One last thing

I'm glad they found the little boy in Japan who was punished by being abandoned in a bear-infested wooded area. He's safe and sound and did better than most adults would have, climbing up rugged terrain quite some distance away and finding a hut used for military exercises with a tap where he could get water. His father has formally apologised for going to far in discipline and causing so much worry and so many resources to have to be deployed to find the child. Let's hope both boy and parents learnt valuable lessons from all of this (and for the boy, let's hope it's more than 'you can be stranded alone in bear-infested woods and live').

I seem to get home about 8:30 or so at night no matter what I do during the day

Today is no exception. I picked a friend up from work and took him to get his bus pass and on a couple of errands, then took him to where he's staying. Then I went to another friend's and washed dishes, taught him how to forward an e-mail (apparently I've never covered this in all these years), and set his default font in Office to Times New Roman rather than Calibri because he prefers that. Then I headed home, parallel parking for the first time in a long time, and nailing it. Now I'm back in air conditioning, with a big glass of ice water, and eating a strange dinner of burritos, cheese, and fruit (a banana and berries).

There was a general notice on my door this evening from the leasing office about how someone really made a mess of the fitness room and laundry, even destroying a trash can in the ladies' room, over the weekend. That's a shame--I thought our tenants were more mature than that. If it continues, they'll just keep it open during office hours, which means I can never use it, as those hours are when I work, except on weekends, maybe. So here's hoping people straighten up. The apartment complex has been doing a lot of upgrading and without more than a tiny increase in rent--$5 this year--and they deserve better respect for their efforts. I think maybe they need to put in cameras. There probably should be some, anyway, as they're open from 5 am-midnight, and even with the fobs, they can't tell who all's been there, I'm sure, if someone lets others in, so it would make it more secure for those of us in there.

Work went really well today; my pace was very steady and I got everything accomplished I wanted to, even the monthly audit. It will be a slow clinic week, so I may catch up on some things that have been on the back burner like processing and cataloguing books and creating a new order to take advantage of our vendor's spring promotion (22% off). I wound up finishing everything up about 15 minutes before it was time to leave. I love days like that, when I feel my time has really been used well and I've had progress in meeting my goals for the day.

I've felt energised these last couple of days. One of my co-workers insisted that it might be the steroids they prescribed for my crud, as she always gets revved up and cleans house when she's on them. I don't know if that's true, but I have had a burst of energy. I thought it was just getting over being sick, but maybe she's right. I'm down to four pills a day and go down to two soon, so that'll be gone in a bit. But at least it was productive while it lasted. :)

My face is still pretty red, but the arms have darkened a bit into what I'd almost call at tan where I burned the other day. My neck got red, but not splotchy, for a change. So I look like I got sun, but no one's come up to me and said, 'Oh, God, don't you know what sunscreen is???'

I talked with one of my co-workers who was at the Cincinnati Zoo this weekend during the incident where a three- or four-year-old boy [accounts differ] climbed a barrier and fell into the moat of a gorilla enclosure, and then was picked up by a male gorilla, who was then shot to death to save the boy. They never made it to the gorilla enclosure, and didn't know what had happened until later. But her daughter is three, so I think she had a good perspective on things. It's caused quite a controversy, and I've avoided comment. I admit, my first response was, 'where on earth were the parents?', but I also know that as someone who has not had children, it's not very fair for me to comment when I've never tried to keep up with a quick, wily four-year-old. Even the best of parents let their guard down, sometimes for enough moments for a child to get away, and usually it doesn't have such terrible consequences--but it could. My understanding is that in this case the mother--who works in a care facility for small children--told him he couldn't go in the water when he said he would and then was distracted by other children in her care. My co-worker said it disturbed her and her husband that people have been posting the personal phone numbers and information of the family online for harassment, after having such a terrible scare. I have to agree. That's wrong. It's horrible that the gorilla, Harambe, was killed. Most of the experts are saying tranquilising the gorilla could have meant the boy was more likely to get hurt. I don't know if I completely buy that, but unlike apparently most people out there, I do know tranquilisers don't work as fast as what you see on TV and in movies, either, so they may be right. My friend did say the enclosure had a small barrier, a brushy area, and then the moat the boy fell into that the gorilla retrieved him from. Maybe the zoo needs to consider another system of barriers.

