The often-inane, though usually entertaining, Maureen Dowd has a funny column this week, comparing our leaders to a pack of alpha girl Heathers:
“Now we have the spectacle of the 70-year-old Rummy acting like a 16-year-old Heather, vixen-slapping those lower in the global hierarchy, trying to dominate and silence the beta countries with less money and fewer designer weapons.”
In a country as outwardly obsessive about safety as Japan, it’s interesting to hear stories of life on the edge. In recent weeks students have described festivals with elements of danger.
One such festival took place a couple weeks ago in Kishiwada-shi, near Osaka. The highlight of the Danjiri Festival is a high-speed “parade” of intricately-carved, incredibly beautiful wooden floats, which are pulled through the streets by dozens of men via long ropes. At intersections, the teams must execute 90 degree turns, while still racing along at high speed. All the while, a man is balancing on top of the float as if riding a surfboard. This is the honored position of daiku-gata. Every year, my students tell me, people are killed during this parade, usually during a crash or when the daiku-gata is flung from the top of the float during a turn. And this year, with two deaths, was no exception.
Closer to Nagano, a festival last Saturday featured almost two hours of low-level fireworks. One student who attended described two hours of rushing from one viewing location to another to escape burning embers falling from the sky. Local fire authorities were on hand to extinguish the many trees that caught on fire. I’m sorry to have missed this one.
Danger, as with so many other things here, is acceptable in the appropriate situation and circumstance.
I had an amazing two days in the Northern Alps. I’d planned to stay for two nights and three days, but the forecast called for rain Sunday night and Monday, so I returned a day early. And sure enough, as I write this (Sunday evening), it’s just started to rain here in Nagano.
I’ve posted pictures from the trip — lots of beautiful fall colors starting to emerge in the mountains.
I left early Saturday morning, catching an 8:30 bus from Nagano station for the hour and a half trip to Ougisawa. The weather was perfect.
Another glorious three-day weekend, and I’m getting out of town. I’ll be hiking and camping for all three days in the mountains northwest of Nagano.
For some fun, try running this page through the AltaVista translation engine. Sample translation:
You will securely take moisture replenishment. The dehydration and the thermal spasm et cetera it is seen. It is the carelessness powerful enemy.
I came across this article in today’s Japan Times (pulled from the UPI wire). Scientists have apparently found that heat can change the sexual preference of genetically modified fruit flies. The story was only mildly interesting until I got to this part:
The male fruit flies also lined up in circles and chains resembling a conga dance and, on occasion, even reciprocated other male’s sexual advances with attempted copulation. Males apparently rejected unwanted suitors with a flick of their wings or a kick to the courting male’s head.
The flies reverted to their original heterosexual behavior when temperatures cooled down.
Comparing the original UPI headline (“Heat change makes mutant flies gay”) with the one the Japan Times came up with (“Flipping the switch of sexual preference”) shows the value of a good headline writer.
A scientist predicts that humans will soon lose their place as the most complex things in the (known) universe — to be replaced by computers.
A few folks, such as Kurzweil, embrace the post-human future with enthusiasm. They look back upon the long sweep of cosmic evolution and recognize that humans are a momentary efflorescence, destined to be supplanted by new forms of complexity as surely as people took precedence over insects and mice.
In Kurzweil’s view, the future will be characterized by ”greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, greater love.” His optimism is similar to that of the Jesuit mystic Teilhard de Chardin, who saw the fulfillment of creation at the end of time, rather than at the beginning.
The majority of people, however, are distressed and frightened by the prospect of a post-human future. The late great chemist Erwin Chargaff and entrepreneur Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, have gone so far as to call for constraints on certain kinds of technological innovation as the only way of preserving our essential humanity.
Nothing like hearing that a small country prone to earthquakes can’t maintain nuclear reactors correctly. What happens when the big earthquake hits?
Things are not good these days when it comes to safety at Japan’s nuclear power plants:
The reports of safety lapses, fraudulent repairs and cover-ups at Japan’s largest nuclear power company began with a trickle but have resounded into an industry nightmare.
The details, filled in over the last two weeks by one alarming report after another, show a potentially catastrophic pattern of cost-cutting along with 16 years of cover-ups of serious flaws, apparently in an effort to preserve public trust. The pattern includes the systematic falsification of inspection and repair records at 13 reactors at the company, Tokyo Electric, the world’s largest private electrical utility.
(From Antipixel, my favorite blog.)
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made a historic visit to North Korea today. During his one-day visit, North Korea finally admitted that it had abducted at least 11 Japanese nationals, and reported that only four of the 11 are still alive.
North Korea has also been accused of kidnapping thousands of South Koreans over the years.
Yet another example of why the entertainment industry is the new evil empire, and is run by idiots.
With each passing day, industry arguments in favor of stricter controls on how consumers use information and entertainment become more absurd and outrageous.
An AOL Time Warner executive actually asserted that television viewers are under contract to watch advertisements:
“Your contract when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots [advertisements]…. Any time you skip a commercial…you’re actually stealing the programming,” Kellner is quoted as saying. He goes on to note that “there’s a certain amount of tolerance” for going to the bathroom.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued Turner Broadcasting and others over this issue, asserting that consumers have the right to record and watch TV as they please, without having information on their viewing habits forcibly turned over to entertainment companies (who will presumably use the data to track down the hardened criminals who aren’t watching ads for dentures).
Additional photos have been posted: My August Hokkaido trip and a few pictures from a day of mountain biking in Hakuba a couple weeks ago.
