Speak Up / Deviating from 'ki-sho-ten-ketsu' : The Language Connection : Features : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri):
Speak Up / Deviating from 'ki-sho-ten-ketsu'
Ian Willey Special to The Daily Yomiuri
It makes for an awkward moment. When introducing essay writing to my university students, I go into a little contrastive rhetoric. The English academic essay, I say, has a strict, legalistic organization, derived from the rhetorical tradition of the ancient Greeks: The writer makes a point (the thesis statement), provides evidence to support that point (the body paragraphs), and wraps up everything with a closing statement (the conclusion).
In Japan, however, compositions follow the ki-sho-ten-ketsu pattern: The writer introduces a topic (ki), develops the topic (sho), departs from the topic in a tangent intended to cast a new light on the topic (ten), and concludes the paper (ketsu). Research done in the past few decades confirms this difference between Japanese and English writing.
Yet, invariably, half of the class eyes me dubiously. That isn't how I learned to write compositions in school, some say. Ki-sho-ten-ketsu is for story writing, not the kind of essays written for class. Several students, however, look at the chalkboard with an enlightened gleam in their eyes. As class proceeds I realize how little I, an American, know about my students' education. And I wonder how, in an educational system famed for its uniformity, so many students can have different backgrounds when it comes to writing.
Ki-sho-ten-ketsu became cemented in the English as a foreign language (EFL) lexicon in 1987, with John Hinds' paper about rhetorical differences between Japanese and English. Hinds asserted that Japanese writing is inductive; responsibility falls on the reader to understand transitions between paragraphs or topics in a composition. English, on the other hand, is more deductive, and the writer is expected to make a statement and explain it clearly and logically.
When writing in a foreign language, people apply writing strategies they learned in their first language. Thus, native English speakers may be perplexed when reading a Japanese writer's essay in English, particularly when they encounter the ten element, which would be regarded as a deviation. Hinds thus stressed the need to inform students of different culture-bound rhetorical patterns when they engage in second-language writing.
That ki-sho-ten-ketsu is alive and well in modern Japan seems beyond doubt. Hinds himself examined Japanese newspaper columns and found an abundance of ten paragraphs. Having taught writing classes in Japan for several years, I continually find ten-like paragraphs in student essays. They usually occur two-thirds of the way through the essay, and begin with "By the way."
In addition to ki-sho-ten-ketsu, two lesser-known composition strategies in Japanese rhetoric have been described: the "return to baseline theme" and the tempura or "quasi-inductive" approach.
In the "return to baseline theme," an opinion is given at the beginning of an essay, but no attempt is made to explain it. The writer goes on to discuss seemingly disconnected topics, then suddenly and without explanation restates the opinion made earlier.
A writer following the tempura or "quasi-inductive" pattern makes statements about a topic in the beginning and middle of the paper, though an opinion or controlling idea is not introduced until the end. The implication is that essays written by Japanese students in English do possess distinct methods of organization, but a native English-speaking reader, normally the teacher, would be put off by the seemingly disorganized styles, and unwilling to make the effort to connect the threads set down by the writer.
But these three patterns alone do not account for all the essay types I have encountered. Most fascinating to me is an essay that begins with a proper English-style intro paragraph, continues with two or three body paragraphs, and then branches off with a new point into a completely new essay, as though two essays had been fused together. How did that happen?
The reason for the profusion of writing styles can be explained by the fact that writing strategies are not uniformly taught in Japanese schools. A visit to the Web site of the Education, Science and Technology Ministry reveals that writing (kaku koto) objectives are presented for primary, middle and high school Japanese (kokugo) classes. Students should be able to express their ideas with clarity, and organize their writing effectively based on the content and audience.
But the objectives are rather vague, and explicit writing strategies are not described (nowhere is there any mention made of ki-sho-ten-ketsu, either). It is up to the instructors to emphasize writing strategies they feel are appropriate, if they have time to teach any at all.
One Japanese high school English teacher told me that writing in Japan is considered an individualized act, and students writing in Japanese are given more freedom of expression than they would have when writing a composition in English. A composition's success or failure depends on its own individual merits, not necessarily its adherence to a preconceived standard.
At the university where I currently teach, I was a member of a selection committee for a group of medical students applying for an intensive study-abroad program. Applicants wrote two essays in Japanese, which we had to judge. When our group met to discuss the essays, it soon became clear that the other members used different criteria from mine in their evaluations. Essays that I felt were strong, that is, well-organized, with a clearly stated opinion, were often evaluated poorly, and vice versa.
One professor repeatedly said he could not feel this or that writer's "passion," and gave those essays low scores. Interestingly, there was often little agreement among the Japanese professors in their evaluations. It seemed, we were all evaluating the papers with different criteria in mind.
Deciding the successful candidates took much time.
If writing in Japanese allows for greater individualized expression than in English, writing teachers should continue to expect all sorts of surprises in English essays written by students. But these surprises may provide the best clues in helping us to understand how our students, as individuals, compose their thoughts.
Willey is a lecturer at Kagawa University in Kagawa Prefecture.
(Apr. 21, 2006)
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Democracy's alien presence in Japan
U.S. Culture / Democracy's alien presence in Japan : The Language Connection : Features : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri):
The Language Connection
It's a shame that this is going to be Kimiko's last article. I really enjoyed her writings over the course of this past year...
A year has passed since I began to write this column. After much thought I have decided to stop writing due to my busy schedule. I would like to thank The Daily Yomiuri for giving me the opportunity to express my ideas, and also the readers for writing to me with their thoughts. It was interesting to hear various different opinions, and I apologize to the many to whom I could not reply.
I would like to devote the last column to some of the questions that readers have raised.
A few seemed to be offended by my suggestion that traditional Japanese morals stem from the individual's pride, honor and discipline, and my belief that such morals are imperilled in today's Japanese society.
In my view, the Japanese historical value system was diluted with the conclusion of World War II and the importation of democracy. Traditional values based on individual pride, honor and discipline were lost. I wrote the following in my column of Jan. 24.
"Despite 60 years of democracy following the conclusion of the World War II, the Japanese are still unable to digest the concept of individualism and freedom. In addition, the Japanese have abandoned attempts to convey to the next generation the historical value system that stresses pride, honor and discipline. Today's Japanese, having lost their emotional compass, have become unable to distinguish the difference between good and evil (right and wrong), which is why I think we have seen a rise in corporate scandals and crimes in recent years."
After the war, when democracy was suddenly imposed upon the Japanese, they did not have the foundation to understand it. Many misunderstood what "freedom" meant. It took centuries for Americans to build the democracy that they have today. In contrast, Japanese society was based on morals and values that existed long before democracy arrived in the country.
It is easy to build something new where there is nothing, but it is hard to build on top of something different that already exists. It seems to me that the current problems in Japanese society come from the building of "democracy" on top of an existing base of "traditional values and morals," and to some extent, both are falling apart.
Unlike the United States, which built its democracy over many centuries, Japan had no knowledge of it when it suddenly became the political system. However, I am not saying that Japan should not be a democratic nation, simply that democracy has to come with a strong sense of law, accompanied by law enforcement. It seems to me that things are rather black and white in a democracy, which isn't surprising as it originated with the ancient Greeks, who had a clearly defined sense of "right" and "wrong."
In Japan, however, there seems to be a wider range of gray that acts as a lubricant in defusing problems between two factions. The common term "Shoganai"--"It can't be helped"--can be seen as an example of such lubrication. The way that the masses think, eat and socialize cannot be changed overnight.
Another reader asserted that it was the post-war Japanese Constitution that introduced the separation of state and religion in Japanese society. To me, this isn't necessarily so.
In Japanese history, there have been powerful religious leaders who tried to assert their power. One notable example was crushed between 1568 and 1580 by daimyo Oda Nobunaga, who was the first of the three unifiers of Japan in the Warring States period. During the Edo period (1603-1867), the Buddhist temple was part of the administration for the shogunate government, and some religious leaders no doubt benefited from this arrangement. But during the numerous shogunate governments, religion was not really a central force in politics--Japanese history is almost entirely free from wars over religion. Unlike Western history, religious wars were relatively rare in East Asia.
According to sociologists, people have a tendency to yearn for two things. The first is lumped together as power and money, and the second is the divine. However, dictators can try to combine the two yearnings. Throughout history in many parts of the world, conquerors have tried to give themselves legitimacy by becoming a king and/or claiming divine origins. Interestingly, in Japan, this was not the case. Those who have seized power usually did not try to acquire some sort of divine status; this remained with the Imperial family, who were, for the most part, powerless throughout history.
Thus there was always a separation between "church" (the divinity of the Imperial family) and "state" (the shogunate government). The Meiji Restoration is so named because it "returned" power to the Imperial family, and was based on European models of monarchy. Thus, it was the importation of European ideas that brought about the mingling of church and state in Japan. In any case, to me, this historical separation indicates that traditional Japanese values and morals do not necessarily have their origins in religion.
As a Japanese person who grew up in Japan, living in the United States taught me that values there seem to exist in a completely different dimension. For Japanese, the striking difference is the way the needs of the individual are put before the needs of the group or common good. When Japanese people go abroad and say that they feel "free" they aren't talking about a lack of individual rights in Japan, but the freedom from always worrying about how others perceive them. In this way, the concept of "freedom" for Japanese people and Westerners is different. Historically, Japanese who only knew group society may not necessarily have sought "individual freedom" in the Western sense.
