I like to pop bubblewrap. Be sure to click the maniac button.

Did I already mention this? I made a website for us Nova folk here in Kanazawa, Ishikawa. Other Nova teachers are allowed to post, and hopefully they will.

So far though, only Adam and Yvette have taken the plunge.

I fully believe that as Earth becomes more like a giant superorganism, humans will be the ones deciding which species live and die (based on which ones we like and which ones we can’t get rid of). Case in point: “Ninety-nine percent of the marine life in San Francisco Bay came there from somewhere else, carried in the ballast water of cargo ships”

Moussaoui has expressed his intention to plead guilty to conspiring with Al-Qaeda. FoxNews says that he is simply waiting for the judge to determine whether he is mentally fit to enter his plea. This is the second time he has tried to plea guilty. He also tried to enter a plea in 2002, but he withdrew his plea a week later. This time his lawyers are asking the judge to ignore his request.

It seems that lawyers have this idea that they need to make sure every defendant gets away with as much as he can. I do not see why that is healthy. Certainly if a person thinks his innocent, he should be able to do whatever he can rightly do. On the other hand, if a person knows they are guilty and wants to atone for their sins, that should be encouraged. It is probably healthier both for society and the individuals committing the crimes if they simply accepted and came to terms with what has been done. It would be terrible if lawyers tried to prevent this from happening.

Before I was talking about how superorganisms are special and inevitable. Slate is now talking about technology in clinical-trials to allow couples to choose the sex of their baby. The article mentions the dangers of upsetting the natural ~50% balance between males and females.

In general though, it seems like a good thing. It would allow a society to optimize the ratio based on the current needs of its society. In times where fast growth was needed, a higher number of women would be beneficial. In times of danger/war, a higher number of men would help that cause. Also, if we are colonizing, we could have the founding families produce higher men to help terra-forming efforts. Then, once food is plentiful, switch to producing more women, or just have the inner, established colonies produce the women.

Of course, the benefits are minimal, and it would require more “flexibile” thoughts on male/female relationships.
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I arrived via night bus at Hachioji station this morning at 6:30 am with Diana. We then took a train to Haijima station and walked the rest of the way (with way too many bags) to Diana’s apartment. I have spent the entire day trying to squeeze all of my stuff into this one room loft. Seven hours, a new bike and a trip to Cainz homes later, it seems like I might just be able to!

Observe the difference between Japanese news (China arrests 7 to “placate” the Japanese in order to avoid disrupting talks) and American news (people are throwing rocks at Japanese restaurants and calling for Japanese death) concerning the protests in Japan.

Of course, Chinese textbooks ignore their sins.

In case you were wondering, Kieran is watching some amazingly weird movie that can’t decide if it is in present day or England a few hundred years ago. And someone has halitosis–the clinical word for bad breath.

A new study has concluded that too much water is worse than not enough. Many athletes–marathon runners for instance–drink much more water than they lose during the course of their exercise. This dilutes their blood and disturbs the salt balance, becoming a serious problem. Topping this off, doctors usually assume the problem is dehydration instead of hyponatremia and give more water instead of salt. Read more about hyponatremia.

93% of CNN website visiting voters do not want Japan to become a permanent member of the security council.

The local NHK news here in Japan is making a big deal about large numbers of people in China protesting things in Japan. NHK went on for a while about how China is protesting Japan’s bid to become a permanent member of the security council. Some of my students mentioned that the Japanese are dying to become a permanent member.

I could not find anything about this story on FoxNews. On CNN, they had one story talking more about gas burning. Japan is allowing drilling in a region disputed by the two countries. Apparently it is some idiotically small island (or large rock) that Japan has claimed is part of their territory in order to secure the mineral/water rights within some number of kilometer radius of the land. It then moves on to assert that the Chinese are mostly protesting because Japan has a new textbook out ignoring the Japanese atrocities of World War II.

Japanese have apologized on “no fewer than 17 occassions”, but if it is anything like their news coverage or textbooks, I can imagine why the Chinese are still upset.

CNN also briefly mentions tension about Japan’s security bid.

Strange how different two news organizations can report a story. I remember thinking that the Japanese were fairly balanced because they were fielding quotes of Chinese protesters, but apparently they ignored an entire side of the story. Too bad.

This seems like a good example of why so many Americans have abandoned the perspective given by NBC and the New York Times for a fresh look somewhere else.