lundi 5 avril 2010

The day before Sunday’s health care vote, President Obama gave an unscripted talk to House Democrats. Near the end, he spoke about why his party should pass reform: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made ... And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

I’d argue that Mr. Gingrich is wrong about that: proposals to guarantee health insurance are often controversial before they go into effect — Ronald Reagan famously argued that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom — but always popular once enacted.

But that’s not the point I want to make today. Instead, I want you to consider the contrast: on one side, the closing argument was an appeal to our better angels, urging politicians to do what is right, even if it hurts their careers; on the other side, callous cynicism. Think about what it means to condemn health reform by comparing it to the Civil Rights Act. Who in modern America would say that L.B.J. did the wrong thing by pushing for racial equality? (Actually, we know who: the people at the Tea Party protest who hurled racial epithets at Democratic members of Congress on the eve of the vote.)

And that cynicism has been the hallmark of the whole campaign against reform.

Yes, a few conservative policy intellectuals, after making a show of thinking hard about the issues, claimed to be disturbed by reform’s fiscal implications (but were strangely unmoved by the clean bill of fiscal health from the Congressional Budget Office) or to want stronger action on costs (even though this reform does more to tackle health care costs than any previous legislation). For the most part, however, opponents of reform didn’t even pretend to engage with the reality either of the existing health care system or of the moderate, centrist plan — very close in outline to the reform Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts — that Democrats were proposing.

Instead, the emotional core of opposition to reform was blatant fear-mongering, unconstrained either by the facts or by any sense of decency.

It wasn’t just the death panel smear. It was racial hate-mongering, like a piece in Investor’s Business Daily declaring that health reform is “affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color.” It was wild claims about abortion funding. It was the insistence that there is something tyrannical about giving young working Americans the assurance that health care will be available when they need it, an assurance that older Americans have enjoyed ever since Lyndon Johnson — whom Mr. Gingrich considers a failed president — pushed Medicare through over the howls of conservatives.

And let’s be clear: the campaign of fear hasn’t been carried out by a radical fringe, unconnected to the Republican establishment. On the contrary, that establishment has been involved and approving all the way. Politicians like Sarah Palin — who was, let us remember, the G.O.P.’s vice-presidential candidate — eagerly spread the death panel lie, and supposedly reasonable, moderate politicians like Senator Chuck Grassley refused to say that it was untrue. On the eve of the big vote, Republican members of Congress warned that “freedom dies a little bit today” and accused Democrats of “totalitarian tactics,” which I believe means the process known as “voting.”

Without question, the campaign of fear was effective: health reform went from being highly popular to wide disapproval, although the numbers have been improving lately. But the question was, would it actually be enough to block reform?

And the answer is no. The Democrats have done it. The House has passed the Senate version of health reform, and an improved version will be achieved through reconciliation.

This is, of course, a political victory for President Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out.

Editors' Note:
This column quotes Newt Gingrich as saying that “Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation, a quotation that originally appeared in The Washington Post. After this column was published, The Post reported that Mr. Gingrich said his comment referred to Johnson’s Great Society policies, not to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

mercredi 17 mars 2010

Oil Change

購入後初、松涛にて。純正のウルトラマイルド 10W-30。何だかエンジンの調子が良くなったような気がする。

mercredi 3 mars 2010

The Hard and the Soft --- Winter Sports

The Hard and the Soft

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: March 1, 2010

The United States, a nation of 300 million, won nine gold medals this year in the Winter Olympics. Norway, a nation of 4.7 million, also won nine. This was no anomaly. Over the years, Norwegians have won more gold medals in Winter Games, and more Winter Olympics medals over all, than people from any other nation.

There must be many reasons for Norway’s excellence, but some of them are probably embedded in the story of Jan Baalsrud.

In 1943, Baalsrud was a young instrument maker who was asked to sneak back into Norway to help the anti-Nazi resistance.

His mission, described in the book “We Die Alone” by David Howarth, was betrayed. His boat was shelled by German troops. Baalsrud dove into the ice-covered waters and swam, with bullets flying around him, toward an island off the Norwegian coast. The rest of his party was killed on the spot, or captured and eventually executed, but Baalsrud made it to the beach and started climbing an icy mountain. He was chased by Nazis, and he killed one officer.

