From the Yomuiri Shimbun: Panel says cram-free education a failure.

     Cram-free education, a main plank of current teaching guidelines, is expected to be declared a failure in an report interim to be released shortly, it has been learned.

     The report, which will be released by the Central Council for Education, an advisory panel to the education, science and technology minister, is the first to publicly admit that cram-free education had failed to achieve the intended results.

     The council has already decided to advise the minister to increase school hours at primary and middle schools.

     Among its main points, the report will say that the cram-free policy led to an excessive reduction in school hours.

     Such self-criticism is a rare move, but the council is believed to have concluded that it is necessary to win teachers' understanding for the policy reversal.

     In 1996, the council proposed encouraging children to develop a "zest for living," including the development of self-expression and care for others.

     As a result, the current official curriculum guidelines aim to increase the effectiveness of teaching by focusing on a narrower range of subject material. The content of primary and middle schools' subjects was reduced by 30 percent, while school hours were cut by 10 percent.

     The Japanese educational system is, from all that I can gather a complete, well fiasco for lack of a better word.  Criticism of it is not exactly thin on the ground and from what I have read this seems to be step backwards.  Why should the central gov't in a nation of 150+ million people be setting the curriculum for every school from Kushiro to Naha?  What Japan desperately needs is decentralization and a reduction in governmental involvement in most aspects of daily life and business.  People tend to excell when government simply gets out of their way and lets them live up to their full potential.  Thats my opinion anyway.

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Its Nice to be ahead of the curve sometimes.

From the China Post: Who's afraid of the Dalai Lama? China's Communists, apparently.

     Wednesday the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress's highest civilian honor, and China is throwing a fit. "We are furious," the Chinese Communist Party's secretary for Tibet, Zhang Qingli, declared this week. "If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world." In recent days, China has abruptly withdrawn from a summit on Iran and canceled a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received the Dalai Lama in September. Beijing, which according to The Post "solemnly demanded" that the Bush administration cancel Washington events planned for the Dalai Lama, is determined to punish and intimidate anyone who might pay tribute to Tibet's Nobel laureate.

     Why is the mighty People's Republic of China so petrified of this 72-year-old Buddhist monk? True, the Dalai Lama is no ordinary scholar and teacher; he is the living symbol of the Buddhist faith. It seems that Beijing's cadres fear his moral authority and do not want the international community to examine their record in Tibet, because they have a lot to hide.

     It has been 48 years since the Dalai Lama eluded capture by the People's Liberation Army and escaped to India, whereupon Chairman Mao Zedong began to plunder Tibet's wealth and murdered more than 1 million of its people. In the mid-1990s, the Chinese politburo implemented the "Strike Hard Campaign" that declared Buddhism "a disease to be eradicated." News of major protests in Tibet has not been widely disseminated in recent years, and now the survival of Tibetan civilization has reached a tipping point. In 2000, China launched a vast infrastructure campaign called "Opening and Development of the Western Regions" and embarked on a new phase of subjugation and control. Construction of rail and road links to Tibet, such as the Qingzang railway that opened last year, has accelerated Beijing's surveillance of Tibetans and has advanced the Sinofication of the Himalayan and Turkic peoples who inhabit China's western territories.

     Have no doubt the Chinese really do fear the Dali Lama and anyone else who can bring attention to their deplorable behavior towards the people of Tibet and elsewhere.  The more he and others like him are recognized and honored in the west the more internal trouble it creates for China, so lets give him the Presidebtial Medal of Freedom next year just to show the Chicoms that we haven't frogotten about Tibet and their repression of her.

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     The only reason the Chicoms are getting so upset over the whole visit of the Dali Lama with the president and the award he is recieving from congress is easy to spot.  He is right and they are wrong, and by honoring him the US is acknowledging that fact.  their occupation of Tibet is not an internal matter, as they so slef righteously claim, but rather the continued and illegal occupation of one sovergien state by another.  This is just further proof that tgers can't change their spots and communists can't take criticism.

From the Bangkok Post: US honours Dalai Lama, angers China.

     Washington (AFP) - US President George W. Bush on Wednesday asked China to open talks with the Dalai Lama, hours before attending a Congress ceremony honoring the Tibetan spiritual leader that has angered Beijing.

     "It's in their interest to meet with the Dalai Lama and I will say so at the ceremony today in Congress," Bush said before the controversial event where the Dalai Lama will receive a US Congressional Gold Medal - the highest civilian award bestowed by US lawmakers.

      It will be the first time a sitting US president appears in public with the 72-year-old Buddhist figurehead.

      Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi had warned that Bush's private meeting with the Dalai Lama on Tuesday and the Congress ceremony represented "a severe violation of the norms of international relations."

      He accused the United States of having "severely hurt" China's feelings and interfered in its internal affairs.

