Obviously I'm not talking about literal bananas. China is doing in Africa what the US did in Latin America, however, with super-cheap 50+ year mineral rights contracts.
I'd rather just contract the damn project out to , but oh no, GOD FORBID we ever put "private" or "contracted" and "social security" in the same sentence...
Traditional Chinese does offer clues on how to pronounce things. The Chinese language is not just made up of pictographs, but it also combines some of the basic characters to form pronunciations. Very frequently, in Chinese characters where there are two halves (i.e., a left and a right half), the right half indicates a meaning, and the left half indicates a pronunciation.
Japanese, on the other hand, has absolutely zero indication on the pronunciation, and on many cases even a character that you're well familiar with will have an entirely different pronunciation depending on what it's grouped with. Japan, however, has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, though, so your point is bunk.
It's not a matter of a defensive stance. The victim mentality is a dangerous one for both the victims and for the accused. All it does is stir nationalism and racism on both sides.
It's easy to waste away in mediocrity when your squalor isn't your fault or your responsibility, but someone else's. The constant focus on the West and how it should feel guilty for its past atrocities in China only makes the Chinese feel enraged about they could have been great but were held back by the evil West, and it makes the West enraged for being endlessly derided because their distant ancestors did something horrible.
Though China doesn't particularly care for exporting its government, other countries (i.e., every authoritarian state on the planet) have a significant interest in China exporting their government to them. Additionally, China has quite a bit of interest in developing banana republics.
I might also note that China throws their weight around and in some cases does force foreign companies to invest in such reckless and short-sighted ways in China. For instance, once some company (we'll say Hitachi) invests a bunch in China, the government, which has absolutely zero qualms with mafia-style bullying, can very simply do things like, "Hitachi, if you do not enter into a 51% 49% joint-venture with this Chinese company, we will cease to sell X component to you." Being that China manufactures at least some vital components for nearly everything, Hitachi would have no choice but to comply with their demands, lest their business in Japan also be harmed.
The moral of the story is to never, ever trust China (the state-backed businesses, not the people, who are very friendly, honest, and hospitable). China looks out for nobody but itself. It does not have a world-centric view, it has a China-centric view. It does not look for win-win or mutually beneficial solutions, it looks only for solutions that benefit itself, more often than not at the detriment of others. It's a huge up-and-coming country with a potential for investment not seen since the early United States, but to ever rely on China's goodwill without a backup plan is a sure guarantee of future disaster and destruction.
1.) China promises a foreign company lots of freedom of business, hundreds of billions in future contracts down the road
2.) China strong-arms the foreign company into a joint-venture 51% owned by a Chinese company (note, this is different from a Chinese subsidiary of the foreign company. The Chinese company is an independent rival to the foreign company). The foreign company must surrender all IP rights to the Chinese company that are developed as part of the 51% 49% relationship.
3.) Having initially imported products form the foreign company, China presses the foreign company to move more and more production to China.
4.) After the foreign company has invested huge sums of money and time into the Chinese market, China changes the law and forces the foreign company to manufacture a set percent (e.g., 40%) of all of the production of their product in China by a domestic Chinese company (again, we're not talking about the Chinese branch of a foreign company, we're talking about a completely separate domestic Chinese company).
5,) In order to meet the strict Chinese-domestic-manufacturing limits, the foreign company has to trade huge amounts of technology to some random state-back domestic Chinese company. Even though some small amount of technology sharing was agreed upon prior to entering the Chinese market, the reality is that in order to produce 40% or so of something (e.g., a bullet train) in China by a Chinese company that was previously built 0% in China, you have to give huge amounts of technology to that company and spend tons of resources to train that Chinese company's engineers. All this technology gifting by the foreign company to the Chinese company is done outside of the technology agreement framework in order to meet the strict 40% Chinese manufacturing quotas.
