1. What is your favorite word?
2. What is your least favorite word?
3. What turns you on?
4. What turns you off?
5. What sound or noise do you love?
6. What sound or noise do you hate?
7. What is your favorite curse word?
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
9. What profession would you not like to do?
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Your favorite qualities in a man.
Your favorite qualities in a woman.
Your chief characteristic
What you appreciate the most in your friends
Your favourite occupation.
Your idea of happiness
Your idea of misery.
If not yourself, who would you be?
Where would you like to live?
Your favorite heroes in fiction.
Your heroes in real life.　Your favorite heroines in real life.
What characters in history do you most dislike.
What I hate the most.
The natural talent I’d like to be gifted with
The reform I admire the most
What is your present state of mind.
For what fault have you most toleration?
Your favorite motto.

What Do You Think?

1. What do you think is the greatest challenge the world faces today?

2. What experience taught you the most important lesson of your life?

3. If you could return to one moment in your life and could do something
differently, what would that be?

4. What one piece of technology that has been created in the last seventy-five years would you not want to do without?

5. If you could “un-invent” one piece of technology that was created in the last seventy-five years, what would it be?

6. What is your definition of success?

7. If you could live in another decade and somewhere else than where you live, when and where would that be?

8. If you could have a conversation with one person, alive or historical, who would that be and what would you want to discuss?

9. What would you like people to say about you after you are gone?

10. What three quotations of humor, inspiration, and wisdom are your favorites?

 News - Culture clash over Japanese whaling

Whaling words: Into the new：本の紹介

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/03/for_as_long_as_i.html

Whaling in Japan: Power, Politics and Diplomacy,

• Whaling is of no real importance to Japan, producing 0.2% of all the meat eaten in the country
• The authorities claim to base their arguments for whaling on science, but in fact invest heavily in emotive messages - for example, that whaling is an integral part of the national culture
• There is no national culture of whaling in Japan; there are local cultures, but there are also local cultures that regard whales as gods, where killing them would be unthinkable
• Successive governments have placed a high priority on ensuring a plentiful supply of fish through diplomacy, often building relationships with developing countries possessing productive coastal waters
• One part of these relationships is backing for Japan’s position in all aspects of international affairs, from supporting its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council to voting with it in the International Whaling Commission
•The industry is perpetuated by the practice of amakudari, where retiring bureaucrats go on to take jobs in businesses that their successors are supposedly regulating
• Japan is a major consumer of all kinds of wildlife, sometimes destructively
• The status quo is helped along by a compliant media, while organisations such as Sea Shepherd also lend a hand by giving the Fisheries Agency ammunition with which to label anti-whaling groups as anti-Japanese

The Power of Words in International Relations: Birth of an Anti-Whaling Discourse.

 The Economist

http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15760510&source=most_commented

Jeff Jarvis: Google is defending citizens of the net | Media | The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/29/jeff-jarvis-google-china

This year at Davos, Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, told an audience of journalists that his company is not a country, does not set laws, and does not have a police force. Yet in its showdown with China, Google is acting as the ambassador for the internet. Well, somebody has to.

Google and China Google’s decision to stop censoring its search service in China on Monday was a principled and brave move, a belated acknowledgment that Internet companies cannot enable a government’s censorship without becoming a de facto accomplice to repression. We hope that other American companies with operations in China, notably Microsoft and Yahoo, will consider emulating Google’s decision. Yahoo said it supported Google. But soon after Google announced its plan to stop censoring its searches in China in January, Bill Gates of Microsoft told ABC News: “You’ve got to decide: Do you want to obey the laws of the countries you are in, or not? If not, you may not end up doing business there.” Microsoft’s Bing search engine is still censoring results in China. We have no illusions that the Chinese Communist Party will suddenly decide to allow its citizens unfettered access to the Internet through Google’s Hong Kong service, where it was redirecting China-based searchers. Beijing is already reportedly disabling searches and blocking search results on Google’s site. But that is much better than self-censorship, which put Google in the troubling business of stripping out results from searches about politically touchy subjects like China’s occupation of Tibet and the massacre on Tiananmen Square by the Chinese Army. When Google took its search engine into China four years ago, it came under attack from human rights groups. Google countered that it was better for the Chinese to have a censored Google than no Google at all. It took four years for Google to acknowledge the flaws in that reasoning, and it did so only after it discovered an attack on its servers by hackers in China that stole proprietary computer code as well as data about Gmail accounts of human rights activists. Google can afford allowing google.cn to be taken off-line. Analysts say it accounts for 1 percent to 2 percent of Google’s revenue. Like other foreign Internet companies, Google has had trouble growing in China. Its YouTube service, like Facebook and Twitter, is blocked, and it has about only a third of China’s search market, around half the share of the local rival Baidu. Still, the move to challenge the Chinese Communist Party may not come without a cost. China Mobile, the biggest cellular company in the country, was expected to cancel a deal to use Google’s search engine on its home page. China Unicom was thought to have canceled plans to create a telephone based on Google’s Android system. Other measures are likely to come. Google’s departure may have more resonance outside China than within. We don’t know how many of China’s many millions of Internet users will be able to read about this public indictment of China’s use of censorship. But that is preferable to helping maintain the fiction that the Internet in China is the same sort of vehicle for open communication that it is most everywhere else.

