I’ve been reading this article all day (it’s long, and I’ve had other stuff to do):

ASIAN POP The Gadget Gap: Why does all the cool stuff come out in Asia first?

The article states that Japan’s tech culture is driven by teenagers, boys and girls alike, rather than by business, which is what drives America’s tech culture. Here’s an interesting snippet:

The cell-phone craze was born soon after the launch of NTT DoCoMo’s wildly successful i-Mode wireless Internet service in 1999 gave rise to a phenomenon known as “keitai [mobile-phone] culture,” fed by a generation of kids known as oyayubisoku, or “thumb tribes,” whose handset addiction has shaped public health (as more and more “thumb princes and princesses” succumb to repetitive stress injuries); sexual mores (as enterprising schoolgirls subscribe to cell-phone “dating services,” where they are introduced to lonely and generous older men); media consumption (as magazine vendors and bookstores find that browsers now snap high-quality cell-cam pictures of articles they want to read rather than purchasing their products); and impulse commerce (as Japanese cell phones increasingly become equipped with “e-money” devices that allow them to be used to purchase small items).

Unlike in the United States, where consumer electronics is an overwhelmingly male-driven industry, the critical vector in the propagation of keitai culture was its embrace by adolescent girls. That this demographic drives the market is no coincidence. Like many Japanese marketers, NTT DoCoMo had determined that i-Mode would live and die based on whether teen fashion queens adopted the handsets as the season’s must-own accessories. A year and a half of aggressive marketing later, with 30 million active users, DoCoMo became the world’s largest Internet access provider, surpassing longtime leader America On-Line. More than 10 million of these users are young women.

“A couple of months ago, Newsweek Japan did a special issue that listed the 100 most influential Japanese people in history,” says Douglas Krone with a chuckle. “Along with ancient emperors, best-selling authors, inventors and scientists, they listed ‘Japanese Schoolgirls,’ because they’ve been so influential, inside of Japan and out.”

This perception of technology-as-fashion means that the coolness factor drives most technology purchases in Japan…which explains why they get all the cool stuff first.

Good article.

Famous Atheist Now Believes in God

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

[…]

Yet biologists’ investigation of DNA “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved,” Flew says in the new video, “Has Science Discovered God?”

This bit is particularly interesting:

“I’m thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins,” he said. “It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose.”

I wonder how Christians will react to having their god described as a “cosmic Saddam Hussein”.

I don’t know how Eric Burns manages to write as much as he does. And everything he writes is good. For an example of something extraordinarily long and yet packed with thoughtful discussion, see his latest: Sacred hamburger: the role of our heroes in the decline of the newspaper comics page. (Whew, even that title is long…)

This is a logical, well-written, thoroughly researched piece, and it deserves the attention of everyone who is even remotely interested in comics. His conclusion may surprise you.

I have hurt two people recently, two people who are extraordinarily close to me, and who I would be devastated to lose. I hurt them because I’m selfish, and because I react emotionally without thinking.

This can’t go on. I can’t let it. And I won’t.

One of my coworker’s aunts is 84 years old, is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and is about to die. My coworker stays with her two days a week. Yesterday she was called to go see her, as the doctor said she didn’t have much time left. Somehow, the aunt has held on through the night and to this morning, but she could go at any time.

My coworker spoke about her aunt this morning. She said, “She has a way of making everyone feel like her favorite.” She said that her aunt has friends everywhere, that everyone who knows her calls her Aunt.

All I have ever wanted, seemingly, is to be Important. I mull over my own life constantly, worrying about whether or not I’m going to be rich and famous. I pester everyone else with my problems, then get irritated if they tell me about theirs. I give not out of a sense of kindness or a desire to help, but because I want to feel better about myself, or because I feel obligated. And I write people off easily, thinking that being bothered is the worst thing that can happen to me, and that I should only allow people who don’t irritate me or cause trouble for me to be around me. The very few exceptions I’ve made to this rule have mainly been family members. On the Internet, it has been especially easy for me to write people off.

I realized this morning that my coworker’s aunt was loved by many not for being rich and famous, but for being who she was. A beautiful person who cared about others, who made them feel special. She’s dying right now surrounded by people who love her. As my other coworker said, “What a wonderful way to die.”

If I become rich and famous, and if the cost is all my friendships, what will surround me when I die?

I realize that this isn’t black and white. I’m not completely Ebenezer Scrooge. I have been a good person–sometimes.

