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Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 23, 2013

After 18.7 billion km, Voyager 1 boldly goes on ... but just where in space is it?

It's 36 years since Voyager 1 was dispatched in 1977 on a mission to send back images of Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere and volcanic eruptions on one of its moons, Io. Then it was due to travel on to Saturn to examine that planet's intricate system of rings and moons. But after traveling more than 18...
WORLD / Crime & Legal / ANALYSIS
Aug 23, 2013

Transgender community unsure whether Manning's move will be blessing or curse

"I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female."
LIFE / Food & Drink / JAPANESE KITCHEN
Aug 22, 2013

Translating Japan's top cooking site

The Internet isn't all kitten videos and saucy stuff, you know. In Japan, food and cooking makes up a large part of the Net — and recipe-sharing site Cookpad is its biggest juggernaut. With 20 million users — including an astonishing 80 to 90 percent of all Japanese women in their 20s and 30s —...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2013

'Natsu no Owari (The End of Summer)'

First published in 1963, Jakucho Setouchi's "Natsu no Owari (The End of Summer)" was the "Fifty Shades of Grey" of its day: a best-selling novel written by a woman that viewed the unconventional love life of its 38-year-old heroine with the sort of matter-of-factness then considered daring. But the story,...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2013

Deflating the hype on big data

Big data holds the promise of harnessing huge amounts of information to help us better understand the world. But the hype is causing contrarians to fall into hyberbole.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2013

Manning and Snowden made secrecy impossible

To whom do U.S. Army privates and intelligence contractors owe their loyalty? To country? To the national security apparatus? Or to the people the apparatus protects
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2013

Why U.S. government is afraid of itself

The U.S. war on leaks has degenerated to a government deliberately destroying its property to keep its staffers from catching sight of publicly available information.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 19, 2013

Larry Summers and a tale of two Harvard professors

It is hard to imagine any private bankers being so callous and socially unconscionable as Larry Summers, a leading candidate to be the next chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2013

Attempt to bury monetarist garners no praise

rican economist Paul Krugman is jumping the gun in suggesting that the late monetarist Milton Friedman will be regarded as just a footnote decades from now.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2013

Slim chance for restoring Egyptian democracy

So long as the Muslim Brotherhoodl exists, liberals' position in power will hinge on the military's good offices in excluding the Brotherhood, which will be back eventually.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 17, 2013

Cyber-kids get a break during Bon holidays

You didn't need prophetic powers, back in the 1980s when the personal computer was starting to show its potential, to foresee something like Internet addiction. It should have been obvious. It was, to science-fiction writer William Gibson. Reminiscing to Time magazine in 1995, he recalled his shock,...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 16, 2013

What being a minority allows us to see

Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before — many times. Someone called your child hafu (half) and you take offence. Or your contract is only one-year renewable, whereas your Japanese coworkers have "lifetime employment." Or maybe someone called you a gaijin as you walked by. I've heard these stories dozens...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 16, 2013

The shadow from Yasukuni

Just as Japanese conservatives are taken to task for refusing to acknowledge their country's colonial horrors, so China would do well to expand discussion of its own history.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 16, 2013

NSA broke privacy rules repeatedly, audit finds

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 16, 2013

Flying reptiles that weren't so scary after all

For most of us, "pterodactyls" are large, vicious and ugly gargoyles with leathery wings and jaws lined with savage teeth, the sort of disreputable brutes we find in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World," the "Jurassic Park" franchise — even a recent episode of "Doctor Who."
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 16, 2013

Reformers set sights on Scotland's immense private estates

On bleak Scottish moors and soft, mossy hills, the oldest and grandest theme park in the world rose on Aug. 12. The vast and sprawling sporting estates that possess most of Scotland's surface thrummed with the frantically beating wings of grouse and echo to the gunshot, bravo and jolly well done. The...
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 14, 2013

Cooked meat overloads senses of taste and smell

According to those who tried it last week, lab-grown beef doesn't really taste like meat. So what exactly gives meat its flavor and makes us beg for more?
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Aug 13, 2013

Even without a Cold War, the D.C.-Moscow link is still up

At 7:15 on the morning of June 5, 1967, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara reached for a handset, one connected to a secure telephone line to a military switchboard at the White House. He asked the operator to ring the Air Force sergeant on duty outside President Lyndon B. Johnson's bedroom.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Aug 13, 2013

Otakon celebrates 20 years of anime fandom in the U.S.

The American anime convention, Otakon ("Otaku Convention"), begins with a costume parade before it officially opens. Last week I had a bird's-eye view of the spectacle from my 14th-floor hotel room in Baltimore, Maryland. An endless army of imaginary characters trudged across the elevated concourse and...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 13, 2013

Running may actually protect against osteoarthritis, keep joints healthy

While out on a run recently, I passed a hiker on the trail. "My knees hurt just watching you," he told me, shaking his head. It was a variation on a comment I hear over and over: Keep running like that, and you'll give yourself arthritic knees.
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 13, 2013

Surge of brain activity may explain near-death experiences

You feel yourself float up and out of your physical body. You glide toward the entrance of a tunnel, and a searing bright light envelops your field of vision.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 12, 2013

A high divorce rate means it could be time to try 'wedleases'

We all know that far too many marriages end in divorce, yet the institution does not adapt. Indeed, most Americans today want to expand conventional marriage to include same-sex couples.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Aug 12, 2013

Ainu fight for return of plundered ancestral remains

Shigeru Kayano, one of the most well-known and respected Ainu figures of modern times, writes in his autobiography "Our Land Was a Forest" about the loathing he felt as a young man for the shamo (Japanese) researchers who used to visit his village and family home.
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 10, 2013

Ninagawa's golden oldies reach a whole new stage in life

"After a performance at the 232-seat Maison de la Culture du Japon in Paris, one of the Japanese staff there said I had a 'splendid voice.' I didn't buy anything in Paris, but that was the best possible souvenir," said Kiyoshi Takahashi, 85, the oldest male member of Saitama Gold Theater.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 10, 2013

'Haiku killings' recall infamous horror story

Mitake, a tiny mountain hamlet located in eastern Yamaguchi Prefecture, is administrated as part of the city of Shunan (pop. 150,000). The area is so remote, cell phones don't always receive signals there.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 10, 2013

Aso's Nazi gaffe tarnishes Abe's agenda for constitutional revision

The other night at my local sushi bar conversation turned to Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso's comments about constitutional revision — specifically, his suggestion there is something to be learned from the way the Nazis revised the Weimar Constitution in 1933.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies / FOCUS
Aug 7, 2013

Can Amazon's Bezos save the newspaper business?

Amazon.com founder Jeffrey Bezos' purchase of The Washington Post promises not just an ownership change for the 135-year-old institution but a potential transformation of the fusty mechanics of the newspaper business.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 6, 2013

Japan's security dilemma

Chinese military planners have probably calculated that the U.S. is unlikely to threaten to devastate China in a Sino-Japanese conflict confined to the East China Sea.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 6, 2013

Why it was right to acquit Manning of treason

If U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning had been charged with treason, it would have elevated a reckless act into a brave choice of some ideological significance.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight