April 18, 2010
Bushido
I served in the military overseas in Japan 1956-57. Being very young and not the brightest bulb in the package I ran up against a conundrum. How could the Japanese behavior in peacetime be so opposite of what it was during the war years? I know they were a defeated army, but their overt behavior towards the American military was not what I expected. It wasn't until later in my life that I discovered a simple answer, what you don't know, you can discover by reading. The Jekyll and Hyde of the Japanese war behavior and their postwar conduct was explained in one word, Bushido.
Japanese Military Culture
At the outbreak of the Pacific war, the Japanese armed forces combined modern technology -- including ships and aircraft equal to or superior to their Allied equivalents -- with a military spirit that remained feudal. Termed Bushido (The Way of the Warrior), that spirit gave rise to behavior that Allied soldiers found bewildering as well as barbarous and fanatical.
Based on peculiar perspectives on Confucianism and Zen Buddhism, Bushido demanded unquestioning loyalty and sacrifice. The Japanese soldiers' written code ordered them to keep in mind that duty was "weightier than a mountain," while death was "lighter than a feather." Indeed, death was idealized as something to be welcomed. Thus, soldiers, sailors, and airmen willingly sacrificed themselves in banzai charges, kamikaze aircraft, and kaiten submarines.
Japan's leaders now believed surrender as unthinkable for Japanese and contemptible in enemies, thus justifying abominable treatment of prisoners after prior years of very decent treatment of prisoners (also attributed to Bushido). In keeping with the samurai tradition, they also revered the sword, which led to the beheading of their captives. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East blamed Bushido as a contributing factor in Japanese atrocities.
Atrocities were part of every major Japanese land operation and were directed against both combatants and civilians. The demeaning training and disciplinary regimes in the Japanese services featured corporal punishment and probably contributed to the brutality of their personnel. The Japanese army employed ruses that their enemies considered unacceptable, including wearing enemy uniforms, booby-trapping corpses, and feigning surrender in order to kill would-be captors.
The atrocities could be blamed on other reasons. The Japanese were fighting a losing war, combating insurgencies, and trying to survive amid starvation. However, the atrocities had begun when Japan was winning the war.
Japanese servicemen were repeatedly told that their martial spirit was superior to that of their materialistic enemies, who would eventually succumb. Initially, the combination of Japanese ferocity and skill was frighteningly successful. However, the ultimate defeat of the Japanese discredited their cultural prejudice.
Japanese Military Culture
At the outbreak of the Pacific war, the Japanese armed forces combined modern technology -- including ships and aircraft equal to or superior to their Allied equivalents -- with a military spirit that remained feudal. Termed Bushido (The Way of the Warrior), that spirit gave rise to behavior that Allied soldiers found bewildering as well as barbarous and fanatical.
Based on peculiar perspectives on Confucianism and Zen Buddhism, Bushido demanded unquestioning loyalty and sacrifice. The Japanese soldiers' written code ordered them to keep in mind that duty was "weightier than a mountain," while death was "lighter than a feather." Indeed, death was idealized as something to be welcomed. Thus, soldiers, sailors, and airmen willingly sacrificed themselves in banzai charges, kamikaze aircraft, and kaiten submarines.
Japan's leaders now believed surrender as unthinkable for Japanese and contemptible in enemies, thus justifying abominable treatment of prisoners after prior years of very decent treatment of prisoners (also attributed to Bushido). In keeping with the samurai tradition, they also revered the sword, which led to the beheading of their captives. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East blamed Bushido as a contributing factor in Japanese atrocities.
Atrocities were part of every major Japanese land operation and were directed against both combatants and civilians. The demeaning training and disciplinary regimes in the Japanese services featured corporal punishment and probably contributed to the brutality of their personnel. The Japanese army employed ruses that their enemies considered unacceptable, including wearing enemy uniforms, booby-trapping corpses, and feigning surrender in order to kill would-be captors.
