I do like mountain music, though I wouldn't qualify myself as a "big" fan.
Today's discovery:
WMMT, broadcasting from Whitesburg, KY (about an hour from my parents' place), using 15,000 watts, a decent Internet service, and an all-volunteer staff.
The mountain version of "All My Loving" was nice, though I'm actually partial to instrumentals. I like the traditional mountain music, with dulcimer, fiddle, banjo, including the gospels. Bluegrass is okay, but I'm not a big fan of modern country. I'm not wild about steel guitar and, despite (because of?) being a drummer, I don't like the heavy drums and simple 4/4 beat of a lot of commercial country.
Just to blow my mind, after three hours of "Bluegrass Express", they wedged some Latin jazz in between "I Need You Like a Train Needs a Track" and "He Got You, I Got the Dog" (how can you go wrong with a song that starts, "He's sleeping in my double-wide, hunting on my land" and proceeds to conclude that getting the dog was the better end of the deal?).
I commented recently that the problem with a lot of Internet music services is that they are predictable, and hence have no personality. This one - and my favorite, KCSM - definitely have personality.
And every WMMT announcer I've heard so far sounds like someone I went to high school with. Ah, the sounds of home...
Friday, May 15, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Kabuki Driving
After more than five years of living here in Japan, and with the expiration of my California driver's license looming (now only days away), I finally decided to get a Japanese driver's license.
Six weeks, six trips to the testing center (more than an hour away), innumerable, insufferable hours spent in plastic chairs crammed too close together to be comfortable, three actual chances sitting in the driver's seat with an inspector, and more than three hundred bucks later...
I still don't have a license.
In fact, given that the effort and expense have already exceeded the license's value to me, I'm thinking about just giving up. For Japan, this is more of an inconvenience to Mayumi than to me; once a year or so, we rent a car and go somewhere, and since I don't have a license, she does all the driving, while I look out the window, fiddle with the radio, read or nap. For most business trips, I'm actually *forbidden* from renting a car (regardless of how realistic a restriction that is for the city I'm travelling to), so it's not a big deal there, either. The only time I *really* need a license is when we're in West Virginia, visiting family, or the far-too-rare occasions when we get to California for pleasure.
(I am told by friends that I *can* renew my California driver's license, even though I no longer live there, but you have to appear in person and get a retinal scan -- and the CA DMV has cut hours and closed offices as a result of the financial crisis.)
There would be a certain satisfaction in taking the moral stand that we actively oppose the use of private cars. But I'm really not in that camp. I think the world would be a better place -- and Americans healthier -- if Americans drove less, used less oil, and ate less beef, and Japanese actually attempted to manage ocean fish stocks rather than simply exterminate them, but I'm not advocating the complete banishment of cars, beef, and sushi. We choose not to have a car here, since we think it's healthier and better for the environment, but don't press that choice on others. (I admit, we still eat sushi, though I'm talking about the fish more, and slowly working toward lowering the catch limit on our take at a sushi restaurant.) And I'd be lying if I said that economics didn't figure into it -- we couldn't afford to buy a car right now if we tried (we have a house and annual trips to the U.S. instead).
Anyway, I've been driving for more than a quarter of a century now. How could I possibly flunk a driving test, you ask? Ah, naive one, let me instruct you in the ways of this country...
First off, flunking is not unusual, it's the norm. The pass rate, I am told, is less than 30%, even among Japanese, and most of those who pass are clearly on their second or third (or fourth or fifth) attempt. In three attempts, in which I sat with groups of foreigners and Japanese returning from living overseas attempting to transfer their license to Japan, I have not yet seen a SINGLE person actually pass the driving test. One Japanese woman drove for years in California, and had driven more than 5,000 kilometers back in Japan using an international license that was about to expire, flunked it three times.
So, if each test were a random, independent variable (they're not) with a failure rate of 70%, about 35% of the people would flunk at least three tests.
The thing you have to understand is that it's not actual driving, it's Kabuki Driving: it involves exaggerated motions, long pauses for dramatic effect, an obscure vocabulary, and improbable sub-plots, and has only the most oblique relationship to everyday life. There's even an audience (they stick another testee in the back seat while you drive). The only thing it doesn't have is exotic costumes. (In fact, if I read the sign right, along with flip-flops, wooden "geta" sandals, and excessively high heels, you are not allowed to take the test while wearing a kimono. Go figure.)
The rules for getting a license differ depending on how you're going about it. Most Europeans can simply take a written test and be issued a license on the spot. Americans and most other Asians have to take the written test *and* a driving one. America is not a signatory to some international treaty (the Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners of war, I believe), and even if it were, there is no central authority in the U.S. Japan would have to decide whether or not to accept licenses from at least fifty-one different jurisdictions.
