Category: general

I’m kind of fascinated by the Japanese underworld syndicates, so here are a couple of articles about the recent change in leadership of the Yamaguchi-gumi.

CNN: Report: New head for Japan gang

The Yamaguchi-gumi, already Japan’s largest syndicate, grew by 1,100 to 39,200 last year and comprised 45.1 percent of Japan’s total underworld members.

Kyodo (by way of Japan Today): Largest yakuza gang holds ‘change of power’ ceremony

Kenichi Shinoda, the Yamaguchi-gumi’s No. 2 man, formally became the sixth boss of Japan’s largest crime syndicate in a ceremony held Saturday at its headquarters in Kobe. The ceremony, marking the first change of power for the Yamaguchi-gumi in 16 years, was attended by some 100 leaders and members of affiliated groups nationwide, police said.

I’d been noticing speculation about a housing bubble on MSN for quite some time. (Here’s a quick Google search that will get you a bunch of current articles on the subject, but will degrade as the years pass and be utterly useless to my biographers.) These rumors were dismissed by the Fed, as I understand it.

Yesterday, Alan Greenspan pretty much admitted that yes, there is a housing bubble. (Via Drudge.)

While this is bad news for anyone who hopes to make a profit on their current property, it might work out well for us, should the crash happen before we buy our house. :>

MSNBC: Tourist perch to be built at Grand Canyon

An American Indian tribe with land along the Grand Canyon is planning to build a glass-bottomed walkway that will jut out 70 feet from the canyon’s edge.

The horseshoe-shaped skywalk, expected to open in January, is part of the Hualapai Tribe’s $40 million effort to turn 1,000 acres of reservation land into a tourist destination that will also feature an Indian village and Western-themed town.

Look at that thing!

How terrifying would that be?!

Of course, I want to go…

I’ve actually never been to the Grand Canyon. My mom has; when she was growing up, her parents took her and her siblings on a road trip around the US. I’ve always wanted to do that. I’m pretty sure Dad’s been out there too, though I’m not positive. He traveled all over the place when he was a journeyman wireman.

Someday I’ll see the West!

Eric Burns has an inspiring post up about hitting a milestone in his fight against obesity. Congratulations, and best of luck to him!

(My personal weight loss seems to have stalled. What I was doing before is not enough to continue losing weight, apparently.)

Originally, I was supposed to be going to a NACA workshop today–that’s why I’m not at work. However, Sean worked his 1 to 10 pm shift this week, and it just wasn’t possible to get ourselves moving early enough to make it on time for the workshop. Sean’s gone back to bed; I’m a morning person, so I’m stuck being awake and websurfing and feeling like I’m playing hooky.

I think the past three days have gotten me quasi-adjusted to being a full-time worker again, so right now it seems like I really ought to be doing something. I have the whole day today to do whatever I want, and tomorrow will be the same way. Crazy!

Next week, I’m going to be working on Saturday, but I’ll have Sunday free. I’m still not sure if only having one day off a week will be enough R&R for me. We’ll just have to see. I’ve been thinking of other things I might do, like going in one hour earlier on the weekdays to pick up 4 hours and then either only working 4 hour shifts every Saturday or working a full 8 hour shift every other Saturday, but I don’t know yet. I’ll have to think about it some more, and of course consult my boss to see if he’d even let me.

Going in an hour early would mean I’d have to leave home at 7, which would be a bit more of a morning rush than I normally like. Right now I get up at 6, get my shower and get dressed, pack lunches and clean the kitchen, and putter around online until 8, then leave for work. On Thursdays it’s the same except that I leave at 7:30. I think 6 is about as early as I want to get up in the morning, so going in an hour earlier would halve my morning me-time.

By the way, I really like my new job. I was feeling a little disquiet due to the fact that my new boss reminds me a little of my former boss…but they seem to only be similar in good qualities, or qualities that don’t really matter. My new boss is very supportive of my creative efforts, and he treats me like a professional. I truly appreciate that, and it makes me want to do my best. This is the kind of working environment I’ve been looking for!

…I’d look for someone in their 50s or so, with blue eyes, who could invoke the standard anime crazy grandpa. Either he’d already have red hair, or it’d be dyed for the flashbacks. Then, for the regular scenes, he’d wear makeup and have his hair dyed white.

The Dumbledores in the existing Harry Potter movies don’t really work for me. Hai has pointed out that the first one seemed way too frail, and the second one seemed young but weird. I think they were both too solemn. Dumbledore is nuts! That needs to come out from the very beginning.

Via the Keenspot newsbox, I discovered yesterday that Filthy Lies!, a comic I don’t normally read, is having a fun Harry Potter crossover event thingy. It starts here.

There’s some really good stuff in that parody so far.

