As an American living and working in Japan, I have the following comments to the video (watch it--it's short).
1) This is classic Japanese governmental/administrative dunderheadedness. They will pick a number or a date and act like the world works that way and that any person that deviates from that is insane. E.g. junior high students have to switch to their heavy wool winter uniforms when winter begins... In the middle of September. That's when it's time to start wearing wool, when it's still 27 degrees (Celsius) out. The teachers sometimes decide not to notice minor infractions, but at no time does anyone go, "Y'know what? Maybe a room full of sweating, miserable adolescents isn't the best learning environment. How about we push this date back by a month or more?" No, no, rules are rules, handed down by the sun goddess Amaterasu to her earthly descendant the emperor, and down the line all the way to the principal sitting in his air-conditioned office smoking all day. Can't question rules.
The video points out that the number seems small, but that we have to remember that the Japanese are tiny people or something. This is craziness too. The Japanese are, on average, smaller than whites or blacks, yes. But there is still a great deal of variation. And they are getting taller. This has to do with their diet changing (more on that later). BMI might be a better measure, but not much better, because they use the Asian BMI, even if you're not Asian. My (British) boss runs marathons. Marathons, okay? But every year at the health check, he is told that he is overweight based on the magical BMI number.
Japanese people forego common sense in the face of authority, which itself foregoes common sense when reaching a decision. It is an amazing testament to Japanese rule-breaking ingenuity that anyone gets anything done at all here.
2) It is classic Japan to assume that the employees of a company are the property of the company, and that the company is the property of the government. This is probably the biggest mindset difference between Westerners and Japanese (or Chinese)--Westerners are natural capitalists. Japanese are natural communists. They just work in a capitalist economy.
When you introduce yourself in Japan (in business settings), you say something roughly equivalent to "I am NEC's Matsumoto." You identify your employer as your superordinate identity. This goes back to the samurai, who would have been in service of a particular warlord. Tribal identity is huge in Japan, and this affects all levels of society. And irritates the hell out of Westerners here.
Just how is the health of the employees the company's responsibility? What are they even supposed to do about it? Reduce the calories in the cafeteria meals? What do you do about the fact that the cafeteria meals are all made of frozen packaged shit from China? So you reduce portion sizes and... More people eat out. Is the company to issue reprimands to portly salarymen? If I were a Japanese CEO, I'd be calling my Yakuza buddies in government to go whack some kneecaps over this.
3) Finally, I have to talk about diet. The reason that Japanese are getting taller is that they are no longer malnourished. The meal that the reporter presented as "traditional Japanese food" would have only been enjoyed by the very rich throughout most of Japan's history. Most people literally subsisted on rice and green tea all the way up into the postwar period. As Japan has gotten richer, their diet has diversified and improved, to the point now that this generation of old people might be able to walk upright until they die, instead of turning into 90-degree ogres at age 70 like the generation before them. It has also led to the shameful depletion of the world's fish stock because Japanese food is based on raiding wild fish reserves, and as people have gotten richer, more people can buy, and so fish are actually going extinct, largely because of
This is your health you're talking about, okay? Your kids and wife would prefer you around a long time (I assume!). Maybe in your mind you're busy for them, but I suspect that what they really want is a healthy dad or husband who doesn't get diabetes and go blind and then die.
I am a college lecturer. I don't have a PhD yet, and I'm not tenure track yet. That means that on top of my classes and my committees and required institutional research projects, I have to do my own research to build up my publication portfolio to help get into a good PhD program at a time when, with the economy dipping, a lot of people are trying to get into good PhD programs. I'm busy. Really busy.
But I've found--seriously!--that I can maintain my weight with one simple thing: Take 5 minutes in the morning and make a homemade sandwich and an apple for lunch instead of picking something up at the cafeteria. I made that one lifestyle change and I started dropping the pounds. Even though at the same time I switched from biking to work to driving (I was sick of getting to work kinda sweaty, in a tie--the commute is just far enough to not be a good idea in business attire--Fine when class is out and I can go in my civvies, but not when I have to look presentable). Just getting away from the assembly-line, sugar-laden cafeteria food and going to homemade ham on rye and a golden delicious solved the waistline creep I experienced in my first 2 years at this job, which evidently would have eventually cost my employer money (I live in Japan)!
Also, no snacking. Just don't. You can wait. Just get busy doing something else and you will totally forget (okay, so yesterday I broke that rule and ate some Oreos I had in my desk, but I shared them with my officemates so I wouldn't mindlessly eat the whole 10-cookie pack--but that was the first time in weeks, I swear!).
I don't exercise (Seriously, who has the time? I used to go to the gym until I worked out that a 30-minute workout was eating 2 hours of my day, all told!). I just reduced portion sizes by about 20%, switched to homemade food (and I'm not timid with the mayo either), stopped snacking, and avoided having beer with dinner (not stopped--avoided--only when I REALLY want one).
Take care of your health, for your family's sake. Remember that you're doing it for them.
Sorry, but I don't think that's the difference. At all.
I think it's gender roles. East Asian men have a hard time with Western women because the gender roles are flipped out of the favor of East Asian men.
East Asian men who are totally Anglo/Western, culturally, do not seem to suffer any of the problems you're describing--problems I know exist, because I, too, have seen them affect friends. But even in those cases, I have to say, it really looks more like a cultural misunderstanding than anything else.
My advice to you would be to look for a girl with a degree in Asian Studies or something. Someone who "gets it." You may not feel that you're different from a white guy from Iowa, but I'm betting you are, in subtle ways.
But I'll warn you: Even my Anglo female friends who live here--and by that I even mean Asian-Americans who are culturally Anglo--aren't in the market for East Asian guys. When you ask why, they say that East Asian guys are male chauvinists. To some extent they are, and to some extent Western women think every guy is a pig. Anyway, throw "geeky" on top of that, and it gets even harder, I think.
Hell, my Chinese (as in, from Guangzhou originally, but moved to the states when he was in grade school) language and literature prof back in my undergrad did a whole class on this. It's a tough issue, and you're right, I'll never know what it's like to be in your shoes. But believe me when I say that I've noticed how tough it is.
Ganbatte kudasai! (Japanese for "do your best!/persevere!/good luck!/you can do it!")
