Skating on Stilts

When DHS Questioned ACTA

A position on ACTA that DHS staked out while I was there has made the news, thanks to a recent FOIA release.

ACTA is the latest in a string of international intellectual property enforcement treaties driven by the United States Trade Representative’s office and industries that depend on IP as part of their business model. 

In the Bush Administration, DHS didn’t much like ACTA, at least as it was then drafted.  It seemed like a sweetheart deal for a few intellectual property owners, who’d get free government enforcement of their private rights, potentially to the detriment of security and traditional customs enforcement.  Worse, the sweetheart deal would be written into international treaty, putting it beyond Congress’s reach if the risks we foresaw actually came to pass.  That’s what my memo to USTR said.

I still think we were right, and apparently so do outlets like Techcrunch.  In fact, it's kind of entertaining to watch the visible pain it causes Techcrunch to admit that they, er, agree with DHS.  Or, in the words of one commenter: “Ok I am confused, what side am I supposed to root for. I thought I hated both sides.”

All the News That's Not Fit to Print in China

The press guidance provided by China’s censors is so voluminous and detailed that leaked copies of the guidance are now available on a regular basis.  China Digital Times publishes a weekly list of what China’s censors tell their journalists not to report or hype.  It’s a remarkable glimpse into the dark soul of Chinese bureaucracy, a guide to what really scares China’s rulers.  But there's irony there as well.  I mean, why read Chinese papers when we can get all the juiciest bits from the censors themselves? 

And juicy they are.  The censors’ guidance are a kind of Drudge Report for China.  Take the story about the music student who was out driving his Cruze one night and hit a mother bicycling home from her job?  Fearing that she’d gotten his license plate and would make him pay for her broken leg, he stabbed her to death in the street.  Now he too is facing the death penalty.  It’s an irresistible tale of wealth, entitlement and tragedy in modern China.  How did I find the story? Thanks to China’s State Council Information Office, which instructed Chinese websites to cover it only by reprinting copy from the Xinhua News Agency.  “Do not conduct follow-up reports," the censors warned, "and do not repost stories related to this case.”

But my favorite in recent weeks is the guidance issued by the Central Propaganda Bureau about Liu Zhijun, 58, the recently disgraced transportation minister who ran up nearly $300 billion in debt creating China’s bullet train bubb...er...network.  The propaganda bureau has issued this frustratingly brief guidance:  “All media are not to report or hype the news that Liu Zhijun had 18 mistresses.” 

Really?  How can you not hype that news?  He’s the same age as George Tenet, for God's sake.  I want to know what he was eating.

Heck, you could fill an entire week speculating just on the logistics of the thing. Is it any wonder the guy needed to travel between cities at 200 mph?

Trek/Schlep to Nepal

Next month, my son Gordon and I are continuing a long tradition of dubious hikes (see, e.g., our heat stroke hike out of Antalya, Turkey).  We’ll be trekking up into the Mustang region of Nepal.  Closed to outsiders for many years, Mustang borders Tibet and partakes heavily of Tibetan culture. 

I’m writing about it here because, in some of our past hikes to remote areas, we’ve turned treks into schleps, carrying toys and other supplies to village schools. The best part was getting our kids to donate their much-loved but outgrown toys to the cause.  We still treasure a few photos of our mundane suburban toys in the hands of Peruvian schoolchildren (like our pillow-fencing set, right).

Unfortunately, our kids are now at that awkward age where the only toys they still have are reserved for their children, who are too young to have outgrown much. 

So I’m throwing the opportunity open to readers of the blog, or at least their children.  If you’ve got kids over, say, ten, and they want to donate some of their educational toys, I’ll schlep them to Nepal and deliver them to one of three schools/libraries in Mustang that were started in memory of Alec Lowe by some of Lowe’s fellow mountaineers. And, assuming my camera keeps working, I’ll bring back a picture of Nepali kids making use of each toy.

The school/libraries are part of some very intimate and admirable work the Alec Lowe Charitable Foundation has done in Mustang.  One of their libraries is pictured, left. Liesl Clark, a moving force in the library campaign, tells me that educational toys and books in English would be quite welcome.  The libraries serve kids from preschool to secondary school, so there’s no age cutoff.

And what if you’re too old to have outgrown toys lying around?  That’s just a question of redefining toys.  Liesl says her latest project is to acquire laptops from the US, reformat the drives to Linux, and add educational software in Nepali and English:

A new program we're working on is getting laptops into the libraries that are preloaded with Nepali-English learning software by our partner, Open Learning Exchange Nepal. If you are interested in donating any old laptops for the cause, please let me know and I can have a colleague pick the laptop(s) up from you in Kathmandu so they can be loaded with the software for the libraries. We did a pilot project with my old laptop and it was wildly successful. We hope to have at least one laptop in each library within a year.

(Here’s a nice short film that gives a feel for Mustang, and for the laptop project.)  So if you’ve got a laptop or netbook that’s been gathering dust since you switched to an iPad, this is your chance to put it to good use.

The three Mustang libraries are in Kagbeni, Tsarang, and Chhoser, near the old capital of Lo-Manthang.  For further background about the locations your kids’ toys would benefit, check out the online PBS photo-tour of the region.

Since we’re leaving in just a couple of weeks, and since there’s a limit to how much we can carry, I suggest that you email me at [email protected] as soon as you decide you’re interested in making a donation. Let me know what you’d like to donate and where you are.  If demand is overwhelming, or time is short, we may have to limit contributions by weight or by location (I can pick up donations in the Washington DC area).   And, if you’re willing to donate cash as well, I’ll get information about how you can air-freight any laptops I can’t carry to Katmandu for pickup by the Open Learning Exchange.

What causes Multiple Sclerosis?

I learned more new things per paragraph by reading this article than anything else I've read all year.  First, who knew that infectious mononucleosis (aka "mono") = Epstein-Barr virus = herpes? 

Second, who would have guessed you could explain nearly three-quarters of all multiple sclerosis cases simply by looking at exposure to mono and lack of exposure to sunlight. But you can, say the authors:

The study found that adding the effects of sunlight exposure and mononucleosis together explained 72 percent of the variance in the occurrence of MS across the United Kingdom. Sunlight exposure alone accounted for 61 percent of the variance.

"It's possible that vitamin D deficiency may lead to an abnormal response to the Epstein-Barr virus," Ebers said.

Spending more time at the beach.  Now that's health advice I can get behind.

Miles to Mt. Diablo: 43