6.) After the domestic Chinese company has received sufficient advanced technology and training from the foreign company, the Chinese government simply stops making new contracts with the foreign company, starts manufacturing whatever the product was (e.g., a bullet train) 100% in China courtesy of the now-advanced Chinese company, and the government buys exclusively from the Chinese company. The foreign company finds themselves having given all of their technology to a Chinese company as a part of "doing business" in China, and then they find themselves discriminated against and completely forced out of the entire Chinese market. They also find themselves having a new Chinese rival selling what is essentially an identical product for significantly less. And, of course, the Chinese company has an unlimited budget and shapes the laws courtesy of the Chinese government.
No, most free countries do NOT work like this. The Chinese government entices foreign companies to come to China, then changes the laws once they are there in order to strong-arm the foreign companies to give up all of their secrets. Don't get me started on corporate espionage by the Chinese which is at or even greater than the level and frequency of the Soviets during the Cold War, and all of that espionage is state-backed and goes straight to up-and-coming Chinese companies (because Chinese business and Chinese government are intertwined, after all)
Of course, I don't blame China. What they're doing is brilliant--exploitative and dishonest, but brilliant. I blame the greedy short-sighted companies and their selfish executives, and I also blame my own government for creating the business conditions that make this possible.
You know, I don't know how often I heard "so and so from the West set so and so back 600 years," but it gets pretty old. China fucked China. If China had been 600 years ahead, the West wouldn't have had the power to go and fuck with them. Their warring states, constant overthrowing of dynasties and governments, and otherwise poor government didn't contribute very much to a better society then, and blaming the West on their inadequacies now isn't going to get them a better society now. Not every country formerly owned by a European power sucks today and Taiwan and South Korea have both been owned by East AND West powers and both are doing pretty well today.
Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii is a great example of classic level design. The beginning of the game shows the opening cinematic, and after that, Donkey Kong leaves his house, and left just standing there. After a few seconds, you move the joystick after the realization that, "Oh... The game just started."
You're just thrown into the game. It guides you along the correct path, but it doesn't sit you down and teach you. You learn how to play for yourself gradually from the moment you touch the joystick.
A cheap and familiar Wii is both good for Nintendo and good for developers
A cheap Wii with a very similar-to-the-Gamecube development kit means profits for Nintendo in development and manufacturing, and it means cheap and fast development process for Wii developers. If developers have a console to experiment on (thanks to low cost), they try new things and make lots of Wii games. This not only makes Nintendo money from the games produced, but makes both Nintendo and the companies money from the increased audience due to the new and innovative games. It helps reinvigorate the gaming industry and takes Nintendo and the companies with it.
At least, so goes the theory behind the Wii. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, or something like that.
If it's a plane coming towards you, the angle might be such that you don't see the separation between the plane and the contrail. Additionally, if the light is seen at one angle and not another, it could just be reflection from the sun, like planes often have. Combine the two together and you have a bright light source with a mystery trail coming out from behind it.
The reason that only the members of the security council have the capability is because members of the security council are the most powerful nations on earth, and each one actively develops their military. Obama is supporting India as a security council member likely because the China-India border is a huge spot for potential military flare-ups, and because the US and the rest of Asia want to pressure China to stop their increasingly violent, nationalistic, aggressive, hegemonic, and contradictory attitudes in the region. India, being the US-friendly country most capable of countering Chinese hegemony in Asia, is an up-and-coming potential super power, and the US wants them on board the security council.
If you're suggesting that submerged missile launch capability is some sort of secret right of passage into the security council, your fishy tin-foil hat is on too tight.
China has one of the largest espionage networks in the world. It encompasses all manner of relations, whether it be military, business, hackers, diplomats, or even foreign exchange students.
I doubt that China would need a demonstration of the US military's capabilities to understand a fact that most of the world already knows -- the US has the capability to launch ICBMs from basically whatever platform it wants.
Taiwan is far gone from China's grasp. China can threaten it, President Ma can snuggle with the PRC, and the entire world can turn its back, but the fact is that the vast majority of Taiwanese now consider themselves Taiwanese (i.e., not Chinese), and virtually no one seeks reunification. Any real move towards unification would result in civil unrest the likes of which modern highly developed nations have never experienced.
