I am currently in the San Francisco Bay Area to visit family and friends for the holidays. One could call this area the deepest reaches of liberal secular culture within the United States, and, as such, the front lines of the War on Christmas (™ and © Bill O’Reilly).

The radio waves are saturated with Christmas tunes singing of Christ Our Lord, Christmas decorations abound with armies of mangers, people are going to church to celebrate Christmas mass, and signs and colors of Christ are everywhere.

Maybe it’s just me, but the whole “War on Christmas” thing seems a lot more like conservatives who get 99% of what they want whining like spoiled children because they can’t have that last little tiny bit and deny others even the smallest of crumbs.

This is not to complain about Christmas. I just had a very nice evening with family last night around the Christmas tree, and am very much enjoying the scenery and the holidays. I have said “Merry Christmas” so many times in the past few days, and will again in years to come.

Let’s just not try to claim that Christmas is in peril or anything, okay? So, as I listen to Bing on KBAY and enjoy the day off with my girl in a house on an avenue decorated by festive lights, Merry Christmas to all.

Partly from a desire for more exercise combined with a need for a good mode of transportation for local birdwatching, I bought a new bike a few days ago, and took it out for the first big spin today. I went birdwatching in Tama Reien (for those who haven’t read this blog and/or don’t know, Tama Reien is a huge cemetery smack in the middle of Tokyo Prefecture, a large, quiet area with lots of small streets and lanes and foliage, great for birdwatching). On the map, Tama Reien looked almost too far for biking, but apparently Tokyo is smaller than it looks like on maps; it took only about 30-40 minutes and was a nice little trip.

I started looking for a bike a week or two ago, and started at the little shop within the large supermarket/home center just down the block from my place (and practically the only real store for a mile in any direction). They had a few bikes that were close to what I wanted. Most of the bikes were too simple–cheap little 1- or 3-speed bikes, not great for this very hilly area–or were too much–expensive 16-speed bikes with narrow seats. A few were mid-priced 6-speed bikes, and one looked especially good: for about $140 it included a kind of lamp that didn’t drag on your front wheel (I hate those things). Instead the engine for the lamp is made of magnets within the front wheel axle, a “no touch” light. Cool.

The problem was, the bike’s frame was low, made that way for people who are short even by Japanese standards. I could fit on it, but only with the seat and handlebar extended fully. But by “trying it on” in the narrow store area for bikes, I found that if I were on the bike and made a turn while my leg in the direction of the turn was at its highest point, the handlebar would collide with my knee and the turn would be limited. So I went to a few other bike shops within biking distance–only to find that no one had anything close to what I wanted, or at nearly the price my local shop had. So on Saturday evening, I went in to reserve it–and it was gone. A new one would take 2 weeks to order, and I wanted to get this out of the way.

After much gnashing of teeth and consideration, I decided to buy the $120 version of the bike with the drag-lamp I really don’t like–and only then noticed that they had put a few bikes out in the aisle that I hadn’t seen before. Usually $190, they were on sale for that day only for $150, and had the features I wanted–6 speeds, the no-touch lamp–and these were regular frames, not to mention they simply looked more well-built (and it had a extra device to lock the front wheel in place). There were three, and a man and his two kids were all over them, with the attitude of “we’re buying these!” Hoping against hope, I asked their intentions, and they said they only wanted two of the three–and the one left over was the one I had been eyeing. So without any further delay, I put the money down and bought the thing.

After midnight, I’ll blog on the birdwatching I got done with the bike today.

I have seen these lists before (they’ve been around for years) and was sometimes tempted to do one, but knew it would be a bear of a job. But then Shari did one on the 1st, “Roy” got his done by the 2nd, and Sean turned his in on the 3rd, and I kind of figured, why not jump on the bandwagon. Paul, you’re next.

