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28 Mar 17:04

Losing The Midas Touch: Why Japan No Longer Dominates The Video Game Industry

by Michael Richey
Justinian

Possibly partially just sharing for the picture of よつば in front of Marcus Fenix & co. Also for stubble link YAAAAAAA!

1985. What a year. The Nintendo Entertainment System debuted in the U.S. to near immediate success. What American video game makers had abandoned as a dead market, Japanese video game companies picked up and revitalized. And they began to dominate. Throughout the 1990s, if an award-winning, mind-blowing, landmark game came out, you could bet it was Japanese. Japan’s gilded, diamond-encrusted horn of video game plenty was pouring choice oils of gaming goodness upon us all. And it seemed the flow would never dry up.

2013. Yasufumi Ono made comments about the state of Japanese gaming at the Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto. Currently, Japan controls a mere 30% of the market share in North America and only 13% worldwide. The horn of plenty has become a trombone of self-doubt. Why isn’t the world buying Japanese games anymore? Has Japan lost its touch?

There are several factors at play here. When Japan swooped in to grasp the field mouse that was U.S. gaming, that mouse was dead. Thankfully Japan brought the mouse back to life and became the sole devourer of its innards. Today there is more than one falcon-country eyeing those rodent intestines, namely the U.S., South Korea, and Finland.

Also, Japan doesn’t make the games that western countries presently want to play, games in the “Call of Battlefield: Ghost Ops II” category. Japan makes games more along the lines of Dungeon Monster DX: The Fire! Time was, you could take your Dungeon Monster games and package them so your average Todds and Brandons would buy them. That’s been a challenge Japan has yet to surmount in this modern era. But why is this such a challenge if it wasn’t before?

Instant Connection

supernintendo-controller

When we hear a story, our mind does its best to connect us to the story’s main character. We want to get to know that character so we can become the hero and experience the tale explicitly. In traditional storytelling, this is no easy task. It takes a witch’s brew of situation, exposition, and time to make a character connection with an audience. And few writers ever know what’s going to work in a given story.

Video games don’t have this problem. It’s a unique storytelling medium. The connection a game character has to the player is almost immediate. My go-to storytelling guru, Scott McCloud, best explains why, by summarizing philosophy first put forth by Marshall McLuhan:

When driving, for example, we experience much more than our five senses report. The whole car—not just the parts we can see, feel and hear—is very much on our minds at all times. The vehicle becomes an extension of our body. It absorbs our sense of identity. We become the car. If one car hits another, the driver of the vehicle being struck is much more likely to say: “Hey! He hit me!!” than “he hit my car!” or “his car hit my car,” for that matter.

So, in touching and controlling the car, your mind makes the car an extension of yourself. The same happens when playing a game. That touch of the controller and your control over the avatar gives your mind the same connection. The hero is a virtual extension of you. You become the hero as soon as you start the game.

This explains why games with subpar stories can still be great games. Your connection to the experience is immediate and doesn’t require a fantastic story to draw you in. If the game is enjoyable, you keep playing because you like your role as the hero. But what happens when you don’t like the hero you become?

Different Heroes For Different Hemispheres

videogamecharacters

Photo by Borgs Dalisay

Back to the Inifinity Ventures Summit (we were talking about that, right?). Some interesting statements were made by Sega/Sammy president, Hajime Satomi. Read below his hypothesis on why Japanese games fail to make an impact in the U.S. And Europe:

Europeans and North Americans like strong people, so the main character has to be a fully-grown, middle-aged man. On the other hand, in Asia, people like stories about middle or high school students growing up or becoming stronger. As you make games for more dedicated players, I think you have to be aware of those differences.

This makes sense when you consider characters from best-selling games in the U.S. from the past ten years: Kratos, Nathan Drake, Master Chief, Niko Bellic, Marcus Fenix, and that hooded guy from Assassin’s Creed. All severely grizzled, middle-aged combat types.

Compare that with some of Japan’s top character picks, plucked from a Famitsu poll of readers’ favorite characters: Link, Sora, Yuri Lowell, Sakura Shinguji, and Cloud Strife. All very ungrizzled and full of youthful optimism for the adventures of life (until they enter the job market).

There is some crossover, of course. Both east and west love Chris Redfield, Solid Snake, Link and Cloud. But there is something to Satomi’s ideas. There is clearly a difference in hero preference between hemispheres.

So if Japan once ruled the western gaming market, they must have created games with middle-aged heroes. Not necessarily.

Let’s Compare Some Box Art!

This is a simple exercise. I will present three games released both in Japan and the U.S. We will observe the in-game pixelated sprites that represent the main character(s) and the art on the boxes for the Japanese and U.S. releases of the game. Let’s begin.

DOWNTOWN NEKKETSU MONOGATARI vs. RIVER CITY RANSOM

downtown-nekketsu

The in-game character looks pretty cartoony. Could be any age.

Japanese Box Art:

downtownnekkutsu-japanboxart

The Japanese release of the game suggests the characters are young high school students.

US Box Art:

river-city-ransom

But the U.S. release suggests they are weird 36-year-old dudes! Despite that “River City High School” sign behind them, these two are clearly just there to pick up their kids from baseball practice.

ROCKMAN 2 vs. MEGA MAN 2

megaman-sprite

The age-neutral Mega Man sprite we know and love.

Japanese Box Art:

rockman2

Japan gets some great art that actually looks a good deal like our robot friend on the screen.

U.S. Box Art:

megaman2

America gets a welder with a broken foot and ray gun. He’s a weirdo, but he’s a grown-up combat weirdo!

DRAGON QUEST II vs. DRAGON WARRIOR II

Here’s the in-Game Characters – Japan & U.S.

dragon-quest

These in-game characters could be impetuous teens or seasoned adventurers.

Japanese Box Art:

dragonquest2

The art for Dragon Quest II features Akira Toriyama’s youthful depictions of the heroes, which have become a staple of the series.

U.S. Box Art:

dragonwarrior2

The American release of Dragon Warrior II is, again, a band of fully-grown adults. These heroes promised each other in college that when they turned 40, they would reunite for a quest to Las Vegas.

Finding Ourselves

iwanttobelieve

So what does this box art comparison mean, exactly? I’ll get to that in a second.

The heroes on our TV screens during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras were less defined and more iconic, and thus more easily interpreted. I touched on this in my article about Hello Kitty, so for a more detailed and Tom Hanks-oriented explanation of icons.

But there was another force at play, helping us interpret our pixel friends. That force is confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is the psychological effect of your mind to favor information that coincides with your preconceptions. Traditionally, confirmation bias is used to describe how we gather information to make rational (or irrational) decisions. Recently, however, a young philosophy blogger named Sam McNerney introduced this idea:

If we are defining confirmation bias as a tendency to favor information that confirms our previously held beliefs, it strikes me as ironic to think that it is almost exclusively discussed as a hindrance to knowledge and better decision-making…With such a broad definition, I think it also explains our aesthetic judgments… Put differently, confirmation bias influences our aesthetic judgments just as it does any other judgment.

Since the pixelated hero images transmit so little information as to what they are, players needed the box art to confirm their bias of what they wanted to see, in this case, their bias of what they think, aesthetically, a hero should look like. Japanese gamers’ biases said, “this pixelated image is a youngling,” and the box art confirmed their bias. Western gamers’ biases said, “this pixelated image is muscular manbeast,” and their different box art confirmed their different bias.

Since video games, as we said earlier, offer an instant connection for the player, it is imperative that the player like that connection. Giving players the chance to connect to the heroes they wanted to be helped to ensure they would not put down the controller and, furthermore, keep buying games.

The Beginning Of The End

red-ring-of-death

So that’s it. Everyone was happy, and all it took was paying two artists to do the same job. It’s easier to sell people what they expect than to challenge their perceptions. Unfortunately, this box art trick got harder to pull off as console gaming entered the world of polygons in 1995. Keeping the hero’s in-game appearance ambiguous got a little trickier.

