The highs and lows of Japanese commercials

Here's a hilarious advertisement for the Ajinomoto Stadium for Japan soccer from 2004. It's called "Husky Women".

SPOILER ALERT: I'm pretty sure I saw this while in Japan. If you can follow the subs while watching the video, it's pretty funny. My favorite part was the chorus singing "Ave Maria" if you could make that out.

Now, I would love to make some broad sweeping comment praising the ingenuity of Japanese commercials. But, that is something I simply cannot do. Especially when every fifth commercial resembles this nonsensical attempt at advertising.

So the banana man is a new student and he's so happy he can get a lot of friends. But tomorrow, he's on to a new school. Where the H was he flying off to at the end? and how?

I have not come to fully understand Japanese humor. Some J-humor is hilarious and I get it while some just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I guess that goes for just about any country's humor. This sometimes even follows for individual comedians. Zack Galifianakis has some hilarious stuff and then some stuff that makes me feel awkward--awkward for him and everyone else watching it. Again, maybe some of his stuff is just something I'll understand later.

But, probably not.

Japanese scientist turns seaweed into fuel

 

Things are looking even more shaky in the Middle East and gas prices are projected to soar this summer despite the fact that the US has quadrupled the number of domestic oil rigs drilling. This is not to mention that oil is a natural and nonrenewable source on this planet.

Good news: scientists at Bio Architecture Lab in Berkeley, California led by co-founder Yasuo Yoshikuni have refined the process of turning brown seaweed into a renewable fuel. The 2 and a half years of fine-tuning was made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The problem with breaking down the high sugars of seaweed into ethanol is the presence of the "alginate" sugar--a problem of which has been deemed to be unsolvable until now. Yoshikuni and his team have genetically engineered E. coli splicing in a section of a known metabolizer of alginate. And this was no easy task considering Yoshikuni and his team had to successfully isolate a 36,000 base pair DNA fragment (source).

So why is this great news? Imagine a cheap alternative to current renewable gases. Corn is the current heavyweight, sucking in so much water (and tax dollars).

 “When you grow corn on land, there’s basically a fixed amount of land, and if you were to increase the use of that corn for fuels, you are taking away the use of that corn for something else,” says BAL spokesman John Williams. Using just three per cent of the waters that can grow seaweed could produce 60 billion gallons of fuel—four per cent of the world’s annual fuel consumption (source).

Sounds great, right? Imagine the skeptics. Keep in mind, though, no one is proposing that seaweed bioethanol will overtake petroleum. But it will be making big progress with a small carbon footprint.

Bio Architecture Lab has made a few deals and now grows this brown seaweed in Chile, where it owns and operates four offshore farms and is currently developing storage facilities (source). The seaweed is grown on long submerged ropes. Also, it doesn't suck up resources like corn, it takes little space, and grows in virtually untouched areas. "Using 3 per cent of the world's coastlines we can replace 5 per cent of total oil consumption. That's 60 billion gallons of fuel," Dr Yoshikuni said (source).

Algal bloom of the coast of China during the Olympics

What's more, seaweed naturally absorbs industrial waste reducing algal blooms which are a whole 'nother cluster F we probably shouldn't get started on.

One of the biggest problems of this amazing advancement in renewable fuels is how to cultivate it year round.

White rice now connected to Diabetes

Japonica rice, the stuff on the left in large amounts is linked to diabetes

A review of previous studies confirmed that high consumption levels of white rice is likely to increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes. This news is especially troublesome for Asians, who tend to have a much higher white rice intake.

The review was done by experts at Harvard Medical and Harvard School of Public Health looking at Chinese and Japanese (as representatives of Asia) and Americans and Australians (as representative of Western society) (source).

The studies followed 350,000 people over time from 4 to 22 years. In these cases, over 13,000 people developed Type 2 diabetes.  There was a 12 percent difference between the Asian and Western groups with Asians 55 percent likelier

It also should be noted (or be pretty clear) that:

Diet is only one factor in Type 2 diabetes, a complex disease that involves high levels of blood sugar that cannot be processed by the hormone insulin. Obesity and lack of exercise are also cited as culprits (source).

What Dan Thinks:

What I find surprising is that this is news to anyone. It is not a secret that rice has a high glycemic index and contains little nutritional value. I remember reading somewhere that we always want to avoid spikes in sugar levels and that such an avoidance will let us live longer (pending other diseases or freak occurrences).

Starches (or, carbohydrates), just like candy or soft drinks, are basically sugar. The only difference is that starches are complex carbohydrates which means they need to be broken down to get at the sugar. But when a person overloads on carbs (no matter what it is) the sugar is released right into the bloodstream causing one of these nasty "spikes".

This was always something I considered in Japan when students were encouraged to go back for seconds and sometimes thirds on the white rice. I'm guessing most of them thought it was healthy, a sign of genki-ness and made for a strong child. The same went for seconds of white bread which everyone thought was a healthy alternative to rice every once in a while. Sometimes we would have yakisoba (noodles), bread, butter and honey, and then a milk--all of which pretty much amount to sugar. And students' consumption was only checked by the amount of food that was left to eat. It really blew my mind.

Japanese synchronized "swimmers"

Here is a short clip of an interactive visualizer from Japan's Music Saves Tomorrow Campaign. If you head on over to Sperm.jp, you can choose your favorite song from Vimeo and have the little sperms dance to it. You can also change whose sperm it is to change the dance routine.

Sperm.jp says they each filmed their own sperm under a biological microscope to extract its shapes and motion data to create the animation. Weird? Awesome?

Their concept is that children are the "seeds" of tomorrow so why not influence them to help create a bright future.

MUSIC SAVES TOMORROW（SPERM DANCE 60 Sec Ver） from SPACE SHOWER TV on Vimeo.

The default song is "Denpa Jack" by Passepied. Denpa Jack means "Broadcast signal intrusion" or basically: a hijacked broadcast. Remember, you can pick any track from Vimeo. Have fun!

Here is the Making Of video:

MUSIC SAVES TOMORROW SPERM DANCE MAKING VIDEO from SPACE SHOWER TV on Vimeo.