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" Forests in Kochi " introduces the representative forests in Kochi, particularly natural forests and their surroundings. Please enjoy looking at beautiful natural forests to your heart's content.

Where's Ryoma?
Japanese version of Where's Waldo?

Send us email with the secret phrase and we'll include your name on the Wall of Fame at our favorite burger shop.
That's the kind of place we are.

This month's secret phrase is: No time to argue! Throw me the whip!

AIDS in the priesthood

In 1990, Crangle conducted a mail survey of hundreds of priests selected at random. Crangle said that of the 500 surveys he sent, 398 were returned.

About 45 percent of those responding volunteered that they were gay, and 92 -- nearly one-fourth -- said they had AIDS. "I was surprised," Crangle said. "I felt there was a problem, but I didn't think it was of that magnitude."

While Murray asserts that few researchers would consider the response rate [27%] "very good," Shapiro observes: "That's better than you're often doing with God. If one of four of your prayers are answered, that's a very good response rate."

An image from aol's AIM page.
Does anybody else this this is funny? There are a few things about it I notice... the cat, it's female, and siri is iris backwards, which could be construed as a reference to Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings, such as this. good job whoever made this up, inuendo is good.

Sunday, May 21, 2000

Dream Blog

I run into Jorn Barger outside a shopping mall. He has a van set up with all kinds of electronic devices - it looks kind of like a news van but it also looks like a van of somebody who is planning to blow up the mall.

We decide to go see a movie about the Holocaust. He decides to sit way down in front and to the left so we have to crane our necks completely to the right. I tell him I can't sit there but the movie starts so we just stay where we are. As the opening credits start, Jorn asks me, "So what are Holocaust movies about, anyway?" I say, "They're about the Holocaust." He looks intrigued.

The INS 100 Test Questions
Does any country have a citizenship test they give at age 18 or 21, asking these types of questions, swearing in the person the same oath that nationalizers have to swear, and also giving them the option to renounce?
I know that at least Spain and Israel have a year or more of mandatory military service at age 18.
Friday, May 19, 2000

Japanophiles adopting Japanese Accents?

We've all trained with this guy. He's trained by The Master, and he thinks he's Junior Master. He was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, has never been to Japan, doesn't speak a lick of Japanese save for some karate terms, and yet he has the most amazingly difficult time speaking English around his Japanese accent.

Instant Checkpoints in Japan
Long story of a foreigner getting (apparently illegally) asked for ID in a Japanese airport. He decides to make a complaint. Great interactions with various Japanese people, and a wonderful look at the Japanese way of negociating (everyone is empathetic to him, he shows pictures of his kids and gets invited out for a beer).

We shook hands. Mr Watanabe was a thin cop in the grand tradition of thin cops. He had the rugged face of Takakura Ken, the wiriness of David Caruso, and the Dennis-Farina eyes that could burn through bullshit in no time.

...

I gave them a deep bow ... and it again had the intended effect. Mr Watanabe: "What a polite foreigner! How can somebody so polite be stopped by one of us?" (Yes, he really DID say that!)
Thursday, May 18, 2000

"Just imagine if the oil-change industry allowed the public to have direct access to oil and oil filters, enabling them to change their car's oil themselves without going through Jiffy Lube or Kwik Lube. People would stop going to oil-change shops, and the entire industry would collapse. We can't let that happen to us."

I had a dream about this weblog last night. I dreamt that somebody got in, and put a message at the bottom of the page in red letters:

Entry 8 has been removed because it contained something offensive. It's so nice to be able to break into other people's sites

Three Stanislaw Lem Stories
great stuff. "The Seventh Voyage", "The Offer of King Krool", and "Automatthew's Friend".
Thursday, May 18, 2000

The Long and Short of it
sex ratings on the performance of various rock stars like Axl Rose Bon Jovi from groupies who slept with them and then sent info to this site. My god.
Thursday, May 18, 2000

Love and Tensor Algebra

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.