1. I was born in Mountain View, CA, but grew up initially in Cupertino, not far from the future site of Apple Computer headquarters.
2. Half of my left ear was bitten off by a Saint Bernard when I was seven years old; plastic surgeons reattached the ear, but skin grafts left scars behind my ear and on my abdomen (don’t ask me why the latter, I don’t know).
3. During childhood, I wanted to be an astronomer; I owned two telescopes, including an 8-inch reflector.
4. As a child, my favorite color was yellow, but now it is green (preferably dark green).
5. As a child, I was a birdwatcher and a member of the National Audubon Society.
6. The first movie I ever saw was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
7. I was a huge Star Wars fan when I was a kid and saw the movie more than 18 times in theaters.
8. I was voted “Most Creative” in high school.
9. I was badly bullied in school, and once even had to transfer to another school due to the problem.
10. When I was 13, I burned my retina in my right eye looking at the sun too long (it’s a small spot and doesn’t appear unless I look only with that eye).
11. I was quite non-social in high school, from being both socially shy and more than a bit goofy.
12. In high school and early college, I used to paint and do other creative stuff; not so much any more.
13. To this day, I hate going to discos or dance clubs (especially because of the sound levels).
14. During high school, I worked part-time at Green Library at Stanford University, and as a Stanford worker, was able to submit several political cartoons to the Stanford Daily newspaper.
15. My favorite candy is See’s (a West-coast chocolatier), and in high school, I used to scarf down about a pound a week.
16. I began studying Japanese language in college partially because of an interest in Japan, and partially because a Japanese major did not involve Math.
17. My usual part-time work during college was in movie theaters, which didn’t pay well, but gave me lots of free time between shows and got me free tickets to any movie theater in the area.
18. I once sued an employer (a shady movie theater operator) for unpaid overtime in small claims court; I won the case and successfully had the money (about $600) removed from their bank account by a deputy sheriff.
19. My first trip overseas was to Japan in 1983 when I was 19 years old.
20. I was the president of the Japanese Club in college, which is to say that I was the least non-motivated of three people in showing Japanese movies to the local community (but it looks good on my resume).
21. During college, I shared a car with my brother: a tiny, underpowered Datsun L1200 which actually made us money because people kept rear-ending the car and the insurance paid more than we spent on repairs.
22. My most serious traffic accident was when an 80-year-old man ran a stop sign in a giant Cadillac and I broadsided him; the Caddy was only slightly dented, but the Datsun L1200 was totaled.
23. I first went to live and work in Japan in 1985.
24. I have lived in Japan for a total of fifteen and a half years; the first two of those years I lived in Toyama (a countryside area on the Japan Sea coast), and the other 13 1/2 years have been in Tokyo.
25. I have lived in five different apartments while in Tokyo (in Asagaya, Tachikawa, Koganei, Nakano, and Inagi).
26. I have climbed Mt. Fuji to see the sunrise three times.
27. My first job in Japan was with a local branch of the YMCA, where I was cheated out of 70,000 yen of earnings.
28. I decided to pursue a college career in Japan when I saw the job possibilities while I was in Toyama.
29. I studied and got a special drivers license for small motorcycles (up to 125 cc) while in Toyama, and toured the mid-Honshu region on a Honda motorcycle.
30. I have an A.A. and B.A. in Japanese, and an M.A. in English (concentration in TESOL).
31. I presently work as a professor in an American college in Tokyo.
32. Two points which are very obvious to anyone who reads this blog: I am an avid Mac user and a liberal Democrat.
33. When I go to eat sushi, I only order tuna (maguro or toro).
34. I have recently started birdwatching again (also obvious to blog readers).
35. I enjoy digital photography and digital movie editing.
36. I love the smell of coffee but not the taste.
37. Since August 2, 2003, I have blogged every day (1192 days to this date), making this my most persistent hobby.
38. I am a pack rat, but once every year or two manage to get myself to throw out large amounts of stuff.
39. I don’t like living in small, crowded apartments, even if it means a long commute to avoid them.
40. I am not a great fan of classic literature, and have not read very much.
41. I hate loudspeaker trucks (common in Japan, even not during elections).
42. My favorite drink is root beer; my favorite snack is sunflower seeds, though the salt is too much for my tongue if I eat too many.
43. I am mildly diabetic (type 2); when I found out in January this year, it was after a junk food binge and period of inactivity that made my doctor believe I was about to keel over because of my blood sugar levels (I had an A1C of 9.9; it’s now hovering around a healthy 5.3).
44. For the last two years, I have been immobilized by illnesses at Christmastime; two years ago, it was a serious nosebleed, and last year, it was a broken foot; everyone is wondering what it will be this year.
45. My musical tastes include classic rock and movie soundtracks, which predominate the 3500 or so tracks I have on iTunes.
46. I have a fairly good musical sense, but cannot play any instrument or even sing very well.
47. With very few exceptions, I don’t like horror movies.
48. Before buying any expensive items, I try to make myself wait for two weeks to protect myself from impulse buying.
49. My Japanese language skills have reached a plateau where everyday conversation is possible but it would take a lot of effort to improve.
50. I have ideas for writing several stories, possibly books, but never get around to writing them.
51. I hate entertainment based upon the humiliation or exposure of others.
52. I love Akira Kurosawa films, especially his earlier funnier ones; my favorite movie is The Seven Samurai.
53. It’s hard for me to start new habits or try new things; it’s also hard for me to get started on projects, though once I get started, it’s hard to stop me.
54. I have a horseshoe (conjoined) kidney.
55. When alone, I am a night owl, often staying up until three or four in the morning; around others, I conform to their sleep schedules fairly easily.
56. I no longer even miss newspapers or magazines.
57. With very few exceptions (e.g., butterflies), I absolutely hate insects.
58. Every few years I experience an ocular migraine.
59. I hate wearing neckties, and avoid doing so at every opportunity.
60. I wear clothes more for functionality rather than style; as an example, I don’t wear suspenders because they look good (they often draw ridicule, in fact), I wear them because on my body type, a belt doesn’t do the trick.
61. I have a terrible memory for faces and names, not that my memory in other respects is stellar.
62. In my younger days, I used to be frightfully nervous about speaking before groups; teaching cured me of that.
63. While taking care of me one time when I was about ten, my grandmother gave me a hit off her cigarette; I took a puff but (wisely) did not inhale. That was my one and only experience with using tobacco, and I despise the stuff today.
64. I have well over 500 VHS tapes in my apartment, mostly aggregates of tapes sent by my father over the years (he used to record all the favorite shows my brother and I liked and sent them to Japan); as I now have most of the media on my DVD collection and never watch the VHS tapes anyway, they are all headed for the trash.
65. I have trouble reading almost all political fiction; even when I agree with it, it tends to come across as simplistic and too heavy-handed.
66. I could care less about people’s sexual activities and preferences; I care more about how they treat other people.
67. I don’t wear hats or caps, but will if someone asks me and I feel like it.
68. I try not to collect things because I never do anything with them.
69. I love small gadgets but ironically have very few of them.
70. I love having a view out my apartment window.
71. I hate entering text information using only a numeric keypad.
72. The white-collar job I would least want to have would be selling something I don’t like; after that, any repetitive, mindless task.
73. I have been bumped up to business class twice, to first class never.
74. With the exception of a trip when I was an infant, I have never been anywhere in the continental U.S. save for the three West Coast states (although I have traveled extensively in Japan and have visited China, Korea, Spain, and Hawaii).
75. When I was younger, people thought I was a lot older than I was; now, people think I am a bit younger than I am.
76. I hunt-and-peck pretty quickly, and can’t touch-type.
77. I am an agnostic with leanings toward deism; there are, however, some religious concepts that I confidently disbelieve in, such as the existence of hell, god having human form, or that the Bible is the literal word of god.
78. I save my favorite part of the meal for last on my plate so I can enjoy it at the end, and hate it when people assume I don’t like that part and grab it without asking.
79. Dave Barry once wrote about excruciatingly embarrassing moments in life that pop unwanted into your consciousness at random times; that happens to me a lot.
80. My experience with non-prescription drugs is limited to relatively sparse and sporadic alcohol consumption and two attempts at smoking marijuana as a teenager.
81. I sweat way too easily.
82. If I receive really bad service, I usually forsake the company involved, at least for a few years’ time and sometimes longer.
83. When I leave my apartment, I usually have to come back up half a flight of stairs and make sure that I really did lock the door.
84. You know how most people in Asia seem to be able to squat and have their heels touch the ground? I can’t do that.
85. I can be calm and patient about a lot of big things, but accumulated small stuff gets to me, as does anyone who I can see is purposefully trying to scam me.
86. I have a very low opinion of people who want to widely distribute their work but are too lazy to provide proper documentation.
87. I like chocolate and I like nuts, but not together.
88. I have no tattoos.
89. If you’re still reading this list, you’ve earned the right to know that I have bathroom shyness; happy?.
90. I have passed the age where I can go a night without sleep and not fall asleep during the middle of the next day.
91. If I had to get a car, any car, cost notwithstanding, I think I’d like a Prius.
92. I love time travel stories, but there are too many where a guy crushes a bug and it turns out to be him in the end, so don’t do that one again.
93. My favorite food is bacon, if you can legitimately call it “food.”
94. During a three-month period early in college, I developed a case of persistent hives–on the soles of my feet.
95. An eating weakness: if it’s in the house and I want to eat it, it gets eaten.
96. My first year in Japan, I hosted a half-hour infomercial for a local technical college, and later did radio ad voice-overs and even a modeling job for a car commercial on TV.
97. I have trouble listening to radio; there are too many commercials, like TV, but with TV you can see visually when to turn the sound back on.
98. I have big feet. I shall allow you to deduce the rest.
99. When I write, I tend not to do drafts, but rather write everything in one chunk, and then proofread; this is a habit from pre-word-processor times when I had to type essays on an old-style typewriter.
100. I’m a sucker for science fiction.

