Japan's Economy is Falling off a cliff.

We're talking about 400,000 jobs being cut soon, and the biggest shrink in GDP since WWII. This is going to get very, very ugly.

Japan beginning to encourage immigration

Good article here.

Japan has long used foreign immigrants, of which they have very few, as a scapegoat for their social ills. As Fukuda, the last of a long uninterrupted string of conservative prime ministers said, "There are people who say that if we accept more immigrants, crime will increase. Any sudden increase in immigrants causing social chaos [and] social unrest is a result that we must avoid by all means."

The Japanese media almost seems to promote the idea that foreigners bring crime with relish, trumpeting any crimes committed by them on the front pages, as if foreign crime is a rampant epidemic happening everywhere, ignoring the fact that by and large, immigrant are actually less likely to commit serious crimes than Japanese citizens. Not more. The same is true in America; for all the heat they get for the country's problems, the threat of immediate deportation makes for a pretty good deterrent.

As I've said before, this kind of attitude may have been safe when the population was growing, but with the declining birthrate, the country can not afford to maintain these prejudices. The population is scheduled to drop by a third in a generation. Japan doesn't even have enough workers to care for its increasing numbers of elderly, let alone fill its factories and companies. So its good to see that even the conservative government is beginning to wake up to the idea that they need to support immigrants and provide them with language training and help them assimilate into the population.

Keeping an entertainment franchise alive

I've been watching the Tina Fey sitcom 30 Rock, and been disappointed by how stale its seemed this year. In the first season, it was about a single female 30-something producer struggling to keep together an NBC comedy show, and who has sexual tension with her boss. 3 years later, its...about a single female 30-something producer struggling to keep together an NBC comedy show, and who has sexual tension with her boss.

That was fine before, so why not now? Well, in the beginning, the show was a pretty good loosely autobiographical take on the early career of Tina Fey, who was the head writer of Saturday Night Live. But the problem is that nothing ever progresses. My favorite episodes were when she had the boyfriend from Ohio, who was in the running for a big job at NBC. But soon he was gone, and everything was back to square one. That's okay to see once, but after a while it gets frustrating. Its obvious now that she's never going to find the right guy, or get a better job, or move on to movies, or have a baby, or become a star in her own right. At this point, I'd much rather see a show based on Fey's current life than her previous one, or at least a show that gradually moves in that general direction and keeps some kind of momentum. But that will never happen. Life is frozen in one spot, and after a few years it gets old.

This seems to be a problem with a lot of TV shows. It's almost as if they have a reset button at the end of every episode; no matter what happens in 30 minutes -a new job, a rival lover- by the end, everything is back to the way it was. The Seinfeld gang remained in their single early 30's for 10 years, hanging out in the same coffee shop talking about nothing. Bobby on King of the Hill comes close to reaching puberty, getting a girlfriend and coming out of his shell, but never quite seems to move beyond the sixth grade. Other shows change things with a reckless abandon that breaks the dynamics that made them interesting to watch in the first place. Soaps like Melrose Place have the characters coming and going, changing jobs and families and sleeping with one another in every mathematical combination.

The similarity with both types seems to be that neither seemed to have any plan of where to go beyond the first season. Its seems like the producers put all their energy into getting the pilot made and on the air, and none into what they would actually do with it if it was a success and lasted for more than a couple seasons. Perhaps the most famous recent example of this in recent times is Lost. JJ Abrams spiced up the pilot with all kinds of bizaare, unexplainable mysteries. When the show became a success, they had no choice but to invent new mysteries to keep the atmosphere the same. Trying to figure out the mysteries in Lost is like trying to chase a rainbow. No matter how far you follow it, you never quite reach it.

Its funny, because movies, which are usually one-shot deals and have much less incentive to worry about these things, seem to be figuring it out. Let me list off a few famous movie franchises-

Rocky, Rambo, Police Academy, The Karate Kid, Back to the Future, Scream

The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter

What's the difference between them? In the first case, you had a single movie that did really well and stood on its own. Then, they attempted to milk it by making more, with diminishing returns. In the case of some of them, you probably forgot that they were even supposed to be franchises, because history has forgotten all but the first. Occasionally a sequel will beat the original, but its up and down, and in the end, they all trail off into nothing. In the other, you have movies that had an overall arch that followed the characters for more than one movie. This is the reason star wars held up so well through the first two sequels, because the story had a momentum to it.

