Who is a Professional?

Who is a professional? Someone who has a precise understanding of his current knowledge and capabilities, and yet always remains highly motivated when performing his duties. That's a professional.

Taken from an NHK (Japan) TV program about professional occupations; in this case, an airline pilot.

Before and After Images of the Inundation from Japan's Tsunami

The extent of inundation from the destructive and deadly tsunami triggered by the March 11, 2011, magnitude 8.9 earthquake centered off Japan's northeastern coast about 130 kilometers (82 miles) east of the city of Sendai is revealed in this image pair from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. The new image, shown on the right, was acquired at 10:30 a.m. local time (01:30 UTC) on March 12, 2011 during Terra orbit 59731. For comparison, a MISR image from March 16, 2001, acquired under nearly identical illumination conditions during Terra orbit 6607, is shown on the left.

From top to bottom, each image extends from just north of the Abukuma River (which is about 21 kilometers, or 13 miles, south of Sendai) to south of the town of Minamisoma (population 71,000, located in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture about 70 kilometers, or 44 miles, south of Sendai), and covers an area of 78 kilometers (48 miles) by 104 kilometers (65 miles). Flooding extending more than 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) inland from the eastern shoreline is visible in the post-earthquake image. The white sand beaches visible in the pre-earthquake view are now covered by water and can no longer be seen. Among the locations where severe flooding is visible is the area around Matsukawa-ura Bay, located just north and east of the image center.

These unique images enhance the presence of water in two ways. First, their near-infrared observations cause vegetated areas to appear red, which contrasts strongly with water. Second, by combining nadir (vertical-viewing) imagery with observations acquired at a view angle of 26 degrees, reflected sunglint enhances the brightness of water, which is shown in shades of blue. This use of observations at different view angles causes a stereoscopic effect, where elevated clouds have a yellow tinge at their top edges and blue tinge at their bottom edges.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team

Feet and Shoes in Korea and Singapore

One of the blogs I read through Google Reader is Juliette Wade's TalkToYoUniverse. Juliette is a science fiction author who blogs about the writing process. One of the topics she frequently writes about is how more realistic fictional worlds can be created by taking real-life examples and using them as the basis for fictional settings. In particular, Juliette examines cultural perspectives on different subjects, and tries to get other writers to think about how people in their fictional world/culture would approach the subject. As a former expat who lived in Japan, many of Juliette's blog posts discuss Japanese culture.

In a recent post, Juliette wrote about feet and shoes across cultures, asking, "What do you know about feet?" In the post, she discussed a number of topics about shoes and attitudes toward feet; for example, different types of shoes (e.g., Japanese fishing boots and snow boots, shoes for the bound feet of Chinese women, etc.), form vs. function in the design of shoes, walking vs. driving, and attitudes toward the wearing of shoes inside one's home or not.

Having been exposed to several different Asian cultures, I decided to comment on some of the observations I've made about the wearing of shoes in South Korea and Singapore. In my comment, I tried to complement her topics by adding additional reasons why attitudes toward shoes are the way they are here in Asia. Below is most of my comment that appears on her blog:

There are actually quite a few other factors that help determine the style and wearing of shoes in addition to those you mentioned. When I lived in Korea, their attitudes toward the wearing of shoes in the home probably mirrored that of Japan, although I can't say about whether most Koreans wore slippers within their homes. Certainly my apartment had the equivalent of the genkan (1) where shoes were taken off and left. Actually, that area next to the front door was "sunken" or, rather, the rest of the apartment floor was raised because of the onbol (2) that lie underneath the floor, providing some warmth to the room.

A lot of attitudes toward taking shoes off in the home come from practical considerations. Singaporeans universally take off shoes before entering a home (regardless of ethnicity or religion) because the climate is very wet here and one walks through lots of puddles and/or mud. Korean and Singaporean men also frequently spit and, while one tries to avoid stepping in that, one never knows if one did accidentally, so, best to take the shoes off rather than tracking that into the house as well.

Both Singapore and Korea are still developing economically, and construction sites tend to be muddy and/or dirty.

