Simply Haiku

The Spring 2006 issue of Simply Haiku is now online.





—Mellow Monk

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The skinny on sleep

Teenagers: Not getting enough sleep. (The reasons probably won't surprise you.)

Adults: Stressing too much about sleep. (Which, ironically, may be just as bad as actually not getting enough sleep.)

—Mellow Monk

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Green tea drinking in Vietnam

A posting on Chen Nung talks about Vietnam's green-tea culture, including the history of green-tea cultivation there and the Vietnamese people's preference for super-strong tea.

—Mellow Monk

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Green tea as a skin toner

Another blogger describes a do-it-yourself facial treatment that contains green tea leaves. (Look about two-thirds toward the bottom of the page.)

—Mellow Monk

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Blogger switches from coffee to green tea

Here is an entry made by a blogger who is switching to green tea as part of an overall "get fit" program.

—Mellow Monk

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Sleep and darkness

Another article about sleep—this time, about the effect of artificial light on our natural sleep rhythms.

—Mellow Monk

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San Francisco not in top 15 skylines?

Come to think of it, how could San Francisco not be in that list of the world's top 15 skylines?

Perhaps it's because...

• It's pretty much impossible to get the Golden Gate Bridge in a shot of the downtown skyline.
  
• The weather's hardly ever nice enough there to get a shot that doesn't make the town look gloomy.
  
• Those Victorian-style homes everyone likes so much technically are probably not part of the skyline.
  
• From some angles, the skyline can look pretty shabby.
  

Still, when the fogs and smog are gone and the sun is shining, the S.F. skyline can look pretty good.





—Mellow Monk

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Water really is the lifeblood of tea

Last night I got lazy and brewed a pot of Monk's Choice using water straight out of the tap. What a mistake that was. The taste was essentially ruined by the chlorine and who knows what else is in the water.

I usually use water that's been run through a Brita filter, which goes a long way toward bringing out the tea's true taste.

When we lived in Aso, Japan, the water that came out of the tap was minimally treated spring water. It tasted great. The only drinking water I've ever had that tasted better than that was right-out-of-the-ground spring water that we would sometimes collect right from the source—for free; the town kept the spring open to the public. Anyhow, that water blows the pants of any water that's been sitting in a plastic bottle. No lie.

But since natural spring water right out of the ground is a little hard to get for the average green-tea drinker, even bottled spring water might be worth the treat every now and then. Because using the best water possible will allow you to experience the true taste of Mellow Monk green tea. Because when it comes to taste, I'd put our green tea up against any competitor's green.

—Mellow Monk

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A computer mouse that's quiet as ... well, a mouse

If you're a computer user who is irritated by the clicking sound that your (or someone else's) mouse makes, a Japanese company named Thanko has just the ticket: a silent mouse.

The sound of mouse clicking is way down on my list of irritating things, but I can see there being latent demand for a quiet mouse in crowded offices.

—Mellow Monk

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Green tea improves oxygen flow to tissues

A study recently published in the journal Life Sciences finds that the green-tea catechin epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) "improves oxygen flow to tissues deprived of adequate supply." Oxygen deprivation in cells—known has hypoxia—can slow healing, and is also thought to play an important role in cancer formation. Fight hypoxia, and you could be fighting cancer formation.

That's good news for green-tea drinkers, because EGCG is found only in green tea.

But that doesn't mean we should run right out and buy EGCG extracts.

After all, freshly brewed green tea is known to contain other catechins and many other health-promoting compounds—and who knows what other wondrous compounds remain to be discovered in that cup of green tea.

—Mellow Monk

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Mellow pics: the world's top 15 skylines

I really like the pictures on this page: the top 15 skylines in the world.

Tokyo (in the picture below) ranks at Number 5.





—Mellow Monk

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Japanese teens? are, like, uptalking, too?

Uptalk is going global.

You know that annoying way of talking? where you raise the tone of your voice at the end of a phrase or sentence? like it's a question? But it really isn't a question?

Well, not only is the uptalk phenomenon found in Canada, Australia, and other English-speaking countries. It's also found in the Japanese language.

That's right—Japanese teens all over Japan today can be heard speaking declarative sentences that rise in pitch at the end like a question. In Japanese, the phenomenon is known as shiriagari intoneshon ("rising-at-the-end intonation") or simply shiriagari.

