2010年10月27日水曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
167. 2010/10/27 Slept with my head on the side table to avoid the electric shocks, which I incurred before doing so. Slept well until woken up by a cat which was temporarily deranged in a funny way at around 6:00 a.m., feeling happy about being woken up by a natural cause. Studied for an hour, fell asleep, woken up by three consecutive electric shocks, placed my head on the side table, and fell asleep. Slept until around 10:00 a.m., when big electric shocks caused strong fits several times in my head, hands, and legs. / An incandescent light bulb I bought today and set in my table lamp blinked a few times in the evening when I was working. I heard some sigh behind the wall of Room 202 when I looked up to see what was going on. The blink did not occur after that. I am going to sleep with not only the ceiling light but also the light bulb on tonight, although I do not expect much because miniature LED bulbs did not prevent electric shocks, which are pinpoint, before.
2010年10月25日月曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
166. 2010/10/25 Last night, an interesting phenomenon occurred. When I was trying to sleep with my head placed on the side table and facing Room 202, after experiencing last night’s first several electric shocks to my head placed on the normal position on my bed, a torrent of beam of electric/sonic/magnetic or whatever came from Room 202, came into my mouth which was slightly open, hit a part inside of my throat, and made a noise which resonated for a second. I think I heard chuckles of two people behind the wall. All night I got electric shocks, piercing pains, and fits in my head, hands, and legs. In between, I was woken up by something around 3:30 a.m. and studied for an hour. Around 8:00, a sensation in my brain, which was like a probing needle was twisting in the center of my brain, woke me up. I could not walk straight in the several steps, and had difficulty to keep balance when I had a little exercise 10 minutes later.
2010年10月24日日曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people (before and now)
(Please read this before reading today's blog. 2010/09/21 I found a couple of YouTube videos that can be related to what has been happening to me over the past three and a half years, which sounds so unreal that even I myself doubt my sanity, although I have a sense that the source of this phenomenon is outside, not inside, of me .
The YouTube video titles are as follows:
1) Hypersonic Sound (Future Weapons)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5imaJwfJMZ8
(or Audio Spotlight featured on the Smithsonian Channel's SciQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tY_EOYqoVs&feature=related; added on September 24, 2010)
2) Future Weapons Directed Energy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqqy-kFre8k&feature=related
I might have been hearing the sound and feeling sensations projected by the system in 1) for years and I may have seen 2) once.
I have been suffering from an unusual phenomenon including noises, beam-like sensations, and fits for over three and a half years.
For example:
1. You hear nothing outside of the apartment, whose building is famous for its thin walls, while inside you hear a blasting engine sound, head-splitting metaｌlic sound in rhythm, loud waving sound like the one from a huge commercial refrigerator, etc.
2.The source of the metallic noises cannot be identified. Blasting sounds and huge commercial refrigerator-like sounds come from a particular part of the wall. Beam-like sensations seem to have directions and I can point the source, a point in the wall, which varies depending on where I am.
3. The sound is stronger when you are lying than when you are standing. The strength of beam-like sensations varies regardless of my physical positions.
4. Concerning the metallic noise, you cannot escape from it perfectly, unless you close your earhole by pressing the skin around it with your finger, although earplugs soften the effect a little. Earmuffs do not work and sometimes seem they amplify the sound, probably because with earmuffs you hear more of the noises inside of your body and the noise is conducted from the floor through my body to my hearing organs.
5. The room often seems to have become a speaker.
6. Sometimes, the noise is not so loud but I feel pain or have convulsions in my eardrums.
7. The magnitude of the fits suddenly became smaller when I started sleeping with lights on in this early spring.)
I think some of these facts can be explained by the YouTube video 1)
I moved twice in vain to escape from this phenomenon. It started suddenly in the early summer of 2007. While I had been bothered by many kinds of loud noises that my next-door neighbors make at odd hours, and strangely right when I was falling asleep, these noises are totally different in nature.
They are not natural sounds but still seem to be manipulated by human beings.
The character of the noises I mainly hear have changed. Until recently, I was bothered mainly by noises. Now, the annoyance is more like a beam or a pinpoint electric-shock. The beam-like sensation started in the early summer of 2008, when I decided to move out in the coming October and when strangely right after that not only the residents on both sides but also three or four in the rooms on the first floor (my room, second floor) including the one right under mine moved out. From that summer and till now, during my sleep and especially when I was falling asleep, and recently while I am lying with eyes closed but clearly conscious, I have beam-like sensations or fits that seem to be caused, if there is something like it, what can be called an supersonic/electronic weapon. For some time, the states before and after the change overlapped. I think the first state (noises that I can hear) continued till this spring. The beam-like sensations first started as something like an electric shock between my ears or ear plugs. They become a little weaker when I unplug my ears. Now they also seem to stimulate my muscles all over my body especially those in my face, fingers, wrists, elbows, and ankles and make unnatural fits and lifts.
Examples of the phenomenon that I have experienced in recent years:
1. Something like an electric shock between my ears, or on other parts of my body, often accompanied by a low noise or vibration of my bedding.
2. With one, a geometric pattern in blue or red appears or appears to appear in my retina.
3. Sudden unintended jolts of my body.
4. Sudden unintended lifts or fits of my finger, arm, lower leg, or foot.
5. Sudden unintended puff of my breath often accompanied by my voice such as, "Eh."
6. Constant small vibration of my bedding which spreads from one point of the bedside wall, which lasts for hours and/or days until I have a crawling sensation in my blood vessels in the lower half of my body.
7. Pulse like sensation on my head and unnatural waving and becoming loud of the sound in my head, which is usually flat and sound like, you know, sheepish flows of electrons.
8. Headache, nausea, slurred speech, feeling of concussion, small blinks at the edge of my visual area when getting up, which lasts for several hours and which subsides better and faster when I go out and spend the whole/half day.
9. Once, something like an electric current covered all over my back giving stinging pains.
These phenomena do not have regular pattern of occurrence, other than the fact that they happen as if they are at someone’s disposal. One day, I only have fits on my upper body, from head to breast in order. Another day, right after I close my eyes, I feel like I am hit in the head and see a geometric pattern and incessantly have fits and sensations as if I am hit by a beam all over my body all through the night, or so but each hit differs in strength. Also, the degree of violence of them change when my neighbors change. Recently, people in one of the rooms adjacent to mine moved out and I realized the period when they were there was the most violent so far. The sources of the first type of unnatural metallic noises were often not clear, but other types of sounds like blasts or noise like the one from a huge refrigerator clearly came from either side of the room. The beam-like sensation came even when rooms on both sides had no tenants in the summer and autumn of 2008 and a few weeks ago this year. The only day I remember I did not feel anything strange was the first night after I moved into a new apartment in October, 2008. I had a sound sleep that night, but from the next day on the noises, fits, and sensations came back.
About 2), I once saw something like a lightning bolt in exactly the same blue-white color and the crawling line and branches come out of the top corner of the walls, one of which faces the balcony, and disappeared in a second before reaching my face. The only difference is that while the one in the video branches in three or four main current flows, the one I saw was basically in one current, with small branches. When I saw it I was awake. But this phenomenon is so unreal too that I told myself that it was either a delusion or part of my dream. I can convince myself that way because I have been sleep-deprived for a too long a time to be confident about my consciousness.
Things are getting better, but I have never slept eight hours or more straight for more than 5 years, including the days I was bothered by more common noises at night like a musical instrument (base), squeals of the wooden loft floor, or computer game noises, and my average sleeping hours are probably between 4 to 5.
When I do research of this problem of mine, I often encounter some notions that I do not believe possible in today's technology. And again this whole thing sounds too unreal to believe. But last night I found some real technologies that seem to have something to do with my experience, so I just decided to put them up here.)
165. 2010/10/24 After I wrote the previous blog early this morning when I was woken up by some strange noise which sounds like gggggggg and which makes my ear drums feel funny, almost painful, I went to bed and slept till past 9:00 when I was woken up by a fit in my hand, which I remember had occurred twice or so in my deep sleep and probably occurred in my head at least once too. I cannot tell that these fits were caused by an outer force because I did not feel any other accompanying electric, sonic, or magnetic phenomenon which usually does. But considering I have never troubled by fits since my birth, and I have been bothered by these phenomena for over three and a half years, I think it is possible they were from the same source which I suspect is behind the wall of the side of Room 202. Or probably I had fit because of the funny feeling, vibration, in my ear drums which came from Room 202. I got up, could not walk straight for a couple second. My teeth felt funny. When I put them together, I felt as if they were vibrating in a very fine move.
