Lunchbox comments

Pretty awesome, but

enough to supply its hi-tech industries for more than 200 years

That projection can only be a projection based on current consumption amounts, which in 5 years time will mean nothing the way usage rates are increasing. But either way it sounds like great news.

Pretty awesome, but

enough to supply its hi-tech industries for more than 200 years

That projection can only be a projection based on current usage amounts, which in 5 years time will mean nothing the way usage rates are increasing. But either way it sounds like great news.

Nice HDR, not overdone. Way to go Chibi Moku, thanks for sharing with us!

rape is rape, and that's what the SA police are investigating.

ReformedBasher

Laughing at other people getting injured is what the internet is all about!

But yeah, you're right, it's not unique to Japan. Still funny though!

Nice one! http://dailynews.yahoo.co.jp/photograph/pickup/?1340114584

Nothing new, this kind of thing has been happening all over the world for thousands of years, still it would be pretty amazing to see in person. I saw a video of them coming to shore still alive, so more like a Sardine-stranding than dead sardines being washed up. Has to be some scientific explanation. The best explanation I've heard yet is that they are being chased by a large barracuda or dolphins. Should be easy to verify if so.

Reminiscent of 3/11 ?? If last night's tiny shindo 1-3 tremors had enough in common with 3/11 last year to have you reminiscing, then you must be a nervous wreck worrying about the Zombie Apocalypse and Mayan Calendar!

Why cut off the top of her head? Some awesome photos in the calendar, but overall it really doesn't do her any justice. She doesn't look cute in any of the photos, yet in real life she is a hottie. "Cute" sells, not "cold and scary and looking like a man". Good luck to her in London though!

An interesting thought, but I don't believe it. As long as humans continue improving our technology at the current rate we have been, then we will have achieved immortality easily within 1000 years, so the Japanese race has nothing to fear. Nano technology, Stem cell research etc, I think we'll have immortality within about 2-300 years from now, then we'll have much bigger problems. Bigger barriers for the Japanese Race will be War and Global Warming. Imagine in 300 years time, when they look back at us and laugh about how we used to use nappies.

Disillusioned: If that's a tortoise, then I'm a giraffe! Why would a tortoise be in the middle of a pond ? Your elementary school science teacher would be cringing right now.

Egrets coming into their breeding plumage are so beautiful. Hate to be so negative, but that is an incredibly average photo of a Great Egret. But probably better than anything I could take.

The exxon valdez was recently sold for scrap metal for US$16 million.

That's a quarter of the way to the moon isn't it? Imagine standing up there and looking back at the earth, pretty impressive! Can't see any humans being able to live away from internet and cell phones for 2 weeks by the time they build this thing though, not like we're gonna have wi-fi up there, but love the science.

There are so many barriers stopping us building an elevator with our current technology though. For one thing solar radiation. Could you imagine being up there in a radiation storm? 96,000 is a long way out of earth's protection, and what about meteors. To carry 30 people for a week, it would have to be bigger than a 2-3 one-room-manshons, so at least 10 metres in circumference. 96,000km by 10m, is 960,000 sqaure kms , that's about 1/500th of the area of surface the earth. That means probably about 80-120 meteors (bigger than 10grams) hitting that thing every year. Sounds pretty risky.

Next problem is drag, actually it's probably the first problem!. Could you imagine the drag on 960,000sq km? Carbon nanotube is super strong, but also super flexi. That would be like driving at 100km/hr with an car stereo antenna poking out of your roof that's 10m high, and trying to keep it pointing straight up, no way, it's gonna be dragging on the road behind you. What speed would that thing need to be doing at it's highest point to keep up with the earth's rotation? So the top end of the elevator would have to have some kind of propulsion to keep it in line with it's contact point with earth, even the space stations can't just sit still in one spot, and they are inside the earth's atmosphere so have gravity pulling them around. Surely it would use more fuel than traditional space flight? But safer. And how brittle does crabon fibre get in freezing temperatures like outer atmosphere? Hmmmm, way too many questions.

Anyway, we may have the physics to do it, but money is gonna stop us doing it for many many many years yet. Love the idea though. Just wish they had could put that money into building better telescopes and super computers.

Netninja, If you're sailing around the Southern Ocean, and you see a small boat jam packed with hippy-terrorists pull up beside you, seconds before a bottle hits you in the face, then you don't have to do much guessing to realize that it was Sea Shepherd and that you've just been hit by a bottle of butyric acid.

Only three types of criminal in the Antarctic waters, Sea Shepherds, Marine poachers, and Norwegian Adventurers. All three should be chucked in Jail.

Maybe that's how we can get finally rid of this bafoon, vote for him and get him in as Prime Minister. Within a few months his ratings will drop like every other prime minister does, no PM lasts more than 9 months in this country, and then we can finally say goodbye to his derriere.

Disillusioned,

scientist? Don't you mean crank? This year has been a bad year for psychics, telepaths and other madmen around the world, all the earthquakes made their silly little predictions look completely random, and on top of that we had Harold Camping and Ken Ring go down in fine style fueled by the media who seem to think we will swallow anything . Every time a psychic goes down I find myself singing a certain Queen song about biting dust. I gotta feel sorry for all the Mayan calendar believers, 2012 really has come around faster than they expected, it's gonna be a year of red faces for them.

Yay for science, and yay for earthquake drills. Anyone who opposes emergency drills shouldn't be given access shelters or food and water.

So does this mean we are gonna be backing-up to the Cashiers at the 7 eleven in the future?

Is he in Noda's new cabinet line-up?

Expression on the old dude's face on the far right is priceless!

Gojira?

