Last Friday the file-swapping site EliteTorrents was shut down by the FBI and Homeland Security (Homeland Security? Aren’t those guys supposed to be chasing terrorists?) for copyright infringement. The site now displays a message from those agencies.

One can’t help but wonder, however, if the law-enforcement agencies got the requisite permission before they used EliteTorrents’ copyrighted logo and graphics on the warning page the FBI designed and published.

Providing further evidence that all of Asia is secretly governed by 12-year-olds, the AP reported that the Prime Minister has been forced to tell lawmakers not to read comic books and play with their cell phones while the Diet is in session.

TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi scolded rookie lawmakers Thursday for reading comic books and talking on their cell phones during legislative sessions, according to a newspaper report.

The national Asahi newspaper said Koizumi scolded 30 first-term lawmakers from his Liberal Democratic Party during a luncheon.

“Don’t send e-mail on your cell phones or read comic books in Parliament while in session,” Koizumi was quoted as saying.

“You can be seen very clearly from the prime minister’s seat. You should really stop that — it’s disgraceful.”

I can’t make up stuff this good!

I just finished an article about the “huge problem” diploma mills are causing. There are dozens of companies out there that, for a nominal fee, will grant you a Bachelors, Masters or PhD based on whatever life experience you claim to have.

Recent auditing by the US Government and military turned up thousands of employees (some in very senior positions) with degrees from these bogus institutions. The article went on with predicable prattle about how these fake collages are undermining American business and government.

As usual, no one sees real punch line here.

The fact that tens of thousands of people with fake degrees do their jobs just as well as those with real degrees demonstrates pretty clearly that having an degree is no indication of ability. Of course, that train of thought goes to destinations unknown, so it’s much better to stay on track and blame the diploma mills for all the confusion they are causing.

Actually, although there are notable exceptions (medical and legal licensing comes to mind) almost all kinds of certification are basically scams. Whether you are talking about university degrees or software certifications, the business model is the same.

1. Spend half your marketing dollars convincing employers that your certification indicates an ability to perform a specifc complex job.
2. Spend the other half of your marketing dollars convincing job seekers that employers will only hire those with your certification.
3. Set up an official certifying authority to keep out competition. It’s best if this “authority” is a non-profit, so you can point to it when wearing your do-gooder hat.
4. Charge those seeking certification as much as you can possibly get away with.

People are worried about diploma mills not because of the difficulty they cause employers, but because of the threat they pose both to the “real” universities’ business model, and to the self-esteem of those of us who have already bought or worked our way into the system.

From Kyodo News

A total of 162 carp have died due to carp herpes in moats located on the outside of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, the Environment Ministry announced Monday.

Another “Only in Japan” story from Kyodo News.

11 officials admonished for directing plane to land on closed runway

TOKYO — The transport ministry admonished 11 airport and government officials on Friday, including a supervisor for air traffic controllers, for instructing a passenger aircraft to land on a closed runway at Tokyo’s busiest domestic airport last month when all 18 controllers on duty forgot it was closed for maintenance.

The Japan Airlines plane, an Airbus 300 service from Obihiro, Hokkaido, with 51 passengers and crew aboard, landed on the runway at Haneda airport April 29.

Of course, that’s the end of the story. It’s possible that this is an example of extreme group think and gross incompetence — even by Japanese standards — but I don’t think so. All eighteen controllers on duty cannot simply “forget” that a runway has been closed.

Far more likely, someone higher up screwed up and has arranged things so he does not have to admit it.

I had an interesting conversation with practitioner of neuro-linguitic programming the other day. He presented an interesting and rather crass model of human communication, but I think he has a point. Basically, a speaker’s words cause a change of emotional state in the listener. The listener then forms a response based not upon what the speaker said, but upon his own internal state change, which he attributes to the words of the speaker. The process in then reversed.

Perhaps this overstates the case. Clearly some discussions are formalized and communication happens according to protocol. And in familiar surroundings some exchanges like “What time is it?” are almost completely informational and responded to accordingly. However, with apologies to Socrates,this seems to be a pretty accurate model of the majority of human dialog.

My Bulgarian software development team has the day off today for the “International Day for Solidarity with all the Working People.” Hey, just because they are capitalists these days is no reason to give up a perfectly good holiday, right?