The following is harassments I got on Friday and Saturday outside of my apartment. They are not directly related to supersonic/electric weapons. I record them because these assaults seem to be related to harassments I have suffered over the past eight years or so, in some cases more. I recorded then in Japanese in the beginning of this series after the harassing had become less often and I had gotten time and some calmness to record them. (http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9094139637570091888&postID=2638451042922365811, http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9094139637570091888&postID=7989375236327738086, http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9094139637570091888&postID=350873401819117818, http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9094139637570091888&postID=3104530626232956853, http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9094139637570091888&postID=2965330781389919204 ) Over the past three months, I seldom recorded them partly because I was very busy and partly because, although I kept being harassed, there were less ugly harassments. But after I had a change in my work shift and started using different train lines on different days, on Thursdays and Fridays, three weeks ago, I started having what I had started to forget again on my way to and back from my work. I do not want to spend my day off doing this (recording depressing experiences) but I feel I have to. This is a record of harassments done for a long time without any reason I can think of by indefinite uncountable number of people, who have nothing in common except for one thing that they seem to know me, despise me for some reason, and think it is Ok to do anything to me. Many of them open their cell-phones before, during, or after they harass me. This phenomenon peaked around 2006 when it started subsiding. On one autumn night, I noticed all people on a platform of Nippori station kept staring at their cell-phones without harassing me and got on the train drooping or still reading something on the phone, and after that day people started to change their expression and demeanor―they look like different people if you compare before and after they see the phone screen―after approaching and/or harassing me with an evil look and opening their cell-phone. Here are what I had on Friday and Saturday. They are much less than I used to get:
On Friday: In Yamanote-line, which was crowded but there was enough space between people, a young man took a step and pushed the left hand side of my bag which in turn pushed the left hand side of my back, took out his phone, and started looking at it. I said to him in a loud voice so that others could hear, “Don’t hit me on my bag with your bag intentionally,” to which he returned a hint of anger. A few minutes later, he had his tail between his legs and disappeared soon.
At Shinjuku Station, a man in his 50’s took a detour, instead of going to the ticket machine in a bee line, and grazed me on the left hand side of my back which in turn grazed the left side of my breast when I was at the ticket counter. I shouted at him, saying, “Don’t come and pass to graze me, pervert!” He turned around and looked at me, shocked, but said nothing and fled.
On Odakyu line from Shinjuku to Machida, I was in the last car and standing at the door second from the back. A man in his 20-30s in dark suit and well groomed on the other side of the car looked at me with a weird smile, put his bag on the floor, took out a tablet computer in a ritual-like manner, and started stroking it. A twittering sound was heard and other people around him stirred a bit, one middle aged woman who looked like a housewife looked at me a second and close her eyes. After a while, he put the tablet back in the bag with a sullen look. A male student came wondering in a circle with his phone near the spot where I stood. There was a young lady next to me, she seemed to have noticed his and made a little gesture of being alerted. He shifted the center of the circle and kept making the strange move. I moved to the spot between the door and the backdoor. He took my space. After a while, he said something in a small voice and kept looking at the phone. I moved to the back door. When I saw him about ten minutes later, he seemed to be sobbing but I am not sure.
A businessman came in and stood in front of the door next to me with his back facing me, and after a while a couple came in and the man, who a few minutes after he stood there bumped his bag on to mine and turned around and looked into my eyes with and an euphoric obscene aggressive smile, stood very close to me, although the car was not so clouded. Behind me, were two women in their 30-40s with carts and packages, one of which was placed right behind me I was in a tiny triangle of the man, the couple, and the women., for the next 20 minutes or so. I could have moved and these days I do so when I see it coming, but I just stood there to see what would happen next. The man of the couple gradually stood away every time the train stooped. Finally, after several stops and a stop before Machida, he made a space enough for me to go through, which I did and stood in front of the door on the opposite side, found the girl made a euphoric smile, with her eyes fixed on me, which made me sick. I said, “These two are sickening,” and started to walk toward the next car. I noticed the only part where I was was crowded and I found a seat in the next car.
At my destination, Machida Station, I walked 10 meters behind the crowed going down the stairs. When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw the crowed going down the stairs at an extremely slow pace－the pace of the funeral march. There no one who seemed to have a physical problem to go down stairs and the stairs were around 7 meters (23 feet) wide. I started walking down but wend up a few steps and found a young office worker coming behind me with his eyes fixed on me, started looking around, and looked puzzled. He looked at me with the puzzled look and went down without looking at me. (Before, not an odd office worker, but a bunch of people with an Oyaji (middle aged man) with nasty smile on top would often come rushing down behind me, driving me to elbow through the crowed saying, “Sumimasen! (Excuse me!), to which pushing back or briefcase brow used to be returned as a rule.)
On my way home, in the Odakyuline, a middle aged man kept looking at me, his neck twisted diagonally from his body and his face fixed on me, not moving at all from the time the express train was at the station waiting for the passengers to get on for a few minutes and a few minutes after the train started. I turned around to made sure nothing except me was in the direction of his site and to show him I am bothered by your look several times when I noticed his stare at the station. About five minutes after the train started, the conductor started his round. I told him that the man kept looking at me in a manner as if he knew me in a loud voice so that others could hear me. The man shouted, saying that I had not in dirtier vernacular. He did that twice, the second time scary enough for the conductor to move to him to say something. The conductor went back to his station in the back. Nothing happened after that although at the next station there was a loud thumping sound n front of the door next to me.
On Yamanote line, a business man around 30 with a sadistic smile came very close to me in a not so crowded car. I slipped away, he took my space, and I moved to the next car, where I heard a young man, who stood with his friends opposite me in the next car, go, “E, Majide! (Why. Are you sure?” Of course he may have been talking about their business but similar thing happens very often in the same situation.
On Keseline between Nippori and Aoto, I was in the last car and standing in front of the door between the next car. I looked in it and saw a tall “handsome” businessman around 30 standing tow other businessmen in the middle of the car spotted me and kept staring at me while taking our his phone from his pocket. I stood with my back facing him. After a while, I checked him and found him walking toward me. I move a few meters and stood in front of the door with my back facing him. I knew he would stop when he saw no other people were interested in me, although a few were staring at the phone quietly. Before, that kind of people would keep following me car after car.
At Aoto station, when I was walking down the stairs, two young women in front of me kept walking very slowly at the pace of the wedding march. As they left no space for me to pass them I followed them. A young man, who had been wondering around me on top of the stairs followed me with his body making a weird move, while looking around. When we approached the floor and could see an ordinary platform on Friday night which was rather quiet with no drunken man roaming, the ladies suddenly started walking fast and disappeared and the young man fled, looking around.
At a convenience store, at the cashier, a tall young man approached me with a mean grin. I stepped away saying, “Why is he wearing a light smile? It’s sickening.” No other person bothered me. The man became drooped and left. (I noticed I have been reporting only about young men and women. Before the major abusers were old and middle aged men. I think almost all of them have had their turn to harass me).
On my way to work, incidentally, I saw what I had not seen for years probably decades, humane faces of Japanese businessmen. At Nippori station, the crowed started forming in front of me, I tried not to take it personally but when a couple of young men who had been chatting in rather loud, excited voices, dashed from their seat and joined the back of the crowed, a switch was turned on inside me and I started singing the theme song of Darth Vader. (I used to do this, every once in a while, around 2007, when a bunch of businessmen in dark suit with sadistic, openly obscene smiles approached me brandishing their briefcases. I remember doing it three times, including the one I did behind several young business men who had done nothing to me, which I regret. I am sure I did not do it more than ten times in those days. I had stopped doing it for a while but recently started doing again, but this time even to people who are not businessmen but who are clearly abusive or mean to me. Not so often anyway because I hate myself doing this.) The crowed froze and got off the car, and after them, two middle-aged businessmen, who, before, would have hit me in my leg or gestured to do so with their briefcases or who would have looked at me in obscenest ways, extremely excited, came slowly and got off, both of whom looked at me sideways with crying, imploring faces, not the Is-she-crazy-or-not faces, which I might make if I saw a small middle-aged woman standing alone suddenly start singing Darth Vader’s Theme in a train at a hub station.
On Saturday: On my way to work, on Keisai line, a woman sitting next to me suddenly stood up and went to the other side seemingly to talk with her partner, when several other passenger who had been looking at me in a weird look suddenly lit up, especially an old man whose eyes had been fixed on me, released an exclamation point silently. I looked at the side where the woman was sitting and found the next person was a male, who seemed not to care what was going on. I looked at the old man again. He was probing something in me with his eyes. I sighed and started studying. After a while, the man sitting a-person away from me made a cough and moved his butt. I could tell it was not so much a harassment but an ego presentation, for what I could not tell. Before, if a man sat me, he would have either pushed me on the side right next to my breast under my arm with his fingers or elbow, moved his butt in a weird way, kept re-sitting, or put his arm on the back of the seat behind me.
On Hanzomon line for the center of Tokyo, in a not crowded car, a couple came rather hurrying and took the space in front of the door opposite me, the girl standing precisely the opposite of me. Four women sitting on my side looked at the couple and stole a look at me, while before they would have wore angelic smiles and kept looking at the couple and me in turns openly, and the same used to happen when middle aged men or women saw a couple or woman with a baby near me, some stat chatting about the baby in a loud voice with the parent(s) who were clearly strangers. Let me remind you that Japanese hardly ever chat with strangers, especially on trains in Tokyo. And I saw this only during these harassment years.
