月別アーカイブ：2020年01月

Last month, the 75th ceremony to commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp was held, and media from around the world featured this important event. Only 75 years ago, at least 1.1 million people, Jews and others, were brutally massacred at Auschwitz; we must never forget this appalling fact. Auschwitz-Birkenau main track Source: Author: C.Puisney（ CC BY-SA 3.0 ） Prior to the ceremony, Germany’s President Steinmeier addressed the participants at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial (he began his speech in Hebrew, which was beautiful).  “They were Germans. I stand here laden with the heavy, historical burden of guilt,” he said. ...

There was an interesting scene in the movie “Shin Godzilla” which premiered in Japan in 2016. A humongous, lizard-like beast, later on named “Godzilla”, emerges in Tokyo. A group of experts urgently convenes for a meeting, in which three scholars argue: A: It is extremely hard to tell if it is an ancient dinosaur, or sort of a whale subspecies, or something else entirely, just from what we saw on the tv screen.B: An unprecedented aquatic creature has invaded Japan - that’s all I can say for now without further field investigation. C: We can’t even confirm if the monster ...

It looks like vegan meat is really becoming a thing now. Actually, it’s not just vegan meat; cultured meat is also gaining attention. In any case, the population explosion and associated food crisis is becoming real, and there are more and more startups emerging to address the food challenge. For example, the plant-based meat substitute producer Beyond Meat went public on the NASDAQ exchange in May of last year and continues to grab the spotlight, with a help of ever-increasing environmental concerns. “(If they have no bread,) let them eat cake.”  This famous quote has been attributed to Marie-Antoinette (although ...

Society’s rise and fall and the cycle of life Recently, I often think about the lifespan that exists for an organization and a society, just the way we human beings have a lifetime. In our lifetime, we grow from an infant to a youth, then enter a mature stage and live out our life. Thus, ancient people described the life process as “青春 (youth)”, “朱夏 (the prime of life)”, “白秋 ( fruiting/aging stage)”, and “玄冬 (mastering and another beginning)”. When we think about it, no society nor civilization has ever been eternal. The Roman Empire came to an end after ...