He was hunted by about 50 Germans and left a trail in the deep snow. He’d lost one boot and sock, and he was bleeding from where his big toe had been shot off. He scrambled across the island and swam successively across the icy sound to two other islands. On the second, he lay dying of cold and exhaustion on the beach.

Two girls found and led him to their home. And this is the core of the story. During the next months, dozens of Norwegians helped Baalsrud get across to Sweden. Flouting any sense of rational cost-benefit analysis, families and whole villages risked their lives to help one gravely ill man, who happened to drop into their midst.

Baalsrud was clothed and fed and rowed to another island. He showed up at other houses and was taken in. He began walking across the mountain ranges on that island in the general direction of the mainland, hikes of 24, 13 and 28 hours without break.

A 72-year-old man rowed him the final 10 miles to the mainland, past German positions, and gave him skis. Up in the mountains, he skied through severe winter storms. One night, he started an avalanche. He fell at least 300 feet, smashed his skis and suffered a severe concussion. His body was buried in snow, but his head was sticking out. He lost sense of time and self-possession. He was blind, the snow having scorched the retinas of his eyes.

He wandered aimlessly for four days, plagued by hallucinations. At one point he thought he had found a trail, but he was only following his own footsteps in a small circle.

Finally, he stumbled upon a cottage. A man named Marius Gronvold took him in. He treated Baalsrud’s frostbite and hid him in a remote shed across a lake to recover.

He was alone for a week (a storm made it impossible for anyone to reach him). Gangrene invaded his legs. He stabbed them to drain the pus and blood. His eyesight recovered, but the pain was excruciating and he was starving.

Baalsrud could no longer walk, so Gronvold and friends built a sled. They carried the sled and him up a 3,000-foot mountain in the middle of a winter storm and across a frozen plateau to where another party was supposed to meet them. The other men weren’t there, and Gronvold was compelled to leave Baalsrud in a hole in the ice under a boulder.

The other party missed the rendezvous because of a blizzard, and by the time they got there, days later, the tracks were covered and they could find no sign of him. A week later, Gronvold went up to retrieve Baalsrud’s body and was astonished to find him barely alive. Baalsrud spent the next 20 days in a sleeping bag immobilized in the snow, sporadically supplied by Gronvold and others.

Over the next weeks, groups of men tried to drag him to Sweden but were driven back, and they had to shelter him again in holes in the ice. Baalsrud cut off his remaining toes with a penknife to save his feet. Tired of risking more Norwegian lives, he also attempted suicide.

Finally, he was awoken by the sound of snorting reindeer. A group of Laps had arrived, and under German fire, they dragged him to Sweden.

This astonishing story could only take place in a country where people are skilled on skis and in winter conditions. But there also is an interesting form of social capital on display. It’s a mixture of softness and hardness. Baalsrud was kept alive thanks to a serial outpouring of love and nurturing. At the same time, he and his rescuers displayed an unbelievable level of hardheaded toughness and resilience. That’s a cultural cocktail bound to produce achievement in many spheres.

mercredi 24 février 2010

NY Times Op-Ed by 大前研一

Toyota, Computers and the Human Factor

By KENICHI OHMAE

Published: February 24, 2010

TOKYO — Over the past decades, Toyota has built a strong presence in the United States by serving its consumers well and doing what the U.S. government has wanted. Now, it has stumbled badly largely because its greatest strength — the Toyota Way of “accumulation of small improvements,” or “kaizen” philosophy — has turned out to be a weakness in the age of complex electronic engines.

There is every reason to believe Toyota will fix its technical and management problems. The question is whether it will dig a deeper hole by losing the air of trust and reputation for competence among customers it has spent so long building up. That would be bad for Toyota, and for America.

Most auto companies in the past, including Ford and G.M., have had recall problems like Toyota. They all seem to try to hide the early evidence of flaws, even if they affect safety. This goes back to the American consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s “unsafe at any speed” campaign in the U.S. in 1965 that involved the Chevrolet Corvair produced by G.M.

Today, however, with electronic programming of cars, many of the problems emerging — such as the braking system of the Prius — are of a new nature. They are judgmental engineering calls. If they can be corrected by readjusting the setting on recalled cars, then Toyota can handle that quickly.

But what we are seeing may be a more fundamental problem that has to do with the engine control unit as a whole. In an average Toyota, there are about 24,000 inputs and outputs, with as many as 70 computer chips processing information and sending it on to other chips to operate the engine control units. It is a very complex system.