Just like in the English-speaking world, Japanese uptalk is primarily a phenomenon of the young, but many older people who should know better are guilty of it, too. And just like in the English-speaking world, uptalk has teachers, parents, linguistic purists, and others—essentially the entire adult world (even ones who use uptalk unconsciously)—up in arms.

Japanese professor of phonetics and second-language acquisition Shoko Haruoka has written a paper [link to Japanese PDF] titled Acquisition of English vocal expressions through oral interpretation: methods and techniques [my translation]. In the paper, he touches on the commonalities between Japanese shiriagari and the phenomenon in English [again, the translation is mine]:

Inoue (1997 pg. 163), in The socialness of intonation, finds commonality in changes in intonation taking root in Australia, America, and Japan. Although the degree of acoustic similarity is unclear, he cites examples in describing three objectives shared in common by users of Australia's questioning intonation, America's uptalk, and Japan's shiriagari: (1) indicating that the speaker is not yet finished talking, (2) pre-empting any interruption by the listener, and (3) asking the listener for a sign that he or she is paying attention.

You can argue about the psychological or sociological or other factors behind uptalk, but I think one point often overlooked in the debate is that every generation of young people wants to be different from their parents, and speaking differently is just one way of achieving that goal.

Which means that some day? uptalk won't be cool anymore? because it will be old and stale?

Or because that's how everyone's mom and dad will be talking.

—Mellow Monk

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The Japanese woman with a Superbowl ring

From this article at Web Japan:

There is a Japanese female trainer employed by an American pro football team in the NFL. Her name is Iso Ariko. It is rare enough to have a female trainer looking after the physical condition of the athletes who compete at America's most popular sport, but being Japanese makes Iso doubly unique. As a member of the staff that supports the Pittsburgh Steelers, winners of the 2006 Super Bowl on February 5, Iso received a shiny Super Bowl ring, awarded to players and staff of the champion team.

—Mellow Monk

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Programmable soda bottle

From the "what'll they think of next" department: a programmable soda bottle.

It sounds silly but is actually a very clever idea. You press in the "additive buttons" (wait for the beverage industry to come up with a much cooler-sounding name, such as FLAVOR BURST!) to release the flavoring into the beverage. By popping different additive buttons with different flavors inside, you can create your own custom flavor.

Like I said, a clever idea. Too bad those additive buttons will contain high-fructose corn syrup, chemical colorings, and who knows what else.





—Mellow Monk

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An alternate take on "organic"

Here is an alternate take on the whole organic-food movement. For instance:

Another heading on the Whole Foods banner says "Help the Small Farmer." "Buying organic," it states, "supports the small, family farmers that make up a large percentage of organic food producers." This is semantic sleight of hand. As one small family farmer in Connecticut told me recently, "Almost all the organic food in this country comes out of California. And five or six big California farms dominate the whole industry."

—Mellow Monk

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On Japanese TV, food is still king

Here is an interesting, insightful article about the continued popularity of all manner of cooking shows in Japan, the nation that gave us Iron Chef.

Food has long been a major staple of Japanese broadcasting. But with most popular cooking and gourmet shows far cheaper to produce than star-powered dramas, TV producers and researchers say food shows now account for an estimated 35 to 40 percent of all domestic programming.

—Mellow Monk

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Traditional Japanese dolls

Akanezumiya is an Asian antique gallery in Montana "specializing in Japanese figural art of the Edo period." In addition to a spiffy-looking website, Akanezumiya (the name means "Red Rat Store") has an impressive collection of such things as ningyo (traditional dolls) and paintings.

—Mellow Monk

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Daytime soaps induce dementia?

Not good news for those of you who hope to enjoy your favorite soaps into old age:

Older women who say talk shows and soap operas are their favorite TV programs tend to score more poorly on tests of memory, attention and other cognitive skills, researchers reported Monday.

—Mellow Monk

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Sushi samurai

Distraction time!

Here's an online video game called Sushi Samurai. It's sort of like Pac-Man, but with ladders instead of a maze and evil tofu instead of ghosts.

—Mellow Monk

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Nutrition and mental health

Britain's Mental Health Foundation has launched a campaign, called
Feeding Minds, to raise awareness about the important of nutrition not just for a healthy body, but for a healthy mind, as well.

As part of the campaign, the Foundation has released two (very lengthy) reports, available in PDF format: Feeding Minds—The Impact of Food on Mental Health (5.55 MB, 72 pages) and Changing Diets, Changing Minds: How Food Affects Mental Well Being and Behaviour (825 KB, 128 pages).