They don't disallow variation within them; in fact, they expect it. Of course people are different. My wife happens to be good with finances. One of my friends' Japanese wives is abysmal. So he takes care of it. But generally speaking, when you're raised in a culture that says "women will be in charge of the finances," women learn how to handle finances.
I made generalizations about people in certain cultures. If you don't think people can be grouped, generally speaking by culture, then... Well, maybe you need to get out and see the world a bit.
What I was specifically talking about was gender roles within cultures. I was specifically addressing the "ladies first" culture of the West and the "men first" culture of much of East Asia. I was pointing out that this is why you see so many successful pairings of these people. The gender roles go together nicely and lead to two people being nicer to each other than they expect.
Of course individual people are different.
But that doesn't mean they aren't also kinda the same.
Finally, after 7 years with my wife, I think I have a pretty good idea what she's like. I also think I have a pretty good idea what my sister-in-law is like. And my father-in-law. And even though I never got to meet her, I even have a pretty good idea what my late mother-in-law was like. I know what my friends are like. I know what my coworkers are like. I know what my students are like. I am fluent in Japanese and have lived here for the better part of the last decade. I have a degree in Asian Studies. I teach international communication and comparative religions at a university. Believe me, I know what Japanese culture is like, and I know what individuals are like.
In fact, I'm pretty offended that you would imply that I see my family as generalizations. As stereotypes. They're my family. Just because they fall under rather broad cultural trends does not mean they aren't individuals.
Get that through your head, and you'll find it a lot easier to understand other cultures.
Well, both of your points are not really about gender relations in cultures, but gender relations in American law, and I agree those are pretty abhorrent.
Even though we have moved, rightly, to a social model in the US where men or women can be the primary breadwinners, the law still assumes that men have all the financial power. You get divorced in America and your wife is walking with half of the stuff, whether she paid for it or not.
The statutory laws are a whole other ball of wax, and need to be looked at a lot more closely. I have a friend who's on the sex offender list for having a relationship with someone who was sixteen. How old was my friend at the time? 23. And female. Her life is fucked up now over... NOTHING. The boy didn't complain. He doesn't have to. Neither do his parents. All it takes is one busybody to call the cops, and the cops are required to press charges. It is insane.
The worst place this inequity shows up is in paternity. There is no way for a man to get out of paying for a child, even if he didn't want it, and even, in some famous cases in the US, where he was deliberately tricked into fathering it. Alimony payments for 18 years because a terrible person figured out how to get an even better deal than a sperm bank.
So, like I said, it's not that I think American women are bad. I don't. I mean, c'mon. That's my mom and my sister-in-law and a lot of my friends! I just prefer being treated more nicely by my life partner--and for my niceness to be appreciated.
My wife and I have been together for 7 years. It's still fun, and we still like each other and we're still nice to each other.
Yes, of course. Speaking in generalities is just that: generalities. It's never supposed to encompass all data points.
People like to be treated kindly and gently. I don't think that's a revolutionary comment to make, but it is profound. I really do think that American women need to be nicer to men. I am also open to the idea that my experiences motivating that pronouncement are due to sampling error. In fact, I hope they are!
Given that I'm fluent in Japanese and have lived here for the better part of 10 years, when I say "Japanese women are nice to guys," followed by "but don't think that means they are weak," those aren't stereotypes. I'm married into a Japanese family. They are my family. How could I think these people were stereotypes?
I can't find any CF bulb that doesn't take a long time to light up. I've tried every brand I've seen (major brands--Toshiba, Panasonic--I live in Japan), and the best ones are slow, and the worst are already in the trash (before I knew how toxic they are!). I have decided that, like PC fan noise, my standards are just way higher than other people's (that's not bragging--I'm open to the idea that I may just be a whiny bastard).
And don't even get me started on the color.
Oh, and I have observed exactly NO change in my monthly electricity usage. I think I have to admit that the biggest draw in my house is this Mac Pro with its kilowatt PSU, plus all the vampire appliances I have.
But lightpipes... Now that's sexy. I love natural light. Too bad I live in an apartment.
Of course, he's not going to get the maximum, or anything close, but let me respond to your sentiment nonetheless:
Taking responsibility for choices we make is all part of growing up.
Throwing people in jail for a long time doesn't allow them to grow up. Or, rather, it forces them to grow up outside of society, in a different paradigm--one whose lessons lead to disaster on the outside. As a general rule, I am very much against locking kids up, because it doesn't help society one iota.
Taking responsibility is important; but it is even more important that he grow up.
I had a run-in with the law when I was in high school. It impressed upon me that the world of high school is not the world. This got me through the rest of it. It's easy for high school kids to think that the school is the whole world. This leads to things like falsifying your grades or killing people because they pick on you. If we want people to grow up, we need to allow them into society. We can't sequester them off into prisons or schools.
This kid thought it wasn't as big a deal as it was. It's very easy to think that when your world is a high school. You see the small actions as sneaking into someone's office and installing a keylogger, then the small actions of changing your grades, as the small actions they are. Maybe there's a rush of adrenaline the first time, but then it just gets to be routine. It's no big deal, right? You're tapping away at your computer. But then the real world comes in and shows you the implication of those actions and then you get it.
I'd wager he gets it now. There's no reason to rub it in.
Okay, there is a little stuff in there I'm uncomfortable about, but let me talk about what I agree with:
If you're looking for a wife, get out of the US. Our angry, second-wave-feminist, crybaby boomer mothers raised our generation for men to hate themselves and women to hate men. For no good reason. Find me a man who says "women should stay home, barefoot and pregnant!" or "women make great secretaries, but that's about it." No. One. Thinks. That. But we all have to grovel and supplicate to prove we're not one of those sexist straw men our mothers made up.
As a result, American, and most Western, women have become, in my opinion, untenable as life partners. I want equality in my marriage. By that I mean social equality. I don't want to be the bad guy. I just want to be someone's husband. Partner.
Why do American guys flip over Asian women? Just as the parent says, it's because it's the first time most guys have ever had a woman treat him kindly. On the other hand, why do Asian women often flip for Western guys? Because for them, it's often the first time a guy has treated them kindly. This is why you see so many successful married couples with Western guy and Asian woman. The cultures' gender roles, in the current generation, are complementary.
BUT...
And this is where the parent has kind of fallen down...
Don't expect it to stay like that forever. It won't. It can't. It shouldn't.