But still, for Americans with a license, the process is much easier than starting without any license at all. The written test is ridiculously easy -- ten true/false questions (in both English and Japanese) with 70% being a pass. Close your eyes and guess, and you've got a 17% percent chance of passing -- almost as good as passing the driving part with your eyes open. And the driving test is difficult, but easier than the one Japanese people go through.
For Japanese people with no license, the first thing they do is sort you based on whether or not you have a certificate from a driving school. Without one, they give you a harder driving test, which apparently no one ever passes, so in effect, you have to attend driving school first.
Driving schools here are a HUGE business. (I'm convinced that the schools themselves are run by ex-inspectors, making out like bandits after decades of civil servant penury.) There is no learner's permit here, so the only way you get enough experience to pass the test is by going to a driving school. At a cost of three thousand dollars, and sixty (yes, sixty!) hours of instruction.
And they wonder why the number of young Japanese people getting driver's licenses is declining.
The Japanese taking the regular route are herded through the system like cattle, and given a registration number, made to wait, made to drive, made to wait (okay, that part is the same for foreigners). After finishing the test, they are NOT TOLD whether or not they passed. After another round of waiting, the registration numbers of the people who passed are posted on a giant LED signboard. A cheer goes up from the hundred or so people who passed, and groans from the other hundreds who didn't.
Once you get to the actual driving part (which is run on a closed course about the size of two American football fields), the kabuki starts. They tell you that you start with 100 points, and as long as the penalties are less than 30 points, you'll pass. But at the end they won't tell you how many points you have, just whether or not you passed; modulo a few major fauxes pas, ultimately I'm sure it's up to the judgment of the inspector. Most of the tests I have seen actually ended before the course was completed, with an "Okay, you're done, you flunked, please return to the start." But getting all the way through the course doesn't mean you passed; I didn't this last time. For the foreigners, at least, they do have some pity, and the inspector will usually give you an oral summary of what you did wrong.
There are minus points for failing to adjust the position of the driver's seat and mirror. There are minus points for holding the steering wheel wrong, including turning your hand palm up and sticking it through the wheel, turning it from the inside. The easiest one for the inspector to use is, "You didn't do enough safety checking," by which he means that your head stopped swiveling on its neck for several seconds at some point.
The one that got me twice is turning too wide. It's a fair cop, as Monty Python would say: I'm not accustomed to driving on the wrong side of the road, so I pull too far out into the road as I turn, in order to avoid hitting the curb. That was the first and third tries. On the second, I was careful about that -- and wound up hitting a curb, which is an automatic fail. There is a tight spot called the "Crank", with two right-angle turns and tight walls, that the car just barely fits through. I cleared that easily -- then clipped the curb on the corner as I turned out of it into the wider street. Dang. That experience pushed me too far back the other way for the third try, apparently.
Before trying the first time, I read up on the process on the web. That taught me that you need to stop at stop signs for three full seconds, which is an eternity. In California, you could watch a stop sign all day, and the *total* amount of time cars spent stopped at the sign might not be three seconds.
But just reading someone's advice on the web will give you a false confidence that you can pass the test. The course is really not that difficult in terms of where you're asked to drive, but there are many small points the inspector is looking for and they grade quite harshly. After flunking the first time, I did a one-hour practice session with one of the inspectors, one Saturday morning.
It was a revelation. Before doing that, I had NO IDEA that they want you to take turns at 10km/hour -- about six miles an hour! That's the speed at which you pull into a parking spot, fer cryin' out loud! Likewise, there is one place on the course with a "caution" sign, and caution means 10km/h. The one "high speed" part of the course is 40km/hour, about 25mph. After learning this, I laughingly told my lead-footed sister that she could never pass the test, since you have to drive slow. It's probably true.
So, I am contemplating whether or not to give this one last shot. They gave me a test slot for the afternoon of my birthday, which is when my CA license expires. I may simply not go.
I no longer have any ego bound up in my driving abilities, though I certainly used to take pleasure in a sunset cruise on an open road. Now I feel that if I was told that I could never drive again, my reaction would probably be to simply shrug. My father's midlife crisis was a red Toyota Supra. My mom joked that the car was fine, as long as he didn't get the blonde to go with it. My midlife crisis arrived earlier, and has resulted so far in a Ph.D. and a faculty position.
Flunking is something of an embarrassment for me in the lab, though. Murai Lab hosts the "iCar" project, which has been working since the early 1990s on connecting cars to the Internet. We have a lot of car enthusiasts, including one student who reportedly used to race professionally, and several others who own sports cars (Beemers, Alfas, a Lotus, an RX-8) and take them out to Mount Fuji Speedway on weekends.