But sometimes isn’t good enough, especially if I spend the rest of the time hurting people I love.

It stops now.

and I’m also the suckiest person alive.

I mentioned the plight of Japan’s Crown Princess recently. Now I see an article indicating that she claims to be recovering.

“I’ve had some hard times, but I feel that my condition is gradually getting better,” she said. “It may still take some time before I can fully resume my official duties, but I want to work toward recovery so that I can quickly show myself in a healthy state.”

I wish her the best.

Just yesterday at work, Audrey was talking about how back in World War II, when someone committed a crime, they were offered the choice of going to jail, or joining the army. This morning, I see this headline on Japan Today:

Takebe suggests delinquents, potential criminals join SDF in Iraq

I’m not sure how you would determine that someone is going to commit a crime…that seems a little strange.

It’s weird.

I have been working in this office for as long as 2go-Box has been here. That’s been since February or something. And in all that time, I never noticed, until just now, that the stripes on the wallpaper alternate.

There’s an antique-looking beige “canvas” of sorts, and then there are these bold strips consisting of five stripes. The outermost stripes are red with a squarish curled Egyptian pattern in gold along them. The three inner stripes are alternately green and blue. I just now noticed that the pattern of green and blue alternates from bold strip to bold strip; first it’s green-blue-green, and then it’s blue-green-blue.

What state of mind am I usually in, that I never noticed this before, and what state of mind am I in now that let me notice it?

Heh.

Click here to get your secret Christmas name. I nabbed this from BT.

Me: I don’t have anything to be upset about right now!

Life: Oh, my bad. Here you go.

Well, the thing I was upset about isn’t really an issue now. I went directly to the person, instead of continuing to draw my own conclusions, and while it turned out to be was very similar to what I’d heard, there were subtle differences that were enough to make me feel that I was important, that I hadn’t just been forgotten, or added in as an afterthought.

And that, my friends, is a run-on sentence. I leave it unrevised for your reading enjoyment.

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough – Parents Go on Strike, Move to Front Yard

I don’t think I could do that. I’d have to have a tent with an Internet connection…

This is the sort of linguistics that gets press, even though there is so much more to the field. But even so, this, like all of linguistics, is absolutely fascinating. I love the field I majored in.

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough – Linguist Deciphers Uses of Word ‘Dude’

I had some weird dreams last night, due to being upset I suppose.

In one of the dreams, I was using the cookie press/icing pump that Mom sent me to pour chocolate everywhere. Connor and Logan and this other kid were there. Connor asked if he could use the pump to put chocolate on his cookies for lunch. I said sure, if it was okay with Dad. AJ, however, said, “You had cookies for breakfast, and you’re having cookies for dinner. You don’t need to have cookies for lunch.”

Connor went into a corner, facing it, and started crying really loudly. I knew he would get into trouble for throwing a fit, so I ran over to him quickly. As I did so, I heard Logan starting to cry, too. I had to act fast.

“Connor,” I said, “don’t cry. If you cry, Daddy will get mad, and then no one will be happy. Don’t worry, you can have cookies at dinner. It’s okay not to have them at lunch, right?”

As I was speaking and hugging Connor, Logan ran up and started hugging me too. Both of them calmed down and stopped fussing after awhile. Disaster averted!

That was one of the dreams. The other two I’m thinking of (I know there were more) were both naked dreams. In the first naked dream, I was at the office. In the morning, no one is usually here, and I suppose that’s why I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Dream logic. However, when I went out of the office to head into Robert’s to get something, I saw a woman standing in the hallway. She had blond hair, so I’m thinking she was Tracy, who works at the end of the hall. I quickly covered myself and ducked back into the office. As I frantically searched for my shirt, I realized that the blinds were all open, and, since it was dark outside and bright inside, I had been giving everyone full view of the shirtless me.

The second naked dream was weirder still. I was at home, completely topless this time, and someone was moving in next door. Only it wasn’t across the way, like normal. These people’s new apartment could only be reached by going through our apartment, in through our front door and then down a hall that was approximately where our bedroom is now. This means that when they were all coming in, they could see straight into my living room…just as I was walking towards the door. I shrieked and covered up, and they all said “Sorry”, but then they simply continued to come in and move their stuff. I was confused, because the hallway to their apartment was where my bedroom should be, so I didn’t know where to go to find clothes.

I’m not sure what that was all about.