The atrocities could be blamed on other reasons. The Japanese were fighting a losing war, combating insurgencies, and trying to survive amid starvation. However, the atrocities had begun when Japan was winning the war.
Japanese servicemen were repeatedly told that their martial spirit was superior to that of their materialistic enemies, who would eventually succumb. Initially, the combination of Japanese ferocity and skill was frighteningly successful. However, the ultimate defeat of the Japanese discredited their cultural prejudice.
April 16, 2010
Best actress award
I rented a few movies the other day. George Clooney's UP IN THE AIR, Sandra Bullock's THE BLIND SIDE, and Meryl Streep's JULIE AND JULIA.
I enjoyed all of them, but particularly Julie and Julia. I am always amazed with the talents of Meryl Streep. She is a chameleon, she becomes the character. George Clooney I thought underplayed his character to a tee.
The puzzle was Bullock's film. It won her the best actress award in all the movie award shows up to and including the Oscar. I like Sandra, and I liked the movie, but best actress performance for the whole year and better than Meryl Streep's Julia Child, I don't think so. The epitome of a best performance would be Spencer Tracy in GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER. That movie was loaded with best performances.
Oh well I shouldn't carp, I liked the movie, I like Bullock, but it just seemed a little too little for all the hoopla it got. It seemed liked a good TV movie.
I enjoyed all of them, but particularly Julie and Julia. I am always amazed with the talents of Meryl Streep. She is a chameleon, she becomes the character. George Clooney I thought underplayed his character to a tee.
The puzzle was Bullock's film. It won her the best actress award in all the movie award shows up to and including the Oscar. I like Sandra, and I liked the movie, but best actress performance for the whole year and better than Meryl Streep's Julia Child, I don't think so. The epitome of a best performance would be Spencer Tracy in GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER. That movie was loaded with best performances.
Oh well I shouldn't carp, I liked the movie, I like Bullock, but it just seemed a little too little for all the hoopla it got. It seemed liked a good TV movie.
April 15, 2010
Mountaineer
I did not intend to post more than one picture, but this one from www.fotocommunity.com was too good not to show. It was taken by Csomor László
April 14, 2010
Absolutely Wonderful
This is absolutely wonderful. Watch this man conduct this orchestra. He is into every note, every drum beat. It is great. The orchestra and the audience knew it was one of those great moments.
April 13, 2010
Baseball life at the top and the rest of the pack
Oh how sweet it must be.
I used to believe in fairy tales when I was very young. I always thought that the good guy would be rewarded in the end. I always thought that good guys finished first. I used to think that baseball was the great leveler, that the good baseball player would be appreciated and rewarded for his achievements.
Well there are the NEW YORK YANKEES, and everyone else after them. I am a fan of a very old franchise that was around at the beginning of organized baseball, and that's a long time. Shoeless Joe used to play for us before he became shoeless. We (I use the collective term because as you all know misery loves company) have won a grand total of two world series.
Read the piece about the Yankees without growling and then think of my team who goes out there everyday and toils hard and achieves what? Nothing much. My team has played seven games this brand new baseball season and has lost five of them. The start of another normal season for my team and the many other teams who are in the same boat. The best they can hope for is to share somehow in the glory their best player will achieve when he becomes a free agent and the YANKEES open up their checkbook and well you know the rest.
Well I feel better now, so click the hyperlink on the top and enter the world that my team only dreams about.
I used to believe in fairy tales when I was very young. I always thought that the good guy would be rewarded in the end. I always thought that good guys finished first. I used to think that baseball was the great leveler, that the good baseball player would be appreciated and rewarded for his achievements.
Well there are the NEW YORK YANKEES, and everyone else after them. I am a fan of a very old franchise that was around at the beginning of organized baseball, and that's a long time. Shoeless Joe used to play for us before he became shoeless. We (I use the collective term because as you all know misery loves company) have won a grand total of two world series.
