Ideasabound

I didn't drink coffee till I moves to Japan. I think it was 1) the trauma of spilling scalding McDonalds coffee on myself as child and 2) lack of flavor. Upon arriving in Japan, I was given coffee which was fragrant without extra exotic flavors like vanilla or mocha. It was simple yet wondrous. I couldn't reject it as I was a guest so I drank it and was pleasantly surprised. Since then I became a two cup a day coffee drinker. No sugar but I do add milk and I'm not a fan of flavors nor creamer. Of course in Japan you can get "American coffee". This is coffee with just a little more water than coffee. It's not heavy nor strong but just slightly weakened. While living abroad I had forgotten what real "American coffee" was like. That was until I got back home for the holidays. I was given a cup of coffee but all I tasted was hot watered down milk with an extremely distant flavor of something resembling coffee. Again not wanting to be rude I slowl...

For the first time in 6 years I traveled back to my central Wisconsin home of Marshfield for Christmas. I've been back to the US several times in between but it has been in summer. Last time, we came home to announce we were having our first child. Now we have three kids. Our youngest is 8 months old and will not remember a thing. Visiting my childhood home has been strange to say the least. It has not changed much except the trees are all grown in, the house has geothermal water heat, and there have been a few redecorations. The biggest change was the ride up from Milwaukee where we were staying with my sister. In my youth, the best way to get to Marshfield was to take a winding road north out of Mauston. Now we take a highway to Stevens Point and highway 10 across. Hwy 10 was a 2 lane road connecting eastern and western Wisconsin. Now it's a behemoth 4 lane super road with limited traffic. It cut the time drastically but didn't feel right. What felt weirder was when...

Last year I examined the length that Japanese Prime Ministers have remained in office. On Sunday December 17th, Japan replaced Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and the lower house of the government with members of the Liberal Democratic Party which is not really Liberal but ultra nationalistic and conservative. What does this mean? At the end of my last post on Japanese prime Ministers, I wished Noda good luck at lasting longer than one year. Well he did make it past 1 year in the number sense. The Noda government lasted 475 days. So now Japan will have a new Prime Minister...but wait we have had this guy before. Welcome back Shinzo Abe. Abe has, before even moving back into the Prime Minister's residence, pissed off China and Korea by claiming he wants to change the constitution so that Japan can have a standing army instead of a purely defensive one. Members of his party want to deny the atrocities Japan committed in WWII. But Japan is facing an economic crisis. The ...

Four horsemen of the apocalypse The Mayans said that the world would come to an end on December 21st, 2012. But I really wonder about this because of a few specific points 1) What about that Mayan Calendar " The Mayans employed three calendars, all organized as hierarchies of cycles of days of various lengths. " ( 1 ) The longest date is actually later than what would be December 21st 2012. If the world were to come to an end at this date, why create a calendar with longer dates? " The Mayans believed at at the conclusion of each  pictun cycle of about 7,885 years the universe is destroyed and re-created. Those with apocalyptic inclinations will be relieved to observe that the present cycle will not end until Columbus Day, October 12, 4772 in the Gregorian calendar."  ( 1 ) 2) It might not be 2012 Not everyone uses the same calendar. This means that in some cases we are way past the 21st day of the 12th month of the 2012th year. We have already m...

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