a short history of modern japan

Japan was a medieval world who's leaders were unwilling to change. Some people wanted change and actively sought it. When the Americans forced change they took the opportunity and said never again will another country do this to us. So they built a big army, navy and later airforce. Some time later some other Japanese used these assets to attack the Americans. (revenge perhaps?) They lost. The Americans sailed into Tokyo bay as a hostile force for change a second time. So the Japanese said for a second time, never again.

IRA and the Triads

I was in Taiwan in the middle of 1999 reading the paper, probably one of the versions of the times. But I cannot remember. There was this article about the Taiwanese being annoyed by the face that the IRA was training the local triads to use cells. They were annoyed because the cells were hard to detect and mad policing harder.

the bigot test

A very simple way to detect a bigot:

1. the bad guys are always them, and the good guys are always us.
   
2. they never do good things.
   
3. we never do bad things.

They can be countries, states, religious groups, social stratas and many other things.

different tyres

Back when I was living in Cammeray (1997 ish), my car was parked out on the street. We were at home, watching the TV. There was a loud bang of a car crash. One of our neighbours near the front of the block of units ran out onto the street. The car that crashed into the back of mine was a suzuki switf. He tried to get the car to stop, but it would not. He got the number plate. 6 months later, the police sent a letter that they could not track down the car and were closing the case. The numberplate was for a car registered in the town of Urana (If I have remembered that correctly.)

Sometime within two years I purchased a Suzuki Jimny and joined the 4WD drive club. They made some comments about people who stole tyres and the need to keep a watch out for cars with different tyres. They seemed to know who might be doing this.

time man of the year

Brian's selection of time's man of the year awards:

2007 - Vladimir Putin

scary...

a long history of WWII

Britian and France joined the war to free Poland, which had been invaded by Germany an Russia. For a while Germany kicked out the Russians, and then the Russians kicked out Germany. In the end Poland was only freed in 1989. So WWII ended in 1989 even though the fighting ended much earlier.

short sighted

I have been short sighted for a long time, since I was in my teen years. I watched the interest of laser eye surgery with interest but I have never taken up the option. This is for a few reasons:

• Initially I was concerned with the long term effects. Although the doctors said that there were no reasons for worry, until the actual experience is gained, there is too much uncertainty and my eyes are important.
• Wearing corrective glasses has never bothered me.
• I knew that eyes change continuously over time. So initially I become more and more short sighted. Originally I expected this to occur for a time and then stabilize. But I have found that it did this, then got worse again stabilized again and so on. I think I have been through this for about three cycles. When you get older, the eyes tend to become longer sighted again. This was believed to be caused by the mussels in the eye relaxing and stretching as they become older. This mean that even with the surgery there seems to be good reason to expect to have to wear glasses again.

I was asked the other day about the effect of bifocals on all of this. Do a bit of reading, it would seem that is it a realted effect, but there was not enough knowledge I could find to make a call. Bi focals are requred becuase of a condition called presbyopia. This seems to be a limit the the closet range that you can see. I suppose if you are short sighted then this would be less of an issue. Though recently I have noticed that I am having difficulty focusing at close range with my glasses off. But I do not know the cause of this effect.

I will do some more reading when I have more time and see if I can come up with a better answer on this latter question.