When I first came to the United States, I was surprised by labor relations--particularly how the employer-employee relationship seems to be adversarial. In Japanese companies, employees traditionally were seen as an extended family. The goal for the company was to be profitable enough for all employees to make a living, and the company wasn't always run for the benefit of the stockholder. It seems to me that this was a natural outgrowth of a group-oriented society. Both the management and the union seemed to understand that they are mutually dependent. From the perspective of a Westerner, then, it might seem Japanese unions lack bite.
When I was caught between the good and bad of both cultures, one I was born in and the other I was adapted to, I thought that perhaps one might be happier not knowing another culture and to be simply satisfied with the culture one was born in. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.
However, I came to realize that to take this position would ultimately make me guilty of the ethnocentrism that is at the root of so many of the world's problems. To the contrary, this age of globalization makes it more necessary than ever to engage with other cultures.
Thank you for your interest in my column.
Manes resides in Philadelphia and teaches Japanese at Bucks and Montgomery county community colleges. She is the author of "Culture Shock of Mind." (Sunmark Publishing Company; in Japanese). maneskim@gmail.com.
(Apr. 18, 2006)
The Language Connection
It's a shame that this is going to be Kimiko's last article. I really enjoyed her writings over the course of this past year...
A year has passed since I began to write this column. After much thought I have decided to stop writing due to my busy schedule. I would like to thank The Daily Yomiuri for giving me the opportunity to express my ideas, and also the readers for writing to me with their thoughts. It was interesting to hear various different opinions, and I apologize to the many to whom I could not reply.
I would like to devote the last column to some of the questions that readers have raised.
A few seemed to be offended by my suggestion that traditional Japanese morals stem from the individual's pride, honor and discipline, and my belief that such morals are imperilled in today's Japanese society.
In my view, the Japanese historical value system was diluted with the conclusion of World War II and the importation of democracy. Traditional values based on individual pride, honor and discipline were lost. I wrote the following in my column of Jan. 24.
"Despite 60 years of democracy following the conclusion of the World War II, the Japanese are still unable to digest the concept of individualism and freedom. In addition, the Japanese have abandoned attempts to convey to the next generation the historical value system that stresses pride, honor and discipline. Today's Japanese, having lost their emotional compass, have become unable to distinguish the difference between good and evil (right and wrong), which is why I think we have seen a rise in corporate scandals and crimes in recent years."
After the war, when democracy was suddenly imposed upon the Japanese, they did not have the foundation to understand it. Many misunderstood what "freedom" meant. It took centuries for Americans to build the democracy that they have today. In contrast, Japanese society was based on morals and values that existed long before democracy arrived in the country.
It is easy to build something new where there is nothing, but it is hard to build on top of something different that already exists. It seems to me that the current problems in Japanese society come from the building of "democracy" on top of an existing base of "traditional values and morals," and to some extent, both are falling apart.
Unlike the United States, which built its democracy over many centuries, Japan had no knowledge of it when it suddenly became the political system. However, I am not saying that Japan should not be a democratic nation, simply that democracy has to come with a strong sense of law, accompanied by law enforcement. It seems to me that things are rather black and white in a democracy, which isn't surprising as it originated with the ancient Greeks, who had a clearly defined sense of "right" and "wrong."
In Japan, however, there seems to be a wider range of gray that acts as a lubricant in defusing problems between two factions. The common term "Shoganai"--"It can't be helped"--can be seen as an example of such lubrication. The way that the masses think, eat and socialize cannot be changed overnight.
Another reader asserted that it was the post-war Japanese Constitution that introduced the separation of state and religion in Japanese society. To me, this isn't necessarily so.
In Japanese history, there have been powerful religious leaders who tried to assert their power. One notable example was crushed between 1568 and 1580 by daimyo Oda Nobunaga, who was the first of the three unifiers of Japan in the Warring States period. During the Edo period (1603-1867), the Buddhist temple was part of the administration for the shogunate government, and some religious leaders no doubt benefited from this arrangement. But during the numerous shogunate governments, religion was not really a central force in politics--Japanese history is almost entirely free from wars over religion. Unlike Western history, religious wars were relatively rare in East Asia.
According to sociologists, people have a tendency to yearn for two things. The first is lumped together as power and money, and the second is the divine. However, dictators can try to combine the two yearnings. Throughout history in many parts of the world, conquerors have tried to give themselves legitimacy by becoming a king and/or claiming divine origins. Interestingly, in Japan, this was not the case. Those who have seized power usually did not try to acquire some sort of divine status; this remained with the Imperial family, who were, for the most part, powerless throughout history.
Thus there was always a separation between "church" (the divinity of the Imperial family) and "state" (the shogunate government). The Meiji Restoration is so named because it "returned" power to the Imperial family, and was based on European models of monarchy. Thus, it was the importation of European ideas that brought about the mingling of church and state in Japan. In any case, to me, this historical separation indicates that traditional Japanese values and morals do not necessarily have their origins in religion.
As a Japanese person who grew up in Japan, living in the United States taught me that values there seem to exist in a completely different dimension. For Japanese, the striking difference is the way the needs of the individual are put before the needs of the group or common good. When Japanese people go abroad and say that they feel "free" they aren't talking about a lack of individual rights in Japan, but the freedom from always worrying about how others perceive them. In this way, the concept of "freedom" for Japanese people and Westerners is different. Historically, Japanese who only knew group society may not necessarily have sought "individual freedom" in the Western sense.
When I first came to the United States, I was surprised by labor relations--particularly how the employer-employee relationship seems to be adversarial. In Japanese companies, employees traditionally were seen as an extended family. The goal for the company was to be profitable enough for all employees to make a living, and the company wasn't always run for the benefit of the stockholder. It seems to me that this was a natural outgrowth of a group-oriented society. Both the management and the union seemed to understand that they are mutually dependent. From the perspective of a Westerner, then, it might seem Japanese unions lack bite.
When I was caught between the good and bad of both cultures, one I was born in and the other I was adapted to, I thought that perhaps one might be happier not knowing another culture and to be simply satisfied with the culture one was born in. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.
However, I came to realize that to take this position would ultimately make me guilty of the ethnocentrism that is at the root of so many of the world's problems. To the contrary, this age of globalization makes it more necessary than ever to engage with other cultures.
Thank you for your interest in my column.
Manes resides in Philadelphia and teaches Japanese at Bucks and Montgomery county community colleges. She is the author of "Culture Shock of Mind." (Sunmark Publishing Company; in Japanese). maneskim@gmail.com.
(Apr. 18, 2006)
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Nepal's king vows to return power to people
Nepal's king vows to return power to people:
Nepal's king vows to return power to people Concession comes amid pro-democracy protests, international pressure
Nepali riot policemen push back pro-democracy activists during demonstrations in the Chabahil district of Nepal's capital Kathmandu April 20, 2006. REUTERS/Adrees LatifBy Binaj Gurubacharya
The Associated Press
April 21, 2006, 10:22 AM EDT
KATMANDU, Nepal -- Nepal's king vowed today to return power to the people of this Himalayan kingdom after weeks of massive protests and mounting international pressure.
King Gyanendra said his dynasty had "unflinching commitment toward constitutional monarchy and multiparty democracy" and he called on the seven main political parties to name a prime minister as soon as possible.
"Executive power ... shall, from this day, be returned to the people," he said in the announcement that was broadcast on state television and radio.
While the king appeared to be giving up most -- and perhaps all -- of his power, it remained unclear if his announcement would mollify his political opponents who launched a general strike on April 6 and drew tens of thousands to the streets daily.
Political leaders were in meetings after his announcement and could not be reached for comment.
Just hours earlier, more than 100,000 pro-democracy protesters defied a government curfew despite shoot-on-sight orders and filled the streets on the outskirts of Katmandu, Nepal's capital.
As the tension grew, so did the international pressure on Gyanendra, who seized power in February 2005, saying he needed to crush the Maoist insurgency that has killed nearly 13,000 people in a decade.
The U.S. ambassador warned the king's regime could be nearing collapse.
"His time is running out," U.S. Ambassador James Moriarty told reporters earlier today. "Ultimately the king will have to leave if he doesn't compromise. And by 'ultimately' I mean sooner rather than later."
Nepal's crisis has escalated steadily since the opposition launched a general strike and protesters began hitting the streets daily, leaving the Himalayan country paralyzed.
Despite the talk of possible compromise, the crackdown continued. Two senior opposition leaders involved in negotiations with communist rebels were arrested today as they tried to return to Katmandu, said Amrit Bohara of the Community Part of Nepal.
The two men, Jhala Nath Khanal and Bamdev Gautam, both leaders of the party, have been important conduits in negotiations between Nepal's seven main opposition parties and the Maoist insurgents who control much of the countryside.
The Maoists remain the biggest unknown in the crisis. Though they have recently tied themselves to the political parties, their history of violence and political extremism worries even their allies.
Shortly before his arrest, Khanal said he only hesitantly trusted the guerrillas.
"They talk about democracy now, but violence is a part of their philosophy," he said at an interview in New Delhi.