East Asian households are basically run by the women. They expect to control the finances. However, in my experience (my wonderful wife is Japanese), and that of my friends, they're pretty damned good at it. It bothered me at first, but then I had to admit we were living very comfortably, I had plenty of money for toys, and we were saving over a third of our income! So I let that go. YMMV.
In the West, we've been programmed to think that a housewife or stay-at-home-mom is a slave. She's not. My wife doesn't work, and even though we could get more money otherwise, and it would of course be fine if she wanted to, it's awesome. I now see why that's been the dominant model in every society since the beginning of time. I work outside of the house, she makes sure the house is operating correctly. We get to spend a lot more leisure time together that way. We don't have to spend our weekends cleaning the house and doing laundry. We eat healthy, home-cooked food that bonds us socially. She's not a slave, she's my best friend and partner. I gladly work my ass off to make sure she's comfortable, and she gladly works her ass off to make sure I am. That, my friends, is a partnership. Just because I'm the one making the money doesn't mean I'm in a higher position. I'm in an equal position. We're taking the entire job of life and splitting it up and assigning roles.
For the record, if she could make more than me, I'd be delighted to stay at home and do the housework.
I guess what I'm saying is this:
If you are looking for a nice woman who wants a partnership, that's still in vogue in Asia.
As the parent said, don't be a dick. Learn the language and culture. This will ensure that you're not getting into something you don't understand.
Your preconceived notions are probably not complete. Asian women are strong and strong-willed. They expect to be given control of certain domains in your life, and you may need to go along with that, or work out a different deal, for your relationship to proceed harmoniously. Just because they don't treat men like crap doesn't mean they are Madame Butterfly. If that's what you want, um, well, you deserve to be unhappy and alone.
Realize that in a culture where women are nice to men, that niceness may or may not actually be indicative of anything special. I got really burned with my first girlfriend (only have had 2) in Japan. I fell head-over-heels for her, wanted to marry her, but found out
Okay, I have been wondering this for a long time... How does one get into writing for games? I have scriptwriting experience (a bad experience--ultimately uncompensated, and then uncredited!!!--but good, not-working-on-something-that-will-never-see-the-light-of-day experience nonetheless) but I have never seen job listings for game narrative/dialogue writers, and so many times when I'm playing a game, I'm like, "My god I wish I could have written for this--I could have made this exchange so much better--and who directed this actor???" It's so infrequently done well (Mass Effect being the huge, monumental exception--stunning writing and acting) that sometimes I wonder if there's any competition at all...
What kind of resume do people look for? How did you get into it?
I live in Japan. They see American crime statistics and think America is dangerous. Then I tell them that I grew up in a town where I didn't know anyone to lock their door, or those of their cars. I tell them that I've never, ever, known or even met someone who had been the victim of a violent crime, and I only know a handful of people who have fallen victim to any crime (CDs stolen from car, that kind of thing).
I feel safer in the US than I do here, what with the yakuza being able to do whatever the hell they want. Usually they just stay out of your way, but the lower-levels sometimes just like to cause trouble. And the cops don't do anything.
Then again, the cops are the ones I'm afraid of in the US...
the head rancher is usually financially well off, and educated.
Go CSU Rams!
Okay, well, I never got into sports when I was at Colorado State, and have never seen any of the teams play, BUT...
CSU is one of the top schools for agribusiness. Farming and ranching are huge businesses, blending so many disparate fields, from animal husbandry to high finance, that if you want to make a buck at it, you need a 4-year degree at least.
Farmhands can be a little... Bucolic... But farmers and ranchers are typically upper-middle-class, erudite, and literate.
But why would one give these kids an assignment to write a program?
My program example was within the context of the argument that these things will expand IT knowledge to developing countries.
The assignment's more likely to be "Draw a map of the area around the village.". The OLPC is the tool the kids use to draw the map. And to get all their friends together to help point out landmarks one of them may have forgotten to include, and to argue about where those landmarks are relative to one another.
I'm sorry, but as long as we're criticizing example lesson plans, could you explain:
1) What this task is intended to teach.
2) How these groups communicate with each other from miles away with no infrastructure.
Furthermore, if we are in a setting where we have tribal warfare, it's not going to be the kind of place where one wants the youngsters running around making a map.
Even for your example to work, you need a lot of people involved. People who are smart; people who are looking out for the kids; people who are working together. Most of the problems of the world, as far as I can tell, are about areas where people have not figured out how to cooperate and work as a large social unit for the betterment of all members. Any development assistance that is not focused on changing the people situation is a waste of time, and I can think of no bigger waste of time than handing personal computers sans curricula to education systems that are neither educational nor systematic.
I see your point, of course, but the problem is almost never the tools. It's the people.
What you are describing there is called "task-based learning." It's a pretty common pedagogical approach in secondary education, first showing up in medicine and law. The idea is that by intelligently creating a task/project, you can be sure that students will follow a fairly predictable path towards completing it, learning things along the way. The biggest learning advantage to this is that, more than learning how to complete the task, the student learns how to learn how to complete a task.
It seems, however, that in the US educational system anyway, we are moving away from this model, which encourages creativity, self-sufficiency, and autonomy, and toward a "cram for this standardized test" model, like where I live now: Japan. This is a mistake. And that's coming from one of the guys who writes and coordinates a large standardized test!
In the case of the OLPC, this pedagogical concern has been and continues to be at the heart of all the questions about its efficacy as a world-changing tool, whether the critics realize that or not. It has never been clear what one could learn from having a little green typewriter which may not even have internet access.
As an educator, tester, and geek, I have mocked the dunderheaded goodwill of this project from the first time I heard about it. The cry for more computers in the classrooms of the world is very rarely raised by the teachers themselves. Computers are great for education mainly as a means of finding information, and in such a case, the essential ingredient is internet access. Once that requirement is satisfied, any terminal is fine. Beyond this, what is a student to do with a PC? Type? Is this substantially different from writing by hand? No. It's just more convenient.
