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By The Mound of Sound, on April 20, 2013, at 2:22 pm The Japanese have become perhaps the greyest of the greying nations of the developed world. This is discussed in The World Today, the public journal of Chatham House, perhaps the world’s most venerable and certainly most prestigious think tank.
Everybody knows that Japan is ground zero for global ageing. The youngest of the developed countries as recently as the mid-1970s, it is now the oldest – and its age wave will continue to roll in for decades to come.
By 2050, the proportion of Japanese who are 65 or older is on track to reach 39 per (Read more…) up from 23 per cent in 2010 and only 9 per cent in 1980, when Japan Inc seemed poised to conquer the global economy. Japan’s total population, which is already contracting, will enter a precipitous decline, shrinking by over a half by the end of the century.
To those of . . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: Learning to Live Within Your Own Skin – Japan’s Grand Experiment
By Christine, on March 30, 2013, at 6:43 am I sure hope they used recycled paper!
By The Mound of Sound, on March 12, 2013, at 1:37 pm The Japanese have successfully tapped seabed methane clathrates, also known as “flammable ice.” Deposits of compressed and frozen methane are fairly common in northern waters. British Columbia has looked at exploiting them.
The gas field is about 50km away from Japan’s main island, in the Nankai Trough.
Researchers say it could provide an alternative energy source for Japan which imports all its energy needs.
Offshore deposits present a potentially enormous source of methane but also some environmental concern, because the underwater geology containing them is unstable in many places.
A Japanese study estimated that at least 1.
By The Mound of Sound, on February 28, 2013, at 2:20 pm Japanese whale “researchers” have persuaded a U.S. judge to declare the Sea Shepherd organization piratical.
The ruling was issued on Wednesday by chief judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th US circuit court of appeals.
In his 18-page opinion, he wrote: “You don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch. When you ram ships; hurl containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate, no matter how high-minded you believe your
. . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: Sea Shepherd Piratical? Hardly.
By The Mound of Sound, on February 11, 2013, at 4:20 pm What if the way forward isn’t? What if it’s time for us to turn around, to go back?
James Lovelock said the future of mankind, if there is to be one, will require that we accept, not sustainable growth, but sustainable retreat. We need to grow smaller. It’s not a matter of choice either.
There are too damned many of us, each demanding an ever-greater amount of resources, and we’re far exceeding our planet’s ability to regenerate the natural resources we need. According to research by the Global Footprint Network, we’re already using up an
. . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: Achieving a Steady State Economy for Canada
By The Mound of Sound, on January 22, 2013, at 2:08 pm Indian officials are warning residents in their part of Kashmir to dig bomb shelters and gather a two week supply of food and water in preparation for a possible nuclear exchange.
The notice, published Monday by the Kashmir police in the Greater Kashmir newspaper, advised people to build toilet-equipped basements large enough to house the entire family for two weeks. If there is no basement, residents should construct bunkers in their front yards, the notice advised.
The shelters should be stocked with candles, battery-operated lights and radios and nonperishable food and water that is regularly replaced to ensure it is
. . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: Arms Race Update – India Warns Kashmiris to Prepare for Nuclear War
By EclecticLip, on January 17, 2013, at 12:40 am (originally written Jan 3, 2012. Part of my Great Upload of 2013.)
Come December’s end, the nervy among us like to review what they got right in the past year. The nervier like to predict what’ll happen in the New Year. Ever the blithe contrarian, I figured I’d visit the Ghost of Predictions Past and see where I got things wrong.**
I do this taking comfort that Great Men, like me, make mistakes sometimes. (Oh, it was tempting to “forget” those commas…!)
Take the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius — he almost ruined his reputation as
. . . → Read More: Eclectic Lip: Whatever foresight is, it’s not 20/20…
By Obert Madondo, on January 7, 2013, at 2:21 pm From Kobe, Japan, an expression of support and solidarity for hunger striker Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence and the phenomenal #IdleNoMore grassroots movement for Aboriginal rights and sovereignty: This photo: Photo via Facebook And these words: Today , we gathered together to pray in Kobe Japan. We hope this prayer can reach to Chief Theresa Spence and also to our READ MORE
By The Mound of Sound, on January 5, 2013, at 1:42 pm It’s a record. A 222kg blue fin tuna was sold for $1.7-million (155m yen) at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market.
