Himajin comments

Still nothing. They're using drones now, too. I sure hope they find him. Poor little tyke.

I can only imagine how hot they must be! Yikes!

" Confirms that money is apparantly still the most important thing a lot of the time."

" Wow so the financial situation of the male's parents is the whole basis of marriage?"

It's the mother's unsavory actions, borrowing the money then refusing to pay it back, claiming it was a gift, the kind of thing you see on Judge Judy....the royals are very very careful of who they marry. That she asked if the royal family could pay it for her is another indicator of the mindset of this family. They are well advised to be cautious and make sure no other problems are hidden.

This totally ticks me off every year...while people are sweltering in 28C office spaces, on a short walk in Center Gai in Kobe you see dozens of shops blasting the air conditioning out into the street. Cool is is a total joke, and so is this.

Manafort is on trial for his dealings in the Ukraine in 2014.

People used to eat different fish in different seasons, and the eel season was short and in summer. Now eel is frozen and eaten year round, more demand means declining stocks...it's not hard to figure out. The custom of eating fish mainly in peak season has been all but abandoned, and it's starting to have an effect. Who'da thunk it?

Do away once and for all with the old wives’ tale of it being dangerous/unhealthy to run the aircon while you sleep, and lower the electricity rates for,these two months so people can use it without going broke! It enrages me when they say on the weather report that it will be hard to sleep because of the heat (mata negurushii yoru). Use that time to encourage people to take care of themselves instead!

Solids take longer to digest that breastmilk, so of course they'll sleep a little longer, but is another hour of sleep the objective, or the best nutrition possible?

Great news! So happy to hear it!

One other thing is that when developers come in and bulldoze, they obliterate the natural pathways of water that existed in these areas, pave over them and hope that a network of ditches will do the job. If you look at older neighborhoods, say along the Hankyu Line in Kobe, Ashiya, Nishinomiya, the hills in Maiko etc you see that the rain drainage took precedence, and the houses were built around it, the opposite of present policy and construction techniques. You can't ignore topography. What happened when they changed the course of the Minatogawa? The first typhoon and whole ichiba and neighborhood flooded. They had to do part of it over. If you get over the projected rainfall and capacity of the ditch system, the water overwhelms the new construction and reverts to it's natural path. It should be taken into consideration.

Another example of what I'm calling 'future news', reporting on events that have not yet, and may never, occur. 'could be' 'might happen'....Mr. Haass sounds a bit unhinged...

‘Princess Kako is certainly a trademark acquired by us.’

They’ll stop at nothing....various companies in China have gotten trademarks in China for the names of different Japanese cities, things like the words ‘Sanuki Udon’ and other food names so they can slap labels on Chinese-made products. It’s rather a different way of thinking...

'  No rain.'

Where are you that it's not raining? :-)

A tokubetsu keiho (heavy rain) has been issued for Hyogo ken, Tottori ken, Okayama ken, and Hiroshima ken . Fukuoka ken, Nagasaki ken and Saga ken had tokubetsu keiho issued this afternoon.

No, this is not normal rainy season rain. The remnants of a typhoon combined with the front. This is nearly unprecedented amounts of rain. I’ve never seen the Sanyo Expressway, Chugoku, the Kita Kobe Yuryou (Route 7), the Dainishinmei and the Hanshin Expressway shut down for what’s coming up to 15 hours (24 for some stretches of road). We had a typhoon and the rainy season front affect the area about 3 years ago, but even then the Dainishinmei wasn’t closed, and the roads that closed opened in a few hours.

The rainy season ended in Kanto last week. It will be between the 10th and 20th in Kansai.

' parents collectively at fault for allowing them to be out at that time of night'

' what kind of parents let their 13 year old kids stay out all night? ?'

Never heard of kids sneaking out after their parents fall asleep? What parent is going to say, 'Here, take the keys to the car' to 13-year-olds?

‘If I recall correctly all she did was have lunch with some married musician. ‘

They were having an affair. She accompanied him to his parents’ house and stayed there for New Years, which is how I think it came out.

‘Why is his mother's debt a problem? Is she suppose to pay for the wedding? ‘

’he stood up to this despotic regime. 

So now they force them apart in a act of PURE SPITE.’

His mother borrowed $40,000 from someone ( a man, I have forgotten if it was a relative or someone she was seeing) to pay for part of his college expenses, and then refused to pay it back, saying it was a gift. That’s bad enough as it is, but the mother visited the royal family in December twice without an appointment to discuss the royal family paying off her debt as a ‘ condition’ of marriage. That takes nerve. So it’s not spite or anything else. The Royals and the Agency are afraid that his mother will be a constant source of trouble. If she’s this nervy before the wedding.....

“Waters was out of line for saying that. We really don't want to become like them.“

What!? It’s been conservative rioting and chasing conservative speakers off campuses, conservatives chasing other conservatives out of restaurants?

Show me one news report of a Republican crowd running Democrats out of a restaurant.

Fizzbit, and get rid of the asbestos in the kitchen ceiling, for houses that are 40-50 it ears old...

“The official was absent a total of 55 hours over six months, according to the city."

I think there is more to the story. 3 mins a day only adds up to 6 hours in 6 months”

That’s a different person, in that last part.

People don’t knock them down because the property taxes double. If it’s supposed to be an incentive to sell quickly, it’s a failure as it can take years for a rural lot to sell. Owners don’t want to be stuck with the increased tax bill so they leave the house as long as possible. It costs a minimum of 100,000 dollars to demolish an average sized house and cart it all away, eventually some people choose to abandon the property. Way to go, lawmakers! They should lower taxes if get rid of the decrepit houses.

‘  but also fascinated by how stupid she is.’

I know, huh!