As of now, the only real chance of unification is A.) All-out total war by the PLA (which would be a catastrophe for the entire region, if not the planet on every front -- humanitarian, technological, economical, peaceful, etc...) B.) China would have to do an about-face immediately on their aggressive behavior, become a better, nicer country to be in than any industrialized democratic nation, and keep up that image for enough generations that newly-born Taiwanese would like China and the older Taiwanese would die off.
Sure you do. My friend in Memphis, TN got a friendly letter from the Memphis Light Gas & Water utility. They kindly told him that they had inadvertently under-read his meter for three months, and that they apologize profusely.
...They then billed him an additional $300 of their lost-revenues.
Where you can pay for and receive payments for things online, replacing Paypal (presumably without Paypal's crappiness), as well as having advanced searching and descriptions of all of your current and past bank transactions. And, of course, Google would data mine everything that goes in and out of that bank account, giving you advertisements of maybe a rival sandwich shop to the one that you paid for with your debit card yesterday, or products that you might like.
Privacy issues aside (and there's a lot of them), that actually sounds pretty innovative and useful.
They see no future in the business world of databases, web-development and science-based applications, but rather in the end-user market phone, games and entertainment space.
Funny, because there is literally a mass-migration of scientists (at least in the US) moving to Mac. As of writing, the Physics, Math, and Chemistry departments at my old university used almost exclusively Macs, and the entire Geophysics and Psychology departments at my grad university use exclusively Macs. And since scientists are often of the uppity-high-horse crowd, a good number of them are of the fanboy/girl crowd and bitch all the time any time there is a problem in Windows (because, you know, Mac is infallible and it couldn't have something to do with their own problem, e.g., that they used some Mac-exclusive font).
The only exceptions are Russian faculty members, who, every one that I have met, all seem to use Fedora. Kudos to them.
Software is MUCH easier to use nowadays. Really, the whole "guis are pointless because everything should be command line" argument is asinine. If you really want to use a command line all the time, let me go make you a command line frontend to Photoshop and see how you like it.
Command lines have their place. And that place isn't everywhere. Ideally, all programs would be the ability to be used by both command line and gui for batch scripting purposes, but for some programs, it's actually the command line that's supplementing the gui, not the gui that is supplementing the command line.
It's not because the the Europeans don't have interest, it's because China has strategic and political interests in making the entire continent of Africa politically-aligned with and dependent upon China. It wants to displace the US as the world hegemony, and Africa is currently a place where a foreign aid/investing cold war, of sorts, is occurring between the US and China. China is frequently beating out Western developers, however by offering huge sums of state-backed money in exchange for exclusive mineral right contracts that last as much as several decades.
If someone could genuinely tell me how I lost 40 lbs (190~200 down to 155~160) in Japan, then please do.
In Japan, diets consist almost exclusively on noodles, rice, various breaded and fried things, bread (so much bread), and vegetables. Meat is almost never a main course, it is nearly always a smaller thing, meant to bring about flavor, not to actually be the food itself.
In Japan, I could literally eat until I was burstingly full, but I would still lose weight. Virtually everyone that has ever gone to Japan from the US has similar stories.
So, my question to anyone who can answer (I genuinely want to know) is how did I lose all of that weight (I have kept off 30 of those 40 lbs for two years, now, in the US) while eating an almost excessively carb-diet. My only observations are: I rode a bike every day (not exercising, but for transportation); portion sizes were smaller; there is very little sugar, so much so that I, for the first time in my life, no longer got cravings for sugar if I hadn't had it in a long time (wonderful feeling, btw); Japanese are very serious about what is and as not in season -- fruits and vegetables are sold only when they're their freshest and in season; the amount of preservatives was exceedingly low compared to the US.
Obviously, riding a bike helps. I wasn't riding a marathon -- just to and from school -- but at least it's something. Smaller portion sizes go some of the way. But the amount of carbs that I ate is staggering by Western standards. Is the small amounts of exercise and reduced portion sizes more influential than the carbs? How did I (and everyone I know) lose so much weight?
Ideally, going to the doctor would be something you pay for out of your own pocket.
