Kyushuben!
Author: Dave
Small Japan
It takes 5 minutes to get from Akasaka to Gion, on the Fukuoka subway.
The NASA Defense
“Was trying to discover a new life form” has just become a valid defense if you get caught feeding arsenic to your labmates.
There be withering leaves…
… and a monkey.
The Sting of Rejection
Dear PLoS editor,
I know our relationship was doomed from the start and it’s not like I did have high hopes for it.
But dumping me with an email and some very generic editorial comment? After our three months together, I feel I deserved at least a little peer review love.
Ouch, baby. Ouch.
Vapnik’s Principle
When solving a problem of interest, do not solve a more general problem as an intermediate step.
Feel free to apply to general life problems… or limit to the field of transductive inference in statistical learning.
Kyoto temples, Osaka fun
I hardly ever take keitai pics anymore. Shame, there were more than a few good occasions in the past months.
Anna Baltzer’s Talk on Palestine at Kyoto University
Last Tuesday, I was serendipitously told of a talk by Anna Baltzer in Yoshida campus. I remembered seeing her on the Daily Show a while back and was curious to hear her talk in more details about her experience and views on the current Middle East situation.
As it happens, I even ranted not long ago about the lack of rational and moderate discourse, in the neverending clusterfuck™ of a situation that is the Middle East. How timely.
No point copy-pasting Anna’s bio, but the skinny is: as a Jewish-American grown up in the US and backpacking her way through North Africa and Asia, she came by herself to the conclusion that many of the views commonly held by her fellow countrymen and community members with regard to contemporary Israeli politics were perhaps overlooking a few teeny details… In particular: serious human right issues with the current treatment of Palestinians in Occupied Territories.
Waste of memory storage
Try as I may, I keep forgetting the kanji for 遺伝子 (いでんし: “gene, genetics”)…
On the other hand I have absolutely no trouble remembering words like 居合い (いあい: “act of drawing one’s katana, killing with a single stroke, shaking out the blood and sheathing the katana back, as one single movement” — yes, it means all that; no, I am not kidding) after seeing them used exactly once.
Which would be great if, you know, there was more assisting with friends’ seppuku and less messing around with genes, in my life right now.
Get paid to be sick…
Local campus health center is currently advertising a study on the effectiveness of TCM (漢方) vs. Western medicines as treatment for the common cold. In addition to free medications1Provided you are one of the lucky 33% landing in the one group that won’t provide you with sugar pills or dragon scale extract powder., you get a bonus ¥2,000 (in bookstore coupons) for agreeing to be their guinea pigs!
All you have to do is show first-day symptoms of the common cold and sign up.
Screw that scarf-and-winter-coat thing, I am biking home in my underwear tonight…