The Triangle of Life is a theory spread by viral email. The proponent of the theory ‘tested’ it by bulldozing structures with mannequins in them. Given the multiple forces from multiple directions in a quake, simply toppling a building over is not a valid test. Setting off small explosives under the floors would much more closely approximate what happens in a quake...glass shards flying, floors buckling, furniture moving. In the Hanshin Quake, the refrigerator in our office (standard size unit with freezer) flew 9 feet. Other equipment traveled through partitions. You can, of course, lie down next to anything you like but there’s no guarantee that what you lie next to won’t jump and crush you. You might look at the numbers of crush injuries in the ‘95 quake caused by being crushed by TVs. Big screen TV’s weigh 40, 50kg . Ditto for dressers and other pieces of furniture.

I wouldn’t take survival advice from anyone who claims to have crawled a mile and a half into the World Trade Center after 9/11 and come out with -

“I became deathly ill. More dead than alive. 47 simultaneous medical diseases and symptoms simultaneously. My IQ went from 164 to less than 70 ( They can’t measure an IQ any lower than 70.) I couldn’t speak; didn’t know my own name; didn’t know how to take a shower etc etc etc..”

and who says that insurance companies won’t adopt the triangle of life because drop and cover is cheaper (huh?) . He’s been debunked many times. He seems to be the amalgamation of all those “Navy Seals” you meet in bars:

https://www.abqjournal.com/terror/197538nm07-14-04.htm

"  This is a crap potentate that underlings of the USA's government should be setting straight"

And haven't been able to for decades....

‘Roseanne claims it was due to her Ambien-tweeting at 2am’

Ambien evidently causes people to do a LOT of strange things in the middle of the night, like binge-eating, picking fights, and it’s been the cause of some car accidents . It was a bit disengenuous for the drug maker to snark-tweet...now everybody is looking it up and getting a snootfull of all the real, ugly side effects.

She evidently suffered some pretty serious brain trauma as a teen, and her personality completely changed. She was hit by a car, and the hood ornament went through her skull. Frontal lobe damage (whether through injury or something like vascular dementia) commonly makes people unable to control anger, and unable to understand others’ feelings.

I’ve never watched her, I don’t find bitchy people amusing...but if there is a physical reason for it, why not cut her some slack instead of instantly firing her?

“The president's daughter getting ridiculously favorable treatment so that she can make more and more money on the back of her father.”

Without knowing what her patent approval rate was pre-Presidency, how can anyone say it’s favorable treatment? I notice no facts in the article to back up the headline, as usual these days. Lots of maybes and mights, no facts. I tend to like facts and proof over pearl-clutching. Anyone know how often her other patents were approved?

“were arrested while investigating labor abuses at Ivanka Trump suppliers in China”

’Trump suppliers’ are GIII apparel, who also make Levi’s, Dockers, Bass shoes, NFL, NBA and MBL clothing among others. No complaints about the clothes you all undoubtedly wear every day, just Ivanka’s clothing line, although they are all made by the same company? No one going to dump their sports jerseys in protest of Chinese worker treatment? Give up their Levis and Gap clothing?

crickets

The Japanese news reports say he denied kidnapping her, and the police found no evidence she was being held against her will.

" A recent study closely examined another possible cause of autism disorders – fertility therapies – to determine whether or not expecting parents should avoid them in the face of the risks. The study examined women of all ages, and age proved to be a factor in the results. In women under the age of 35, fertility therapy, including ovulation inducing drugs and artificial insemination, did not increase the risk for having a child with autism. However, in women over the age of the 35, both methods of fertility increased the risk for autism. Artificial insemination was significantly associated with autistic children in the older women, and fertility drugs were also related, but not as pointedly so. "

"Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are developmental conditions characterized by restrictive, repetitive behaviors and deficits in communication and social interaction. Though genetic factors are known to be involved in the etiology of ASD, research demonstrates that environmental factors play a crucial role as well [1,2]. For example, congenital rubella [3], or maternal use of thalidomide [4] or valproic acid [5] during pregnancy can lead to autistic behaviors in the offspring, and many pre- or perinatal maternal factors, including obstetric complications and gestational diabetes, have been associated with ASD [6,7]."

Only two studies, but as you can see, there are several conditions already thought to be linked to autism. There is a tremendous amount of research being done into autism.

The Wakefield autism study (which started the whole brouhaha, with Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey and John Travolta all jumping on the bandwagon, along with a whole slew of mommy bloggers) was a study on 12 children, and based on parental interviews, not charts. Word of mouth and the impressions of parents, perhaps subconsciously wanting to deny a genetic cause or some fault of their own, is not a basis for forming a conclusion and trying to change public policy. He relied on parental recall for his data, and twisted the data to back up his hypothesis, that the MMR caused autism, and the new MMR injection and a new colitis test he was developing (ahem...) would solve the problem. When a reporter actually pulled the charts of the 12 children, 5 had low APGAR scores, muscle tone deficits and other problems at birth that point to autism, as well as delayed development...3 never had autism....Wakefield either didn't look, or ignored the birth data, but most of these children were documented as having developmental problems from birth, and didn't present overnight, the day or days after an MMR.

“ Autism also takes on traits of people who suffer from heavy metal poisoning, such as aluminum, mercury, etc.”

Autism is is marked by developmental delays....no smiling by 6 months, avoidance of eye contact, no spontaneous babbling by a year, etc. It bears no resemblance to mercury poisoning.

Neither Sweden nor Japan has ever used thimerosal in their MMR injections, and the autism rates are the same as countries that used it. It hasn’t been in any childhood injections since 1992, btw, in any country...it was removed in ‘92, so you can’t blame present autism rates on something that hasn’t been in the shots in 26 years.

Recent research points to several causes, such as many more people in their 40s and 50s having children than in generations past, and one drug used in IVF is coming under suspicion as a cause of autism.