Guy's Books and Thoughts

I saw on NHK news that the price of eggs is going up due to the rise in the price of chicken feed which is made from corn. The rise in corn price is due to the stupid ethanol policy pursued in the U.S. Japan is dependent on the United States for corn and wheat. Corn ordinarily used for food is used for fuel. Less corn for food means a higher price for corn. I should add that the stupid ethanol policy has also impacted the price of bread and other wheat based products. Less wheat is grown in favor of corn. This means a smaller supply of wheat. And in a case of supply and demand, less wheat means higher prices. So the price of pasta, bread and other wheat based products has gone up in Japan.

I think a possible short term solution Japan could take to check the high price of eggs is to use the "emergency" rice stored in warehouses for chicken feed. Japan has been buying rice from other countries and storing it in warehouses. I think this rice is bought to avoid the charge of protectionism. From what I can tell the rice is just sitting in the warehouses and not released to the market. The NIKKEI WEEKLY suggested releasing this rice to keep the price of rice from skyrocketing as it has in other countries. Why not use some of this rice for chicken feed? Chickens can eat rice. And brown rice is more nutritious for the chicken than corn.

Another helpful solution is to adopt the terraced farming practiced by the ancients in Latin America. My friend, Dr. Donald Chittick, in his book THE PUZZLE OF ANCIENT MAN, pointed out the benefits of terraced farming. Some people reconstructed this ancient method of farming and achieved a bumper crop using such methods. In some cases the yield was seven times the normal yield. Using such methods an estimated 100,000 people could be supported. The source cited for this book was an article entitled "Lost Empires of the Americas" found in U.S NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, April 2, 1990 pg 53. I talked to Dr. Chitick and he thought that such terraced farming could be adopted to Japan's hilly regions. Granted one may not be able to grow rice, but perhaps other fruits and vegetables can be grown. The Japanese government should consider encouraging such farming. Direct laws mandating such farming are probably not effective. But perhaps people can be encouraged to engage in such farming through homesteading agreements and tax incentives. Perhaps businesses could also be encouraged to move to such rural areas since cities like Tokyo are getting overcrowded.
Perhaps this type farming might provide some relief to the food problem in Japan. Granted crops cannot be grown overnight. But this terraced farming could provide a longer term solution to the food problems of Japan.

Guy

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In the May 12, 2008 edition of the NIKKEI WEEKLY, a company named Kongo Gumi was mentioned. The company lasted as a family run business for over 1,400 years until 2006! The company apparently had financial problems and another company, the Takamatsu Corporation took it over. According to wikipedia this is the oldest continuous company in the world. No, I don't think I'm related to the Takamatsu Corporation.

In the following week, the NIKKEI WEEKLY ran an article called "'Creative Destruction' helps age-old firms." According to this article Japan has the highest number of companies over 200 years old at 3,113. Germany has the second highest number at about 1,500 and France has the third largest number at little over 300.

I guess the secret to the longevity of these Japanese companies is their willingness to change and adapt to new technology. The companies engage in "creative destruction" in eliminating the old business to make way for the new business. One of the companies, profiled, Suzuyo, withdrew from selling coal as oil became the prominent fuel, source and switched to selling gasoline. Now the company is planning to go into the airline business.

One way a company survives is by anticipating future trends and plan according to those trends. Unfortunately it is not always easy to tell what the future trends will be. I remember a video store switching to laser disks in anticipation of consumers buying laser disks over VHS videos. Unfortunately for that owner, that did not happen and his store closed. How was that owner to know that DVD was the format of the future? One has to be very careful in discerning future trends.

Sometimes the change is not in the product. One company decided to introduce franchising to survive. Another company, which sold dried bonito (fish), used shopping vouchers as a marketing tool. The voucher, shaped like a bonito, could be exchanged for a real dried bonito.

This article on the "creative destruction" used by the Japanese companies to survive illustrated the foresight and creativity used by the companies to survive. Some may also say the companies had good luck. But one may also argue that perhaps a providential hand was guiding these companies.

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I guess news in Japan is sort of like news in the U.S. Depressing. I watch NHK news in English. For some reason the news mentions depressing crime stories and other wrong doings. Of course it has to do its civic duty and report on events such as earthquakes and other natural disasters. I've talked to my students from other countries such s France, Germany and Korea. It seems as if the news media there also likes to report depressing news. At least two of my students said they don't watch the news. They get their information from the Internet. I head the China and the former Yugoslavia never reported negative news. I guess they have to say everything is "wonderful" in their "paradise."