Everyone clamors for national health care; most everyone in the US drives a car and must have car insurance by law, but nobody is clamoring for national car insurance. That's because there's actually competition in car insurance. And that's because car insurance doesn't cover when I run out of gas or hit a nail with my tire, it covers things like when someone runs into the side of me in an intersection.
Likewise, in health care, a terrible illness or accident would be something that insurance would pay for. A routine check up (which would include mammograms for older women, prostate exams for older men) is something that all insurance would provide once or twice a year (not due to regulation, but because competition would force them to, like with car insurance). If I get sick with strep throat and all I need is to see a doctor for 15 minutes to a Biaxin prescription, then I should pay for it myself. If I know I have something simple, I don't need to go to Mayoclinic to have the health care gods look at me. I can go to the doctor that has good reviews online for $20 and get my medicine. For someone genuinely too poor to pay for medicine, we already have something like that for food -- they're called food stamps.
And if I'm in charge of my own money and making my own medical decisions for my own self, I'm not going to go to the doctor that refuses to quote me a price before I go in. I'm going to go to the doctor that has a clear, transparent pricing scheme. Would you give your car to a mechanic that wouldn't tell you how much he was going to charge?
National health insurance may inevitably be necessary in the US. But it won't have been necessary because you can't have privatized health insurance. It will have been necessary because the US government was too incompetent to properly set up a competitive industry for health care. Our car insurance system is running mostly fine, and honestly, a sick car in the US is just as detrimental to your livelihood as being sick, yourself. The deal is that car insurance is very transparent, it covers only what is necessary (i.e., not everything), and you have a choice of where to get your car fixed, by whom, and for how much.
You resoundingly do not have any such choice in medicine, and that is why it is so god damn expensive, mismanaged, and quite frankly, often downright evil (doesn't matter if health insurance company X makes little Suzy die in the emergency room, none of their "customers" are really capable of switching to a different insurance company).
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Obviously I'm not talking about literal bananas. China is doing in Africa what the US did in Latin America, however, with super-cheap 50+ year mineral rights contracts.
I'd rather just contract the damn project out to , but oh no, GOD FORBID we ever put "private" or "contracted" and "social security" in the same sentence...
Traditional Chinese does offer clues on how to pronounce things. The Chinese language is not just made up of pictographs, but it also combines some of the basic characters to form pronunciations. Very frequently, in Chinese characters where there are two halves (i.e., a left and a right half), the right half indicates a meaning, and the left half indicates a pronunciation.
Japanese, on the other hand, has absolutely zero indication on the pronunciation, and on many cases even a character that you're well familiar with will have an entirely different pronunciation depending on what it's grouped with. Japan, however, has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, though, so your point is bunk.
It's not a matter of a defensive stance. The victim mentality is a dangerous one for both the victims and for the accused. All it does is stir nationalism and racism on both sides.
It's easy to waste away in mediocrity when your squalor isn't your fault or your responsibility, but someone else's. The constant focus on the West and how it should feel guilty for its past atrocities in China only makes the Chinese feel enraged about they could have been great but were held back by the evil West, and it makes the West enraged for being endlessly derided because their distant ancestors did something horrible.
Though China doesn't particularly care for exporting its government, other countries (i.e., every authoritarian state on the planet) have a significant interest in China exporting their government to them. Additionally, China has quite a bit of interest in developing banana republics.
I might also note that China throws their weight around and in some cases does force foreign companies to invest in such reckless and short-sighted ways in China. For instance, once some company (we'll say Hitachi) invests a bunch in China, the government, which has absolutely zero qualms with mafia-style bullying, can very simply do things like, "Hitachi, if you do not enter into a 51% 49% joint-venture with this Chinese company, we will cease to sell X component to you." Being that China manufactures at least some vital components for nearly everything, Hitachi would have no choice but to comply with their demands, lest their business in Japan also be harmed.
The moral of the story is to never, ever trust China (the state-backed businesses, not the people, who are very friendly, honest, and hospitable). China looks out for nobody but itself. It does not have a world-centric view, it has a China-centric view. It does not look for win-win or mutually beneficial solutions, it looks only for solutions that benefit itself, more often than not at the detriment of others. It's a huge up-and-coming country with a potential for investment not seen since the early United States, but to ever rely on China's goodwill without a backup plan is a sure guarantee of future disaster and destruction.
