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Section 15 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 February 14 Friday.
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Spring is definitely in the air. It's starting to warm up, and Japanese TV has started to broadcast pollen warnings. Yesterday's hayfever news showed an orange alert for the Izu Peninsular. (We were having orange alerts here in Japan long before the American concept of homeland security was even imagined.)
Now that it's become warmer, it's become practical to switch from Windows 98 to the allegedly rock-solid operating system known as Linux. One undocumented feature of Linux is that it is not practical to use it in the winter. The reason for this is that my private room is upstairs, remote from the kerosene heater, and there is no Linux driver for the WiFi system I'm using.
In the winter, the WiFi system becomes essential, allowing me to use the computer wherever it is warmest, and I need Bill Gates and his buddies to help me connect to the WiFi system. The only alternatives would be either to keep two kerosene heaters running all the time (which seems a bit extravagant) or else to run a LAN cable all the way from the broadband connection in the spare bedroom (upstairs) down to the dining table (downstairs).
Right now I have a LAN cable long enough to reach from the spare bedroom to my private room. I have actually thought about getting a cable long enough to run right through the house, but I'm not sure if that's technically possible. And, even if it is, a loose cable trailing all the way down the stairs is a recipe for getting someone killed. (Seriously. Remember: most accidents happen in the home.)
Anyway, this week I reinstalled Red Hat Linux 8.0 (codenamed "Phoebe") and I'm now doing my writing on it and I'm also using it to maintain my website.
Linux is great, because, once you have it, you can very easily upload a new copy of your entire website with gFTP, a really great FTP program, and then you can find yourself saying, "Well, so now I can't access the website with Windows ... I must have messed up the permissions."
And then you can sweat a little blood as you try to remember what permissions are, or which of your various Linux manuals might contain the answer.
And doing all of this stuff, which can take hours, makes you feel infinitely superior to all those poor old Windows people who just click on mouse buttons, which, let's face it, is something a three year old kid can do.
I first got into Linux back in the days of Red Hat Linux 6.2, whenever that was. To be honest, if I'd known how much work it was going to be, I'd never even have attempted it. It's way more complex than Windows, and things can get a bit tricky if you try to partition the computer's hard disk and set things up so you can run Windows and Linux on the same computer (which is what I've done).
Linux's biggest defect is a shortage of shrink-wrapped software. A lot of the shrink-wrapped software of the Windows world quite simply does not have any Linux equivalent. The two most important items, from my point of view, are the driver needed to run my WiFi system and the software package which includes the timetables for every train in Japan (including every subway train), and which allows you to compute the best possible route from A to B at the click of a button.
On the plus side - and this is a big plus for me - when my ThinkPad is running under Linux it will very sweetly suspend, something it now refuses to do when running under Windows 98. Additionally, after being suspended, it resumes work quickly again once opened. This is a really big thing for me, since I am always closing up the computer when it's time to get off yet another train.
Linux comes with a whole bunch of built-in software, the most important piece of which, for me, is the NEdit text editor. Unfortunately, for some reason I can't get NEdit to run properly under Phoebe's version of the Gnome desktop. Fortunately, I prefer to use the KDE desktop anyway.
Unfortunately, the Red Hat guys hid the bits and pieces of the KDE desktop in different places on the installation CDs, apparently on the principle that you won't be needing all of them. But that's a real major hassle for us completists. How do I know I don't need it if I can't check out what's actually supposed to be there?
The first time I installed Phoebe, I got annoyed and frustrated trying to figure out what parts of KDE were missing and where they were hidden. Fortunately, the second time I installed, I was able to use the "install everything" option and skip the hunting around business. Unfortunately, this means that you end up with gigabytes of software on your system. Fortunately, I've been able to give 13 gigabytes of my computer to Linux. (Windows 98 gets less than 5 gigabytes, which is a fair indication of what I think of it.)
So, having got Linux up and running, I can run NEdit, which really is a massively stable text editor. I have never had this crash on me, not even once, and I've been using it for years. If you want a word processor which can do bullet points and so forth, then this is not it. But if you just want to write War and Peace then NEdit is just the thing.