Such was the case with The Legend of Zelda‘s transition from 2D to 3D. For the most part, early polygonal models could still be interpreted by both cultures as the heroes they wanted to be. And so it was with 1998’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Nintendo 64. EVERYONE loved this game. The main character, Link, started out as a kid but later grew into an adult. But what kind of adult? A grizzled one, probably.

link

How old is this adult Link? Fifteen or thirty-five?

When the first Zelda game for the 128-bit Gamecube was announced, Americans eagerly anticipated their powerful adult Link to appear in new, beautifully rendered 12 million polygons per second! It was at this point Nintendo thought it would be a good idea to have Link represented as a very cartoony boy child in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Americans went nuts. Angry nuts! Link had always been an elfin lad since the very beginning, according to the series’ story, but in pixel world and the American mind, he was nice and grizzled. For the first time, gamers were faced with a Link they could not interpret to their liking. Despite The Wind Waker being a gaming triumph, it sold a mere 3.07 million copies worldwide, compared to Ocarina of Time’s 7.6 million.

It was around this time, Japan’s control over the gaming industry began to wane. Of course, it was not solely due to the unambiguous heroes. The Xbox launched with incredible success in 2001, eating away at a large part of the North American market share previously held by Nintendo, Sega, and Sony. American video game companies, having learned from two decades of great Japanese games, started making games just as good or better. The spike in popularity that Japanese pop culture saw in 1999 was diminishing by the mid 2000’s, banishing anime from general acceptance back to the cavern of the nerds, which also meant the unmistakably Japanese video game heroes were banished as well (unless they were grizzled).

In our modern era, we have our two camps making games for themselves. American game companies churning out gritty power lunks and Japanese companies churning out sleek action teens. And we like it that way, apparently. Only a small fraction from each side is interested in games from the other.

The Sun Also Rises

sun-rises

Photo by Sean MacEntee

2014. In a few months, the next Infinity Ventures Summit will be held in Sapporo and the Japanese gaming industry will gather once again to discuss the future, the past being a non-issue. The truth is, Japan will likely never again rule the video game world as it once did. The special circumstances of an evacuated market and technology that was easily localized is gone forever. Global competition and the advent of mobile/social gaming has changed the industry so nobody knows what to expect anymore. (BIRDS being angry at PIGS?! Nobody saw that one coming.)

But that’s okay. Industries change. When Georges Méliès and the Edison Trust dominated the film industry, it was only a matter of time before other artists from around the world said, “I want to do that, too!” Film expanded until people loved it so much that certain individuals began making films simply as artistic expression.

The Infinity Ventures Summit is a gathering of companies, so their primary concern should be how to sucker people out of money (using video games, hopefully). But games are made by artists, so I hope when these artists gather in May, they will talk, at least individually, about how to move video games forward as medium, how to push boundaries and make something people have never seen before. There will always be success in giving people what they expect. But there is a truer reward in creating something that changes peoples’ minds.

Bonus Wallpapers!

macholink-1280
[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

Sources:

25 Mar 01:59

Culture Enriches Everything: Fair Use and The Office Time Machine

by Parker Higgins

If you're looking for proof that new cultural works speak to and are embedded within a vast array of pre-existing works and ideas, you can't do much better than "The Office Time Machine," a new art project by video remix artist Joe Sabia. Over the course of the last 18 months, Sabia has isolated every pop culture and real world reference from the US television show "The Office," and arranged them by the date of the events, people, and media they reference. It's much more fun to look at than to read about, so feel free to check it out before reading on.

It's an impressive piece of technical work, and it will certainly be interesting for fans of the Office to see the incredible range of allusions embedded in the show—Sabia clipped out and identified over 1,300 from 9 seasons of the program. But it also makes an important point about copyright and culture, and is itself a perfect demonstration of how certain assumptions baked into our current law are out of line with reality.

This isn't Sabia's first time pushing the boundaries of those assumptions. He's got an impressive portfolio of video work, much of which relies heavily on the fair use doctrine, like this supercut of every cigarette smoked in the series Mad Men. But "The Office Time Machine" makes the point even more explicitly: the show is better for its ability to refer to and incorporate a common culture. As Sabia puts it on the project page:

Culture enriches everything. The Office is relatable (and hilarious) because it borrows so much from culture, and people get the references. Culture is society’s collected knowledge, art, and customs. It’s what surrounds us and unites us, and it allows us to collectively laugh at a joke in The Office about Ben Franklin or M. Night Shyamalan. Culture, simply put, is the seasoning in a meal.

That's a great point, and it's a valuable message for art to deliver.

But here’s another message: to make this work, Sabia had to run a legal gauntlet—one that would discourage many artists. For one, to get the source videos in high quality, Sabia rented and ripped every episode of "The Office" on DVD. DVDs come with digital restrictions management software installed. Even if the intended use is a fair one, as in this case, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits circumventing that DRM.

There’s a bit of a safety valve, fortunately: the Librarian of Congress is authorized to grant exemptions for appropriate purposes. EFF has been fighting to expand that safety valve for years, and one of the exemptions EFF successfully fought for in the last round was for ripping DVDs and online streams for non-commercial remixes, giving artists like Sabia some breathing room to engage in his work. We quoted Sabia in our testimony for the exemption, and cited his work with ACLU documenting the media narratives surrounding the War on Drugs.

The exemption puts Sabia in the clear, but highlights an issue with the rulemaking process: if the exemptions must be reviewed from scratch every three years, it can be dangerous to take on a long project like "The Office Time Machine," which took 18 months to create.

Then, once the artist has gotten the materials together, they can face lots of fear, uncertainty, and doubt about whether their use can be considered fair. There are plenty of examples where fair use is abundantly clear, and courts can find fair use even when the new work is commercial, or copies the entire original, or enables people to make their own copies.

Taking portions of a work and rearranging them for a totally transformative purpose is a classic fair use, but courts have sometimes imposed additional limits. In one such example, a court in the Harry Potter Lexicon case sided mostly with author J. K. Rowling against a publisher selling a fan encyclopedia incorporating text from the book.

Finally, while "The Office Time Machine" will hopefully stay up and available for a long time to come, there's the risk that an algorithmic copyright cop like YouTube's ContentID will remove or flag the videos that make it up. Even if the law is on Sabia's side, an automated match could force him to go through the site's appeal process just to keep the video up. Video artist Jonathan McIntosh faced that situation last year when a fair use remix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Twilight movie series was flagged by Lionsgate Pictures.

EFF is working on making it easier and safer for people like Sabia to make and share works like "The Office Time Machine." As lawmakers and the public continue to review copyright law, we should aspire to a policy that would foster works like this—not inhibit them.


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24 Mar 04:41

Cowl of Remorse

Justinian

DARKNESS
NO PARENTS

no one gets out of coffee alive.
20 Mar 04:54

Los Angeles Cops Argue All Cars in LA Are Under Investigation

by Jen Lynch and Jennifer Lynch
Justinian

LAPD basically arguing that LA is a police state. (To borrow a hashtag from firehose, #nevergo)

The Freedom of Information Act is not the only law the public can use to obtain records from the government. Most states have similar laws for accessing documents on the state and local levels. Here in California, EFF is using the California Public Records Act to learn what new technologies local law enforcement agencies are using and whether these technologies violate our rights.

Do you drive a car in the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area? According to the L.A. Police Department and L.A. Sheriff’s Department, your car is part of a vast criminal investigation.

The agencies took a novel approach in the briefs they filed in EFF and the ACLU of Southern California’s California Public Records Act lawsuit seeking a week’s worth of Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data. They have argued that “All [license plate] data is investigatory.” The fact that it may never be associated with a specific crime doesn’t matter.

This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are some indicia of criminal activity. In fact, the Fourth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution exactly to prevent law enforcement from conducting mass, suspicionless investigations under “general warrants” that targeted no specific person or place and never expired.