Speaking of which, one of our faculty members (late forties, has an Alfa and two Beemers, one of which was brand new...) lost his license last year. 55km/h OVER the speed limit. License yanked (not suspended, canceled outright), forbidden to reapply for a year. His year is almost up, so he is now back in driving school, spending sixty hours and three thousand bucks to enjoy the company of eighteen-year-olds hearing for the first time that a car usually has four tires and a steering wheel, so he can get back in the brand new Beemer two-seater. He and the others spend a fair amount of energy discussing "license tourism", taking the three grand and going to Europe and getting a license instead (European ones translate more easily than American ones). Sounds like a win to me.
No one I know will defend the system. It's clearly ridiculous. But in a larger social engineering context, maybe it makes sense. If it's not in Japan's interest to have too many people on the roads, maybe it *should* be hard to get a license, and it doesn't really matter whether it's difficult for a good reason or if it's the equivalent of reading Shakespeare while standing on your head. As a liberal with a belief that government should actively work toward creating the society we would like to have, this could be exhibit A. Hmm. Let me think about that.
Six weeks, six trips to the testing center (more than an hour away), innumerable, insufferable hours spent in plastic chairs crammed too close together to be comfortable, three actual chances sitting in the driver's seat with an inspector, and more than three hundred bucks later...
I still don't have a license.
In fact, given that the effort and expense have already exceeded the license's value to me, I'm thinking about just giving up. For Japan, this is more of an inconvenience to Mayumi than to me; once a year or so, we rent a car and go somewhere, and since I don't have a license, she does all the driving, while I look out the window, fiddle with the radio, read or nap. For most business trips, I'm actually *forbidden* from renting a car (regardless of how realistic a restriction that is for the city I'm travelling to), so it's not a big deal there, either. The only time I *really* need a license is when we're in West Virginia, visiting family, or the far-too-rare occasions when we get to California for pleasure.
(I am told by friends that I *can* renew my California driver's license, even though I no longer live there, but you have to appear in person and get a retinal scan -- and the CA DMV has cut hours and closed offices as a result of the financial crisis.)
There would be a certain satisfaction in taking the moral stand that we actively oppose the use of private cars. But I'm really not in that camp. I think the world would be a better place -- and Americans healthier -- if Americans drove less, used less oil, and ate less beef, and Japanese actually attempted to manage ocean fish stocks rather than simply exterminate them, but I'm not advocating the complete banishment of cars, beef, and sushi. We choose not to have a car here, since we think it's healthier and better for the environment, but don't press that choice on others. (I admit, we still eat sushi, though I'm talking about the fish more, and slowly working toward lowering the catch limit on our take at a sushi restaurant.) And I'd be lying if I said that economics didn't figure into it -- we couldn't afford to buy a car right now if we tried (we have a house and annual trips to the U.S. instead).
Anyway, I've been driving for more than a quarter of a century now. How could I possibly flunk a driving test, you ask? Ah, naive one, let me instruct you in the ways of this country...
First off, flunking is not unusual, it's the norm. The pass rate, I am told, is less than 30%, even among Japanese, and most of those who pass are clearly on their second or third (or fourth or fifth) attempt. In three attempts, in which I sat with groups of foreigners and Japanese returning from living overseas attempting to transfer their license to Japan, I have not yet seen a SINGLE person actually pass the driving test. One Japanese woman drove for years in California, and had driven more than 5,000 kilometers back in Japan using an international license that was about to expire, flunked it three times.
So, if each test were a random, independent variable (they're not) with a failure rate of 70%, about 35% of the people would flunk at least three tests.
The thing you have to understand is that it's not actual driving, it's Kabuki Driving: it involves exaggerated motions, long pauses for dramatic effect, an obscure vocabulary, and improbable sub-plots, and has only the most oblique relationship to everyday life. There's even an audience (they stick another testee in the back seat while you drive). The only thing it doesn't have is exotic costumes. (In fact, if I read the sign right, along with flip-flops, wooden "geta" sandals, and excessively high heels, you are not allowed to take the test while wearing a kimono. Go figure.)
The rules for getting a license differ depending on how you're going about it. Most Europeans can simply take a written test and be issued a license on the spot. Americans and most other Asians have to take the written test *and* a driving one. America is not a signatory to some international treaty (the Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners of war, I believe), and even if it were, there is no central authority in the U.S. Japan would have to decide whether or not to accept licenses from at least fifty-one different jurisdictions.
But still, for Americans with a license, the process is much easier than starting without any license at all. The written test is ridiculously easy -- ten true/false questions (in both English and Japanese) with 70% being a pass. Close your eyes and guess, and you've got a 17% percent chance of passing -- almost as good as passing the driving part with your eyes open. And the driving test is difficult, but easier than the one Japanese people go through.