I took a seat. The train had very few vacant seat but the space in front of doors were almost vacant, but a young middle height slender good-looking businessman stood in front of me, even though I was probably the least decent looking and not the youngest woman along the same seat. He stood there in a strange posture of sticking his hips to one side to another. After a while, he started stumping the floor in front of me with his heels, making a strong shock on the floor and a hard sound. Then another young man with a cap came up to me, started loaming in a small circle next to the business men. Now an officially odd gathering in a not crowded train was in front of me, so I looked up and looked around, saying, “Kimochi-waru (It’s sickening).” My eyes met a young rather tall woman who looked like a volleyball player standing on the other side of the men in front of the seat. I said, “Ne (aren’t they?” to her so that she could see that I did not mean to say she was sickening. She kept looking at me, emotionless, with an animal-like straight stare. I could tell that she had not seen her cell-phone, yet, after which most people turn to normal as if exorcized. Other passengers were looking at me in more or less the same way as the woman did but at the same time to me they looked a little disappointed to see me not upset. When the train came close to the station I was going to change trains, another young man in camouflage pants came up to me and stood in the corner between my seat―I was sitting at the end―and the door, with his butt sticking to me between the pole and the wall. When the train started slowing down, the businessman stood behind the camouflage man. I did not see the man in a cap was still there or not. I stood up and started walking to the next door. The woman who had been standing at the end of the seat started coming towards me, probably to take the seat I was sitting. When we passed each other, we bumped, even though I was walking side way and furthest from her.
On Nanboku line, I was standing right in front of the door and when the to get off at the next station. When the train started to slow down, I felt something hit my bag rather hard, which hit my side on the left side. I turned around and found an old gentleman dressed well standing pretty close to me with his hands put in front of him. The train was least crowded. Although most seats were taken, the space between the doors was empty. At that moment no one other than me and the old man standing like a kindergartener, though slightly taller than me, sticking to me. I said, “Excuse me, but don’t you apologize after you hit me?!”in a loud voice so that others could hear me. The man said, “E? A,a,a,aaaaa. Su, sumimasen. (Why, ah, I am sorry).” He was still standing almost in the same position, even though his upper body was a little away from me, so I said, “And why are you standing so close to me?” The man stepped back, while some middle aged women started gathering behind him with a criticizing look at me. I got off.
At Nagatacho station, which was where I got off to work, when I started walking up a narrow stairs where two people could barely stand side by side, I say a couple with wide smile show up on top and coming down side by side. I was on the left hand side and they were on the right hand side with the man near me. I saw the man carrying a baby. As we came closer, they kept walking side by side, with an open smile and eyes fix on me. When the distance between us came to the point where usually people form a line if there are some one coming from the opposite in such a narrow stairs, the man did not move and kept walking down next to the woman, with a wild smile which I secretly call a DV smile. I walked sideway and slid the space between the wall and the man. I looked back and again, the switch was on and I started singing Darth Vader’s Theme. It seemed that their backs became stiff. They did not turn around. They walked down several steps and man seemed to say something and the woman said something in a strident, “kawaii-est (cutest in the Akihabara-otaku culture sense)” voice. When I came out of the stairs, a businessman, who had just started walking, with his back facing me, seemed to wipe his face, which gesture I rather often see used in front of me, although I do not know why they have to do so, since no one explains to me what has been going on and what is making them drop tears to see me, who was the object of fun abuse for them till recently. I remember a middle-aged business man bowed repentantly before he got off the train a couple years ago, though. He did not say anything, either.
The YouTube video titles are as follows:
1) Hypersonic Sound (Future Weapons)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5imaJwfJMZ8
(or Audio Spotlight featured on the Smithsonian Channel's SciQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tY_EOYqoVs&feature=related; added on September 24, 2010)
2) Future Weapons Directed Energy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqqy-kFre8k&feature=related
I might have been hearing the sound and feeling sensations projected by the system in 1) for years and I may have seen 2) once.
I have been suffering from an unusual phenomenon including noises, beam-like sensations, and fits for over three and a half years.
For example:
1. You hear nothing outside of the apartment, whose building is famous for its thin walls, while inside you hear a blasting engine sound, head-splitting metaｌlic sound in rhythm, loud waving sound like the one from a huge commercial refrigerator, etc.
2.The source of the metallic noises cannot be identified. Blasting sounds and huge commercial refrigerator-like sounds come from a particular part of the wall. Beam-like sensations seem to have directions and I can point the source, a point in the wall, which varies depending on where I am.
3. The sound is stronger when you are lying than when you are standing. The strength of beam-like sensations varies regardless of my physical positions.
4. Concerning the metallic noise, you cannot escape from it perfectly, unless you close your earhole by pressing the skin around it with your finger, although earplugs soften the effect a little. Earmuffs do not work and sometimes seem they amplify the sound, probably because with earmuffs you hear more of the noises inside of your body and the noise is conducted from the floor through my body to my hearing organs.
5. The room often seems to have become a speaker.
6. Sometimes, the noise is not so loud but I feel pain or have convulsions in my eardrums.
7. The magnitude of the fits suddenly became smaller when I started sleeping with lights on in this early spring.)
I think some of these facts can be explained by the YouTube video 1)
I moved twice in vain to escape from this phenomenon. It started suddenly in the early summer of 2007. While I had been bothered by many kinds of loud noises that my next-door neighbors make at odd hours, and strangely right when I was falling asleep, these noises are totally different in nature.
They are not natural sounds but still seem to be manipulated by human beings.
The character of the noises I mainly hear have changed. Until recently, I was bothered mainly by noises. Now, the annoyance is more like a beam or a pinpoint electric-shock. The beam-like sensation started in the early summer of 2008, when I decided to move out in the coming October and when strangely right after that not only the residents on both sides but also three or four in the rooms on the first floor (my room, second floor) including the one right under mine moved out. From that summer and till now, during my sleep and especially when I was falling asleep, and recently while I am lying with eyes closed but clearly conscious, I have beam-like sensations or fits that seem to be caused, if there is something like it, what can be called an supersonic/electronic weapon. For some time, the states before and after the change overlapped. I think the first state (noises that I can hear) continued till this spring. The beam-like sensations first started as something like an electric shock between my ears or ear plugs. They become a little weaker when I unplug my ears. Now they also seem to stimulate my muscles all over my body especially those in my face, fingers, wrists, elbows, and ankles and make unnatural fits and lifts.
Examples of the phenomenon that I have experienced in recent years:
1. Something like an electric shock between my ears, or on other parts of my body, often accompanied by a low noise or vibration of my bedding.
2. With one, a geometric pattern in blue or red appears or appears to appear in my retina.
3. Sudden unintended jolts of my body.
4. Sudden unintended lifts or fits of my finger, arm, lower leg, or foot.
5. Sudden unintended puff of my breath often accompanied by my voice such as, "Eh."
6. Constant small vibration of my bedding which spreads from one point of the bedside wall, which lasts for hours and/or days until I have a crawling sensation in my blood vessels in the lower half of my body.
7. Pulse like sensation on my head and unnatural waving and becoming loud of the sound in my head, which is usually flat and sound like, you know, sheepish flows of electrons.
8. Headache, nausea, slurred speech, feeling of concussion, small blinks at the edge of my visual area when getting up, which lasts for several hours and which subsides better and faster when I go out and spend the whole/half day.
9. Once, something like an electric current covered all over my back giving stinging pains.
These phenomena do not have regular pattern of occurrence, other than the fact that they happen as if they are at someone’s disposal. One day, I only have fits on my upper body, from head to breast in order. Another day, right after I close my eyes, I feel like I am hit in the head and see a geometric pattern and incessantly have fits and sensations as if I am hit by a beam all over my body all through the night, or so but each hit differs in strength. Also, the degree of violence of them change when my neighbors change. Recently, people in one of the rooms adjacent to mine moved out and I realized the period when they were there was the most violent so far. The sources of the first type of unnatural metallic noises were often not clear, but other types of sounds like blasts or noise like the one from a huge refrigerator clearly came from either side of the room. The beam-like sensation came even when rooms on both sides had no tenants in the summer and autumn of 2008 and a few weeks ago this year. The only day I remember I did not feel anything strange was the first night after I moved into a new apartment in October, 2008. I had a sound sleep that night, but from the next day on the noises, fits, and sensations came back.
About 2), I once saw something like a lightning bolt in exactly the same blue-white color and the crawling line and branches come out of the top corner of the walls, one of which faces the balcony, and disappeared in a second before reaching my face. The only difference is that while the one in the video branches in three or four main current flows, the one I saw was basically in one current, with small branches. When I saw it I was awake. But this phenomenon is so unreal too that I told myself that it was either a delusion or part of my dream. I can convince myself that way because I have been sleep-deprived for a too long a time to be confident about my consciousness.