Typically how it goes is:
1.) China promises a foreign company lots of freedom of business, hundreds of billions in future contracts down the road
2.) China strong-arms the foreign company into a joint-venture 51% owned by a Chinese company (note, this is different from a Chinese subsidiary of the foreign company. The Chinese company is an independent rival to the foreign company). The foreign company must surrender all IP rights to the Chinese company that are developed as part of the 51% 49% relationship.
3.) Having initially imported products form the foreign company, China presses the foreign company to move more and more production to China.
4.) After the foreign company has invested huge sums of money and time into the Chinese market, China changes the law and forces the foreign company to manufacture a set percent (e.g., 40%) of all of the production of their product in China by a domestic Chinese company (again, we're not talking about the Chinese branch of a foreign company, we're talking about a completely separate domestic Chinese company).
5,) In order to meet the strict Chinese-domestic-manufacturing limits, the foreign company has to trade huge amounts of technology to some random state-back domestic Chinese company. Even though some small amount of technology sharing was agreed upon prior to entering the Chinese market, the reality is that in order to produce 40% or so of something (e.g., a bullet train) in China by a Chinese company that was previously built 0% in China, you have to give huge amounts of technology to that company and spend tons of resources to train that Chinese company's engineers. All this technology gifting by the foreign company to the Chinese company is done outside of the technology agreement framework in order to meet the strict 40% Chinese manufacturing quotas.
6.) After the domestic Chinese company has received sufficient advanced technology and training from the foreign company, the Chinese government simply stops making new contracts with the foreign company, starts manufacturing whatever the product was (e.g., a bullet train) 100% in China courtesy of the now-advanced Chinese company, and the government buys exclusively from the Chinese company. The foreign company finds themselves having given all of their technology to a Chinese company as a part of "doing business" in China, and then they find themselves discriminated against and completely forced out of the entire Chinese market. They also find themselves having a new Chinese rival selling what is essentially an identical product for significantly less. And, of course, the Chinese company has an unlimited budget and shapes the laws courtesy of the Chinese government.
No, most free countries do NOT work like this. The Chinese government entices foreign companies to come to China, then changes the laws once they are there in order to strong-arm the foreign companies to give up all of their secrets. Don't get me started on corporate espionage by the Chinese which is at or even greater than the level and frequency of the Soviets during the Cold War, and all of that espionage is state-backed and goes straight to up-and-coming Chinese companies (because Chinese business and Chinese government are intertwined, after all)
Of course, I don't blame China. What they're doing is brilliant--exploitative and dishonest, but brilliant. I blame the greedy short-sighted companies and their selfish executives, and I also blame my own government for creating the business conditions that make this possible.
You know, I don't know how often I heard "so and so from the West set so and so back 600 years," but it gets pretty old. China fucked China. If China had been 600 years ahead, the West wouldn't have had the power to go and fuck with them. Their warring states, constant overthrowing of dynasties and governments, and otherwise poor government didn't contribute very much to a better society then, and blaming the West on their inadequacies now isn't going to get them a better society now. Not every country formerly owned by a European power sucks today and Taiwan and South Korea have both been owned by East AND West powers and both are doing pretty well today.
Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii is a great example of classic level design. The beginning of the game shows the opening cinematic, and after that, Donkey Kong leaves his house, and left just standing there. After a few seconds, you move the joystick after the realization that, "Oh... The game just started."
You're just thrown into the game. It guides you along the correct path, but it doesn't sit you down and teach you. You learn how to play for yourself gradually from the moment you touch the joystick.
Donkey Kong Country Returns is how games used to be. This is how they are now.
A cheap and familiar Wii is both good for Nintendo and good for developers
A cheap Wii with a very similar-to-the-Gamecube development kit means profits for Nintendo in development and manufacturing, and it means cheap and fast development process for Wii developers. If developers have a console to experiment on (thanks to low cost), they try new things and make lots of Wii games. This not only makes Nintendo money from the games produced, but makes both Nintendo and the companies money from the increased audience due to the new and innovative games. It helps reinvigorate the gaming industry and takes Nintendo and the companies with it.