Three separate groups of marchers -- each numbering in the thousands -- converged on the western edge of Katmandu in an area called Kalanki, where police shot three demonstrators dead on Thursday and wounded dozens more. The security forces ringing the city today were told to shoot any demonstrators trying to enter the curfew zone.
Government notices issued early today said the 9 a.m.-8 p.m. curfew must be observed in Katmandu, its suburbs of Lalitpur and Bhaktapur, and in the resort town of Pokhara, 125 miles west of the capital. The notices warned people to stay indoors or risk being shot.
The government said the curfew was imposed "to protect the people, property and peace." Katmandu residents rushed to buy food and supplies before it began.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene estimated the crowd at more than 100,000; independent Kantipur television said it counted some 150,000.
Earlier, an Indian envoy who met with Gyanendra on Thursday said he expected a "major announcement" that could defuse the situation -- apparently referring to the king's statement.
"We are hoping that there will be some major step toward reinstating democracy," Karan Singh told reporters in New Delhi after returning from Nepal.
There was minor unrest at today's demonstrations, but no immediate reports of shootings.
A group of protesters destroyed a tin shack covered with barbed wire that was serving as a temporary police checkpoint. Another group vandalized a government office, throwing out portraits of King Gyanendra before setting the building on fire.
At Kalanki, protesters claimed an area on the street with a message scrawled in large red and white letters that read, "Martyrs' square, long live the martyrs."
They waved the flags of opposition political parties and chanted, "Long live democracy! The blood of the martyrs will not go to waste!"
A protester who was wounded during Thursday's clashes died in the hospital today, becoming the 14th person killed by security forces since opposition parties launched the strike. He was among 26 people shot during a protest in Gulariya, 300 miles southwest of Katmandu.
A Defense Ministry statement said security forces had to fire on the crowds because the protests were getting out of control. The statement said 13 policemen were wounded in clashes with protesters who vandalized government offices and tried but failed to set them on fire.
At the Model Hospital, where many of the wounded protesters were taken, doctors wore black bands to protest the shootings.
"It was terrible," said Dr. Sarita Pandey. He said 66 wounded people, eight in critical condition, were brought in Thursday. The injured included a 10-year-old boy with a gunshot wound and 5-year-old beaten by police, he said.
Nepal's Hindu royal dynasty was once revered as godlike, and the recent chants of "Hang the King" are a major departure from past protests, like the 1990 uprising that led the king's older brother to introduce democracy.
Gyanendra ended that experiment last year, arguing the move was needed to restore political order and to crush the communist insurgency.
While many of Nepal's 27 million people -- frustrated by squabbling politicians -- at first welcomed the king's power grab, the worsening insurgency and faltering economy have fueled discontent.
Associated Press writer Matthew Rosenberg contributed to this report.
Nepal's king vows to return power to people Concession comes amid pro-democracy protests, international pressure
Nepali riot policemen push back pro-democracy activists during demonstrations in the Chabahil district of Nepal's capital Kathmandu April 20, 2006. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
The Associated Press
April 21, 2006, 10:22 AM EDT
KATMANDU, Nepal -- Nepal's king vowed today to return power to the people of this Himalayan kingdom after weeks of massive protests and mounting international pressure.
King Gyanendra said his dynasty had "unflinching commitment toward constitutional monarchy and multiparty democracy" and he called on the seven main political parties to name a prime minister as soon as possible.
"Executive power ... shall, from this day, be returned to the people," he said in the announcement that was broadcast on state television and radio.
While the king appeared to be giving up most -- and perhaps all -- of his power, it remained unclear if his announcement would mollify his political opponents who launched a general strike on April 6 and drew tens of thousands to the streets daily.
Political leaders were in meetings after his announcement and could not be reached for comment.
Just hours earlier, more than 100,000 pro-democracy protesters defied a government curfew despite shoot-on-sight orders and filled the streets on the outskirts of Katmandu, Nepal's capital.
As the tension grew, so did the international pressure on Gyanendra, who seized power in February 2005, saying he needed to crush the Maoist insurgency that has killed nearly 13,000 people in a decade.
The U.S. ambassador warned the king's regime could be nearing collapse.
"His time is running out," U.S. Ambassador James Moriarty told reporters earlier today. "Ultimately the king will have to leave if he doesn't compromise. And by 'ultimately' I mean sooner rather than later."
Nepal's crisis has escalated steadily since the opposition launched a general strike and protesters began hitting the streets daily, leaving the Himalayan country paralyzed.
Despite the talk of possible compromise, the crackdown continued. Two senior opposition leaders involved in negotiations with communist rebels were arrested today as they tried to return to Katmandu, said Amrit Bohara of the Community Part of Nepal.
The two men, Jhala Nath Khanal and Bamdev Gautam, both leaders of the party, have been important conduits in negotiations between Nepal's seven main opposition parties and the Maoist insurgents who control much of the countryside.
The Maoists remain the biggest unknown in the crisis. Though they have recently tied themselves to the political parties, their history of violence and political extremism worries even their allies.
Shortly before his arrest, Khanal said he only hesitantly trusted the guerrillas.
"They talk about democracy now, but violence is a part of their philosophy," he said at an interview in New Delhi.
Three separate groups of marchers -- each numbering in the thousands -- converged on the western edge of Katmandu in an area called Kalanki, where police shot three demonstrators dead on Thursday and wounded dozens more. The security forces ringing the city today were told to shoot any demonstrators trying to enter the curfew zone.
Government notices issued early today said the 9 a.m.-8 p.m. curfew must be observed in Katmandu, its suburbs of Lalitpur and Bhaktapur, and in the resort town of Pokhara, 125 miles west of the capital. The notices warned people to stay indoors or risk being shot.
The government said the curfew was imposed "to protect the people, property and peace." Katmandu residents rushed to buy food and supplies before it began.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene estimated the crowd at more than 100,000; independent Kantipur television said it counted some 150,000.
Earlier, an Indian envoy who met with Gyanendra on Thursday said he expected a "major announcement" that could defuse the situation -- apparently referring to the king's statement.
"We are hoping that there will be some major step toward reinstating democracy," Karan Singh told reporters in New Delhi after returning from Nepal.
There was minor unrest at today's demonstrations, but no immediate reports of shootings.
A group of protesters destroyed a tin shack covered with barbed wire that was serving as a temporary police checkpoint. Another group vandalized a government office, throwing out portraits of King Gyanendra before setting the building on fire.
At Kalanki, protesters claimed an area on the street with a message scrawled in large red and white letters that read, "Martyrs' square, long live the martyrs."
They waved the flags of opposition political parties and chanted, "Long live democracy! The blood of the martyrs will not go to waste!"
A protester who was wounded during Thursday's clashes died in the hospital today, becoming the 14th person killed by security forces since opposition parties launched the strike. He was among 26 people shot during a protest in Gulariya, 300 miles southwest of Katmandu.
A Defense Ministry statement said security forces had to fire on the crowds because the protests were getting out of control. The statement said 13 policemen were wounded in clashes with protesters who vandalized government offices and tried but failed to set them on fire.
At the Model Hospital, where many of the wounded protesters were taken, doctors wore black bands to protest the shootings.
"It was terrible," said Dr. Sarita Pandey. He said 66 wounded people, eight in critical condition, were brought in Thursday. The injured included a 10-year-old boy with a gunshot wound and 5-year-old beaten by police, he said.
Nepal's Hindu royal dynasty was once revered as godlike, and the recent chants of "Hang the King" are a major departure from past protests, like the 1990 uprising that led the king's older brother to introduce democracy.
Gyanendra ended that experiment last year, arguing the move was needed to restore political order and to crush the communist insurgency.
While many of Nepal's 27 million people -- frustrated by squabbling politicians -- at first welcomed the king's power grab, the worsening insurgency and faltering economy have fueled discontent.
Associated Press writer Matthew Rosenberg contributed to this report.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Treating violence as an infectious disease | Chicago Tribune
Treating violence as an infectious disease Chicago Tribune: "chicagotribune.com >> Editorials
The novel approach to a rather serious problem was an interesting read... It might even work!
Professor of Epidemiology and CeaseFire Director Gary Slutkin with First Lady Laura Bush at roundtable at the Logan Square CeaseFire Project Site in Chicago
PERSON OF INTEREST
Treating violence as an infectious disease
CeaseFire Director Gary Slutkin says understanding illnesses offers insight and direction into quelling urban brutality
By Johnathon E. Briggs
a Tribune staff reporter
Published April 9, 2006
chicagotribune.com >> Editorials
Dr. Gary Slutkin has tackled AIDS in Uganda, cholera in Somalia and tuberculosis in San Francisco. Now he views violence as an infectious disease and treats it like other epidemics, by trying to alter behavior. Last week at the annual Richard J. Daley Urban Forum at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Chicago epidemiologist told civic leaders that nothing makes urban life more fragile than violence.
Slutkin was lauded last month by the fourth annual Volvo for life Awards for his CeaseFire antiviolence program, which has helped reduce shootings in some of Chicago's more dangerous neighborhoods by 50 to 75 percent. He will be in New York Wednesday, when one overall winner will be crowned "America's Greatest Hometown Hero," although he says CeaseFire outreach workers truly deserve the title.
