Comic Book Sales Data

Here's something interesting. A new monthly feature that analyzes historical market trends in comic book sales. At first glance, the historical analyses (five-year and ten-year) don't seem all that informative, as they seem to analyze orders and pre-orders rather than sales. They also compare final orders to pre-orders, so I wonder how reliable that is. Still, this is pretty cool.

Fun note: 30 Days of Night was the top-selling trade paperback of 2003.

Golf for the Homeless?

According to today's Times, less people are playing golf in the United States.

Over the past decade, the leisure activity most closely associated with corporate success in America has been in a kind of recession.

The total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since 2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million, according to the National Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

More troubling to golf boosters, the number of people who play 25 times a year or more fell to 4.6 million in 2005 from 6.9 million in 2000, a loss of about a third.

The industry now counts its core players as those who golf eight or more times a year. That number, too, has fallen, but more slowly: to 15 million in 2006 from 17.7 million in 2000, according to the National Golf Foundation.

If George Carlin was right in his famous bit, this is terrific news. According to him, golf is an "arrogant, elitist game that takes up entirely too much room in this country." I, myself, am a huge fan of hitting balls at my local driving range and I also couldn't be more fond of miniature golf. Intuitively, one would think that I would have a natural affinity towards golf. However, I find myself agreeing with Carlin. Even the Times notes that it is a "leisure activity" (notice how they did not say, "game") mostly associated with "corporate success."

Is Carlin's bit about sacrificing all the golf courses in America for the homeless, for prisons, and other projects that benefit the community that farfetched? There are approximately 23,000 golf courses and clubs in the United States! 23,000!

If we could suddenly demolish all of those, what would you do with all the room? Seriously.

The Delegates are Super

It looks like Obama is currently the front-runner of the Democratic campaign, but it also looks like the nominee might be decided by the "super-delegates" in August. Clinton supporters urge the delegates to vote according to their consciences. But, what does the public's wishes mean to a super delegate?

Oy. I hope they don't do anything that I wouldn't do!

Troops Gone Wild

How do people acquire perceptions and judgments about those of other cultures? Unfortunately many judge based on stereotypes, political propaganda or based on what they see through subtler but equally distorted channels like movies and TV shows. However, more striking and true toward forming ideas and learning about people of other cultures is through living and existing with them. It is always eye-opening and profound for anyone who experiences it. What happens though when the picture that is painted by a few of one group is not the one that the majority wants others to see?

The record of American troops committing rape, violence and destruction of property on the Japanese island of Okinawa is a blight on the perception that Americans should be giving abroad--especially with one of its closest allies. American troops have been stationed at Okinawa since the end of Second World War, protecting American interests in the Pacific while at the same time upholding the American-Japanese alliance. While possible hostilities with China represents a clear reason for military presence for some, the soldiers have had more of a symbolic and ambassadorial role since the end of the Cold War. It is unavoidable that those living in Okinawa and in Japan as a whole will look to these troops as representative of American values. But what what do they see?

In the most serious of recent cases, a Marine has been detained and questioned over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old Okinawan school girl. While he denies the charges of raping her, he admits that he tried to forcibly kiss her after he gave her a ride home.

Just today, a marine Corporal was arrested for breaking into the home of Okinawan woman and taking a drunk snooze. The arrest came after the woman discovered him passed out in her home this morning. The official charge is "trespassing".

It would be wrong to judge all American troops, let alone all the American troops in Okinawa as being drunken, sex-crazed party animals. That would be unfair. However, the repeated incidence of horrific crimes and complete irresponsibility by some soldiers can lead one to question the environment in which these soldiers operate that allows for these acts to continue. How can military policy be changed to stop troops from ravaging the locales where they are stationed? What perceptions do these soldiers and their commanders have of their local communities that makes them feel these actions are A) OK to commit and B) not serious enough to enact reforms to prevent? Finally, is this the image that America wants to give to the rest of the world? If the above impression is what one of America's greatest allies is getting from our overseas 'ambassadors', what is everyone else getting?

Pop Culture's Best Couples (Happy Belated Valentines Day!)

Here's a great list of pop culture's greatest fictional lovers. I love that Superman & Lois, Buffy & Angel, Han & Leia, and Rick & Ilsa are on there. Pam & Jim, Ron & Hermione, Carrie & Big are lame. I guess I'm just anti modern romances.