Things are getting better, but I have never slept eight hours or more straight for more than 5 years, including the days I was bothered by more common noises at night like a musical instrument (base), squeals of the wooden loft floor, or computer game noises, and my average sleeping hours are probably between 4 to 5.
When I do research of this problem of mine, I often encounter some notions that I do not believe possible in today's technology. And again this whole thing sounds too unreal to believe. But last night I found some real technologies that seem to have something to do with my experience, so I just decided to put them up here.)
165. 2010/10/24 After I wrote the previous blog early this morning when I was woken up by some strange noise which sounds like gggggggg and which makes my ear drums feel funny, almost painful, I went to bed and slept till past 9:00 when I was woken up by a fit in my hand, which I remember had occurred twice or so in my deep sleep and probably occurred in my head at least once too. I cannot tell that these fits were caused by an outer force because I did not feel any other accompanying electric, sonic, or magnetic phenomenon which usually does. But considering I have never troubled by fits since my birth, and I have been bothered by these phenomena for over three and a half years, I think it is possible they were from the same source which I suspect is behind the wall of the side of Room 202. Or probably I had fit because of the funny feeling, vibration, in my ear drums which came from Room 202. I got up, could not walk straight for a couple second. My teeth felt funny. When I put them together, I felt as if they were vibrating in a very fine move.
The following is harassments I got on Friday and Saturday outside of my apartment. They are not directly related to supersonic/electric weapons. I record them because these assaults seem to be related to harassments I have suffered over the past eight years or so, in some cases more. I recorded then in Japanese in the beginning of this series after the harassing had become less often and I had gotten time and some calmness to record them. (http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9094139637570091888&postID=2638451042922365811, http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9094139637570091888&postID=7989375236327738086, http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9094139637570091888&postID=350873401819117818, http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9094139637570091888&postID=3104530626232956853, http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9094139637570091888&postID=2965330781389919204 ) Over the past three months, I seldom recorded them partly because I was very busy and partly because, although I kept being harassed, there were less ugly harassments. But after I had a change in my work shift and started using different train lines on different days, on Thursdays and Fridays, three weeks ago, I started having what I had started to forget again on my way to and back from my work. I do not want to spend my day off doing this (recording depressing experiences) but I feel I have to. This is a record of harassments done for a long time without any reason I can think of by indefinite uncountable number of people, who have nothing in common except for one thing that they seem to know me, despise me for some reason, and think it is Ok to do anything to me. Many of them open their cell-phones before, during, or after they harass me. This phenomenon peaked around 2006 when it started subsiding. On one autumn night, I noticed all people on a platform of Nippori station kept staring at their cell-phones without harassing me and got on the train drooping or still reading something on the phone, and after that day people started to change their expression and demeanor―they look like different people if you compare before and after they see the phone screen―after approaching and/or harassing me with an evil look and opening their cell-phone. Here are what I had on Friday and Saturday. They are much less than I used to get:
On Friday: In Yamanote-line, which was crowded but there was enough space between people, a young man took a step and pushed the left hand side of my bag which in turn pushed the left hand side of my back, took out his phone, and started looking at it. I said to him in a loud voice so that others could hear, “Don’t hit me on my bag with your bag intentionally,” to which he returned a hint of anger. A few minutes later, he had his tail between his legs and disappeared soon.
At Shinjuku Station, a man in his 50’s took a detour, instead of going to the ticket machine in a bee line, and grazed me on the left hand side of my back which in turn grazed the left side of my breast when I was at the ticket counter. I shouted at him, saying, “Don’t come and pass to graze me, pervert!” He turned around and looked at me, shocked, but said nothing and fled.
On Odakyu line from Shinjuku to Machida, I was in the last car and standing at the door second from the back. A man in his 20-30s in dark suit and well groomed on the other side of the car looked at me with a weird smile, put his bag on the floor, took out a tablet computer in a ritual-like manner, and started stroking it. A twittering sound was heard and other people around him stirred a bit, one middle aged woman who looked like a housewife looked at me a second and close her eyes. After a while, he put the tablet back in the bag with a sullen look. A male student came wondering in a circle with his phone near the spot where I stood. There was a young lady next to me, she seemed to have noticed his and made a little gesture of being alerted. He shifted the center of the circle and kept making the strange move. I moved to the spot between the door and the backdoor. He took my space. After a while, he said something in a small voice and kept looking at the phone. I moved to the back door. When I saw him about ten minutes later, he seemed to be sobbing but I am not sure.
A businessman came in and stood in front of the door next to me with his back facing me, and after a while a couple came in and the man, who a few minutes after he stood there bumped his bag on to mine and turned around and looked into my eyes with and an euphoric obscene aggressive smile, stood very close to me, although the car was not so clouded. Behind me, were two women in their 30-40s with carts and packages, one of which was placed right behind me I was in a tiny triangle of the man, the couple, and the women., for the next 20 minutes or so. I could have moved and these days I do so when I see it coming, but I just stood there to see what would happen next. The man of the couple gradually stood away every time the train stooped. Finally, after several stops and a stop before Machida, he made a space enough for me to go through, which I did and stood in front of the door on the opposite side, found the girl made a euphoric smile, with her eyes fixed on me, which made me sick. I said, “These two are sickening,” and started to walk toward the next car. I noticed the only part where I was was crowded and I found a seat in the next car.
At my destination, Machida Station, I walked 10 meters behind the crowed going down the stairs. When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw the crowed going down the stairs at an extremely slow pace－the pace of the funeral march. There no one who seemed to have a physical problem to go down stairs and the stairs were around 7 meters (23 feet) wide. I started walking down but wend up a few steps and found a young office worker coming behind me with his eyes fixed on me, started looking around, and looked puzzled. He looked at me with the puzzled look and went down without looking at me. (Before, not an odd office worker, but a bunch of people with an Oyaji (middle aged man) with nasty smile on top would often come rushing down behind me, driving me to elbow through the crowed saying, “Sumimasen! (Excuse me!), to which pushing back or briefcase brow used to be returned as a rule.)
On my way home, in the Odakyuline, a middle aged man kept looking at me, his neck twisted diagonally from his body and his face fixed on me, not moving at all from the time the express train was at the station waiting for the passengers to get on for a few minutes and a few minutes after the train started. I turned around to made sure nothing except me was in the direction of his site and to show him I am bothered by your look several times when I noticed his stare at the station. About five minutes after the train started, the conductor started his round. I told him that the man kept looking at me in a manner as if he knew me in a loud voice so that others could hear me. The man shouted, saying that I had not in dirtier vernacular. He did that twice, the second time scary enough for the conductor to move to him to say something. The conductor went back to his station in the back. Nothing happened after that although at the next station there was a loud thumping sound n front of the door next to me.
On Yamanote line, a business man around 30 with a sadistic smile came very close to me in a not so crowded car. I slipped away, he took my space, and I moved to the next car, where I heard a young man, who stood with his friends opposite me in the next car, go, “E, Majide! (Why. Are you sure?” Of course he may have been talking about their business but similar thing happens very often in the same situation.
On Keseline between Nippori and Aoto, I was in the last car and standing in front of the door between the next car. I looked in it and saw a tall “handsome” businessman around 30 standing tow other businessmen in the middle of the car spotted me and kept staring at me while taking our his phone from his pocket. I stood with my back facing him. After a while, I checked him and found him walking toward me. I move a few meters and stood in front of the door with my back facing him. I knew he would stop when he saw no other people were interested in me, although a few were staring at the phone quietly. Before, that kind of people would keep following me car after car.
At Aoto station, when I was walking down the stairs, two young women in front of me kept walking very slowly at the pace of the wedding march. As they left no space for me to pass them I followed them. A young man, who had been wondering around me on top of the stairs followed me with his body making a weird move, while looking around. When we approached the floor and could see an ordinary platform on Friday night which was rather quiet with no drunken man roaming, the ladies suddenly started walking fast and disappeared and the young man fled, looking around.
At a convenience store, at the cashier, a tall young man approached me with a mean grin. I stepped away saying, “Why is he wearing a light smile? It’s sickening.” No other person bothered me. The man became drooped and left. (I noticed I have been reporting only about young men and women. Before the major abusers were old and middle aged men. I think almost all of them have had their turn to harass me).
On my way to work, incidentally, I saw what I had not seen for years probably decades, humane faces of Japanese businessmen. At Nippori station, the crowed started forming in front of me, I tried not to take it personally but when a couple of young men who had been chatting in rather loud, excited voices, dashed from their seat and joined the back of the crowed, a switch was turned on inside me and I started singing the theme song of Darth Vader. (I used to do this, every once in a while, around 2007, when a bunch of businessmen in dark suit with sadistic, openly obscene smiles approached me brandishing their briefcases. I remember doing it three times, including the one I did behind several young business men who had done nothing to me, which I regret. I am sure I did not do it more than ten times in those days. I had stopped doing it for a while but recently started doing again, but this time even to people who are not businessmen but who are clearly abusive or mean to me. Not so often anyway because I hate myself doing this.) The crowed froze and got off the car, and after them, two middle-aged businessmen, who, before, would have hit me in my leg or gestured to do so with their briefcases or who would have looked at me in obscenest ways, extremely excited, came slowly and got off, both of whom looked at me sideways with crying, imploring faces, not the Is-she-crazy-or-not faces, which I might make if I saw a small middle-aged woman standing alone suddenly start singing Darth Vader’s Theme in a train at a hub station.