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I found that it’s more interesting reading other people’s lists after you have done your own, since you then have a much better understanding of what is involved. While the ones written by this local cluster of blogs have been very good, the ones I found searching the Internet (you get desperate for inspiration (not stealing!) after 70 or 80 list items) were spotty, and all too often lazy–like cutting up one item into three or four, or making comments on list items into list items themselves (good example of that here). Had I done that, I probably would have twice as many items on my list. It’s hard to keep off the list anything which would be a near-universal experience for people of your age (I have one or two in there I guess), and make the list only consist of things that distinguish you from others. The personal history and experiences are a good source of material, but only last so long.

One interesting point: a lot of people mention The Matrix in their lists. Weird. Another note: if I did intend to steal anyone’s list items, the one I would most likely steal would be, “There! Are! Four! Lights!” Though you have to be somewhat of a Star Trek fan to get that one.

This time, actually, it’s kind of the reverse of noisy neighbors; instead, I have acquired a neighbor who is incredibly sensitive to noise.

As I’ve mentioned before, I live in a building which has excellent soundproofing. A couple moved in several years ago with an infant, and I don’t hear a thing from them. If the person upstairs vacuums, I don’t hear the machine; I just hear the knocking sound it makes if it bumps on the floor–vibrational sound like that. The fact that the loud motor of a vacuum cleaner is stopped says something for the floor-to-ceiling sound cancellation. The only time a neighbor got out of hand was when a kid two floors down got it into him to let loose with an electric guitar with his amps turned up full blast–and even then, it was very, very muffled in my apartment. It took an hour of it to get me annoyed enough to look into it–and I am easily annoyed by sounds like that. That’s how good the soundproofing is.

Now, several weeks ago, a couple with a kid moved into the apartment below me. Before, there had been a woman who lived there, and though I had asked her repeatedly if I made any noise, she said “no” every time. Maybe she felt intimidated or something, but I did my best to say that I was a noisy person (I sometimes watch TV till very late at night), and welcomed any report of noise, saying I’d be glad to turn it down. She insisted that she couldn’t hear anything.

When the new people came in, they came around with a small gift (a hand towel), as new neighbors in Japan often do. I gave them the usual invitation to let me know if I was being too noisy for them. The very next night, the husband came up and complained about the TV noise. OK, I thought–I was using speakers on the floor, and it had been pretty loud. So I stopped using them, and started using my headphones a lot more; otherwise, I used much smaller, desk-mounted speakers, and not nearly as loud.

The other day, the guy came up again to complain. This time, he said that I was making loud noise constantly from 1 am to 6 am–and I could honestly tell him that (a) I was not making that much noise, and (b) I had gone to bed at 3 am. He seemed puzzled, and maybe like he didn’t fully believe me.

Now, tonight, he came up after midnight and complained about noise from my apartment. This time, it was me–but the noise he complained about was my laughing. I was watching a video (volume down), and it was funny, so I laughed–but for no longer than 1 or 2 minutes, and certainly not continuously. Now, keep in mind that the noise of a vacuum cleaner cannot penetrate the same barrier from the apartment above. This guy has to come up and tell me to knock off laughing? I laugh a little loud, but not that loud.

What’s more, he said (unapologetically) that he had found the source of the noise that kept him up all night recently–it was from the apartment above me, he said. Now, remember, going through two floors, it took a kid playing electric guitar full blast to get me to notice. And the person in the apartment between us absolutely heard it, too. But now the guy below me says the people above me were making a racket that kept him awake–and I didn’t hear a thing.

If this goes on, I am going to have to have a talk with this guy. I mean, I am all for keeping the noise down. But if I am going to have to walk on eggshells because he has better hearing than your average dog, then we have a problem.

Yes, another entry on a topic of earth-shattering importance! File this one under “Simple Engineering Designs That Have Gone Underutilized.” In the U.S., the only toenail clippers I could ever find were the classic type. You know, the kind where, when you clipped your toenails, the nail shards would go flying randomly around you as you went about the clipping task. Thus forcing me to associate toenail clipping with sitting outside on the porch in inclement weather because neither I nor my mother before me wanted stray toenail shards turning up stuck to the underside of everyone’s feet for weeks to come.

When I came to Japan, I noticed a design that is so simple that I was astonished that it was not used in America. Simply add a side enclosure to the clipper, and the toenail shards get caught inside the mechanism (so long as you don’t hold it the wrong way so they fall out). After clipping, just empty the clipper into the trash–the side-guard even retracts about a half-inch to help with that.

