Misaki Ito and Pinky (伊東美咲とPinky)

山おんあ、壁おんあがすきです。伊東美咲さんはおかしいです。Pinky は運が良いです。わたしはPinky になりたいです。どきどき！！　でも、わたしはかわいくない。めそめそ。C’est la vie。

- Just a peasant

Photo from hasegawanobita site.

Why We Need Universal Health Care

The threat to life and liberty is not limited to an opponent with a gun or a bomb. The threat to life and liberty also involves economic disparity and, just as importantly, impaired health. It is absurd to give exclusive and excessive funding to military institutions and arms manufacturers when the very infrastructure and health of the country’s citizens crumbles away. It should be realized that the premise of maintaining a functioning military is exactly the same as maintaining the infrastructure of a modern medical system.

In the late medieval days, barber-surgeons provided their own instruments to perform procedures, as questionable as those procedures might be, and, as alchemy and medicine advanced, the equipment necessary to carry out procedures was not beyond the financial means of individuals who practiced those arts. Yet still, medicine itself remained a rudimentary excursion into the repair of human physiology. Advances in technology and the education of medical specialists have given us a much better ability, during the late 20th and into the 21st centuries, to correctly identify and rectify various pathologies associated with infectious diseases, traumatic injuries, age-related disabilities, congenital defects, and genetic predispositions to disease. But these technologies and the requirement for well-trained medical specialists are expensive. With the possible exception of multi-millionaires and billionaires, the new costs of modern medical advances are well beyond the means of any single individual. Accuracy in diagnosis often depends on the use of these technologies and, in many cases, the confluence of multiple technologies and specialists. Yet, the use of our medical infrastructure, to solve these medical problems, is severely inhibited by strictly monetary concerns – concerns of the insurance companies and hospital business administrations. Ultimately, profiteering from the misery and sickness of people is deplorable.

We would hardly expect individual citizens or even local communities to purchase military tanks and helicopters for their own defense. Yet the cost of buying technologies, such as MRIs and constructing rooms for them, as well as employing the specialists that extrapolate treatments from the results, quickly match the real world costs of tanks and helicopters. So instead, we use a shared cost approach – federal taxes - to alleviate the economic burden of national defense on individuals or local communities. This approach must also be used in health care.

Forget the movie Sicko and instead realize that we are long past the days of quaint remedies, simple country doctors, and copper surgical cutlery. We are in the age of MRIs and NMRs and of organ transplants and cancer neutralization. We live in the reality of sophisticated artificial body parts, DNA mapping, targeted pharmaceuticals, and vastly extended life spans. These are not things that come from the local grocer. These are serious, hardcore technologies. Even more so, they were created from our collective, historical medical infrastructure. And the medical professionals that employ them in diagnosis and treatment have made very serious life commitments to the field. All of this constitutes a modern health system infrastructure so vast and expansive that it should be maintained at a governmental level, just as the military infrastructure is, to ensure life and liberty – and the pursuit of happiness – to every taxpaying citizen.

- Just a peasant


Photo of an MRI brain map using Diffusion Tensor Imaging from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Pictures like this help neurosurgeons plan for tumor resection or trauma repair inside the brain. Welcome to the 21st century.

Littlest of the Little People

“Only the little people pay taxes.” – Leona Helmsley

Ah, how much of the adversities of life you miss out on when you are not a peasant. In the US we have a federally funded program called SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) which is a health insurance plan for children of lower income parents. It covers over 6 million children. The Bush administration wants to limit the number of children that are on this program. They don’t like that some states include children that are above the poverty line though they do not qualify for other insurance programs. What?! A government that doesn’t care about the health of its children? Why am I not surprised?

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, SCHIP costs taxpayers $7 billion dollars a year. Let’s put that into perspective. Let’s see how much it really sets us back. Roughly, SCHIP covers about $1,500 per child. That's not a lot when it comes to medical expenses.

We spend $5 billion dollars a month on the war in Iraq. And remember that this taxpayer money actually goes into the bank accounts of private industries such as General Dynamics with $10.6 billion in military weaponry contracts in 2004 alone or to Blackwater Security for their highly paid mercenaries. And gee, I thought we were paying our US Army to do this work.

Exxon, a single oil company, posted a 2005 profit of $36 billion dollars and a 2006 profit of $39.5 billion dollars.

Halliburton actually misplaced $9 billion dollars. Hey! That’s OUR money – where the hell did you put it! If they find that money it would be a whole year of the program. And maybe we could also revoke our yearly contract, of $5.2 billion dollars, with them which would also pay for most of SCHIP every year.

It’s funny to listen to so called patriots and nationalists, especially Republicans, preach about how people should make sacrifices for the citizens of their country but then, they complain that they have to contribute tax dollars to other citizen’s health care and medical treatment. What a bunch of hypocrites. They don’t know sacrifice – they only know self-preservation. No surprise there.

- Just a peasant

Photo of a neonatal unit in the UK

Japanese Heavy Metal (日本のヘビーメタル)

The music I hear now on the 80s music radio stations now is not the music of the 80s that I remember. For the most part, I existed in the heavy metal sub-culture. But I suppose there’s no reason to elaborate on any of this since those days are long gone. However, contrary to what many people think, Japanese metal bands were not just copying American or British metal bands. They were on the crest of the Heavy Metal wave. I can remember when myself - and the boys in the band - went out on the town, that there were five albums (yes 1980s cassettes) that were essential for proper head banging in the car: Metallica, Queensryche, Anthrax, Iron Maiden, and Loudness. Loudness was a Japanese band.