Such complex systems are a problem these days for all auto manufacturers — Germans and Americans as well as Japanese — because about 60 percent of a modern automobile is electronics. Toyota is the canary in the cave, so to speak, since it is the world’s largest manufacturer of cars, with more than 50 plants across the globe outside of Japan. Toyota has been expanding so rapidly it has more models on the road than any other carmaker on earth.

What we see with Toyota in particular is that this new electronic complexity has overwhelmed its famous concept of kaizen — “the accumulation of small improvements” — that has made Toyota such a quality brand worldwide. The company has so perfected the practice of kaizen from the bottom up at the assembly line that it has lost the big picture of how the whole electronic engine — and thus overall safety — works.

This is a limitation of the kaizen philosophy, which has helped Japan become the headquarters of quality manufacturing. If Toyota does not recognize this and tries to chalk all its problems up to floor mats touching the accelerator, or resetting a computer, it will miss the real issue. Where Toyota has failed is that rather than review the overall safety of the engine operating unit, it has focused instead on diagnosing the function of many thousands of pieces of an electronic engine.

What the company is missing is the human factor — a single person who has a comprehensive understanding of the details of the engine and how the parts interact and work as a whole.

In the old days, one chief engineer used to design everything. This was true with ships and airplanes as well as nuclear reactors. Now, design and production is broken down into so many details that there is no one in the current generation of Toyota engineers who seems to have the whole picture. A 45-year-old engineer at Toyota today would have spent the last 25 years working on “the accumulation of small improvements.”

What this suggests is that Toyota has to come up with a new organizational ethos beyond kaizen that can oversee the crucial safety features that may have been compromised by so much incremental improvement over the years. This is a philosophical problem of management, not a technical issue. A new system of “man and machine interface” needs to supplement the kaizen philosophy — in other words, one that perfects the big picture of engine control safety instead of just the small picture of components.

I believe Toyota can meet this challenge. The challenge I fear it will fail to meet is the psychological one, enveloped as the company’s leaders seem to be in a sense of panic at being attacked politically and in the press in their most lucrative market, the United States. There is such a clash between aggressive American political and media culture and reserved Japanese ways.

As America brings Toyota to account on safety, it must also put the company in the right perspective. Toyota has also always done what the American market and politicians demanded without losing quality or productivity. The U.S. asked Toyota to come to the U.S. to produce cars instead of export them from Japan, and use up to 50 percent local content.

Today, 2.5 million cars are produced annually in the U.S. at several plants; this has created many jobs. Toyota’s annual spending on parts, goods and services from hundreds of U.S. suppliers totals more than $22 billion.

Ninety-five Japanese component companies were transplanted from Japan to supply Toyota through its “just in time” manufacturing process, building up a component supply network along the Mississippi Valley that didn’t exist before.

Toyota is in the hot seat. But everyone should understand that the issue at hand is the tradeoff between complexity and safety in an age in which electronics and computers dominate the vehicles we all use on a daily basis.

Kenichi Ohmae is a management consultant and a former a senior partner at McKinsey & Co. He is author of “The Mind of the Strategist” and “The Borderless World.”
Global Viewpoint / Tribune Media Services

mardi 23 février 2010

To All the Hysteric Whale Lovers

Misguided Emotions by Phililp Bowring

By PHILIP BOWRING

Published: February 23, 2010

HONG KONG — It must count as one of the more bizarre bits of diplomacy in recent times. Last week, on the eve of a visit by Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia threatened to take Japan to the International Court of Justice if it did not stop whaling in the Southern Ocean, the part of the Indian Ocean south of Australia.

One may dismiss this as a politician’s gesture aimed at a domestic audience that has taken to emotional “save the whales” campaigns. Though whale oil and bone had once been Australia’s biggest export, the nation had no tradition of eating whale meat, and a shortage of whales caused the closure of its last whaling station in 1978.

But such outbursts in favor of one member of the mammal kingdom by a major exporter of red meat is likely to do more damage to Australia’s image than to Japan’s. Most of Australia’s Asian neighbors — other than Japan — may not care much one way or the other about whaling. But the tone of moral superiority adopted by Australia — its apparent belief that it is the guardian of the Southern Ocean from Asian depredation — grates on many Asians who also resent environment lessons from a top carbon polluter.