Read the piece about the Yankees without growling and then think of my team who goes out there everyday and toils hard and achieves what? Nothing much. My team has played seven games this brand new baseball season and has lost five of them. The start of another normal season for my team and the many other teams who are in the same boat. The best they can hope for is to share somehow in the glory their best player will achieve when he becomes a free agent and the YANKEES open up their checkbook and well you know the rest.
Well I feel better now, so click the hyperlink on the top and enter the world that my team only dreams about.
April 12, 2010
The ordeal of radiation therapy is coming to an end for Hazel. Monday will be her 36th and final treatment. She tells me that the whole experience for her was much less traumatic than what she thought it would be. The God who is in charge of the dreaded side effects department dealt kindly with her she believes. Yes she has radiation burn. Yes, she has occasional flashes of pain. But it has not completely sapped her energy nor effected her ability to carry out her daily activities. The amount of actual time spent at the radiation center is minimal, and the flexibility of the scheduling should accommodate most people so they can continue their daily schedules as close to normal as possible.
On a personal note, I must say she has been very brave and has throughout the whole ordeal kept as the Brits say, a stiff upper lip. I, on the other hand, am damn glad it's over. At least this portion is over. Now she will have to start a pill regimen that is scheduled to last five years with dozens and dozens of side effects. Each person of course is different and what side effects will effect the individual is of course different.
April 7, 2010
Apache Dance
Watched Dancing with the stars last night which reminded me of the Apache dance. I grew up when they had many variety shows on TV and they would have apache dancers on frequently. Kind of different.
April 6, 2010
Technology is great, isn't it?
Which reminds me, I want to visit my local tech store and look at one of the new 3D televisions in action.
Isn't technology great. They just keep developing something new year after year. I'm still pondering the IPAD. I'm sure it's great, but does it have any new applications that are not already out on the market? It could be a Kindle clone with color, I like that. I understand it is light and pretty easy to handle. It's bigger which makes it nice on the old eyes. What am I doing going over the list of pro's and con's, I don't want to pay the price they want anyway.
April 3, 2010
March 23, 2010
March 22, 2010
Cancer Cure Perhaps?
Clinical trials by Caltech-led team could open the door to 'game-changing' genetic therapies for cancer, Parkinson's and chronic pain - Pasadena Star-News
PASADENA - Caltech researchers believe they are one-step closer to a cure for cancer, thanks to a "game-changing" genetic therapy that's actually working in some patients.
According to paper published Sunday in the journal Nature, the technique might even work in patients suffering from Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and chronic pain.
Lead researcher Mark Davis said he began to look for an alternative to chemotherapy after watching his wife Mary almost die from treatments.
"She basically said, 'There's got to be a better way than this, why don't you start working on it?" Davis said.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996 before anyone had proved this kind of genetic therapy could work on animals - much less humans.
"After quite a few years of work here at Caltech and proving that we could do these in animal models, we decided it was ready to go with humans," said Davis, a chemical engineer at Caltech.
This scientific breakthrough is particularly promising for "undruggable" diseases that can't respond to medicine, Davis said.
The therapy works by injecting tiny particles directly into the blood stream of cancer patients. These nanoparticles are stealthy inventions that are programmed to invade the cancer cells in tumors and snip the messenger RNA inside these cancerous cells in two.
This is the key - the therapy interrupts the process of cancer cells replicating by slicing what is called the messenger RNA. If the messenger RNA of these cells is destroyed,
these cancerous cells can't reproduce and tumors can't grow, Davis said.
For the first time, the "game-changing" idea of attacking a disease at the genetic level worked in clinical trials on actual patients.
"We're such complex organisms that you don't know how it's going to work (until you go into clinical trials)," Davis said.
Clinicians took a biopsy of the cancer patients. They found the "smoking gun signature" in the cancer - bits of RNA snipped in half exactly in the place researchers expected.
