randomwisdom.com

Thinking about visiting Japan? You might want to think twice. Starting tomorrow, they're going to start fingerprinting foreigners again at immigrations. By foreigners I mean tourists, students and business workers with valid visas, and even permanent residents. It's expected that the lines at immigration will now take at least an hour, whereas those with visas and permanent residence could previously bypass the long and understaffed "foreigners" line. If this isn't egregious enough, the fingerprints get stored in a database for an "unspecified time" (read: forever) and are available to every local police station and foreign government that requests them. Framing someone for a crime has never been easier!

Apparently they used to do this awhile back until the human rights groups (like Amnesty International) made a stink, and the law was repealed in 2000. But someone dropped the word "terrorism" and everyone's brains magically turned off. It doesn't matter that Japan has never been the target of a foreign terrorist attack. Remember the sarin nerve gas attack on the subway? Japanese radicals. Japanese Red Army attacks back in the 70's? Oh, that's right, those were attacks BY Japanese terrorists on foreign soil. Oops. Maybe I'm just dense, but I simply cannot see the connection between foreigners in Japan and terrorism.

Previous proposed legislation to fingerprint all Japanese citizens has been met with outrage. So why do they think it's any more acceptable to do it to a smaller group of law-abiding people? I'm not a criminal. If Japan is going to treat me like one, it's tempting to just not come back.

Edit: (I should make a note that Slashdot also posted my submission about this, so you can read the comments there as well.)

I've finished soldering the majority of my project, but not without some mental repercussions.

I had no idea you could cook with lava, but apparently it's possible.

http://www.dolphinbayhilo.com/cook.html

Since I love you all, and since I am as busy as a honeybee on speed, I'm going to give you something to tide you over until I can update again. I give you Giant Pets Invasion.

Here's something I found today.  It's the story of a guy from California who travels to Japan and walks the whole distance on foot, from the southernmost point to the northernmost point.  It's a long video, slightly over an hour long, but it's worth watching if you're interested in seeing what Japan is really like.  I think it shows more of Japan than all the Tokyo and Kyoto blogs with their photos of capsule hotels and temples and palaces.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3067683435545761102

And here I was thinking that "Radioactive Snails" would be a great name for a band.

I don't think I mentioned it before, but my longtime workhorse Canon Powershot S50 digital camera was stolen off my desk at work, probably by one of the construction crew members who have been wandering in and about rebuilding the school. Whoever you are, I hope you have an accident and fall off the roof, you dirty thief.

So I guess this means I'm looking for a new digital camera, and I stumbled across this fine article:

Enough already with the megapixels.

The Powershot was a great camera, but I was always a bit underwhelmed by its low-light shooting and lack of dynamic range. So I took a look online at the next step up, which was digital SLRs. Both the Sony DSC-R1 and the Canon EOS 350D have the features and performance I'm looking for, so I suppose the next step is walking into a store and trying them out, but I hate spending massive sums of money.