TV series, which are designed to last several years and for several hundred more hours of footage, have much more reason to think this way, not less. Obviously, the writers cant script out 3 years of shows before it even gets picked up. But they should at least have a general idea of where its going to go in advance, even if it takes years and years to get all the way there.

I think the best way to do it is to dole out small, incremental changes every other season or so, just enough to give the show fresh material to draw off and give the sense that the characters' lives are progressing, but not enough to break the dynamic that made the show a hit in the first place. The best example of this that I can think of right now is Entourage. Slowly, Eric is branching out on his own and finding other clients, Ari has started his own company, Johnny has gotten a part on a pretty successful TV show, and Turtle has a girlfriend. But the show still revolves around Vincent and the ups and downs of his career, which moves along at a satisfactory rate, but never quite takes him to a level of fame where he doesn't have to worry anymore.

Japan sees biggest population fall yet

Here at the Guardian.

Actually, Japan saw its lowest birth rate about 18 years ago, and its up this year by 0.02% or so. The difference now is that the large pre-war generation is aging and beginning to die off at a faster rate than babies are being born. Caring for the disproportionately large numbers of elderly is now big business in Japan. There are far more of them than there young people to support them or pay their social security. And it will only get worse as the boomers age.

Now, the advanced nations of the west have abysmal (if not quite this bad) birth-rates too. So why is it such a big deal in Japan?

Because unlike Japan, those countries have aggressive immigration policies. People from India with engineering or medical degrees can become Canadian citizens really easily. The province of Alberta goes to England and tries to entice people with medical backgrounds to emigrate.

Japan just won't hear that. While in theory its possible and legal, in practice almost no foreigners ever become Japanese citizens. The only immigrants they accept are phillipino hostesses for the nightclubs, and poor chinese to do the drudge work in factories for lower pay and worse conditions. A servant class. And to add insult to injury, they're all here on temporary work visas.

Japan desperately needs to replenish its labor force. This country's economy relies on skilled labor, but they have a serious shortage of engineers, and it will only get worse. They can:

A) Instead of blaming single women for not marrying and having kids (and "not fulfilling their duties as baby making machines", as one government official put it), they can invest in Japanese education and offer enormous benefits to couples that have children. The cost of raising kids in Japan is astronomical, and few want to do it in times of economic uncertainty. The government should be forking over something to the order of 2 or 3 million yen per child in benefits, tax breaks and baby bonuses. Sounds ridiculous, but when you consider each child is a future worker, its a pretty sensible investment.

B) Attract educated, skilled foreigners to move and work here, and grant them citizenship and a path into the society.

Something tells me neither option is forthcoming.

Timbaland steals a lot of samples

Check out this song Courtship Dating by the Toronto band, Crystal Castles, which has been getting critics excited this year. They use sounds from old 8-bit nintendo games, and give it an electro bounce and really spooky, grating vocals. It's really good-

Penguin Swimming Hole wrote,

Courtship Dating”...could be the beat to next year’s number one hip-hop song

Actually, Timbland is way ahead of her- he already sampled it last year. Check this out.

Looking into it, this isn't the first time he's done it, either. I discovered that one myself, but check these out from youtube-

Sampling an artist that works with video game sounds, like Crystal Castles-


Sampling Arabian music-


What I've heard is that he's very lazy about clearing his samples. He just steals the pieces of music and puts the tracks out, and if anyone complains, he lets them settle it with the label's legal department. It probably costs him more to do it this way than it would be to just get permission in the first place, but he earns so much he doesn't care.

People into the video game culture are outraged, but actually, this is pretty par for the course for hip hop, which builds almost every thing out of samples. The difference being, most producers stick to sampling soul records, James Brown or Parliament. Timbaland samples some really out there stuff. Its one thing to be James Brown, who already had a deal and a name, and have to deal with this stuff via lawyers. An aggravation, but you have the team to deal with it and see you get paid. But if you're just a guy doing music as a hobby, it must feel like a punch in the stomach to hear someone stealing your music and making half a million dollars off it.

Edit: just found a comment by someone who talked to Ethan Kath of Crystal Castles, who says that the Timbaland isn't a sample, but appears to be a re-creation of the riff using the same SIDstation synthesizer:

I spoke to Ethan about it and he said that neither one is sample.
He said it sounded to him like Timbaland listened to the CCs song and wanted to imitate that sort of sound.

Ethan uses a sample of ETHAN playing a SIDstation on his track.
Timbaland probably used a SIDstation to create the similar sound on his track.

(from Gameboy Genius)