Informed Decisions

Freakonomics linked to this article today:

Doctors are adjusting their bedside manner as better informed patients make ever-increasing demands and expect to be listened to, and fully involved, in clinical decisions that directly affect their care. In a study just published in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, Dr. J. Bohannon Mason of the Orthocarolina Hip and Knee Center in Charlotte, NC, USA, looks at the changes in society, the population and technology that are influencing the way patients view their orthopaedic surgeons. As patients gain knowledge, their attitude to medicine changes: They no longer show their doctors absolute and unquestionable respect.

Is this a blessing or a curse? On the one hand, developments in technology have produced more informed patients that do not blindly succumb to the will of their seemingly omnipotent physicians, and can use efficient internet tools in order to research information on signs, symptoms, diagnoses and procedures, statistics, risks, etc. On the other hand, these same factors have resulted in patients becoming more arrogant, disrespectful to doctors, and impetuous in selecting medical treatments. After all, looking up information on the internet is certainly no substitute for the experience and training that a typical physician would have acquired. It is also common that such a savvy patient would be more susceptible to medical marketing and influenced by factors other than evidence-based medicine.

Thoughts?

Torture Shock

Nicholas Kristoff had an article in today's Times dealing with the issue of torture in Guatanamo Bay, and specifically with Sami al-Hajj, who is protesting the cruel and extensive abuses he was subjected to while imprisoned. Kristoff writes:

Mr. Hajj cannot bend his knees because of abuse he received soon after his arrest, yet the toilet chair he was prescribed was removed — making it excruciating for him to use the remaining squat toilet. He is allowed a Koran, but his glasses were confiscated so he cannot read it.

All this is inhumane, but also boneheaded. Guantánamo itself does far more damage to American interests than Mr. Hajj could ever do.

To stand against torture and arbitrary detention is not to be squeamish. It is to be civilized.

Torture is a critical issue these days. It has been raised again and again as a question for presidential hopefuls. Though it may be overshadowed now by health care and the economy, no doubt with the media attention that is given to Guatanamo abuses, terrorism have torture have been on people's minds. A poll conducted in December 2006 - January 2007 by Pew Research Center revealed that 12% of respondents think that torture in order to gain vital information is often justified, 31% feel it is sometimes justified, 25% think it is rarely justified, and 29% think that it is never justified (the remaining 3% were unsure--for all of you math geeks). Additionally, a stunning (but oddly not surprising) 40% of respondents feel that in order to curb terrorism, the public must be willing to relinquish some civil liberties.

In September, The Economist had an entire three-part series on civil liberties, terrorism and torture. They ultimately sided with civil liberties:

Take torture, arguably the hardest case (and the subject of the first article in our series). A famous thought experiment asks what you would do with a terrorist who knew the location of a ticking nuclear bomb. Logic says you would torture one man to save hundreds of thousands of lives, and so you would. But this a fictional dilemma. In the real world, policemen are seldom sure whether the many (not one) suspects they want to torture know of any plot, or how many lives might be at stake. All that is certain is that the logic of the ticking bomb leads down a slippery slope where the state is licensed in the name of the greater good to trample on the hard-won rights of any one and therefore all of its citizens.

I'm actually not going to go into extensive detail on my thoughts, suffice it to say that I tend to side with The Economist's view. I do want to point out one thing, however. The other night I was out with a friend to whom I made a crack about how Rudy Giuliani was virulently pro-torture. My friend could only laugh and comment on how sad it is that such a phrase would come out of my mouth, and that it is possible that someone could be "pro-torture."

In other words, how sad is it that torture is actually a prominent debate today?

Uh oh. Anothere Blog on Smoking

Tyler Cowen points us to an interesting article on "uncommon knowledge" gleaned from the social sciences, including this about the smoking ban:

SMOKING BANS CAN be hazardous to some people's health. A rigorous statistical examination has found that smoking bans increase drunken-driving fatalities. One might expect that a ban on smoking in bars would deter some people from showing up, thereby reducing the number of people driving home drunk. But jurisdictions with smoking bans often border jurisdictions without bans, and some bars may skirt the ban, so that smokers can bypass the ban with extra driving. There is also a large overlap between the smoker and alcoholic populations, which would exacerbate the danger from extra driving. The authors estimate that smoking bans increase fatal drunken-driving accidents by about 13 percent, or about 2.5 such accidents per year for a typical county.