From The Times March 26, 2010

Confessions of a manga addict

Leo Lewis 

Having a manga/anime addiction in Japan is like being a drug fiend living on a coca plantation: try as I might, I cannot shake it off. From Lupin III on early-morning TV, to the five shops where I know I can procure Golgo 13 comics on the way into work, to the stash of Trigun DVDs under my desk … Japan’s cartoon world lurks seductively behind every corner of the real one. It is three decades since my habit began. Long before South Park and The Simpsons, Japanese animators recognised that the form was a perfect vehicle for satire, anger and provocation. Compared with Western animation and comics, everything in manga seems more extreme: the horror, the outrage, the violence, the perversion, the emotion. It is twisted, brilliant stuff. It is the artistic extension of a culture that seeks out the most poisonous fish in the ocean and charges you £20 per slice. The astonishing power of manga lies in its limitless capacity to transport you back to the place you love, time and again. It lives to feed your habit. Week after week, year after year, the worlds of Gundam, or Death Note or One Piece are reopened for fans to step into to receive their next fix.

Review : Rolling Stone

Peter Traversはこういうのはうまい！

Recent movies about Iraq have pushed hard to show the growing dehumanization infecting our world. No Country doesn’t have to preach or wave a flag — it carries in its bones the virus of what we’ve become.

冒頭リンクはドイツ国内のグーグルストリート・ビューについて。

Taking on the Internet Giants: Germany Applies Brakes to Google & Co. - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

When it comes to freedom, Americans and Europeans bring completely different ideals and definitions to the table. While Americans want to liberate consumers, Europeans seek to protect them.

Google’s Move to Hong Kong ‘A Face-Saving Capitulation’

Google has stopped playing by the Chinese rules and moved its search engine to Hong Kong. The move allows the company to keep one foot in China while fulfilling its promise to end self-censorship. But German commentators are still skeptical of the company’s motives — and future.

>http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-685452,00.html

ドイツの反論
・グーグルはメンツだけ
・実際にはビジネス敗退の撤退じゃ？
・テクノロジーでもハッキングに対応できないということでは？
・全面撤退ではない。広告とリサーチは残る。
・グーグルは反体制ぶりたがるが、情報やニュースを独占している。
・グーグルのない世界を中国はこれから見せる。現実にはグーグルは民主主義国とも問題を起こしている（プライバシーなど）。

Google Co-Founder on Pulling out of China　’It Was a Real Step Backward’

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,686269,00.html

セルゲイ・ブリン語る：

オリンピック後、検閲のネタが増えた。／GMailの人権活動家へのアクセスと、それ以上と思える広範なサーベイランスの動きも見られた。／PRでは？との見方には「インターネットで情報の公開性と自由を広げることが我々の使命だ」／ロシア移民だから個人の自由への強い気持ちはある。／「中国政府と仲良くすれば向こうも折れてくれるというのでは商売にならない」「アメリカ政府からの応援を受けてはいないが、彼らは情報の自由の問題を真剣に考えている」「中国政府全体を批判しているのではない。ある政策（情報閉鎖性）を批判しているだけだ」

・「これまでどんなふうにgoogleが検閲を受け入れていたか、googleにどんなサイバー攻撃が仕掛けられたか、すべてアメリカ政府にちくっちゃうよーん。あんたらいろんな面で困るんじゃないのー」→FBIに報告したという事実がある。
もちろん、中国政府は、メンツにかけてgoogleという一外国企業の要求で政府の方針を変えるわけにはいかないから、当然のことながら、交渉は決裂してgoogleは撤退することになるわけです。

アメリカ政府は、自国企業に対する他国政府によるサイバーテロを見逃すことはできないよね、当然ながら。これは、「倫理」の問題ではなく、「国益」の問題ではないかと。アメリカ政府が出てくるのは、別にグーグルが呼び込んだというよりは、出てきて当然というか。中国の行動の結果でしょう。

ただ、アメリカ政府が、中国にどこまで強く出るかというと、疑問だし（日米防衛機摩擦のようにはならないと思う）、また、中国はこれでグローバルな流れから取り残されてダメージを受けるだろうという見方もどうかなと。

ともあれ、googleってのは、各国からの嫌われようがマクドナルドとちょっと似てるなあ。焼き討ちされないだけで。それに、googleが破壊するのは、ローカルな文化じゃなくって政府の統制なんだけど。

ローカル・ルールは他国でも受け入れている。たとえばドイツでは「ホロコースト否定」が違法なので、「ホロコーストはなかった説を謳うサイトはグーグルではあがらない。社訓「インターネット上での民主主義。あらゆる情報を広く、自由に伝える」に沿っていれば受け入れているということ。もともとは自主検閲は受け入れてたが、これ以上はムリと判断。

The World from Berlin: Google’s Move to Hong Kong ‘A Face-Saving Capitulation’ - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

〈報道規制の対象〉 ■人民元切り上げ問題 ■官僚の腐敗 ■高額な医療費 ■食品安全問題・事件 ■新疆ウイグル騒乱 ■チベット騒乱 ■貧富の格差 ■戸籍制度改革 ■食用油の価格高騰 ■党幹部の人事予想 ■大学の自治権拡大 ■大学生の就職難 ■四川大地震の学校倒壊問題や復興の遅れ ■山西省の不良ワクチン注射事件 ■吉林省の製鉄所社長の殴殺事件 ■重慶の警察と暴力団の癒着 ■不動産価格の上昇と住宅難 ■地価高騰をあおる不動産開発業者

Japanese teachers given handbook to cope with

タイムの過去記事もあり。ウィキ参照。アメリカではヘリコプター・ペアレンツという。

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4083278.ece

高学歴化に伴う教師への敬意の低下、消費社会、学歴のありよう、などが関係か？　どこまで日本の問題なのかはけっこう謎。教師や学校教育に対する視線の変化も関係している。