     In regards to china's "hurt feelings," they can kiss my ass and get the fuck over it.  We have every right to honor whom ever we want for wahtever reason we want, so why don't the Chinese stop meddling in our internal affairs.

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The Earth rising over the Moon, photographed by Astronaut Bill Anders of Apollo 8, December 24, 1967.  NASA Photo.

     I have never really said this out loud, but one of my deepest wishes is to be an Astronaut.  I would give just about anything to be able to float in the void of space or to stand upon the hauntingly beautiful surface of the moon and look back at the planet that we all call home.  While the number of men and women who have ventured into space is small, and only twelve men, Americans all have had the chance to set foot on a heavenly body that is not Earth.  My envy of them beggars description, yet I also know that perhaps I too, may have a chance to do the same.  Many years of my life lay yet before me, and the nature of space travel is constantly evolving.  I do not know what it is about spaceflight, or even flight in general that entrnaces me so, perhaps it is the beauty of seeing the eath from above, or the feeling of freedom that soaring through the skies briings with it.  Whatever it is it has held me fascinated for as long I can possibly remember.

     But even if I never have the chance to look down upon our graceful and magnificent blue orb I can still look up into the heavens above and allow my self to be lost in the simple beauty of the stars, planets and other celstial wonders, and all of their vast and unexplored secrets.  What makes humanity so unique among all of God's creatures is that we, and we alone strive for knowledge simply for the sake of having that knowledge.  We are propelled to explore space for the same reason Edmund Hillary climbed Mt. Everest, because it is there.  Even when it is beyond our capability to explore first hand our celestial meighbors we find a way to go and visit them none the less.  The may be machines, but in their own way the are an extension of human life, and proof our exsistence.  For they will remain wher they are long after all of us are gone onto whatever awaits in the next life.  They shall remain, proving that we where here, and that we did all we could to find life beyond our own world and to learn all we could about everything we could.  Sometimes even robots get homesick I guess, at leat that was what I thought when I first saw this picture.

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     Many of my fellow conservative are often heard lambasting the concept of the right to privacy as being a fallacy, nothing could be further from the truth.  Just because the words are not explicitly stated anywhere in the bill of rights and subsequent amendments the exsistence of such a right is easy enough to see by looking at the plain meaning of the words of the fourth, ninth and fourteenth amendments.  their protections and inhabitions create a clear and readily identifable concept of privacy that was in the monds of the men who wrote those words. The words below offer a fine insight into the view of the court on this issue when the right to privacy was first articulated.

     Justice John Marshall Harlan II famously wrote, "the full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This 'liberty' is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints."

      On a point by point basis I will examine and explain how each of the three amendments I have noted above contribute to the exsistence of a right to privacy.  The first and perhaps most pertinent amendment is one of the two least talked about amendments of the constitution along with its companion, the 9^th.

     The enummeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

     The 9^th amendment is an interesting creature, massively important, yet terribly ignored by the courts and the legal profession.  This amendment was along with the 10^th the comprimise necessary to get the Federalists to go along with the Anti-Federalists demands for a bill of rights.  To put it simply it allayed the fears of the Federalists that just because a right was not mentioned did not mean it didn't exsist.  Rather it does exsist and it belongs only to the people as only rights can.  Thus it follows that the right to privacy does indeed exsist, even though it was not specifically enummerated, and is given protection equal to the enummerated rights.

     Given that , in the words of John Adams freedoms are more inumerable than grains of sand upon a beach one must indeed tread lightly when it comes to dismissing a right just because it isn't in the constitution as it is written.

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and siezures will not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, amd particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be siezed.

     The 4^th amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and siezures, but what is more important is what it describes as being protected.  ones person, home, papers and effects (property).  What is this but the right to privacy described in excruiating detail?  This gives people the right to be free from state interference in their lives by forbidding the state from prying into the activities of its citizens.  Except when in posession of a valid warrant the government can not violate your person, home, property and papers except in rare and very specific circumstances.  Here in plain english is the right that so many people have said is not in the constitution is right before them if they would choose to see it.

     Article 1:  All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.  No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privliges and immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shallany State deprive any person of life. liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws.

     Article 5:  The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisons of this article.

Note: (Articles 2, 3, and 4 deal with issues related to the civil war and former comfederates and the public debt of the US and are excluded for non-relevance and brevity.) 

     The 14^th amendments contirbution to the right to privacy is the hardest to articulate, and therefore tends to come in for the most criticism.  The basic position is that, each individual must be treated equally by the state, and the stae can not discriminate in the treatment of it's citizens by applying laws to some and not to others.  These cases sighting this facet of the right to privacy tend to revolve around things like birth control, abortion and state laws prohibiting certain types of consenual sexual intercourse.  Generally though I see the 14^th amendment as forcing the restrictions of the 4^th and 9^th amenments onto the states, as the drafters of the 14^th amendment intended.