Various religious facilities (e.g., Mosques and Buddhist temples) require one to take off one's shoes before entering those buildings. (In Islam, that consideration is practical as there is no furniture in the prayer hall which allows people to walk anywhere, and one puts one's face on the carpeting during prayer.) Also, because one needs to take off one's shoes within mosques, many Muslims choose to wear shoes that don't have laces. In Singapore, sandals and flip-flops are the preferred shoe to wear to the mosque because they are the easiest to put back on when one is leaving the building.

In Singaporean and Korean homes, bathrooms tend to be wet as there are no bathtubs, thus showering is done in the middle of the bathroom floor (there's a drain in the floor for the water). Only rarely have I worn flip-flops in the bathroom; usually it's just bare feet, which also means that many Singaporeans walk around with bare feet in the rest of the house; wearing socks means needing to take them off before going into the bathroom.

Singaporeans tend to have two places to store shoes, one indoors and one outdoors. Many apartments here have an outdoor shoe rack, which may be used by family members or guests. However, many people just leave their shoes lying outside their front door when they come home and leave them there overnight. (I used to do that with a pair of flip-flops, but they were stolen, probably by an estate maintenance worker who had big feet like me. Since then I always keep my shoes indoors, unless I know I'm going to be leaving the house within an hour or two.)

One other factor is health. Several members of my family, including me, all wear sandals as our normal foot wear because we are type 2 diabetics. Type 2 diabetics are susceptible to bacterial and fungal skin infections, and closed-toe shoes are perfect environments for those types of beasties (moist, warm). With sandals the feet are drier and cooler, which helps to minimize infections (which are very painful itches). With the exception of some athletic shoes that are only worn for an hour or so at a time, I haven't worn anything but sandals since 2005. (That includes at work, so I tend to buy more stylish sandals. ;) )

One other side issue is home flooring. Singaporeans and Koreans almost exclusively use ceramic tiles for their floors. With so much dirt and mud here, people would be forever vacuuming their carpets. With tile, cleaning is much faster: just a sweep through and mopping. Those few rugs that are used here tend to be small rugs, either for the kitchen and/or bathroom or larger carpets (like a Persian rug) that's used for decorative purposes.

(1) A genkan is an area inside the front door of a Japanese home where shoes are taken off and stored before entering the rest of the house or apartment.
(2) An onbol is a set of water pipes located underneath the floor of a Korean home or apartment; the onbol heats up the floor during the winter months, helping to make the home a little bit warmer.

Japanese Bottle Jet Pack

I caught this on yesterday's Watt's; it's hilarious. I've seen other videos of Japanese bottle rocket pranks, but this one was the most successful flight I've seen so far. In fact, I'd say the flight went far beyond any of their wildest expectations. :)

Links for 1 June 2009

I've been debating whether to continue the Links series of posts, either in its current format (published primarily on weekdays) or in an alternative format (e.g., weekly, rotating, sans the Politics section or American politics). While I won't stop reading the various blogs and websites that I link to, the actual writing of the Links posts takes a little longer than I would like. Suggestions? Thumbs up? Thumbs down?)

Politics:
Dr George Tiller shot to death at Wichita church (By now you've probably heard about the Kansan abortion doctor who was murdered in a church Sunday. This is one of the early reports. Other links you might find of interest include Bill O'Reilly has Dr. George Tiller's blood on his well-stained hands, Operation Rescue's Randall Terry Is Sorry Tiller Didn't Get Proper Trial And Execution, and Operation Rescue Distances Itself From Roeder’s Activities On Behalf Of The Group (sorry, the blood doesn't wash off your hands that easily). )

Lindsey Graham Says Sotomayor Is Not A Racist But Should Apologize Anyway (Sometimes I think of doing an intelligence index for Republicans; say, start at 100 and then add or subtract points based on any smart or (much more likely) stupid things Republicans say publicly. If we started today, Lindsey Graham would take the Republicans down to 99 already.)

Pressing China With A Nuclear Japan?

Gen. Ricardo Sanchez calls for war crimes truth commission.

Obama Administration Files Petition To Block Uighurs From Entering U.S., Praises Gitmo Conditions (Ridiculous!)


Economics:
What to Do Now with $50,000 Cash? ("If you have USD $50,000 in cash, what do you actually do with the money now? It is probably different by age group, but does one buy Ford at $2/share, swiss francs, some gold?")