The three Japanese bands we admired were: Loudness, X Japan, and EZO. Loudness, formed in 1981, caught our attention because they were all technically excellent musicians. The guitarist, Akira Takasaki, was even influential on many of the more technical guitarists of American metal. EZO formed in 1984 and were great because of their songwriting talent as well as having a singer, Masaki Yamada, whose English was nearly perfect. I really loved playing Here It Comes as a cover because Taro Takahashi had written such a great bass line for it.

Finally, there was one of my favorite metal bands: X Japan. Formed in 1982 these guys were just awesome even though their singer’s English was heavily accented. Nonetheless, they had an approach similar to Iron Maiden including writing long songs. X Japan’s song Art of Life was 29 minutes long not unlike Iron Maiden’s 13 minute song, Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The link above is to Part 1 of Art of Life recorded at the Tokyo Dome with about 50,000 fans. I think it’s worth watching both Part 1 and Part 2 just because the show was really nice. I admired their bass player Taiji Sawada because I would have loved to play in this band. I was also saddened by the death of the lead guitarist Hideto Matsumoto.

To ignore the talent of these Japanese metal bands would be like ignoring other metal bands like the Scorpions, from Germany, or Sepultura, from Brazil. We never cared where a metal band came from – we only cared whether we could bang our heads to their music.

- Just a peasant

Mountain woman, Wall woman (山おんあ, 壁おんあ)

Yes, this is a fan page of sorts for Misaki – at least when I have time. So, I watched the first episode of this new comedy, Mountain woman, Wall woman (山おんあ, 壁おんあ), with Misaki Ito (伊東美咲) in the lead role.　I do think it is a pretty funny show. I was very apprehensive about the premise of the show which is about a top, department store saleswoman, Megumi, who is extremely self conscious about her smaller breast size and then is suddenly put into the presence of another saleswoman, Marie - played by Fukada Kyoko (深田恭子), who is well endowed with large breasts.

At first, I thought it would be a gratuitous vehicle for male breast fixation but I see now that it is well intentioned comedy. (I should mention here that this series is actually based on a manga written by a woman who was relating her own experiences). And remember, Comedy gives us extremes of character after all. For instance, Joey and Phoebe in Friends, were ridiculously foolish and their interactions with “normal” people were where much of the comedy occurred. And certainly the premise of humor in South Park is often gratuitous to a fault but it is also a very well-liked show. But no matter your opinion, on the premise in the show, there are a lot of hilarious moments that I think make it worth watching. Still, we’ll have to see how far the writers can continue “milking” this breast complex issue. (I know! – that was really bad! I’m sorry.)

More importantly, for Misaki Ito’s fans, is that I think this role is her best role yet. Her character displays a wider range of emotional states, from anger to humility, making her more like a real person. Many fans of Misaki Ito are still obsessed with her character in Densha Otoko but that’s because, although the character was very sweet, she was also far more pliable and less confrontational. Mo-e. This type of subservient behavior is attractive to many men but, I can guarantee you, is not realistic. So guys, don’t fool yourselves - women have emotional desires and intellectual aspirations like anybody else.

- Just a peasant

Myths of the Atomic Dawn (長崎の記念)

We inherit history the same way we inherit a genetic disease or malformation – it exists whether we like it or not. And though we of distant generations are not to blame, neither can we ignore it, for that will only lead to catastrophic consequences and perpetuation of the disease. The only way to overcome what we inherit is to accurately understand the truth of it. You cannot cure a disease if you misdiagnose it.

On August 9th, 1945, three days after Hiroshima, a second hydrogen bomb was detonated over Nagasaki.

It is now the 21st century and unfortunately, both modern US and modern Japan have inherited myths from the dawn of the atomic age. In the US, it is insisted that the bomb was necessary to end the war. In Japan, it is assumed that the Japanese were gentle and innocent victims of US-Chinese imperialism. Both are myths that are continually reinforced by their respective countries despite evidence to the contrary. Both are wrong and both are victims of the disease of Nationalism.

Using the atomic bombs was not necessary. Japan had been sending out peace feelers as early as 1944 and the US military controlled the Sea of Japan negating the ability of Japanese army units, stationed in China, to reinforce their homeland. Indeed, almost every city in Japan had been bombed and severely damaged. James Byrnes (future Secretary of State) made it clear to Leo Szilard (physicist) that the actual concern was, in fact, the Soviet Union. Ultimately, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became demonstrations of US nuclear mastery, but not for the benefit of the Japanese - the intended audience was the Soviet Union: a reality that I contend is even colder and scarier.

Japan was an imperialist nation. It had earlier, in the 20th century, defeated Russia and now had no interest in maintaining the 5:5:3 rule governing the balance of naval power in the Pacific. It even went so far as to construct high-tonnage battleships such as the Musashi and the Yamato. It invaded China and began brutalizing South-East Asia and the Pacific Islands to secure resources for its own industrialization. It is estimated that 20 million SE Asians died at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army. Its soldiers, believing all "gaijin" to be barbarians and less than human, had absolutely no reservations in visiting atrocities upon local populations. For instance, the massacres in Nanking were well documented by John Rabe who was, ironically, a Nazi business man.

We usually have to accept that our ancestors behaved badly. My own ancestors were Vikings. They were brutal, they were cruel, and they were greedy. There is nothing romantic about them. But I accept this fact knowing that I do not have to be like them. I refuse to perpetuate their deformity and so their disease has no hold on me.

- Just a peasant

Hiroshima Memorial （広島の記念）

To achieve a lasting Peace we must first despise Nationalism.

- Just a peasant

Photo of Peace Cranes for today’s anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.