But the fact of the matter is that the great majority of the people calling for blood over the death of that magnificent creature weren't there, don't have all the facts, and probably should not be making comments. Do I wish they'd done something else in response? Yes, of course, if at all feasible. But if the boy had died, the same people would have been blaming the parents and the zoo for a terrible tragedy, too. There really is no winning in this situation. It does, however, bring up a dialogue on keeping wild animals in captivity to be gawked at by clueless humans, all in the name of preserving the species and conservation. Don't get me wrong, my grandmother instilled in me a love of that zoo (I've been to only three, but the Cincinnati one is the one I've been to the most). I think it can be very educational. But there are issues that the animal rights people (many of whom I think are a bit too far in left field, no matter how much I love animals) have some very good points about. Anyway, the authorities are now investigating, and I'm sure there will be lawsuits and reports on what could have been done differently, that sort of thing. I am very saddened by the death of the gorilla. I'm very glad the boy is alive. Enough said.

What I've been following more than that, however, is the story out of Japan where the parents put their child out of the car for misbehaving (he'd been throwing rocks at cars and the like, definitely spoilt brat behaviour) in an effort to discipline him and left him, supposedly for a few minutes, out on the side of the road. When they returned, he was gone, vanished into a remote forest full of bears. Now hundreds of people have been looking through the area for FOUR DAYS trying to find him. Initially the parents gave a story of him wandering away while they were looking for wild vegetables, but then confessed that it had been a time out gone wrong. They are, of course, now very regretful about what they did.

Regretful? I know lots of people threaten to put their kids out of the car (and I know at least one who did, briefly, but not in a bear-infested woods), but this, I think, was not thought out well. I'm sure the kid said fine, I'll show them, and hid in the woods, figuring he'd make them look for him, and then got lost or hurt. He's seven, it would be natural. I hope they find him safe, for his sake, and that of his parents.

What do both of these stories tell us? In just a few short minutes, everything can change, especially when dealing with small children who don't really know much about life, but think they know everything there is to know. It's all our responsibility to keep kids safe, and we have to be vigilant--not just parents, any of us, of when they are in danger. But a parent must, especially, because ultimately, not only did you create this little human, he or she is yours to protect for life, and any day that you put them to bed safe and sound is a good day. Hold their hands, hell, put leashes on them if need be, but keep them close, because in a moment, everything can change, and what is done cannot be undone.

Isn't this a restful desktop wallpaper?

It's from the Autumn Color in Japan desktop theme from the Microsoft Windows website, which is free to download and includes other very lovely, restful scenes.

Still a bleak outlook, one year later

Japan’s 3/11 Triple Catastrophe Endures in Broken Families, Divided Towns

Chikako Abe’s desk is decorated with flowers and candy at her school in Minamisoma, a reminder of a 17-year-old life cut short a year ago. Instead of attending a graduation ceremony this month, her family will pray tomorrow at the ruins of a house where the sea snatched away the lives of Chikako, her father and two grandparents.

It's hard to believe that a year has gone by since the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster hit Japan. Oeconomic, cultural, and bureaucratic issues are hampering recovery, but on the other hand, can we really expect any nation to bounce back quickly with such a triple disaster, especially given the lingering uncertainty of radiation?

My thoughts tonight are with the people whose lives were changed forever by this disaster, people who lost family, homes, and livelihoods, and also trust of their government to protect them.

Japan marks 1 year since quake, tsunami disaster

Japan on Sunday was remembering the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck the nation one year ago, killing just over 19,000 people and unleashing the world's worst nuclear crisis in a quarter century.

Along the tsunami-battered northeastern coast, in Tokyo and elsewhere, memorial ceremonies were planned to mark 2:46 p.m. — the precise moment the magnitude-9.0 earthquake hit on March 11, 2011.

The quake was the strongest recorded in Japan's history, and set off a tsunami that towered more than 65 feet (20 meters) in some spots along the northeastern coast, destroying thousands of homes and wreaking widespread destruction.

Today, some 325,000 people rendered homeless remain in temporary housing. While much of the debris has been gathered into massive piles, very little rebuilding has begun.

Wish I wasn't as big or they were bigger

Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, who is Japanese-American, has designed a couple of T-shirts to benefit the people who went through the Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami. One says 'Not Alone' with the colours of the Japanese flag in the letters and the Linkin Park symbol done small to the right. The other has a white origami butterfly on a black t-shirt with the Linkin Park symbol underneath. I particularly like that one. Unfortunately, they only go up to extra-large. I do best in a 2X-3X.

If you're a fan of Linkin Park and would like to donate to Music for Relief, the t-shirts are $25.00. You can view them here.