High bids traditionally mark the year’s first auction at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. Even the buyer, sushi chain owner Kiyoshi Kimura, who also paid out the record price last year, said the cost was “a bit high”. The sale came amid continued warnings from environmentalists that tuna stocks are dwindling and overfished. ‘Encourage Japan’ This year’s record-breaking fish was caught off north-eastern Japan and weighed in at 222kg (489lbs), some 47kg lighter than last year’s prize-winner, which fetched
By CuriosityCat, on September 23, 2012, at 11:44 pm A potentially deadly game of tit-for-tatis taking place at the two islands that are the centre of the dispute between China and Japan, both of whom claim ownership of the islands. Smaller numbers of fishing boats were sent to the islands by China and then by Japan, but this week China upped the ante by dispatching 1,000 fishing boats to the islands:
On Monday, a flotilla of around 1,000 Chinese fishing boats was sailing for the islands. Japan’s prime minister warned that this could take things to a new level: The Asahi Shimbun newspaper quoted an aide . . . → Read More: CuriosityCat: Japan, China & Those Islands: Dueling flotillas increase tensions
By Adam, on September 21, 2012, at 11:32 am In Japan the town of Kamikatsu people there create zero-waste while living a modern life. The community has taken the idea of a plastic bag ban to the next level and have banned garbage outright.
The crazy part? Most locals actually seem to like the extreme recycling process. Kikue Nii, one resident, claims that the town’s no-waste policy makes her more mindful of what she’s using, and helps her to take advantage of every last scrap. “I think I produce less waste because I have to compost it,” she told BBC News.
“When I can’t use the whole vegetable or
By CuriosityCat, on September 16, 2012, at 10:12 pm China Daily, the Hong Kong based English language newspaper owned by the Chinese state, and regarded as the window into China, has a few choice words to describe the conflict between China and Japan over the two disputed islands in an article headed Time for Tough Measures:
China should forget about forging Sino-Japanese economic integration and fight against Japan’s resurging militarism. The Japanese government claims to have “purchased” China’s Diaoyu Island and Nanxiao and Beixiao islands for 2.05 billion yen ($26.15 million) from the Kurihara family, the so-called private owner of the Diaoyu Islands, and . . . → Read More: CuriosityCat: Chinese state newspaper: Japan has been wolfishly pushing its luck on the islands
By CuriosityCat, on September 16, 2012, at 2:01 pm Turmoil still bubbling up in China with the USA voicing concern and trying to avoid taking sides: Islands in the Rising Sun
On Sunday, hundreds of Chinese protesters again faced off against riot police at the Japanese embassy in Beijing.
In Shenzhen, police fired tear gas to disperse a demonstration, while in the nearby city of Guanghzhou angry crowds burned Japanese flags.
One eyewitness in the city of Xi’an described to the BBC on Saturday how his camera was snatched from him and damaged because it was a Japanese brand.
“Japanese-made cars were randomly stopped, their drivers grabbed and thrown
. . . → Read More: CuriosityCat: China & Japan: Just where are those islands in the sun?
By CuriosityCat, on September 14, 2012, at 2:20 pm There is a good chance that we will see violence erupt between a bellicose China and equally bellicose Japan over two small islands – known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China – that could lead to very strained relations between these two countries. Chinese ships at the islands Barren islands, inhabited by goats, leading to war between China and Japan? How could that be? Because of past wounds:
Japan has claimed the islands since 1895. The US took jurisdiction after the second world war and turned them over to Japan in 1972. But Beijing sees the purchase
. . . → Read More: CuriosityCat: China & Japan: Keep your eyes on these islands – there are more than goats at stake
By Obert Madondo, on September 11, 2012, at 10:00 pm Oh, the things we progressives do in the name of charity! A charity “breast squeeze” orgy took place during the August 27-27 weekend in Tokyo as part of the “Erotica will Save the World“ event. The event, hosted by Japan’s Paradise TV encouraged people to donate money to STOP! AIDS, a charity that promotes awareness, treatment, and prevention of global AIDS. In exchange, the donors got to grab the boobs of one of ten adult movie actresses, known as oppai momi in Japanese. So, you got there and went through the following routine: 1. Line up, have your ID checked (must be over
. . . → Read More: Canadian Progressive: Breasts squeezed for charity in Tokyo (VIDEO)
By Bill Longstaff, on July 6, 2012, at 1:26 pm There are mea culpas and there are mea culpas. The report by an independent commission on the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is a dandy. In the preface to the report the commission chairman, Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a medical doctor and professor emeritus at Tokyo University, laid it on without mercy. “Its fundamental causes,” he wrote, “are to be found in the ingrained
By The Mound of Sound, on June 14, 2012, at 10:00 am The Japanese supposedly go whaling for “scientific research” purposes. Hard to tell what they’re looking for. Maybe they’re exploring new ways to kill whales or the process by which they die when you explode stuff inside them. But they were probably killing them for the same purpose they slaughter dolphins – for meat to throw on grocery store shelves at home.