Does this mean "score 1" for the critics of the ban? Not exactly. The article continues by advocating increasing regulation, either by employing a nationwide smoking ban or by coming down harder on drunk driving laws.

I disagree with that assertion, but then again I'm not sure how much credence I put into the study to begin with. It's just something to think about.

Smoker Be Thy Name

How far is the war on smoking going to go?

Offices and restaurants have become no-smoking zones in New York City. But Galila Huff, a chain-smoking restaurateur from the Upper West Side, always thought that when it came to smoking, her apartment was her sanctuary.

But perhaps it is no longer.

Her neighbors, Jonathan Selbin, a class-action lawyer who has honed his skills suing major corporations, and his wife, Jenny Selbin, also a lawyer, are irate over the cigarette smoke that they say seeps from Ms. Huff’s apartment into the common hallway of their building, the elegant Beaux-Arts Ansonia, on Broadway between 73rd and 74th Streets.

Her smoking, they say, makes the hallway smell like “a Las Vegas casino,” and the secondhand smoke is jeopardizing the health of their 4-year-old son, Charlie.

In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, they are demanding that she “cease and desist from causing smoke to enter into the common hallway,” and that she pay punitive damages.

I admit that when states began passing legislation to ban smoking in pubic venues (bars, restaurants, etc.), I was furious. Not because I was personally burdened as a smoker (I had part of an elite class of hipster smokers at the time), but because I felt that if a business could make more money by appealing to a certain group of people, then they should have every right to. That and I didn't think that the ban would be enough of an incentive for smokers to actually quit, but rather would cause more smoking on the streets and in the cold.

Well, it appears as though I was wrong about that and my opinion has since changed. The smoking ban and the increase in taxes have apparently causes a dramatic decline in smoking rates in the United States.

Here are the numbers of cigarettes sold (in billions) in 2006 by Philip Morris:

U.S./Canada: 184
Asia Pacific: 197
Eastern Europe: 229
Western Europe: 242

The decline in U.S. smoking rates is pretty remarkable, both in terms of total percentages (42.4 percent of Americans smoked in 1965, versus 20.8 percent in 2006) and the number of cigarettes smoked by people who do smoke (from 19.8 per day in 1974 to 13.9 in 2006).

Still, the slippery slope argument comes into play with legislation like this. When the smoking ban was first enacted in New York, many critics suggested that the legislation would not reduce overall smoking, but rather move smoking to other locations. Consequently, smokers would congregate outside office buildings rather than inside. The argument goes that smoking would eventually be banned outside and confined to personal homes. But now with this the aforementioned lawsuit, even smoking in the privacy of personal homes is in question, as Ms Huff ( cool name for a smoker?) is facing punitive damages for endangering a child in a neighboring apartment.

I want to try and have those who read this blog actually put forth an opinion about this one. What do you think about
a) The smoking ban
b) Tax on cigarettes
c) Suing someone for smoking in his or her home.

Gyoza-San

Over the past week Japan has been rocked by a wave of nearly 500 illnesses directly caused by tainted 'gyoza' from China. For those not familiar, gyoza is a Chinese style of cooking dumplings that is a wildly popular staple in Japan--it also happens to be one of my favorite foods here, hence why the children I teach call me "Gyoza-san".

I am personally upset that I won't be able to stuff myself on my favorite bite-sized salty snack. I am equally disconcerted at both the magnitude of the tainted gyoza's impact (nearly 500 people in 38 of Japan's 50 prefectures) and the preliminary findings as to its possible cause (from the Japan Times):

The head of the Chinese delegation in Japan for talks over recent food poisonings said Wednesday he believes the Chinese-made frozen "gyoza" dumplings were deliberately tainted with pesticide after being shipped from the factory and not during the production process.

Speaking at a joint news conference with the Japanese side in Tokyo, Li Chunfeng stressed that Tianyang Food's factory in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province — where the tainted dumplings were made — has strict and thorough quality control measures that made it almost impossible to mix the toxic substance there.

"I believe that the incident did not stem from structural problems but rather is a specific case," Li, vice director of China's Import and Export Food Safety Bureau at the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said after morning talks with the Japanese officials."