I have seen it argued that the OLPC project would expand IT/programming to impoverished children and give them a means of developing their economy. Rubbish. I have a master's degree and teach at a university and do statistics-heavy research, but if you handed me an OLPC and said, "your project is to write a program that alphabetizes this list," which--if I remember correctly--was one of the first assignments in my friends' programming classes, I would have no idea of how to even begin. I have done zero programming. I would require some explicit instruction to at least know how to get started. Explicit instruction requires access to a knowledgeable person. If I live in the boonies of Kafoonistan, and I don't speak English, how am I going to get access to such a person? Even if I were to use my OLPC to read up online about how to begin... I don't speak English. How do I learn English? I need access to a knowledgeable person.
You see where I'm going with this.
The OLPC project overlooks the single most important thing to any educational system: People. We learn from other people. I didn't get into stats until I was 30, and I've done a lot of self-study with books to get where I am now, but if I didn't have access to teachers in graduate school and knowledgeable colleagues at work, and the money to take distance courses on some of the arcane procedures and programs I use, I would still be totally in the dark. If I hadn't had a string of great teachers, there's no way I could have learned Japanese.
The OLPC is gadget. It's handy, to be sure, but without the infrastructure--and by that I'm referring both to net access as well as a functioning education system--all it can really be is a toy. Even in your example, the teacher was an important component, if not always a helpful one. He/she would ultimately look at the output you created--the outcome of the task--and tell you whether it was acceptable or not.
This is how we learn. You can't just give people a tool and a task and say "go." Someone needs to show you how to use that tool; someone needs to design that task; someone needs to be available to guide people through it and get them past the bumps in the road; someone needs to tell the student if the task has even been completed.
People really do love to learn. But learning is a social act, even if it's done on the internet. Without people, the OLPC is just a pencil for someone who doesn't know how to read or write.
As an academic myself, I can only say it would be utter madness to do away with academic journals. Peer review, though sometimes flawed (editorial bias), serves as information quality control. Yes, tripe still gets published. Yes, good papers still get refused. But it works well enough.
However, again, as an academic myself, I am very much opposed to the insane prices to get at research, both as a researcher and a writer. I have found that, if your research budget can't handle getting at a key piece of research, an email to the person who did it oftentimes results in a Word file or a PDF, because what they want is for you to read and use their work as well.
All this really is is the same copyright/IP storm we see everywhere else. Producers and consumers want each others' lives to be easy and to be able to meet each others' needs. But there is a massive organization in the middle that maybe costs too much but which handles some of the important work necessary to avoid wasting people's time. It's fun to research, but no one really likes reading all the unfiltered crap, so those people--regular professors--on those editorial boards have to be paid.
I'm seeing Creative Commons licenses creeping in, slowly, though. I think we'll see big changes coming down the pipe in academic, peer-reviewed journals, same as anywhere else.
Yeah, that's the dealbreaker for me as well, but my industrial band days have only left me incapable of having conversations with background noise (bars, etc.). For me its my wife, who is Japanese. Her English is decent, but I have to hit "pause" to catch her up a lot less if she has both auditory and visual linguistic input.
Here in Japan, talk shows and reality shows tend to subtitle all the funny/important comments for effect, and I, too, find that that often makes the difference between "Huh?" and "Ha-ha."
I used to do tech support for Apple (a million years ago now), and your #2 is right on the money. Those people call, furious, about every little thing. It really helped me learn how to deal with angry, irrational people, though, and how to break bad news to people without them going ballistic (no, warranty does not entitle you to replacing the plastic case of your laptop for free because it's getting scuffed from use).
Yeah, you're probably right. I probably was too much of a whiner expecting the game to be good, and I probably was too dumb to configure it properly.
Seriously, dude. Ask around. Almost no one finished that, because it was boring. It was stunningly beautiful, but it was BORING. Bad gameplay. I think I stopped about the time that I figured out that the way to get any power-up was to back into it, because the moment I took it, the wall behind me would open and something would come out.
In 1993, when I first played Doom, that was innovative and exciting gameplay.
Post Half-Life, that just doesn't cut it. Not even for a FPS.
Hell, I'd love a job where i work 8AM-2PM and roughly 180 days a year. 10 weeks off for summer and extra pay if you chose to work.
God this sentiment irritates me.
You are evaluating the work teachers do based on your experiences as a student.
When class is in session, I work far more hours a week than my software development friends. Basically, I can't play when school is in session. There literally is no end to what needs to be done.
When class is not in session, I can scale back to about 40 hours a week.
I'm so sure you think that just because students aren't at the school, teachers have nothing to do (eyeroll).
Part of the reason it's hard to get good people to teach is that it's an abusive amount of work for very little pay.
I only taught at the K-12 level for 2 years before I said "screw this." I'm at the uni level now, and while the hours don't go down much, the pay goes up a lot. Also, you don't have to deal with parents!
I don't actually mind paying for software at all. I know it's infinite, but the demand for it isn't, and I want someone to do all the grunt work of writing it and testing it and supporting it. That's the scarce good I am happy to pay for.
BUT...
Due to the "old Microsoft millionaires" you reference, people seem to think that they should make a million billion dollars off of something that has become insanely common, and whose bottlenecks are utterly destroyed. That doesn't mean that they can't make money; it just means they can't charge an arm and a leg.
Take SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), the best GUI-driven stats package out there. It is a staple of university campuses, and has become the default stats program for most stats users in business and academia. And it's good. And easy. And has phenomenal help files that actually teach the user about when to use this function and when to use that function and why. It's a great product, and I'd be happy to pay for it, IF it weren't $500 US for the first version that's worth a damn, and if it were just an install with a CD key.
But it's not.
It actually has a serial for every bunch of analyses, plus some sort of activation code that is utterly impossible to remember and is printed on a separate piece of paper when you buy it, and this code ties that product forever to your computer and your name. If you want to uninstall it and give it to someone else in your organization, you have to FAX SPSS and let them know.
This is a ridiculous artificial bottleneck that actually hurts the usability of the product. I have actually uninstalled my licensed copy and put on a cracked copy. It does what it's supposed to do, and won't complain if I need to reinstall, etc.
But does this bottleneck need to be there for SPSS to make money? I suspect not. I suspect that if they dropped the price to, say, $100 for educational purchases and $200 for business, they could sell enough to recoup the loss in per-copy revenue. I would have been able to buy my own copy in grad school instead of ripping it off. I could afford to get a copy for everyone on my project at my university. I would have been the originator of a lot of revenue for the company if the product were cheaper and less locked-down.
But as it is, I steal it.
