Good news is always slow in arriving. I had been reading the internet intently, watching for news of the Alberta Government's release of cheques to every Albertan due to windfall oil revenue. The news came in the form of an email from my parents. I suppose in some way its part of a social contract to keep the population from revolting and just passing the pure profits straight to big business but I'm not complaining. If there is anything positive about the free market I can say about this little exercise, it is that I rather see the funds be spent from the bottom up rather than funneled into the ridiculously inefficient trickle-down effect (an issue talked about openly in Japanese economic circles). I do, however, wish that more thought was put into how it was spent. I would have liked to see at least some of it save with the future in mind. I would have stressed education, universities and research, and ultimately innovation, myself; and too that end I will be spending most of the cheque on paying off my student loan.
I had an interesting conversation trying to explain the whole situation of high oil revenue and the sending off of private cheques by the government of Alberta with one of my teachers. Japan, by itself, lacks many natural resources when compared with other countries. And so what we in Alberta might consider the next logical step are completely foreign to many Japanese. An issue tightly coupled with this, throughout Japan's history, is food importation. At the moment, Japan is on the extreme high end of any measurement of food importation and on the low end of self-sustainability. Japan produces no where near enough food; meaning around 70% of all food is imported. Most of this is made up from trade with China. To complicate the matter, the importation of this food is tightly coupled with the price of oil. Any increase in the price of oil, causes an increase in getting the food to market thus the overall price to increases. One always thinks of Japan as a very advanced country (which is not misplaced) and so it is counter-intuitive to consider a large food deficit.
Some dedicated readers may wonder why I move the same picture from yesterday to the top? Besides not taking any pictures today, I believe having a picture at the top, instead of just text, draws readers in. I have been doing this forever now but a recent story on Slashdot.com confirmed my reasoning. Slashdot.com ran a story saying that people judge a website in a fraction of a second. Which I can certianly believe because when I surf blogspot.com if you have a stupid, unnatural layout I'll always hit the next button before the page even finishes loading. I'll let a Swedish or Malaysian website load before I let some stupid pic of fairies with white type on a pink background fills my whole Safari window. Is this not just common sense?
Going out tonight for a bit (after I get a haircut). It been warm, but overcast, today and Kevin and I are wondering if it is going to snow.
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