Q. How does violence undermine a city's progress?
A. It's only if you don't live there [that] you would not realize that the violence is overwhelming the education, the possibility for business, your housing price and your daily life. This is the No. 1 reason why teachers quit our schools. It's a constant cause of serious concentration problems that little children have. These two little girls [killed last month] in Englewood, what do you think the rest of the children in Englewood are thinking about right now? Are they thinking about their homework? Improving schools is the main issue of Chicago, correctly so, but it may be the case that we will not succeed in this arena until we have cooled down the neighborhoods first.
Q. How can we understand violence as a disease?
A. First off, it is the No. 1 cause of death of persons in the 1 to 35 age group in Chicago and many U.S. cities, so it's kind of like the heart disease and cancer of young people. Second, it involves hospitals, emergency rooms, anesthesiologists, surgeons and chest tubes. But the principal reason is that the results are a result of behavior.
Q. How are violent behaviors formed?
A. Well, they're learned by modeling what's around you. In other words, what is expected of you if someone shows you disrespect, or looks at your girlfriend or owes you money or insults you? If the expectation is that you should shoot, then that's what you do.
Q. Like a disease, can violence be transmitted from person to person?
A. Violence behaves almost completely like an infectious disease. There are fast epidemics like a soccer riot where there's no violence, then suddenly there is. That kind of looks like cholera. The massacre in Rwanda was a sudden epidemic, 800,000 people killed in three to four months. There are slower epidemics [such as those] that occurred in most U.S. cities starting in the '60s, '70s, '80s and building up into the '90s.
Q. To borrow a public-health term, who is at high risk to be violent?
A. It's someone who grows up in a neighborhood in which violence is common. For example, for a flu or for measles, if someone gives [it] to you, then you can give it to somebody else. Likewise, if someone has done violence to you, that's the largest predictor, scientifically, that you will do violence back to that person. There's the story of the boss who screams at the man who hits his wife who hits the kid who hits the dog. That's the inverse of the kid who gets a cold in school and brings it back to the mom who gives it to the dad who brings it to work.
Q. So what is the vaccine?
A. To break the chain of transmission by changing the thinking. What we're really trying to do is to change norms like how we changed the norms for cigarette smoking.
Q. Why are CeaseFire workers effective?
A. It's because they're credible, because they come from the same group. We use ex-offenders to talk to people who are currently involved [in violence] because it's a public-health technology.
Q. How do you change the social norm?
A. First off, there's a general view of violence as individual crime, whereas we see this as a group behavior and preventable. The reality is that none of these people were born bad. They were all little babies who laughed and cried and smiled and the behavior was formed. The best way to change it is social pressure, peer pressure. Peer pressure is more powerful than law enforcement for changing norms.
Q. How do you respond to people who say that once poverty is reduced violence will follow?
A. People have said this for every problem that I've worked on. When we worked in refugee camps in Somalia, they said that you're not going to get rid of diarrhea disease until you improve the nutrition and get the water clean and improve the sanitation. In fact, we directly addressed the diarrhea and provided education to the moms and we reduced the diarrhea deaths. When you begin to deal with the problem directly, all kinds of other things become easier to deal with. It's almost the opposite of what the [conventional wisdom] is.
Q. Wouldn't getting guns off the streets also solve the problem?
A. Guns are not the essential problem. If we could get rid of all the guns, we could reduce the violence most dramatically. However, the "if" is too large right now. So far there has not been success globally in interrupting the flow of a product that is in demand whether it is legal or illegal. If they don't get their guns in Illinois, they will get them in Indiana; if they don't get them in Indiana, they'll get them from Mississippi.
--an edited transcript
----------
jebriggs@tribune.com
The novel approach to a rather serious problem was an interesting read... It might even work!
Professor of Epidemiology and CeaseFire Director Gary Slutkin with First Lady Laura Bush at roundtable at the Logan Square CeaseFire Project Site in Chicago PERSON OF INTEREST
Treating violence as an infectious disease
CeaseFire Director Gary Slutkin says understanding illnesses offers insight and direction into quelling urban brutality
By Johnathon E. Briggs
a Tribune staff reporter
Published April 9, 2006
chicagotribune.com >> Editorials
Dr. Gary Slutkin has tackled AIDS in Uganda, cholera in Somalia and tuberculosis in San Francisco. Now he views violence as an infectious disease and treats it like other epidemics, by trying to alter behavior. Last week at the annual Richard J. Daley Urban Forum at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Chicago epidemiologist told civic leaders that nothing makes urban life more fragile than violence.
Slutkin was lauded last month by the fourth annual Volvo for life Awards for his CeaseFire antiviolence program, which has helped reduce shootings in some of Chicago's more dangerous neighborhoods by 50 to 75 percent. He will be in New York Wednesday, when one overall winner will be crowned "America's Greatest Hometown Hero," although he says CeaseFire outreach workers truly deserve the title.
Q. How does violence undermine a city's progress?
A. It's only if you don't live there [that] you would not realize that the violence is overwhelming the education, the possibility for business, your housing price and your daily life. This is the No. 1 reason why teachers quit our schools. It's a constant cause of serious concentration problems that little children have. These two little girls [killed last month] in Englewood, what do you think the rest of the children in Englewood are thinking about right now? Are they thinking about their homework? Improving schools is the main issue of Chicago, correctly so, but it may be the case that we will not succeed in this arena until we have cooled down the neighborhoods first.
Q. How can we understand violence as a disease?
A. First off, it is the No. 1 cause of death of persons in the 1 to 35 age group in Chicago and many U.S. cities, so it's kind of like the heart disease and cancer of young people. Second, it involves hospitals, emergency rooms, anesthesiologists, surgeons and chest tubes. But the principal reason is that the results are a result of behavior.
Q. How are violent behaviors formed?
A. Well, they're learned by modeling what's around you. In other words, what is expected of you if someone shows you disrespect, or looks at your girlfriend or owes you money or insults you? If the expectation is that you should shoot, then that's what you do.
Q. Like a disease, can violence be transmitted from person to person?
A. Violence behaves almost completely like an infectious disease. There are fast epidemics like a soccer riot where there's no violence, then suddenly there is. That kind of looks like cholera. The massacre in Rwanda was a sudden epidemic, 800,000 people killed in three to four months. There are slower epidemics [such as those] that occurred in most U.S. cities starting in the '60s, '70s, '80s and building up into the '90s.
Q. To borrow a public-health term, who is at high risk to be violent?
A. It's someone who grows up in a neighborhood in which violence is common. For example, for a flu or for measles, if someone gives [it] to you, then you can give it to somebody else. Likewise, if someone has done violence to you, that's the largest predictor, scientifically, that you will do violence back to that person. There's the story of the boss who screams at the man who hits his wife who hits the kid who hits the dog. That's the inverse of the kid who gets a cold in school and brings it back to the mom who gives it to the dad who brings it to work.
Q. So what is the vaccine?
A. To break the chain of transmission by changing the thinking. What we're really trying to do is to change norms like how we changed the norms for cigarette smoking.
Q. Why are CeaseFire workers effective?
A. It's because they're credible, because they come from the same group. We use ex-offenders to talk to people who are currently involved [in violence] because it's a public-health technology.
Q. How do you change the social norm?
A. First off, there's a general view of violence as individual crime, whereas we see this as a group behavior and preventable. The reality is that none of these people were born bad. They were all little babies who laughed and cried and smiled and the behavior was formed. The best way to change it is social pressure, peer pressure. Peer pressure is more powerful than law enforcement for changing norms.
Q. How do you respond to people who say that once poverty is reduced violence will follow?
A. People have said this for every problem that I've worked on. When we worked in refugee camps in Somalia, they said that you're not going to get rid of diarrhea disease until you improve the nutrition and get the water clean and improve the sanitation. In fact, we directly addressed the diarrhea and provided education to the moms and we reduced the diarrhea deaths. When you begin to deal with the problem directly, all kinds of other things become easier to deal with. It's almost the opposite of what the [conventional wisdom] is.
Q. Wouldn't getting guns off the streets also solve the problem?
A. Guns are not the essential problem. If we could get rid of all the guns, we could reduce the violence most dramatically. However, the "if" is too large right now. So far there has not been success globally in interrupting the flow of a product that is in demand whether it is legal or illegal. If they don't get their guns in Illinois, they will get them in Indiana; if they don't get them in Indiana, they'll get them from Mississippi.
--an edited transcript
----------
jebriggs@tribune.com
Friday, April 14, 2006
A caustic brand of Irish comedy
Performance: A caustic brand of Irish comedy - Arts & Leisure - International Herald Tribune
By Brian Lavery The New York Times
TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 2006
DUBLIN At some point in each episode of his reality television series, Des Bishop is sure to walk onto the stage of a grimy pub in a rough neighborhood, beam out at the crowd and say exactly what it doesn't want to hear.
In Belfast, he told a bristling Protestant audience that they are more like their hated Catholic neighbors than they like to admit.
In Southill, an area of Limerick known for boarded-up houses and burned-out cars, he boasted that his show would support the area by attracting tourists whom locals could rob.
Maybe because a camera was present, the crowds refrained from hurling glasses at Bishop, a 30-year-old American. Instead, they laughed. As he kept spouting jokes and insults, they kept on laughing.
It seems that all of Ireland has been watching his stand-up comedy and caustic brand of reality TV. His satire contains no-holds- barred discussions of class divisions, immigration and the drinking problem. He encourages and sometimes forces people to confront their hypocrisies.
