Categories
Japan

Go For A Walk

Today is National Foundation Day in Japan, a national holiday. With a day off, I decided to go for a walk. My walk today covered 9.95km.

About 30 minutes away by foot, Ikuta Ryokuchi Park is a favorite destination of mine. It has several entrances and exits, so it can be approached and left in several different directions. I had planned to walk through it on the way to Tamagawa, but fate intervened — I mistakenly left via the wrong exit.

So I walked instead past the Fujiko F. Fujio Museum en route to Higashitakane Forest Park. On the way, my toe started bleeding, probably a cut from the toenail. But I didn’t notice this until I arrived home.

Closer to home, at the park behind our building, I saw many children playing, possibly as many as 50. It made me smile so much to see so many happy children playing outdoors under the sunny, blue sky. I wanted to take a picture, but I knew that would be creepy.

When I got home, I realized I was .05km short of 10km. I wondered whether My walk was incomplete.

Categories
Japanese Sightings

Japan Sightings: Pachinko Games

Lily & Madeleine

Pachinko Games

I’m scared my bitterness, written all over my face

Takes over everything

I ran through Tokyo hoping to find the place

Where only I could be, but I never found it

Categories
Japanese Sightings

Japan Sightings: Wars

Of Monsters and Men

Wars

Cold, but you glow
Like the streets of Tokyo
It’s alright, we can stay
Lost here forever
Sinking stones, we don’t know
What lies on the riverbed
So we fall, no control
No, this can’t be over yet

Categories
Uncategorized

How many people have you misunderstood today?

According to the World Clock there are 7.7 billion people (humans) alive in the world today.

How many of them have you misunderstood today? We have many mechanisms for failing to achieve consensus.

  • We receive different information
  • We interpret the same information differently
  • We commit new information to long-term storage at different rates, and in different ways
  • Everyone’s long term storage is different
  • We would make different estimates about the future, even if we started from the same information base

I misunderstand even the people closest to me on a daily basis. Even when my wife and I receive significant amounts of the same information every day, the above factors interfere with our ability to achieve consensus on the meaning of much of that.

How many people have I misunderstood today? About 7.7 billion.

Categories
Japan Japanese Sightings

Japan Sightings: Lost in Japan

Lost in Japan, by Shawn Mendes, Zedd

Categories
Japan

Ghosn rearrested for alleged aggravated breach of trust – Nikkei Asian Review

This farce is descending rapidly, even by the low standards of Japan’s legal system. The court just ruled his detention could not be extended. Apparently the prosecutors found a way around it. Hopefully, this is a sign they are very desperate to get Ghosn to incriminate himself, because their case is otherwise too weak to justify prosecution on the basis of the available evidence.

TOKYO — Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn has been rearrested for alleged aggravated breach of trust, Tokyo prosecutors announced on Friday morning
— Read on asia.nikkei.com/Business/Nissan-s-Ghosn-crisis/Ghosn-rearrested-for-alleged-aggravated-breach-of-trust

Categories
USSA

‘Underground’ May Be the U.S. Military’s Next Warfighting Domain – Defense One

We must not allow a mineshaft gap?

Tunnels and subterranean infrastructure demand high-level attention, training, and technology, the military’s intelligence chief says.
— Read on www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/06/underground-may-be-us-militarys-next-warfighting-domain/149296/

Categories
Uncategorized

Doctor, you’ve been a beacon of light to me

You’re living proof

That ideology is a poor substitute

For kindness and decency

And that at the end of the day

It is our actions

And not our beliefs that define

Who we are.

What we are.

  • Star Trek Deep Space Nine, S07E23
Categories
World

Elimination of the Guinea Worm

Finally, a US President attempting to achieve something positive for the world, and actually succeeding.

Thanks to efforts from the Carter Center, the Guinea Worm may have been eliminated.

 

Drac_life_cycle

 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/nasty-3ft-long-parasitic-worms-are-on-the-cusp-of-being-wiped-from-the-planet/

Categories
Climate Change Other

Novel Approach to Fusion Power

If I understood the news correctly, this potential new development depends on using semi-conductors with super-conductivity. Fusion has a long history of being Brazil: 30 years away, always has been always will. If this development pans out, which we may know in as soon as 3 years, we would be 15-30 years away from viable fusion energy.

  • Visualization of the proposed SPARC tokamak experiment. Using high-field magnets built with newly available high-temperature superconductors, this experiment would be the first controlled fusion plasma to produce net energy output.

Please note that nuclear fusion is not a fantasy. Fusion reactions have been sustained on Earth for decades. What we haven’t been able to do yet is to extract more energy than needed to contain the reactions. This may change. Big MAYBE, but something worth watching.

https://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-newly-formed-company-launch-novel-approach-fusion-power-0309