For Japanese people with no license, the first thing they do is sort you based on whether or not you have a certificate from a driving school. Without one, they give you a harder driving test, which apparently no one ever passes, so in effect, you have to attend driving school first.
Driving schools here are a HUGE business. (I'm convinced that the schools themselves are run by ex-inspectors, making out like bandits after decades of civil servant penury.) There is no learner's permit here, so the only way you get enough experience to pass the test is by going to a driving school. At a cost of three thousand dollars, and sixty (yes, sixty!) hours of instruction.
And they wonder why the number of young Japanese people getting driver's licenses is declining.
The Japanese taking the regular route are herded through the system like cattle, and given a registration number, made to wait, made to drive, made to wait (okay, that part is the same for foreigners). After finishing the test, they are NOT TOLD whether or not they passed. After another round of waiting, the registration numbers of the people who passed are posted on a giant LED signboard. A cheer goes up from the hundred or so people who passed, and groans from the other hundreds who didn't.
Once you get to the actual driving part (which is run on a closed course about the size of two American football fields), the kabuki starts. They tell you that you start with 100 points, and as long as the penalties are less than 30 points, you'll pass. But at the end they won't tell you how many points you have, just whether or not you passed; modulo a few major fauxes pas, ultimately I'm sure it's up to the judgment of the inspector. Most of the tests I have seen actually ended before the course was completed, with an "Okay, you're done, you flunked, please return to the start." But getting all the way through the course doesn't mean you passed; I didn't this last time. For the foreigners, at least, they do have some pity, and the inspector will usually give you an oral summary of what you did wrong.
There are minus points for failing to adjust the position of the driver's seat and mirror. There are minus points for holding the steering wheel wrong, including turning your hand palm up and sticking it through the wheel, turning it from the inside. The easiest one for the inspector to use is, "You didn't do enough safety checking," by which he means that your head stopped swiveling on its neck for several seconds at some point.
The one that got me twice is turning too wide. It's a fair cop, as Monty Python would say: I'm not accustomed to driving on the wrong side of the road, so I pull too far out into the road as I turn, in order to avoid hitting the curb. That was the first and third tries. On the second, I was careful about that -- and wound up hitting a curb, which is an automatic fail. There is a tight spot called the "Crank", with two right-angle turns and tight walls, that the car just barely fits through. I cleared that easily -- then clipped the curb on the corner as I turned out of it into the wider street. Dang. That experience pushed me too far back the other way for the third try, apparently.
Before trying the first time, I read up on the process on the web. That taught me that you need to stop at stop signs for three full seconds, which is an eternity. In California, you could watch a stop sign all day, and the *total* amount of time cars spent stopped at the sign might not be three seconds.
But just reading someone's advice on the web will give you a false confidence that you can pass the test. The course is really not that difficult in terms of where you're asked to drive, but there are many small points the inspector is looking for and they grade quite harshly. After flunking the first time, I did a one-hour practice session with one of the inspectors, one Saturday morning.
It was a revelation. Before doing that, I had NO IDEA that they want you to take turns at 10km/hour -- about six miles an hour! That's the speed at which you pull into a parking spot, fer cryin' out loud! Likewise, there is one place on the course with a "caution" sign, and caution means 10km/h. The one "high speed" part of the course is 40km/hour, about 25mph. After learning this, I laughingly told my lead-footed sister that she could never pass the test, since you have to drive slow. It's probably true.
So, I am contemplating whether or not to give this one last shot. They gave me a test slot for the afternoon of my birthday, which is when my CA license expires. I may simply not go.
I no longer have any ego bound up in my driving abilities, though I certainly used to take pleasure in a sunset cruise on an open road. Now I feel that if I was told that I could never drive again, my reaction would probably be to simply shrug. My father's midlife crisis was a red Toyota Supra. My mom joked that the car was fine, as long as he didn't get the blonde to go with it. My midlife crisis arrived earlier, and has resulted so far in a Ph.D. and a faculty position.
Flunking is something of an embarrassment for me in the lab, though. Murai Lab hosts the "iCar" project, which has been working since the early 1990s on connecting cars to the Internet. We have a lot of car enthusiasts, including one student who reportedly used to race professionally, and several others who own sports cars (Beemers, Alfas, a Lotus, an RX-8) and take them out to Mount Fuji Speedway on weekends.
Speaking of which, one of our faculty members (late forties, has an Alfa and two Beemers, one of which was brand new...) lost his license last year. 55km/h OVER the speed limit. License yanked (not suspended, canceled outright), forbidden to reapply for a year. His year is almost up, so he is now back in driving school, spending sixty hours and three thousand bucks to enjoy the company of eighteen-year-olds hearing for the first time that a car usually has four tires and a steering wheel, so he can get back in the brand new Beemer two-seater. He and the others spend a fair amount of energy discussing "license tourism", taking the three grand and going to Europe and getting a license instead (European ones translate more easily than American ones). Sounds like a win to me.
