One of my favorite financial blogs, Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis, today had a post about the censorship in China. It says his site is blocked in China. I then became curious how one could check which sites are blocked by the Chinese government. I found two methods. Just Ping checks access to your site from 40 different places in the whole world, including Shanghai, China. I then found another tool that checks just China, called “Website Test behind the Great Firewall of China” by WebsitePulse. I have no idea how reliable these tools are, but it’s amusing to try them out.

Both sites show that Facebook is blocked in China. As claimed, Mish’s site is indeed blocked in China according to these sites. Now that I’m discussing the very subject of censorship in China here, I wonder if my site would get blocked too. That would be sort of cool. It would give me bragging rights. I would design a little seal that says, “Blocked in China” and put it on every page.

I wonder what I would have to write about in order to get blocked. The most obvious candidate is Tiananmen Square. Or perhaps, Dalai Lama. I actually don’t like him, but I would write a post about his greatness just for the sake of getting blocked. I would imagine that they must have automated bots that scan websites for certain keywords. So, it’s probably just a matter of using words like “Tiananmen Square” many times on your site. (Yes, “Tiananmen Square”) And, your site would probably get blocked automatically without any human intervention. That would be my guess.

So, let’s wait and see. Tiananmen Square. Love Dalai Lama.

I’ve been living in the US for 25 years now, so I barely feel that I’m Japanese, and it’s rare these days for me to feel concerned about what the Japanese do. But this one caught my attention this morning. Apparently the Japanese are still hunting whales and the activists are still fighting them. I actually had no idea; I thought this conflict ended years ago.

This is a tricky issue and I can see the arguments of both sides. Whale is an easy target to pick for animal activists because not many cultures consume them. In other words, it’s fightable, especially because it can be attacked as a national problem. On the other hand, fighting the killing of cows couldn’t be framed as such. Shaming a nation is much more effective than trying to shame the whole human race.

But ultimately, the moral arguments or rationales used by both sides don’t concern me much. What does concern me is that this conflict could become self-perpetuating, like the way the conflict in the Middle East has become. Just as whaling is a career in Japan, anti-whaling activism has becomes a career too because it’s been going on for so long. Watching this video made me realize how much of a career it has become. Once we spend decades of our lives doing something, we can’t help but have a vested interest in continuing it forever because our sense of self-worth is deeply tied to what we do.

To make the matters even worth, both sides are becoming increasingly more emotional and bitter towards one another, and they are both vengeful and selfrighteous too. The wounds are getting deeper and deeper on both sides, and the deeper the wound, the longer it lasts. This whale war will soon be an industry (if it’s not already), like the war in the Middle East is an industry with many businesses depending on it.

I was hoping that China would help us pull out of this recession but it is looking unlikely. China has its own problems which are becoming difficult to manage. Foreign Policy has an article about how China is cooking its books. Well the US has been doing it too, so why wouldn’t China? Of course, they go a few steps further. According to the article, the government officials show up to your factory and offer you a big chunk of money upfront to “resign”, so that you wouldn’t be part of the unemployment rate.

What I find funny is this: Why do they have to bother with such a scheme? Why don’t they just make up the numbers? Why bother collecting any data? I think they should bail out Madoff and hire him as their minister of finance.

Here is an interesting video I came across on one of my favoriate finanical blogs. The guy in the video explains how all those big buildings are standing completely empty with no prospect of getting anyone in there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ektMQGbW3wk

A friend of mine posted this YouTube video on Facebook (see below). It’s a Japanese TV program that investigates the possible historical connection between Jews and Japanese. I asked my dad about this and he said this is old news. He read a book about this 20 years ago.

I’ve always thought that the Jewish values are quite similar to the Japanese values. The fact that I have a lot of Jewish friends, I don’t think, is a coincidence.

In any case, even if this is completely bogus, it’s still interesting (or at least amusing), as I’m a big fan of crazy Jewish conspiracy theories as entertainment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00BP86cks4w

photo credit: k.Akagami

In an episode of Top Chef Masters, Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 made slow-cooked eggs using an “immersion circulator”, and the judges went wild for them. One of them said he’s never had an egg like that, which is a bit embarrasing given that he is a food critic. According to this article written March of 2007, it was all the rage then already.

In fact, the Japanese have been slow-cooking eggs for hundreds of years in hotsprings. It’s called “Onsen” eggs. Similar eggs are served at some Japanese ramen noodle restaurants, such as Ramen Setagaya. When I saw Dufresne cook it on Top Chef, I didn’t make the connection at first because they made it sound so novel and high-tech. A friend of mine pointed it out to me that it’s just Onsen eggs.

Nathan’s Hot Dot Eating Contest is coming up soon. I found this commercial on YouTube where Koby (Takeru Kobayashi) and Sonya Thomas compete at a convenience store.

When you look at the past winners on the Wikipedia page for Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, you see a bunch of American and Japanese flags. I find that really funny. There is one German flag and one Mexican flag; other than these, it’s all Japanese or American.

I remember when the first Japanese contestant appeared on the scene; I thought it was the funniest thing. I had never thought that the skinny Japanese had a chance, but it turned out that being skinny allows you to eat more. This completely changed the “sport”. Now the fat guys have no chance of winning.

A Castle On the Ocean — Tokyobling’s Blog

Castle made out of paper. It’s quite amazing. Check it out.