So, my question is, why hasn’t this caught on in America? Last I checked a few years ago, this design was still rather rare in the U.S., even though one look at it and you’d wonder at how stupid the alternative is and why this hasn’t replaced the classic style. Do the American clipper people just not know about this? Or is it some kind of insidious toenail-shard conspiracy? And (nod to Dave Barry) wouldn’t “Toenail Shards” be a great name for a band?

And while I’m critiquing the design of basic household tools, what the hell is the deal with corkscrews? I mean the type with the brace that fits over the mouth of the wine bottle, and the arms that go up as you wind the screw into the cork. In every design I’ve found of this device, no matter how much you try, after using the arms to pull out the cork, there’s still a good half- to three quarters-inch of cork left in the bottle neck which you must still wrestle with to get out, half the time leaving an amputated stump of cork that has to be fished out. I have to think that there’s some reason for this to be done, else it’s one of the most idiotic engineering screw-ups ever.

I mean, why not just re-engineer the gears on the arms of the device so that the cork is pulled all the way out of the bottle? What’s the matter with that idea? Is there some esoteric wine-opening wisdom that shows wine tastes better if human strength is applied directly to finish the corking process? Or is this some idiotic, elitist “you must be talented to open a bottle of wine” crap? I suspect it’s the latter–after all, the whole idea of corking wine in the first place seems faddish to me; I know that screw-caps are associated with cheapo Ripples or whatever, but surely there has to be a better, more workable solution. And if not, then at least design the corkscrews to make it even passably unfrustrating to open a simple beverage container.

Finally. Eight and half months after breaking my foot, my doc gave me a clean bill of health today. Well, actually, he said I was 90% healed, but that was good enough for any reasonable activity. The spiral fracture has fused along the entire length of the break, and though the bone still has a month or two before it is 100% healed, it’s more or less done the important stuff. Over the next year, the bone should solidify more, with the few jutting parts smoothing off. I wonder if the bone will fuse well enough to look more or less natural despite the new shape.

What did I learn? First, don’t take any walking surface for granted. It seemed like a safe patch of concrete which I’d tread before thousands of times, but sometimes even the most familiar setting will catch you off guard. A confluence of speed, turning, angle and surface smoothness did me in that day. Second, I learned that I’m a slow healer. It took me perhaps twice as long as it should have to get fixed back up.

Third, I discovered that the “Beckham treatment” seems to work. Though I lost the crutches three and a half months after the break and could start to walk again, at the six-month mark, the bone still wasn’t healing properly. Note the image below: the middle image, marked “APR,” was a month after I lost the crutches, and that did not change too much a month after that, when I started using the ultrasound therapy called SAFHS.

Note the difference in mid-July, just a month and a half after starting the therapy. It all filled in pretty strongly except for the top part–and this morning, the x-ray showed that closed up as well, a month later. Without the SAFHS treatment, I don’t know how far along my foot would be, but I’d be willing to wager that it still wouldn’t be healed. The ultrasound really seems to work–which is probably why they’re now using it to grow new teeth. I don’t know if that’ll work, but I can recommend it for bone repair, if your doctor thinks it’ll work for you.

Watching the most recent installment of 30 Days, in which an atheist lives in a religious family and community for the requisite amount of time, I heard statements from Christians that I’ve heard many times before: if not the Bible or the Ten Commandments, what is the basis of your morality? To many Christians, there can be no other basis; without the morality given by God, a person can believe they have morality, but it is only an illusion. For example:

“It is true that some people who are irreligious can live seemingly decent lives, but when they do, they merely borrow from Christian ethics.”

I am not a Christian. I am agnostic, sometimes with leanings toward a personal spiritualism resembling Deism. But I most certainly did not derive my morality from Christianity. Am I fooling myself? Am I really an immoral person? I don’t think so. What, then, is my basis for morality? To understand this, I think it is important to understand what morality is.

I see there being two different kinds of morality: a general morality, and internal moralities. General morality is roughly the same as what many people see “morality” as being–be kind to others, don’t kill, steal, lie, cheat, etc. This morality, to me, is born from self-awareness. We are conscious and aware of our being, and as a consequence or extension of that, we realize that others are also conscious like we are. We can make the leap from knowing what we feel to understanding that others are capable of this as well. We know what is most important for ourselves and how we wish to be treated. We know that we do not want to be hurt or killed, lied to or cheated. Morality, or what I have called “general morality,” is the extension of that understanding to the treatment of others, possibly through nothing less than interpersonal negotiation. One might call this the expression of the “golden rule”: treat others as you would have them treat you.

However, this is an incomplete description of morality. The basic reason is that not all of us are the same, and not all of us want to be treated in the same way. Years ago, my brother pointed out to me a refinement of the golden rule: treat others as they want to be treated. This makes sense. If I love back rubs, but you hate them, I shouldn’t treat you the way I want to be treated. While most of our desires may overlap, not all of them do.

This leads me to the second type of morality I listed above: internal moralities. These are the rules or morality that do not derive from common desires and understandings, but from those particular to an individual or a group. An individual’s internal morality would be a rule or preference that applies to one person but not necessarily anyone else. This could include actions that you see as personally important, for example, specific rituals for exercise, language that is appropriate or not, or certain spending rules and habits. You violate these rules and you feel that you have done something wrong.

A community or group’s internal morality is more common, however, and applies to rules and preferences peculiar to a social group, such as a family, a congregation, a region, a religion, or a nation–any group with its own specific identity. This could include such things as saying the pledge of allegiance, going to church on Sundays, keeping your lawn free of kitschy ornaments, jury duty, not smoking, and so on.

The common quality of internal moralities is that they apply only to the individual or group that possesses them; they do not apply to those outside. It is immoral for Christians to take the Lord’s name in vain, for example; it is not for me. That is the most common source of non-immoral offense: breaking rules that belong to the internal morality of others.

The problem that naturally arises is when people impose their internal morality on others, not seeing the distinction between internal and general morality. As Shaw’s Caesar put it, “he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.” One believes that one’s internal morality is in fact part of the general morality.