The Artist is now known as prince again

On Dec. 31, 1999, my publishing contract with Warner-Chappell expired, thus emancipating the name I was given before birth - Prince - from all long-term restrictive documents,'' the freshly-minted Prince told a crowded news conference. ``I will now go back to using my name instead of the symbol I adopted to free myself from all undesirable relationships

Words in phrases that can mean "you". Most of these can't be used as a real subject to a sentence, but they can be added onto sentences to show direction. It's in comparison to Japanese, which has many words for "you". English does as well, they just can't be used as subjects.

	situation it would be used in	who would say it to whom	what it could mean
look buddy...	rough forced interactions	manual laborer to employer	you may have money, but he knows how to get stuff done.
hey mister	unknown status interactions	submissive/young person to someone older/nicer dressed than them.
hey boy!	confrontation	good old boy to black or younger person	he really disrespects you
sure thing honey	in a diner	waitress to younger customer	she's so old, you're so young
listen, sonny	large age difference	old guy to youngun	i'm old, listen to my wisdom
but professor...	visiting professor's office	student to professor	respect, sucking up
dude!	informal/friends	friends, not necessarily even	you are being criticized
man	informal/friends
ahoy matey	joke	friend to friend	it's outdated pirate slang
yo homeboy / home slice / home skillet	joke	friends	outdated black slang
bizach / biatch / biznatch	friend to friend, probably drunk

Wednesday, May 17, 2000

Ford Admits SUVs Are Irresponsible

Ford Motor said SUVs contribute more than cars to global warming, emit more smog-causing pollution and endanger other motorists. The automaker said it will keep building them because they are so profitable, but will seek technological solutions and look for alternatives to the big vehicles.

SUVs are three times as likely as cars to kill the other driver in a crash, but the death rate for sport utility occupants is just as high as for car occupants because of sport utilities' tendency to roll over and their lack of crumple zones. Although current regulations allow large sport utilities to emit up to 5.5 times as much smog-causing pollution a mile as cars, President Clinton announced rules in December that will require sport utilities to meet the same standards as cars by 2009.

Where I'll be next year.
This is a map of the general location. I'm in Nankoku-shi, near Kochi city, on Shikoku.

On this map, Nankoku is the little greyed area to the east of Kochi city, touching the rail line.

Here's a satellite map showing the eastern part of Kochi, and what appears to be Nankoku. It looks really big somehow, I don't know why.

I havn't actually been able to find much at all about nankoku, although I've found a good amount of stuff about Kochi.
The weather seems absolutely wonderful there, at least in summer. Here is a good summary Very little variance in the weather it seems. Incredibly rainy there though... average of 300+ days of precipitation per year!!! I hope it's just quick showers... Seems great otherwise, fairly moderate, but on the warm side which is what I wanted.
Friday, May 12, 2000

Bugzilla page about selective image blocking in mozilla
<rant>The man is fucked. Get used to it. For example, say there were, oh, trees that grew a perfect food, and really fast, and grew anywhere. Would it be appropriate to try to exterminate them, because so many people would lose their jobs? You can bet that the billionaires who'd lose money from them would try by every means necessary to exterminate them. (If you think corporations are nicer than that, look at some examples: the introduction of lead into gasoline for profit, even though it was known to be toxic, the secrecy about cigarettes addictiveness for years after it was known, etc).

Reproductions of music cost nothing, so why pay? It's like trying to stop the tide; it's so natural to give music to your friends if you like it. Do structured economies work? Do artificial markets work? Because that's what music is now, and movies are going to be.
Live shows and performance will still exist though. But for the current markets to keep existing, things are going to have to get pretty totalitarian.</rant>
Thursday, May 11, 2000

Music without Borders

Mozart seems to have admired his avian companion's musical skills. One of his notebooks records a passage from the last movement of the Piano Concerto in G Major and the same passage as the starling revised it. The bird imitated it closely but changed the sharps to flats. "Das war schön"—That was beautiful!,— reads the comment in Mozart's hand.

