october 21, 2005 [...] Reporters Without Borders today called on the Chinese authorities to stop blocking accessing to the website of the independent online encyclopedia Wikipedia, whose popularity has been growing steadily in China.

...This latest online censorship paradoxically comes at a moment when China is openly raising the issue of democracy by publishing its first white paper entitled “The construction of political democracy in China” on 19 October.

The authorities are censoring Wikipedia in the same way that they censor thousands of websites with information that strays from the official Chinese propaganda on certain issues as Tibet and human rights in China.

Internet users trying to visit the Wikipedia site since 18 October get an error message referring to temporary connection problems for unknown reasons. [...]

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15374

october 20, 2005 […] North Korea, Eritrea and Turkmenistan are the world’s ‹black holes› for news… North Korea once again comes bottom of the Reporters Without Borders fourth annual World Press Freedom Index, released today. It is closely followed in the 167-country list by Eritrea (166th) and Turkmenistan (165th), which are other ‹black holes› for news where the privately-owned media is not allowed and freedom of expression does not exist.
Journalists there simply relay government propaganda. Anyone out of step is harshly dealt with. A word too many, a commentary that deviates from the official line or a wrongly-spelled name and the author may be thrown in prison or draw the wrath of those in power. Harassment, psychological pressure, intimidation and round-the-clock surveillance are routine. […]

http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20

october 20, 2005: Yahoo Hong Kong ratted out a Chinese dissident journalist to the Chinese government, sending the journalist to prison for ten years. Yahoo founder Jerry Yang shrugged off the public outcry over this by saying that helping to send Yahoo customers to jail was just the price of doing business in China. Now Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo has responded with an open letter to Yang, and it's a scorcher:
International companies are ignoring basic human rights in return for business opportunity, while the Communist party is offering profits in return for continued control of the internet and the ability to intimidate dissidents, Mr Liu writes.
«The collusion of these two kinds of ugliness means that there is no way for western investment to promote freedom of speech in China, and that in fact it greatly increases the ability of the Communist party to blockade and control the internet.»
«You are helping the Communist party maintain an evil system of control over freedom of information and speech,» he writes.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/20/chinese_activist_to_.html

october 15, 2005 [...] It's all been a bit of a disaster on the blog front - but here's the first blog entry since landing in Phuket, Thailand, two weeks ago. I have travelled here with Matthew Eaves on a project jointly supported by the British Council, Ultralab and Apple. The aim has been to work with children from Pattani on a digital creativity project with the intention of bring together communities of children as part of the Connecting Futures outreach work that has been very successful.
...Two workshops had been arranged during the two weeks we had been invited and used the well-respected SummerSchool format where the participants gained new skills with using digital video cameras and iMovie software.
...Even though we already know lots about children making movies (our research in digital creativity work using the SummerSchool format stretches back over the past 6 years) there were still several surprises.
...What was exceptional here wasn't just the comments the pupils made, but their confidence to speak in front of the camera. [...]

http://www.jonathansblog.net/digital_creativity_roadshow_thailand

11. oktober 2005 Die vor zwei Jahren in Indonesien gefundenen Überresten eines Zwergenmenschen repräsentieren wirklich eine neue Menschenart. [...] Weitere Knochenfunde belegen, dass die nur etwa einen Meter grossen «Hobbits» mit dem etwa pampelmusengrossen Kopf nicht einfach eine geschrumpfte oder krankhafte Version eines anderen Frühmenschen darstellen.

...Mike Morwood von der University of New England (Australien) und seine Mitarbeiter hatten die jetzt vorgestellten Knochenfunde im vergangenen Jahr in der Liang Bua-Höhle ausgegraben - genau dort, wo die Wissenschaftler im Jahr 2003 das erste Skelett des Zwergenmenschen entdeckt hatten.

...Die neuen Funde widerlegten die Annahme einiger Kritiker, dass das ursprüngliche Skelett zu einem Pygmäenmenschen oder zu einer bereits bekannten Frühmenschenart mit einem krankhaft verkleinerten Gehirn gehört. [...]

http://www.sz-online.de/nachrichten/artikel.asp?id=973129&newsfeed=rss

19. september, 2005 [...] Im April 2005, kurz nach der Eröffnung der Weltausstellung in Aichi, Japan, setzte sich der Japan-Schweizer Roger Walch zusammen mit seinem Kameramann Jörg Bühler aus Rorschach drei Wochen in die japanische Partnerstadt der Schweiz, Shinshiro ab.

In dieser alten Kulturstadt der Präfektur Aichi zeichnete er im Auftrag der Expo 2005 für einen Dokumentarfilm-Wettbewerb den Alltag, die Kultur und den internationalen Austausch der Stadt mit der Schweiz auf.

Mitte September ist er von der Expo-Jury für diesen Dok-Film mit 100'000 Yen (1150 Franken) und einem Sachpreis, dem Friendship-Preis, ausgezeichnet worden.

...Walch, seit 1998 in Japan ansässig, unterrichte seit sieben Jahren deutsch an japanischen Universitäten und weiss, dass das Wissen über die Schweiz in Japan grosse Lücken aufweist.