Over coffee in a Dublin hotel, Bishop spoke of himself in an unexpectedly mild voice. "I did always see myself as some sort of an agitator," he said.
Like African-American comedians who joke about racism, he helps take the sting out of prejudices here.
"It's humanizing," Fintan O'Toole, the critic and Irish Times columnist, said of Bishop's work. "He allows people to emerge from the stereotypes, and to play with those stereotypes themselves."
Bishop's TV series, which recently had a six-week run on RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster, earned impressive ratings by offering an honest glimpse inside groups that are usually ignored.
The cameras followed him as he lived in tough housing projects, ran stand-up comedy workshops for residents and showcased the results in a performance by his trainees, usually in a shabby pub, with Bishop as the uncompromising M.C. It is a gritty comedy version of "American Idol."
While living in those areas he took part in some bizarre customs, like hunting rabbits with flashlights and mangy greyhounds (and cooking the catch for dinner); throwing appliances out the windows of abandoned tower- blocks, and amateur boxing (in which he broke a rib).
For some, Bishop hits a raw nerve rather than the funny bone.
After an episode about Knocknaheeny, in Cork, politicians and news organizations accused him of overemphasizing the area's deprivation, and of exploiting hardship for laughs. One Cork newspaper printed a full-page demand that he apologize; call-in radio shows argued it for two days before banning the subject. (He replied that politicians had previously been happy to ignore that deprivation and that he gave people in the area a voice.)
"I wanted to do stuff that's in some way conscious of an issue," he said. "I did cherish the day when I would be able to stand up and really make some serious points. I didn't see it coming this fast, though."
Bishop has lived in Ireland since he was 14. He was expelled from school in Queens, New York City, for unruly behavior and his immigrant father, who had family in Ireland, enrolled his son at a boarding school in Wexford. He later attended the state university in Cork, where he gave his first comic performance.
Since those years, the country has experienced a quiet social revolution, stoked by economic growth, cultural openness and newfound national confidence. When he arrived, thousands of young Irish were emigrating each year, and sex scandals had yet to loosen the Catholic Church's grip on public morality.
"I was given the tiniest little taste of the old Ireland," he said.
He speaks in a broad New Yorker's accent but slips easily into the subtle Irish regional brogues. He also knows Ireland astutely enough to tackle its foibles head on.
When he camps in a rough neighborhood, residents take to him, crediting him with living in areas that many people avoid even in daylight.
Bishop said he forswore alcohol at 19, when he realized he was becoming an alcoholic.
Those experiences, and the volunteer work he does at addiction centers and prisons, strongly influence his frequent live performances.
"Ireland was booming in the late '90s, and that's when I was coming into my own as a comedian who was doing what he wanted to do, rather than just looking for laughs," he said. "Issues of inequality were just out there, and those were the things that started to run in my mind."
That perspective is one reason Bishop likes to boast about the off-camera successes of his current TV show. For instance, his workshop students in the notorious Ballymun neighborhood in Dublin continued running comedy nights after the cameras left. The best comics became warm-up acts on Bishop's national tour.
But he dislikes being branded an activist. "Fundamentally, my job is to make people laugh," he said. "I find it a bonus that there are certain elements that have a greater use than just making people laugh. It's just like a little reminder, refreshing people's minds a little bit."
And laugh they do. His current tour included 21 consecutive nights at the 1,000-seat opera house in Cork, a city of barely 150,000. Every performance sold out.
At more than 6 feet tall and with a big impish grin, he enjoys a loyal following among admiring Irishwomen, and others who appreciate his anti-establishment attitude.
His popularity is not as keen outside Ireland. Bishop's DVDs are watched in Irish bars in New York, but he would like to perform there more.
"In people's perceptions, I'm still the outsider, as much as I am an Irishman now in my mind," he said. "Which is fine by me, because I like being the Irish-American. That's what I am, you know?"
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
RTE News - Conroy increases armed patrols in Dublin
RTE News - Conroy increases armed patrols in Dublin:
The Conroy in this article is the Irish police commissioner. When I was growing up in Ireland, we never had armed police. I understand that times change, but it's too bad it had to be like this.
"Conroy increases armed patrols in Dublin
12 April 2006 09:06
The Garda Commissioner, Noel Conroy, has increased the number of armed patrols on the streets of Dublin to tackle gangland crime.
Speaking at the conference of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors in Killarney in Co Kerry, he said more armed gardai would be assigned wherever or whenever necessary.
However, he said this diversion of resources to tackle drug-related gun crime meant detection rates, though still comparably high, were falling.
Advertisement
Mr Conroy also said guns coming in from eastern Europe and with drug shipments were a serious problem and that gunmen and those involved in drug crime - even as victims - gave no help or co-operation to investigating gardai.
Criminals, he said, were shooting innocent people as well as each other.
Also outlining some of the measures gardai were adopting to tackle road deaths, he said more forensic traffic investigators were now being trained and he promised that a serious collision unit was being established in every region."
Sunday, April 09, 2006
You kiss your mother with that mouth?!
Chicago Tribune You kiss your mother with that mouth?!:
STATE OF PROFANITY
You kiss your mother with that mouth?!
By Rex W. Huppke
a Tribune staff reporter
Published April 2, 2006
Americans believe the use of profanity is on the rise, that coarse language has become commonplace in public, and that people are generally more foul-mouthed than they were a couple of decades ago.
Those are the results of a new survey, one that found 74 percent of Americans frequently or occasionally hear people cursing in public.
The Associated Press-Ipsos profanity poll provides ammo for those who fear every dirty word we utter nudges us closer to Sodom and Gomorrah Part II.
"I think it has really contributed to a culture of disrespect," said Melissa Caldwell, senior director of programs for the Parents Television Council, a conservative group that objects to swearing on TV. "It's not simply harmless. I think it impoverishes our society."
As the curmudgeonly Col. Sherman T. Potter of the television show "M*A*S*H" once said: Mule muffins!
Profanity has been around a lot longer than the religious right, a lot longer than television, Hollywood, rap music and Howard Stern. It likely dates back to the first time a caveman dropped a boulder on his foot.
Of course it didn't take long, historically speaking, for people to get uptight about bad words. Even Shakespeare was knocked around a bit for profane language in his plays.
The reality is that every generation has its share of taboo words, but those words can slowly gain acceptance and lose their bawdy luster. There was a time when "punk" and "heck" were considered profane, but now we watch people getting "Punk'd" on MTV, and anyone who says "heck" sounds either quaint or Southern.
So, some experts posit, this perceived uptick in swearing is more likely just a shift in the way the current generation feels about "bad words."
"The truth is, language is constantly changing, and what's considered to be taboo is kind of a moving target," said Jason Riggle, an assistant professor in the University of Chicago's linguistics department. "It's not necessarily true that we're swearing more now. People were probably swearing just as much back then, just not using the same words we use today."
Aside from perhaps a career peanut vendor at Wrigley Field, it's unlikely anyone has heard as much profanity as Timothy Jay, a psychologist and author of "Cursing in America." He has spent the past 30 years studying foul language and has reached a conclusion that will make clean-talking folks cringe.
"I would call it an essential part of communication," Jay said from his office at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. "Swear words express our emotions in a more efficient way than any other language, and you really can't use substitute words. Other words don't mirror your emotion, and they're not satisfying."
Naturally, not everyone agrees.
"It's just lazy language," said Jim O'Connor, the Lake Forest-based author of "Cuss Control," a guide to breaking the bad-word habit. "Why bother? Nobody ever got in trouble by not swearing. You can say it doesn't do any harm, but it certainly doesn't do any good."
Still, many modern-day swearers ask where we, as a culture, would be without profanity.
Imagine in 1939, as Americans first took in the epic "Gone With the Wind," if Rhett Butler had locked his eyes on Scarlett O'Hara and snarled, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a hoot."
Or if 40 years later, the band AC/DC had penned a hard-rock anthem called "Highway to Heck."
For most, it just wouldn't be the same, which is perhaps why ongoing attempts to purge profanity from our society seem destined to fail.
Jay, the cussing expert, puts it this way: "Restrictions against profanity are like restrictions against farting."
If you don't believe that, go drop a 16-pound sledgehammer on your toe and see if the first thing you holler is "Oh, rats!"
STATE OF PROFANITY
You kiss your mother with that mouth?!
By Rex W. Huppke
a Tribune staff reporter
Published April 2, 2006
Americans believe the use of profanity is on the rise, that coarse language has become commonplace in public, and that people are generally more foul-mouthed than they were a couple of decades ago.
Those are the results of a new survey, one that found 74 percent of Americans frequently or occasionally hear people cursing in public.
The Associated Press-Ipsos profanity poll provides ammo for those who fear every dirty word we utter nudges us closer to Sodom and Gomorrah Part II.
"I think it has really contributed to a culture of disrespect," said Melissa Caldwell, senior director of programs for the Parents Television Council, a conservative group that objects to swearing on TV. "It's not simply harmless. I think it impoverishes our society."
As the curmudgeonly Col. Sherman T. Potter of the television show "M*A*S*H" once said: Mule muffins!
Profanity has been around a lot longer than the religious right, a lot longer than television, Hollywood, rap music and Howard Stern. It likely dates back to the first time a caveman dropped a boulder on his foot.