On Saturday: On my way to work, on Keisai line, a woman sitting next to me suddenly stood up and went to the other side seemingly to talk with her partner, when several other passenger who had been looking at me in a weird look suddenly lit up, especially an old man whose eyes had been fixed on me, released an exclamation point silently. I looked at the side where the woman was sitting and found the next person was a male, who seemed not to care what was going on. I looked at the old man again. He was probing something in me with his eyes. I sighed and started studying. After a while, the man sitting a-person away from me made a cough and moved his butt. I could tell it was not so much a harassment but an ego presentation, for what I could not tell. Before, if a man sat me, he would have either pushed me on the side right next to my breast under my arm with his fingers or elbow, moved his butt in a weird way, kept re-sitting, or put his arm on the back of the seat behind me.
On Hanzomon line for the center of Tokyo, in a not crowded car, a couple came rather hurrying and took the space in front of the door opposite me, the girl standing precisely the opposite of me. Four women sitting on my side looked at the couple and stole a look at me, while before they would have wore angelic smiles and kept looking at the couple and me in turns openly, and the same used to happen when middle aged men or women saw a couple or woman with a baby near me, some stat chatting about the baby in a loud voice with the parent(s) who were clearly strangers. Let me remind you that Japanese hardly ever chat with strangers, especially on trains in Tokyo. And I saw this only during these harassment years.
I took a seat. The train had very few vacant seat but the space in front of doors were almost vacant, but a young middle height slender good-looking businessman stood in front of me, even though I was probably the least decent looking and not the youngest woman along the same seat. He stood there in a strange posture of sticking his hips to one side to another. After a while, he started stumping the floor in front of me with his heels, making a strong shock on the floor and a hard sound. Then another young man with a cap came up to me, started loaming in a small circle next to the business men. Now an officially odd gathering in a not crowded train was in front of me, so I looked up and looked around, saying, “Kimochi-waru (It’s sickening).” My eyes met a young rather tall woman who looked like a volleyball player standing on the other side of the men in front of the seat. I said, “Ne (aren’t they?” to her so that she could see that I did not mean to say she was sickening. She kept looking at me, emotionless, with an animal-like straight stare. I could tell that she had not seen her cell-phone, yet, after which most people turn to normal as if exorcized. Other passengers were looking at me in more or less the same way as the woman did but at the same time to me they looked a little disappointed to see me not upset. When the train came close to the station I was going to change trains, another young man in camouflage pants came up to me and stood in the corner between my seat―I was sitting at the end―and the door, with his butt sticking to me between the pole and the wall. When the train started slowing down, the businessman stood behind the camouflage man. I did not see the man in a cap was still there or not. I stood up and started walking to the next door. The woman who had been standing at the end of the seat started coming towards me, probably to take the seat I was sitting. When we passed each other, we bumped, even though I was walking side way and furthest from her.
On Nanboku line, I was standing right in front of the door and when the to get off at the next station. When the train started to slow down, I felt something hit my bag rather hard, which hit my side on the left side. I turned around and found an old gentleman dressed well standing pretty close to me with his hands put in front of him. The train was least crowded. Although most seats were taken, the space between the doors was empty. At that moment no one other than me and the old man standing like a kindergartener, though slightly taller than me, sticking to me. I said, “Excuse me, but don’t you apologize after you hit me?!”in a loud voice so that others could hear me. The man said, “E? A,a,a,aaaaa. Su, sumimasen. (Why, ah, I am sorry).” He was still standing almost in the same position, even though his upper body was a little away from me, so I said, “And why are you standing so close to me?” The man stepped back, while some middle aged women started gathering behind him with a criticizing look at me. I got off.
At Nagatacho station, which was where I got off to work, when I started walking up a narrow stairs where two people could barely stand side by side, I say a couple with wide smile show up on top and coming down side by side. I was on the left hand side and they were on the right hand side with the man near me. I saw the man carrying a baby. As we came closer, they kept walking side by side, with an open smile and eyes fix on me. When the distance between us came to the point where usually people form a line if there are some one coming from the opposite in such a narrow stairs, the man did not move and kept walking down next to the woman, with a wild smile which I secretly call a DV smile. I walked sideway and slid the space between the wall and the man. I looked back and again, the switch was on and I started singing Darth Vader’s Theme. It seemed that their backs became stiff. They did not turn around. They walked down several steps and man seemed to say something and the woman said something in a strident, “kawaii-est (cutest in the Akihabara-otaku culture sense)” voice. When I came out of the stairs, a businessman, who had just started walking, with his back facing me, seemed to wipe his face, which gesture I rather often see used in front of me, although I do not know why they have to do so, since no one explains to me what has been going on and what is making them drop tears to see me, who was the object of fun abuse for them till recently. I remember a middle-aged business man bowed repentantly before he got off the train a couple years ago, though. He did not say anything, either.
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
164. 2010/10/24 Woken up around 3:30 a.m. by some gggggggg noise from Room 202, which left funny feelings in my ear drums and the sound in my head waving in very small frequency cicles. Friday night (2010/10/22-23), I slept around 2 + 2 hours. Got home around 11:00 p.m. and went to bed around 12:30. Too alert to sleep until 2:00, when got the electric shock in the head just when I started falling asleep. Switched my head position on to the side table, locating my head further from Room 202. Electric shock started coming to head, hands, legs, some causing twitches. (I know that perception cannot be 100 % objective, but it is certain to me that these feelings and sensations come from outside of me. These things do not happen when I am outside of my room., and rarely when I am awake. At 4:20 ggggg sound woke me up and I put earmuffs on. Lay awake thinking and maybe slept a little and soon woken up by a big GGGGG noise at 7:30 a.m. Tried to sleep again but a sensation like an air gun shot between my ears kept coming. Took off earmuffs and may be slept a while. Woke up at 10:00 a.m. Felt like a zombie all day. Dragged my feet sometimes.
2010年10月22日金曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
163. 2010/10/22 Woken up at 2:45 a.m. by a strong shock on/in my head which felt like being hit with a grapefruit-sized rock. Studied till 5:00 and went to bed again. Right after that started a noise like a loud male snooze. Wore earmuffs and strange sensation like air-gun shot between my ears happened twice or three times. Pulled the side table close to my bed, put my pillow on it, and again tried to sleep. A week electric shock came to my head, and slight vibrations in the veins of my lower legs. Woke up around 8:30 with a construction-site noise. Felt very dizzy and could not walk straight the first several steps.
Yesterday, the third Thursday since one of my work days at Shibuya branch shifted to this day, on my way to work, not so many weird business men flock between Otemachi and Mitsukoshimae train stations as they did last week, but when I gave up my seat to a senior man, he strangely got excited and stack his hands, palm-leaf-open, towards my breast, almost touching them if I had not slid away from the seat, as seemingly a gesture of rejection, eyes glittering, saying, “Ye, ye, ye!,” “No, no, no.” Japanese, especially old people, do not gesture often and as a sign of rejection we also do not stick out wide open hands towards the other party’s breast. I shouted, “Don’t touch me!” and went towards the door.
On my way home, on Hanzo-mon line, a man who looked like a South Asian came up to me in a least crowded car and started looking at his phone while staring at me. I stared back, thinking I would shout if he did it again. He did not and instead frozen and got off at the next stop with his phone open. A few minutes later, after I moved to another car after avoiding some abusive, a tall slender good-looking young guy dressed in a dark suit, rushed towards me, sticking opened phone towards me, with his head fixed to its screen, and when I shouted, “Kichi-guy!,” “Mad man!,” which is one of the words I use these days to fend off further harassment when one of these abusive crowd starts doing this kind of intimidation, he looked up with a wired aura, and looked into my eyes with animal-like straight stare with some kind of purpose, changed course, and sank into the vacant seat in the corner. I moved to the door, where another young guy standing with similar weird aura looking at his phone. I looked around, there were about 5 or 6 of them doing the same, while other passengers, who used to do the same before, some of them till really recently, stood straight or pretend sleeping in the seats. I decided to get off the car at the next station, a young lady stood next to me before the doors opened, turned around, and stared the first young guy in the seat for seconds before getting off.
On the next train to my station, an old man looked into my eyes with a weird smile, as if he knew me and had seen my anything embarrassing thing, several times. After shouting and asking if he knew me and accusing him of looking at me like that I moved to the next car. The man, who first blushed slightly and started moving his fingers in a strange way when he realized that I was standing within his sight, or vice versa, turned white and stopped moving his fingers after several stations and no one abused me.