From the executive summary of the former report:

The time is now right for nutrition to become a mainstream, everyday component of mental health care, and a regular factor in mental health promotion.

The four-page Nutrition Table lists common mental-health problems (such as anxiety and poor concentration) to deficiencies of specific nutrients.

—Mellow Monk

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Spider webs after the rain

Here are a few cool photos of spider webs after the rain.





—Mellow Monk

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Mao Asada graduates

Japanese figure skater Mao Asada finally graduated from high school. That's her holding her diploma in the picture below.

She was unable to attend the actual ceremony with her classmates as she was at the World Junior Figure Skating Championships, where she finished second. After returning home, her high school gave her a "one-person graduation cerermony," as she put it.

—Mellow Monk

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Japanese robots to care for the elderly

Japan is bracing for a huge, long-term increase in the elderly as a portion of the nation's population due to a declining birth rate and a population that is among the world's longest living. One way the Japanese are preparating for this demographic change is by developing robots.





—Mellow Monk

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Japan wins World Baseball Classic

Japan beats Cuba 10 to 6 to win the World Baseball Classic.

The next WBC is slated for 2009.





—Mellow Monk

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Life expectancy calculator

Here's a life expectancy calculator of the sort actually used by life insurance companies.

To complete the calculation, you'll need to know your blood pressure and cholesterol count.

This may be reassuring for some ... or a wake-up call for others.

—Mellow Monk

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Robot water snake from Japan

First, there was the robot carp.

Now robotics engineers in Japan have built a swimming robot snake. [Ed.: Shouldn't that be "snake robot," Monk?] This link leads to a movie of the snake robot swimming in a plexiglass pool on a TV show.

—Mellow Monk

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Chinese government cracks down on baby names

The Chinese government is cracking down on parents trying to give their kids unusual names.

Actually, the move isn't as harsh as it sounds. What the government is doing is telling parents that any Chinese characters (known as kanji in Japan) used in a child's name must be on an official list. This move was made in response to parents using super-obscure characters that many folks didn't know how to pronounce and—more importantly—weren't in the government's computer databases.

In Japan, when parents register their child's birth at the local city office, officials there actually have the power to accept or reject the name. A story widely reported by Japan's mass media about 10 years ago concerned a father who wanted to name his son "Akuma," or "demon" (悪魔). The city officials said no way. The father protested, but to no avail.

I say that if the guy likes the name "Akuma" so much, let him change his own name. Don't give the poor kid a screwy name like that!

—Mellow Monk

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Optimism is healthy

A study done by a Dutch institution finds that optimistic men were only half as likely to die from cardiovascular disease as men not classified as optimists. The lead researcher in the study said the connection was not necessarily because of lower rates of depression among the optimistic:

"One possibility is that optimists are better at coping with adversity, and may, for example, take better care of themselves when they do fall ill."

—Mellow Monk

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Red pepper induces cancer-cell suicide

Capsaicin, which gives red peppers their kick (and makes tear gas burn), has been observed causing prostate cancer cells to commit suicide. The actual term is apoptosis, or programmed cell death.

On the other hand, spicy foods containing capsaicin are normally considered a prostate irritant, so the jury is still out on whether guys worried about their prostate should start quaffing hot sauce right out of the bottle.

—Mellow Monk

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Asimo running

This is kind of neat and kind of creepy: Asimo the robot running.

—Mellow Monk

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Tea and ovarian cancer

A study done in Sweden showed that women "who drank at least two cups of tea a day developed 46 percent less prevent ovarian cancer than non-tea drinkers."

—Mellow Monk

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Mellow Monk at the green biz recognition

Last night, Mellow Monk's representatives (all two of us) attented Alameda County's green business recognition ceremony (there was an article about it in the Oakland Tribune).

The event was opened by Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, and the keynote address was delivered by Kevin Cleary, executive vice president of energy bar maker Clif Bar.

We had a great time, and everyone there was exceedingly nice to us, even though we showed up late and underdressed, were the only ones there with child in tow, and ate more than our share of those delicious food. (Just don't ask me what the names of any of the dishes were.)

Reach more about the Bay Area Green Business Program here.





—Mellow Monk

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Rice

Photographer Robb Kendrick has an online photoessay about human beings' number one food crop: rice.





—Mellow Monk

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