I think all of us that are married, should do the right thing, and go down there now and see if its not to late to stop him.

Wonder if there was anyone behind the Japan-Today photographer taking a photo? And someone behind them.. and someone behind ...

Eddie is great, love what he's done at Suntory, and look what he did with the Wallabies, but hiring him as coach is not gonna change anything. I'm not sold yet, I'm still sour about them letting Kiriwin go, he wasn't the problem. What's the point in hiring someone for just 4 years? It's gonna be harder to improve than it was 4 years ago when Kirwin took over from Elissalde, and if Japan doesn't make the top 10 then what? We let go of Eddie and start over again for 2016?

Immediately after the World Cup, there were some good articles that came out about the reasons for the national team being a failure, and they all talked about needing to change the structure of rugby here, to completely overhaul the tournaments and the referees, get rid of the pretentious tradition that surrounds the College rugby, get more high schoolers playing competitive rugby including sevens, get younger players into the top league teams, and get more Japanese players playing overseas. Yet since the world cup we've heard nothing so far about any changes, just dribbly speculation that Eddie is gonna be the new coach. What they needed was to do was to higher someone that's not part of the Japanese rugby system, like Kieran Crowley or John Mitchel. Someone who would start the job and within a month demand a complete cleanup of the whole rugby structure, because otherwise nothing is gonna change.

I'm not sold yet. I'll stick by them for one more season, and if nothing changes I'm giving up supporting them, because unless they change this year, then 2019 is gonna be a joke.

tkoind2

If you really think that there was more good music around in past generations, then you must be deaf. Or maybe your source for new music, is the rubbish you hear on TV? I don't mean to take a dig at you, but you are missing out, there is so much good music around these days! In fact that's the problem, there is too much and so nothing stands out like it used to. There's heaps of rubbish around too, but that's just a product of the digital age, in the past it wouldn't have been heard because record companies were the only outlet for music. The only reason the Beatles were so big is because they hit the ground when there was nothing else like them around. If they came on the scene now, they wouldn't even make it past Myspace or youtube. The Ford Model T, and the VW beetle will always be cars to remember too, but they have nothing on a Corolla. There are so many bands around today that can write and play music as good as the Beatles. You can't remember any profound or definitive songs from the last decade? You don't remember Eminem, Green Day, Britney, Amy Winehouse, Foo Fighters, Chemical Brothers, and that's just mainstream pop? Do a search for top albums of the past decade, and give some of the bands you've never heard of on mainstream media a listen, you might be surprised.

With or without Gaga Kohaku is gonna be rubbish anyway. Plenty of decent music in around these days (here in japan included), but you won't hear any of it on Kohaku. Copying Madonna? She just copied Marilyn Monroe anyway. Hardly original. I can't stand Lady Gaga's music, but I don't see how it's any different to the rubbish I listened to when I was a teen. She works hard, she helps out with charity etc, she's a good role model for teens.

James Tanaka,

Where do we come from? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_birds_and_the_bees

How did we get here?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations

Where are we going when we die?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decomposition

Science is very interesting, you should give it a chance sometime. Merry Christmas!

Great photo! Well spotted.

Cos, Never heard of that before. Interesting, would love to know more. Where'd you hear that, or even better, where can we read more about it. Would love to know more.

Yeah, Maybe one day we'll discover that radioactive debris make good rocket fuel and we don't need to harness anti-matter after all. Fukushima could be the new Dubai with all its black, I mean green-gold!

tmarie, I realise that radioactive contamination is a problem not just in Fukushima, but take somewhere like Kisenuma or Ishinomaki, they have hundreds of thousands of tons of Debri that they can't do anything with. What has digging a big pit in Fukushima got to do with that? People have an automatic knee-jerk reaction when they hear tsunami debris that sometimes isn't warranted. You are right, Hashimoto is just doing this for the votes, he's just copying Ishihara's idea on this one, but for once I think the both of them are actually showing some guts by taking a step to solve one of the many problems that Tohoku faces.

buggerlegs, That is so true, someone said something like that on a current events program the other night, that they should be pouring more money into Tohoku to create jobs, and one way to do so would be to create new rubbish refuge stations there.

ssway, Why should Fukushima have to deal with all the debris from Tohoku? Maybe you are getting the Nuclear accident mixed up with the Tsunami. This is talking about Tsunami debris, not radioactive debris from the nuclear stations accidents, or topsoil from the fallout area. The dog pooping on your carpet analogy doesn't really work. It's more like a truckload of shingle being dumped on your front lawn and you have nowhere to put it, let alone the time to shovel it into buckets to move it. If your neighbours each offer to take a few wheelbarrow loads each, you might actually be able to get down to the hard job of picking all the tiny stones out of grass so you can use your lawnmower once again.

The tsunami left millions of tons of debris (concrete, steel, wood, plastic, garbage, etc) strewn across the coastline of the Tohoku area. The debris needs to be moved before any rebuilding can be done. To just dig a big hole and bury it is not practicle because of the amount. It would also be foolish because it's not just dirt. The rubble needs to be sorted, some of it is reusable and recyclable, some of it is dangerous, and some of it can be buried or used for landfill. But sorting it is a massive task that Tohoku cannot do alone, and at the moment they have much more important things to attend to. At the moment all they have managed to do is stockpile it into enormous piles, which in itself is a huge job. If cities like Osaka and Tokyo (which certainly have the money) can take some of the debris, it may be a big help to Tohoku. But as the article says, there is concern that the debris may contain radioactive materials, so decisions have to be made carefully.

Moderators. Why are there Pirate flags on the Japanese coastguard boats in the photos attached to this story?