"It cut at exactly the right place," Davis said. "If you take that away, you take away the cancer."
Scientists have been interested in interfering with a disease at the genetic level since the idea was first floated in a paper by Andrew Fire and Craig Mello in 1998. The pair went on to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology in 2006 for their breakthrough, but they were working on the genes of worms - not humans.
The first phase of the clinical trials began in May 2008, and they are continuing in Los Angeles at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the South Texas Accelerated Research Therapeutics in San Antonio.
The trials are headed up by a Caltech start-up company, Calando Pharmaceuticals.
PASADENA - Caltech researchers believe they are one-step closer to a cure for cancer, thanks to a "game-changing" genetic therapy that's actually working in some patients.
According to paper published Sunday in the journal Nature, the technique might even work in patients suffering from Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and chronic pain.
Lead researcher Mark Davis said he began to look for an alternative to chemotherapy after watching his wife Mary almost die from treatments.
"She basically said, 'There's got to be a better way than this, why don't you start working on it?" Davis said.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996 before anyone had proved this kind of genetic therapy could work on animals - much less humans.
"After quite a few years of work here at Caltech and proving that we could do these in animal models, we decided it was ready to go with humans," said Davis, a chemical engineer at Caltech.
This scientific breakthrough is particularly promising for "undruggable" diseases that can't respond to medicine, Davis said.
The therapy works by injecting tiny particles directly into the blood stream of cancer patients. These nanoparticles are stealthy inventions that are programmed to invade the cancer cells in tumors and snip the messenger RNA inside these cancerous cells in two.
This is the key - the therapy interrupts the process of cancer cells replicating by slicing what is called the messenger RNA. If the messenger RNA of these cells is destroyed,
these cancerous cells can't reproduce and tumors can't grow, Davis said.
For the first time, the "game-changing" idea of attacking a disease at the genetic level worked in clinical trials on actual patients.
"We're such complex organisms that you don't know how it's going to work (until you go into clinical trials)," Davis said.
Clinicians took a biopsy of the cancer patients. They found the "smoking gun signature" in the cancer - bits of RNA snipped in half exactly in the place researchers expected.
"It cut at exactly the right place," Davis said. "If you take that away, you take away the cancer."
Scientists have been interested in interfering with a disease at the genetic level since the idea was first floated in a paper by Andrew Fire and Craig Mello in 1998. The pair went on to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology in 2006 for their breakthrough, but they were working on the genes of worms - not humans.
The first phase of the clinical trials began in May 2008, and they are continuing in Los Angeles at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the South Texas Accelerated Research Therapeutics in San Antonio.
The trials are headed up by a Caltech start-up company, Calando Pharmaceuticals.
March 21, 2010
Politics Must Change
I don't claim to be a follower of either party. But how can a political party be against monumental programs that are designed to make life easier for our citizens almost every time. How can the republican party vote so consistently as a party against landmark legislation each time an opportunity presents itself to better our lot?
My understanding is that they are just against anything government sponsored. They believe that government should butt out of peoples lives, always, and completely. They believe less government is better, and no government is best and I suppose they would vote for that if it was possible, except they would vote themselves out of some pretty cushy jobs.
We have two political parties, the liberal wing and the no government at all wing. It is no revelation that the two shall never agree on anything. The difference in philosophy is too vast between them.
Perhaps it would make sense of we could somehow establish a moderate wing. A party a little closer to what both republican and democrats believe. If you can believe the polls we read, most of us would fall right smack dab in the middle of the moderates.
March 20, 2010
Health Care Vote and a Stupid Statement by Limbaugh
Oh Oh Rush, the bill may get voted on tomorrow and it just might get passed.
Perhaps this is the kazillionaires equivilent to the little kids jumping up and down and screaming, when things don't go their way.
Perhaps this is the kazillionaires equivilent to the little kids jumping up and down and screaming, when things don't go their way.
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