Christians who believe that morality derives only from the Bible take this one step further, however–they not only assume their internal moralities are general, then cannot conceive of there even being any other basis for morality than their own religious doctrine. Therefore, to these extremists, non-Christians are immoral, or, at best, are simply poor imitations of true Christian morality.

To further rebut the claim that I am fooling myself and just “borrowing” their morality, I would point out that morality has to predate Christian morality, as well as the Judaic morality that gave birth to it. Before these religions, before the Ten Commandments, did people kill and steal and lie and cheat and think it was all fine? I think the obvious answer is “no.” So, where did they get their morality from?

The answer, of course, is that all general morality, including that part of Christian morality, derives from self-awareness and the resulting sympathetic understanding of the feelings of others. More specific internal moralities derive from group or individual customs, rules, ideas, and preferences. Now, specific internal Christian moral codes can be said to derive from Christianity; for example, the first five of the Ten Commandments are internal moral rules dealing with authority (with the possible exception of parental authority), while the last five are more general moral definitions. But to say that all morality derives from there is arrogant presumption and bias.

We found morality by ourselves; if it was God-given, it was because God built it into us, all of us. But morality has its roots in human awareness and experience, not scripture.

I bought an iPod almost three years ago, and usually I use it–but not at home where I have better music playing devices. And since my foot was broken and I was limiting my movements to where I could access these things, I wasn’t using the iPod. The last time I used it was my trip home last December.

After I got off my crutches and later became more mobile, I suddenly found the need to use the iPod. So I looked for it where I was pretty sure I had it. It wasn’t there. I thought back to where I could have last used it. At first I thought I had last used it on the trip home, so I searched my luggage and all the places I’d put stuff after I came home. Not finding it, I searched the apartment a few times over, like I did several times over the following months. No dice. I called the lost and found for the airlines, the bus line I used, even the taxi company; no one had found it. I thought maybe I hadn’t lost it on the trip, and rather that I’d taken it in to school once, so I searched my desk, the classrooms, and asked anyone if they’d found one. Still no iPod. So a few months ago, I resigned myself to having lost a $450 piece of equipment (priced that way when I bought it, anyway).

So now I’m giving the apartment a good cleaning, and am throwing away a lot of stuff that, being the pack rat that I am, I have been hoarding. That includes some plastic shopping bags that I collect but never use. I pick one up, and it is suspiciously heavy. At first I thought, ewww, that’s probably some bad juice from a year ago or something. I reach inside, and there’s the iPod.

That has to be the longest amount of time I have lost an expensive item without really having lost it. On the down side, I was all set to buy myself a new iPod–though I planned to wait for the new true-video iPod, and that’s not likely to come out for another 8 or 9 months. I’ll probably get one of those anyway, but maybe I’ll wait until revision 2 to do so.

As you may recall, I broke the fifth metatarsal of my right foot last December, and it’s been taking forever to heal. Since it did not heal well by the beginning of June, I started with an ultrasound therapy, and that seems to be doing a much better job. Check out the image below: my foot when I broke it on December 3, again in April (five months later, not very well healed), and then just the other day in mid-July.

The doc told me that the bone is now 80% healed, so with the new therapy, it might be all the way back by the end of August. That ultrasound pulse stuff seems to actually work. In fact, they seem to be finding more uses for it–including growing new teeth. The article, which I noticed a few weeks ago, details the exact same treatment that I’m using for my feet, except instead of SAFHS, it’s called LIPUS, and has a much smaller and automatic pulse generator.

How about that?

At my heaviest, I weighed in at 206 lbs. (94 kg); that was about three or four years ago. I stand at 5′ 10.5″ (roughly 179 cm), so that’s a bit on the big side. (One doctor, maybe three years ago, didn’t speak English very well, so he just looked at me and said, “obesity!” I didn’t take that too well.) Before I started my newest slimming-down drive, I was down to about 196 lbs. (89 kg), which was mostly due to mild dieting, but nothing serious.

Starting at the beginning of the year (no, it wasn’t a resolution–it was the broken foot that started all this by showing me how out of shape I was), I started on a serious health kick, pretty much eschewing beef, pork, and almost any sugar product. I started eating oatmeal in the morning (okay, that stuff has sugar in it) with berries, a 6″ sub sandwich (mostly veggies) for lunch, and chicken and salad for dinner. Along with that, I worked my way up to half an hour of Karvonen-Formula exercise most days of the week, and more general exercise-style hobbying, like my birdwatching.

Put that together, and you get weight loss. I had an initial drop to 83 kg (183 lbs.), but that seems to have been the easy part–heck, that was even before my foot healed and I could exercise. After I could start working out, I got down to 81 kg (178 lbs.) without too much trouble, but then on a visit to the doctor, I was told to drop at least three more kilos, to help get my triglycerides down (I still have a bit of a cholesterol problem, why I don’t know). So I lost the weight. From what I understand, the slow way is best–I dropped only a few pounds a week, but it worked and stayed off (except for the temporary salty weight gain, all gone now), and upon seeing the same doc a month later–today, that is–I weighed in at 78 kg (172 lbs.).

Apparently they didn’t expect me to actually do that; the nurse who weighed me (and took blood) couldn’t speak English, so after I went back to wait in the lobby, she came out with a nurse who spoke English, and they asked me if I was feeling okay–they were actually concerned that I was losing weight unhealthily fast. That was nice. But it was also based on a misunderstanding–the nurse subtracted a kilo for my clothing weight, which the nurse a month ago didn’t do, so they were under the impression that I lost a bit more than four kilos (almost 10 lbs.) in four weeks.

The preliminary blood work came in by the time I got in to see the doc just a few minutes later, and my blood levels were all within normal range. The doc even calculated my ideal body weight–at just one kilo, or a few pounds, below what I am now–how about that. I certainly am slimmer than I’ve been since my early thirties, but that’s not to say everything is perfect–still too much of that “ideal” weight on my waistline, not enough in the places where it should be. Buff I am not.

Hey, it’s something else to work on.