The following song plays on that page, the exact song that came to my mind when the earthquake and tsunami happened.

One nice thing about Facebook

You learn what family members who are far away are doing with their lives. For example, my cousin is enjoying a trip to Japan at the moment. Of course a family member of mine would wind up in a country right after it had been hit by earthquakes, a tsunami, and radiation. :) Anyway, here's to him having a great time.

Followup: Ban the dog and her owner are reunited

The dog was found three weeks after the Japanese tsunami, on a mass of floating wreckage on the sea. A Japanese Coast Guard crew rescued the dog, who was skittish over the helicopter. She is definitely happy to be with her owner.

A blessing after 9 days

80-year-old Japanese woman and grandson rescued from rubble

An 80-year-old woman and her 16-year-old grandson were rescued Sunday after being buried under rubble for nine days after the worst recorded earthquake in Japanese history and a massive tsunami toppled their home.

Worries and hopes regarding the dangers of radiation in Japan

Hiroshima survivors fear new nuclear fallout

The cities flattened by last week's earthquake look eerily similar to the decimated buildings Shigeko Sasamori saw after an atomic bomb was dropped on her hometown in 1945.

The floodwaters from the tsunami -- the waves of debris and bodies -- remind her of the rivers in Hiroshima, Japan, swamped with corpses.

And the struggle to contain radioactive emissions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant makes Sasamori, 78, wonder if the crisis there will plague a new generation in Japan.

"Radiation is the most horrible thing, and it's more horrible to me because humans make it," she said from her home near Los Angeles. "We don't have to make that."

Sasamori is a hibakusha, or heat radiation survivor -- a name given to those who lived through the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States at the end of World War II.

For them, radiation is an invisible enemy that has haunted them, claimed their loved ones, altered their bodies and threatened their lives.

Thinking of Japan...

Please help.

Please don't be a triple disaster

Earthquake, tsunami, and now fears of a nuclear meltdown...

In Japan, fears of a threat no one can see

Meltdown fear after nuclear plant blast

Reactor not damaged in Japan nuclear plant explosion

Radiation leaks from Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant

Also...

9,500 unaccounted for in Japanese port city: report

More than 9,500 people are unaccounted for in Minamisanriku, a town of some 17,000 people, Japan's Kyodo News agency reported Saturday.

Do not pour liquid into the angry 'vagina'

Or so the comments on YouTube indicated. :)



Thanks YKWIA for the link!

Apologies are long overdue...and for many, may come too late

Unfinished Business: For 65 years, Japanese corporations have escaped responsibility for abusing American POWs during World War II

Lester Tenney entered World War II as a strapping 21-year-old, weight 180 pounds. By the time he emerged from Japanese captivity in 1945, he was a shattered, emaciated cripple. His left arm and shoulder were partly paralyzed due to an accident in a coal mine where he'd been sent as a slave laborer. His overseers there -- civilian employees of the Mitsui Corp., not members of the Imperial Army -- had knocked out his teeth in repeated beatings with hammers and pickaxes. At war's end, he weighed in at 98 pounds. It took him a year in U.S. Army hospitals to regain something like a semblance of his old well-being.

Sixty-five years later, Tenney and his fellow ex-prisoners of war (POWs) -- the rapidly diminishing group of those who remain alive, that is -- are still awaiting the full fruits of victory. The Japanese companies that once abused Tenney and his fellow prisoners have never acknowledged responsibility for their crimes, let alone offered compensation or regrets of any kind. (The companies needed the POWs to compensate for a wartime labor shortage.) The Japanese government has only just begun to offer its regrets for what happened -- far too late for most of the veterans, but, still, something. Perhaps most depressingly of all, the U.S. government has spent years allowing the Japanese to get away with it -- a policy of complicity that has its roots in the two countries' complex postwar relationship. There are signs that this, too, may finally be changing. Hope never dies, as they say.

Just like businesses that reaped the benefits of Jewish slave labour in German areas of Europe in World War II have a moral obligation to apologise and offer reparations to those who suffered (and in several cases, that has been the case), so do Japanese companies who used American POWs.

Survivors of Japan's WWII POW Camps Call on Japan for the Same Treatment as Siberian Internees

World War II former prisoners of war of Japan are calling on Japanese government and industry to provide the same commitment to the memory of their suffering and forced labor. The call comes after Japan's parliament approved on June 16th $200M to benefit Japanese veterans who survived the Soviet Union's post-WWII Siberian labor camps and to provide an accurate historical account for future generations.

