One man's garbage is....

Garbage.

I don't remember what the garbage collection system is like in America, other than it varies widely from area to area, but anyone who has lived in Japan knows just how complicated it can get.

The dilemma for local governments who must recycle is where to place the burden of separation. Burden the people who throw it out too much, and no one will bother. Burden the collection agency and the efficiency of recycling declines exponentially, as everything gets mixed together, things get dirty and broken, etc.

But at least something is being done. I remember when I was younger, and there was practically NO recycling done on the personal level. Sure we returned glass bottles to the supermarket to get our deposit back, and sometimes we sold old soda pop cans to the scrapyard, but that was really the extent of it.

When I think about it now, we were truly irresponsible back then. I couldn't even imagine not recycling now. When I think about all of the plastic bottles, plastic bags, glass bottles, soda pop cans, steel cans, paper products, newspapers, milk cartons, styrofoam trays, etc. that I send out to be recycled, and then think about how much of it would have been either incinerated or put in a landfill when I was young, I can only shake my head with shame.

Of course, it's economically driven. When I was younger, it wasn't cost effective enough to recycle so many things, so we didn't. Now, because of high oil costs, etc., it has become much more competitive. I saw on TV some time ago that here in Japan they might start recycling CDs to help offset the higher prices of plastic brought about from high oil prices.

Still, it seems a shame to me that we had to wait so long to start to get serious about recycling. Hopefully this is the beginning of a shift towards a cleaner, more responsible world economy. I highly doubt it, though. As long as economics is a leading factor, the cheapest viable solution will be used, even if it is known to be only a temporary fix.

The problem is, I can't help but remember the old adage, "you get what you pay for."

Why I dislike typing Japanese in Roman characters

Kyou ha pa-supo-to no kousinn tetuduki wo yatta. sono tetuduki no hitotu to site, furui ryokenn wo amerika no ryoujikann ni okuranakereba naranai. nannto fuann da na. ima no seikatu no naka de itibann daiji na syorui nanoni kousinn no tame ni hanasanai to dame nannte. atarasii no ga kuru made daitai 3 syuukann kakaru to iu nnda kedo, maa, nanimo monndai ga nai to ii na. ima no yatu no kigenn ga raigetu no 24kka da kara nanika ga atta buai ha komaru na...

ato ha heya no keiyaku no kousinn mo semattekiteiru. hayaku sinai to.

kono tetuduki ga iya da na. ro-maji de kaku you ni mendou da kara!

Three English entries in a row! It must be a conspiracy!

Speaking of conspiracies, I met an actual hardcore conspiracy theorist in person for the first time in my life this past weekend. I almost hate to say it, but he even looked the part, with missing teeth, unkempt hair and a certain wild look in his eyes.

He was a nice guy, though, when talking about his wife and two children, or his job as a woodworker here in Japan. It was just when he started talking about politics that he changed dramatically. He is, by the way, an American citizen from the Midwest married to a Japanese national. We met at Jonathon's friend's house when we went to watch the fireworks. He was another guest there.

Talking to this man, it really made me think. He came to Japan ten years ago with his wife, and he didn't speak any Japanese. Naturally he looked for a job where language proficiency wasn't a prerequisite, and I suppose equally naturally, he's still at that same job to this day. Not being able to speak the local language, though, meant that it was extemely difficult to make friends, but even more importantly, to communicate freely at even the most basic level. Even saying something like, "I'm hungry," would be an ordeal.

I imagine his wife speaks English fairly well, but she was apparently more concerned with raising their children than taking care of him. After all, he is a grown man. But take away his home time and work time and most time in-between for real human interaction, and all that's left is his own thoughts.

I'm sure that at first he started out being fairly liberal, but nothing out of the ordinary. Quite like myself, in other words. However, with the help of the internet, little by little, his thoughts began to feed themselves and he turned in on himself. Little by little, little doubts and concerns became this elaborate conspiracy on the highest levels.

Now he is absolutely convinced that a certain elite class is trying to reduce the world's population to one twelfth its current size, and they are putting their long thought-out plans into action, and he's apparently even started some kind of political movement in the USA via the internet.

Was it Kant who said, "No man is an island"? Commit a man to endure nothing but his own thoughts, and those thoughts slowly deform and twist into something unrecognizable. I think it's unfortunately a natural process, but it is a sad thing to see.

More PC thoughts

PC as in Personal Computer, that is.

Today I reinstalled both Windows and Ubuntu on my laptop, and I noticed something that I just had to share.

After reinstalling Windows XP, I was amazed at how much faster it was suddenly running! I couldn't believe the difference, it was so pronounced! Then I vaguely remembered something from several years ago. It was the time I installed the Windows XP Service Pack 2. After that I noticed that my computer was running much slower than it was prior to the installation, so I figured that I would skip installing it this time. I did a little research, and I found out that the Service Pack 2 was not really a necessary install, and that if you had a 3rd party firewall and virus software, and you were a responsible web user, you really probably wouldn't notice much difference.

Well, actually, I do. Without Service Pack 2, my computer is running like a charm. Without Norton anymore, it runs faster as well. This time I downloaded a free firewall and virus software from www.majorgeeks.com and so far so good.

Better than good. Excellent!

Hello from Linux!

Sorry I haven't been posting very much lately. I've been a little preoccupied.

I now have the Ubuntu version of Linux up and running on my new computer! Since I installed from the English version, I have some work ahead of me as far as getting the Japanese language support all enabled, but so far so good. All I have left in front of me is to get the input device working.

I have to say that so far I like Linux quite a bit. It's a little work to hammer out the bugs, but it seems to be far more stable than Windows ever did. I guess that means that my laptop is next.

Actually, this is not my first foray into the world of Linux. I have wanted to try out a Linux system for at least 12 years now. I tried in college a couple of times, but I could never get it to work. As it is, I probably would have been in trouble if not for the fact that I now have two computers. That meant that I could plug one into the internet and access all of the nice online documentation that's available. That saved me a lot of headache, I think!

So, hello from Linux!