At least, so goes the theory behind the Wii. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, or something like that.
I bet that with a little more poking by the powers that be, we could gather a semi-large crowd to all participate in an airport No Pants Day.
I will vote.
It may not help in reality, but theoretically, if everyone else is with me, we can make a difference.
If it's a plane coming towards you, the angle might be such that you don't see the separation between the plane and the contrail. Additionally, if the light is seen at one angle and not another, it could just be reflection from the sun, like planes often have. Combine the two together and you have a bright light source with a mystery trail coming out from behind it.
The reason that only the members of the security council have the capability is because members of the security council are the most powerful nations on earth, and each one actively develops their military. Obama is supporting India as a security council member likely because the China-India border is a huge spot for potential military flare-ups, and because the US and the rest of Asia want to pressure China to stop their increasingly violent, nationalistic, aggressive, hegemonic, and contradictory attitudes in the region. India, being the US-friendly country most capable of countering Chinese hegemony in Asia, is an up-and-coming potential super power, and the US wants them on board the security council.
If you're suggesting that submerged missile launch capability is some sort of secret right of passage into the security council, your fishy tin-foil hat is on too tight.
China has one of the largest espionage networks in the world. It encompasses all manner of relations, whether it be military, business, hackers, diplomats, or even foreign exchange students.
I doubt that China would need a demonstration of the US military's capabilities to understand a fact that most of the world already knows -- the US has the capability to launch ICBMs from basically whatever platform it wants.
Taiwan is far gone from China's grasp. China can threaten it, President Ma can snuggle with the PRC, and the entire world can turn its back, but the fact is that the vast majority of Taiwanese now consider themselves Taiwanese (i.e., not Chinese), and virtually no one seeks reunification. Any real move towards unification would result in civil unrest the likes of which modern highly developed nations have never experienced.
As of now, the only real chance of unification is
A.) All-out total war by the PLA (which would be a catastrophe for the entire region, if not the planet on every front -- humanitarian, technological, economical, peaceful, etc...)
B.) China would have to do an about-face immediately on their aggressive behavior, become a better, nicer country to be in than any industrialized democratic nation, and keep up that image for enough generations that newly-born Taiwanese would like China and the older Taiwanese would die off.
Are we legally allowed an expectation of privacy if we're in public walking around a movie theater?
Sure you do. My friend in Memphis, TN got a friendly letter from the Memphis Light Gas & Water utility. They kindly told him that they had inadvertently under-read his meter for three months, and that they apologize profusely.
Where you can pay for and receive payments for things online, replacing Paypal (presumably without Paypal's crappiness), as well as having advanced searching and descriptions of all of your current and past bank transactions. And, of course, Google would data mine everything that goes in and out of that bank account, giving you advertisements of maybe a rival sandwich shop to the one that you paid for with your debit card yesterday, or products that you might like.
Privacy issues aside (and there's a lot of them), that actually sounds pretty innovative and useful.
I wenodr if the smae appiles to the good ol' "the frsit and lsat ltteer of ervey wrod are in tcat thuogh the rset of the wrod is scrmblaed" mhetod.
The caveat is that all of those with English as a second language would likely die trying to read a textbook.
They see no future in the business world of databases, web-development and science-based applications, but rather in the end-user market phone, games and entertainment space.
Funny, because there is literally a mass-migration of scientists (at least in the US) moving to Mac. As of writing, the Physics, Math, and Chemistry departments at my old university used almost exclusively Macs, and the entire Geophysics and Psychology departments at my grad university use exclusively Macs. And since scientists are often of the uppity-high-horse crowd, a good number of them are of the fanboy/girl crowd and bitch all the time any time there is a problem in Windows (because, you know, Mac is infallible and it couldn't have something to do with their own problem, e.g., that they used some Mac-exclusive font).
The only exceptions are Russian faculty members, who, every one that I have met, all seem to use Fedora. Kudos to them.