Three past commanders of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC) applaud Japan's government for taking action now. Dr. Lester Tenney, Mr. Edward Jackfert, and Mr. Ralph Levenberg all survived Japan's notorious prisoner of war camps and endured brutal forced labor, providing profit for some of Japan's largest corporations during WWII. Over 60 well-known Japanese companies, such as Mitsui, Sumitomo, Kawasaki, Mitsubishi, and Nippon Sharyo, used American and Allied POW labor in harsh conditions to sustain their war production.

Does anyone other than me think this is just *wrong*???

Glowing Monkeys Make More Glowing Monkeys the Old-Fashioned Way

The first genetically modified primates that can pass their modifications to their offpsring have been created by Japanese scientists.

The marmosets...express a green fluorescent protein in their skin. The gene for producing the glow was delivered to the first marmoset embryos via a modified virus. But now that modification method could become unnecessary. One male marmoset, number 666, fathered a child...that also contained the transgenes.

666? Oh, the wingnuts will have fun with that! But seriously, I've been saying that transgenetics is a dangerous thing because of its capacity to reproduce in the wild. What happens when this happens outside of a lab? And these are primates, our cousins. What's next, making our kids glow green under UV light? How will they feel about it? Like a freak? And how will those who don't have the novelty of glowing green feel? Normal? or freaks? Argggh!

It looks like, from the pictures, that the child glows stronger than the parent. What also disturbs me is that glowing transgenetic animals aren't made that way just to prove our scientists can. They're made to study all sorts of human diseases. Although I do believe scientific work to cure disease is important, I have trouble with the idea of creating an entire line of designer animals just so you can experiment on it. Not to sound like a religious zealot, but I think there is a point where we have wonder if some people play God in the name of science (As I'm sure you realise from reading this blog, I'm a great advocate of science. But science can run amuck, as its study and manipulation is in the hands of humans, who are in essence imperfect. I give to you the atom bomb and its unforeseen effects.)

Unwittingly, Google's maps lead to furor over derogatory terms for the Japanese 'untouchables'

Google Earth maps out discrimination against burakumin caste in Japan

A handful of innocent-looking antique maps, one offensive word and tens of thousands of offended 'untouchables' have plunged Google into an unspoken class war that has raged in Japan for centuries.

Despite its ambition to be the cartographer of the internet age, the search engine has lumbered into one of the darkest corners of Japan — the bigotry of mainstream Japanese society towards the burakumin, the 'filthy mob', whose ancestors fell outside the caste system of the 17th-century samurai era.

Discrimination against the burakumin continues even though it was outlawed 150 years ago. The untouchable caste is not evident in manner, dress, accent, or even names, so it's hard to figure out who are descendants of this class. What the maps show, however, are ghettos labelled with titles like 'scum town' to denote where the burakumin lived, and that makes it easier for Japanese and their private detectives to figure out whether a prospective mate, student, employee, or even government official might be such a descendant. As an example of ongoing prejudice:

In 2003 Taro Aso, the Japanese Prime Minister, dismissed the chances of Hiromu Nonaka — a burakumin who became Secretary-General of the ruling party — becoming Prime Minister. 'There is no way we can make that kind of person prime minister,' Mr Aso was quoted as saying.

As much as I hear Americans complain about emergency rooms...

it pales to the situation in Japan, which has a doctor shortage:

Injured man dies after rejection by 14 hospitals: Case of 69-year-old man in Japan underscores country's doctor shortage

The worst case, according to the article, was a woman in Tokyo who was denied care 49 times. She, too, was elderly, although I don't know if that's a factor or not.

Our girl gets into trouble for worthy causes

The cheerleader of the line from 'Heroes'--'Save the Cheerleader, Save the World'. Hayden Panettiere, was attempting to do the latter last month when she and an animal activist group paddled to a cove to try to warn off dolphins and whales before they could be massacred by Japanese fishermen. They were forced back to shore when the fishermen used their boat propellers and giant hooks to turn them away, at which point the killings continued.

So the 18-year-old now has a warrant in Japan for her arrest for 'interfering with international commerce'.

Arrest The Cheerleader?

Panettiere was quoted as being surprised by the publicity surrounding the incident. 'In this town [Hollywood], you tend to be able to get publicity when you're not wearing underwear or [you're] in rehab. I was very excited that people were interested in what we did.'

Well, her heart's in the right place, although I'm sure the fishing industry in Japan would beg to differ. All I can say is, you go girl. And yes, she said she'd probably do it again.