Supply, demand, and the price of oil

Guest Blog: Japan's first trade deficit in 28 years

The View from the 23rd Century (This was a rather interesting column, looking at some of the ideas floating around in the field of growth economics and applying a Star Trek-twist to them. Some of the essay is "old" in the respect that the notion of "bits and atoms" has been talked about for a few years now. However, the basic idea of the essay is sound: growth in developed economies is strongest and can be very long lasting when it's based on knowledge ("bits"), with government legislation and spending often the key to moving the knowledge acquisition forward.)

"Incarceration as a Labor Market Outcome" (Although I've been looking at unemployment statistics for a few months now, the incorporation of incarceration rates into the analysis wass a new idea for me.)


Business:
At Harvard, Some Students Are Taking an M.B.A. Honor Oath (As an MBA who's Muslim, I find this type of oath a day late and a dollar short. I think it really speaks volumes about the lack of values inherent in Western society, especially within the business sub-culture.)


Islam/Muslim Blogs:
Jesus (AS) in Islam (Austrolabe finally came back online after a five-month hiatus with a link to a documentary on the Muslim view about Jesus (pbuh).)

Al-Muhajiroun sent packing


Miscellaneous:
Alien reboot, a prequel, is confirmed! (The Scott brothers, Ridley and Tony, are going to make an Alien prequel.)

Links for 29 May 2009

Politics:
Dick Morris Thinks Convincing the Japanese to Develop Nuclear Weapons is the Solution to Dealing With North Korea (Oh, yeah, that's the ticket! Bring all of Northeast Asia into a nuclear arms race. No, thank you!)

Another Ralph Peters idea: Eventually, soldiers will need to start killing the media too (Yesterday, I linked to a post where Col. Ralph Peters suggested we should just kill all the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Some people have been looking into his previous statements, and found that he's also suggested that the military kill the media as well: "Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar. ... Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media." Unthinkable now, unthinkable in the future, too, you nitwit!)

Fox News Embraces Right-Wing Theory That Obama Is Forcing GOP-Owned Car Dealerships To Close (Of course, no one seems to consider that "...all car dealers are, in fact, overwhelmingly more likely to donate to Republicans than to Democrats — not just those who are having their doors closed.” But why let facts get in the way of a good hysteria? See also TBogg's Negro president locks Republican car dealers in the trunk and Yet another intrepid Malkin 'investigative scoop' goes pffffft.)

Was Rape an Enhanced Interrogation Technique? (The answer: YES! No wonder the Obama administration is trying to keep the new photos from Abu Ghraib secret.)

Rachel Maddow Responds to Tancredo's Racist Screed

Countdown: Jesse Ventura on Torture Prosecutions and Waterboarding (Ventura on "why he thinks we haven't had any prosecutions for torture in the United States, 'Mancow' Muller's waterboarding and Sean Hannity never agreeing to go through it himself.")

How to talk to a right winger ("What was ostensibly good for Israel for 40 years will also be good for another 400 years. For 40 years we were able to deceive ourselves, to mock the world, to occupy, to oppress, to trample and to kill. So why shouldn't we continue?")

The Potential Korea Escalation


Economics:
Yield Curve

"Fermi Problems" (Fermi Problems are interesting; I've run into a few, and I know that Microsoft has used them as part of their recruiting process. Thoma mentions that "Watching someone work out a Fermi problem in real time reveals a lot about their brainpower." More specifically, what it really does, IMO, is show how one works through a problem: the assumptions made and the logic necessary to solve the problem itself. Whether the solution itself is correct is mostly irrelevant. How one comes up with the solution is what's at stake.)

Are Durable Goods Orders Bottoming? (Another sign that might indicate the recession is beginning to fade.)


Islam/Muslim Blogs:
A quote to remember...


Miscellaneous:
Closer: The Cutout Of Delight (Always carry an extra hand in your purse, my dear?)

Russian police find feral girl in Siberia (Astaghfirullah! Poor girl. Russian police have taken into care a 5-year-old girl who has been shut up in a flat in the company of cats and dogs for her entire life, police said on Wednesday. ... The girl, who lived in the Eastern Siberian city of Chita, could not speak Russian and acted like an dog when police took her into care. ... "For five years, the girl was 'brought up' by several dogs and cats and had never been outside," a police statement said.)