From an Australian perspective it may seem reasonable that the largest, most advanced country in the Southern Ocean should assume some responsibility for it. But such assumptions of its rights and duties in international waters can easily keep alive lingering Asian resentments of Western colonialism — European expansionism that gave a small new nation with a population only a little bigger than Shanghai control over a vast, mineral rich landmass. Does Australia want to control the ocean too, some ask?

There may be scientific arguments about whether Japan’s harvesting of several hundred whales per year is endangering the stock in the Southern Ocean. But Australia’s “crusade” seems more couched in emotional than scientific terms. We see this also in the heroic status accorded the Australian and New Zealand campaigners who have harassed Japan’s whaling vessels.

Japan may be pushing the limits of the “scientific research” allowed by the International Whaling Commission in the “whale sanctuary” it declared in the Southern Ocean. But at least Japan still belongs to that body. Norway always refused to accept I.W.C. restrictions. Iceland walked out of the I.W.C. in 1992 (it returned in 2002 but largely on its own terms). Canada left earlier and has not returned.

Meanwhile, other countries with whaling traditions turn a blind eye to the organization. For example, whale hunting is illegal in South Korea but the meat of whales caught in nets or killed accidentally is sold freely. There is pressure to make hunting legal again. Other countries, including Russia and Denmark, allow it for “traditional” communities, which take hundreds of whales a year.

Even making allowances for all the unofficial catch it is still small compared with the numbers killed by ship collisions and nets.

In short, though the world needs properly regulated management of the oceans, Mr. Rudd’s antics discourage whaling countries from cooperating with the I.W.C. and make others reluctant to accept controls on fishing in international waters to stabilize rapidly depleting fish stocks.

Harpooning whales may be cruel and does excite emotions even among those who regularly eat red meat. But Australia is in scant position to complain when it shoots upward of 3 million wild kangaroos a year to protect crops and grazing for sheep and cattle. It recently announced a mass shooting of troublesome wild camels.

The kangaroo and camel culls may be justified. But local emotions are confused. Shooting kangaroos by licensed hunters has long been common in Australia’s outback. But a plan for a culling of the national symbol near the national capital raised a storm of protest to “save Skippy” (the pet kangaroo in a famous children’s TV program).

There is of course nothing unusual in battles between the heart and the head when it comes to attitudes to animals. For example, there is emotion, not reason, behind those in the West who are horrified with the consumption of dog in the East. In fact, there is no reason to treat whales differently from horses, which are still a table meat in some European countries.

Australia’s elevation of its selective emotion into a diplomatic feud with its major Asian ally is nothing short of ridiculous.

Misguided

samedi 5 décembre 2009

Why is Chrome Fast

http://www.atmarkit.co.jp/news/analysis/200812/22/chrome.html

samedi 31 octobre 2009

Justice in Gaza by Richard Goldstone

Justice in Gaza

I ACCEPTED with hesitation my United Nations mandate to investigate alleged violations of the laws of war and international human rights during Israel’s three-week war in Gaza last winter. The issue is deeply charged and politically loaded. I accepted because the mandate of the mission was to look at all parties: Israel; Hamas, which controls Gaza; and other armed Palestinian groups. I accepted because my fellow commissioners are professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation.

But above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.

In the fighting in Gaza, all sides flouted that fundamental principle. Many civilians unnecessarily died and even more were seriously hurt. In Israel, three civilians were killed and hundreds wounded by rockets from Gaza fired by Hamas and other groups. Two Palestinian girls also lost their lives when these rockets misfired.

In Gaza, hundreds of civilians died. They died from disproportionate attacks on legitimate military targets and from attacks on hospitals and other civilian structures. They died from precision weapons like missiles from aerial drones as well as from heavy artillery. Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.

Israel is correct that identifying combatants in a heavily populated area is difficult, and that Hamas fighters at times mixed and mingled with civilians. But that reality did not lift Israel’s obligation to take all feasible measures to minimize harm to civilians.

Our fact-finding team found that in many cases Israel could have done much more to spare civilians without sacrificing its stated and legitimate military aims. It should have refrained from attacking clearly civilian buildings, and from actions that might have resulted in a military advantage but at the cost of too many civilian lives. In these cases, Israel must investigate, and Hamas is obliged to do the same. They must examine what happened and appropriately punish any soldier or commander found to have violated the law.