Of course it didn't take long, historically speaking, for people to get uptight about bad words. Even Shakespeare was knocked around a bit for profane language in his plays.
The reality is that every generation has its share of taboo words, but those words can slowly gain acceptance and lose their bawdy luster. There was a time when "punk" and "heck" were considered profane, but now we watch people getting "Punk'd" on MTV, and anyone who says "heck" sounds either quaint or Southern.
So, some experts posit, this perceived uptick in swearing is more likely just a shift in the way the current generation feels about "bad words."
"The truth is, language is constantly changing, and what's considered to be taboo is kind of a moving target," said Jason Riggle, an assistant professor in the University of Chicago's linguistics department. "It's not necessarily true that we're swearing more now. People were probably swearing just as much back then, just not using the same words we use today."
Aside from perhaps a career peanut vendor at Wrigley Field, it's unlikely anyone has heard as much profanity as Timothy Jay, a psychologist and author of "Cursing in America." He has spent the past 30 years studying foul language and has reached a conclusion that will make clean-talking folks cringe.
"I would call it an essential part of communication," Jay said from his office at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. "Swear words express our emotions in a more efficient way than any other language, and you really can't use substitute words. Other words don't mirror your emotion, and they're not satisfying."
Naturally, not everyone agrees.
"It's just lazy language," said Jim O'Connor, the Lake Forest-based author of "Cuss Control," a guide to breaking the bad-word habit. "Why bother? Nobody ever got in trouble by not swearing. You can say it doesn't do any harm, but it certainly doesn't do any good."
Still, many modern-day swearers ask where we, as a culture, would be without profanity.
Imagine in 1939, as Americans first took in the epic "Gone With the Wind," if Rhett Butler had locked his eyes on Scarlett O'Hara and snarled, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a hoot."
Or if 40 years later, the band AC/DC had penned a hard-rock anthem called "Highway to Heck."
For most, it just wouldn't be the same, which is perhaps why ongoing attempts to purge profanity from our society seem destined to fail.
Jay, the cussing expert, puts it this way: "Restrictions against profanity are like restrictions against farting."
If you don't believe that, go drop a 16-pound sledgehammer on your toe and see if the first thing you holler is "Oh, rats!"
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
MIT professor hits back at $100 laptop critics
MIT professor hits back at $100 laptop critics - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com
Eraldo Peres / AP file
"When you have both Intel and Microsoft on your case, you know you're doing something right," MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte told open-source fans Tuesday. He is seen here in a photo from March with a prototype of his $100 laptop.
MIT professor hits back at $100 laptop critics
Negroponte also unveils new tweaks to computer aimed at world's children
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:48 p.m. ET April 4, 2006
BOSTON - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who hopes to give $100 laptops to the world's children dismissed recent criticisms Tuesday and said his project could begin distributing the computers by early next year.
Kicking off the LinuxWorld conference in Boston, Nicholas Negroponte said he was undeterred by skepticism from two of the leading forces in computing, Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp.
"When you have both Intel and Microsoft on your case, you know you're doing something right," Negroponte said, prompting applause from the audience of several hundred open-source software devotees.
Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit association, also revealed a few new tweaks to the design of the computers.
One distinctive element of the original design was for a hand crank to provide power to the laptops where there is no electricity. To compensate, the devices are being engineered to use just 2 watts of electricity, less than one-tenth of what conventional portable computers generally consume.
But having a hand crank stuck to the device likely would have subjected the machine to too many wrenching forces, so it will now be connected to the AC electrical adapter.
In fact, because the adapter can rest on the ground, the power generator might take the form of a foot pedal rather than a hand crank altogether.
Negroponte had previously said the flexible devices will have a 7-inch screen that can be read in sunlight. It will save on costs by using the Linux operating system, peer-to-peer wireless connectivity and a 500-megahertz processor — which was top of the line in the late 1990s.
One Laptop Per Child has big-name partners, including search leader Google Inc., chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Linux distributor Red Hat Inc., laptop maker Quanta Computer Inc. and News Corp., the media company led by Rupert Murdoch. All have helped finance the project, which Negroponte said has raised $29 million.
However, skeptics have questioned whether the device can meet Negroponte's goal of inspiring huge educational gains in the developing world.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has criticized the computers' design, including its lack of a hard disk drive — though many people in the tech world believed he was more irked by the laptops' use of Linux, the free, open-source system that competes with Gates' proprietary Windows systems. (MSNBC.com is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)
Intel executives, meanwhile, have suggested that Negroponte's laptop is a mere gadget that will lack too many PC functions. Last week, Intel announced its own plans to sell an inexpensive desktop PC for beginners in developing countries.
Negroponte expressed frustration with Gates in particular, saying that the $100 laptop designers are still working with Microsoft to develop a version of the Windows CE operating system that could run the machines.
"Geez, so why criticize me in public?" Negroponte said.
Microsoft did not immediately return calls for comment.
Negroponte's current plan is to begin distributing 5 million to 10 million of the laptops in China, India, Egypt, Brazil, Thailand, Nigeria and Argentina by early 2007.
Governments or donors will buy the laptops for children to own and use in and out of school, and the United Nations will help distribute the machines.
Eventually, Negroponte expects many other governments — and not just those in technology-deprived places — to come onboard. For example, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has expressed interest in buying the machines for schoolchildren here.
In time, Negroponte expects the $100 laptop to be a misnomer. For one thing, he believes the cost — which is actually about $135 now and isn't expected to hit $100 until 2008 — can drop to $50 by 2010 as more and more are produced.
He also said the display and other specifications could change as enhancements are made. In other words, he seemed to be saying to his critics: Don't get too hung up on how this thing operates now.
"The hundred-dollar laptop is an education project," he said. "It's not a laptop project."
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12153615/
Monday, April 03, 2006
Porn: Homewrecker or harmless fun?
Porn: Homewrecker or harmless fun? - Media - MSNBC.com
Porn: Homewrecker or harmless fun?
Critics say $12 billion adult entertainment industry no innocent diversion
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:39 p.m. ET April 2, 2006
NEW YORK - The industry’s VIPs mingle at political galas and Super Bowl parties. Their product is available on cell phones, podcasts, and particularly the Internet — there it’s an attraction like no other, patronized by tens of millions of Americans.
It’s pornography. And if you’re a consumer, John Harmer thinks you’re damaging your brain.
Harmer is part of a cadre of anti-porn activists seeking new tactics to fight an unprecedented deluge of porn which they see as wrecking countless marriages and warping human sexuality. They are urging federal prosecutors to pursue more obscenity cases and raising funds for high-tech brain research that they hope will fuel lawsuits against porn magnates.
“We don’t think it’s a lost cause,” said Harmer, a Utah-based auto executive and former politician who’s been fighting porn for 40 years.
“It’s the most profitable industry in the world,” he said. “But I’m convinced we’ll demonstrate in the not-too-distant future the actual physical harm that pornography causes and hold them financially accountable. That could be the straw that breaks their back.”
The activists’ adversary is a sprawling industry that, by some counts, offers more than 4 million porn sites on the Internet, that in the United States alone is estimated to be worth $12 billion a year. A tracking firm, comScore Media Metrix, says about 40 percent of Internet users in the United States visit adult sites each month.
Porn products are featured at popular sex expositions and retail chains such as Hustler Hollywood. Major hotels provide in-room porn, and adult film stars are now mainstream celebrities. Mary Carey attended a VIP Republican fundraiser in Washington in mid-March; Jenna Jameson’s “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star” hit the best-seller lists and she hosted a racy pre-Super Bowl party in Detroit in February.
As much as there is national consensus on the evils of child pornography, there is none whatever on porn featuring adults and marketed to them. It’s more pervasive than ever, yet activists and experts disagree bitterly over the extent of harm it causes.
“The form of entertainment is no problem,” said Paul Cambria, general counsel for the porn industry’s Adult Freedom Foundation. “There are individuals who are going to react abnormally to normal material, but it’s not a problem for the average person.”
For every couple driven apart by porn, there are others whose relationship is enlivened, Cambria argued. He dismissed contentions that porn is highly addictive or brain-damaging.
“Some people lie about it,” Cambria said. “It’s their way of excusing personally unacceptable conduct — ‘It wasn’t me, it was porn.”’
Such attitudes infuriate experts on the other side who say online porn is as addictive as crack cocaine.
Miseducation system“The Internet is the perfect delivery system for anti-social behavior — it’s free, it’s piped into your house,” said Mary Anne Layden, a psychologist and addiction expert at the University of Pennsylvania. “Internet porn is probably the biggest miseducation system we can devise in terms of sexuality, misuse of women.”
She says many of her patients, rather than improving their sex lives with porn, suffer sexual dysfunction.
Interest in porn is age-old and normal, says psychologist David Greenfield of West Hartford, Conn., an expert on Internet behaviors, but it can become a destructive obsession for a minority who indulge in it at the expense of healthy relationships. Easy availability is part of the issue.
“It’s not your father’s porn,” he said. “With little or no effort, as long as you have a computer, you can access some of the most stimulating content on the planet. There’s no delay, no person watching. It’s designed to very quickly get to a point where you’re not in full control.”
He estimates that for up to 10 percent of porn users, relationships suffer — with many husbands spending so much time online that they cease to have sex with their wives.