Crater on Mars named for Isaac Asimov (An asteroid was already named after him, but this is still an overdue honor.)

Links for 20 May 2009

Thank God I did this over two sessions.

Politics:
Republican Strategist Tantaros Thinks Suggesting She Undergo Waterboarding Is "Lame" (Coward.)

Countdown's Worst Person: Bill O'Reilly...New Champion For Protecting Our Privacy

Ventura's smashdown tour continues, with Yellow Elephant Kilmeade the latest victim (Sooner or later, conservatives are going to realize that going mano a mano against Jesse Ventura is not a bright idea.)

Bet Accepted (Seven reasons why Republicans have an uphill battle to control even one branch of the federal government.)

Barton: We Shouldn’t Regulate CO2 Because ‘It’s In Your Coca-Cola’ And ‘You Can’t Regulate God’ (This sort of argument strikes me as similar to what I heard druggies argue several decades ago, that because marijuana, cocaine and other drugs were "natural" (as opposed to man-made drugs like LSD) that it wasn't "harmful." Yeah, right!)

Countdown: Worst Persons May 19, 2009 (The coward Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Joe Barton.)


Economics:
In Search of ... Hyperinflationary Expectations (Short answer: not any time soon.)

FRBSF Economic Outlook ("To me the forecast seems optimistic, but in any case, employment is unlikely to turn around until many months after output recovers. ... Let's hope the forecast is correct, or even understates the speed of recovery, but policymakers must take seriously the possibility that this forecast - as has been generally true for all the forecasts from various sources that have come before it - will have to be revised downward later.")

Math and the City ("These numerical coincidences seem to be telling us something profound. It appears that Aristotle’s metaphor of a city as a living thing is more than merely poetic. There may be deep laws of collective organization at work here, the same laws for aggregates of people and cells. ..." See also Why Has Globalization Led to Bigger Cities?.)

Geography of a Recession (The New York Times has created an interactive map of the United States that can show you, county-by-county, what the unemployment rate is and the one-year change in unemployment.)

Japan Shrinks 15.2%


Business:
The $5-million billboard. Was it worth it?


Islam/Muslim Blogs:
Quran Read-A-Long: The Cow 284-286 Complete the Second Sura

Bibles Destroyed in Afghanistan... By U.S. Military (On May 6th, I linked to a story about US Army soldiers proselytizing (masquerading as "giving gifts") in Afghanistan, with the video showing a stack of Bibles in the Dari and Pashto languages. Now, supposedly, according to an Army spokeswoman, "the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed." Take of that what you will.)

The Uighurs: Compilation ("This is a post compiling the questionable and/or false claims that have been made about the Uighurs.")

If Chris Coleman Was a Muslim? (No kidding.)


Miscellaneous:
Sagittarius and the Central Milky Way

Rose is Rose

Hairdressers Journal: Linda Blair Special (Doesn't anyone review these sorts of images and realize just how badly they've been manipulated???)

Sci-Fi’s Top 5 Toughest Gals (#s 1, 2 and 3 I completely agree with. Four, I'm OK with; Five??? How was Scully "tough?")

Japanese Binocular Soccer

This video is both amusing and so typically Japanese. Someone must have thought, "Let's get a bunch of guys to wear strange outfits while trying to play soccer with binoculars strapped to their heads." And what the heck is that one guy doing running around wearing a vampire bat's head?

Soyjoy: Much Effort, Little Effort

Two very crazy commercials have started airing here in Singapore for a Japanese fruit bar product called Soyjoy. Although the ad campaign was developed locally, the commercials have a very Japanese feel to them. According to BrandRepublic-Asia:

Developed by Ogilvy & Mather Singapore, the campaign targets working women who are health and weight conscious. To appeal to them, the campaign takes on the biggest obstacle that women face when it comes to keeping the pounds off: the amount of ‘effort’ required.

Soyjoy was thus positioned as the secret to staying slim using minimal, or little effort.

Of course I don't buy that last claim for a second, but the commercials are certainly unique (at least to me).