Meanwhile, Sluggy is also doing a Harry Potter story, as Torg the Lastnameless One returns to Hogglerynth for his third year. (As Torg said to Homogenize Milktoast, “Wasn’t second year two years ago?”) That parody starts here. It hasn’t been as memorable as the Filthy Lies! parody, but today’s was excellent:

If you know of any other Potter parodies on the web, let me know! (Yes, I am quite happily aware of this one ;> I wouldn’t say no to similar stuff!)

They don’t ask me to “catch the phones”. I don’t even have a phone.

Score!

That is all.

August 31 has been named BlogDay by Nir Ofir, because 3108 kind of looks like “BLOG” if you squint and tilt your head slightly to the left.

The idea is pretty neat: on that day, participating bloggers will post about 5 interesting blogs that are preferably from a different country/culture than their own. This deluge of recommendations will be a cultural exchange and provide opportunities for some great reading.

I’m looking forward to participating…with some measure of trepidation. After all, these are supposed to be new recommendations. My blogroll stays perfectly up to date, because it’s generated by my RSS reader. This means that I’ve been recommending the stuff I already read all along. In order to really participate, I feel that I ought to go out and find five all-new blogs to recommend–and really, I’d like to recommend blogs written in English by people of other countries. Right now I don’t read very many blogs like that, and all of my Japan blogs are written by English-speaking foreigners who happen to be living in Japan. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

So it will be interesting to see what I’m able to find before the 31st.

Are you participating?

[Here is the groovy Technorati tag that I have to put in BlogDay posts to show that I’m participating, even though I think it looks totally goofy to have tags in the body of a post, and I’m hoping that I can find some better way to do it when I switch to WordPress (maybe with categories or something).]

Look at these pictures that accompanied this CNN article. That’s just crazy!

Two people have been injured in the typhoon so far.

CNN weather anchor Mari Ramos said Friday the typhoon was weakening rapidly.

She said the weather would improve and the high winds and sea would begin to abate, but the very heavy rainfalls associated with the typhoon meant there was still a danger of floods and landslides.

Kyodo news agency said Mawar was the second typhoon to make landfall on the Japanese archipelago this year.

Best wishes to everyone in eastern Japan. The typhoon may affect some of my favorite bloggers: Jeff Laitila lives in Yokosuka (the site of the first image), and Justin Klein has been visiting Tokyo. (Of course, Jun-Jun-chan is in Tokyo, too…)

Although he is of Palestinian heritage, Sami Habbas has lived in the US since he was 3. Somehow, a credit card company had him on file as “Palestinian Bomber”, which is how he was addressed on the envelope, in the letter, and on the phone when he called to ask what was going on:

When he called the company, JPMorgan Chase & Co., provided his ZIP code and invitation number, two operators said to him: “Yes, Mr. Bomber, what can we do for you?”

There is inherent humor in this–the phone operators not noticing the name “Palestinian Bomber”, for one thing (reminds me of this story)–but ultimately it’s not cool. It would seem that Mr. Habbas was added to a list somewhere by someone who was aware of his heritage. A neighbor? It’s creepy to think about.

The Augusta Chronicle has a story about how the city might not even own the land it’s been leasing to Alltel for a cell phone tower. The land is in dispute due to an historic cemetery on the property.

That’s not why I’m linking, though; this is:

Jim Wall, a former city attorney, declined to comment since he is no longer the city attorney.

Isn’t that the most useless piece of information you’ve ever seen? Thanks for that hard-hitting reporting!

Yahoo!: Singapore locks up U.S. man for possessing porn

Despite efforts to loosen some of its social controls, many tough rules remain in Singapore. “Playboy” magazine is banned, while oral sex remains technically illegal under a law that says “whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animals” can be fined and jailed up to 10 years, or even for life.

In recent years, Singapore has partially relaxed its famous ban on chewing gum, allowed some bars to stay open for 24 hours and ended a ban on the popular U.S. sitcom “Sex and the City.”

Meh, they’re going soft. ;>

To find out what undergraduate life is like today, a professor at Northern Arizona University enrolled as a freshman and moved into a dorm for a year.

Part of the trick to college life, she learned from good students, was being able to quickly decipher what work needed to be done and what could be skipped. Those management skills helped students balance classes, part-time work and involvement in volunteer or professional groups, Small said.

She found some of the coursework tough and had to seek tutoring for a class far outside her field of study. “It was a hectic life,” she said.

Small also said she found current undergraduates faced more pressure to pick a major that readily translated into a job that could pay off student loans.

Travis Shumake, student body president and a senior at NAU’s School of Hotel and Restaurant Management, said he sees that all the time — students choosing his program because it provides the “fastest results at the highest income.”

Small said her generation wasn’t as career-oriented in college.

“It was an era of anti-materialism. It was kind of nerdy then to talk about careers,” she said. “Now, different things are nerdy.”

I have to wonder if that last bit has something to do with increased college enrollment. In years past, the majority of college students were people with high incomes who didn’t necessarily have to worry much about what would happen after college. Nowadays we’ve got people racking up loan debt left and right.