ALPR systems operate in just this way. The cameras are not triggered by any suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; instead, they automatically and indiscriminately photograph all license plates (and cars) that come into view. This happens without an officer targeting a specific vehicle and without any level of criminal suspicion. The ALPR system immediately extracts the key data from the image—the plate number and time, date and location where it was captured—and runs that data against various hotlists. At the instant the plate is photographed not even the computer system itself—let alone the officer in the squad car—knows whether the plate is linked to criminal activity.

Taken to an extreme, the agencies’ arguments would allow law enforcement to conduct around-the-clock surveillance on every aspect of our lives and store those records indefinitely on the off-chance they may aid in solving a crime at some previously undetermined date in the future. If the court accepts their arguments, the agencies would then be able to hide all this data from the public.

However, as we argued in the Reply brief we filed in the case last Friday, the accumulation of information merely because it might be useful in some unspecified case in the future certainly is not an “investigation” within any reasonable meaning of the word.

LAPD and LASD Recognize Privacy Interest in License Plate Data

In another interesting turn in the case, both agencies fully acknowledged the privacy issues implicated by the collection of license plate data.

LAPD stated in its brief:

[T]he privacy implications of disclosure [of license plate data] are substantial. Members of the public would be justifiably concerned about LAPD releasing information regarding the specific locations of their vehicles on specific dates and times. . . . LAPD is not only asserting vehicle owners’ privacy interests. It is recognizing that those interests are grounded in federal and state law, particularly the California Constitution. Maintaining the confidentiality of ALPR data is critical . . . in relation to protecting individual citizens’ privacy interests”

The sheriff’s department recognized that ALPR data tracked “individuals’ movement over time” and that, with only a license plate number, someone could learn “personal identifying information” about the vehicle owner (such as the owner’s home address) by looking up the license plate number in a database with “reverse lookup capabilities such as LexisNexis and Westlaw.”

The agencies use the fact that ALPR data collection impacts privacy to argue that—although they should still be allowed to collect this information and store it for years—they should not have to disclose any of it to the public. However, the fact that the technology can be so privacy invasive suggests that we need more information on where and how it is being collected, not less. This sales video from Vigilant Solutions shows just how much the government can learn about where you've been and how many times you've been there when Vigilant runs their analytics tools on historical ALPR data. We can only understand how LA police are really using their ALPR systems through access to the narrow slice of the data we’ve requested in this case.

We will be arguing these points and others at the hearing on our petition for writ of mandate in Los Angeles Superior Court, Stanley Mosk Courthouse, this coming Friday at 9:30 AM.

UPDATE: This hearing has been postponed until April.

You can find all of EFF's Sunshine Week posts linked here.

Briefs:

- EFF / ACLU-SC Reply in Support of Petition for Writ of Mandate (ALPR Case)

- LAPD Opposition to Petition for Writ of Mandate (ALPR Case)

- LAPD Gaw Declaration (ALPR Case)

- LASD Opposition to Petition for Writ of Mandate (ALPR Case)

- EFF & ACLU of Southern California — License Plate Readers - Opening Brief

- EFF & ACLU of Southern California — License Plate Readers - Declaration

- Petition for Writ of Mandate - ACLU-SC & EFF v. LAPD & LASD


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17 Mar 23:44

Edward Snowden: The US is Undermining its own Cybersecurity

by Juan Cole
Justinian

Yeah, I know it's from SXSW, but still.

SXSW: Snowden Touts Encryption, Swipes at NSA (via slashdot)

In a Google Hangout with an auditorium full of South by Southwest attendees, government whistleblower (and former NSA employee) Edward Snowden suggested that encrypted communication should become more ubiquitous and easier to use for the majority of…

 

—–

The video:

Edward Snowden and ACLU at SXSW [South by Southwest]

12 Mar 04:41

The Science Of Kawaii

by Linda
Justinian

本当に!?かわいいがわるいかもしれない!?

Possibly also shared because the pony looks like Rosalind.

Japan is famous for being basically the “Kingdom of Cute.” Of course there’s cuteness all over the world, but in Japan it permeates the culture in a way you don’t see anywhere else. In the US, a cute mascot for the police or a sewage treatment plant would be unheard-of – as would a cute poster about how to respond to a tsunami. In Japan, all of these are routine.

Japan’s special take on cute is unique enough that we even borrow the word “kawaii” in English to talk about it. But although there is some cultural variation in the details, cute is very much a universal concept, and you might be surprised at the fundamental role it plays in human psychology.

What is Cute, Exactly?

bear

What makes something cute? Think about how characters and toys based on animals look compared to their real-life counterparts. Compare the bear above to this teddy bear:

teddy-bear

Photo by Jonik

Or take our friend the ubiquitous tanuki statue and his wild cousin:

tanuki-cute

Photo by Shingo

…versus…

tanuki-cutest

Photo by Wallslide

What are the differences? The snouts are shorter (in some teddy bears it’s gone, or close to it). The head and eyes are big and round. The legs are stubby and rounder and generally, everything is softer and more rounded than in real life.

But why are these the particular features that turn a dangerous animal that could bite your head off, like a bear, into something that makes us go “awwwwwww”? Scientists have actually thought about this subject, starting with the zoologist and ethologist Konrad Lorenz in the 1940s.

Lorenz proposed that the features that make up “cute” are all characteristic of human infants. We coo and squeal at the sight of heads that are large for their bodies, little button noses, and chubby, soft bodies. It also doesn’t hurt if the critter has a floppy, clumsy gait like a human toddler.

Basically, the more a a cartoon character or animal is like a human baby, the cuter it is. One interesting thing that shows this is the importance of round forward-facing eyes like humans have. An animal with eyes on the front of its face, like a panda, looks cuter to us than one with eyes on the sides of its head, like a horse. (If you don’t believe it, check out the next photo, which shows that if you want to turn a a horse into something absolutely horrifyingly cute, you move its eyes to the front of its face.)

Why The Short Face?

pony

Photo by tolbxela

Lorenz theorized that there’s an evolutionary reason that these characteristics make you want to grab something and cuddle it. Human babies need a lot of care. If you’re a giraffe, your baby can stand up and run within moments of birth. If you’re a frog, you dump a whole bunch of eggs somewhere and get on with your life, figuring at least one of your hundreds of offspring will manage to survive on its own. But if you’re a human, your baby needs constant attention for months.

So the reason we go “awwww” in response to babies has an obvious evolutionary explanation: the people who reacted that way to round, soft creatures with big heads had babies that survived better. Those babies grew up to have more babies, and passed on the genes for wanting to cuddle things that look that way. On the other hand, the people who didn’t react that way to cute features would be more likely to leave their babies lying around in dangerous places, forget to feed them, etc. So resistance to cuteness would tend to eliminate itself from the gene pool.

This response is now so ingrained in our brains that we react the same way even when it has no evolutionary advantage to our species. We’re just as smitten by pandas as by human infants, despite the fact that they have no benefit to the survival of the human race whatsover. And we even create stuff that has those features, like Hello Kitty, sewage-treatment-plant mascots, and teddy bears. So if you’re one of those people who thinks all that cute stuff is stupid? Blame it on the babies.

This Is Your Brain On Cute

cat-on-cat-video

Photo by McBeth

Psychologists have actually experimentally tested Lorenz’s theory that those specific features of “cute” result in a care-giving impulse. One study, for example, manipulated photos of real babies to make their heads more or less round, etc, and found that photos with more of those characteristics were rated as cuter, and made subjects feel more strongly that they wanted to care for them.

But research has also shown that cuteness has other effects – both positive and negative.

There’s one recent study out of Japan that’s probably going to be good news for everyone reading this. You’re on the Internet, so the odds are high that you spend some of your time at work looking at photos and videos of cats – or, if you’re not a cat fan, of whatever other cute animal floats your boat.

No doubt you try to hide this apparently time-wasting behavior, but instead, maybe you should send your boss a link to this article titled The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus. The research reported shows that looking at pictures of cute animals might actually help you to do your work better.

Two different kinds of tasks were used in the experiment. One was a game called Bilibili Dr. Game which is like the American game Operation. If you’ve never played, it’s a game where you have to remove very tiny body parts from very small openings on a “patient”, using very tiny tweezers.