Divorce lawyers report that porn use is an increasingly common factor in marriage breakups: It can cause immense pain when a wife discovers her husband’s porn habit.
“I compare it to your house burning down,” said Laurie Hall, who divorced her husband after writing a book called “An Affair of the Mind,” about his 20-year obsession with porn.
“It destroys your sense of personhood when you bring all that you are into a relationship and someone chooses to ignore that,” she said. “It eats away at the heart of the family.”
Across America, compulsive porn use has spawned hundreds of support groups, treatment programs and Web sites where heartbroken spouses — mostly wives — swap stories of their mates’ obsessions.
Polls suggest most Americans believe porn should be off-limits to minors and available legally for adults. But groups such as Morality in Media think the public favors tougher enforcement of obscenity laws against hard-core porn; it operates a Web site that forwards obscenity complaints to federal officials.
“We’re not going to get rid of all of it, but we can push it back into the gutter as far as humanly possible,” said Morality in Media president Robert Peters, a Dartmouth-educated attorney who struggled in his 20s to kick a porn habit that started in grade school.
“It was hell,” said Peters, recalling a six-year stretch where he regularly visited porn outlets on New York’s 42nd Street. “It’s a very hard habit to break.”
Mark Laaser of Edin Prairie, Minn., says he frequently sought out pornography and engaged in extramarital sex for more than 20 years, starting in college and continuing through a career as pastor and counselor. He now runs workshops, and consults with church congregations on the issue.
“I’ve seen the damage it does to marriages, to families,” he said.
‘It’s a matter of invasion’Though he stressed the need for individual willpower, Laaser also faulted the porn industry for employing aggressive online technologies that “besiege you.”
“Sometimes it’s not a matter of free will,” he said. “It’s a matter of invasion.”
Another self-described former addict is Phil Burress, head of a Cincinnati-based conservative group called Citizens for Community Values.
Like many conservatives, he had hopes that the Bush administration would reverse Clinton White House policy and step up prosecutions of adult-porn obscenity cases as well as child porn cases. Thus far, Burress is disappointed.
“Five years into this administration, they get an F,” he said.
Still, Burress is encouraged by the recent formation of an FBI anti-obscenity squad and the appointment of Brent Ward, a former U.S. attorney who combatted porn in Utah, to head an obscenity prosecution task force.
The Justice Department defends its record, saying it has indicted dozens of people on obscenity charges since 2001 and suggesting the pace will increase. But with a vast array of potential targets, and many other priorities, prosecutors must choose their battles carefully.
One pending case involves obscenity charges against a California couple whose company sold pornographic videos depicting simulated rape and murder. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison plus $7.5 million in fines.
The bottom line, perhaps, is that each side in the debate can make points that seem unassailable.
“Everyone agrees that tens of millions of Americans consume porn. ... ministers, PTA members, policemen, teachers, soldiers, dentists and Boy Scout leaders,” argues California sex therapist Marty Klein. “The overwhelming majority of them don’t rape strangers or emotionally abandon their wives.”
But Layden, the Penn addiction expert, refuses to see porn as mostly harmless.
“When I ask men who are sex addicts if they would want their wife or daughter to be in porn, 100 percent say, ‘No,”’ she said. “They want it to be somebody else’s wife or daughter. They know this material is damaging.”
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12055135/
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Hey brain! Nintendo ds...
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200603040112.html
asahi.com > ENGLISH > LifeStyle
Weekend Beat: Hey, brain! Drop down and gimme twenty!
03/04/2006By KATSURA ISHIBASHI, Staff Writer
"Your brain is 59 years old," said the message on the screen of my game console. It came as quite a shock, given that I'm a writer in my 30s.
"It's been a long day and you're exhausted," I told myself. "Your brain's probably tired, too." But such excuses offered little comfort. Fortunately, though, the verdict doesn't amount to a death sentence for my little gray cells. Apparently, it's possible to get your brain up to speed again. Here's hoping.
The software that judged the age of my brain was "No o Kitaeru Otona no DS Training" (DS for adult brain training), a 2,800-yen game produced by Nintendo Co. for its DS console.
The game has been such a hit that production of the 15,000-yen DS can't keep up with demand, and the console has been in short supply since the beginning of the year. The game and its sequel have together sold more than 3.3 million units since May last year, while the DS platforms have sold over six million units.
And demand is growing. On Thursday, the company released DS Lite, a compact version of the console, priced at 16,800 yen.
In April, Nintendo of America will market its English language edition, "Brain Age."
The software features a variety of tasks to train your brain: simple arithmetic, drawing, memorizing words, writing on the LCD screen with a stylus, reading literary classics aloud and stating the color of letters shown on the screen--the latter not being as easy as it sounds because the word "red," say, might be displayed in blue. You speak into the built-in microphone and the voice recognition program does its work.
According to the proportion of correct answers you give and the time it takes you to complete the tasks, the software tells you how old your brain appears to be, based on data taken from hundreds of people ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s. The quicker you answer, the younger your brain is supposed to be. But, with people so used to having computers do all their work for them, there must be many cases in which those who try the game are shocked to find the software concluding their brain is older than it really is.
Nintendo is not the only one reaping the benefits of the recent interest in "brain training." Segatoys Corp. has also gotten in on the act with "No-ryoku Torena" (Brain force trainer, 5,250 yen), which went on sale last March. More than 80 percent of purchasers of the software are in their 40s or older.
First indications that a craze for exercising the mind was on the way came in 2003, when a series of "No o Kitaeru" (Brain training) books hit the shelves. The five-title best-selling series features simple calculations and reading materials.
These drills as well as Nintendo's game software were produced under the supervision of Ryuta Kawashima, professor of neuroscience at Tohoku University's New Industry Creation Hatchery Center in Sendai.
Kawashima's first "No o Kitaeru" books to go on sale were a set of two volumes titled "No o Kitaeru Otona no Doriru" (Drills for adult brain training) from Kumon Publishing Co., an affiliate of Kumon Institute of Education Co., one featuring math and the other reading. Kumon's initial target readership was women in their 40s and 50s who used to work but had become full-time mothers. The company expected these women to be thirsty for learning. But the books turned out to be a huge hit among both men and women from their teens to their 90s. As of last month, sales of the books were being forecast to exceed 1.2 million and 1.3 million copies, respectively.
TV quiz shows emphasizing brain training have also become popular, as have brain training board games.
Nintendo released its brain training software in May 2005, and it sold rapidly. The increase in software sales created greater demand for DS platforms. Yasuhiro Minakawa, Nintendo's public relations group manager, says DS production has been unable to keep pace with demand since last Christmas. "We never imagined the software would turn out to be such a huge hit," he says.
In fact, Minakawa says, the game company developed the DS with the aim of simplifying console operations, which had generally become extremely complicated because of the introduction of three-dimensional graphic images. Nintendo believed that was preventing many potential users from playing video games.
"We should produce games that everyone in the family can enjoy," says Minakawa. "That's our role as a game maker, and it's our policy as well." Thanks to the brain-training software, even user demographics have changed. Now, more users over 30 are engaged in playing the software with the DS platform.
Psychiatrist and social commentator Rika Kayama sees a subconcious desire--or fear--among the aging population behind the brain-training boom. "The idea of training the brain gives us hope that we can make it better ... I think many of us are overly frightened of getting old, or refuse to even admit it. In this country, youth seems to be valued in every aspect of life. In this regard, the DS software gets to the point very effectively."
Behind the huge commercial success of the brain-training software also lie advances in research on the human brain. For Kawashima of Tohoku University, his contribution to the DS's popularity is simply a spin-off from his pursuit of exploring the mechanisms of and the relationship between the mind and the brain.
"When I was a child, I was scared of dying. I used to think, 'If I could put my brain into a computer, I'd be able to live forever,'" the 46-year-old professor said in a recent interview.
Since then, he has always been interested in the mechanisms of the human mind. While studying at Tohoku University, he also conducted research on apes' brains at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute. After receiving his medical degree, he was still struggling to get to grips with the mechanisms of the human brain and mind. His breakthrough came when he studied in Sweden for two years from 1991 under a Danish researcher who had succeeded in getting images of brain function with the then-latest technology, Positron CT.
After returning to Japan, Kawashima set about working with Positron CT, which by then had been introduced to Tohoku University, the first institution in Japan to acquire the technology. He captured images of the functions of various areas of the brain involved in different activities and tasks, such as thinking, exercising and memorizing. This process is what is now called "brain imaging."
Through a series of experiments, Kawashima found the brain works more actively when an individual is engaged in simple calculations than when the person is playing computer games. The more you work on simple calculations, the more various parts of the brain get activated.
"Then I came up with the idea of developing a computer game that activates the brain by using various data from the experiments," the professor says.
Kawashima also discovered reading books aloud is an effective way to activate the brain regardless of the subject's age.
The professor eventually became interested in enlightening children about the human brain and encouraging them to train their brains with calculations and reading. He wrote a book for kids in 2001. However, he ultimately decided to focus on adults, believing this would be an effective way to convey his message to children.
"I thought that if I could write books on brain science that were interesting enough to attract adults, I could motivate kids to get interested in studying by seeing their parents studying (or doing drills) at home," he says. That's when he came up with the idea for the first brain-training book published by Kumon.