At my station Aoto, when I started walking on the platform, I saw around ten turn around and spot me, like “Here is that comedian girl on TV!” When I went up to a narrow space between the edge of the platform and the wall of stairs, 7 to 10 guys came rushing from the other side with their eyes fixed on me, some with robot like stare which is fixed a little diagonally to the right above me. There was little space between each of them. If everyone, including me, had walked straight ahead, I would have touched at least one of them. I thought of twisting my body and walk slightly side way, which I used to do when this happened before, and remembered at least one of them would touch me anyway. I shouted, “What in the world is going on? (Nannan-desu-ka ittai?)” a second before I passed the first two closely walking ones, and they parted. I walked through them without touching any, without being hit by their briefcases or without being pretended to hit me…well may be they did so but I did not look. When all of them were gone, I looked back and saw another similar bunch following me at the same speed, on the front a well-built guy, who is probably usually a nice-looking or taciturn athletic type, with a brutal grin moving his shoulders and arms like those of Bluto in Popeye. As I had reached the end of the narrow space and the top stair, I went down. After walking down several steps, I went up several steps and found the crowd was dispersed and a few guys, including the Bluto, meandering purposelessly, as if they cannot find what they had expected to be there－before, another crowd used to wait for me around the stairs or followed me down the stairs while those before me going down unnaturally slowly, making me either harassed by the crowed behind or elbow through forward being harassed anyway. ― I now regret that I used to say, “Excuse me,” when I elbowed through, for now I know they enjoy making me say that. ― There was one stout man who looked like the remainder of those, practically most people, involved in that “practice” or “ritual” of them going down in front of me. I said, “Japanese are oni kichi-guy (pitiless maniacs), aren’t they?” to nobody.
― I know I demeaned myself with this statement. It might have been better for me to say, “These activities are insane and pitiless,” if I could not help saying something. I know I should not generalize and these words are strong. The following is my excuse and/or justification. I am Japanese, so this is not an ethnic bias; given that I have been alienated by my people, in essence it is an ethnic bias, though. I started using the word kichi-guy, or mad man (actually this word should be spelled kichigai and it means not kichi-person but ki-chigai or mind-gone-wrong, although it is pronounced like kichi-guy), to repel attackers about three years ago. It took me more than five years to come up with the word after the onset of full-dress mass harassment for no reason at least I know of, mainly because I am not very perceptive. To avoid meaning people who suffer from mental disorders, I started putting adjectives such as iji-no-warui or mean before kichi-guy and finally ended up with oni, which originally means demon and is used to mean a merciless and cruel person. Oni is a noun and using this noun to modify another noun is a misusage in Japanese just like saying “demon mad man,” but I could not come up with a better adjective and I doubt anyone else can. I think it is an accurate description for my part. People seem to enjoy harassing me especially when they have the opportunity to remind me of the fact that I am single, childless, getting old and without any love-life, about the last one of which they seem to have some confused or conflicting ideas but this is not the point now. I came up with the word oni two years ago after I had repeatedly seen young mothers give me a blood-curdling “angelic” smile, with their eyes fixed on me and not smiling at all, when they push their baby-cart, change course toward me, and stop it right next to my foot or when they pass as close to me as possible when they cannot park their baby cart right next to me or when they turn their baby cart unnecessarily in a big circle and almost graze my foot before they get off the train car after sitting opposite me staring at me with a smile of satisfaction all the time, after I had seen older men and women seem to enjoy seeing young mothers do those things to me or looking at me and a young couple standing close to me, most of whom conspicuously being flirtatious to each other, after I had seen young women look into my eyes with devilish joy and young men laugh saying that I had expired as woman after signs of aging clearly showed up on me, after people euphorically keep staring at me when the train passes the station where around 2004 my then boyfriend lived and moved out of the apartment because of the landlord’s plan to demolish the building right after I had moved to a nearby station, after I remembered being told over the past fifteen years or so the phrase “hebi-no-namgorohshi (keeping a snake half alive)” by a few men, who without fail were extremely excited in a strange way and smiling in a devious way, after I remembered being told when I was in my middle and late thirties the phrase “hito-no-fukou ha mitsu-no-aji (someone else’s misfortune tastes like honey)” by a few women, most of whom young women, who without fail looked at me in the eyes with evil and satisfied smiles, and after I had realized that the more I became pathetic in their eyes, the more these people enjoy harassing me. I have seen 99.999…% of human beings I encountered, mainly Japanese, act “as,” not “like,” pitiless maniacs. Japanese people have a strong tendency to become extremely brutal and mean under a certain circumstance, and I have seen this phase for over eight years. I am suffering from the scar caused by this experience. I am sometimes at a loss of how to handle the fear, humiliation, and disenchantment I have gone through. Anger and hatred resurge when the same kind of harassment is repeated. And I have been sleep-deprived for more than 5 years, more than half of which are the years of incredible phenomena that seem to be caused by high-tech devices, about which I cannot talk because my sanity will be doubted. At any rate, I hope I will not say the same thing again. ―
A high school boy with earphones who were walking a few stairs up looked at me with a sadistic expression. I walked down and stepped on the descending escalator, which I used to avoid because of abuses by those who pass me but not anymore at this station, and no one bothered me then either. About 3 meters before it reached the first floor, the high-school boy came down from behind and passed me with his head down.
Yesterday, the third Thursday since one of my work days at Shibuya branch shifted to this day, on my way to work, not so many weird business men flock between Otemachi and Mitsukoshimae train stations as they did last week, but when I gave up my seat to a senior man, he strangely got excited and stack his hands, palm-leaf-open, towards my breast, almost touching them if I had not slid away from the seat, as seemingly a gesture of rejection, eyes glittering, saying, “Ye, ye, ye!,” “No, no, no.” Japanese, especially old people, do not gesture often and as a sign of rejection we also do not stick out wide open hands towards the other party’s breast. I shouted, “Don’t touch me!” and went towards the door.
On my way home, on Hanzo-mon line, a man who looked like a South Asian came up to me in a least crowded car and started looking at his phone while staring at me. I stared back, thinking I would shout if he did it again. He did not and instead frozen and got off at the next stop with his phone open. A few minutes later, after I moved to another car after avoiding some abusive, a tall slender good-looking young guy dressed in a dark suit, rushed towards me, sticking opened phone towards me, with his head fixed to its screen, and when I shouted, “Kichi-guy!,” “Mad man!,” which is one of the words I use these days to fend off further harassment when one of these abusive crowd starts doing this kind of intimidation, he looked up with a wired aura, and looked into my eyes with animal-like straight stare with some kind of purpose, changed course, and sank into the vacant seat in the corner. I moved to the door, where another young guy standing with similar weird aura looking at his phone. I looked around, there were about 5 or 6 of them doing the same, while other passengers, who used to do the same before, some of them till really recently, stood straight or pretend sleeping in the seats. I decided to get off the car at the next station, a young lady stood next to me before the doors opened, turned around, and stared the first young guy in the seat for seconds before getting off.
On the next train to my station, an old man looked into my eyes with a weird smile, as if he knew me and had seen my anything embarrassing thing, several times. After shouting and asking if he knew me and accusing him of looking at me like that I moved to the next car. The man, who first blushed slightly and started moving his fingers in a strange way when he realized that I was standing within his sight, or vice versa, turned white and stopped moving his fingers after several stations and no one abused me.
At my station Aoto, when I started walking on the platform, I saw around ten turn around and spot me, like “Here is that comedian girl on TV!” When I went up to a narrow space between the edge of the platform and the wall of stairs, 7 to 10 guys came rushing from the other side with their eyes fixed on me, some with robot like stare which is fixed a little diagonally to the right above me. There was little space between each of them. If everyone, including me, had walked straight ahead, I would have touched at least one of them. I thought of twisting my body and walk slightly side way, which I used to do when this happened before, and remembered at least one of them would touch me anyway. I shouted, “What in the world is going on? (Nannan-desu-ka ittai?)” a second before I passed the first two closely walking ones, and they parted. I walked through them without touching any, without being hit by their briefcases or without being pretended to hit me…well may be they did so but I did not look. When all of them were gone, I looked back and saw another similar bunch following me at the same speed, on the front a well-built guy, who is probably usually a nice-looking or taciturn athletic type, with a brutal grin moving his shoulders and arms like those of Bluto in Popeye. As I had reached the end of the narrow space and the top stair, I went down. After walking down several steps, I went up several steps and found the crowd was dispersed and a few guys, including the Bluto, meandering purposelessly, as if they cannot find what they had expected to be there－before, another crowd used to wait for me around the stairs or followed me down the stairs while those before me going down unnaturally slowly, making me either harassed by the crowed behind or elbow through forward being harassed anyway. ― I now regret that I used to say, “Excuse me,” when I elbowed through, for now I know they enjoy making me say that. ― There was one stout man who looked like the remainder of those, practically most people, involved in that “practice” or “ritual” of them going down in front of me. I said, “Japanese are oni kichi-guy (pitiless maniacs), aren’t they?” to nobody.