The subjects played the game, and then they were shown photos: Either of dogs and cats, or of cute puppies and kittens. Then they played the game again, and the people who saw puppies and kittens got better scores the second time around. They also took longer to play the game, so the researchers concluded that seeing cute animals made them do their work more deliberately and carefully.

If your job doesn’t involve the same kind of fine motor control as the game of Operation, you may think this study won’t convince your boss to count looking at Cute Overload as work. Never fear! The experimenters also used another task, which involved looking for certain numbers in a large matrix.

Subjects also did better on this task after looking at photos of puppies and kittens, so the researchers concluded that cute animals made people more attentive. And there’s no job that doesn’t benefit from careful attention, right? So surf away for the those cute kitties.

Cute: The Dark Side

cute-gloomy-bear

Photo by Flavio

Other research has shown that the effect of cuteness isn’t always so benign. If you’ve ever told a baby that it was so cute you wanted to eat it up, you’ve experienced the effect studied in another recent study: cute animals actually make people feel more aggressive.

Subjects were shown a slideshow including cute baby animals, animals in silly situations, and “neutral” adult animals. One group was asked to rate how much the photos made them want to squeeze something or give an aggressive “want to eat it up” sort of response. The cute pictures made them feel that way more often. Then, another group actually put their money where their mouth was: they were popping bubble wrap while watching the slideshow. They popped an average of 120 bubbles when looking at the cute photos, compared to 100 for neutral ones and 80 for the silly ones.

Cute Clouds The Mind

chihuahua

Photo by Toronja Azul

Maybe being more aggressive at popping bubble wrap seems like no big risk, but there are lots of real-life situations where our uncontrollable response to cuteness affects our judgement about important matters.

For example, you probably wouldn’t hesitate to walk right up to a cute little Chihuahua and pet it, while you might cross the street to avoid a big dog. Turns out you’ve got it exactly backwards. There are fashions in what breeds are considered dangerous, but from German shepherds in the 1960s through Rottweilers and Dobermans to pit bulls nowadays, the breeds considered dangerous are always large ones. But the truth is, as this study showed, the dogs that are most aggressive towards humans are cute little guys: Dachshunds, Chihuahuas and Jack Russell Terriers.

Even professionals who work with animals are not immune to the bad influence of cuteness. A paper in the journal Conservation Biology showed that cute animals are much more likely to be studied by scientists and to get funding for their conservation. Apparently even scientists aren’t attracted to animals because they’re important to their ecosystems or more endangered: it’s more important that they be fuzzy, with 500 times more published studies on large furry mammals than on slimy little amphibians.

Cute animals also cloud our judgment about our fellow humans. An experiment in France found that women were three times more likely to give a guy their phone number if he was walking a cute dog, and another showed that a panhandler more than doubled his income when he had a dog.

So if you always considered “cute” to practically equal “harmless,” maybe you better think again. I have to wonder, how many other ways is cute messing with our minds that science hasn’t found out about yet? How is this affecting the psychology Japan, the “Kingdom of Cute”? Will they all just one day snap and eat each other up?

You know, that Hello Kitty…. I always thought there was something a little sinister about her. Now I know why.

Bonus Wallpapers!

kawaiitofugu-1280
[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

Additional Reference:

10 Mar 07:48

Bill O’Reilly says Muslims will Diss Hillary; but 8 Muslim Countries Chose Female Leaders

by Juan Cole
Justinian

LESS GOOD AT SEXUAL EQUALITY THAN THE MIDDLE EAST, YOU GUYS. :(

(By Juan Cole)

Bill O’Reilly maintains that one downside of having a woman president is that Muslims won’t respect her.

For Mr. O’Reilly’s information, here are the women leaders of Muslim-majority countries, most of them freely elected by Muslim publics and all of them respected by the latter:

Tansu Çiller, elected prime minister of Turkey, 1993-1996

Benazir Bhutto, elected prime minister of Pakistan 1988-1990, 1993-1996

Mame Madior Boye, appointed prime minister of Senegal, 2001-2002.

Megawati Sukarnoputri, elected president of Indonesia, 2001-2004

Khaleda Zia, elected prime minister of Bangladesh, 1991-1996 and 2001-2006

Sheikh Hasina, elected prime minister of Bangladesh 2009-

Roza Otunbayeva, president of Kyrgyzstan, 2010- 2011

Atifete Jahjaga, elected president of Kosovo 2011-

Related video:

The Colbert Report: “Bill O’Reilly on the Downside of Woman Presidents”

Related video 2:

Reuters in Jan. On Bangladesh elections

10 Mar 07:46

Journalists should stop ‘balancing’ stories with Science Denialists: Cosmos’s Neil DeGrasse Tyson

by Juan Cole
Justinian

I <3 NdGT. It was hard to watch the first episode of the Cosmos remake, though, as I just want to re-watch Sagan do it instead. Sorry, Neil, this is the first time I haven't thought you were completely awesome. (Still really glad he's hosting it, though!)

(By David Edwards)

Neil deGrasse Tyson tells CNN: Stop giving ‘equal time to the flat Earthers’ (via Raw Story )

Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of Fox’s documentary series Cosmos, said on Sunday that the news media should stop trying to “balance” the debate on scientific issues by hosting people who deny science. In an interview on CNN’s Reliable Sources, host…

 

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Related video:

CNN: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Religion, Science and the ‘Cosmos’ debut

05 Mar 22:13

Facts About Naps

by ray

Facts About Naps

19 Feb 18:37

February 19, 2014


GULPO IS HERE! And, he's here in a limited quantity.



(Seriously, these were a little difficult to get made, so if you don't get one of this batch it might be tricky to get more for a while.)
19 Feb 18:26

Slippery Slope

Sure, taking a few seconds to be respectful toward someone about something they care about doesn't sound hard. But if you talk to hundreds of people every day and they all start expecting that same consideration, it could potentially add up to MINUTES wasted. And for WHAT?
17 Feb 20:59

if you can read cursive

Justinian

Well shit.

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: if you can read cursive


Read Drew's blog: The Worst Things For Sale.
17 Feb 18:13

Explaining Ability Scores with a Tomato

13 Feb 21:44

How Big Was The Day We Fight Back?

by Parker Higgins
Justinian

Shared both for The Day We Fought Back, and for Michigan Stadium, where I used to work. Go Blue!

This is Michigan Stadium, the largest football stadium by capacity in the United States. It fits 109,901 people.

Imagine two Michigan Stadiums, filled to capacity, with 219,802 people. Imagine that all those people are doing the same thing at the same time—contacting Congress and demanding an end to mass surveillance.

You'd still fall short of the nearly 250,000 people inside the US that called or emailed their legislators yesterday for The Day We Fight Back. And that's not even touching the more than 200,000 people around the world that organized actions and signed on to the Necessary and Proportionate principles.

At the peak, people were placing over 7,000 calls to Congress an hour. Legislators, companies, organizations, and many others showed their support in tweets, speeches at live events, and banners splashed across home pages.

As we said yesterday, and many times before, this is not a one-day effort. "Victory," unfortunately, is not as simple as beating back one piece of bad policy, or getting a few organizations (or even lawmakers) on board. We've worked against bulk NSA spying for the better part of a decade, and we're not going to stop now.

Still, hundreds of thousands of people speaking up is an amazing thing. We're proud to have taken part in it, and deeply grateful for the people—the many, many people—who participated.

Photo: Michigan Stadium 2011 by Andrew Horne. Released under Creative Commons BY-SA.

Related Issues: 

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11 Feb 17:55

Today We Fight Back Against Mass Surveillance

by Adi Kamdar and Adi Kamdar

Since June, ongoing revelations about the NSA's activities have shown us the expanding scope of government surveillance. Today is the day people around the world are demanding an end to mass spying.