I've got NEdit set up so the color scheme is black text on a violently yellow background. I don't pretend to think that this is ergonomically sound, but the problem with ergonomically sound color schemes is that they tend to send me to sleep.
To get the color scheme, I wrote an .Xdefaults file which looks, in part, like this:-
nedit*text.foreground: black
nedit*text.background: yellow
nedit*text.cursorForeground: red
nedit*text.heavyCursor: True
nedit*text.blinkRate: 600
nedit*background: gray70
! highlighted stuff:-
nedit*text.selectBackground: magenta1
nedit*text.highlightForeground: black
And what, you ask, is an .Xdefaults file? And how do you write one?
I'm very happy to say that I've now forgotten the answers to both those questions, as I no longer need to know. I've also forgotten most of the pain that was associated with learning the answers back when I did need to know.
Now I have my .Xdefaults file on CD ROM, and any time I reinstall Linux, I simply copy the .Xdefaults file onto my system in the appropriate place. And reinstalling Linux is something I've done rather more times than I care to count, because my Linux systems seem to have a habit of eventually falling over, something which encourages me in good backup habits.
Of course, in addition to the .Xdefaults file, there's also an .nedit file, which in my case looks, in part, like this:-
nedit.textFont:
-adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--24-240-75-75-m-150-iso8859-1
nedit.boldHighlightFont:
-adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--24-240-75-75-m-150-iso8859-1
nedit.italicHighlightFont:
-adobe-courier-bold-o-normal--24-240-75-75-m-150-iso8859-1
nedit.boldItalicHighlightFont:
-adobe-courier-bold-o-normal--24-240-75-75-m-150-iso8859-1
Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux font specifications!!
Fortunately, however, unlike the .Xdefaults file, the .nedit file does not have to be written by hand. You can generate it simply by opening up NEdit then using PREFERENCES then DEFAULT SETTINGS then SAVE DEFAULTS. In this way, you can do a certain amount of customization by just clicking on things. For example, by choosing one of the available options (and I've forgotten which one that is) you can make text wrap at the window's edge without inserting hard breaks, just like a standard Windows-based text editor.
Anyway, I think that's quite enough about operating systems for one day ... it's a bit like someone discussing how they keep their toenails in good health. Of limited interest, let us say.
I'll close with a snippet from one of the conversations which took place on planet Earth today:
A: " ... and we ended up discussing the Second Crusade, since that's his interest."
B: "The Second Crusade? Which George Bush was that?"
Section 15 Entry 0002. Date: 2003 February 15 Saturday.
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Warning: Linux can kill. I found this out last night the hard way. I sat up after midnight having the mother of all Internet sessions, and then walked downstairs in the dark and walked right into a door.
That door is always closed at night, and in this case I had closed it myself. But I went right into it - blam! Fortunately, I survived the experience. But what if there had been other hazards en route? A LAN cable strung all the way down the stairwell, for example?
The problem with using Linux for an Internet session is that the whole thing becomes a much more immersive experience. I'm running the KDE desktop under Red Hat Linux 8.0 and I have available to me a total of sixteen different desktops.
Last night I had gFTP open on one desktop (gFTP is a file transfer program, an FTP program, being used in this case to upload files from the computer on my desk to my website on the cable television company's server) ....
.... and spread across another three desktops I had various instances of the NEdit text editor open, as I edited various parts of my website ....
.... and open on other desktops I had three instances of the Galeon web browser and two instances of the Mozilla web browser ....
.... and all of this stuff worked flawlessly, glitchlessly, so that at times the computer disappeared, leaving me in a world of pure thought, which is a very dangerous experience to play with when you do in fact happen to possess a physical body.
If you happen to have Windows 98 and you want to experiment with the multiple desktop experience, then there's a piece of freeware you can find on the Internet called DoubleDesktop, which allows you to spread your work across two desktops and switch between one and the other with a mouse click.
I've used DoubleDesktop in the past, but I've found from practical experience that when running Windows 98 it's not a good idea to have a whole bunch of processes open, since that amplifies the chances of something crashing. On top of that, things may start to slow down as you run out of memory.
One of the great things about Linux is that it generally remains stable regardless of how many programs you have open. On top of that, the memory management is very efficient.
