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Category: Uncategorized

Seldom-Asked Questions About Japan

Published December 4, 2003

This is fantastic; full of odd little facts about Japan. Here’s one I really like:

  1. ‘(How do you explain) the frequency of Japanese people (usually women) running or jogging for no apparent reason. In the travel agency, ‘let me get you a copy’ and she runs away. In my office a woman runs to the bathroom (can be explained) and then runs back to her desk (huh?). Most of the teachers I work with wait for the bell in the teacher’s room, and then practically sprint to their classes. Do you know why all this running is going on? Fitness? Service? An Edo-era leftover?’–Question submitted by Ben Schwartz
  2. I once teasingly asked a female with whom I worked why she always did a sort of feigned jog to and from the copier, especially since her jog was slower than her walk. The humour wasn’t lost on her, but she explained that many Japanese do this at work because the appearance of urgency is important in more traditional office environments. You don’t have to truly run around frantically, but just offer the gesture.–Answer kindly submitted by Lou C.

Another good one — it seems Bob the Builder had to have a finger added for the Japanese market, in order to not look like a yakuza.

Canadian Pharmacy FUD debunked

Published December 2, 2003

Health: Canadian Pharmacy FUD debunked: ”After nearly a year of sharp warnings about the dangers of prescription drugs from Canada,’ the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, ‘U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials cannot produce a single U.S. consumer who was killed or injured by inferior medications from Canada.’ Neither can its Canadian counterpart.’

Potentially objectionable xscreensaver

Published December 2, 2003

xscreensaver, the default (and greatest) screensaver on most free UNIX distros, may contain R-rated content, as this mail to the Fedora discussion list notes.

Much to my surprise, I stumbled across it drawing an ‘erect penis’ when I returned from lunch today. So I did some investigating: 

$ strings /usr/X11R6/lib/xscreensaver/glsnake | grep penis
erect penis
flaccid penis

Post-Thanksgiving bits

Published December 1, 2003

Quickies: I like Thanksgiving! A holiday based around a roast fowl and some booze; can’t go too far wrong with that. Thumbs up.

‘Nepalese Nose-Leech’ hits the Beeb

Published November 26, 2003

Health: via Forteana, BBC: Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. It seems the Beeb is producing a new TV series about parasites, and the PR blitz starts here (and also in The Sun).

This is a supposedly true story I received from an associate. I have no additional evidence as to its veracity but it makes a good tale. — Editor’.

No better way to announce an urban legend!

So is the Beeb printing a UL? Or did an author called Broughton Coburn really pick up a nose-leech in Nepal shortly after arriving with the Peace Corps, and before becoming a successful travel writer? It could be, I suppose…

This Hong Kong Medical Journal report on the removal of a large leech from a woman’s nose:

The woman said that one month before her symptoms developed, she swam and washed her face in a stream while hiking. Doctors checked other members of her hiking group and found another leech in the nose of a man who washed his face in the stream, the journal said.

And this NY Times interview with a leech researcher, who notes:

“There are all sorts of things out there like Dinobdella ferox, which means the terrifying and ferocious leech,” Dr. Siddall said. “It lives in eastern Bengal, and it will literally crawl up your nose and lodge in the back of your throat.”

Back to the Broughton Coburn account. An Amazon reviewer comment notes that this story appeared in Travelers’ Tales Nepal, a book by Rajenda S. Khadka. In addition, Broughton Coburn has a website nowadays, so someone could always ask! Finally, this copy of the full account has some more research.

While on the subject of Nepal, <a href="http://www.jetcityjimbo.com/awful_wonderful_ii/as1_run.html"> here’s an incredible cautionary tale — don’t do the non-tourist treks in Nepal without a guide, if you value your life:

A wall of furiously churning brown water was racing toward us. Behind it the lodge by the river where we had lunch an hour earlier was disintegrating. The water level had increased another ten feet and was annihilating everything in its path.

yikes. Lots more great travel stories, including almost swimming in shit, diarrhoea in a west African minefield, and strangling muggers in Peru on that site, BTW. And he can write!

Ireland: Knick Knack Paddy Hack — ‘Paul Clerkin and Mick Cunningham explain how their crazy-ass website p45.net suckered the (Irish) media.’

New Federal Anti-Spam Law Passed

Published November 22, 2003

Federal Anti-Spam Law Passes Congress (Anne Mitchell):

This source also said that the bill in its ultimate (and by now presumably passed) version was significantly tighter and more pro-consumer than the version which passed the senate and went to the house earlier this month. That’s good. On the other hand, it still doesn’t go nearly as far as the CA law did in many ways.

Still, one must be pragmatic – it doesn’t really matter if it’s better or worse than the CA law, right now, because it is (will be) the law. If we have to have a Federal law, and if it has to pre-empt the states, then this one at least has some positive aspects to it.

XmlStarlet, and lots of stuff

Published November 21, 2003

XML: XmlStarlet: ‘a set of command line utilities (tools) which can be used to transform, query, validate, and edit XML documents and files using simple set of shell commands in similar way it is done for plain text files using UNIX grep, sed, awk, diff, patch, join, etc commands.’ Sheer genius!

Power failure — Unix v Windows war as usual

Published November 20, 2003

OSes: /.: NERC Releases Interim Report on Aug 14th Blackout. ‘part of the blame for the big fizzle of 2003 lies with a failing SCADA system, GE’s XA/21 power management system. ‘Not only did the software that controls audible and visual alarms stop working at 2:14 p.m. EDT, but about a half hour later, two servers supporting the emergency system failed, too.’ According to the product specs, it is a Unix system with X Windows.”

How to link without PageRank

Published November 18, 2003

Spam: Given the latest spammer trick, clone blogs, there’s been some discussion of how one can link to another site, without actually conferring Google PageRank to them.