A broad coalition of organizations, companies, and individuals are loudly voicing their stance against unwarranted mass spying—over 6,000 websites have joined together today to demand reform. EFF stands by millions of users—represented by groups like Demand Progress, ACLU, PEN, and Access as well as companies like Google, Twitter, Mozilla, and reddit—to reform governmental collection of innocent users' information.

Over the past few years, we've seen the Internet as a political force make waves in Washington. From our defeat of the Internet censorship bill SOPA to our battles over CISPA, TPP, and patent reform, history has shown that we can activate our networks to beat back legislation that threatens our ability to connect, as well as champion bills that will further our rights online.

We can win this. We can stop mass spying. With public opinion polls on our side, unprecedented pressure from presidential panels and oversight boards, and millions of people speaking out around the world, we've got a chance now to change surveillance policy for good.

Last year, we were presented with a new opportunity—an opportunity in the form of leaks that showed us the truth about deeply invasive surveillance programs around the world. This is the year we make good on that opportunity. Let's ensure that sacrifices made by whistleblowers and risks taken by brave journalists were not done in vain.

Join us in fighting back. We've laid out below how you can speak out against mass spying.

In the US? Call Congress today.

Dial 202-552-0505 or click here to enter your phone number and have our call tool connect you

Privacy Info: This telephone calling service is operated by Twilio and will connect you to your representatives. Information about your call, including your phone number and the time and length of your call, will be collected by Twilio and subject to Twilio's privacy policy.

Calling Congress takes just five minutes and is the most effective action you can take right now to let your elected officials know that mass surveillance must end.

Here's what you should say:

I'd like Senator/Representative __ to support and co-sponsor H.R. 3361/S. 1599, the USA Freedom Act. I would also like you to oppose S. 1631, the so-called FISA Improvements Act. Moreover, I'd like you to work to prevent the NSA from undermining encryption standards and to protect the privacy rights of non-Americans.

Outside the US? Take action now.

Mass spying affects all of us worldwide. Demand an end to mass surveillance by signing the 13 Principles petition.

More ways to get involved

After you have called Congress or signed the 13 Principles, share this action widely.

Join me in demanding an end to illegal mass surveillance. Take action now: https://thedaywefightback.org/?r=eff #StoptheNSA

On your social network of choice, be sure to use the hashtag #StoptheNSA.

There are also a handful of in-person events occurring around the world—protests, discussions, cryptoparties, and more. Don't see one in your area? It's not too late to throw one together today.

Today we fight back

This fight is more important than ever. Our world has radically changed since last June, when newspapers started reporting on mass spying based on documents revealed by Edward Snowden. Today, it is widely known that the international spy agencies collect users' phone calls, emails, address books, buddy lists, calling records, online video game chats, financial documents, browsing history, text messages, and calendar data. We also know that the security agencies have hacked deep into the backbone of the Internet and disrupted international encryption standards. These activities compromise the confidence and safety of countless people, organizations, and companies.

The President's NSA review group has demanded expansive reforms to NSA surveillance programs. The Congressionally mandated Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has condemned NSA surveillance programs as illegal. And recent polls have shown that a majority of Americans oppose governmental mass collection of phone and Internet data.

It's time to turn this momentum into action. Call Congress today, or if you're abroad, make your voice heard.

Related Issues: 

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04 Feb 21:41

Billionaire Victimology is the Worst

by Juan Cole
Justinian

Guest post on Juan Cole's blog, which I usually follow for his views on the Middle East, but this is equally astute. My reaction to the Perkins situation was less "lol, dick" and more "why aren't more people talking about this?" And I still wonder why.

(By Robert Freeman)

Protesters calling for higher wages for fast-food workers stand outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Oakland, California December 5, 2013 (Photo: Reuters)The Tom Perkins “billionaires-as-victims” charade couldn’t be more surreal. It goes without saying that his comparing the 1% to victims of Hitler’s genocide is tasteless. That it is oblivious is obvious. And that Perkins himself suffers from paranoid delusions must be suspected.

But there are deeper reasons for plumbing the pathology of Perkins’ rant. As background, let’s recall some basic facts.

Over the past 30-odd years, since Reagan, a vast share of the nation’s income and wealth has been transferred from the poor, working, and middle classes to the very wealthy. Twenty five years ago, the top 1% of income earners pulled in 12% of the nation’s income, today they get twice that, 25%. And the rate of transfer is accelerating.

In the ten years between 1996 and 2006 67% of all the growth in the entire U.S. economy went to the top 1% of income earners. Between 2009 and 2012, 95% of all the new income produced in the economy went to the top 1%. What about everybody else?

Since the late 1970s, labor productivity in the U.S. has risen 259%. If the fruits of that productivity had been distributed according to the capitalist ideal that a person gets what he produces, the average person’s income would be more than double what it is today. The reality?

Median male compensation, adjusted for inflation, is lower today than it was in 1975, a full generation ago. A staggering 40% of all Americans now make less than the 1968 minimum wage. It’s the exact opposite of the cultural myth of shared prosperity and opportunity for all.
The rich are getting richer, and everyone else is getting poorer. That is not an ideological statement. It is an empirical one. Perkins believes that simply discussing such facts cannot be allowed. The rich may only be addressed in terms that signal deification.

But underlying Perkins’ tirade is a conviction that the super-rich have earned everything they’ve gotten and so are beyond reproach. Have they?

An enormous amount of the gains by the super-rich have flowed to those in the finance industry. But much of that has been the result of naked fraud and outright criminality, for example in the mortgage, mortgage securities, and derivatives markets. The simple fact of banks being “too big to fail” (an immunity to failure underwritten by the government) is worth tens of billions of dollars a year. And do we even need mention the trillions of dollars of bailouts lavished on the banks, even as millions of mortgage holders were losing their homes?

The banks have learned how to pillage the public and plunder the public purse by paying a periodic “licensing fee” in the form of a nominal fine with no admission of guilt, even as tens of millions of global victims are denuded of income and wealth.

This is hardly the John Galt/Atlas Shrugged model of rugged economic individualism that Perkins fantasizes. It is a cancerous corruption of markets, achieved by equally cancerous capture of political and regulatory systems. It is so brazen and uncontested it’s become normal. Perkins literally believes it is admirable.

Markets in fossil fuels are equally corrupted, if not more so. Coal and oil companies reap enormous, breathtaking profits, partly by offloading their waste products into the global commons called the atmosphere. As with the banks, it is a massive, trillion-dollar case of privatizing profits while socializing costs.

This is the essential nature of almost all major markets today: the government acts as guarantor of staggering private profits, underwritten at public cost. This is the basis of much of the income and wealth transfers of the past thirty years.

We have WalMart and McDonalds, for example, paying their people so little they are forced onto food stamps. It is a covert subsidy of their costs, borne by the public, and worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year. All hidden in plain view.

Or, remember G.W. Bush’s billion giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry with his Medicare Part D gift. It prohibited the government from negotiating for lower drug prices or from allowing foreign-made competition into the U.S. market. Its value? $600 billion.

The government effectively quit enforcing anti-trust thirty years ago, with the consequence that almost all major markets have become consolidated into just a handful of mega-corporations who agree not to compete on price. Think, for example, of the banking, airline, telecommunications, insurance, weapons, and media industries. They are massive oligopolies, extracting all value from their captive customers.

It is through such structuring of industries, stripping of regulations, provision of subsidies and guarantees, favorable tax treatments, and a thousand other insider artifices that the U.S. economy has become a mechanism for sluicing the nation’s income and wealth to those who are already the most wealthy, like Tom Perkins.

The consequence is that the U.S. has become the most unequal economy in the developed world, and with less upward mobility than any other industrialized country. Another consequence is the devastation of democracy, as pharaoic wealth is channeled into buying politicians, judges, regulators and all other gatekeepers of the public trust. Inequality and plutocracy then become an irreversible problem.

