Two years ago, the  BBC said Japan was the future,  but it's now stuck in the past.  I agree. Among the detractions is ownership of real estate.  You buy a home, and after paying off your mortgage in, say, 40 years, it is worth almost nothing. Japan recently had the third-largest economy, is a peaceful and prosperous country with the longest life expectancy in the world, the lowest murder rate, little political conflict, a powerful passport, and the sublime Shinkansen, the world's best high-speed rail network.  Actually, about GDP and the economy, Germany has slipped past Japan into #3, with India in the next few months easing by Japan. When the author of this article, Rupert Wingield-Hayes, first arrived in Tokyo in 1993, a third of a century ago, he was effusive about the country being exquisitely clean and orderly.  Actually still is. But he noted that Hong Kong was an assault on senses and Taipei had horrible air pollution. He could have said...

This is a Tuesday, which means I select a past posting of relevance and, as necessary, update it.  The reason why I felt compelled to include this particular blog was that I learned a lesson:  knowing nothing about something can inspire you to develop creative solutions.  Today,  MY LIFE IN WIND POWER  was extracted from  SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth , a book which documented my life in renewable energy.  This lesson I just mentioned?  So I thought, why not write a book on which I know almost nothing, which became  SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth . You will note that the first sentence of MY LIFE IN WIND POWER indicates that there was a reason why I went to Washington, D.C.  The following info is useful to provide the background of this trip.  Keep in mind that all this occurred almost 50 years ago soon after the First Energy Crisis, which occurred in 1973. Dean of Engineering John Shupe was asked by Governor George Ariyoshi ...

 From the  New York Times  this morning: Covid death has been   far more common in red America . Over the past three months, the death rate in counties that Donald Trump won in a landslide has been more than twice as high as the rate in counties that Joe Biden won in a landslide, according to   Charles Gaba , a health care analyst. The second lesson is that interventions other than vaccination — like masking and distancing — are less powerful than we might wish. Although masks reduce the chances of transmission in any individual encounter, Omicron is so contagious that it can overwhelm the individual effect One, nothing matters nearly as much as vaccination. A continued push to persuade skeptics to get shots — and to make sure that people are receiving booster shots —   will save lives . Two, there is a strong argument for continuing to remove other restrictions, and returning to normal life, now that Omicron caseloads have fallen 95 percent from their peak...