― I know I demeaned myself with this statement. It might have been better for me to say, “These activities are insane and pitiless,” if I could not help saying something. I know I should not generalize and these words are strong. The following is my excuse and/or justification. I am Japanese, so this is not an ethnic bias; given that I have been alienated by my people, in essence it is an ethnic bias, though. I started using the word kichi-guy, or mad man (actually this word should be spelled kichigai and it means not kichi-person but ki-chigai or mind-gone-wrong, although it is pronounced like kichi-guy), to repel attackers about three years ago. It took me more than five years to come up with the word after the onset of full-dress mass harassment for no reason at least I know of, mainly because I am not very perceptive. To avoid meaning people who suffer from mental disorders, I started putting adjectives such as iji-no-warui or mean before kichi-guy and finally ended up with oni, which originally means demon and is used to mean a merciless and cruel person. Oni is a noun and using this noun to modify another noun is a misusage in Japanese just like saying “demon mad man,” but I could not come up with a better adjective and I doubt anyone else can. I think it is an accurate description for my part. People seem to enjoy harassing me especially when they have the opportunity to remind me of the fact that I am single, childless, getting old and without any love-life, about the last one of which they seem to have some confused or conflicting ideas but this is not the point now. I came up with the word oni two years ago after I had repeatedly seen young mothers give me a blood-curdling “angelic” smile, with their eyes fixed on me and not smiling at all, when they push their baby-cart, change course toward me, and stop it right next to my foot or when they pass as close to me as possible when they cannot park their baby cart right next to me or when they turn their baby cart unnecessarily in a big circle and almost graze my foot before they get off the train car after sitting opposite me staring at me with a smile of satisfaction all the time, after I had seen older men and women seem to enjoy seeing young mothers do those things to me or looking at me and a young couple standing close to me, most of whom conspicuously being flirtatious to each other, after I had seen young women look into my eyes with devilish joy and young men laugh saying that I had expired as woman after signs of aging clearly showed up on me, after people euphorically keep staring at me when the train passes the station where around 2004 my then boyfriend lived and moved out of the apartment because of the landlord’s plan to demolish the building right after I had moved to a nearby station, after I remembered being told over the past fifteen years or so the phrase “hebi-no-namgorohshi (keeping a snake half alive)” by a few men, who without fail were extremely excited in a strange way and smiling in a devious way, after I remembered being told when I was in my middle and late thirties the phrase “hito-no-fukou ha mitsu-no-aji (someone else’s misfortune tastes like honey)” by a few women, most of whom young women, who without fail looked at me in the eyes with evil and satisfied smiles, and after I had realized that the more I became pathetic in their eyes, the more these people enjoy harassing me. I have seen 99.999…% of human beings I encountered, mainly Japanese, act “as,” not “like,” pitiless maniacs. Japanese people have a strong tendency to become extremely brutal and mean under a certain circumstance, and I have seen this phase for over eight years. I am suffering from the scar caused by this experience. I am sometimes at a loss of how to handle the fear, humiliation, and disenchantment I have gone through. Anger and hatred resurge when the same kind of harassment is repeated. And I have been sleep-deprived for more than 5 years, more than half of which are the years of incredible phenomena that seem to be caused by high-tech devices, about which I cannot talk because my sanity will be doubted. At any rate, I hope I will not say the same thing again. ―
A high school boy with earphones who were walking a few stairs up looked at me with a sadistic expression. I walked down and stepped on the descending escalator, which I used to avoid because of abuses by those who pass me but not anymore at this station, and no one bothered me then either. About 3 meters before it reached the first floor, the high-school boy came down from behind and passed me with his head down.
2010年10月21日木曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
162. A strange smell like tobacco but not tobacco－cigarette smoke gives me pain in my respiratory organs but it did not －came in around 10:30 p.m. last night when I lay on my bed and started reading. I turned on the air conditioner. One hour later, I turned it off and again the smell started. I slept with the air conditioner all night. I slept about seven hours. This morning I feel better than usual. I do not remember if I had the electric-shock-like assault last night, although I remember when I turned on the air conditioner the second time, a sound like someone getting off a deep seat or getting out of a booth was heard at around five feet above my head behind the wall of Room 202, which I heard once before. If the thing behind the wall has a seat, it seems that a middle build man was on it today and a small woman was on it last time.
2010年10月20日水曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
161. 2010/10/20 Almost at the same time with noise sounding like ggg behind the wall of Room 202 came rings of pulse and hit my head, giving it a strong shock. I was lying awake on my bed staring at the wall. I could spot the radius of the ring of the pulse－it was the size of a basketball or a little bit larger. It was last night before I went to bed and after I went to bed till I slept, incessant assault of electric shock stronger than usual and strong enough to give me pain but not strong enough to twitches of the parts of my body they hit. I think I heard the high woman/machine tone a few times again while I was in deep sleep. I went to bed around 12:30 and woke up/was woken up at around 4:30 a.m. Studied for a while and went to bed again. This time, strange vibration started coming toward my lower body from Room 202 and I sometimes felt piercing pains in my butt and calf. Had some shocks in my head, too. When I woke up and got up past 10:00 a.m., I felt dizzy, especially in my frontal robe. I felt as if I had had a concussion. While writing this, at 11:56, I have pains like thin needles in both of my lower legs.
2010年10月19日火曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
160. 2010/10/19 Sunday night, the electric shock thing was more often and stronger, many of them caused twitches of my feet and hands, with which I felt piercing pain. I was woken up by what I thought was a high voice of a female which repeated three times and dragged me out of deep sleep at around 7:30 a.m.. I do not remember I had anything last night. I was too tired to sleep and kept awake till past three a.m. and went to bed. Strange vibration to my ear drums made me earmuffs for a while in the morning. In the evening, when I was eating and watching TV, suddenly, a strong shock came right in the middle of my brain and I felt as if my body sank a little for a second. / Last Thursday, around 10:00 p/m/, in the last car of Odakyu line for Tokyo, a man sitting opposite me, tall and well build in his 30-40s, suddenly stack his bottom and opened his legs wide, and about 10 minutes later or so, he then stretched his legs straight towards me, leaving a foot and a half wide space between his soles and my feel. He kept the position for probably 10 minutes or so till I said in a vice loud enough for other passengers to hear, “Excuse me, but do you usually stretch your legs this way?” People, who had been in the I-am-tired-leave-me-alone position, looked at us and he folded his legs. When stain came close to the last stop, he did the same and in a second a man, who looked like a professor in his thirties and who had been looking at his phone all the time, came and passed the space between his feet and mine quickly and went to the next car. Yesterday, around 10:00 p.m. on Hanzomon line, I was at the door, slouching a little and studying. Suddenly, I felt something warm on my right shoulder and turned around, finding a 30-40 year old salary man hanging on to the strap was standing in the way his upper body covers my right back. The train was not crowded and there are many other places a man could stand or hold on to the strap comfortably in the car, so I shouted again loud enough for others to hear, “Excuse me, why are you standing extremely close to me when there is much space. It’s sickening,” while I moved away to the next door on the opposite side. Some passengers looked at him, others looked at me with artificial hostile criticism with a little hint of deviant joy. Train came close to the last stop, some passengers with odd moves started gathering between me and the door on the other side and one short and chubby man passed the space between the last person in the crowd and me, with a strange smile. These thing used to happen several time a day, seven days a week. These days, when I use trains at different time or on a different day or use a different line. and the magnitude of strangeness was much larger. It was scary and for some reason humiliating. Often the person that pass the space, gestured to touch me or laughed in obscene ways, or, in the case of a salary man, made gestures of hitting me in my thigh or calf with his brief case. They used to actually hit me that way before I started accusing them for doing it in front of others in a loud voice.
2010年10月17日日曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
159. 2010/10/17 At around 4:30 a.m., a pulse and a sound in monotonous rhythm with faster pitch pushing my ear drums woke me up. They seemed to come from Room 202 or below (Room 104.). I kept my eyes closed and in a few minutes, suddenly the pulse and sound stopped, leaving a vibration like the one a mortar makes when it stops. A car engine made a noise and drove away within a block from my apartment. My ear drums were tired and strange sensation remained in my ear for 20 minutes or so, keeping me awake until finally I gave up to go back to sleep again and started studying and working. Between 9:00 – 11:00 a.m., a strange smell which is like that of tobacco but different, flew in at least twice. I opened the balcony window and found there was no such smell outside. The electric-shock like sensation comes almost always I am trying to sleep. Last night and right now (at 13:02 when I tried to take a nap) the thing was like a sharp razor blade slicing my brain from top right into the center. When I got up, an intentional cough of a male was heard in Room 204. In the morning, when I got up to eat, in rooms on both sides there were noises that people started moving. After I wrote the last line and the moment I went back to study on my bed, a cough of a male was heard in Room 202. After writing this last line, I climbed onto my bed, lay down, worked, and fell into sleep for what I felt a second or so and a big fit came to my head and then a bigger one to my left foot, a very big jolt. I noticed that I had switched off the lights of my bedroom－before I started sleeping with lights on, the jolts like the ones I had right now used to come incessantly almost all night and some were big enough to bounce whole body of mine. I turned on the light and lay, and a low machine like noise started. As I was wearing earmuffs, I cannot tell where it was from. Now I hear a noise like that of the air conditioner, although I made sure that either air conditioners of the rooms on both sides of my room was working.