It is interesting to see what gets reported in Japan and in the U.S. I doubt if the American news media is interested in the rising price of food in Japan. Due to the rising price of corn, the price of chicken feed has gone up in Japan. Thus the price of eggs is increasing. This is due to the stupid push for using corn as fuel. Corn which could have been sold for chicken feed is now being used for ethanol. In addition American agribusiness is growing less wheat. That means the price of bread, pasta and other related wheat products is going up. The policy of using corn as fuel is turning out to be a disaster. Granted such a policy may make "environmentalists" feel good. But what do they know about the average consumers who have to struggle with rising food prices? I wonder if "environmentalist" policies and
"Environmentalists" are disaster to the environment?

Japan has a different emphasis in sports coverage. I doubt if American TV covers Japanese baseball. The Japanese coverage of American Major League Baseball seems focused on the Japanese players in MLB. One does not a complete listing of MLB games played on NHK. Of course the broadcast, I see, only lasts about 30 minutes. And the emphasis in sports would be on Japanese athletes and sports. There was a story about the Japanese woman who won the Marathon in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. She will be competing in the Beijing Olympics. Before she competed in the Athens Olympics, she shouted out her intention to win in Greek. This time she declared her intention to win in Chinese. This seems a bit superstitious to me. I don't know if she can win this time. She is 30 years old. And I'm not sure if Beijing has the same environment as Athens. I think one Ethiopian athlete said he would not compete because of the air pollution.

There is a German TV broadcast called Deutschwella in my area. I may have seen one or two broadcasts from that German TV program. Somebody informed me that Deutschwella is simply a recap of most of the U.S. news. Well, I guess maybe Deutschwella is not all that great or different from U.S. news. I wish the other foreign news programs would have the option of listening to an English version of their broadcast. There used to be a magazine which had selections of news stories from all over the world. I think the magazine may have been called WORLD PRESS. But I don't think it exists anymore. Maybe someone ought to have some sort of "news from around the world" program.

Guy

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I saw a video by Mike Anderson about cancer. I am not sure if I agree with everything in the DVD, but I think he does give one food for thought.

The video is divided into two parts. The first part talks about vested interests in the cancer industry. Mr. Anderson claims that the conventional cancer treatments such as radiation, chemotherapy and surgery do not really work well and that the "cancer industry" is against finding a cheap cure. According to him the government agencies regulating medical care are controlled by the very industries, they are supposed to regulate. Free market advocate Thomas Sowell makes the same point about regulators ending up being controlled by the industries they are supposed to regulate in his book BASIC ECONOMICS. I don't think more government will solve this problem .What happens with regulating bodies, is that certain vested interests can use the regulating body to stamp out rivals. And this is what Mike Anderson claims. For some reason, this video makes me think of the opposition that opponents of evolution face. Sure, evolutionists like to portray themselves as altruistic, dispassionate seekers of truth. But that is more a case of self congratulatory rhetoric than reality as demonstrated in the Ben Stein movie EXPELLED. The fact of the matter is that people have a tendency to abuse their power. It is interesting when opinions coincide. Mike Anderson really blasts Morris Fishbein, who was president of the AMA. I talked to the son of a female medical doctor, who practiced medicine around the 1900's. His mother did not like Mr. Fishbein.

The talk about the decreasing ineffectiveness of chemotherapy ties in with natural selection. Some cancer cells are already resistant to chemo, so all chemo does is kill of the vulnerable cells and leave the resistant cells remaining. So the cancer comes back with a vengeance. Note the cancers cells do not evolve to become resistant. They already are resistant. What the chemo does is wipe out the competing cancer cells and leave the resistant cells standing.

The second part of the video spent a good deal of time on nutrition. The video made the point that while pollution can play a factor, diet is a more important factor. Okinawans apparently have a low cancer rate in spite of the industrial pollution. The dietary recommendations were interesting. According to the people interviewed plant protein is better for the health than animal protein. This makes me think of the Garden of Eden. In the beginning we were vegetarians. But after the fall and the flood, animal flesh became an acceptable source of food. We now live in an imperfect world, so vegetarianism may not be a viable option for many people. I am also reminded of the denunciation of "gluttonous eaters of meat" mentioned in one of the books of the Bible. So the Bible allows for meat eating, but not to excess.

I note while the speaker in the film would not personally take the conventional approach to treating cancer, he does not order to people to solely follow the Alternative approach. He suggests that one can follow sound nutritional practices and undergo conventional treatment.

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The anime meeting, on June 14, 2008, included the series FATE, STAY NIGHT and a Detective Conan movie.