When working on the website, I might have browsers open, text editors open, graphics programs open, and possibly even an office suite open. (Red Hat 8.0 comes with Open Office installed, Open Office being an office suite which does a lot of the stuff that Microsoft Office does.) And if you do have a whole bunch of programs open, then, under Linux, the one program that you're actually using will automatically be allocated the memory it needs.
By contrast, under Windows 98, programs which you have used tend to be allowed to hog memory right up until the point at which you switch off the computer, just in case they happen to need it again. And they tend to be allowed to do this even if you have only used them once.
Section 15 Entry 0003. Date: 2003 February 15 Saturday.
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I am experiencing the coming war as a drug, pumping energy into my body, giving me the energy to run and burn and burn and run for hour after hour, regardless of how little sleep I have.
I've noticed that some bloggers are updating their diaries at a really furious pace, and I'm wondering if this is normal for them or if they, like me, are being energized by the war. Energized and driven.
It would be interesting to have statistics on blogging rates for the last few months, to see if activity has generally been spiking upwards as we draw closer and closer to catastrophe.
Boy, am I ever energized!
It's true that at times I get dozey enough to walk into a door, which is exactly what I did last night. However, recently I've found that, as a rule, I almost never feel tired.
At times, objective signals warn me that my mental functioning is totally shot. If you add up a set of figures three times in a row and the result comes out, variously, as 98, 64 and 82, then you know you've got a problem. Even so, subjectively I feel fine (just like George Bush, I guess).
It is true that in the mornings I sometimes feel a little flat. But then I open up the morning newspaper and start reading, and pretty soon the red energies are flowing again.
Today's most energizing newspaper input was from an article by Paul Krugman, although he mentions the coming war only parenthetically. His main topic is Alan Greenspan's folly. Recently, Alan Greenspan (no introduction needed, I hope) has been unrealistically upbeat about the George Bush plan for the American economy, the mathematical model for which is that 3 - 7 = 4.
By soft-pedaling the looming financial disaster, Greenspan is giving political cover to the guys in the White House, whose self-serving arithmetic is even worse than mine. (And at least I don't deliberatly set out to gerrymander my mathematical results.)
Writing of this on page six of today's edition of the International Herald Tribune (as published in Japan), Paul Krugman predicts that "If the administration gets what it wants" then the economy will "spiral out of control". Writing what seems to be an open letter to Alan Greenspan, he then says:-
So why are you still giving these people political cover?
No doubt you're under intense pressure to be a team player. But these guys are users: they persuade other people to squander their hard-won credibility on behalf of bad policies, then discard those people once they are no longer useful. It's happening to Colin Powell right now. (A digression: The U.S. media are soft-pedaling it as usual, but the business of the Osama tape has destroyed Powell's credibility in much of the world. The tape calls Saddam Hussein an "infidel" whose "jurisdiction ... has fallen," but says that it's still all right to fight the "Crusaders" - and Powell claims that it ties Saddam to Al Qaeda. Huh? All it shows is that Al Qaeda views a U.S. invasion of Iraq as an excellent recruiting opportunity.
Count me as one of those for whom Colin Powell's credibility has been totally destroyed. For a really long time he was my hero, the one sane adult in the White House. But now, I'm afraid, he's thrown in his lot with the looney tunes. And he's smart enough to know better.
The logic of the situation is this:-
Osama bin Laden is a deeply religious man. His aims are spiritual, and he regards his connections to the material world as being unimportant. (Yes, I know he has more wives and children than I could easily count, but I'm sure he regards that side of his life, too, as being a matter of religious duty.)
As a deeply religious man, Osama bin Laden yearns for war, death, murder, terror and chaos. He is looking forward to a big war which will leave Saddam Hussein dead and which will stir up the fury of the Islamic world against the United States.
Saddam Hussein, by contrast, is not looking forward to a big war which will leave Saddam Hussein dead. Saddam Hussein wants peace. Or, at least, that state of discrete machinegunning and recreational torture which Iraq has enjoyed (if that's the word for it) during the last several years of his rule.
Osama bin Laden is a prophet inspired by God. Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, is a purely secular guy who likes to drink, smoke and fornicate. He wants to stay alive and enjoy the good things in life. In this, he's like North Korea's Kim Jong Il.