Unfortunately, both Israel and Hamas have dismal records of investigating their own forces. I am unaware of any case where a Hamas fighter was punished for deliberately shooting a rocket into a civilian area in Israel — on the contrary, Hamas leaders repeatedly praise such acts. While Israel has begun investigations into alleged violations by its forces in the Gaza conflict, they are unlikely to be serious and objective.

Absent credible local investigations, the international community has a role to play. If justice for civilian victims cannot be obtained through local authorities, then foreign governments must act. There are various mechanisms through which to pursue international justice. The International Criminal Court and the exercise of universal jurisdiction by other countries against violators of the Geneva Conventions are among them. But they all share one overarching aim: to hold accountable those who violate the laws of war. They are built on the premise that abusive fighters and their commanders can face justice, even if their government or ruling authority is not willing to take that step.

Pursuing justice in this case is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law. Western governments in particular face a challenge because they have pushed for accountability in places like Darfur, but now must do the same with Israel, an ally and a democratic state.

Failing to pursue justice for serious violations during the fighting will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an unacceptable hypocrisy. As a service to the hundreds of civilians who needlessly died and for the equal application of international justice, the perpetrators of serious violations must be held to account.

Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor for war-crime tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, is the head of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.

vendredi 17 juillet 2009

Estemirova's Death

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/world/europe/17chechnya.html?ref=global-home

mercredi 15 juillet 2009

悩みのるつぼ

悩みのるつぼ　6/13 朝日

相談者　男性高校教師　40代

40代の高校教諭。英語を教えて25年になります。自分で言うのも何ですが、学校内で評価され。それなりの管理的立場にもつき、生徒にも人気があります。妻と２人の子供にも恵まれ、まずまずの人生だと思っています。

でも、5年に１度くらい、自分でもコントロールできなくなるくらい没入してしまう女子生徒が出現するんです。

今がそうなんです。相手は17歳の高校2年生で、授業中に自然に振る舞おうとすればするほど、その子の顔をちらちら見てしまいます。

その子には下心を見透かされているようでもあり、私を見る表情が色っぽくてびっくりしたりもします。

自己嫌悪に陥っています。もちろん、自制心はあるし、家庭も大事なので、自分が何か具体的な行動に出ることはないという自信はありますが、自宅でもその子のことばかり考え、落ち着きません。

数年前には、当時好きだった生徒が、卒業後に他県で水商売をしているとのうわさを聞き、ネットで店を探しました。自分にあきれながら、実際にその街まで足を運びましたが、結局店は見つかりませんでした。見つけていたら、きっと会いに行っていたでしょう。

教育者としてダメだと思いますが、情動を抑えられません。どうしたらいいのでしょうか。

回答者　作家　車谷長吉

私は学校を出ると、東京日本橋の広告代理店に勤めた。が、この会社は安月給だったので、どんなに切り詰めても、1日2食しか飯が喰えなかった。

北海道・東北への出張を命じられると、旅費の半分は親から送ってもらえと言われた。仕方がないので、高利貸から金を借りて行っていた。生まれて初めて貧乏を経験した。2年半で辞めた。

次 に勤めたのは総会屋の会社だった。金を大企業から脅し取るのである。高給だったが、2年半で辞めた。30代の8年間は月給2万円で、料理場の下働きをして いた。この間に人の嫁はんに次々に誘われ、姦通事件を3遍起こし、人生とは何か、金とは何か、ということがよくよく分かった。

人は普通、自分が人間に生まれたことを取り返しのつかない不幸だとは思うてません。しかし私は不幸なことだと考えています。あなたの場合、まだ人生が始まっていないのです。

世の多くの人は、自分の生はこの世に誕生した時に始まった、と考えていますが、実はそうではありません。生が破綻した時に、はじめて人生が始まるのです。 従って破綻なく一生を終える人は、せっかく人間に生まれてきながら、人生の本当の味わいを知らずに終わってしまいます。気の毒なことです。

あなたは自分の生が破綻することを恐れていらっしゃるのです。破綻して、職業も名誉も家庭も失ったとき、はじめて人間とは何かということが見えるのです。あ なたは高校の教師だそうですが、好きになった女生徒と出来てしまえば、それでよいのです。そうすると、はじめて人間の生とは何かということが見え、この世 の本当の姿が見えるのです。