I think this idea that software will automatically make you a millionaire is the problem, as is the idea that if people can get your product for free, they will always go for that option. Basically, if people don't need your scarce good (time and expertise), let 'em have the product for free. But price that scarce good right, and you can get most people to sign on.
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As an American living and working in Japan, I have the following comments to the video (watch it--it's short).
1) This is classic Japanese governmental/administrative dunderheadedness. They will pick a number or a date and act like the world works that way and that any person that deviates from that is insane. E.g. junior high students have to switch to their heavy wool winter uniforms when winter begins... In the middle of September. That's when it's time to start wearing wool, when it's still 27 degrees (Celsius) out. The teachers sometimes decide not to notice minor infractions, but at no time does anyone go, "Y'know what? Maybe a room full of sweating, miserable adolescents isn't the best learning environment. How about we push this date back by a month or more?" No, no, rules are rules, handed down by the sun goddess Amaterasu to her earthly descendant the emperor, and down the line all the way to the principal sitting in his air-conditioned office smoking all day. Can't question rules.
The video points out that the number seems small, but that we have to remember that the Japanese are tiny people or something. This is craziness too. The Japanese are, on average, smaller than whites or blacks, yes. But there is still a great deal of variation. And they are getting taller. This has to do with their diet changing (more on that later). BMI might be a better measure, but not much better, because they use the Asian BMI, even if you're not Asian. My (British) boss runs marathons. Marathons, okay? But every year at the health check, he is told that he is overweight based on the magical BMI number.
Japanese people forego common sense in the face of authority, which itself foregoes common sense when reaching a decision. It is an amazing testament to Japanese rule-breaking ingenuity that anyone gets anything done at all here.
2) It is classic Japan to assume that the employees of a company are the property of the company, and that the company is the property of the government. This is probably the biggest mindset difference between Westerners and Japanese (or Chinese)--Westerners are natural capitalists. Japanese are natural communists. They just work in a capitalist economy.
When you introduce yourself in Japan (in business settings), you say something roughly equivalent to "I am NEC's Matsumoto." You identify your employer as your superordinate identity. This goes back to the samurai, who would have been in service of a particular warlord. Tribal identity is huge in Japan, and this affects all levels of society. And irritates the hell out of Westerners here.
Just how is the health of the employees the company's responsibility? What are they even supposed to do about it? Reduce the calories in the cafeteria meals? What do you do about the fact that the cafeteria meals are all made of frozen packaged shit from China? So you reduce portion sizes and... More people eat out. Is the company to issue reprimands to portly salarymen? If I were a Japanese CEO, I'd be calling my Yakuza buddies in government to go whack some kneecaps over this.
3) Finally, I have to talk about diet. The reason that Japanese are getting taller is that they are no longer malnourished. The meal that the reporter presented as "traditional Japanese food" would have only been enjoyed by the very rich throughout most of Japan's history. Most people literally subsisted on rice and green tea all the way up into the postwar period. As Japan has gotten richer, their diet has diversified and improved, to the point now that this generation of old people might be able to walk upright until they die, instead of turning into 90-degree ogres at age 70 like the generation before them. It has also led to the shameful depletion of the world's fish stock because Japanese food is based on raiding wild fish reserves, and as people have gotten richer, more people can buy, and so fish are actually going extinct, largely because of
I hear you, to be sure, but...
This is your health you're talking about, okay? Your kids and wife would prefer you around a long time (I assume!). Maybe in your mind you're busy for them, but I suspect that what they really want is a healthy dad or husband who doesn't get diabetes and go blind and then die.
I am a college lecturer. I don't have a PhD yet, and I'm not tenure track yet. That means that on top of my classes and my committees and required institutional research projects, I have to do my own research to build up my publication portfolio to help get into a good PhD program at a time when, with the economy dipping, a lot of people are trying to get into good PhD programs. I'm busy. Really busy.
But I've found--seriously!--that I can maintain my weight with one simple thing: Take 5 minutes in the morning and make a homemade sandwich and an apple for lunch instead of picking something up at the cafeteria. I made that one lifestyle change and I started dropping the pounds. Even though at the same time I switched from biking to work to driving (I was sick of getting to work kinda sweaty, in a tie--the commute is just far enough to not be a good idea in business attire--Fine when class is out and I can go in my civvies, but not when I have to look presentable). Just getting away from the assembly-line, sugar-laden cafeteria food and going to homemade ham on rye and a golden delicious solved the waistline creep I experienced in my first 2 years at this job, which evidently would have eventually cost my employer money (I live in Japan)!
Also, no snacking. Just don't. You can wait. Just get busy doing something else and you will totally forget (okay, so yesterday I broke that rule and ate some Oreos I had in my desk, but I shared them with my officemates so I wouldn't mindlessly eat the whole 10-cookie pack--but that was the first time in weeks, I swear!).
I don't exercise (Seriously, who has the time? I used to go to the gym until I worked out that a 30-minute workout was eating 2 hours of my day, all told!). I just reduced portion sizes by about 20%, switched to homemade food (and I'm not timid with the mayo either), stopped snacking, and avoided having beer with dinner (not stopped--avoided--only when I REALLY want one).
Take care of your health, for your family's sake. Remember that you're doing it for them.
Sorry, but I don't think that's the difference. At all.
I think it's gender roles. East Asian men have a hard time with Western women because the gender roles are flipped out of the favor of East Asian men.
East Asian men who are totally Anglo/Western, culturally, do not seem to suffer any of the problems you're describing--problems I know exist, because I, too, have seen them affect friends. But even in those cases, I have to say, it really looks more like a cultural misunderstanding than anything else.
My advice to you would be to look for a girl with a degree in Asian Studies or something. Someone who "gets it." You may not feel that you're different from a white guy from Iowa, but I'm betting you are, in subtle ways.
But I'll warn you: Even my Anglo female friends who live here--and by that I even mean Asian-Americans who are culturally Anglo--aren't in the market for East Asian guys. When you ask why, they say that East Asian guys are male chauvinists. To some extent they are, and to some extent Western women think every guy is a pig. Anyway, throw "geeky" on top of that, and it gets even harder, I think.
Hell, my Chinese (as in, from Guangzhou originally, but moved to the states when he was in grade school) language and literature prof back in my undergrad did a whole class on this. It's a tough issue, and you're right, I'll never know what it's like to be in your shoes. But believe me when I say that I've noticed how tough it is. Ganbatte kudasai! (Japanese for "do your best!/persevere!/good luck!/you can do it!")