When the starling died, Mozart held graveside ceremonies, singing hymns and reciting a poem he'd written for the fallen songster. Baptista agrees with two other ornithologists who have argued that Mozart's next composition, an odd sextet for strings and two horns, known as "A Musical Joke," shows starling style. Mozart wrote it only 8 days after the death of his bird, and it includes such starling-like bits as intertwined tunes, off-key recapitulations, and an abrupt ending.

Jupiter's Gravity May Be Protecting Earth, Scientists Say

George Wetherill, a senior Carnegie scientist, has estimated that 10,000 times as many objects as big as that dinosaur-killer would have hit Earth if Jupiter had not cleaned out our region of the solar system.

Cruise And Kidman Hit Back At Scientology Split Reports

Couple TOM CRUISE and NICOLE KIDMAN have slammed reports they have quit the Church of Scientology.

I got my placement for next year in Japan! I'll be going to Nankoku-shi in Kochi Prefecture. It's about 10 miles east of Kochi city, and 3 miles from the pacific coast! I'll have a big list of links to stuff about it later.
Wednesday, May 10, 2000

Simcoe's comments on This Article

A while back it was found that smokers had consistently lower rates of Parkinson's disease, and it was assumed that the cigarettes themselves had something to do with it. Luckily, this would appear now not to be the case. Researchers in the Netherlands have found evidence that higher consumption of coffee and alcohol is also associated with a lower incidence of Parkinson's. This, say the authors, suggests that smoking and other addictive behaviors may be a result of the same brain chemistry that helps prevent Parkinson's.

Calling the cops on my neighbors
it was 1:30, i had an exam the next morning. Just falling asleep, then I hear a guy scream "help me, please help me!" in a rather convincing tone. so I get up, but nobody's there. Then I start to hear glass breaking, and it gets closer and more frequent. After about 15 minutes, I heard maybe 10 bottles breaking. I look out the window, and it's the same fools that i'd seen before standing on their front lawn in the middle of the afternoon, breaking beer bottles over each other's heads (!! I can't believe it either, but I've seen it). Last night they extended their fun by breaking lots of bottles in the street.

I'll put up with some pretty stupid stuff, but this is too much. I mean, how drunk or stoned do you have to be before you think it's ok to sit on your front porch with a group of 10 people, throwing bottles in the street in the middle of the night? So I called the cops and gave directions. within 1 minute they showed up with a van and cop car (we live in a college town, they're always ready to bust some stupid college kids). They made some girl sweep up the glass from the street, and then they arrested her! I was surprised, I thought they'd just get a fine. I felt kind of bad, but I mean, it's still dumb. Anyone with any sense knows to get out of the area when people are doing something that stupid.
Tuesday, May 9, 2000

Kite-Flying Heritage in Nepal

The greatest fun of kite-flying is to cut the strings of the kites of the others.
Therefore the string is specially treated to make it sharp and abrasive so that your kite string wears out the strings of other kites. The paste of adhesive substances with powder of ground glass is coated on the string.

It is fascinating to watch the kite-flying during Dasain. All the roofs of Kathmandu are full of kite-fliers and they jump and shout 'Chet!' when they cut kites of one another. You would see big speakers on the roofs blaring out the greatest hits of Guns and Roses, Metallica, Michael Jackson, Kenny G, Kitaro, Spice Girls, the Hindi and Nepali film songs, the Nepali rock groups and so on. They dance on the roofs while their friends are busy bringing the others' kites down.

Idiophonics (Natural Sounds) in Early Japanese Women's Poetry
also Otagaki Rengetsu & Keiko Abe

Life in the Mountains
by Otagaki Rengetsu

Living deep in the mountains
I've grown fond of the
Solitary sound of the singing pines;
On days the wind does not blow
How lonely it is!