せっかく人間に生まれてきながら、人間とは何かということを知らずに、生が終わってしまうのは実に味気ないことです。そういう人間が世の9割です。

私はいま作家としてこの世を生きていますが、人間とは何か、ということが少し分かり掛けたのは、31歳で無一物になった時です。

世の人はみな私のことを阿呆だとあざ笑いました。でも、阿呆ほど気の楽なことはなく、人間とは何か、ということもよく見えるようになりました。

阿呆になることが一番よいのです。あなたは小利口な人です。

Ribeira Sacra

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/dining/15pour.html?ref=global-home

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/14/dining/20090715-pourSUB-slideshow_index.html

R.Sil, Miño & Bibei, neighbouring Bierzo in the E.

Dominio do Bibei Project

Red:
El Pecado Lalama Lacima Algueira Alodio

White:
Lapola Lapena Godello Dominio do Bibei

Vineyard sites:
Viña Caneiro Amandi Valley Sober Pantón

葡萄：　mencía, brancellao, mouratón, garnacha, sousón, albariño

A Flash of Memory

NY Times Op Ed by Issey Miyake

IN April, President Obama pledged to seek peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons. He called for not simply a reduction, but elimination. His words awakened something buried deeply within me, something about which I have until now been reluctant to discuss.

I realized that I have, perhaps now more than ever, a personal and moral responsibility to speak out as one who survived what Mr. Obama called the “flash of light.”

On Aug. 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on my hometown, Hiroshima. I was there, and only 7 years old. When I close my eyes, I still see things no one should ever experience: a bright red light, the black cloud soon after, people running in every direction trying desperately to escape — I remember it all. Within three years, my mother died from radiation exposure.

I have never chosen to share my memories or thoughts of that day. I have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to put them behind me, preferring to think of things that can be created, not destroyed, and that bring beauty and joy. I gravitated toward the field of clothing design, partly because it is a creative format that is modern and optimistic.

I tried never to be defined by my past. I did not want to be labeled “the designer who survived the atomic bomb,” and therefore I have always avoided questions about Hiroshima. They made me uncomfortable.

But now I realize it is a subject that must be discussed if we are ever to rid the world of nuclear weapons. There is a movement in Hiroshima to invite Mr. Obama to Universal Peace Day on Aug. 6 — the annual commemoration of that fateful day. I hope he will accept. My wish is motivated by a desire not to dwell on the past, but rather to give a sign to the world that the American president’s goal is to work to eliminate nuclear wars in the future.

Last week, Russia and the United States signed an agreement to reduce nuclear arms. This was an important event. However, we are not naïve: no one person or country can stop nuclear warfare. In Japan, we live with the constant threat from our nuclear-armed neighbor North Korea. There are reports of other countries acquiring nuclear technology, too. For there to be any hope of peace, people around the world must add their voices to President Obama’s.

If Mr. Obama could walk across the Peace Bridge in Hiroshima — whose balustrades were designed by the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi as a reminder both of his ties to East and West and of what humans do to one another out of hatred — it would be both a real and a symbolic step toward creating a world that knows no fear of nuclear threat. Every step taken is another step closer to world peace.

mardi 9 juin 2009

Op-Ed by Philip Bowring: Islam's Diversity

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/opinion/10iht-edbowring.html?ref=global

HONG KONG — It would be churlish to criticize President Obama’s Cairo address to the Muslim world. It was finely crafted and typically well-delivered. It had the impact that was intended, even if actions to back the words will be difficult.

However, the speech suggested that the Muslim/non-Muslim divide is greater than it actually is. There was an implicit lack of recognition of the sheer diversity of Islam, a religion that like Christianity has shaped, and been shaped by, the societies to which it has attached itself.

That diversity is not primarily reflected in the division between Sunni and Shiite but in the actual practices of the Muslims — almost all Sunni — in South and Southeast Asia, Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. These non-Arab Muslims constitute by far the largest part of global Muslim community.

Diversity is also not sufficiently recognized by many in the Islamic world. The result is that one orthodoxy is imposed as vigorously as Catholic countries once discriminated against other interpretations of Christianity.

It was said, supposedly by Voltaire, that England had 60 religions but only once sauce, France one religion but innumerable sauces.

The multiple religions were, of course, all branches of Christianity. The issue for society was acceptance of diversity and the separation of church and state. America achieved that with its Constitution, while in France anti-clericalism became a defining political force against the secular claims of the one religion.