But generalizations are generally true.
That's why they call them generalizations.
They don't disallow variation within them; in fact, they expect it. Of course people are different. My wife happens to be good with finances. One of my friends' Japanese wives is abysmal. So he takes care of it. But generally speaking, when you're raised in a culture that says "women will be in charge of the finances," women learn how to handle finances.
I made generalizations about people in certain cultures. If you don't think people can be grouped, generally speaking by culture, then... Well, maybe you need to get out and see the world a bit.
What I was specifically talking about was gender roles within cultures. I was specifically addressing the "ladies first" culture of the West and the "men first" culture of much of East Asia. I was pointing out that this is why you see so many successful pairings of these people. The gender roles go together nicely and lead to two people being nicer to each other than they expect.
Of course individual people are different.
But that doesn't mean they aren't also kinda the same.
Finally, after 7 years with my wife, I think I have a pretty good idea what she's like. I also think I have a pretty good idea what my sister-in-law is like. And my father-in-law. And even though I never got to meet her, I even have a pretty good idea what my late mother-in-law was like. I know what my friends are like. I know what my coworkers are like. I know what my students are like. I am fluent in Japanese and have lived here for the better part of the last decade. I have a degree in Asian Studies. I teach international communication and comparative religions at a university. Believe me, I know what Japanese culture is like, and I know what individuals are like.
In fact, I'm pretty offended that you would imply that I see my family as generalizations. As stereotypes. They're my family. Just because they fall under rather broad cultural trends does not mean they aren't individuals.
Get that through your head, and you'll find it a lot easier to understand other cultures.
Well, both of your points are not really about gender relations in cultures, but gender relations in American law, and I agree those are pretty abhorrent.
Even though we have moved, rightly, to a social model in the US where men or women can be the primary breadwinners, the law still assumes that men have all the financial power. You get divorced in America and your wife is walking with half of the stuff, whether she paid for it or not.
The statutory laws are a whole other ball of wax, and need to be looked at a lot more closely. I have a friend who's on the sex offender list for having a relationship with someone who was sixteen. How old was my friend at the time? 23. And female. Her life is fucked up now over... NOTHING. The boy didn't complain. He doesn't have to. Neither do his parents. All it takes is one busybody to call the cops, and the cops are required to press charges. It is insane.
The worst place this inequity shows up is in paternity. There is no way for a man to get out of paying for a child, even if he didn't want it, and even, in some famous cases in the US, where he was deliberately tricked into fathering it. Alimony payments for 18 years because a terrible person figured out how to get an even better deal than a sperm bank.
So, like I said, it's not that I think American women are bad. I don't. I mean, c'mon. That's my mom and my sister-in-law and a lot of my friends! I just prefer being treated more nicely by my life partner--and for my niceness to be appreciated.
My wife and I have been together for 7 years. It's still fun, and we still like each other and we're still nice to each other.
Yes, of course. Speaking in generalities is just that: generalities. It's never supposed to encompass all data points.
People like to be treated kindly and gently. I don't think that's a revolutionary comment to make, but it is profound. I really do think that American women need to be nicer to men. I am also open to the idea that my experiences motivating that pronouncement are due to sampling error. In fact, I hope they are!
Given that I'm fluent in Japanese and have lived here for the better part of 10 years, when I say "Japanese women are nice to guys," followed by "but don't think that means they are weak," those aren't stereotypes. I'm married into a Japanese family. They are my family. How could I think these people were stereotypes?
Actually, there's a Costco 10 minutes from me. I was planning on going there in a few minutes anyway!
They don't, however, necessarily sell the same things. But I'll take a look!
I can't find any CF bulb that doesn't take a long time to light up. I've tried every brand I've seen (major brands--Toshiba, Panasonic--I live in Japan), and the best ones are slow, and the worst are already in the trash (before I knew how toxic they are!). I have decided that, like PC fan noise, my standards are just way higher than other people's (that's not bragging--I'm open to the idea that I may just be a whiny bastard).
And don't even get me started on the color.
Oh, and I have observed exactly NO change in my monthly electricity usage. I think I have to admit that the biggest draw in my house is this Mac Pro with its kilowatt PSU, plus all the vampire appliances I have.
But lightpipes... Now that's sexy. I love natural light. Too bad I live in an apartment.
Of course, he's not going to get the maximum, or anything close, but let me respond to your sentiment nonetheless:
Taking responsibility for choices we make is all part of growing up.Throwing people in jail for a long time doesn't allow them to grow up. Or, rather, it forces them to grow up outside of society, in a different paradigm--one whose lessons lead to disaster on the outside. As a general rule, I am very much against locking kids up, because it doesn't help society one iota.
Taking responsibility is important; but it is even more important that he grow up.
I had a run-in with the law when I was in high school. It impressed upon me that the world of high school is not the world. This got me through the rest of it. It's easy for high school kids to think that the school is the whole world. This leads to things like falsifying your grades or killing people because they pick on you. If we want people to grow up, we need to allow them into society. We can't sequester them off into prisons or schools.
This kid thought it wasn't as big a deal as it was. It's very easy to think that when your world is a high school. You see the small actions as sneaking into someone's office and installing a keylogger, then the small actions of changing your grades, as the small actions they are. Maybe there's a rush of adrenaline the first time, but then it just gets to be routine. It's no big deal, right? You're tapping away at your computer. But then the real world comes in and shows you the implication of those actions and then you get it.
I'd wager he gets it now. There's no reason to rub it in.
Okay, there is a little stuff in there I'm uncomfortable about, but let me talk about what I agree with:
If you're looking for a wife, get out of the US. Our angry, second-wave-feminist, crybaby boomer mothers raised our generation for men to hate themselves and women to hate men. For no good reason. Find me a man who says "women should stay home, barefoot and pregnant!" or "women make great secretaries, but that's about it." No. One. Thinks. That. But we all have to grovel and supplicate to prove we're not one of those sexist straw men our mothers made up.
As a result, American, and most Western, women have become, in my opinion, untenable as life partners. I want equality in my marriage. By that I mean social equality. I don't want to be the bad guy. I just want to be someone's husband. Partner.
