A Nuclear Bomb Wrapped in a Hurricane －ハリケーンに包まれた原子爆弾－

There was a very odd news story this week. 

Donald Trump was forced to deny news reports that he had suggested getting rid of problem hurricanes threatening the US by dropping nuclear bombs on them. 

The idea that America could make use of its supply of nuclear bombs by dropping them on hurricanes was originally suggested in the 1950s. 

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration responded to the news reports by advising against the idea.  They said that given the huge energy of a hurricane, a nuclear bomb might not even alter its course.  And of course the dangerous radiation of the bomb would be spread over a wide area. 

Despite the complete opposition of scientists, and the obvious risks, the idea that Trump would support such an action seems perfectly believable.  If you’ve got a potentially extremely dangerous situation developing which nobody understands very well, why not just drop a nuclear bomb on it and see what happens? 

Is the idea of dropping a nuclear bomb on a hurricane any stranger than another of Trump’s recent ideas?:  To deal with the climate-change crisis, don’t cut CO2 emissions.  Just buy Greenland and, when America gets too hot, move the rich people to Greenland. 

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Ps. I wrote an article which was published in the Japan Times this Monday.  Here is the link:
The subtleties that bedeviled St. Francis

Being Mark Antony －マルクス・アントニウスになること－

One of the odd things about being a writer is that you can have two names.  As with tv celebrities and bank robbers, people consider it normal for a writer to use a different name in their working life than the one they use in their everyday life. 

It is important for a tv celebrity or writer to stand out and be easily recognised and remembered (bank robbers are presumably hoping for the exact opposite.)  So it is a big advantage to have an unusual name.  It would also be great if your name could project the image you want it to – a mystery writer’s name should sound mysterious, and a fantasy writer’s name should sound magical.  A top mystery writer is Dorothy L. Sayers - What does the “L.” stand for?  A top fantasy writer is Lewis Carrol.  Doesn’t his name sound more beautiful and magical than his real name, “Charles Lutwidge Dodgson”?

Some writers, of course, are just born lucky.  I am currently reading a book by Jared Diamond.  His books are excellent.  His book, “Guns, Germs and Steel,” is one of my favourite books of all-time.  But even if his books weren’t so memorable, I would probably still remember his name.  “Jared” is a very unusual first name.  And who wouldn’t like to own a diamond?

Parents have to be very careful when naming their children.  You have to find the right balance between being unusual and being weird.  “Jared” is good because not many people are called Jared, but it does sound like an attractive name.  “Satan” and “Pooh-san” are unusual names for good reasons.  Don’t choose them! 

I say that parents must know something about history and culture because names may have been used before.  There used to be a young footballer called “Mark Anthony”.  I often used to wonder why the guy’s parents – Mr. And Mrs. Anthony – had called their son, “Mark”.  Mark Antony is the English form of Marcus Antonius, a famous figure in the Roman Empire, who married Cleopatra.  If your family is Antony or Anthony, call your child anything except “Mark”!  In Japan, it would be like the “Oda” family having a baby boy and deciding to call him, “Nobunaga”.  Call him anything except Nobunaga!  No matter how smart and hard-working the boy is, what is the chance that he will become more famous than the other Oda Nobunaga? 

This essay was written by Rainbow X.X. Ruby.



Vocabulary:

to stand out – to be easily noticeable

weird - strange and unnatural

I Asked to Live Forever ー永遠に生きることを頼んだー

I asked to live forever,
But I forgot to ask for eternal youth.
As my back bent and my teeth fell out,
Merciful God, you let me try again.

I asked to live forever,
And have eternal youth,
But I forgot to ask for a body hard as stone.
As my bones were smashed by a wayward Toyota Corolla,
Merciful God, you let me try again.

I asked to live forever,
And have eternal youth,
And a body hard as stone,
But I forgot to ask for an immortal, eternally young girlfriend as hard as stone.
As humanity died, and I sat weeping from loneliness,
Merciful God, you let me try again.

I asked to live forever,
And have eternal youth,
And a body hard as stone,
And an immortal, eternally young girlfriend as hard as stone.
When I found her with a young postman who was as hard as stone,
Merciful God, I went to the Devil.

He offered me a life that would end,
Youth that would bloom and fade like flower petals,
Tender flesh to know both caress and bruise,
And a big dog that hates postmen.
Merciful God, forgive me, for I decided to give it a go.


Vocabulary:

eternal – without end; lasting forever

merciful – having forgiveness or showing sympathy to someone being judged

wayward – not following the correct rules, but going in its own (incorrect) way

a petal – the soft, coloured leaves on a flower, designed to attract insects or birds

a caress – a stroke, or physical sign of affection or love

a bruise – a black or blue part of the skin, caused by an injury

The Eyes Next Door－お隣さんの目－

I was born in a reasonably big city, and so I am not used to all of my neighbours knowing who I am and what I have been doing. 

A few times after moving to Japan I have felt that it would be romantic to go and live in a rural area or small town with few other foreigners, where I would have to integrate with the local community, and speak only Japanese.  But soon afterwards, I started to feel people’s eyes on me everywhere. 