From my dad, thanks!
Sunday, May 7, 2000

Google logos
What's the word for when you say something over and over again until it doesn's sound like a word anymore?
What actually happens to your brain when you are saying a word you know and it means nothing to you? Maybe it's a way to experience what your language sounds like to a non-speaker. Once you know a language, you can't avoid understanding it. Always-on technology.
Sunday, May 7, 2000

the gaudiest, most valuable, and most improbable water wheel

right now I'm interested in taking pictures of different sorts of greyness, and this time of year there's plenty to go around. It all started with a series of poster ads for one of the Swedish cable channels back in October - they featured pictures of just how dark and miserable the Swedish winter was going to be, and of course the pictures were absolutely beautiful, capturing just what's so fantastic about the winter and darkness and greyness in the city.

...In the future, all the best Swedish party music will be in Spanish

...Or how Swedish sounds when you can't understand any of it.

The Importance of Season-Words

At the present time some five thousnd haiku magazines, most of them monthlies, are being published in Japan. Almost all of them belong to one or another school of haiku, though some declare themselves to be independanto.

It usually takes a beginner five or six years to learn how to identify and use season-words properly. In the process, the consciousness of seasonal transition and its significance is deepened, and the student is introduced to a new and alluring realm of poetry.

For example, Sei Shonagon, writing in the late tenth century, opened her "Pillow Book (Makura no soshi)" in this way:

"In the spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful...In summer the nights...In autumn the evenings...In winter the early mornings."--giving her reasons for each pronouncement [translation by Ivan Morris].

As a rule, only one season-word is used in a haiku, although two are allowed in certain circumstances.

New Pokey (post-easter)

Sunday, May 7, 2000

Saturday, May 6, 2000

"Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, as a long hind and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times."
Proverbs 5:18-19

"Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I said, 'I will climb the palm tree. I will take hold of its fruit stalks.' Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine and the fragrance of your breath like apples."
Song of Solomon 7:7-8

Red Rock Eater

Reading the press reports, Microsoft's stance toward this situation has been disgraceful. Most of their sound bites have been sophistry designed to disassociate the company from any responsibility for the problem. One version goes like this quote from Scott Culp of Microsoft Public Relations, excuse me, I mean Microsoft Security Response Center:

This is a general issue, not a Microsoft issue. You can write a virus for any platform. (New York Times 5/5/00)

Notice the public relations technology at work here: defocusing the issue so as to move attention away from the specific vulnerabilities of Microsoft's applications architecture and toward the fuzzy concept of "a virus". Technologists will understand the problem here, but most normal people will not.
...
... the virus spread rapidly through Microsoft itself, to the point that the company had to block all incoming e-mail (Wall Street Journal 5/5/00).

Rasterweb

Augh, I spent all day yesterday dealing with that ILOVEYOU thing, wiped out all my- wait a minute! I don't use Windows & Outlook. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA... suckers...

Numbers

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	base A
zero	one	two	three	four	five	six	seven	eight	nine	ten	words
	first	second	third	fourth	fifth	sixth	seventh	eighth	ninth	tenth	cardinal?
	once	twice	thrice								?
	single	double	triple	quadruple	quintuple	sextuple	septuple	octuple			multiple
	circle?		triangle	rectangle	pentagon	hexagon	heptagon	octagon	nonagon	decagon	shapes
	solo	duo	trio	quarto							?
		duet		quartet	quintet	sextet					musical
	whole	half		quarter							fractional
		pair	triplet								n-tuple?
	1	11	111	1111	11111	111111	1111111	11111111	111111111	1111111111	base 1
0	1	10	11	100	101	110	111	1000	1001	1010	base 2

mail me with more or clarifications
Friday, May 5, 2000

Mario Puzo wrote superman?
it's amazing, I know! thanks, TWERNT
Friday, May 5, 2000