This has sparked wide-spread mistrust of not only gyoza but of foods imported from China on a whole. Aside from the ramifications for the Japanese company responsible for importing and distributing the gyoza, this new gaff in the world of Chinese exports further shatters the credibility of its products and producers in the minds of consumers around the world (now, in Japan despite assurance of this being a 'specific case' apart from 'structural problems').

Looks like, I'll have to wait a while before I dig in again.

A Flag By Any Other Name

What's in a flag? Apparently, a lot. I suppose the accoutrement of any new autonomous (?) state is a national symbol that the people can be proud of. Instead, the unveiling of the interim flag of Iraq visibly highlights some of the country's most pressing concerns.

Most striking is the decision to retain "Allah Akbar" as the centerpiece of the flag, in a script different from Saddam Hussein's supposedly original handwriting. This is not a problem at first glance--the majority of Iraq's population is Muslim and the flag should represent fundamental commonalities shared by the citizens that live under it. The intention to show that the various sects within the country share common bonds of unity, however, is completely overshadowed by tangible and horrifying sectarian conflict. The flag is a fantastic gesture, but ending conflicts might take more than just a piece of cloth--however, it is be a great start.

Many Iraqis are enraged by the change. Citing that the old flag was not a symbol of Saddam at all, score of protesting Iraqis throughout the country insist that it was one that thousands of citizen soldiers died for in patriotic wars. Municipalities have already pledged not to fly the new flag as citizens attach the old flag to their cars and houses. This protest, however, reminds me of the persistence of many states in the American south that continue to take pride in use of the Confederate flag. Just as the Confederate flag unquestionably represents a past marred by slave holding and racism by consensus, so does Saddam's handwritten script represent his once paternal dominance as does the three stars of the Ba'ath tripartite slogan "Unity, Freedom, and Socialism" remind the world (and the Iraqi people) of the hypocrisy behind the thinly veiled one party authoritarian rule.

Furthermore, Kurdish members of parliament (MP, MP's, MsP, M'sP... dear me) who pushed the initiative to change the flag are upset that the color yellow, representing the Kurdish population, was not added. Even on the simple but crucial level of palette choice, the flag fails to represent a sizable portion of the population who called for its ratification in the first place.

There is no doubt that creating a new flag is an important symbolic step. However, the new Iraqi flag is as tenuous and insecure as the nation it represents. It should prove extremely difficult to find a new national symbol that can sum up the values of the new nation whilst pleasing everyone.

On the purely aesthetic side...

Courtesy of a link through Tyler Cowen's Blog, I checked to see how the new flag fared on one completely unscientific ranking of world flags. It hasn't been updated yet, but I think through a purely artistic lens, losing the stars might place the new flag somewhere between Equatorial Guinea and Rwanda.

Brad Delong is Upset

Wow. Brad Delong is officially pissed about the Bush budget proposal.

Now that we have an actual Bush administration proposal in print--one that Republican senator Judd Gregg doesn't think much of--it is time for an accountability moment. The Bush administration and its flacks and flunkies have long promised that the administration was going to "cut the deficit in half" by the time in left office in fisal 2009. The press by and large reported this straight--not pointing out that the "cut in half" was from a highballed projected peak deficit number that was artificially inflated in order to set the bar artificially low, not pointing out that such a deficit still left fiscal policy far from where it ought to be, and not pointing out that the Bushies' policies would produce such a reduction only if everything broke right and we had four uninterrupted years of macroeconomic good news. Republican economists who cared more about pleasing White House communications than in informing their audience chimed in--why, I get 100 hits on Google for Greg Mankiw saying both when he was under and since he came out from under message discipline that George W. Bush's proposals were projected to reduce the deficit by half by 2009 http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en-us&q=mankiw+%22the+deficit+in+half%22&btnG=Search. Not under any projection that I would recognize as straight.

Need I say more?

Note: I implore all readers of this blog (all 10 of you?) to go read Delong's entire post on this. I don't think I've ever read something he has written where he has been this angry. It's worth five minutes of your time--hell it's worth fifteen.

Super Brawl for Smash Brothers

With the release of Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii comes massive supply shortages not only in its domestic market but also in foreign markets for the version still in Japanese. Supply shortages? I'm not an expert on video game production, but a good strategy for brewing demand immediately comes to mind.

For the record I have played the game here in Japan and it is fantastic. Also, it doesn't come out in the states till mid-March (jealousy from friends across the Pacific ensues).

Just a small dose of nerdery to keep sane.