August 27, 2003
Canada bans Smilez and...Southstar
Wednesday August 27th 2003
Montreal -- World renown rappers Smilez and Southstar have recently encountered trouble entering Canada when they presented grinning passport photos to Canadian authorities. The immigration control officer in charge could not confirm their identities claiming "Smilez's smile covered so much of his face that I could not in good conscience admit him[to Canada] without having some auxillary verification of his identity. For all I knew he could have been this man [holding picture]."
The offended rappers were eventually admitted, but were informed shortly thereafter that Canada had just passed legislation banning smiles (and frowns) on their own passport photos and were scolded "maybe your country should invest in a similar practice." As a half Inuit with double citizenship in both the US and Canada, Smilez's partner Southstar was said to be quite aghast at the new passport regulations as his Canadian passport is set to expire November 22 2003. A Canadian government spokesperson took the liberty to inform Southstar personally that he "has shit luck," because the smile amnesty is set to terminate on November 3, and non-compliers would be jailed indefinitely.
August 24, 2003
Lost in Translation
I searched today for information on the upcoming movie "Lost in Translation" featuring Bill Murray, and the first site that popped up on google was this. Everyone knows about the Systran translation software that makes their French/Spanish homework so easy, but they also know how fucking unreliable it is. The site describes itself as follows:
What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages? The authors of the Systran translation software probably never intended this application of their program. As of July 2003, translation software is almost good enough to turn grammatically correct, slang-free text from one language into grammatically incorrect, barely readable approximations in another. But the software is not equipped for 10 consecutive translations of the same piece of text. The resulting half-English, half-foreign, and totally non sequitur response bears almost no resemblance to the original. Remember the old game of "Telephone"? Something is lost, and sometimes something is gained.
After playing around with it for a while, I finally came up with my favorite bastardization:
Original English Text:
Fuck You Cracka
Translated to French:
Va te faire foutre Cracka
Translated back to English:
Get stuffed Cracka
Translated to German:
Erhalten Sie angefülltes Cracka
Translated back to English:
Receive filled Cracka
Translated to Italian:
Ricevi Cracka riempito
Translated back to English:
You receive filled up Cracka
Translated to Portuguese:
Vocę recebe Cracka acima enchido
Translated back to English:
You receive Cracka above fulled
Translated to Spanish:
Usted recibe Cracka arriba fulled
Translated back to English:
You receive Cracka above fulled
Thats right folks. You receive Cracka above fulled!
August 07, 2003
Revisionist History
Being that yesterday was the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, I thought it might be an appropriate time to voice some concerns of mine over how this event has been treated in posterity.
People say that history is written by the victorious, but contrary to this proverb, there has been much historical uproar -- coming from the victor's camp -- over the justifications for two atomic bombings of Japan near the end of World War Two. Not only have countless erudite treatises been composed over the supposed irresponsibility of the American Military's actions but its gotten to the point at which for some bizarre reason this revisionist history has some sort of legitimacy; an entirely inappropriate and misguided view. Americans need to cease their self deprecating historical reviews and aknowledge the truth -- that the Japanese military was structured in such a way that surrender was not an option, no matter what the human consequences might be. It therefore took a display of incredible destructive power to convince the civilian Japanese leaders(plus the emperor) of the cost of continued resistance. It was these leaders who after the bombs were dropped, managed to force the military to stand down, effectively ending World War II and saving the millions of lives that would have been lost in the invasion of the Japanese mainland. Critics who argue otherwise are just being naive. The interesting thing is that most of these critics are American, and many Japanese researchers actually contradict their beliefs with their own research and the testimony of the various Japanese governmental players at the time.
Choice Quotes:
"We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war," Koichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest aides, said later.
"The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war," Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief cabinet secretary in 1945, said later.