No one I know will defend the system. It's clearly ridiculous. But in a larger social engineering context, maybe it makes sense. If it's not in Japan's interest to have too many people on the roads, maybe it *should* be hard to get a license, and it doesn't really matter whether it's difficult for a good reason or if it's the equivalent of reading Shakespeare while standing on your head. As a liberal with a belief that government should actively work toward creating the society we would like to have, this could be exhibit A. Hmm. Let me think about that.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Happy Birthday!
A day late, but yesterday was Edgar Allan Poe's two hundredth birthday! Happy birthday to one of my favorite writers.
Tonight's midnight (well, two a.m., Tokyo time) promises to be anything but dreary, as I ponder (perhaps weak and weary due to a cold I've contracted) the inauguration. Obama's TODO list is infinitely long, but hope dawns across the land. Hmm, there are lots of comparisons to Lincoln, King, and Kennedy; I wonder if there's an appropriate Poe quote?
Tonight's midnight (well, two a.m., Tokyo time) promises to be anything but dreary, as I ponder (perhaps weak and weary due to a cold I've contracted) the inauguration. Obama's TODO list is infinitely long, but hope dawns across the land. Hmm, there are lots of comparisons to Lincoln, King, and Kennedy; I wonder if there's an appropriate Poe quote?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Anniversary of Two Eras
This past week was the anniversary of two important eras in Japanese history, one symbolic and high profile, the other of enormous practical impact but much lower profile.
January 7th was the twentieth anniversary of the death of Emperor Hirohito, the end of the Showa Era, and the start of the Heisei Era with the ascension of the current occupant to the throne.
That same day, Jun Murai was at Narita Airport, on his way to Washington, D.C., for some rather obscure technical work. On about January 11th, he got it running: Japan was connected to the Internet, via IP over X.25, for the first time.
Several years later, when I left Japan for the first time, I gave my email address to many Japanese (and foreign) friends. Most said, "What's this?" I replied, "Hang onto it, in a few years you'll know." And indeed, I occasionally am contacted by friends from that time, though I suspect they come upon my address now via Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or another, mutual friend.
January 7th was the twentieth anniversary of the death of Emperor Hirohito, the end of the Showa Era, and the start of the Heisei Era with the ascension of the current occupant to the throne.
That same day, Jun Murai was at Narita Airport, on his way to Washington, D.C., for some rather obscure technical work. On about January 11th, he got it running: Japan was connected to the Internet, via IP over X.25, for the first time.
Several years later, when I left Japan for the first time, I gave my email address to many Japanese (and foreign) friends. Most said, "What's this?" I replied, "Hang onto it, in a few years you'll know." And indeed, I occasionally am contacted by friends from that time, though I suspect they come upon my address now via Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or another, mutual friend.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
ToN Quantum Paper Online
Our Transactions on Networking paper, "System Design for a Long-Line Quantum Repeater," is now available in final form in the IEEE's Digital Library. Print edition is not due until August 2009. Thanks as always to Thaddeus, Bill and Kae for their hard work on it.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
MARA in Infocom!
Congratulations to Yasu Ohara and Shinji Imahori! Yasu's paper (on which Imahori-san and I are coauthors), "MARA: Maximum Alternative Routing Algorithm", was accepted to INFOCOM 2009, one of 282 acceptances out of 1,435 submissions. This work is follow-through on Yasu's Ph.D. thesis, completed and defended in our lab last academic year. It's good work on how to do route calculations to support multipath forwarding in a network.
A trip to Rio for Yasu next April!
A trip to Rio for Yasu next April!
Monday, December 22, 2008
New Campus Web Site
For those who aren't allergic to Flash, our campus has a new website for faculty & research profiles. Check it out, let me know what you think.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Tell Me a Story
What he said. Robert Krulwich, you da man.
Now, if only I could write like that...I can't, but sign me up, I'm willing to give it a shot.
Now, if only I could write like that...I can't, but sign me up, I'm willing to give it a shot.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Sustainable Sushi
...is largely a hopeless prospect in this country (let alone the rising appetite for it world-wide, especially in China) for the foreseeable future, but: the Monterey Bay Aquarium's sustainable sushi guide is a win.
A translation to both Japanese language and Japanese market availability would be a plus...
FWIW, a sushi bar here is actually a reasonable place to take a non-squeamish vegan. At a good place, there are a number of pure vegetable rolls. Not clear how much goodwill you earn with the sushi chef that way, but it's a much better menu bet than a tonkatsu (deep-fried pork) restaurant.
