Know your rights in Japan

Had more trouble with renegade cops tonight. sa. Will post more on it later. For now, the police here are getting more aggressive in their tactics with foreigners. Print this and keep it in your wallet so you can demonstrate that you know your rights.

====================================
"The Foreign Registry Law, Section 13, Clause 3. Public officials
governed by the previous clause, if asking for the Gaijin Card
outside of their workplace, must carry a certificate of their
identity and present it if asked."
====================================
外国人登録 法　第十三条　第三項　前項に規定する職員は、その事務所以外の
場所に お いて登録証明書の掲示を求める場合には、その身分を示す証票を携
帯し、請求 があ るときは、これを掲示しなければならない。
====================================

IF THE POLICE ASK FOR YOUR I.D. ask to see their ID and write down their name and badge number.

Ask why. Because, under Police Execution of Duties Law (Keisatsukan
Shokumu Shikkou Hou), Section 2:

====================================
"A police officer is able to ask for a person's ID, but only if based
on a reasonable judgment of a situation where the policeman sees some
strange conduct and some crime is being committed, or else he has
enough reason to suspect (utagau ni tariru soutou na riyuu) that a
person will commit or has committed a crime, or else it has been
acknowledged that a particular person knows a crime will be
committed. In these cases a police officer may stop a person for
questioning."
====================================
警察官職務執行法　第二条　警察官は、異常な挙動その他周囲の事情から合理
的に判 断して何らかの犯罪を犯し、若しくは犯そうとしていると疑うに足り
る相当な理由の ある者又は既に行われた犯罪について、若しくは犯罪が行わ
れようとしていることについて知っていると認められる者を停止させて質問
することができる。
====================================

IF THE POLICE TRY TO TAKE YOU TO THE POLICE BOX (kouban):
they cannot do so against your will, unless they formally arrest you,
under the Shokumu Shikkou Hou Article 2, Clause 2 and 3:
====================================
Clause Two: "It is possible to ask a particular person to accompany
the [police] to a nearby police station, police branch [i.e. kouban],
or any police administration area for questioning if it is determined
that this place is unsuitable for questioning because it obstructs
traffic or is disadvantageous to the questionee."

Clause Three: "Unless there is a regulation relating to criminal
action, officials may not confine, bring back to any police
administration area, or else coerce a person to reply to questions
against his will."
====================================
警察官職務 執行法　第二条　第二項　その場で前項の質問をすることが本人に
対して不利であり、又は交通の妨害になると認められる場合においては、質
問するため 、その者に附近の警察署、派出所又は駐在所に同行することを求
めることができる。

警察官職務執行法　第二条　第三項　前二項に規定する者は、刑 事訴訟に関す
る法律 の規定によらない限り、身柄を拘束され、又はその意に 反して警察
署、派出所若しくは駐在所に連行され、若しくは答弁を強要されることはない。
====================================

kyoteizinc

Jean Snow posted this the other day. It's so wonderful I wanted to pass it along:



Video directed by Hiroshi Kizu, featuring dancer Masako Yasumoto. From Warren Ellis’ blog:

OMODAKA is the name of the project developed through a trial-and-error process of mutational fusion of music and motion graphics.

Bruce Gilden vid

Bruce Gilden at Magnum

I am showing a slice of life in New York City that in several years won't be there any longer. Many of the people that I photograph are people who have a certain individuality in the way they walk, the way they dress, the way they look. But the world is getting smaller and smaller, so people are tending to look more alike, dress more alike. All of these differences are disappearing, and it's making it tougher to find people to photograph. I believe I'm preserving that so maybe one day my pictures would be considered documentary photographs.

from interview here

Japanese festivals and fairs in and around Tokyo

Festival Listings

thanks Brett Bull!

Photographer's Bill of Rights

Photographers Bill of Rights

I'll talk to the Japanese Photojournalist Association sometime and see if this is all true in Japan...

WIRED blog article on the basics of RAW

Why You Should be Shooting RAW

Penn & Teller: Americans w/ Disabilities Act (highlights)

Quite interesting:

eat less meat

Take responsibility for your own health and diet. No one is going to do it for you. (^_^)v

TED talk by Mark Bittman: What's wrong with what we eat

another apple shot

Here's my setup--shot with my mobile phone. Shooting through an umbrella with 580EXII flash on manual mode, 1/8 power. Using white cards on the opposite side to fill a bit. Camera is Canon 5D w/24-105mm f/4 EF lens at 55mm f/8.0, 1/100 sec, ISO 100. Used a remote control and camera is tethered to Lightroom so I can sit in front of the camera and easily preview the shots.

still life with apples

Tim Rudder and I decided to shoot apples to practice still life lighting. I'm not real excited about my results, but ran out of playtime for today. I wanted the light to just illuminate the rim and make it look like a flower. Didn't really like the placement of the highlights in the first shot.

Flower Appple


I wanted the highlight to be more like a ring shape around the rim after countless trial and error I finally more or less acheived it by bouncing the flash off a white card that was held very near the apple. In this setup shot you can see I used this black curtain to hide the flash itself.



Lips Apple:

my response to Massimo Pigliucci's essay "Chess, psychoanalysis, evolutionary psychology and the nature of pseudoscience"

Essay is here: Chess, psychoanalysis, evolutionary psychology and the nature of pseudoscience

my response:

I think it's disingenuous to lump sociobiologists in the same boat with Freudian psychologists. Sociobiology is grounded in the natural sciences--in biology, genetics, chemistry and physics. Freudian psychology is not. Just because you are unable to imagine an easy way to gather experimental evidence for a given scientific theory does not disqualify it as a valid hypothesis. I personally cannot imagine experiments that could be used to validate theories of General Relativity, but that doesn't discredit the fundamental scientific nature of the theory. Scientists are still working on devising new experiements to test Relativity half-a-century after this theory was proposed.

You've used this line of argument before. In your essay, "Do you believe in human nature?", you wrote:

"Our genetic makeup certainly poses limits to what we can and cannot do, but how ample those limits are is currently largely beyond the scope of human biology, partly because we cannot do the right experiments that would settle the matter (it is both impractical and unethical to breed human beings and raise them under controlled environmental conditions, which is what we do with other animals and with plants when we wish to study gene-environment interactions)."

But you inability to imagine ethical experiments only reflects on your own limits of imagination, not on the scientific validity of these lines of inquiry. I have more confidence in mankind's collective resourcefulness in devising fruitful experiments than in one philosopher's doubt.

Pixel Perfect

The New Yorker interviews photo retouch master Dangin Pascal.

LINK

crystal castles

I'm liking this:

http://www.myspace.com/crystalcastles