He provides a new perspective of recycling: why people cannot get a second chance while some garbage can.
News
Hiroshima had hosted one of the major military bases which sent many battalions instrumental to Japanese military aggression throughout China and Asia. Motoshima wrote the following important articles whose candid opinions almost literally cost his life. He lived in Nagasaki and he knows the war time experience as an outsider, minority christian.
なぜ私は「謝罪」を言うか・民衆にも加害責任がある（本島等氏の論文・1997年）(The citizens were also responsible for the war mayhem.)
広島よ、おごるなかれ（本島等氏の論文・1997年） 2007-07-13 (Hiroshima, also remember its own military past.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUrfo5cyeDA
Her analysis of democracy and free market in many developing countries explain many failures and problems after the collapse of the Berlin wall.
She also wrote a controversial book on child education. I think the book was sensationalized by the publisher. That Chinese education system is not very different from Japan’s Korea’s and Jew’s etc. Important message is to reconsider the method of child education.
His provocative articles may serve well to populistic patriotism but contain too many careless factual errors. These errors are not difficult to identify. Itou has a PhD in physics and degenerated into a neo-social scientist or musician.
It is the time of iPhone and the internet; a foot long sword will not define our destiny. Focused goals may bring better outcomes. But, observing the world objectively requires a clear lens not predefined skewed a “Samurai” lens. Rarely have I seen the Japanese people carrying a metal sword in academia.
Here is the project link
http://samuraibp.com/report
A very fascinating story about a Japanese man
フィリピンの火山灰地の再生に挑戦した森田 剛氏。現在はジャトロファ等を活用した事業に挑戦中。
I like the story but the end remark make me laugh: the author claims that Morita is an admirable Samurai Japanese. No, I do not think so. Ota is transforming Morita into a Samurai Japanese. Morita did his best for the given situation and succeeded unprecedentedly without thinking he was a Samurai or not.
TED talks are usually good, but there are exceptions. Rosin may have been intentionally obnoxious in the talk so men realize their macho non-sense. She does not have to be a bitch to do so. Many other speakers are conveying their excellence without refereeing to their gender and many of them are truly remarkable. This seems to be the majority opinions posted there. She was rated as obnoxious and unconvincing which are rarely seen in TED.
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TEDWomen
Hanna Rosin: New data on the rise of women16:12 Posted: Dec 2010
Rated:
Obnoxious Unconvincing InformativeJust think about it: if a head of national laboratory related physical science came to give a talk and showed data after data on cheery-picked topics demonstrating men were more competent very arrogantly. Is that convincing?
This entry by no means depreciate the established cultural value of Christmas and the original was provided by devoted Christians.
The Fallacy of Christmas
Christmas: Paganism from the Past
Mark S. Baker
Given 25-Dec-04; Tape #698s; 18 minute
http://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Audio.details/ID/1375/Fallacy-Christmas.htm
“Mark Baker, focusing upon Luke 2:1-8, offers internal evidence that Christ was not born even close to December 25. The Romans took census for tax purposes from August through October. Because of inclement weather, the shepherds brought the flocks in from pasture in September. Calculating the probable birth of John the Baptist, and extrapolating Jesus Christ’s birth six months later, we have a probable date around September. The December 25 date derives from the pagan celebration of Saturnalia, observed in the Roman Empire from December 11-24, honoring the god Saturn, bringer of fire. Justinian later enforced the “Christian” observation supposedly transforming the day of the sun to the day of the Son. Saturn also goes under alternate names of Tammuz, Vulcan, Kronos, and Nimrod. The origins surrounding the paraphernalia of “Christmas”—the Yule log, holly wreath, Santa Claus, mistletoe, and other customs—are also explained.”
Read more: http://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Audio.details/ID/1375/Fallacy-Christmas.htm#ixzz19DIfEj4d
Japanese media often report that Japanese youths abandon their global ambitions and blame them for their inaction. Is this true?
“キャリアに関するデータの真相 その1：「若者は内向き」という誤解”
http://www.r-agent.co.jp/kyujin/knowhow/tatsujin/20101118.html (in Japanese)
This is really an important piece of information no media or people talk about. Media often blast that Japanese youths basically do not have global ambitions. But the decline in Japanese students in American universities stems from more complicated reasons. Many people dealing this issue should be aware of these statistical frauds, otherwise they are as incompetent as the very youths they are bashing. This information is very difficult to get even though the other claims are ubiquitous in the media
It is possible to glimpse twitter conversations among people, whose opinions are similar to mine but not the same. It is interesting and funny to see some people are just picking up convenient information that only support their view points. Without good editorial control, most of the information floating in twitter is rubbish, but still there may be a chance that precious information may pop up from twitter. But it is not from perpetual twitters who cannot distinguish between balking and opinions.