Obama recognized that America, despite its pluralism and a Muslim community almost as large as its Jewish one, had much healing to do in its relationship with the Islamic world. He also aimed to push the Middle East peace process by showing even handedness toward Israelis and Palestinians. But those objectives, while they partly overlap, are far from identical. Sympathy for the Palestinian situation is common in developing countries formerly ruled by Europeans.

On the other hand, the farther Muslims are from Jerusalem the less they are emotionally involved in what is more of a struggle between nations than religions.

Indeed, the failure of the Muslim community in the United States to have much influence on Middle East policy is partly a result of the sheer diversity of its origins and interests. Arabs are a minority among American Muslims as in the rest of the Muslim world.

Yet both Arabs and the U.S. — indeed the West more generally — see Islam through the prism of Middle East politics, Al Qaeda and Iraq. That is a natural outcome of recent events but has also played to the Arab sense of being the guardian of Islam. By speaking to the Muslim world from Cairo, Obama may have fortified such perception.

That could be a misfortune. Oil money has added to the influence of narrow Arabian interpretations of Islam even as most social and economic progress in the Muslim world has been found in non-Arab countries — Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, for example. Even Pakistan, for all its troubles, displays a diversity of interpretations of Islam, some with strong liberal and individualistic leanings that helps sustain democratic debate and keep alive the notion that it is a “state for Muslims” not an “Islamic state.”

Acceptance of diversity within Islam, as well as tolerance of Christians and Hindus, is perhaps most marked in Indonesia. There, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa and India, not to mention Bosnia and the Central Asian republics, the social mores of Muslims are often almost identical to those of Christians and nonbelievers.

The problem is often not so much between Muslims and non-Muslims but the efforts of state controlled religion to deny Muslims the diversity of interpretation that should be their birthright. Thus, non-Muslims in Malaysia face only modest obstacles. Even in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Christians are free to drink alcohol as well as worship. Yet in both countries Muslims themselves are the ones denied freedom by state religious authorities trampling on centuries of local traditions to impose their orthodoxy.

Obama has a background in two countries where Islam and Christianity co-exist and where politics is mostly not about religious affiliation — Kenya and Indonesia. Perhaps when he has a chance to visit either of them he could emphasize — to his home audience as well as his hosts — the diversity of Islamic traditions and the importance of their separation of church and state as the keystones of the freedom and pluralism that define America’s success.

The battle is not between Islam and others, it is between the open society and its enemies.

lundi 8 juin 2009

Invisible Community

　Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　- Albert Einstein

America's hypocrisy

田中宇は近頃 NYTimes を痛烈に批判しているが、今日の editorial にも疑問を感じる。
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/opinion/08mon1.html

以下の箇所は目を疑う

Last week, The Times reported on the initial conclusions of a Pentagon investigation, citing significant errors by military personnel that contributed to the high civilian death toll. These included ignoring a rule against bombing high-density residential areas in the absence of imminent threat and failing to reconfirm a target after a bombing delay.

Such mistakes are costly, not just in civilian lives but in broader support for the presence of American troops and the military campaign against the Taliban.

表面ではアフガンの人々に同情するかの様な内容。しかし文体から滲み出るのはあくまで、富んだ国から見た遠い異国の他人事である。

これが本当のアメリカのタチの悪さである。一人一人の犠牲者、生活の痛みに対する生きた実感はない。 "civilian lives" という collective な単語で、この感情は既に昇華されてしまっている。

本当に政治的な視点から、或いは単純で独善的な視点から、アフガン人はあくまで異国人である、アメリカ人ではない、アメリカの国益の為にアフガニスタンでのアメリカ軍をもっと統制するべきである、というのならまだ良い。残念ながらあたかもアフガニスタン人の側に立つような皮相的な感情に酔いながら、実は自分の中に巣食う優越感、虐げられた人々への蔑視に気づかない。

皮相な親切、自己の短絡的な emotion を満足させるためだけの同情程相手にとって迷惑なものは無い。世界中の国々、人々の間のギャップはまだまだ計り知れない程深い。アメリカは若すぎる。本当にアメリカが痛めつけられアメリカ人が傷付くまでアメリカという国が良くなる事はない。

lundi 1 juin 2009

Paul Krugman to Blame the Economic Crisis to Reagan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/opinion/01krugman.html

“This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a long-term solution for troubled thrift institutions. ... All in all, I think we hit the jackpot.” So declared Ronald Reagan in 1982, as he signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act.