Well it turns out the Japanese are losing their appetite for whale meat. Of last year’s 1,211 tonnes harvested, 908 went unsold despite 13-auctions.
The Institute of Cetacean Research blamed low demand on the complicated
By Adam, on April 19, 2012, at 3:22 pm Japan is about to build a new solar power plant and it’ll their largest one to date. The country is trying to improve their power grid and make it more sustainable after the nuclear disaster last year. Great to see progress!
The new plant, which will be called the Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega-Solar Power Plant, is expected to take up approximately 314 acres, though drawings show most of that space will be over water, either by constructing a floating barge or building up the seabed below. Once completed, the plant is expected to produce 70MW of electricity (enough to power 22,000
By Christine, on March 11, 2012, at 7:44 am “We can sum it up in one sentence: Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests…….Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that [...]
By Christine, on March 3, 2012, at 7:50 am This ad is for a newly launched cell phone of NTT Docomo, the largest cell phone service provider in Japan. The shell of the new phone is wood from domestic woods that are produced in a sustainable way. Apparently this was made without CG or cuts, and it took four days of filming: *Thanks to [...]
By Adam, on February 8, 2012, at 10:22 am A simple addition to the standard wind turbine setup called a wind lens can double, or even triple, the power output.
Professor Prof. Yuji Ohya of the Kyushu University research institute for applied mechanics (RIAM) has been working with a team to improve the efficiency of wind turbines. Combining an inlet shroud, a diffuser, and a brim into a wind lens, power output has been improved by a factor of 2 to 5 times in several experiments. Turbine noise is also decreased.
Here’s more on the matter.
Thanks Greg!
By Mark A. Rayner, on January 12, 2012, at 7:00 am
“Like most of you I was inclined to say the war was caused by fish.”
However, after a close examination of the evidence, Cadman Michaels — who held doctorates in theoretical physics and history, but who called himself an Alternate Historian — could say now with some confidence that the roots of World War III could be found in three things: beer, ice hockey and something called Tim Horton’s coffee.
He could say this with some confidence. And he did.
“My extensive work in multi-universal alternate histories, made possible by my invention, the Moorcock Inter-Dimensional Time Inversion Tunneller (patent
. . . → Read More: The Skwib: How Anne of Green Gables Destroyed the World
By Bill Longstaff, on December 13, 2011, at 1:49 pm I consider myself a lucky man. I was born in the right place at the right time to enjoy what may well be the peak period of civilization. Never has human society offered so much to those in a position to take advantage of it—physical luxury not even kings and queens could enjoy in past eras, intellectual freedom unparalleled since the ancient Greeks, an exceptionally wide spectrum of political
By AppalledBC, on November 15, 2011, at 5:25 pm What happens to the U.S. economy, as we all know, will affect Canada profoundly – which is no doubt why this Munk debate garnered so much attention here. The debate is repeated several times on BNN. Krugman has the edge for me since he has always reco… . . . → Read More: Politics and Entertainment: Krugman and Summers: A Reading of the Munk Debate
By The Mound of Sound, on August 31, 2011, at 11:15 am A girl born in Japan today can expect to live to age 86. Japanese life expectancy has increased 30-years since 1947. A series of papers in the British medical journal, The Lancet, finds the Japanese success has cultural, social … . . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: The Japanese Live Longest. Why?
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