Immersing yourself in the flood of information generated by others will never make you unique nor exceptional. Twitter may make like-minded people around the world come together. This can be beneficial for good causes but like minded terrorists will also get together to destroy the society. It is becoming a scary world. Only way to prevent this is to solve social injustice and inequality since weaker voiceless people can blow up really big guys who thought they are immune from the others.
老害 (perils imposed by older generation)
This is totally relative concept, and young folks who complain about this will be, for sure, targeted by their juniors who would call the current young folks as defunct seniors. Generation gap is as old as human history since each generation has different skills as society evolves. Stop looking for some irrelevant excuses and focus on what they can change or do. Blind shot-gun targeting on all seniors make them (twenties-thirties) feel better but they should watch out their back since their juniors (teens) are stocking up their new ammunition to blow up their own enemies (twenties-thirties).
In the end, they should not try to change society as a whole. They should just create their own companies or parallel alternative societies: testing many since most of them will fail. If that is difficult then they just should try to change the regulations instead of targeting people. The older people they want to change are too entrenched with the dysfunctional system — like Fujiwara who seems to be a remnant of a stone age. These dinosaurs would prefer to be dead than accepting unknowns.
In some sense, Rakten or IT companies may just be able to change some part of social norms. They are selling concepts and their own survival totally depends on constantly evolving technologies so simultaneity is the essence of their business since a perfect model would not emerge in software industries. Hard manufacturing industries have to be more careful since they need to live with their investments for long time.
An incompetent idiot: 池田信夫 (Ikeda Nobuo)
He is the chief of a conservative Japanese blog forum that often complains about liberal minds. Ikeda, who is a professor of a small private Japanese university, does not understand even microns of science and logic of climate change. http://newsweekjapan.jp/column/ikeda/2009/09/25.php Climate change is not measured by year by year variation, it must be measured by the longer term trend, but not so long enough that Earth spin axis starts fluctuating. No wonder he thinks university is useless since people like him are teaching. Top class scientists would strongly disagree. If he thinks university is useless, that is reflecting his qualification as professor: he is a useless prof, just staying the position for the sake of money and prestige.
Business can save money and go green. Unlike the perception of the US in the media, the US younger generations are not stupid who just passively looking their future diminished by the people who are too old to see the results of their catastrophic irresponsible behaviors. The business consultant gave very optimistic and realistic perspective.
In some sense China may never officially commit to any climate related treaties for long time, for they already know it is important and are already fully committed in the R&D on this issue. If many other countries delay their commitments because of China then China will benefit, not because they are ignorant nor cheating but they can just go ahead and develop new technologies by themselves while other governments complaining about China’s inaction at international political stages: we like it or not they have a strong government with full of competent people who can implement their strategy. Many other nations unfortunately do not have a very strong government, an unintended cost of democracy at the moment.
China Pulls Ahead in Building a Clean-Energy Workforce
Many people think their country is facing the intractable messes in foreseeable future. China, in the eyes of foreigners, has only bright future ahead while many complain about their closed, incomprehensible, yet functionally competent political system. But it seems, China is facing almost same problem with Japanese, and possibly with Korean.
A NYT article laments about substandard education system of a country: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/02/what-is-a-college-degree-worth-in-china
There’s a frustrating paradox in XXX’s education. On the one hand, MANY of college graduates cannot find a job — at least a desirable job that pays substantially more than what a migrant worker makes. On the other hand, businesses that want to pay a lot more can’t seem to find qualified employees.
A separate study by McKinsey Quarterly found that 44 percent of the executives in XXX’s companies reported that insufficient talent was the biggest barrier to their global ambitions.
The explanation: a test-oriented educational environment.
The result is that XXX’s college graduates often have high scores but low ability. Those who are good at taking tests go to college, which also emphasizes book knowledge. But when they graduate, they find out that employers actually want much more than test scores. That is why another study by McKinsey found that fewer than 10 percent of XXX’s college graduates would be suitable for work in foreign companies.
Guess which country they are talking about. Japanese may think they are talking about Japan for sure, but the article is about China. They are in paradoxical love with their country and neighbors: they bash their own country and their neighbor whenever it is convenient to do so. Everywhere I lived: Canada, US, UK, Belgium and Japan, they are talking about their undergraduates are getting more dumb these days. Japanese youths are complaining about “the old peril”, in their view, sniffling their opportunities while older people think of degeneration of the youths.
In reality, the world should be improving bit by bit as the knowledge accumulates, thought many politicians do not see any thing beyond their next election or interest. But is it time for Asian countries to have more messy, imperfect democratic system?