Working in conjunction with Kumon Institute of Education, Kawashima has also developed "learning therapy," a form of treatment based on the results of experiments conducted with the help of dementia sufferers. It aims at improving the condition of such people from a new perspective by using exercises to restore functions of the brain controlled by the prefrontal cortex, instead of substituting the lost functions by relying on other areas of the brain.
A test group showed apparent improvement in faltering cognitive functions. Some elderly subjects who had lost the ability to show facial expressions began to smile again, while others regained the ability to walk, Kawashima says. Last year, Kumon Learning Therapy Co. was founded to spread the treatment method.
Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward is one of a handful of municipalities that have embarked on programs to help slow the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's disease through this form of therapy. At its "Iki-Iki No no Kenko Kyoshitsu" (Health club for active brains), more than 100 elderly people train their brains once a week with simple math questions and reading materials. During the rest of the week, they undertake assignments at home.
The program encourages participants to do a light brain workout of 10 to 15 minutes a day, thus getting them into the habit of exercising their brains. Program helpers then give the elderly feedback on their achievements, which in turn gives the participants a sense of satisfaction.
"In the future, those with Alzheimer's disease may not have to take drugs to delay the symptoms if they keep up with the learning therapy," Kawashima says. As for the therapy, it doesn't matter whether they work on written drills or use game consoles, he says. The effect would be the same.
"But just doing it in a leisurely fashion won't do," he cautions. "The important thing is to have a purpose in your life."
For me, being told I had the brain of a 59-year-old was motivation enough. After using the DS for about a week, I've managed to improve my cognitive level to that of a 42-year-old. There's hope for me and my brain yet.
(IHT/Asahi: March 4,2006)
asahi.com > ENGLISH > LifeStyle
Weekend Beat: Hey, brain! Drop down and gimme twenty!
03/04/2006By KATSURA ISHIBASHI, Staff Writer
"Your brain is 59 years old," said the message on the screen of my game console. It came as quite a shock, given that I'm a writer in my 30s.
"It's been a long day and you're exhausted," I told myself. "Your brain's probably tired, too." But such excuses offered little comfort. Fortunately, though, the verdict doesn't amount to a death sentence for my little gray cells. Apparently, it's possible to get your brain up to speed again. Here's hoping.
The software that judged the age of my brain was "No o Kitaeru Otona no DS Training" (DS for adult brain training), a 2,800-yen game produced by Nintendo Co. for its DS console.
The game has been such a hit that production of the 15,000-yen DS can't keep up with demand, and the console has been in short supply since the beginning of the year. The game and its sequel have together sold more than 3.3 million units since May last year, while the DS platforms have sold over six million units.
And demand is growing. On Thursday, the company released DS Lite, a compact version of the console, priced at 16,800 yen.
In April, Nintendo of America will market its English language edition, "Brain Age."
The software features a variety of tasks to train your brain: simple arithmetic, drawing, memorizing words, writing on the LCD screen with a stylus, reading literary classics aloud and stating the color of letters shown on the screen--the latter not being as easy as it sounds because the word "red," say, might be displayed in blue. You speak into the built-in microphone and the voice recognition program does its work.
According to the proportion of correct answers you give and the time it takes you to complete the tasks, the software tells you how old your brain appears to be, based on data taken from hundreds of people ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s. The quicker you answer, the younger your brain is supposed to be. But, with people so used to having computers do all their work for them, there must be many cases in which those who try the game are shocked to find the software concluding their brain is older than it really is.
Nintendo is not the only one reaping the benefits of the recent interest in "brain training." Segatoys Corp. has also gotten in on the act with "No-ryoku Torena" (Brain force trainer, 5,250 yen), which went on sale last March. More than 80 percent of purchasers of the software are in their 40s or older.
First indications that a craze for exercising the mind was on the way came in 2003, when a series of "No o Kitaeru" (Brain training) books hit the shelves. The five-title best-selling series features simple calculations and reading materials.
These drills as well as Nintendo's game software were produced under the supervision of Ryuta Kawashima, professor of neuroscience at Tohoku University's New Industry Creation Hatchery Center in Sendai.
Kawashima's first "No o Kitaeru" books to go on sale were a set of two volumes titled "No o Kitaeru Otona no Doriru" (Drills for adult brain training) from Kumon Publishing Co., an affiliate of Kumon Institute of Education Co., one featuring math and the other reading. Kumon's initial target readership was women in their 40s and 50s who used to work but had become full-time mothers. The company expected these women to be thirsty for learning. But the books turned out to be a huge hit among both men and women from their teens to their 90s. As of last month, sales of the books were being forecast to exceed 1.2 million and 1.3 million copies, respectively.
TV quiz shows emphasizing brain training have also become popular, as have brain training board games.
Nintendo released its brain training software in May 2005, and it sold rapidly. The increase in software sales created greater demand for DS platforms. Yasuhiro Minakawa, Nintendo's public relations group manager, says DS production has been unable to keep pace with demand since last Christmas. "We never imagined the software would turn out to be such a huge hit," he says.
In fact, Minakawa says, the game company developed the DS with the aim of simplifying console operations, which had generally become extremely complicated because of the introduction of three-dimensional graphic images. Nintendo believed that was preventing many potential users from playing video games.
"We should produce games that everyone in the family can enjoy," says Minakawa. "That's our role as a game maker, and it's our policy as well." Thanks to the brain-training software, even user demographics have changed. Now, more users over 30 are engaged in playing the software with the DS platform.
Psychiatrist and social commentator Rika Kayama sees a subconcious desire--or fear--among the aging population behind the brain-training boom. "The idea of training the brain gives us hope that we can make it better ... I think many of us are overly frightened of getting old, or refuse to even admit it. In this country, youth seems to be valued in every aspect of life. In this regard, the DS software gets to the point very effectively."
Behind the huge commercial success of the brain-training software also lie advances in research on the human brain. For Kawashima of Tohoku University, his contribution to the DS's popularity is simply a spin-off from his pursuit of exploring the mechanisms of and the relationship between the mind and the brain.
"When I was a child, I was scared of dying. I used to think, 'If I could put my brain into a computer, I'd be able to live forever,'" the 46-year-old professor said in a recent interview.
Since then, he has always been interested in the mechanisms of the human mind. While studying at Tohoku University, he also conducted research on apes' brains at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute. After receiving his medical degree, he was still struggling to get to grips with the mechanisms of the human brain and mind. His breakthrough came when he studied in Sweden for two years from 1991 under a Danish researcher who had succeeded in getting images of brain function with the then-latest technology, Positron CT.
After returning to Japan, Kawashima set about working with Positron CT, which by then had been introduced to Tohoku University, the first institution in Japan to acquire the technology. He captured images of the functions of various areas of the brain involved in different activities and tasks, such as thinking, exercising and memorizing. This process is what is now called "brain imaging."
Through a series of experiments, Kawashima found the brain works more actively when an individual is engaged in simple calculations than when the person is playing computer games. The more you work on simple calculations, the more various parts of the brain get activated.
"Then I came up with the idea of developing a computer game that activates the brain by using various data from the experiments," the professor says.
Kawashima also discovered reading books aloud is an effective way to activate the brain regardless of the subject's age.
The professor eventually became interested in enlightening children about the human brain and encouraging them to train their brains with calculations and reading. He wrote a book for kids in 2001. However, he ultimately decided to focus on adults, believing this would be an effective way to convey his message to children.
"I thought that if I could write books on brain science that were interesting enough to attract adults, I could motivate kids to get interested in studying by seeing their parents studying (or doing drills) at home," he says. That's when he came up with the idea for the first brain-training book published by Kumon.
Working in conjunction with Kumon Institute of Education, Kawashima has also developed "learning therapy," a form of treatment based on the results of experiments conducted with the help of dementia sufferers. It aims at improving the condition of such people from a new perspective by using exercises to restore functions of the brain controlled by the prefrontal cortex, instead of substituting the lost functions by relying on other areas of the brain.
A test group showed apparent improvement in faltering cognitive functions. Some elderly subjects who had lost the ability to show facial expressions began to smile again, while others regained the ability to walk, Kawashima says. Last year, Kumon Learning Therapy Co. was founded to spread the treatment method.
Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward is one of a handful of municipalities that have embarked on programs to help slow the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's disease through this form of therapy. At its "Iki-Iki No no Kenko Kyoshitsu" (Health club for active brains), more than 100 elderly people train their brains once a week with simple math questions and reading materials. During the rest of the week, they undertake assignments at home.
The program encourages participants to do a light brain workout of 10 to 15 minutes a day, thus getting them into the habit of exercising their brains. Program helpers then give the elderly feedback on their achievements, which in turn gives the participants a sense of satisfaction.
"In the future, those with Alzheimer's disease may not have to take drugs to delay the symptoms if they keep up with the learning therapy," Kawashima says. As for the therapy, it doesn't matter whether they work on written drills or use game consoles, he says. The effect would be the same.
"But just doing it in a leisurely fashion won't do," he cautions. "The important thing is to have a purpose in your life."
For me, being told I had the brain of a 59-year-old was motivation enough. After using the DS for about a week, I've managed to improve my cognitive level to that of a 42-year-old. There's hope for me and my brain yet.
(IHT/Asahi: March 4,2006)
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