Who needs an alarm clock when they start jackhammering outside your window at 8:30 am sharp every single weekday morning? They’ve been doing that for so long now, I woke up at 8:28 without an alarm. They’re installing decorative tiles. Swell. Why can’t they start at 10? And it’s been weeks, and they’ve just been doing the foyer right below me. There are about a dozen more in the building. So apparently, I have a lot of incredibly noisy mornings to look forward to without the chance of sleeping in. With vacation coming up, too.

Who needs %#*$@ decorative tiles?

On Saturday, I related the story about how I was hit by lightning, complete with an audio recording of the incident. I was amazed by being hit, wondering what the odds against that were.

Today, I found out something that makes the odds beyond astronomical, almost beyond belief: one of my co-workers, a professor whose desk is right next to mine, was also hit by lightning–same day, approximately the same time, and same intensity of electrical shock, but in a different part of town.

I know, your first reaction will be that they are pulling my leg. No way something that unlikely could happen. Probably they’re having fun with me, maybe they didn’t believe my story and are being sarcastic. What a sucker I am, right?

I’ll admit, I can be gullible, but I can guarantee you that this is not the case this time. I trust this person implicitly; their personality is completely incompatible with that kind of a gag. My brother-in-law, that would be a different story. By this particular co-worker, not a chance. It’s true: we were both hit by lightning the same day, at roughly the same time.

My co-worker, as it turns out, was jogging in a park near her home at the time (about 10 km away from where I was). Like me, she had misjudged the weather, and was caught off-guard by the sudden thunderstorm. In her case, it was already raining a little and she was wet when the lightning hit. She saw a flash and felt the electrical shock down her left arm as the thunderclap and lightning flash hit. Like me, she was startled, though my reaction right after that was, how cool was that! whereas my co-worker was much less enthralled by the experience. She ran for the nearest shelter, a small utility shed in the park, and waited out the lightning storm there.

But really, what are the chances? I calculated the odds, very, very roughly, of both of us being hit at 90 billion to one–but that’s just for any two people being struck by lightning, and does not factor in the circumstance that we both work together in a small office. I have no idea how to factor that in, but I’m sure that if you did, the odds would go up to the point where you’d need a few sheets of paper just to contain all the zeroes involved.

Stranger than fiction….

Let me start off by pointing out that the title of this post quite accurately describes what happened to me today, and not in any metaphoric sense. I was literally struck by lightning a few hours ago.

Of course, I was not struck directly–had I been, I would not be sitting at home right now. Let me explain what happened.

This morning, I decided to do some birding around the bay. I was going to make a bit of a day of it, starting at the Tokyo Minato Yacho Koen near Haneda Airport and then making my way over to Kasai Rinkai, near Tokyo Disneyland. The weather was sunny and hot–around 100 degrees when I left.

When I got to the bird park, there were clouds off in the distance, but it still seemed nice. Not many birds were there, however (I’ll do a birding report later). I did manage to get some nice shots of a Little Ringed Plover when the thunder really got started. It had been thundering for maybe fifteen minutes, but not very frequently. But then it really started going, maybe three or four strikes a minute. While some parts of the sky were still bright, dark clouds from the north were starting to cover the sky above. With my rainsuit stashed in my scooter (it’s always there, for instances like this) on the other side of the park, I figured it was time to get the hell out of Dodge and get to my suit before I got soaked.

Halfway out, the lightning was going pretty steady, bolts flashing all around–which for me, is pretty cool. I love lightning and thunder, and still do. In fact, I’ve always wanted to get a good recording of that sheet-ripping sound of nearby lightning. So while I walked out of the park, I had my camera on, and was using the voice notation feature as an audio recorder, in case a good peal of thunder presented itself.

At that point, I crossed the bridge which goes over the railroad tracks and roads that lead in to the adjacent shipping/distribution center. I saw a couple with a video camera on the middle of the bridge, and asked them if they were filming birds. They said they were filming the planes going into Haneda. Just after I walked by them, it happened.

Now, remember I said I was recording at that time. Well, here it is:

Me getting struck by lightning (MP3 version, 375 KB)
Me getting struck by lightning (WAV version, 1.3 MB)

Those are two different versions of the same recording. By the way, it sounds best when listened to with headphones and the sound way up. When you listen to it, you’ll hear sounds you may not recognize without introduction. First, you’ll hear thunder in the background, a previous strike that was still echoing. You’ll hear a rhythmic crunching sound, which is me walking on the gravel bridge; I take about five steps before it hits me. Then you’ll hear a static crackle, then me yelping in shock as the lightning hits me, then the crack of immediate thunder accompanying the lightning strike. Then you hear my reaction, and I speak to the couple I just passed on the bridge, as a flock of starlings flushed by the lightning can be heard flying overhead.

Here’s a longer version (MP3, 580 KB) with more audio before and after the strike. It’s also censored–bleeped when I cussed, a version I made for my class (of course I’m going to play it for them). In this version, you hear me talking to the couple before the strike, and you can also hear a few more comments by me as I walk off the bridge.

As I mentioned in the recording, I felt the lightning strike. That was the yelp I made; I felt an electric shock in my left foot, which I presume was the one touching the bridge as I walked. I did not see the lightning bolt, disappointingly–it struck behind me–but I did notice the strobe effect from the flash all around me. Since I didn’t see it directly, I don’t know how far away it was, but it was probably within ten feet of me, maybe hitting the railing of the bridge. But consider: I was wearing rubber-soled shoes, it was dry, and I was on gravel, and still I got a strong electric shock to my foot.

At that point, I just figured that it was a really good idea to get out of there, so I did, making it back to my bike just after the rain started. I was going to hide out in a tunnel until the lightning stopped, but by the time the rain started, the lightning had stopped, so I headed on home. As it turned out, the rain only lasted fifteen or twenty minutes, but I was wet enough not to want to go on with the birding.

Besides, once you get hit by lightning, isn’t that pretty much going to be the high point of the day?

I’ve been trying to lose weight this year, and have been pretty successful. I lost almost 10 kilos since the beginning of the year before I hit a plateau; in the past few weeks I’ve been on a stricter diet-and-exercise regime, and I was gaining ground–I lost two more kilos in that time. But early this week, I found that I had put those two kilos back on almost overnight. What the…?

