So the most exciting election in, oh, for ever, is upon us. For the last 50 years, the Japanese interpretation of democracy has seemed to be "all the people vote for the Government" but this time it looks like a majority of them might actually vote for the Opposition! There was one brief period of less than a year when the Govt fell apart in the early nineties, but the opposition collapsed in a matter of months. It must be quite possible that the same will happen again this time, but there is also a real feeling that change is in the air.
This time, there is a genuine contest between two contrasting candidates:
One of the parties is led by an immensely wealthy grandson of a former conservative party prime minister, and the other is led by an immensely wealthy grandson of a former conservative party prime minister. One of these princelings’s tongue frequently gets tied in knots when he is trying to explain himself and the corruption of his colleagues, while the other’s tongue frequently gets tied in knots when he is trying to explain himself and the corruption of his colleagues.
(That last paragraph was shamelessly stolen from this blog post but I thought it was worth sharing with a smaller audience.)
One of the promises of the (current opposition) DPJ is that, if elected, they will cut back on the pork-barrel politics of gratuitous spending on worthless public projects such as dams to hold water no-one needs, and roads from nowhere to nowhere. Some people at work are worried about the future of the institute where we work. But of course we aren't merely a front for the Govt to pump money into the domestic computer industry, so there is nothing to worry about, oh no....
This time, there is a genuine contest between two contrasting candidates:
One of the parties is led by an immensely wealthy grandson of a former conservative party prime minister, and the other is led by an immensely wealthy grandson of a former conservative party prime minister. One of these princelings’s tongue frequently gets tied in knots when he is trying to explain himself and the corruption of his colleagues, while the other’s tongue frequently gets tied in knots when he is trying to explain himself and the corruption of his colleagues.
(That last paragraph was shamelessly stolen from this blog post but I thought it was worth sharing with a smaller audience.)
One of the promises of the (current opposition) DPJ is that, if elected, they will cut back on the pork-barrel politics of gratuitous spending on worthless public projects such as dams to hold water no-one needs, and roads from nowhere to nowhere. Some people at work are worried about the future of the institute where we work. But of course we aren't merely a front for the Govt to pump money into the domestic computer industry, so there is nothing to worry about, oh no....
5 comments:
Well, the Opposition (now government) claims to be taking a firmer stance on climate change. So I suspect they'll keep your group around.
Maybe they'll even pony up for a replacement of that ratty old ES. :)
Oh, we've already got a replacement, though it does not have an especially stunning performance in global terms. Still pretty good for the climate science field though.
Of course, there is the petaflop machine coming too...
Aha, I hadn't known about that. Is there a link to details on the capabilities? Anyway, I suppose the prospect of an embarrassing spectacle of a big machine not doing much science is job security of a sort.
Of more immediate interest is how the new government manifests its allegedly stronger views in the Copenhagen process.
I don't know of anything better than that link really. The wikipedia page has a couple of lines. Don't be thrown (as I was) by the "most efficient" line, that only refers to the practical speed as a fraction of theoretical one, and only the LINPACK test, not a real climate model (so my colleagues complain) :-)
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