When living in Higashi-Matsuyama, I couldn’t sit in a restaurant without bumping into one of my elementary school students, who would run over to see what I was eating. 

“Will-Sensei eats chocolate ice-cream in Gusto!” they would shout at me the next day in the playground.  “Gusto!  Gusto!  Gusto!” 

An even stranger thing happened to me when I was living in a small town in Kansai called Okubo.  My next-door neighbour was an elderly Japanese lady who often came out into her garden to talk to me when she saw me leaving for work or coming back home.  I didn’t speak much Japanese at the time and so we couldn’t communicate much more than by exchanging greetings.  “Please work hard today!” she would shout as I left for work. 

As I said, I had a romantic idea of life in a small town.  And I didn’t have anything worth stealing.  So I used to leave my house without locking the door. 

One day I came back home from work.  The lady next door wasn’t around.  When I opened my door, I got a shock.  The inside of my house seemed really clean.  I entered the living room and I found that the dirty laundry that I had left scattered on the floor was now sitting in a neat pile, having been washed and dried. 

I checked around the house.  But there was nothing missing.  Thieves don’t usually sneak into your house, steal some jewellery, and then do your laundry as an apology.  The only explanation was that the elderly lady next door had come into my house when I was at work, cleaned up and done the laundry, and then gone home again. 

Well what would you have done?  I wasn’t sure whether I should say, “Thank you,” or “Please don’t sneak into my house again, scary lady!”  I’m sure in her mind she was being very helpful.  She saw a young, single man living far from his mother and thought that he couldn’t be keeping his house clean or properly taking care of his laundry.  And in this she was certainly not wrong. 

I said “Thank you,” to the lady, and bought her a little gift.  But I also asked her not to come into my house again, and I started locking my door.  I was even careful to close the curtains.  Suddenly in Okubo the eyes were following me everywhere. 

I now live in Tokyo where everyone ignores everyone else.  Neighbours that I have been living amongst for ten years would probably struggle to recognise my face.  And that has its good side as well as its bad side.



Vocabulary:

reasonably big – fairly big; big, but not very big

rural – in the countryside

to integrate – to join and become a unit

laundry – clothes which need to be washed, or have just been washed

a pile – a collection of things placed one on top of the other

to sneak somewhere – to go somewhere secretly, or quietly and while trying to avoid being caught

to struggle to do something – to find it difficult to do something

IQ, and How to Make Yours as High as Einstein’s －IQ、そしてアインシュタインと同じだけ高くする方法－

IQ tests are a way of trying to measure someone’s intelligence.  They test skills such as the ability to use numbers, or to recognise similarities between words.  After doing the test, you are given a score.  The human average is set at 100, so a score of lower than 100 suggests a lower than average intelligence, a score of more than 100 a higher than average intelligence.

But average human IQ scores have changed over time.  I read an article recently which talked about how people’s IQ scores have changed over the last 100 years.  It said that if people who took the test in the past were judged against today’s average IQ, they would be considered to have lower than average intelligence.  From the 1920s to the 1990s, the average human IQ was increasing by about 3 points every ten years.  If an IQ test really is a good measure of your intelligence, then you would look very smart to almost everyone around you if you could go back to 1920 in a time machine.

The article also said, however, that IQ scores stopped going up in the 1990s, and in some places have started to go down.  It made me wonder what changed in the 1990s to make everyone stupider?

Could it have been calculators?  In the 1980s, people had to use their brain to make calculations.  Increasingly from the 1990s, people just had to push some buttons.

Could it have been the internet?  Did we stop bothering to learn things because we thought, “I can always ask Google later”?

Could it have been tamagotchi, Pokemon, or the Spice Girls?  I’m not quite sure why, but I just have the feeling that these things might have been making the world stupider.

I talked about this topic with one of my Japanese friends.  To begin the conversation, I asked her if she knew anything about IQ tests.

“Ah, IQ tests.  You mean, like, Einstein had a high IQ, right?”

“Right,” I said.  “I’m sure Einstein must have had a very high score, since he was so intelligent.”

“But then again, maybe his intelligence balanced itself out,” she said.  “Like, maybe he was a genius in maths, but he couldn’t do simple things, such as put on matching socks.”

“I don’t think IQ tests have a question about whether your socks are matching,” I said.

I think it is a nice idea.  To give ordinary people a chance to keep pace with great scientists like Einstein, the questions should be tweaked a little:

Q1

1, 3, 6, 10.  What is the next number in the sequence?

Q2

On your left foot is a black sock.  What coloured sock should be on your right foot?

Q3

Which two words have the same meaning?

Tiny; faded; large; true; big


Q4

You have a slice of toast for breakfast.  Which of these things should you spread on it?:

Ice-cream; dynamite; butter; caviar

How did you do?  Are you as smart as Einstein?

Vocabulary:

for two things to balance out – for two opposite things to be roughly equal in size, power etc., or for the strength of two things to match and cancel each other

ordinary – not unusual

to tweak something – to change something just slightly