Während die japanischen Studenten bei Ländern wie Deutschland und Österreich immerhin noch Namen wie Beethoven und Mozart assoziieren, sagt Walch, fallen ihnen im Fall der Schweiz höchstens Heidi oder die Neutralität ein.

...Das Thema galt den" Beziehungen zwischen dem jeweiligen Heimatland des Regisseurs und der jeweiligen Partnerstadt in Japan", im Fall der Schweiz Shinshiro.

...Der Jury gehörten neben dem bekannten japanischen Regisseur und Schauspieler Okuda Eiji und der Schauspielerin Takeshita Keiko, die beide aus Aichi stammen, auch der englische Regisseur John Williams an.

...Wie wichtig die Auszeichnung der Schweizer Dokumentarfilms ist, zeigt der Umstand, dass diesen 20- bis 30-minütigen Filmen laut den Organisatoren in Japan in möglichst allen Landesmedien viel Platz eingeräumt wird.

...21 Regisseure bewarben sich dabei mit jeweils halbstündigen Dok-Filmen über die Freundschaft ihres jeweiligen Landes mit ihrer Partnerstadt in der Präfektur Aichi.

...Walch lebt seit 1998 in Japan, ist Musiker, Video- und Film-Regisseur mit Sprach- und Kultur-Lehraufträgen an Universitäten. [...]

http://www.swissinfo.org/sde/swissinfo.html?siteSect=201&sid=6092198&cKey=1127133005000

september 16, 2005 [...] Twice a year, the government of
Taiwan holds air-raid drills around the country, to pre-
pare the population psychologically for the possibility of
an military attack by China.
I don’t know if China holds similar air-raid drills (I
suspect not), but here in Taiwan, twice a year, trafffic in
all major cities is stopped, no cars or trucks or taxis or
buses are allowed to move for 30 minutes in mid-after-
noon, usually from 2:30 pm to 3 pm, and big department
stores must lock their doors and keep customers inside in
basement levels.
In schools, as the photo shows, students sit on the floor
of a classroom and place bookbags over their heads. [...]

http://japundit.com/archives/2005/09/16/1200/

september 9, 2005 [...] ZakZak reports that 150 people have been evacuated from a city park in Sapporo after bear shit was discovered there.
An elementary school in Sapporo was shut down after bear footprints and bear droppings were found there as well. [...]

http://japundit.com/archives/2005/09/29/1274/

Artist/Teacher, lives and works in Bangalore, India

The last few years have been very intensive and interesting, as my work has been going through a much-awaited shift! I feel that I went through a full circle but of course when I have reached the other end of the circle I have gained a lot more. As many artists I started off as a painter, interested in the act of image making and discovering images rather that creating them with a preconception. My work dealt with issues related to industrial and communal violence. My participation in the group installation projects later, dealing with issues like territory, consumerism, communalism and identity enhanced my interest and gave me an opportunity to study these issues in depth. My involvement in workshops with people from different backgrounds and communities like ‘backward’ and ‘tribal’ communities from different parts of India and working on various art forms and performances have broadened my horizon in understanding ‘Indian-ness’. It has also exposed me to the issues of consumerism and the politics of culture and understanding the reality behind the so-called development of society in particular and nation on the whole. Born and brought up in a relatively conventional society and exposed to the strong regional culture that forms an important part of one’s psyche, I have attempted to distance myself and analyze it and understand it better through interactions with artists from India and abroad.
For the last few years I have been able to travel and participate in residency programs and that has helped me to explore my ideas further both in terms of contents and form. I have been working with installation and video as my main medium and tried to push the line as much as possible. The shift from painting to installation to video and later back to painting (!) has been gradual.
I have taken part in a few International artists workshops and I like to connect to the place where I am working responding to both environment and work accordingly… I would like to call such work place specific.

fig. I xxxxxxxxxx xx fig. II xxxxxxxxxxxxfig. III

Professor of Anthropology, lives and works in Kitakyushu, Japan

Maximum Space Out of Minimum Material

Buckminster Fuller, mathematician, architect, inventor, philosopher, is known for his thoughts about the earth as being a limited space for living creatures as well as for having spread the phrase “Spaceship Earth”. He studied insightfully the prospect of architecture in the future and lifestyle design. He introduces various ideas about creating maximum effect out of minimum materials, based upon his idea of “doing the most with the least”. The more we get to know about his theory on geometrics and his background in philosophy, the more attracted we get. It is a new, light type of house to be moved around; a space where everyone can get their “private sky”; couldn't such a great dome be made out of materials used in daily life?
Fuller's dome is a beautiful hemisphere that can be made by combining some small surfaces together. However, it requires complicated calculations to transfer spherical surface onto plane surfaces, so we decided to go back to the drawing board and reconsider his idea. It had to be possible to make a dome following simpler principles while sticking to spherical calculations. Surely, a beautiful, stable spherical structure can be created using bamboos, which can be bent by having stress laid on them. We were at a loss how to build a sufficiently strong and stable dome. It is only after multiple trials that we hit upon a hint, hidden in an exhibition entitled “Mandala Deities of Tibetan and Nepalese Buddhism” held by the National Museum of Ethnology. The image of a new dome suddenly took form in ours minds, like a combination of the world of Buddha’s around Sumi Mountain and the geometrical patterns of the Mandala.

fig. I