I can't promise perfection, but I can promise to do my best to follow the guide.
Now, how to popularize the ideas here?
A translation to both Japanese language and Japanese market availability would be a plus...
FWIW, a sushi bar here is actually a reasonable place to take a non-squeamish vegan. At a good place, there are a number of pure vegetable rolls. Not clear how much goodwill you earn with the sushi chef that way, but it's a much better menu bet than a tonkatsu (deep-fried pork) restaurant.
I can't promise perfection, but I can promise to do my best to follow the guide.
Now, how to popularize the ideas here?
Friday, November 28, 2008
Give Us This Day Our Daily Banana
In English, "bread" can be a synonym for "meal" or "food" (and for "money", though that's a later innovation), as evidenced by the line from the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread."
In Japanese, "gohan" is both (cooked) "rice" and "meal": "Gohan wo tabeta?" "[Have you] eaten a meal?" (Transliterated; a more natural rendering would be "Have you eaten?")
An article in a recent issue of Science, talking about bananas, informs me that in Uganda the word for "banana" is the same as the word for "food". Sadly, the article didn't give the word for it, or even name the language (presumably Swahili).
I read the article on the train on the way home yesterday, and when I got home I was dying for a banana. Fortunately, Mayumi had bought bananas. Unfortunately, my girls managed eat all of them before I got home :-).
That's perhaps an allegory for what's happening worldwide: the Cavendish banana, the most common around the world, is under attack by a fungus all over the planet. The plant can be grown only by cloning (it's sterile) and since all the plants are genetically identical, they are all equally susceptible.
Other strains of bananas might be less vulnerable, but are suffering from neglect. (The most fragrant bananas I've ever had were in Nepal, some small variety that smelled of cinnamon.) Let's not let the world's fourth-most-important staple crop (behind rice, wheat and corn) get away from us, people!
In Japanese, "gohan" is both (cooked) "rice" and "meal": "Gohan wo tabeta?" "[Have you] eaten a meal?" (Transliterated; a more natural rendering would be "Have you eaten?")
An article in a recent issue of Science, talking about bananas, informs me that in Uganda the word for "banana" is the same as the word for "food". Sadly, the article didn't give the word for it, or even name the language (presumably Swahili).
I read the article on the train on the way home yesterday, and when I got home I was dying for a banana. Fortunately, Mayumi had bought bananas. Unfortunately, my girls managed eat all of them before I got home :-).
That's perhaps an allegory for what's happening worldwide: the Cavendish banana, the most common around the world, is under attack by a fungus all over the planet. The plant can be grown only by cloning (it's sterile) and since all the plants are genetically identical, they are all equally susceptible.
Other strains of bananas might be less vulnerable, but are suffering from neglect. (The most fragrant bananas I've ever had were in Nepal, some small variety that smelled of cinnamon.) Let's not let the world's fourth-most-important staple crop (behind rice, wheat and corn) get away from us, people!
guGUttara?
"To google" is now a verb in English (at least, the American (correct) form of the language, not sure about other parts of the diaspora). "He googled it," "I'm googling it now...," "Why don't you google it?" and more.
The same thing is true in Japanese. "Google" in Japanese is "GUUguru" (or "GU-guru"), written in katakana, the syllabary used for "loan" (imported) words, with a long "uu" and the unfortunate but necessary mangling of the pronunciation. (Not that Americans can come close to pronouncing Chinese or even French correctly, but that's not the point here.)
By fortunate coincidence, "-ru" is the common ending for verbs in Japanese, so conjugating it is natural and trivial, but the emphasized syllable changes: "guGUrimasu", "guGUrimashita". You almost never hear the formal form of it, though, you usually hear the informal form "guGUtta" ("googled") or "guGUtte iru" ("am googling/is googling"). Japanese has a verb form (not sure of the technical name in either Japanese or English) for "why don't you..." or "if you...", which usually ends in "-ttara".
And if you don't believe me, guguttara?
The same thing is true in Japanese. "Google" in Japanese is "GUUguru" (or "GU-guru"), written in katakana, the syllabary used for "loan" (imported) words, with a long "uu" and the unfortunate but necessary mangling of the pronunciation. (Not that Americans can come close to pronouncing Chinese or even French correctly, but that's not the point here.)
By fortunate coincidence, "-ru" is the common ending for verbs in Japanese, so conjugating it is natural and trivial, but the emphasized syllable changes: "guGUrimasu", "guGUrimashita". You almost never hear the formal form of it, though, you usually hear the informal form "guGUtta" ("googled") or "guGUtte iru" ("am googling/is googling"). Japanese has a verb form (not sure of the technical name in either Japanese or English) for "why don't you..." or "if you...", which usually ends in "-ttara".
