Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)

A bunch of countries in east Asia are working on a free trade agreement. The people in these countries make up 30% of the world's population. 

I'm reading Tyler Durden's post about this and there is a chart of numbers and I don't like the format. The numbers are all left justified, makes it hard to see what's going on, so I muck around 

(save the image, run it through a free online OCR (Optical Character Recognition) service, edit with a text editor to clean it up a bit) 

and then import it into a spreadsheet. Now I can play with it. Lists of numbers like this call for a graph, but none of graphs I call into existence really show me anything useful. Then I realize what we need is GDP per person, so I add that column. Now we have some numbers that mean something.

The top five are no surprise. Number six, Brunei, is kind of a freak, a tiny country on the island of Borneo that just happens to be "the fourth-largest producer of oil in Southeast Asia". Then we have China, Malaysia and Thailand that seem to be doing okay. And then we have the bottom six, who maybe aren't doing so well. That the Philippines are below Vietnam was kind of surprise, but maybe not. Filipinos make up a third of the crews of most of the cruise ships in the world. Working on a cruise ship is not far from slave labor. If that many people are looking for slave labor gigs overseas, things can't be too good at home. Plus we've got a jihadist revolution percolating there.* 

Seems Capitalism worked in some of these countries (the top five again). A couple suffered Communist revolutions (China and Vietnam) and are making progress. You'd think that the Philippines would be doing better what with it being a mostly an English speaking, Christian country with strong US backing, but maybe that's the problem. South Vietnam's corrupt government had US backing as well.

* It took me a while to find this post. Searching for philippines missed it. Searching for philippine would have found it, but Blogger's search function is rudimentary at best and I didn't think of it. Searching for winning finally turned it up because I remembered that from the blurb I quoted.

P.S. The chart in Tyler Durden's post was an image of the chart in Visual Capitalist's post. The chart format in Visual Capitalist's post is still piss poor, but at least it was text, so I could have copied it directly instead of going through the OCR business.

The Siege of Fort Bismarck

Pusher Biplane on floats from The Siege of Fort Bismarck

What a great picture. People, Japanese or Chinese or possibly Germans, transporting a float plane across dry land using oxcarts. Vunderbar!

The Siege of Fort Bismarck is a movie set during WW1 in Asia. Short description of the movie, translated by Google:

Japanese pilots in white gloves against the Kaiser infantry in pickelhaub. This was to be painted by Miyazaki.
Very funny movie, given some elements of form and weapons :). It seems that the Japanese read "Guns of the Navaron Island", and then turned off the pages of self-roll and tightened well.
At the same time, there are a lot of well-shot various battle scenes - from air combat (in 1914, hmm) to squadron shooting. There are a lot of special effects.
Separately impressive is the dropping of bombs by hitting a rope with a knife on which the bomb is suspended.
The theme of the fraternal Chinese people is also revealed.

Trying to figure out just what airplane this is, I found there were a bunch of similar configuration. Aside from being on wheels instead of floats, this one has several of the main features in common with the one above. The nose is different, but I'm not sure that is significant.

Voisin Type 1

Via Just a Car Guy

Visit Fascinating Vietnam, circa 1961

CAT Advertisement from Vietnam Travel Brochure

Visit Fascinating Vietnam, travel brochure from 1961. The world was a different place back then. Via Posthip Scott.

Hattori Clock Tower

The K. Hattori Building in 1932

I started reading William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive this evening. A couple of pages in he mentions "the shadow of the Hattori clock". Must be a pretty big clock, so I look it up. Turns out to be a rather famous landmark in Ginza. Kintarō Hattori started his watch and clock business (otherwise known as Seiko) in Ginza in 1881. Ginza is a district in Tokyo, Japan. In 1932 he built the K. Hattori building.

Tokyo PX in the K. Hattori Building

Much of Tokyo was devastated by American bomber raids during WW2, but the Hattori Clock Tower survived. After the war it became the PX (Post Exchange) for American G.I.'s.  In 1947 the building went back to being a department store.

The Wako Building Today

At some point people started calling this the Wako building, which is the name of the department store that occupies it.

Girls with Guns

North Korean soldiers patrol on the river bank of Sinuiju, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong, on 20 September 2014.  (PA)

On patrol, wearing high heels. Be afraid, be very afraid. Our soldiers will die of humiliation as they are not nearly so fashionable.

Ice Planet Hoth

Pyeongchang-gun, South Korea, Military exercise. Temperature below zero.

Well, it could be Hoth.

North Korea, Part N-teenth

Jieun Baek and a North Korean military woman officer in front of the USS Pueblo.

Previous posts about North Korea.

Stylin' with the Japanese Defense Force

Japanese F-15 with Mt. Tsukuba & Mt. Fuji painted on the wings

Fun with North Korea

North Korean leader Kim Jong un (C) plays with children during a visit to the Taesongsan General Hospital in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang May 19, 2014.

CNN Story: Defector: Shadowy organization, not Kim Jong Un, controls North Korea

[WDW]Megaraptor provides a short summary:
Kim Jong Un grew up in Switzerland, has no friends in the North Korean government.
All real power in DPRK is held by a group called the Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), made up of associates of his father Kim Jong Il. When someone was admitted to the OGD, they were considered to take on some aspects of Kim Jong Il's divinity.
The execution of Kim Jong Un's uncle eliminated the last real threat to the OGD's power, now Little Kim basically has to do whatever they say.

PSY - GANGNAM STYLE

This video is nearing two billion views. Three days ago it was at 1.97 something billion. Today it's showing a very similar number, so I fed the numbers to me calculator and guess what!?! It's had three million views in three days. That's like ten plays a second. At this rate it will hit the two billion mark in three weeks. I don't think it is more than a couple or three years old.