Perkins’ delusions of persecution might be tolerable were they rooted in some reality about the source of the 1%’s income and wealth. They are not. We must guard against letting his narcissistic delusions become anyone else’s cognitive map for how to deal with the problem.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Robert Freeman

Robert Freeman is the author of The Best One-Hour History series which includes World War I and The Vietnam War. He is the founder of the national non-profit One Dollar For Life which helps American students build schools in the developing world from their contributions of one dollar.

Mirrored from Commondreams.org

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Related video:

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks: “Rich Asshole Tries To Apologize And Makes Things Much Worse”

01 Feb 01:18

The Real Irony of Rep. Harman being interrupted on NSA Spying by Bieber Bulletin

by Juan Cole
Justinian

Such a self-sustaining cycle. I can never quite tell if I'm breaking from my socialist liberal ideals by disagreeing with pro-NSA democrats, or if they're being convinced to disagree with me via alternate means. Probably neither, really, as socialist doesn't mean "in support of an all-powerful state", despite the RNC trying to frame the conversation that way lately.

(By Juan Cole)

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell interrupts former Rep. Jane Harman, speaking on NSA surveillance from Davos, for breaking news about Justin Bieber’s DUI arrest

The real irony of interviewing Harman on NSA spying is that, as Ryan Gierach points out, she is both a victim of it and a big defender of it, which sounds suspicious and possibly corrupt:

” The potential for abuse of privacy drives him to increase oversight, especially in light of a Senator Bernie Sanders’s reminding us of a recent story that involved a Southern Californian congress woman whose phone was tapped by the NSA without FISA approval in 2005 or 2006.

No one to this day knows if Rep. Jane Harman, called the “most crucial defender of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program,” using her status as ‘the ranking Democratic on the House intelligence committee’ to repeatedly praise the NSA program as “essential to U.S. national security” and ‘both necessary and legal,’” was blackmailed by the Bush administration for an allegedly corrupt agreement she made on that phone call with an alleged Israeli spy. “

When she was in Congress, Harman was allegedly offered the chairmanship of the House Intelligence committee by an Israeli spy in return for her lobbying for reduced charges against operatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who had been charged with espionage.

The conversation was allegedly picked up by the NSA.

27 Jan 19:38

Is Iran Back? Foreign Policy after the Nuclear Deal

by Juan Cole
Justinian

I have high hopes for better relations with Iran. Hopefully we can also get past the ingrained "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb!" popular mentality about Iran that we've ingrained in our population in recent years.

(By Paul Rogers)

Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif with EU High Representative Catherine Ashton at the EU+3 and Iran talks, November 2013

Summary

If Iran and the P5+1 succeed in negotiating a robust agreement on the nuclear issue, then Iran will be less preoccupied with rebalancing its relationship with antagonistic western powers and its role in the Middle East and the wider region has scope for developing in many new directions. This could have significant impact on its approach to the conflict in Syria. This briefing looks ahead to a post-agreement environment and assesses where Iran might chose to concentrate its resources. A key question is whether it will work to build better links with the US and selected European states or whether it will be more interested in the BRIC and other states, not least Turkey. Its choice will be influenced strongly by domestic politics and the urgent need for a more stable region.

Introduction

Following President Rouhani’s success in last August’s election, relations between the United States and Tehran have improved substantially, partly because of the election result but also because the Obama administration has a more positive view of Iran. There is no guarantee that the US election in 2016 will result in an administration sympathetic to further progress. This element of uncertainty will be factored into the policy-making process of the Rouhani administration. Even so, prospects for a negotiated settlement to the nuclear issue are the best they have been for a decade and it follows that if an agreement is concluded this is likely to have a pronounced effect on Iranian foreign policy. This briefing explores this aspect of the politics of the Middle East and analyses the impact of Iran finding itself in a more positive international environment.

The Ahmadinejad Legacy

The flamboyance and the sometimes inflammatory rhetoric of the Ahmadinejad administration (2005-13) disguised a pragmatic foreign policy that combined a degree of confrontation on the nuclear issue with the enhancing of contacts with many countries across the global south, including left-leaning states in Latin America and numerous states in sub-Saharan Africa. It also sought to maintain reasonable links with Russia and China while limiting links with the West. While acceptable to much of the “Iranian street”, it was at odds with the liking of elements of western culture by young Iranians and the nuclear issue was deeply problematic in terms of the impact of sanctions.

While much is made of their role in bringing Rouhani to power and then to the negotiating table, the reality is rather different. Sanctions were effective, in part, because of the parallel impact of internal economic mismanagement by the Ahmadinejad government. Thus, if the Rouhani government improves the management of the economy then even the modest sanctions relief already promised will combine to enable the government to benefit through early respite from recent economic woes.

One other key factor is that Iran’s standing in the region, including the Arab world, has been damaged by its support for the Assad regime in Syria. Under Ahmadinejad, Iran saw the Assad regime as a strong and necessary ally, especially in combination with the Maliki government in Iraq. But as the war in Syria has worsened, and as the violence in Iraq degenerates towards a civil war, many states blame Iran. Regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt hold Iran partly responsible for the violent suppression of the Sunni majority in Syria, and states beyond the region believe Iran bears some responsibility not just for that but also for the possible spread of the war to Lebanon.

Conservative Strategy

Rouhani’s victory was singularly impressive in that he gained an absolute majority on the first ballot against four relatively conservative opponents on a 72% poll turnout. While this has given him considerable authority, most power still lies with the Supreme Leader. However, Ayatollah Khamenei has to be aware of the popularity of Rouhani, a matter made more difficult for him by Rouhani’s preference for avoiding a personality cult. While the election gave Rouhani a clear mandate for negotiating with the US, conservative elements are regrouping.

For these elements a particular concern is the election of the Assembly of Experts – the parliamentary upper house, which selects the Supreme Leader – that are due in September this year. Their fear is of a buoyant Rouhani government that will damage conservative prospects still further following last year’s reversals. It appears to be for this reason that they have sought to persuade the Supreme Leader to expand the negotiating team at the Syria peace talks in Geneva to include more hard-line elements and to have a Majlis (parliamentary) oversight body for the whole process. This would be dominated by conservatives. Rouhani’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Seyed Abbas Araqchi, has stated officially that the negotiating group remains accountable to the Supreme National Security Council, not a Majlis body, but there are reports of more members recently being appointed to the group.

What this means is that the Rouhani government will have a strong interest in developing policies that are attractive to the domestic constituency as soon as possible. The emphasis will undoubtedly be on the nuclear issue and getting further sanctions relief which, in combination with better economic management, could ensure palpable improvements in the economy and consequent political popularity. This, though, is not enough and liberalising economic reforms such as removal of subsidies may even exacerbate short-term economic difficulties. It follows that the Rouhani government will be looking closely at ways of increasing Iran’s standing in the region and beyond.

Developing Foreign Policy

A key aspect of the Iranian outlook is a belief in Persia’s very proud history, one that extends over thousands rather than hundreds of years, and the consequent belief that Iran has not been realising its potential as one of the world’s potential great powers. This view of historic greatness transcends religion, even if Iran sees itself also as the centre of the Shi’a Muslim world. Iran has a population of 80 million, a little less than Egypt at 85 million and Turkey at 81 million. Egypt has formidable internal problems and a weak non-oil-based economy; Turkey is far stronger in terms of economy, even if it, too, lacks significant fossil fuel reserves. Since its 2013 counter-revolution, Egypt is also increasingly reliant on Saudi Arabia, Iran’s greatest rival for influence in the Gulf and wider Middle East.

Iran has all the problems of a near-moribund economy but has remarkable potential for development given that it has close to 10% of world oil reserves and 15% of gas reserves. The latter is largely shared with Qatar because of the huge reserves under the Gulf. There have so far been few problems of delineating boundaries – indeed relations with Qatar remain quite good despite major differences on other issues such as Syria, where Qatar, with Turkey, strongly backs the anti-Assad rebellion.

Asia or Europe?