And if you don't believe me, guguttara?
Monday, November 24, 2008
ORF: QKD with IPsec
Our campus (Keio's Shonan Fujisawa Campus) just finished our Open Research Forum, the annual two-day big exhibit of students' work. It was a blast, a lot of interesting people show up (including, if I understood him right, the director of "Godzilla versus Hedora", and it's great to see the work being done by students in other "kenkyuukai" (research groups), as well.
At our campus, undergrads, usually, starting in their second year, join the "lab" or kenkyuukai of a professor, and by the end of their four years, I would say that many students have done a third to a half of their total learning in the context of the kenykyuukai. Classes provide breadth and theory, the kenkyuukai provides depth.
My students in the AQUA group integrated IKE, the Internet Key Exchange protocol, with QKD (quantum key distribution), so that traffic between two networks can be encrypted using a key created via QKD. I'll post more about the technical work on it a little later, but thanks to Satoh and especially Nagayama for the hard work on both the implementation and the display.
Thanks to NEC for the loan of the QKD devices! We look forward to continuing to work with you.
At our campus, undergrads, usually, starting in their second year, join the "lab" or kenkyuukai of a professor, and by the end of their four years, I would say that many students have done a third to a half of their total learning in the context of the kenykyuukai. Classes provide breadth and theory, the kenkyuukai provides depth.
My students in the AQUA group integrated IKE, the Internet Key Exchange protocol, with QKD (quantum key distribution), so that traffic between two networks can be encrypted using a key created via QKD. I'll post more about the technical work on it a little later, but thanks to Satoh and especially Nagayama for the hard work on both the implementation and the display.
Thanks to NEC for the loan of the QKD devices! We look forward to continuing to work with you.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Keio: Astronauts, Princes, Emperors, and Postage Stamps!
So, Saturday was the Keio University 150th anniversary ceremony. I didn't get to attend (there were only a few thousand tickets), and I found out about the live webcast after it was over. Oh, well.
I'm told that the Emperor made very nice remarks about the history of Keio.
Prince Charles also dropped by the Mita Campus on his visit to Japan a couple of weeks ago. There is a good photo of him examining a bamboo sword during a kendo demonstration. I heard that his talk was nice, as well.
Just as exciting, to me, was the talk that Akihiko Hoshide gave a few weeks ago. He was on the team that delivered the Kibo Laboratory module to the International Space Station this summer. He also took an aluminum soroban with him, made for him by our engineering department. Oh, Hoshide is a Keio grad -- at least the second to fly in space, after Chiaki Mukai. Hoshide-san gave a great, inspirational talk targeted at kids, and accessible to all ages. It was broadcast over the Internet, and translated into several languages in real time.
More to my surprise, the Japan Post Office has issued a commemorative stamp set. Now I know what I'm getting my great-aunt, the stamp collector, for Christmas.
I'm told that the Emperor made very nice remarks about the history of Keio.
Prince Charles also dropped by the Mita Campus on his visit to Japan a couple of weeks ago. There is a good photo of him examining a bamboo sword during a kendo demonstration. I heard that his talk was nice, as well.
Just as exciting, to me, was the talk that Akihiko Hoshide gave a few weeks ago. He was on the team that delivered the Kibo Laboratory module to the International Space Station this summer. He also took an aluminum soroban with him, made for him by our engineering department. Oh, Hoshide is a Keio grad -- at least the second to fly in space, after Chiaki Mukai. Hoshide-san gave a great, inspirational talk targeted at kids, and accessible to all ages. It was broadcast over the Internet, and translated into several languages in real time.
More to my surprise, the Japan Post Office has issued a commemorative stamp set. Now I know what I'm getting my great-aunt, the stamp collector, for Christmas.
Friday, September 26, 2008
New Papers
It occurs to me that I'm behind in doing the obligatory paper dance, as our pontiff would say. All from collaborators, one already published and two new submissions:
More to come in the next couple of months, I hope, on both repeaters and arithmetic circuits; there is also a pile of systems work from last year's QEC conference and other places that needs to be polished up and submitted, as well as a stack of half-completed things...
...ah, for a trio of clones! Then one of us could teach, one could spend time with the family, one could do research, and one would have to do the drudge work. I suppose we'd have to rotate; I love all three of those first topics, but no one would want to be stuck with the paperwork forever :-).
- Byung-Soo Choi and Rodney Van Meter,
Effects of Interaction Distance on Quantum Addition Circuits,
submitted;
available from the arXiv as quant-ph:0809.4317.