Who has an interest in a war between America and Iraq? The answer is very simple: Osama bin Laden. A war will suit his exteme aims. It's perfectly possible that, when he threw his tape into the arena, he knew the Americans would use it as yet another tool to help bring about war.
And a war will also suit the extreme aims of George Bush. George and Osama both want the same thing: war. And, what's more, George Bush seems to have at least one other thing in common with Osama bin Laden: George Bush, too, is a man of God.
Later ... Hugh refines his Theory of George Bush
I still haven't figured out how George Bush ticks, and I'm really glad that I'm not one of the historians who, one day, will have the job of explaining how in hell this catastrophic war in Iraq ever happened.
But I'm starting to think, more and more, that George Bush is driven by a religious vision. I'm not sure of the exact nature of that religious vision, but it seems to involve (amongst other things) the sacred nature of wealth (the richer you are, the more worthy) and the equally sacred nature of American power (America, the nation appointed by God to rule over lesser nations and the breeds which inhabit them.)
The day that George Bush gave up drinking was undoubtedly a very good day for George Bush. However, I'm rather inclined to think that it was a rather bad day for the other inhabitants of planet Earth. It was probably George's first big step toward the Osama bin Laden mode of relating to reality, and unfortunately he seems to have taken quite a few more since then.
Later ... Hugh refines his Theory of George Bush
Now, also in the International Herald Tribune there's this article which has just caught my eye. It's by Nicholas D. Kristof and it's headlined "Nuclear talk harms the U.S." The paragraph which happened to catch my eye made my head spin.
Here's the paragraph:-
Does America really want to encourage Sharon to consider ordering a nuclear strike against Baghdad?
I've now got to sit down and read the entire article, and I'm sure that by the time I'm finished the red energies really will be pumping.
Section 15 Entry 0004. Date: 2003 February 16 Sunday.
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"Whatever token guard its strength, whatever oath assure it,
Still,
Treaty will be broken.
For what can words by treaty bind
That swords cannot asunder?
It follows - does it not? -
That peace is but a name for war in waiting -
And those who will not arm for war
Are but the bloody meat of pirates,
The slaves of tyrants, waiting to be taken.
You talk of peace?
Then talk!
But, while you talk,
Ever the forges beat, and ever
The warlords and the weaponmasters
Gather their strength, perfect the means of slaughter.
This
Is the truth of weapons:
Concede nothing.
Never.
This
Is the way of wisdom:
Make certain
Fear, hate, death, doom:
These certain things
Alone preserve the world.
The wise in our generation, we know
The only peace is that beneath the sword."
I found the above in the text of Book One (that is, part one) of my poem Troy. The speaker is the king of Crete, Idomeneus. (I don't think I need to say who I was reminded of.) What followed was war, blood, death, destruction, ruin.
I've been feeling pretty flat today, as if a second bout of the flu is about to strike. I've been watching the war protests on CNN, but I find I have nothing more to say about it, at least not now.
Today I uploaded a couple of pieces which have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with war, a poem from 1975 called Grafton in Spring and a story called Acorns which was written a couple of years ago.
Section 15 Entry 0005. Date: 2003 February 17 Monday.
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Over the last few weeks, my hair has been getting longer and longer and longer and longer, because I've been too busy to go to the barber's. Today, however, I finally made my move. When the kerosene truck came round, I went downstairs, intercepted the truck and bought eighteen liters of kerosene. And then I lugged the kerosene into the house, put it into storage, and then -
Resumed work on some material for a client.
Saturday, I did some real hands-on teaching, teaching an intensive class which started at 1000 and finished at 1600. (Seven hours of teaching and a one-hour lunchbreak.) Yesterday, however (Sunday) I was working on this material-for-a-client project, and it has kept me busy for most of today, too. It's material for a computer-based course.
Over the five years in which I've been in Japan, computers have gradually been creeping into the teaching business, and there seems to be the theoretical possibility that English teachers will one day be replaced by computers. I can't say I'm particularly worried.