Why do American guys flip over Asian women? Just as the parent says, it's because it's the first time most guys have ever had a woman treat him kindly. On the other hand, why do Asian women often flip for Western guys? Because for them, it's often the first time a guy has treated them kindly. This is why you see so many successful married couples with Western guy and Asian woman. The cultures' gender roles, in the current generation, are complementary.
BUT...
And this is where the parent has kind of fallen down...
Don't expect it to stay like that forever. It won't. It can't. It shouldn't.
East Asian households are basically run by the women. They expect to control the finances. However, in my experience (my wonderful wife is Japanese), and that of my friends, they're pretty damned good at it. It bothered me at first, but then I had to admit we were living very comfortably, I had plenty of money for toys, and we were saving over a third of our income! So I let that go. YMMV.
In the West, we've been programmed to think that a housewife or stay-at-home-mom is a slave. She's not. My wife doesn't work, and even though we could get more money otherwise, and it would of course be fine if she wanted to, it's awesome. I now see why that's been the dominant model in every society since the beginning of time. I work outside of the house, she makes sure the house is operating correctly. We get to spend a lot more leisure time together that way. We don't have to spend our weekends cleaning the house and doing laundry. We eat healthy, home-cooked food that bonds us socially. She's not a slave, she's my best friend and partner. I gladly work my ass off to make sure she's comfortable, and she gladly works her ass off to make sure I am. That, my friends, is a partnership. Just because I'm the one making the money doesn't mean I'm in a higher position. I'm in an equal position. We're taking the entire job of life and splitting it up and assigning roles.
For the record, if she could make more than me, I'd be delighted to stay at home and do the housework.
I guess what I'm saying is this:
Okay, I have been wondering this for a long time... How does one get into writing for games? I have scriptwriting experience (a bad experience--ultimately uncompensated, and then uncredited!!!--but good, not-working-on-something-that-will-never-see-the-light-of-day experience nonetheless) but I have never seen job listings for game narrative/dialogue writers, and so many times when I'm playing a game, I'm like, "My god I wish I could have written for this--I could have made this exchange so much better--and who directed this actor???" It's so infrequently done well (Mass Effect being the huge, monumental exception--stunning writing and acting) that sometimes I wonder if there's any competition at all...
What kind of resume do people look for? How did you get into it?
Yes.
I live in Japan. They see American crime statistics and think America is dangerous. Then I tell them that I grew up in a town where I didn't know anyone to lock their door, or those of their cars. I tell them that I've never, ever, known or even met someone who had been the victim of a violent crime, and I only know a handful of people who have fallen victim to any crime (CDs stolen from car, that kind of thing).
I feel safer in the US than I do here, what with the yakuza being able to do whatever the hell they want. Usually they just stay out of your way, but the lower-levels sometimes just like to cause trouble. And the cops don't do anything.
Then again, the cops are the ones I'm afraid of in the US...
Enjoy it, friend. You earned it. If you can get to that place in life, you have every right to enjoy it.
Go CSU Rams!
Okay, well, I never got into sports when I was at Colorado State, and have never seen any of the teams play, BUT...
CSU is one of the top schools for agribusiness. Farming and ranching are huge businesses, blending so many disparate fields, from animal husbandry to high finance, that if you want to make a buck at it, you need a 4-year degree at least.
Farmhands can be a little... Bucolic... But farmers and ranchers are typically upper-middle-class, erudite, and literate.
My program example was within the context of the argument that these things will expand IT knowledge to developing countries.
The assignment's more likely to be "Draw a map of the area around the village.". The OLPC is the tool the kids use to draw the map. And to get all their friends together to help point out landmarks one of them may have forgotten to include, and to argue about where those landmarks are relative to one another.I'm sorry, but as long as we're criticizing example lesson plans, could you explain:
1) What this task is intended to teach.
2) How these groups communicate with each other from miles away with no infrastructure.
Furthermore, if we are in a setting where we have tribal warfare, it's not going to be the kind of place where one wants the youngsters running around making a map.
Even for your example to work, you need a lot of people involved. People who are smart; people who are looking out for the kids; people who are working together. Most of the problems of the world, as far as I can tell, are about areas where people have not figured out how to cooperate and work as a large social unit for the betterment of all members. Any development assistance that is not focused on changing the people situation is a waste of time, and I can think of no bigger waste of time than handing personal computers sans curricula to education systems that are neither educational nor systematic.
I see your point, of course, but the problem is almost never the tools. It's the people.
What you are describing there is called "task-based learning." It's a pretty common pedagogical approach in secondary education, first showing up in medicine and law. The idea is that by intelligently creating a task/project, you can be sure that students will follow a fairly predictable path towards completing it, learning things along the way. The biggest learning advantage to this is that, more than learning how to complete the task, the student learns how to learn how to complete a task.
It seems, however, that in the US educational system anyway, we are moving away from this model, which encourages creativity, self-sufficiency, and autonomy, and toward a "cram for this standardized test" model, like where I live now: Japan. This is a mistake. And that's coming from one of the guys who writes and coordinates a large standardized test!
In the case of the OLPC, this pedagogical concern has been and continues to be at the heart of all the questions about its efficacy as a world-changing tool, whether the critics realize that or not. It has never been clear what one could learn from having a little green typewriter which may not even have internet access.
As an educator, tester, and geek, I have mocked the dunderheaded goodwill of this project from the first time I heard about it. The cry for more computers in the classrooms of the world is very rarely raised by the teachers themselves. Computers are great for education mainly as a means of finding information, and in such a case, the essential ingredient is internet access. Once that requirement is satisfied, any terminal is fine. Beyond this, what is a student to do with a PC? Type? Is this substantially different from writing by hand? No. It's just more convenient.
I have seen it argued that the OLPC project would expand IT/programming to impoverished children and give them a means of developing their economy. Rubbish. I have a master's degree and teach at a university and do statistics-heavy research, but if you handed me an OLPC and said, "your project is to write a program that alphabetizes this list," which--if I remember correctly--was one of the first assignments in my friends' programming classes, I would have no idea of how to even begin. I have done zero programming. I would require some explicit instruction to at least know how to get started. Explicit instruction requires access to a knowledgeable person. If I live in the boonies of Kafoonistan, and I don't speak English, how am I going to get access to such a person? Even if I were to use my OLPC to read up online about how to begin... I don't speak English. How do I learn English? I need access to a knowledgeable person.