The FATE STAY NIGHT series is a about a contest between teams consisting of
Masters( human) who are paired with Servants ("epic heroes" from the past or future) They fight against each other to win the prize of the "holy grail." Whoever gains this prize gets their wish granted. The main team in this series is a schoolboy named Shirou and his servant who belongs to the Saber class of fighters. Hence her name "Saber." Later we learn she her real name is Arturia. In this story King Arthur was really the daughter of Uther Pendragon, not the son. Shirou and Saber have formed an alliance with the Master/ Servant team of Rin and Archer. In this episode, Saber is in danger of disappearing, since she used up her power in her last battle. The only solution is for Shirou to supply Saber with some sort of power called "mana." But Shirou, unlike other masters, who are supposed to be mages or musician does not seem to have that power to transfer mana. The only other option is to have Saber attack people. But Shriou did not think it was right to kill or hurt innocent people to save Saber. This is a very real life question. How far does one go in saving a life? I am trying to remember what a doctor said. I think he said he would take any means necessary within certain boundaries In other words, killing an innocent person to save someone else cross those boundaries. Hello this almost sounds like the question of embryonic stem cell "research." In this episode Shirou is captured by another master named Ilya. Saber senses Shirou is in danger and sets out to rescue him. She asks Rin for help. Archer says that one should not bother to rescue Shirou. But since Rin is the master, Archer does have to follow Rin's decision. The episode ends with Saber, Rin and Archer setting out to rescue Shirou. Ironically, in a later episode, Archer is the one who ends up sacrificing his "life" for the group. It later revealed that Archer is the future self of Shirou. Unlike the idealistic noble Shirou, Archer is cynical and thinks of Shirou as naïve. But in this later episode Archer performs this deed of self sacrifice.

The Detective Conan movie is about a teen age detective, named Shinichi Kudo, who was poisoned and shrunk to the form of a little boy. As a little boy he takes on the name Edogawa Conan. This series in English is known as CASE CLOSED. A little Japanese literary history may be in order here. Shortly after Japan surrendered, the Occupation forces in Japan banned military literature. I believe the Occupation forces encouraged mysteries as an alternative literature to military epics. Agatha Christie's works were translated into Japanese about this time. Also after the war a Japanese writer with the pen name Edogawa Rampo arrived on the literary scene. The author adopted this name in reference to the writer Edgar Allen Poe. I read that Edogawa Rampo sounds like the name of the American writer if one says it real fast. The Japanese apparently have had an interest in the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle. So the Conan Edogawa character is a reference to two mystery writers EDGAR ALLEN POE and Arthur CONAN Doyle. In Japanese the name would read Edogawa Conan.
Conan feared for the safety of his friends and loved ones and that is why he did not let anyone but a few select people know he was really Shinichi Kudo. His high school girlfriend only knows him as Conan Edogawa, a little boy. He also has a voice changer, so he can change his voice to sound like his old self and talk to his girlfriend by phone. He can't show himself to her in his old high school self. I think part of his quest is to get back to normal. In this movie someone issued a challenge to his old high school self. This challenger burned buildings and planted some bombs. In the end we find that the culprit is an architect who destroyed his own creations because of aesthetic dissatisfactions with his creations. I suspect the writer of this movie was making a reference to the Ayn Rand novel THE FOUNTAINHEAD. The movie reaches a climatic ending where Shinichi Kudo's girlfriend, Ran, must disarm the bomb planted by the architect. Conan is on the other side of the wall. Ran can't see him. So Conan uses the voice changer to sound like his old self Shinichi. I should point out that Ran had met the architect before. She told him that she and Shinichi were supposed to see a movie. She was planning to give him a red sweater as a present since red was a favorite color for both of them. They movie they were going to see had some mention of a red thread. It was about a couple who had their pinky fingers bound together by a red thread. I guess that was to show how close they were as a couple. The architect, who planted the bomb, knew that red was Ran and Shinichi's favorite color. So in the end Ran had to choose between cutting the red wire or the blue wire. Conan realized at the last second that the blue wire was the wire to be cut, but he could not contact her. I think so rescue workers pulled him away from the wall.. Ran had to make the decision on her own. She correctly cut the blue wire. The architect registered a look of astonishment on his face. Apparently he expected her to cut the red wire since that was her favorite color. Later Conan tells Ran that Shinichi was puzzled why she cut the blue wire instead of the red. She mentioned the film and the red thread. I guess cutting the red wire would be like cutting the red thread. And that would be a loss of connection between the couple in the movie, and Shinichi and Ran as well. Yes, I know this is just a story. But this movie made me think about the limitations of human reason and how one thinks. The architect thought he had planned his trick well. He failed to see how Ran would think. Or perhaps he was thinking that Conan's logical mind would lead him right into a trap. It is interesting to see how sometimes ignorance can somehow work to benefit a person, a family or a nation. No, I'm not saying that ignorance is bliss. But sometimes ignorance can cause a blunder into something big. Portugal knew more about geography than Spain and declined to sponsor Columbus's voyage West to Asia. But Spain's sponsorship of Columbus led to an empire which surpassed Portugal's. Logic and reason are great tools, but no guarantee success. I think the providential aspect to life must also be considered.

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