Currently, to be effective teaching gadgets, computers need human input somewhere in the teaching cycle, and they will continue to do so at least until you can go to the hardware store and buy a computer which is smart enough to research a randomly-chosen topic then go build a website based on that topic.
This is not something that I expect to see in my lifetime.
(Google news is the exception which proves the rule. It's a regularly-updated website featuring news from various sources, all organized and prioritized by computer. However, this computer-driven site could not exist without the human input from the editors who organized the original websites in the first place. Take away the humans, and the site content would rapidly start skidding toward zero.)
My anticipation, then, is that computer-based teaching will continue to need human input right through what is left of my lifetime, and (this is my guess) for several generations beyond that.
Today, Monday, Hugh the teacher was replaced by Hugh the materials developer, which, given that I'm both Hughs, doesn't feel like a particularly threatening development. In fact, given my fairly strong writing skills, it's always seemed logical to me that my teaching career should evolve in the direction of materials development, which is a lot more attractive to me than having it evolve in the direction of management.
Anyway, I worked away today, trying to design effective multiple choice questions and the like, but late in the afternoon I sneaked away from my place of work (the livingroom) and went to barber's.
The last time I had a haircut was in the sunny city of Takasaki, in November of last year, when I fled from the barber's shop (not neglecting to pay first, however) after the barber attempted to attack an inappropriate part of my anatomy.
That barber was a man. Today's barber was a middle-aged woman, to whom I was a stranger. She looked at me very uncertainly, projecting an "exactly what do you think YOU are doing here?" attitude.
However, her attitude changed after I said, in Japanese, "I'd like it cut to about here" (gesturing) "and clear of the ears to about here, and thinned out here ... like a salaryman."
So she went to work and cut it, very efficiently, and even threw in some (rather perfunctory) scalp and shoulder massage for good measure. (Therapeutic massage is very big in Japan - and also totally respectable - and getting a massage at the barber's falls into the realm of normative behavior.)
All this for 2,000 yen, versus 3,500 last year at Takasaki.
So now I'm sitting here looking very cleancut and respectable as the clock registers 2300 and I contemplate the job of opening up the thirty-five unread e-mail messages which are sitting in the inbox of my main e-mail account (the one I use for my day job, not the one I use for this site.)
At times I have the oddest feeling of the fragility of reality ... last night in the supermarket, for example, wandering around in the neon light, wondering whether to buy the stingray fillets (a bit expensive) ... sitting in the chair at the barbershop ... and it's no mystery where this feeling comes from.
Let's close with a multiple choice question.
From day to day, my own judgment varies, but I'm coming to think that the best answer is "all of the above".George Bush is:-
(A). A warmonger inspired by God, and thus the soul brother of Osama bin Laden.
(B). A cowboy from Texas who is every bit as limited in his comprehension of the nuances of reality as he appears to be.
(C). A true American patriot of the "The only good Injun is a dead Injun" variety.
(D). A mistake inflicted on America by the defective voting machines in Florida.
That's my own small contribution to the cultural havoc of the day. It's not sure exactly what the final casualty toll of the George Bush war is going to be, but it's very clear that one early casualty has been the art of good manners. Which, internationally, has slithered away down the drainpipe, mortally wounded, as America swells in rage and confronts its greatest enemies (which currently appear to be France and Germany.)
I stand corrected: George Bush is NOT a cowboy
The following correction is from Melissa whose site is www.zanthan.com/japan and who appears to know what she's talking about. She says:-Because my site isn't set up to handle comments, this correction didn't make it to the site until February 18, Japan time ... have added "add comments" to my list of things to do, but it's rather a long way down the list, somewhere after "go to dentist" (something I last did two years ago)."Dubya is a damn yankee, an ivy-league college frat boy, who's no more a Texan than he is a statesman. So his daddy bought him a cowboy hat and the governorship. That doesn't make him a Texan. LBJ was a Texan. And though he is not remembered fondly because of Viet Nam, he has a wonderful legacy of social legislation (Civil Rights, health, education, environment) that Dubya and Co. are working to undo."
Right now it's 0206 on Tuesday the 18th of February in the Year of War 2003, and, having virtuously cleaned out the thirty-five e-mail messages which were sitting in the inbox of my main e-mail account, I'm going to bed.
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