He was, as it happened, wrong about solving the problems of the thrifts. On the contrary, the bill turned the modest-sized troubles of savings-and-loan institutions into an utter catastrophe. But he was right about the legislation’s significance. And as for that jackpot — well, it finally came more than 25 years later, in the form of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

For the more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

On the latter point: traditionally, the U.S. government ran significant budget deficits only in times of war or economic emergency. Federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell steadily from the end of World War II until 1980. But indebtedness began rising under Reagan; it fell again in the Clinton years, but resumed its rise under the Bush administration, leaving us ill prepared for the emergency now upon us.

The increase in public debt was, however, dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by financial deregulation. The change in America’s financial rules was Reagan’s biggest legacy. And it’s the gift that keeps on taking.

The immediate effect of Garn-St. Germain, as I said, was to turn the thrifts from a problem into a catastrophe. The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.

But there was also a longer-term effect. Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down.

These restrictions were put in place in the 1930s by political leaders who had just experienced a terrible financial crisis, and were trying to prevent another. But by 1980 the memory of the Depression had faded. Government, declared Reagan, is the problem, not the solution; the magic of the marketplace must be set free. And so the precautionary rules were scrapped.

Together with looser lending standards for other kinds of consumer credit, this led to a radical change in American behavior.

We weren’t always a nation of big debts and low savings: in the 1970s Americans saved almost 10 percent of their income, slightly more than in the 1960s. It was only after the Reagan deregulation that thrift gradually disappeared from the American way of life, culminating in the near-zero savings rate that prevailed on the eve of the great crisis. Household debt was only 60 percent of income when Reagan took office, about the same as it was during the Kennedy administration. By 2007 it was up to 119 percent.

All this, we were assured, was a good thing: sure, Americans were piling up debt, and they weren’t putting aside any of their income, but their finances looked fine once you took into account the rising values of their houses and their stock portfolios. Oops.

Now, the proximate causes of today’s economic crisis lie in events that took place long after Reagan left office — in the global savings glut created by surpluses in China and elsewhere, and in the giant housing bubble that savings glut helped inflate.

But it was the explosion of debt over the previous quarter-century that made the U.S. economy so vulnerable. Overstretched borrowers were bound to start defaulting in large numbers once the housing bubble burst and unemployment began to rise.

These defaults in turn wreaked havoc with a financial system that — also mainly thanks to Reagan-era deregulation — took on too much risk with too little capital.

There’s plenty of blame to go around these days. But the prime villains behind the mess we’re in were Reagan and his circle of advisers — men who forgot the lessons of America’s last great financial crisis, and condemned the rest of us to repeat it.

mardi 12 mai 2009

ETG Technology Investigation: EGR

EGR

酸素が希薄な排気を吸気と混ぜる事で、ピーク燃焼温度が低下、よって窒素酸化物(NOx) の発生が抑制される初めはNOx低減対策として導入されたが、燃費は悪化した。三元触媒導入後、燃費向上に繋がった。
高温の排気還流に因る吸気充填効率低下を防ぐ為、大型ディーゼル機関の殆どは Cooled EGR を採用する。Cooled EGR は主にエンジン冷却水の一部を分流して用いるがラジエーターの放熱が最大３０％まで上昇する事に繋がってしまう。
Turbo charger など過給器を備えたディーゼル等には、逆止弁（チェックバルブ）機能を設ける・可変ノズルを制御して背圧を高める・燃焼済みガスの再吸入、等の対策が取られている。
In a typical automotive spark-ignited engine, 5-15% of the exhaust gas is routed back to the intake as EGR.
ディーゼルなど、燃焼が常にリーンなシステムに用いられる　(リーンだと三元触媒が使用できないため）
EGRにより、吸気中の酸素濃度が下がり、燃料が緩やかに燃える。
吸気中に温まりにくいCO２の濃度が高まるため、燃料温度が上がりにくくなる。
燃料温度が下がると窒素酸化物の生成が抑えられる.
三元触媒.....理論空燃比付近での燃焼時に炭化水素、NOx、CO を同時に無害に帰ることの出来る触媒
電子制御式EGRバルブで排ガス量を調整する。