Kaguya's Reverse Solar Eclipse

The lunar orbiter Kaguya (aka Selene), launched by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has released a recent video of a unique solar eclipse; however, this time, instead of the moon coming between the sun and the observer (Kaguya, in this case), the earth moves in front of the moon. What's spectacular about this video, though, is the diamond-ring effect. In all other videos of solar eclipses, I've never seen a diamond-ring effect so brilliant as this one is. I'm not quite sure why this is the case; perhaps due to a wide lens aperture or the fact that there was no atmosphere to help diffuse all that light. Either way, Milady would like a diamond ring now that's as brilliant as the one in this video. ;) The video was taken on February 10th.



For more about the eclipse, read the article at Science@NASA

Science@NASA also notes that this is the third time humanity's been able to see a reverse solar eclipse. The first picture was taken by Surveyor 3 back in April 1967 (you can see it by clicking on the link above). The second was taken by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean in November 1969, and is the image below:

Movie Sunday: Mr. Baseball

Mr. Baseball is one of my favorite movies. (Milady groans. :) ) Why? Because it's a romantic comedy, it's about baseball, and it's about life as an expatriate. (OK, so I loved the movie before I even became an expatriate. ;) ) It's a classic "fish out of the water" story set in a culture that's both exotic and attractive to Americans. Mr. Baseball's also got some exceptionally good performances in it by the supporting cast of actors: Ken Takakura as Uchiyama, the baseball team's manager, Aya Takanasha as Hiroko, the Japanese love interest (and the daughter of Uchiyama), a young Dennis Haysbert as fellow expatriate Max Dubois, and Toshi Shioya as Tom Selleck's interpreter and guide. And the "rookie" in the first clip belting out the 500-foot home runs? That's "The Big Hurt," Frank Thomas.

Now if only I could find a copy of the movie here to buy...

Jack Elliot: Just let them have a little fun.

Uchiyama: Baseball is work. Not fun.

Jack Elliot: Baseball is grown men getting paid to play a game. When you were a kid, I bet you didn't pick up a bat and ball because you were dying to work. A player's career is short enough. Let them enjoy it.

Max 'Hammer' Dubois: Max Dubois. Around here they call me Hammer. Don't ask me why.

Jack Elliot: Jack Elliot.

Max 'Hammer' Dubois: Yeah. I know who you are. I've been in Japan, not dead.

Jack Elliot: C'mon, it ain't over till the fat lady sings!

Toshi Yamashita, Jack's Interpreter: [subtitle as he translates to the team] When the game is over, a fat lady will sing to us!

Are You Chinese, Japanese or Korean?

I'm currently reading Yasutaka Sai's book, The 8 Core Values of the Japanese Businessman: Toward an Understanding of Japanese Management. In his third core value, "Aesthetics and Perfectionism," Sai retells a story about three different Asian perspectives as to what is aesthetically desirable (pp. 55-56):

Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591) was tea master to the leaders Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi and founder of the Sen school of tea ceremony. One bright autumn day, having invited guests for a tea ceremony, he ordered a young monk to clean the small temple garden. The monk swept up every fallen leaf and told Rikyu that the job was finished. The tea master glanced at the scene and stepped down into the garden. He gently shook two or three trees until a few dead leaves fell to the ground. "Now the stage is set for our guests," he said.

A south Korean intellectual has criticized this incident as typical Japanese affectation. He said that a Chinese would probably have left the garden clear of leaves, as the priest had cleaned it, and a Korean would have held the ceremony with all the fallen leaves just as they were, in their natural state, finding that truly beautiful.

So what are you? Is your aesthetic sense "Chinese," "Japanese" or "Korean?" (I do think that Singapore, being a Chinese-majority country, does have a Chinese sense of aesthetics.)

Fly Me to the Moon...

I've been putting up various photos from the Japanese satellite Kaguya (Selene) that's orbiting the moon (see here and here). I've just discovered, courtesy of LPOD, a nine-minute video taken by the satellite's high-definition television camera.