You see where I'm going with this.
The OLPC project overlooks the single most important thing to any educational system: People. We learn from other people. I didn't get into stats until I was 30, and I've done a lot of self-study with books to get where I am now, but if I didn't have access to teachers in graduate school and knowledgeable colleagues at work, and the money to take distance courses on some of the arcane procedures and programs I use, I would still be totally in the dark. If I hadn't had a string of great teachers, there's no way I could have learned Japanese.
The OLPC is gadget. It's handy, to be sure, but without the infrastructure--and by that I'm referring both to net access as well as a functioning education system--all it can really be is a toy. Even in your example, the teacher was an important component, if not always a helpful one. He/she would ultimately look at the output you created--the outcome of the task--and tell you whether it was acceptable or not.
This is how we learn. You can't just give people a tool and a task and say "go." Someone needs to show you how to use that tool; someone needs to design that task; someone needs to be available to guide people through it and get them past the bumps in the road; someone needs to tell the student if the task has even been completed.
People really do love to learn. But learning is a social act, even if it's done on the internet. Without people, the OLPC is just a pencil for someone who doesn't know how to read or write.
As an academic myself, I can only say it would be utter madness to do away with academic journals. Peer review, though sometimes flawed (editorial bias), serves as information quality control. Yes, tripe still gets published. Yes, good papers still get refused. But it works well enough.
However, again, as an academic myself, I am very much opposed to the insane prices to get at research, both as a researcher and a writer. I have found that, if your research budget can't handle getting at a key piece of research, an email to the person who did it oftentimes results in a Word file or a PDF, because what they want is for you to read and use their work as well.
All this really is is the same copyright/IP storm we see everywhere else. Producers and consumers want each others' lives to be easy and to be able to meet each others' needs. But there is a massive organization in the middle that maybe costs too much but which handles some of the important work necessary to avoid wasting people's time. It's fun to research, but no one really likes reading all the unfiltered crap, so those people--regular professors--on those editorial boards have to be paid.
I'm seeing Creative Commons licenses creeping in, slowly, though. I think we'll see big changes coming down the pipe in academic, peer-reviewed journals, same as anywhere else.
Yeah, that's the dealbreaker for me as well, but my industrial band days have only left me incapable of having conversations with background noise (bars, etc.). For me its my wife, who is Japanese. Her English is decent, but I have to hit "pause" to catch her up a lot less if she has both auditory and visual linguistic input.
Here in Japan, talk shows and reality shows tend to subtitle all the funny/important comments for effect, and I, too, find that that often makes the difference between "Huh?" and "Ha-ha."
I used to do tech support for Apple (a million years ago now), and your #2 is right on the money. Those people call, furious, about every little thing. It really helped me learn how to deal with angry, irrational people, though, and how to break bad news to people without them going ballistic (no, warranty does not entitle you to replacing the plastic case of your laptop for free because it's getting scuffed from use).
Yeah, you're probably right. I probably was too much of a whiner expecting the game to be good, and I probably was too dumb to configure it properly.
Seriously, dude. Ask around. Almost no one finished that, because it was boring. It was stunningly beautiful, but it was BORING. Bad gameplay. I think I stopped about the time that I figured out that the way to get any power-up was to back into it, because the moment I took it, the wall behind me would open and something would come out.
In 1993, when I first played Doom, that was innovative and exciting gameplay.
Post Half-Life, that just doesn't cut it. Not even for a FPS.
I don't think anyone finished it. I was bored after about 4 hours.
God this sentiment irritates me.
You are evaluating the work teachers do based on your experiences as a student.
When class is in session, I work far more hours a week than my software development friends. Basically, I can't play when school is in session. There literally is no end to what needs to be done.
When class is not in session, I can scale back to about 40 hours a week.
I'm so sure you think that just because students aren't at the school, teachers have nothing to do (eyeroll).
Part of the reason it's hard to get good people to teach is that it's an abusive amount of work for very little pay.
I only taught at the K-12 level for 2 years before I said "screw this." I'm at the uni level now, and while the hours don't go down much, the pay goes up a lot. Also, you don't have to deal with parents!
I think you are partially right.
I don't actually mind paying for software at all. I know it's infinite, but the demand for it isn't, and I want someone to do all the grunt work of writing it and testing it and supporting it. That's the scarce good I am happy to pay for.
BUT...
Due to the "old Microsoft millionaires" you reference, people seem to think that they should make a million billion dollars off of something that has become insanely common, and whose bottlenecks are utterly destroyed. That doesn't mean that they can't make money; it just means they can't charge an arm and a leg.
Take SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), the best GUI-driven stats package out there. It is a staple of university campuses, and has become the default stats program for most stats users in business and academia. And it's good. And easy. And has phenomenal help files that actually teach the user about when to use this function and when to use that function and why. It's a great product, and I'd be happy to pay for it, IF it weren't $500 US for the first version that's worth a damn, and if it were just an install with a CD key.
But it's not.
It actually has a serial for every bunch of analyses, plus some sort of activation code that is utterly impossible to remember and is printed on a separate piece of paper when you buy it, and this code ties that product forever to your computer and your name. If you want to uninstall it and give it to someone else in your organization, you have to FAX SPSS and let them know.
This is a ridiculous artificial bottleneck that actually hurts the usability of the product. I have actually uninstalled my licensed copy and put on a cracked copy. It does what it's supposed to do, and won't complain if I need to reinstall, etc.
But does this bottleneck need to be there for SPSS to make money? I suspect not. I suspect that if they dropped the price to, say, $100 for educational purchases and $200 for business, they could sell enough to recoup the loss in per-copy revenue. I would have been able to buy my own copy in grad school instead of ripping it off. I could afford to get a copy for everyone on my project at my university. I would have been the originator of a lot of revenue for the company if the product were cheaper and less locked-down.
But as it is, I steal it.
I think this idea that software will automatically make you a millionaire is the problem, as is the idea that if people can get your product for free, they will always go for that option. Basically, if people don't need your scarce good (time and expertise), let 'em have the product for free. But price that scarce good right, and you can get most people to sign on.
Silly boss, valuing his time and that of his company! Doesn't he see that supporting people's hobby projects is more important than making money???