It turns out the culprit was… pretzels. I bought some at Costco last weekend, seeing as how they were low-calorie, low-fat, etc.–a good snack, it seemed. At first I was stunned, and couldn’t believe that eating a small number of pretzels could increase my weight by several times the full weight of the pretzels themselves. I was still puzzling over it this morning until I figured it out: pretzels are salty.

These particular pretzels were very salty, in fact. That’s OK with me–I love salty stuff. But a Biology lesson from back in high school flashed through my mind: when you increase the amount of salt in your body, your body increases your fluid retention in order to balance the saline concentration. I did a quick Google search and confirmed it. So eating lots of salt means you retain fluids, and gain weight. Damn! And I like pretzels, too–I thought I’d found a new good snack.

The good news is that it’s fluid weight, not fatty weight, which means (I hope) that staying away from salt and drinking a lot of water should help flush the salt from my system, and the weight should fall off rather easily.

Surprised the hell outta me, though.

We just got hit by a massive sudden thundershower. First, there were repeated lightning strikes. One hit very close, and had that awesomely cool 3-second ripping sound before the main, booming peal of thunder, a sound like a mile-long sheet of fabric is being torn. Seconds later, rain is pouring in buckets, along with a small amount of hail, so thick you can see it swirling and pouring in two or three different directions before it hits the ground. Then the sun comes out only a few minutes later, while it is still pouring, heralding the coming end of the rain as the ground is suddenly covered with small, fast-running rivulets and deep puddles where dry ground was just minutes before.

I love weather like that. As long as I am not outside in it. And even then, I still think it’s cool.

If you’re an American living and working in Japan, tax time is just about here. Even though you will probably owe no taxes–you get an automatic $80,000 exemption, and a $3,200 deduction for yourself in addition–you must file or lose the exemption! It’s not too late, though–we get an automatic extension until June 15th. You should have gotten your tax forms by now in the mail, if you’ve filed taxes from Japan before. If not, you can get your tax forms here as printable PDF files. Unless you make more than $80,000, you’ll just need forms 1040 and 2555. By the way, the 2005 yen-dollar exchange rate was 110.11 yen to the dollar.

Alas, the U.S. government, after handing out so many hundred-billion-dollar tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, had to go all penny-and-dime on us expats and closed down the minimally-staffed IRS office at the U.S. Embassy–meaning that if you need any official help, you now have to call the U.S. and wait on hold for an hour for the IRS rep to get to you, and probably even then they won’t know what you have to do. But, lucky for you, I did a blog post two years ago which shows you step-by-step how to make out your tax forms. As always, I do not guarantee their accuracy and you follow them at your own risk. I have to say that–I’m not a professional tax preparer or anything. It’s just how I do mine. And if you’re confused about how to fill these things out, the guide will probably help a lot. Mail it off by June 15th and you’ll be fine.

Although I can walk on my broken foot now, and have been for a few months, it’s still somewhat broken. That is, the bones aren’t properly knitting. There’s pain, but not at the break, rather at nearby joints, and that may be from the atrophy from having used crutches for more than three months. Still, the break should be healing faster, and better. It’s not.

As a way to help with the healing, I’m using a system called SAFHS (“Sonic Accelerated Fracture Healing System”; scroll to the bottom of the linked page to see illustrations), pronounced “safes.” It’s a very-low-frequency ultrasound pulse device, which is reported to help bone healing, especially in cases like my own. The FDA approved it 12 years ago. When the World Cup was played in Japan in 2002, David Beckham broke his second metatarsal (I broke my fifth) just a few months before the games started; he used the same technique (as my doc loves to tell me):

“We have an ultrasound product that’s capable of repairing broken bones. David Beckham wouldn’t have played in the last World Cup if it hadn’t have been for our ultrasound bone healing technology when he broke his metatarsal.”

While my doc at first dissuaded me from using it (he thought it was not covered by insurance and would not be overly effective), I went to see a second doctor who urged me to use the device. Sure enough, sources on the web report rather dramatic improvements in healing when using the device–makes me wish I had started using it a lot sooner. And it turns out that insurance will cover it after all; my first doc had it wrong on that account, too.

Still, it’s not cheap. It costs ¥125,000 (about $1100), 70% of which my insurance pays for, so I’m shelling out $330. I gotta figure that most of that pays for the research & development for the device, because the device itself doesn’t look like it should cost nearly that much. It’s a little thing, almost small enough to call it handheld, with a cord leading up to a small rubber puck-like thing (imagine a rubber drain stopper), which is the pulse generator. With a gel applied, that gets snapped into a belt with a round hole that goes around my foot; turn on the machine for 20 minutes a night, and that’s it. It’s a take-home device, on loan to me until whenever the doc says the healing is good enough.

Let’s hope it works.

Someone is selling a very precise and fully-tricked-out Back to the Future DeLorean time machine car on eBay, in “pristine” condition, can actually be driven, and has all the special effects including flux capacitor and time circuits. Vanity plate “OUTATIME” not available (too many letters anyway), instead it reads “BK2D80S.” For the ultimate geek who has everything. Looks like it would be fun to ride in, for about five minutes, and then the embarrassment would quickly overtake the novelty.

I mean, it’d be OK for a joyride, but really, can you imagine going shopping in it? Of course, it would probably be theft-proof; even if a car thief did want to steal it, it’s not like the police couldn’t track it down in ten seconds flat.

The eBay description does not guarantee flyability or accurate time displacement. Your mileage may vary.

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Speaking of movies, there’s going to be yet another remake of the The Seven Samurai, this time with a Chinese cast (Donnie Yen, Zhang Ziyi et al), plus George Clooney. Um, wha? According to the rumors, the film, budgeted at $100 million, will feature lots of Kung-fu action and digital effects. This is a movie that Harvey Weinstein (producer of Pulp Fiction, Lord of the Rings, Scream, and Scary Movie among others) has reportedly wanted to make for some time. Clooney is said to be taking the role of the lead samurai, portrayed by Takashi Shimura in the original. It’s anyone’s guess as to where and when the remake would be set, or how Clooney could fit in. One can only hope that it won’t be as terrible as it sounds.

