More about the Japanese and food…

A friend passed along this article from the Guardian about Japanese theme restaurants. This trend has emerged since the mid-90s. I like the looks of the ninja restaurant.

Japanese perspective on food security

This post links to an interesting video from Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries about the Japanese diet and food security.

It’s a clever presentation of the familiar “buy Japanese” message couched in concerns about health and sustainability. The argument goes like this: If the Japanese people just go back eating a traditional Japanese diet of food produced mainly in Japan, their health would improve, it would contribute to global food security, and agricultural communities would be revitalized.

There are some legitimate points there, but a few of the questions/contradictions glossed over include:

• How to reconcile the heavy consumption of fish in the traditional Japanese diet with the sustainability of global fisheries.
• The health benefits of increased consumption of animal proteins by the Japanese since World War II.
• The role of Japan’s agricultural policies in limiting long-term productivity gains in Japanese farming.
• Benefits of trade and globalization for developing country agriculture.
• The cost of increased food self-sufficiency to Japanese consumers.

Similar self-sufficiency/anti-globalization arguments can be made on behalf of any number of economic interests in Japan and elsewhere (e.g. the Detroit 3 arguing for “car self-sufficiency”). 

Debate about WordPressDirect

This post on Mashable describes the marketing effort associated with WordPressDirect, which allows quick creation and maintenance of search engine-optimized blogs around search terms provided by the user.

The controversy revolves around WordPressDirect’s automated content generation, and whether this feature simply enables spamblogging or represents a legitimate tool for bloggers. There’s an interesting debate in the comments of the Mashable post which includes WordPressDirect reps. The arguments illuminate some of the issues raised by commercializing aspects of Web 2.0. From Stephen Downes.

Forty-somethings on Facebook

Essay by an NYU business school prof on how young folks approach Facebook differently than us oldsters.

The market and the economy: How bad will they get?

A couple interesting reads on the stock market and the economy from last week.

This piece from last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal (November 20) by former hedge-fund manager Andy Kessler enumerates some factors that will contribute to selling pressure for the remainder of the year and into January, including tax-loss selling, hedge-fund redemptions, margin calls, and new mutual fund managers reworking portfolios.

This article by Nouriel Roubini in Forbes lays out a case for why it will be difficult for the U.S. consumer to jumpstart a quick recovery. Roubini predicts a cumulative fall in GDP of 10% from its peak, about three times as bad as the worst post World War II recession (1957-58), and says it is preferable for this drop to occur over a longer period (4 years rather than 2).

Video: Duck-Cougar Mascot Fight

Here is a classic from the 2007 football season.

Shackleton Centenary Expedition

An Antarctic expedition set out earlier this month along the route taken by Sir Ernest Shackleton in his 1908-1909 journey, the Nimrod Expedition, where he got closer to the South Pole than anyone else had up to that time. The more famous Endurance Expedition was several years later.

The web site for the current effort is really interesting. Members of the expedition give daily audio reports, juxtaposed against Shackleton’s diary entries. The 2008 group is experiencing much better weather conditions than their forbearers.

Rent out the condo for Inaugural weekend?

This Washington Post story today is a nice, concise guide to the issues people need to think through in considering whether to rent out their homes for the Inaugural weekend, along with some resources. Rule #1: get all the money in advance. 

I suspect that the more outrageous prices that are being bandied about are probably not attainable, or would draw so many people renting out their places into the market that it would drive prices down. I just looked on Craigslist, and prices are all over the place.

Myths about recycling debunked

This article in Popular Mechanics goes through some common recycling misconceptions (e.g. that the extra energy used in recycling exceeds the energy saved in reuse).  The important takeaway for me is that higher prices for recyclable material are drawing investment into recycling, including automated sorting technologies that allow a wider variety of plastics to be recycled more easily.  Via Instapundit.

When good pols go bad….

A city council member from Jersey City, NJ, arrested for urinating from a balcony onto the crowd below at the 9:30 Club, a DC music venue.  From the New York Daily News.