The following video is a series of short video clips taken from orbit as Kaguya passes overhead. The entire video is rather disjointed to watch, and it has no soundtrack; however, the video does has some very amazing footage of lunar landscapes from both the near side and the far side of the moon (for example, the crater Tsiolkovskiy and Mare Moscoviense (Moscow Sea). (There are also a number of unintentionally amusing uses of "Japlish" for the captions; for example, "Mid-latitudes of South" instead of "southern mid-latitudes.") And, best of all, there's a dramatic Earthrise at the very end of the video.

Earth Over the Moon and Earthset, by Kaguya

Credit (both photos): Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

Some beautiful photos (actually video outtakes from a high definition TV camera) from the new Japanese spacecraft Kaguya (aka "Selene"). In the above image (click on the photo to enlarge), taken on November 7th, the Moon's surface is near the South Pole, and the Australian Continent (center left) and Asian Continent (lower right) can be seen. In this image, the upper side of the Earth is the Southern Hemisphere, thus the Australian Continent looks upside-down. According to Chuck Wood over at LPOD, the crater in the lower center right (where you only the rim is exposed to the sunlight) is Shackleton; the far hill underneath the Earth is Malapert Peak, and the hill in front of that (with the crater to the left) is the "Peak of Sunlight."

In the image below, the Earth is setting toward the horizon near the Moon's South Pole. It took about 70 seconds from the left image to the right image (complete setting).

One thing I find interesting about these images is that, even though they are video outtakes, they have a different "texture" than one might expect. The images of the Earth almost look like paintings (perhaps in an Impressionist style; whaddyathink, Izzy Mo? :) )

Web Trend Map 2007, v. 2.0

Yesterday, in a comment to my post about the Antipocentric World Map, I mentioned another map that's based on the Tokyo subway system map. Here it is:


This map, by Information Architects Japan, shows the 200 most successful websites on the web, ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective. Their webpage has several different versions of this map (by size and resolution); the map above is their most readable version (1600 x 1024). Below are some of IAJ's comments to help decipher the map:

What’s New?
First of all, the new trend map features much more websites than the previous one. While the focus is still on English language websites (because that is where it’s at), we have added some Japanese sites (a mystery to most of you gaijin), some German sites (yeah, there are some popular ones) and a Chinese line (the second Internet).

More Consistency
The different trend lines have been renamed, simplified and cleaned up. Now, if you follow the tech line – you will find tech sites, if you follow the news line – you will find news sites.

Less Japanese Jokes
There are less insider jokes about the different stations and more consistency within the connections and the neighborhood of the different sites. People who know Tokyo will still find lots of little hints and sarcastic comments hidden in there.

Some Interesting Things to Note
* Google has moved from Shibuya, a humming place for young people, to Shinjuku, a suspicious, messy, Yakuza-controlled, but still a pretty cool place to hang out (Golden Gaya).
* Youtube has conquered Shibuya.
* Microsoft has moved to Ikebukuro, if you know what I mean.
* Yahoo is in Ueno, a nice place but nothing going on there.
* Wikipedia now is in Shimbashi, the place for the square and hard-headed Salaryman, like the Wikipedia watchdogs.
* The Chinese line runs parallel to the “share line” which starts with the main pirates…
* Paper info designer Tufte is right below the Federated Media, right before joining with the interactive information design circle in a 90 degree angle.
* "You" are in the Emperor’s palace, in the center of the network.

More Revealing Coincidences
* The main Japanese sites are all on the money line. I never notice before, but most big Japanese sites are financially successful.
* The northern part of the Yamanote line (”main sites”) is a boring unknown territory (just as in real Tokyo).
* Ze Frank ended up close to the German carousel.
* iA ended up close to the pirates.
* Adobe moved from Ginza (high class) to Tokyo station (anonymous, lots of money there), which is pointing at the fact that they continue to move towards the center of gravity without being too loud about it.
* Skype has conquered a place that doesn’t exist.

Trend Forecast
Of course you will notice that we added a weather forecast. The weather forecast is our six months prognosis for each candidate (no big surprises there).

Japanese Massage Chair Pranks

Here's another crazy Japanese video from IZ Reloaded. The video's a little long in its set-up, but the hilarity begins at the 1:05 mark. There are two sets of massage chair pranks, the first of which is funny enough, but the "Mission II" pranks are LOL hysterical. I also find it interesting that the symbol used to cover up these naked guys' genitals is "Kim," which means "gold" or "money."