It's very loud, raucous and silly, but he does it all with a straight face. It's just nuts.

Pic of the Day

April 23, 2014...Three Japanese men were apprehended by Hong Kong border officers attempting to smuggle $ 580,000 USD into Hong Kong.

Those are bundles of Benjamin Franklins taped to the man's legs. More pictures here.

South Korean Ferry Disaster

 

The death toll in the South Korean ferry disaster has risen to 58, and 244 are still missing, the country’s coast guard says.

The accident happened about 15 miles from land around 9 in the morning. By 1PM the ship was submerged. I suspect that there was a problem with the steering gear. A cruise liner had a malfunction with the steering gear a few years ago up around Vancouver B.C. The ship didn't capsize, but it got thrown into a sharp turn that knocked all the glassware off the shelves.

Update April 2015: Our adventure on the same cruise liner from the Vancouver incident.

Equal Rights for Women

Cutest flight deck crew on the 7 Seas on board the Red Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning.

Pic of the Day

The Ameya by Robert Frederick Blum, 1893. Via Spoon & Tamago.

Eastern Cross

Eastern Cross

I got to wondering about the relative latitude of Tokyo and Peking, so I went to Google maps and found that Peking is slightly farther North, but more interestingly, Seoul is almost exactly halfway between the two. If you look at the North-South line we find that Vladivostok, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and Kuala Lumpur are almost in a straight line. Here ends today's geography lesson.

Update February 2021 replaced missing map. Update inspired by this video.

Giant Japanese Submarine Sighted Off Hawaii

OK, "sighted" may be putting it a bit strong since it's on the bottom of the sea.
First view of a World War II-era Imperial Japanese Navy mega-submarine, the I-400, lost since 1946 when it was intentionally scuttled by U.S. forces. It now sits in more than 2,300 feet of water off the southwest coast of O'ahu. Press release here. Discovered in August, but just announced.

Video obtained using the Pisces V 3 man submersible.

More WW2 era pictures of the I-400 here.

Update: Webpage about the I400, Storm From A Clear Sky - by John Geoghegan. Via Posthip Scott.

Update September 2021 replaced link to WW2 era pictures.

War of the Arrows

Best Korean movie of 2011. Set during the 2nd Manchu invasion of Korea in 1636. Excellent. I, for one, am glad to see more archery in warfare and less sword fighting. Hollywood likes swordfights for their action and drama. They are thrilling, but they are basically stupid. Remember Agincourt? (Okay, you weren't there, but you have heard of it, right? If not, go read.) Remember the black cloud of arrows in 300? And our plucky heroine in The Hunger Games?

Some of the drama was a little much, but then I suppose it is an adequate stand-in for Korean incompetence during the invasion. I mean, criminently, the enemy is at the gates and everyone is standing around wondering what to do? With that kind of discipline they deserve to be enslaved.

The best parts are the running bowfights. There is one where we have a bunch of baddies chasing our hero through a forest. Straight, tall trees, minimal undergrowth, so there is no impediment to running, but with all the trees and everyone running, it is extremely difficult to get a clear shot. There is another where our hero has managed to jump a chasm, but the baddies have him pined down behind a rock. They cannot cross without exposing themselves to his shots, but he cannot shoot without exposing himself to theirs. But it takes time to knock another arrow after making a shot, so there is a brief window of opportunity after a fusillade where you can return fire.

I am not sure of the historical accuracy of some of the armor these guys were wearing. Chain mail in the 1600's in Korea? Could be, I suppose, and somebody went nuts with the brass studding, but hey, it could have been that way. Some of the close ups of archery techniques struck me as Hollywood-ish. I don't think there is any reason to twist the arrow and the bowstring once you have the bow at full draw, or pull a bit of the bowstring below the arrow another inch or two back, unless you want to show how impossibly strong your fingers are. I guess you have to give the movie makers some license, they did do a hell of job overall.

There was the "half-pounder", a chisel tipped arrow that weighed a half pound. I think the translation got a bit garbled here, probably doesn't weigh more than a couple of ounces. A fearsome missile in any case, if your were close enough to shoot it. There was also the whistling arrow, used to communicate on the battlefield. That was new to me.

Christmas

Dan got me a copy of "Alone in the Wilderness". Haven't watched it yet. Hoping to get my family to watch it with me, but that may be futile. The kids got me the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western trilogy (Fistful of Dollars, etc.) so we watched that last week.

Last weekend Anne & I took the kids out to dinner and then to Lemony Snicket ("A Series Of Unfortunate Events"). Not great, but entertaining. The house perched on the edge of the cliff was fine. That was the family event for the week/month/year. We seldom do anything all together anymore. John has his video games and his friends, daughter has dance and her friends, and Ross has basketball and student council and his friends

Watched a Jean-Claude Van Damme with Anne last weekend. "Death Wake". Jean-Claude is getting old. It was better than most of his films, I think. Haven't seen much of him lately, but from what I remember, they were pretty poor. Lots of action, but not too smart. This one was a little better.

Also watched a weird Japanese sword and sorcery movie "Onmyoji". Setting was several hundred years ago when swords and sorcery held sway. Very different.

Heard a pleasant song on KBOO radio on the way back from lunch today. The band is Shantala and the album is "The Love Window" and the song was "Nataraja".

Kids also got me the latest Lenny Kravitz CD. The song I wanted "Where are we runnin'?" was the shortest song on the disc, and the only real rocker. This was one of the songs daughter danced to at her Christmas recital (?!?). But I listened to the rest of CD and it has started to grow on me. Then I heard one of the songs on an ad for "Alias", and I think heard another one somewhere else.