     No one who espouses to be a conservative can not make a decent argument against the exsistance of the right to privacy, rather they revert to the charge of Judicial activism.  This is largely motivated by a desire to advance the 'conservative' (read moral) agenda on abortion and gay marriage.  Two topics about which I give exactly a damn.  I have a strong libertarian streak when it comes to what consenting adults do to themselves and between themselves.  I believe abortion is morally reprehensable, but that does not give me, or anyone else the right to tell someone else what they can do with thier body.  I want less government at every level, not more, and trying to legislate morality is simply counter productive to that goal.  I hope that this election cycle we can discard the 'moral' issues and focus on the real problems in the world today, like say terrorism and the war, or lowering taxes etc, etc.  Well enough ranting for now.

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From the Taipei Times: State of a hemmed-in nation.

     This is one fine editorial, I sympathize greatly with Taiwan, she has been betrayed by her protector and denied the basic recognition that is the right of every sovergein government, of which Taiwan's certainly is.  It is heartening to see that despite her difficult situation Taiwan continues to mature and develop as free and democratic nation, in stark contrast to the illegitimate and repessive regieme across the strait.

     We noted last year that beyond the hardware, these nationalist displays have a hollow core and that nationalism is ill-served by symbols and rhetoric that simply serve as face-saving mechanisms for organs of state. Meanwhile, the alternative -- that Taiwan is part of China and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is the natural party to rule all of China -- is so discredited now that even chunks of the KMT cannot bring themselves to spout it in public.

     By and large, however, Taiwan is chugging along nicely, with solid economic credentials and growth, even if inflationary pressures are building. Shunting aside media hyperbole, Taiwan remains one of the safest countries in the world, with encouraging standards of education, growing (if erratically distributed) income and a good international reputation in various sectors.

     In recent years the picture of Taiwan in the international eye has bounced back and forth between the predatory neuroses of China and the political mandates of competing foreign-affairs factions in the US -- the balance of which has not helped Taiwan to expand its global space.

This an excellent piece of writing go read the whole thing, go on read it all here

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     Today the Space Age offically entered its fiftieth year, as today marks fifty years since Sputnik roared off the pad at Baikanor Cosmodrome and into history.  Amazingly only twelve years later man would walk on the moon.  Since the end of the Apollo progeram one has to wonder if the intervining years of space exploration have been wasted.  I would say that they have not been wasted, but rather under utilized.  Our continuing efforts in space have returned massive dividends here on earth, but we need to and finaly are resuming the path of outward human exploration of our solar system.  The Orion program to return to the moon is a well thought out and well designed program, it combines the early NASA grand vision and seemingly impossible goal (manned missions to mars by 2030 or so)  with all of the knowledge and experince NASA has gained through the shuttle and robotic exploration programs of the last thirty five years.  What will the next fifty years of the Space Age bring?  Who knows, but I would benture to guess that in the next twenty five years Space will be opened to the average man and woman as commercial space tourism and other commercial ventures in space go from a niche market catering to the super rich (current) then the well to do (SpaceShip 2, 5 years or so away) to afforable to all (10-15 years from now).

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From the Taipei Times: Tibetan nomads ordered to settle down in cities for the sake of the environment.

     China is ordering 100,000 ethnic Tibetans to give up their traditional nomadic habits and settle in towns because their way of life is threatening the environment, state press reported yesterday.

     Overgrazing from the Tibetan herders' livestock and the growing number of people living on the grasslands of China's Qinghai Province are endangering the source of the nation's great rivers, Xinhua news agency said.

NEW TOWNS

     By the end of this year, 60,000 Tibetans will have been moved into new towns in Qinghai, with the number to grow to 100,000 by 2010, Xinhua reported, citing a government document and local environment officials.

     While the agency highlighted compensation packages of up to 8,000 yuan (US$1,060) a year for families, it acknowledged that not all Tibetans were happy with having to give up the lifestyles their families have known for centuries.

     The real reason for this order is so the commies can keep an eye on their restive and for their liking all too independant and self sufficient subjects.  This along with the deliberate efforts to flood Tibet with ethnic chinese is clearly aimed at creating a situation that short of external miltary intervention it would be politically impossible for Tibet to be free of the Chinese yoke.  This move also reinforces the fact that the reds in china realy haven't changed all that much since the sixties, they still have no respect for history and tradition, given that they are trying to destroy one of the last remaning Asian nomad cultures.  Much like the misguided three gorges dam they don't give a damn about protecting history when it gets in the way of their misguided and foolish schemes.  The sooner these bastards are kicked to the curb the better, for they have inflicted far too much suffering on far too many people for far too long a time.

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     After a long time, at least for me anyway, chapter 14 of Bunnies of Love is up and I like this one a lot.  It isn't my favorite, because in a way they are all my favorite but I think that moves things nicely toward the next chapter.  Although I am not so sure now as to wether or not the next chapter will be the last as I noted in the note to chapter 14, we will just have to wait and see.

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