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.