Japanese Barking Spiders

Only the Japanese could come up with this type of video. The sequence starting at 1:46 is a hoot. From IZ Reloaded.

"All we are saying..."

The Economist Intelligence Unit, a division of the corporation that publishes The Economist, has come out with its first annual "Global Peace Index," an index that ranks 121 countries based upon their "peacefulness." One of the irritants I have about certain American Christians and Islamophobes (who are often one and the same) is their claim that the US is sooo peaceful and Muslims are sooo violent. Well, the Global Peace Index exposes the lie behind that claim. Of the 121 countries in this year's index, the US placed 96th, ahead of Iran, but behind Yemen. The most peaceful Muslim country is Oman (22) [see below for a list of the remaining Muslim-majority countries]. Countries of interest: Norway (1), New Zealand (2), Japan (5), Canada (8), Hong Kong (23), Australia (25), Singapore (29), South Korea (32), United Kingdom (49), China (60), India (109), Russia (118), and Israel (119).

The following comes from the press release that describes the objective of the Index and how the Index was created:

"The objective of the Global Peace Index was to go beyond a crude measure of wars by systematically exploring the texture of peace," explained Global Peace Index President, Mr. Clyde McConaghy, speaking in Washington. "The Index provides a quantitative measure of peacefulness that is comparable over time, and we hope it will inspire and influence world leaders and governments to further action."

The rankings show that even among the G8 countries there are significant differences in peacefulness: While Japan was the most peaceful of the G8 countries, at a rank of five in the Index, Russia neared the bottom at number 118. The Global Peace Index also reveals that countries which had a turbulent time for parts of the twentieth century, such as Ireland and Germany, have emerged as peace leaders in the 21st century.

The Economist Intelligence Unit measured countries' peacefulness based on wide range of indicators - 24 in all - including ease of access to "weapons of minor destruction" (guns, small explosives), military expenditure, local corruption, and the level of respect for human rights.

After compiling the Index, the researchers examined it for patterns in order to identify the "drivers" that make for peaceful societies. They found that peaceful countries often shared high levels of democracy and transparency of government, education and material well-being. While the U.S. possesses many of these characteristics, its ranking was brought down by its engagement in warfare and external conflict, as well as high levels of incarceration and homicide. The U.S.'s rank also suffered due to the large share of military expenditure from its GDP, attributed to its status as one of the world's military-diplomatic powers.

The main findings of the Global Peace Index are:

Peace is correlated to indicators such as income, schooling and the level of regional integration

Peaceful countries often shared high levels of transparency of government and low corruption

Small, stable countries which are part of regional blocs are most likely to get a higher ranking

Muslim-majority countries: Oman (22), Qatar (30), Malaysia (37), the UAE (38), Tunisia (39), Kuwait (46), Morocco (48), Libya (58), Kazakhstan (61), Bahrain (62), Jordan (63), Egypt (73), Syria (77), Indonesia (78), Bangladesh (86), Saudi Arabia (90), Turkey (92), Yemen (95), Iran (97), Azerbaijan (101), Algeria (107), Uzbekistan (110), Lebanon (114), Pakistan (115), and Iraq (121).

Japanese Flashmob

Those crazy Japanese! ;) Another hilarious video found at I.Z.'s.



(Interesting how much these streets look like those in Korea.)

Morning Musume English Lessons

I came across these videos at the S'pore blog iZ Reloaded. This is not quite how my colleagues and I taught English in Korea, but the videos do bring back a sense of nostalgia for me. Actually, the one thing that strikes me about the young women in these videos is just how badly they all speak English. When I was in Korea, most of my students were college-age, and while a few had poor speaking skills, most did not. Moreover, in the late 90s, the Korean government had required the primary schools to begin teaching English to the children at an earlier age. There was one time while I was visiting a beach in Busan when I ran into a group of kids who were able to maintain a conversation with me for about 45 minutes. Considering that these kids were about 10 years old at the time (and that most Korean kids at that age could only speak a sentence or two in English before they used up all their vocabulary), I was quite impressed. The Japanese girls in these videos are nowhere near the level of those Korean kids. Run times: 9:42 and 9:59.