Software is MUCH easier to use nowadays. Really, the whole "guis are pointless because everything should be command line" argument is asinine. If you really want to use a command line all the time, let me go make you a command line frontend to Photoshop and see how you like it.
Command lines have their place. And that place isn't everywhere. Ideally, all programs would be the ability to be used by both command line and gui for batch scripting purposes, but for some programs, it's actually the command line that's supplementing the gui, not the gui that is supplementing the command line.
It's not because the the Europeans don't have interest, it's because China has strategic and political interests in making the entire continent of Africa politically-aligned with and dependent upon China. It wants to displace the US as the world hegemony, and Africa is currently a place where a foreign aid/investing cold war, of sorts, is occurring between the US and China. China is frequently beating out Western developers, however by offering huge sums of state-backed money in exchange for exclusive mineral right contracts that last as much as several decades.
If someone could genuinely tell me how I lost 40 lbs (190~200 down to 155~160) in Japan, then please do.
In Japan, diets consist almost exclusively on noodles, rice, various breaded and fried things, bread (so much bread), and vegetables. Meat is almost never a main course, it is nearly always a smaller thing, meant to bring about flavor, not to actually be the food itself.
In Japan, I could literally eat until I was burstingly full, but I would still lose weight. Virtually everyone that has ever gone to Japan from the US has similar stories.
So, my question to anyone who can answer (I genuinely want to know) is how did I lose all of that weight (I have kept off 30 of those 40 lbs for two years, now, in the US) while eating an almost excessively carb-diet. My only observations are: I rode a bike every day (not exercising, but for transportation); portion sizes were smaller; there is very little sugar, so much so that I, for the first time in my life, no longer got cravings for sugar if I hadn't had it in a long time (wonderful feeling, btw); Japanese are very serious about what is and as not in season -- fruits and vegetables are sold only when they're their freshest and in season; the amount of preservatives was exceedingly low compared to the US.
Obviously, riding a bike helps. I wasn't riding a marathon -- just to and from school -- but at least it's something. Smaller portion sizes go some of the way. But the amount of carbs that I ate is staggering by Western standards. Is the small amounts of exercise and reduced portion sizes more influential than the carbs? How did I (and everyone I know) lose so much weight?
Ideally, going to the doctor would be something you pay for out of your own pocket.
Everyone clamors for national health care; most everyone in the US drives a car and must have car insurance by law, but nobody is clamoring for national car insurance. That's because there's actually competition in car insurance. And that's because car insurance doesn't cover when I run out of gas or hit a nail with my tire, it covers things like when someone runs into the side of me in an intersection.
Likewise, in health care, a terrible illness or accident would be something that insurance would pay for. A routine check up (which would include mammograms for older women, prostate exams for older men) is something that all insurance would provide once or twice a year (not due to regulation, but because competition would force them to, like with car insurance). If I get sick with strep throat and all I need is to see a doctor for 15 minutes to a Biaxin prescription, then I should pay for it myself. If I know I have something simple, I don't need to go to Mayoclinic to have the health care gods look at me. I can go to the doctor that has good reviews online for $20 and get my medicine. For someone genuinely too poor to pay for medicine, we already have something like that for food -- they're called food stamps.
And if I'm in charge of my own money and making my own medical decisions for my own self, I'm not going to go to the doctor that refuses to quote me a price before I go in. I'm going to go to the doctor that has a clear, transparent pricing scheme. Would you give your car to a mechanic that wouldn't tell you how much he was going to charge?
National health insurance may inevitably be necessary in the US. But it won't have been necessary because you can't have privatized health insurance. It will have been necessary because the US government was too incompetent to properly set up a competitive industry for health care. Our car insurance system is running mostly fine, and honestly, a sick car in the US is just as detrimental to your livelihood as being sick, yourself. The deal is that car insurance is very transparent, it covers only what is necessary (i.e., not everything), and you have a choice of where to get your car fixed, by whom, and for how much.
You resoundingly do not have any such choice in medicine, and that is why it is so god damn expensive, mismanaged, and quite frankly, often downright evil (doesn't matter if health insurance company X makes little Suzy die in the emergency room, none of their "customers" are really capable of switching to a different insurance company).