Scott started following the work of 2 people.
Scott Looking forward to an evening out with new colleagues - and I hope friends - at the very traditional 'Takeshigero' eatery in Kyoto.
Scott changed a Contact section.
Scott Packing the office into boxes for the move - no more work 'til next week :(
Blog
'Anti-Fuji / Anti-Korea' Demos
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
During August (7th and 21st) several thousand people gathered outside Fuji TV in Odaiba, Tokyo to protest against what they see as the Korean-isation of FujiTV. The demos don't really seem to have made the mainstream media though there's a small piece in the back of today's Asahi.
According to the demonstrators they're not expressing any 'Anti-Korean' feelings, they're just against Fuji being 'taken over by the Koreans' - amounts to pretty much the same thing as far as I can see, and sort of explains why the majority of the protestors seem to be middle-aged men carrying 'hinomaru'. But then maybe they want less romantic Kanryu dramas and more chambara and fishing shows. Maybe they feel excluded as Fuji (followed by NTV and the others) try to grab the high-spending female 20-34yr audience.
As one commentator pointed out, Fuji are in it for the money, if people didn't watch Kanryu stuff, they wouldn't keep showing it.
http://www.j-cast.com/2011/08/21104905.html?p=all
Gliffy Directionality Thinking Diagram
Thursday, July 28, 2011
As part of the process of sorting out the paper on directionality I'm currently working on I came across 'Gliffy' an online diagramming service, on first use it seems to be be pretty flexible and very easy to use, being an online thing its functionality is limited by comparison to desktop apps but certainly makes sharing diagrams very easy.
Here's one I made earlier…
http://www.gliffy.com/publish/2815177/
Nengo and the future
Monday, June 28, 2010
It has often puzzled me how the nengo calendar system, in its current form which links nengo to the actual rule of a particular emperor, works when it comes to making predictions about the future. This is something any government has to do, but when you are also bound into a system which ties the numbering of years to a specific (highly symbolic and politically and culturally significant) individual lifespan, how does it work.
I've asked, casually and usually over a beer and yakitori, a number of Japanese what they thought - they assumed there would be some sort of common-sense cut off point where the switch would be made to western style counting. Again, this is interesting; for government documents it seems odd that this - effectively a prediction of the imperial lifespan and an implication of not too distant death - should be left to individual judgements. So, is there an official whose role it is to say when this switch happens? Who effectively predicts the death of the emperor?
Maybe there is somewhere. However, the obvious way to easily avoid such a prediction is to just let the current nengo (Heisei at the time of writing) to extend as far as necessary into the future, despite the fact that any human lifespan - and thus any nengo - is limited.
Anyway, I was recently looking at the 1993 Information Technology City for Fukuoka and I came across the following graph:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koga-browes/4741061051/in/set-72157624249
It shows a prediction of demographic structure until 2070, or in nengo terms that's Showa 145! The book itself was published in Heisei5 (1993) but the graph is from Showa61 (1986). By the time of publication the Showa nengo had already come to an end, we got a few days of Showa 64 and that was it, Heisei started in January 1989. So, what was the original author doing effectively predicting Hirohito would live to the age of 145, and what was the reproducing author doing ignoring the fact that he'd already died?
Whatever the answer is - maybe its preferable to use a nonsensical prediction about a dead emperor, rather than having to make a rational/common-sense predication about a living one - it seems to show that, despite what one would think - that people are able to make sensible decisions about theses things based on a knowledge of the typical human lifespan - this is not in fact the case and local governments will happily (there are other charts in this document that are similar) predict an emperor living to the age of 169!
Or maybe I'm taking this whole nengo thing too seriously!?
Academic Stalking...
Friday, June 11, 2010
Check-up on your fave academics activity... well. some of it...
MyPeers software: http://codingseed.com/
WriteFlow
Friday, June 11, 2010
Another bibliography-cum-reference info manager. It looks promising though...
30-day trial here:
http://www.writeflow.net/wf/