The news recently visited a nashi batake (梨畑　なしばたけ), what we would call a pear orchard. The name literally means a field of Japanese pears. What I was surprised about were the ages of the trees ( Read more... )

Wen Spencer in the Baen Free Radio Hour, August 29, 2014.
Published on LiveJournal with permission by Baen.
Copyright 2014 Baen Books.

From http://baen.com/podcast/podcast.asp Starting at 8 minutes ( Read more... )

I have never suspected that I might be green-blue color-blind, but the new DNS 13 system may change my mind ( Read more... )

It's still early for me, but this article

http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2014/08/11/teach-children-marketing/
provides a useful reflection on advertising. The idea is simple -- watch television ads with your children, and analyze them. Who is the audience, who are they trying to sell to, how does this commercial fit this show, what does it say ( Read more... )

Interesting. They had a video of a crow who has developed an interesting approach to the problem of getting his walnuts open. Apparently he flies them to a local intersection, where he lands on a convenient cable overhead. He drops the walnuts into the road. Then he waits, as cars run over them, cracking them nicely. But it is a busy intersection ( Read more... )

On a recent TV show, they were talking about research being done on ancient carpets here in Japan. Basically, these are old carpets -- I think they said 900 years old? -- which are used as part of the Gion Matsuri festival in Kyoto. But no one really knew where they came from ( Read more... )

On the Japanese news, as I understand it, is a couple of young men who managed to find a new and interesting way to get in trouble. It seems that one of them was using one of the crop of inexpensive "cool spray" that are being sold now. These are small pressure spray bottles, which supposedly cool you down if you spray them on -- or at least do a ( Read more... )

Okay. Here's what I did yesterday, on my day off... Just a bit from Gion Matsuri, in Kyoto ( Read more... )

This morning, under a blue sky with a forecast of a beautiful spring day, I was walking into work when I happened to notice a tiny sparrow apparently dancing  near the door into the building. Under the tree beside the door, he was dashing, twisting, performing aerobatics in a wonderful display. It was beautiful. I stopped to watch from a ( Read more... )

After the news about a ring of folks apparently using Blackshades malware to spy on folks using built-in cameras, I accidentally launched Microsoft Lync earlier today. Which immediately grabbed a shot of me peering at the screen ( Read more... )