Random crap.
We went to the trout farm in Katashina two weeks ago, and enjoyed the cool 28°C. As always, the air was filled with dragonflies flying about.
There is a trick to catching dragonflies. As you know, they like to land on the reeds standing out above the water, right? If you point your finger up, the dragonflies might land on your finger. Ulan is a master at it!
I attended the Numata Matsuri on Thursday night.
I took this picture last week at the east exit of Takasaki Station. These lanterns were put up for the Takasaki summer festival, which is for the last weekend in August, the 26th and 27th. I love Japanese paper lanterns.
When I flew to Japan in January 2000 to propose to Mayu, I took a second camera loaded with slide film. I took these pictures on Fujicolor 200 slide film. First up is Shibuya.
Next is Akihabara.
These slides have been packed away in a box for so many years. I recently took them to a photo shop in town and dropped them off. They were sent away, scanned, and put onto a CD-ROM for me. I am so glad to have these now.
Wow. It’s been over 3 1/2 years since I migrated to Linux. I was so excited and nervous at first, but since then I haven’t looked back. The only software I really miss is Photoscape, which I would use for captioning photos and for batch photo processing. The auto color balance tool on Photoscape is lacking in Gimp.
So June is “Pride Month.” What other months can we celebrate?
Greed Month. Well, that’s pretty much every month.
Lust Month. “Illicit sexual desire.” That ties in with Pride Month, I guess. Lots of overlap there.
Envy Month. I guess that’s every month.
Gluttony Month. Gosh, I guess this is every month too.
Wrath Month. Yikes.
Sloth Month. Well, I guess that depends on the individual.
So if we celebrate Pride Month, why not celebrate any of the other 6 deadly sins people indulge in? I can’t imagine a Sloth Parade prepared for Sloth Month though. Everyone would be too lazy to participate. Gluttony Month… I can only imagine that would be filled with those disgusting hotdog eating contests and such. I guess Greed Month is kicked off every year with Black Friday, turning Christmas from a solemn, joyous celebration of faith and family in the name of Christ into one of blatant commercialism in the name of Santa Claus.
“Hey guys, can’t you read this sentence? Why can’t? ‘Cause you are Japanese.”
A Japanese coworker showed this to me. As an American, I can read this easily because I was not raised in the Japanese education system. If you know any Japanese people try this out on them and see if they can read this. My wife couldn’t read it. My bilingual daughter had a bit better luck, actually. It goes to show that it is true that bilingual people have a different approach to problem solving than regular people. This goofy font is meant to look Japanese, borrowing from actual Japanese writing to come up with an alphabetical substitute. A Japanese person will see jibberish while someone who was not raised to read Japanese can read this fairly easily.
This is an example of cognitive bias. One’s biases shape how they perceive the world. It shows how people need to expand their thinking in order to change their worldview. We are constantly lied to, such as diamonds being rare gems, soy being healthy for you, fluoride being good for your teeth, flu vaccines can prevent you from catching the flu, chemotherapy being able to treat cancer, etc. And as this example shows, cognitive bias can depend on the context of one’s culture. We’re taught that Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack out of the blue, or that aluminum airplanes could slice straight through solid steel-frame buildings like butter on 9/11. The good news is that it appears that increasingly these days, more and more people are waking up to the fact that they’ve been lied to about a great number of things. Welcome to the Great Awakening.
This dialogue actually happened yesterday morning after breakfast:
Ulan: “Bring me a plastic bag. Now.”
Me: “What’s the magic word?”
Ulan: “…SHIT.”
Me: “No, the other magic word.”
She’s crazy. But you know, I admire that.
She’s also LITERALLY HITLER.
“Please, show us mercy and forgive us. Don’t let the way ahead be one of darkness. As we stumble down the path of our sinful history, let there always be one shining star to show the way.”
Royal Space Force was a masterpiece movie that was woefully underappreciated. Plus the soundtrack was composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who recently passed away. Shiro becomes the first man into space, and there as he is enveloped in peace and tranquility, he finds solace with God and understands the message of salvation he had been struggling with throughout the movie.
On the chalkboard outside of a bar near one of the schools I work at, this big drawing of Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service welcomes customers. This is one of the many things you’ll never see in the United States. I can’t imagine anything as cute and charming at a bar where I am from, nor even a chalkboard, really.