The issue for Iran relates largely to where it seeks to develop its economic and political alliances. To the immediate east the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan are hugely significant, especially in the case of Afghanistan where opium and refined heroin smuggling across the border has cost the lives of hundreds of Iranian border guards. Iran has close links with the north-west parts of Afghanistan and has no liking for the Taliban. It is suspicious of Pakistan because of radical Sunni Islamist elements within the state, its long-term support for the Taliban, close security ties to Saudi Arabia and the precarious security predicament of the Pakistani Shi’a community, but still seeks to improve relations, not least through exporting gas. The originally planned Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline is going ahead as far as Pakistan. Iran will further increase its links with Afghanistan, where it has greatly increased aid in recent years, especially to projects in the north-west of the country.

India and China are both significant importers of Iranian oil and gas and China has been particularly useful to Iran in two respects. One has been long-term investment in the development of new oil and gas fields, and it remains much appreciated that China persisted with this when relations with the US were at their lowest. The other has been China’s supply of carefully selected weapons, especially shore-based anti-ship cruise missiles. Iran will maintain close links with China, but will not eschew improved relations with India, seeing it as a useful counter-balance to Pakistan.

The links with southern and eastern Asia will remain highly significant in terms of Iranian foreign policy but it is already clear that a priority will be to improve relations with neighbouring Turkey, already demonstrated by the meeting between Foreign Ministers Mohammad Javad Zarif and Ahmet Davutoglu in Tehran last November. In spite of considerable differences over Syria, the countries have good relations in other respects, and Turkey’s past role in trying to defuse the nuclear issue remains appreciated. Trade relations between Iran and Turkey have expanded greatly in the past decade.

It is highly likely that Iran will seek a much closer relationship with Turkey, seeing the two countries together comprising an axis of influence linking Europe and Asia. The Turkish attitude to this is likely to be very positive, seeing it as a useful factor in increasing Turkey’s significance for the European Union. This does mean that the Rouhani government has an added interest in seeing a scaling down of the Syrian War. It is probable that a Turkey/Iran connection is more important to Tehran than the much vaunted Lebanon/Syria/Iraq/Iran “Shi’a crescent”.

The rivalry with Saudi Arabia remains pervasive and is a crucial proxy element in the Syrian conflict but Rouhani’s personal links with Saudi diplomats in the past, combined with Iran’s need to see the war scaled down, means that even here there may be potential for progress. Further improving relations with the US will be a priority but the Rouhani government recognises the risk of sudden changes in US leadership in less than three years time. This means that European links remain useful but Iran does not look to the west to ensure its standing in the world. Turkey, China and India are more significant and this will remain as long as Rouhani is in power. Of these, Turkey is probably the most important.

Conclusions and Policy Implications

Rouhani has barely a year all told to build on the considerable support he gathered last year, and this is against a background of entrenched conservative and theocratic elements that will work hard to limit his capacity. While he will give ground on nuclear issues and may work towards a Syrian settlement, if Iran is allowed to participate in Geneva ll, there is a risk that this can be presented by his opponents as a sign of weakness. Economic progress might blunt this but an additional way forward is to engage in a much more active foreign policy. One consequence of such a shift to the north and east is that Iran may not see Europe as important to its interests to the extent that Europe sees Iran. This is a reflection of more general global changes, bringing its own challenges.

 


AuthorPaul Rogers is Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group (ORG) and Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. His ‘Monthly Global Security Briefings’ are available from our website, where visitors can sign-up to receive them via our newsletter each month. These briefings are circulated free of charge for non-profit use, but please consider making a donation to ORG, if you are able to do so.

Photo: Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif walks with EU High Representative Catherine Ashton at the EU +3 and Iran talks, November 2013. Source: European External Action Service (Flickr)


 

Copyright © Oxford Research Group 2014. Some rights reserved. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Licence. For more information please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

Mirrored from The Oxford Research Group

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Related video add by Juan Cole:

Iran’s Press TV reports, “South Korea parliament to use its parliamentary diplomacy capacity to boost economic ties with Iran”

24 Jan 22:03

Rent-A-Gaijin For All Your Temporary Gaijin Needs

by koichi
Justinian

BRB, moving to Japan to make money off of my heritage.

A little while back someone sent me a link to an interesting website. On it, they said you could rent a gaikokujin (foreign person) who will do various things for you, depending on the person. They could speak English with you (seems like the most obvious application), be a model, DJ, write, be a bartender, hang out with you, etc., etc. As long as it is legal and the gaikokujin is willing, your imagination is the limit.

Looking at the website, it was apparent that two gaikokujin were available for rental. One Australian with dark hair and a smirky smile and one American with a beard and blue eyes.

gaikokujin-rental

Turns out they are the co-founders and they have had many clients between them… too many, in fact. If you’re a gaikokujin in Japan get in touch with these guys. They’re looking to add some folks to their roster. You can visit their website at gaikokujin-rental.jp.

Although they are in their early goings over at Gaikokujin Rental, I thought it was an interesting idea. I also had no idea what it was they were doing, so I sent them an email asking if they’d be willing to do an interview. They were very gracious and got back to my questions super quickly. What follows is said interview, and it includes stories, success stories, and information on what the heck all this gaikokujin rental stuff is all about.

#Interview START

1. Who started gaikokujin-rental.jp?

Two guys, one Australian and one American. Both have called Japan home for a handful of years: Six and ten respectively.

2. Why did (you) start it?

“Why has someone not?,” is what we have been asking ourselves for years. Peer to peer business in Japan has always been BIG. Big for both client and contractor. Yet it seems every year the market is not adequately accessed, and unfortunately for many the public space for self-promotion is in, we feel, terminal decline.

For-hire platforms available at present are largely top-down corporate to individual, not peer to peer, and we think peer to peer is important and remarkable. We think it makes for new economy.

Also, we feel Gaikokujin Rental serves as an alternative meeting space to the usual foreigner/Japanese social venues which exist in Japan today.

Author Note: Oh, so it’s like AirBnB but for people and their skills/time. Now I’m starting to get it.

3. How long have you been renting foreigners?

Gaikokujin Rental officially launched on November 29, 2013.

4. It looks like you have two people being rented out. Who are they?

They are the co-founders, Austin and Adams.

5. Are you looking to add more people to rent out?

We are actively looking to add more foreigners as well as increase Japanese readership at our site – We wish to bring as many people together and build as many success stories as possible. To this end, we have invested energy and time into the idea, sustainability and scalability of Gaikokujin Rental.

Author Note: There’s a contact form on their website if you’re interested.

6. What kinds of things have you done? I need a bedtime story.

Austin:

I once had a woman hire me to look after her children and clean her house.

I was hired by a Japanese women to go shopping with her and pick out a birthday present for her husband because he was a foreigner.

I was asked to attend a bonenkai with a group of salary men and speak only English with them.

I was asked by a young Japanese couple to come to Kyoto and take pictures of the two of them.

Author Note: Now Austin tells a story:

Well, it started around 8:00 on a Friday night. I got off from work and was asked to meet my client at Nagoya (Meieki) station. We engaged in small talk for a few minutes, after which she asked me if I could do two things. The first was to check some English paper work which she had been given by her boss. I was asked to explain it and help her with some possible answers.

After that, she wanted me to join her for dinner. My client enjoyed eating spicy food but none of her friends or family enjoyed spicy food. We had exchanged mail previously and found that we both had a liking for spicy food. She had already found one of the spiciest Nabe restaurants in Nagoya and made a reservation.

After making our way to the restaurant we entered, took a seat and decided what we wanted to eat. I then helped my client with the paper work which had been mentioned earlier after that our meals arrived and we chatted while we ate. She asked me some questions about what it was like living abroad ( because she was thinking of doing the same one day).

And also asked me questions about my country. The rental period was for 2 hours. So after the 2 hour period was up we talked about the possibility of meeting again, paid the check and went home.

Adams:

I’ve had clients ranging from housewives to businessmen to ramen chefs to entrepreneurs to bohemian outcasts – a motley cast of characters. Once I was asked to work in a Ramen shop to take orders from Russians, because apparently the Ramen shop Master “couldn’t understand the Russians.” I’ve done interpretation work between Italian businessmen and a Japanese apparel firm, but most of the work involved making reservations at onsens for the Italians.