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Supposedly another of Weinstein’s projects will be Fahrenheit 9/11 ½, a new film due out in 2007 (presumably after Sicko) by Michael Moore about the state of Bush’s America since the 2004 election. Make of it what you will.

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A very interesting birth: a child born in Shanghai with three arms–and it is difficult to tell which of his left arms is more developed than the other. While doctors debate which arm should be removed, another question is, should either arm be removed? The photo is not grotesque (unless that kind of thing especially bothers you), but what is unnerving is how similar it seems to all the pictures we’ve seen over the past years showing frogs being born with similar extra limbs. The next sign of environmental damage taking its toll?of it what you will.

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And finally, I did not know that you could be fined and even jailed by a court of law in Japan for disrupting a high school graduation ceremony. Apparently you can be. But I’ll bet you any amount you like that 65-year-old retired Social Studies teacher Katsuhisa Fujita was not fined ¥200,000 by the Tokyo District Court just because he was disruptive. My bet is that he would never have been arrested, tried, or fined had the disruption been about anything else but the Japanese national anthem and flag. Fujita’s crime was that he urged parents attending the ceremony to remain seated during the anthem as a way to protest Japan’s growing nationalism, which many see as represented by the government’s demand that the anthem and flag be displayed and mandatorily saluted at schools across the country.

The “tumult” caused by Fujita delayed the ceremony by all of two minutes, for which the prosecutors wanted the senior citizen thrown in jail for eight months. Which, one would presume, would convince everyone that Japan is not becoming a totalitarian state, because we all know that liberal democracies are renowned for throwing the elderly in prison for the egregious crime of free speech, especially when agitating against fascism. And with the prosecutors’ job done, Japan is again safe from 65-year-old Social Studies teachers trying to teach everyone about democracy.

Sometimes the elegance of a single photo can truly strike you. I wish I had a larger version of this picture, but this one from a CNN set (via DKos) will have to do. Taken by a family member of a returning soldier, this is the kind of photo you expect to win a Pulitzer for its simplicity and its symbolism. You see no faces, and yet the image could not be more full of expression. A father returning home to what is most important to him, his weapon casually yet significantly discarded. The composition could not be more perfect. One could write volumes and yet not articulate as exquisitely as this as desirable a resolution to conflict.

Don’t you hate those new “ad links” in web pages? They appear mostly in news or magazine sites, as green, double-underlined words; if your cursor moves over them, little javascript windows appear displaying ads even remotely related to the word in question. They block the text and take a small amount of time to generate and disappear. Now I have to be careful to keep my cursor away from the dang things or be annoyed. As if the ring of dancing, flashing advertisements all around the periphery–and sometimes in the middle–of the page are somehow not enough. Even pop-up blocking browsers like Safari and Firefox are not 100%–on both browsers, I have visited sites that somehow got around the blockers and opened pop-ups anyway.

Safari also has a bug I don’t like much. On some sites, like MSNBC, any attempt to select text results in a 5- to 10-second pause while the browser goes into spinning-beachball mode.

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I went birdwatching recently… inside Costco. The last few times I’ve visited, I’ve noticed Tree Sparrows flying up in the rafters. They congregate near the back of the store, where the open-topped bakery is–which makes me wonder, as I bite into those tasty Costco bagels, exactly how they keep the sparrow droppings from getting into the baked goods…

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Microsoft seems to be on a new-software kick; after releasing the MSIE 7 beta, they’re now releasing Windows Media Player (WMP) version 11, also in beta. The Washington Post has a piece on it, calling it an improvement, but still not a match for iTunes. It is also reported (that’s a link to one of those pages with the annoying green underline ads) that WMP, like MSIE, goes through the OS “validation” process to see if you have a non-pirated version of Windows.

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David Blaine, after living in a giant fish bowl for a week then failing to hold his breath long enough, has announced that next, he will “live harmoniously among wild beasts” in an as-yet undisclosed jungle. Observers have noted that if Blaine were places in true wilderness amongst feral creatures, he wouldn’t last long. Aren’t there laws to protect the mentally ill from themselves? Or to protect us from desperately pathetic attention seekers? Fortunately, I only hear about these things peripherally at best; I make a point of not paying attention to stories like Michael Jackson’s court proceedings, Britney Spear’s adventures in babysitting, or similar stupid stuff. I looked at the recent Blaine story solely to make fun of it here.

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Well, finally. Yet another Windows piece of malware came along the pike, this one big enough to momentarily distract the media from its weeks-long Macs-are-dangerous kick. This one is a trojan, called “Trojan.Mdropper.H,” and spreads through email, pretending to be a valid corporate MS Word attachment. When you open the attachment, you see Excel charts and Powerpoint presentations–and a piece of malicious code named “Backdoor.Ginwui” opens a back door in your system to allow hackers to gain control. It’s called a “zero-day exploit,” which means that it is not known to the general public, or does not affect it, meaning that system administrators get little or no advance warning of the malware before it hits.

Ironically, McAfee is calling this one a “trojan,” despite their recent scaremongering report, in which they said that a trojan was really a virus, justifying their ability to say “viruses infect the Mac!” Apparently, trojans are now trojans again, at least on Windows.

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Oh, boy. A Democratic congressman got caught taking payola. And it got filmed. The guy’s corrupt, should be jailed. But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts this is gonna be used big-time by the right wing to claim that Democrats are just as, if not more corrupt than Republicans, on the heels of successful yet wildly inaccurate rumor-mongering that the Abramoff scandal was equally spread among the two parties. I wouldn’t even be too surprised if the FBI was directed to try to get something on a Democrat to take the pressure off the Republicans, and it looks like the details of the case may have been leaked precisely for that purpose.

The fact remains that Republican scandals of the past years make things like this look like chickenfeed–and it’s a lot scarier on the Republican side, because they’re so much better at hiding it and getting away with it. Look what Tom DeLay and other Republicans had to do to get caught, and even still he might lawyer his way out of it. This Jefferson guy got videotaped taking the bribe and stashed the money in his freezer. Amateur.

Hell, this guy almost had to be corrupt anyway–he’s a Louisiana Democrat.