stores before they were actually released! I recall also, although I don't remember the details, that an album whose sales fell well short of expectations was returned (albums were distributed on consignment) in numbers that exceeded what was legitimately pressed. Piracy is not new to America, but domestic piracy would appear to be under control. Now that foreign counterfeits have infected the market, the potential for economic chaos in the affected industries is staggering. The film industry claims a $3.5 billion dollar loss to counterfeits. But unless they begin to understand the chain of supply and demand, its going to get a lot worse.

I happen to disagree that each counterfeit sold (as if the MPAA could really do a credible accounting) deducts from a projected sales total. There is value in having American films, arguably America's most effective export, sought after in third world countries with growing economies. It may be the only way left to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the world, which is demonstrably disgusted with our foreign policy. Popular culture exports American values (is that a dirty phrase already?) American stories and American free expression, all of which cultivate creativity and interaction more valuable than commerce. And I put forth the proposition that penetration, however achieved, only engenders more popularity which inevitably creates a better market. Exploiting this phenomenon takes vision beyond futile efforts of legislative or punitive control.

When DVDs cost 20 US dollars, well beyond the reach of consumers in a country like China whose economy is growing rapidly but unevenly, how can you stop the demand for DVDs priced at a dollar? Are DVDs really worth $20 USD? Is charging what the market will (not) bear a recipe for undercutting?

What if major releases of U.S. movies had a three-tier release strategy. The first CD release would sell as priced, and a second, later release might be priced much lower, much as paperbacks follow hardback books. The third tier would be a legal license to sell an agreed-upon number of copies at a price determined by the licensee. It might not replace the alleged $3.5 billion that the MPAA estimates as a loss, but some remuneration is certainly better than none.

The Chinese government regularly proffers strong warnings, stages counterfeit destruction demonstrations and has recently lowered the conviction criteria of Intellectual Property Rights violations. (You'll have to wade through a bit of Chinglish to read this story in People's Daily.) They are extremely concerned that counterfeiting will injure the robust trade relations it has built up and bring WTO sanctions. Chinese people have few opportunities to fly in the face of their government, but in the matter of keeping demand for counterfeit CDs and DVDs lively, they continue to sell them and buy them in enormous numbers that can hardly be tracked.

It's time to deal with counterfeiting as a fact of life instead of a problem that can be eradicated in a conventional manner. As we've seen from the history of MP3 trading on peer-to-peer networks, the ingenuity of culture vultures and the appetite for popular culture knows few bounds. It's going to take a new paradigm to drive--or ride--these healthy trends within the entertainment business.

This week, reports of two U.S. businessmen, each having deals with different Chinese automobile manufacturers (and by extension the Chinese government) who are looking to import inexpensive Chinese cars to America, appeared in American newspapers. One of them who has tried this before with catastrophic results, believes the time is ripe to attempt it again. The other, who imported the ill-fated Yugo, hopes the future of the Chinese made car will fare better.

From CNN, Plan to bring Chinese cars to U.S.
and from USA Today Inexpensive Chinese cars on way soon?

Both stories cite problems each entrepreneur has had in previous car import endeavors, indicating that while Chinese cars might inevitably enter the U.S. market, the road ahead, at least in the near term, is likely to have some potholes.

Natural disasters bring out the best in humanity because, at least at first, they are not politicised and all the victims are innocent. We ache to empathize with those affected and we recoil as a species at the ultimate vulnerability we all share while secretly experiencing gratitude for our own safety. As horrific as these events are, they raise the consciousness of the human race, they emphasize the essential connection that is normally so removed from our daily thinking. They make heroism ordinary and charity universal. If you've not yet done so, give something to the relief effort through an organization you admire. Here are some of them and access to others. Even if it's only five dollars you can help by donating online. It takes but a moment to affirm humanity at a time when we are reminded how fragile our tenure truly is.



Click the banner above to donate to UNICEF.

The Washington Post has a list of public, religious, south Asian and other international organizations through which you can donate here and the N.Y. Times list, with a lot of donate online links, is here. The Red Cross International Disaster Relief online donation form is here and CARE's is here.

Quite by accident I looked at my post from last new year's this week and almost cried. What a bittersweet year's end it's been. We had an extremely pleasant, centainly compared to how it's been lately, New Year's Eve - and this morning I spoke to my family far away. But far away is how I feel from last year's reach for optimism.

It seems selfish and insincere to celebrate in the tumultous shadow of the devastating tragedy of the south Asian earthquake and tsunami that has taken so much life and land from people who can least deal with it. And yet today on TV I saw some of the ravaged victims of nature's wrath lighting candles in a Buddhist ceremony of hope. So why is it that I can hardly find my candle, much less light it? My health is good, I enjoy my work, my family is well, friends and former students reach out to send me cards and messages of holiday joy. I should be able to weather a transition to another year, especially one that had a long dark inconclusive denouement where it seemed the very nature of being and belief faded into a complex web of unwelcome revelation, both political and personal.

So this a winter of the soul and it's snowing core assumptions that insist on being questioned. I know this to be the most productive exercise of detachment life has to offer and I've spent a lot of time like that as my curious path has unfolded. It's just a bitch while it's going on.

Maybe tomorrow I'll find how to express what I'm after...or it will find me as so often happens. Thanks for being with me while I write my way toward a new beginning. I feel a little better already.

Happy New Year. Sometimes newness comes in unexpected turns. I know that.