- Liang Jiang, Jacob M. Taylor, Kae Nemoto, William J. Munro, Rodney Van Meter, and Mikhail D. Lukin,
Quantum Repeater with Encoding,
submitted;
available from the arXiv as quant-ph:0809.3629.
- W. J. Munro, R. Van Meter, Sebastien G. R. Louis, and Kae Nemoto,
High-Bandwidth Hybrid Quantum Repeater,
Phys. Rev. Letters 101, 040502, July 2008;
available from the arXiv as quant-ph:0808.0307.
Selected for Virtual J. Quantum Inf. 8(8), Aug. 2008.
More to come in the next couple of months, I hope, on both repeaters and arithmetic circuits; there is also a pile of systems work from last year's QEC conference and other places that needs to be polished up and submitted, as well as a stack of half-completed things...
...ah, for a trio of clones! Then one of us could teach, one could spend time with the family, one could do research, and one would have to do the drudge work. I suppose we'd have to rotate; I love all three of those first topics, but no one would want to be stuck with the paperwork forever :-).
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Biden's Travels
I'm not going to get into politics on this blog, but one note: Joe Biden's team released a list of heads of state he has met with.
Now, the team claims the list is incomplete, but as an expat living where I do, there is a conspicuous hole: um, Japan? I realize that prime ministers here change often enough that it's difficult to keep up, but Japan is still the second biggest economy on the planet, and one of the U.S.'s top trading and defense partners.
Has Biden really not met with any Japanese leaders, or is the absence an oversight? It's not that he's shunning East, South, or Southeast Asia; he's met with leaders from almost every Asian country you can name, except Bangladesh and Thailand. Okay, he's allowed to not hit every single one; but still, Japan?
Likewise, another near the top of any U.S. list should be that Neighbor to the North, Canada. Hmm.
Now, the team claims the list is incomplete, but as an expat living where I do, there is a conspicuous hole: um, Japan? I realize that prime ministers here change often enough that it's difficult to keep up, but Japan is still the second biggest economy on the planet, and one of the U.S.'s top trading and defense partners.
Has Biden really not met with any Japanese leaders, or is the absence an oversight? It's not that he's shunning East, South, or Southeast Asia; he's met with leaders from almost every Asian country you can name, except Bangladesh and Thailand. Okay, he's allowed to not hit every single one; but still, Japan?
Likewise, another near the top of any U.S. list should be that Neighbor to the North, Canada. Hmm.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
No comment?
I'm a little disappointed that my glamorous new profile photo here hasn't drawn the attention of Paris, Milan and New York runway talent scouts.
I'm also a little surprised by the lack of comments from the peanut gallery.
I'm also a little surprised by the lack of comments from the peanut gallery.
The Candidate of Change
No, for you myopic Americans, I'm not talking about Obama, McCain, or anyone else on that continent. I'm talking about Yuriko Koike, a candidate for president of the Liberal Democratic Party here in Japan. She has held several cabinet positions, and is fluent in both Arabic and English, having received her degree from Cairo University. She's a bit of a long shot, but is supported by Koizumi, the former prime minister, who is still very popular. And, she has been dubbed the candidate of change, which many people would agree is desirable in Japanese politics.
The LDP's internal presidential election is tomorrow (Monday), Japan time. The rules for that election are apparently variable from election to election, but involve mostly members of parliament, and some local leaders, I believe. Taro Aso is expected to win.
Because the LDP is still the largest and strongest political party here, the person elected president normally becomes prime minister. Could Japan wind up with a woman chief executive before America does? Stay tuned.
The LDP's internal presidential election is tomorrow (Monday), Japan time. The rules for that election are apparently variable from election to election, but involve mostly members of parliament, and some local leaders, I believe. Taro Aso is expected to win.
Because the LDP is still the largest and strongest political party here, the person elected president normally becomes prime minister. Could Japan wind up with a woman chief executive before America does? Stay tuned.
Quantum Arithmetic
I get occasional mail from people asking me about quantum arithmetic. I usually point them to the Qwiki page on arithmetic I created a couple of years ago, which is a list of useful papers, rather than an actual technical description.
Most of the papers there are about specific arithmetic circuits, building from binary integer addition to modular exponentiation, and include some examples of actual experimental implementations.
This morning, I ran across some lecture notes by Ekert, Hayden, and Inamori on "Basic concepts in quantum computation," at Quantiki. The notes contain a nice intro to the theory behind reversible, binary, modular arithmetic.
Most of the papers there are about specific arithmetic circuits, building from binary integer addition to modular exponentiation, and include some examples of actual experimental implementations.
This morning, I ran across some lecture notes by Ekert, Hayden, and Inamori on "Basic concepts in quantum computation," at Quantiki. The notes contain a nice intro to the theory behind reversible, binary, modular arithmetic.
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