No more Smoking U

It's another sunny, beautiful winter day at the foot of the Suzuka's.

Cigarette smoking is a real problem, both for people's health and the health of the environment. The industry is a plague really, with unethical companies preying on people with dangerous drugs, and farmers devoting their energies to providing tobacco to people instead of food, while millions starve.

Several universities in Japan are working to stop their schools from becoming places where young adults learn to smoke. Yokkaichi University has recently prohibited the use of tobacco anywhere in any of the buildings. The school has also taken the progressive step of providing the school nurse with information to pass out to the students on how to stop smoking, and free nicotene patches that smokers can use to ease them off their addiction.

Here's an article from Mainich Shinbun on the issue.

Graduated from where?

Junichiro Koga didn't graduate from Pepperdine... surprise, surprise. Guess he figured no one would call him on it. It's probably tempting to pull that kind of trick.

Sounds af if he was 19 credits short. For those of you not familiar with the system, that is about a semester and a little more, depending on how big a class load he would want to carry. I'm also not sure what classes he has to take, but usually senior-level courses are not easy, and if it has been 20 years since he studied at an American University, he may find it more difficult than he remembers.

If I were in the Admissions Office, I would think twice about letting this kind of person back in with the possiblity that they would eventually confir upon him a real degree, and then that same person is going to go around flaunting it. Does the school want that kind of advertisement.

I just did a quick search on Google for word if Koga's involvement in the US in the American media. I didn't find anything. that means that this guy got nearly 30 minutes of air time on the networks in Japan for this. He may be a liar, but he ain't stupid.

Exam Time

It is that time of year, exam time. I remember this time of my student career from time to time. I remember the hard work and the satisfaction of writing a good essay. I also remember the terror of math and chemistry exams, too. They were a struggle for me, and instead of facing them and making the requisite effort, I employed my favorite strategy of all time...Avoidance. For that choice, I still have nightmares about university exams, even though that time is 20 years in my past.

Last Saturday and Sunday were the "Center Exams," exams that candidates for universities take. Not even many Japanese people know what they're for. They know they exist, but unless they have been there themselves or have had children taking them, not very many people know what they're for. They are mostly used for entrance to public universities. They are exams that determine whether students are eligible to embark on the next stage of entrance to their school of choice. Universities determine point requirements, and if the students meet or exceed the points standard, they are eligible to take the universities' home-made entrance exam.

There are several different exams in the Center Exam, each one given at a specific time all over the country. The sections include English and other foreign languages, a couple of different Math exams, Science including Chemistry, General Science, and Biology. There is a Japanese exam, Geography, and Social Studies tests. Some students take one or two of these, others take most, and a few probably take all of them. The Japanese and English tests last 80 minutes, and all of the others last for one hour.

Many of my colleagues and I were proctors at the exam. Our jobs were to read the preliminary instructions to the test takers before each exam began, to distribute the test booklets and computer answer sheets, and to collect and organize the answer sheets after the test was over. During the test, we were there to take care of students who began to feel bad, to prevent cheating (of which there is very very little), and to take care of any administrative work that needed to be done.

As I watched the students, I wondered many things. How many of them were proud of their work, and how many were frightened or worried? Who were they there for, their parents, their teachers, themselves? What kinds of dreams they had and if they would be able to pursue them. And as they were putting on their coats and walking out of the exam room, I wondered if they were happy with themselves, or would they have nightmares 20 years hence.

You may have noticed that I have comments up again. The company that I was using for comments had provider problems, as you can see from the previous post, and made an agreement with HaloScan to port everyone over to that system. I just did it myself. Sure hope it doesn't cause problems if they decide to make changes for me.

Updates on my son's entrance exam. He passed, for which I am delighted, but there no results were published. That means that I have no way to know how he is progressing or needs help. There is no way for me to know where he was among the students who took the exam. The results of the exam do not equip parents or learners with information that can help them in any way other than to know that they have been accepted into a school.

This weekend is another big event, the Center Exams, or the "National Center for University Entrance Examinations." If you would like to know more about what they are, give this a look.

Had a place to put comments, didn't I. It just seemed to have disappeared. I guessed that it was something I had done wrong, but this is what happened.

"BlogSpeak is currently down because the bastards that host it (not the one you got the hosting offer from, those guys are wonderful) decided to suspend my account. I do not know as of yet when this situation will be resolved. If you don't want any JavaScript errors on your pages, take the code off for the time being. If you're pissed off because your comments don't work, I would be too. Believe me, I'm not too happy about my account being suspended either. I do have a backup of the DB from an hour before the suspension occurred. So if the server comes back up, or I have to get a new server, of even pass the duties of maintaining BlogSpeak off to someone else, everything will be in tact."

Sure hope it comes back. Ganbatte BlogSpeak people!

Whoa! How much sence do current agricutural practices make? Now chickens have a disease. Surprised? Why? Look at how they are raised, in tiny cages with thousands of birds kept together. A perfect monoculture ready for a plague. And where better for that plague to come from than from abroad. Migratory birds... yes, the foreigner ducks bring the virus, infect their domestic brethern, and the mass killing hysteria begins. Farmers killing hundreds of thousands of birds in order to control the disease.

But don't worry, it's safe to eat chicken. And beef, as long as it isn't from the US. Thank goodness pork is safe. But have you seen how they raise pork? Just a matter of time.

Improve your health, stop the killing and abuse of life. Go vegitarian!

Coming of Age Day was yesterday. A national holiday with public celebrations for those who have recently become "adults". Also a day for a few to riot at said celebrations and ruin them for those who feel that they are important. My vote is to stop wasting tax dollars on this kind of public display and arrest people guilty of public disturbances. Here is what some people had to say.

Oh, yeah...entrance exams. My son is off to take his for junior high school this morning. What a barrell of monkeys that is. Irresponsible, unfair, and completely out of control this entire industry is. There are plenty of folks who profit from the system and who have a stake in keeping the system going as it is. The average person either doesn't know enough about how testing and education work to ask questions, so they either do nothing to build their children's self esteem, or they send their kids to cram schools in hopes that it will make their kids more competitive, which also, by the way, does nothing for their self esteem. It just raises the stakes.

For anyone who may have wondered, I haven't given up here. Just took a little bit of a break. In addition to the break, I started a Japanese blog for my students to use. Give it a look. There are probably loads of errors in my Japanese, but one thing I want to emphasize is that one can make some errors and still communicate. It's called Kirk's ブログ(Blog). My goals are to encourage students to write by example, and to encourage them to read extensively by adding comments, some useful vocabulary, and links to English articles of possible interest. I also hope that I get some writing practice myself.