I’ve been in front of and behind the camera for modeling and photography work, behind a desk as a freelance journalist and webshop master, a private mail courier for digital products, Santa Claus… YES, Santa Claus, an English teacher, a flyer boy, a bar server, and a BIG buyer of Switzerland-made outdoor clothing for a Japanese Trading company.

7. Have you run into any problems while running this service?

Yes, but not the kind one would bemoan about. Actually at present there are simply too many orders to fill for our current line-up of two foreigners. This is the scenario we envisioned, and to ratchet up both the supply and demand we are working in earnest to promote our service via virtual channels, magazines and ultimately word-of-mouth.

8. What’s the best success story of someone using gaikokujin-rental.jp?

It would be difficult to only talk about the best success story and not mention all the really good ones. On the Japanese side of it, students have increased their TOIEC scores, hobbyists have procured parts and various nick-knacks from abroad that otherwise could not have been gotten, local businessmen have been fed detailed information on foreign market trends, party-goers have been entertained, and the list goes on.

On the foreigner side of it, success is in the MAGIC. The magic being that once your profile goes up online at Gaikokujin Rental you can get paying customers who deal with you directly. Furthermore, your new customer is an in-road into their own network – ehem, your new network.

9. What are you hoping to achieve with gaikokujin-rental.jp?

In a word, symbiosis. We want to turn the disconnect between peer-to-peer business into uber-connection! To us growth means lots of little success stories the length of Japan, new networks forged, smiles, and satisfied customers. We plan to make this happen by staying online as a professional go-between for that all-important first connection between Japanese and foreigners.

For Japanese, we hope to attract anyone and everyone, including businesses, who seek to employ foreigners in one way or another.

For foreigners, we hope to attract everyone from young transplants to long timers to even those residing abroad who perhaps offer services via the Internet, and in general anyone here who seeks odd-jobs, freelance stuff, part-time work, one-off arrangements, and basically new money and customers. That’s teachers of all sorts, musicians, caregivers, models, IT people, photographers, artisans, entertainers, self-proclaimed ambassadors and more.

#END interview

So there you have it. At first I thought Gaikokujin Rental was some kind of joke. Something someone put up as a kind of commentary about how “differently” gaikokujin were viewed in Japan. Or, at the very least I thought it was a hobby that a couple of dudes set up because they thought there was an opportunity to make some extra yen.

It turns out, in my opinion, to be a pretty smart business idea. Of course, they have to find new people on both sides (Japanese and gaikokujin), and they are eventually going to have to deal with the problems that come with bad experiences, etc., but in Japan I can see this business model working. Anywhere else? Not so much. Just imagine if there was a “Rent a Norwegian” company in America, where you would get your Norway-related needs filled. There would be a small mob outside the Rent-A-Norwegian office demanding that this racism stops.

In Japan, however, I doubt this is going to be seen as racism. There’s actual need for gaikokujin-related tasks in Japan, as was illustrated in the stories above. A Japanese person needed an opinion from a foreigner about a gift for her foreign husband. Some people needed someone who could speak English. Another person just wanted to eat spicy food with someone (which I can attest to, Japanese people don’t know what “spicy” really means).

I hope they keep on trucking along and start to grow and do okay. Maybe we’ll see if we can meet up with them and see what they’re doing the next time we’re filming in Japan.

Website: http://gaikokujin-rental.jp

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22 Jan 19:49

The Day We Fight Back: A Call To the International Community to Fight Against Mass Surveillance

by Katitza Rodriguez

The Snowden revelations have confirmed our worst fears about online spying. They show that the NSA and its allies have been building a global surveillance infrastructure to “master the internet” and spy on the world’s communications. These shady groups have undermined basic encryption standards, and riddled the Internet’s backbone with surveillance equipment. They have collected the phone records of hundreds of millions of people none of whom are suspected of any crime. They have swept up the electronic communications of millions of people at home and overseas indiscriminately, exploiting the digital technologies we use to connect and inform. They spy on the population of allies, and share that data with other organizations, all outside the rule of law.

We aren’t going to let the NSA and its allies ruin the Internet. Inspired by the memory of Aaron Swartz, fueled by our victory against SOPA and ACTA, the global digital rights community are uniting to fight back.

On February 11, on the Day We Fight Back, the world will demand an end to mass surveillance in every country, by every state, regardless of boundaries or politics. The SOPA and ACTA protests were successful because we all took part, as a community. As Aaron Swartz put it, everybody "made themselves the hero of their own story." We can set a date, but we need everyone, all the users of the Global Internet, to make this a movement.

Here’s part of our plan (but it’s just the beginning). Last year, before Ed Snowden had spoken to the world, digital rights activists united on 13 Principles. The Principles spelled out just why mass surveillance was a violation of human rights, and gave sympathetic lawmakers and judges a list of fixes they could apply to the lawless Internet spooks. On the day we fight back, we want the world to sign onto those principles. We want politicians to pledge to uphold them. We want the world to see we care.

Here's how you can join the effort:

1. We're encouraging websites to point to the Day We Fight Back website, which will allow people from around the world to sign onto our 13 Principles, and fight back against mass surveillance by the NSA, GCHQ, and other intelligence agencies. If you can let your colleagues know about the campaign and the website (https://thedaywefightback.org/) before the day, we can send them information on the campaign in each country.

2. Tell your friends to sign the 13 Principles! We will be revamping our global action center at http://en.necessaryandproportionate.org/take-action to align ourselves with the day of action. We’ll continue to use the Principles to show world leaders that privacy is a human right and should be protected regardless of frontiers.

3. Email: If you need an excuse to contact your members or colleagues about this topic, February 11th is the perfect time to tell them to contact local politicians about Internet spying, encourage them to take their own actions and understand the importance of fighting against mass surveillance.

4. Social media: Tweet! Post on Facebook and Google Plus! We want to make as big of a splash as possible. We want this to be a truly global campaign, with every country involved. The more people are signing the Principles, the more world leaders will hear our demands to put a stop to mass spying at home and overseas.

5. Tools: Develop memes, tools, websites, and do whatever else you can to encourage others to participate.

6. Be creative: plan your own actions and pledge. Take to the streets. Promote the Principles in your own country. Then, let us know what your plan is, so we can link and re-broadcast your efforts.

All 6 (or more!) would be great, but honestly the movement benefits from everything you do.

The organizers of the Day We Fight Back are:

  • Demand Progress
  • Access
  • EFF
  • Internet Taskforce
  • FFTF
  • Free Press
  • Mozilla
  • Reddit
  • ThoughtWorks
  • BoingBoing

The organizers of the international action center at http://necessaryandproportionate.org/take-action:

  • Amnesty International USA
  • Access (International)
  • Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (Argentina)
  • Asociacion de Internautas - Spain (Spain)
  • Asociación Colombiana de Usuarios de Internet (Colombia)
  • Bolo Bhi (Pakistan)
  • Center for Internet & Society (India)
  • CCC (Germany)
  • ContingenteMX (Mexico)
  • CIPPIC (Canada)
  • Digitale Gesellschaft (Germany)
  • Digital Courage (Germany)
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation (International)
  • Electronic Frontiers Australia (Australia)
  • Global Voices Advocacy (International)
  • Hiperderecho (Peru)
  • ICT Consumers Association of Kenya (Kenya)
  • La Quadrature Du Net (France)
  • Oficina Antivigilância (Brasil)
  • Open Rights Group (UK)
  • OpenMedia.org (Canada/International)
  • OpenNet Korea (South Korea)
  • Panoptykon Foundation (Poland)
  • Privacy International (International)
  • PEN International (International)
  • TEDIC (Paraguay)
  • RedPaTodos (Colombia)
  • ShareDefense (Balkans)
  • Unwanted Witness (Uganda)

The Internet’s spies have spent too long listening on our most private thoughts and fears. Now it’s time they really heard us. If you share our anger, share the principles: and fight back.


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