Class Supplement (早稲田国際AO入試直前の注意点）
受験直前の注意点
毎回熱心に授業を受け努力して力をつけてこられた今の状態を崩さず更に受験日までパワーアップするにはどうしたらよいか私なりに注意点を考えてみたので参考にしてください。
これから受験当日まで
☆過去問の解き直し： 正解しなかったもののみ、添削された答案や模範解答を見たあともう一度解きなおしましょう。
☆苦手分野のチェック： 苦手分野の問題は解くたびに落ち込むので試験直前には回避しがちですが、最もチェックが必要です。直前まで学び続ける姿勢を崩さないことです。今まで知らないでいた常識などを発見した場合、「こんなことも知らないのではだめだ。」と思わず、「テスト前に知ることができてよかった。」と考えるようにしましょう。やる気が出ないときは本番でその苦手分野が出題されて困っている自分を想像してみてください。その時のつらさを回避するために前もって苦手分野をチェックするのです。
受験当日 《当日の注意点ですが普段から注意して習慣にしておきましょう》
☆小手先の技術で切り抜けようとしない： 早稲田国際AO入試の筆記テストも基本的には英語のテストです。見られるのは英語の読解力と表現力及び国際政治・経済の知識です。実力を見られるのであって要領のよさではありません。要領よく解こうとするよりも、本文と問題を正確に読み取り、筆者の一番言いたいことと質問のポイントを理解することに集中しましょう。良い解答の第一歩はそこからであり、それができれば7割とれたも同然です。（もちろん反論や具体例などで重要でないところは流し読みするなどの時間の節約は大切ですが、これも内容を理解することによってどこを流せばよいかが分かるのですからまずは内容理解です。）また、解答欄が余っても余計なことは書かないようにしましょう。減点されかねません。うまく最後をまとめる練習は普段からしておきましょう。解くときの優先順位は １）理解 ２）内容 ３）量でよいと思います。
☆ポイントを先に書く： 普段やっていないのに本番でやってしまいそうなミスが出だし部分にこだわることです。筆記問題の解答ワード数はTOEFLエッセイの3分の１程度なのですから前置きは不要です。また論じ方の説明や問題文の内容の繰り返しも要りません。1行目でストレートに言いたいことを書いてください。詳細はそのあとに書きます。そのほうが時間配分もしやすくなります。最後はできればまとめの1文をつけましょう。
☆要約問題は簡単な言葉、個性を見せる問題は精一杯の語彙で解答する
内容を問う問題（要約問題）は内容を理解していることを示すことが大切です。簡単な言葉でよいので理解したことを自分の言葉で表現しましょう。自分の経験・知識を使って答える問題の場合、経験・知識＝語彙なのですから出せるものは全て出しましょう。【簡単にまとめる／個性を発揮する】のメリハリをつけた解答にしましょう。
最後に： あれこれ心配するよりも少しでも多くの時間を準備に使いましょう。これだけやったんだから後は何とでもなれと思えるところまで準備すれば気持ちよく本番に望めます。
毎回熱心に授業を受け努力して力をつけてこられた今の状態を崩さず更に受験日までパワーアップするにはどうしたらよいか私なりに注意点を考えてみたので参考にしてください。
これから受験当日まで
☆過去問の解き直し： 正解しなかったもののみ、添削された答案や模範解答を見たあともう一度解きなおしましょう。
☆苦手分野のチェック： 苦手分野の問題は解くたびに落ち込むので試験直前には回避しがちですが、最もチェックが必要です。直前まで学び続ける姿勢を崩さないことです。今まで知らないでいた常識などを発見した場合、「こんなことも知らないのではだめだ。」と思わず、「テスト前に知ることができてよかった。」と考えるようにしましょう。やる気が出ないときは本番でその苦手分野が出題されて困っている自分を想像してみてください。その時のつらさを回避するために前もって苦手分野をチェックするのです。
受験当日 《当日の注意点ですが普段から注意して習慣にしておきましょう》
☆小手先の技術で切り抜けようとしない： 早稲田国際AO入試の筆記テストも基本的には英語のテストです。見られるのは英語の読解力と表現力及び国際政治・経済の知識です。実力を見られるのであって要領のよさではありません。要領よく解こうとするよりも、本文と問題を正確に読み取り、筆者の一番言いたいことと質問のポイントを理解することに集中しましょう。良い解答の第一歩はそこからであり、それができれば7割とれたも同然です。（もちろん反論や具体例などで重要でないところは流し読みするなどの時間の節約は大切ですが、これも内容を理解することによってどこを流せばよいかが分かるのですからまずは内容理解です。）また、解答欄が余っても余計なことは書かないようにしましょう。減点されかねません。うまく最後をまとめる練習は普段からしておきましょう。解くときの優先順位は １）理解 ２）内容 ３）量でよいと思います。
☆ポイントを先に書く： 普段やっていないのに本番でやってしまいそうなミスが出だし部分にこだわることです。筆記問題の解答ワード数はTOEFLエッセイの3分の１程度なのですから前置きは不要です。また論じ方の説明や問題文の内容の繰り返しも要りません。1行目でストレートに言いたいことを書いてください。詳細はそのあとに書きます。そのほうが時間配分もしやすくなります。最後はできればまとめの1文をつけましょう。
☆要約問題は簡単な言葉、個性を見せる問題は精一杯の語彙で解答する
内容を問う問題（要約問題）は内容を理解していることを示すことが大切です。簡単な言葉でよいので理解したことを自分の言葉で表現しましょう。自分の経験・知識を使って答える問題の場合、経験・知識＝語彙なのですから出せるものは全て出しましょう。【簡単にまとめる／個性を発揮する】のメリハリをつけた解答にしましょう。
最後に： あれこれ心配するよりも少しでも多くの時間を準備に使いましょう。これだけやったんだから後は何とでもなれと思えるところまで準備すれば気持ちよく本番に望めます。
Class Supplement (早稲田国際AO入試 Extra Questions)
☆Extra Questions:
What can we learn from the decline of the United States?
We can learn that the following phenomena are bad signs.
♦Too much government spending on military and war (Iraq and Afghanistan, War on Terror)
♦Huge national debt ($12 trillion)
♦Slow to start tackling environment and energy issues (the Kyoto Protocol, the fall of GM)
♦The extremely wide gap between the rich and the poor (The top 20 % earning almost 50% of the income generated in the U.S. / A leaked Citibank memo says the top 1% of households account for more than the bottom 95% of households put together; the decline of the middle class because of offshoring; loss of pension and houses because of financial crimes; lack of regulations on the financial, insurance, credit, and pharmaceutical companies)
♦Insufficient safety net (the healthcare system that serves the insurance companies)
♦Broken education (Although the Obama administration is restoring environment for real education, decades of neglect has had American children falling way behind in every category except for confidence; 4o million Americans cannot read and write over the 4th grade level, and 40 million can read but cannot comprehend what is written; decline of creativity)
♦Media propaganda (sponsored by large corporations; fear mongering, less serious issues than rather irrelevant issues; too much focus on fashion, celebrities, and entertainment)
♦Unfettered capitalism (corporations: profit-pursuing machines for shareholders, trying to make money from anything/anyone; competition: making people see each other as their opponents/enemies, not as their fellows, and dismiss those left behind)
♦Losing soft power: attack without a cause, civilian casualties, torture
1) To meet the needs of the extremely poor, we need only less than ( ) % of income of the rich world.
2) Why are the issues of the poor the issues of women?
1) one
2) a. Most of the poor, the illiterate, and HIV/AIDS patients are women. Therefore, helping poor women will directly reduce the number of the poor. b. Women use their extra money for the benefit of their family such as houses to shelter themselves from elements and education of their children, so that money spent to improve the lives of poor women will also improve the lives of the next generation.
For most people on earth, democracy is better than other systems. However, democracy does not always bring about good results. What do you think prevents it from working properly?
1) The consensus of the majority is not always right. (e.g. Hitler, the old Japanese military government, Iraq War)
2) It is lobbyists, who persuade politicians to vote for or repeal registrations, that actually pass the bills, and most of the time lobbyists are interest groups and enthusiastic activists who do not always represent the majority opinion. (e.g. pharmaceutical lobby)
3) Media propaganda controls public opinion. (e. g. Fox News, main media not reporting significant information)
Scientists are not monsters but decent people. However, science is not free from serious accidents, crimes, and scandals. Why do you think science sometimes go wrong?
Like other things in this world,
1) science follows the money, and funds are not always properly allocated because of lobbying.
2) pressure from big corporations or the government prevent them from doing the right thing.
3) scientists are human beings, too. Desire for fame and money, urges to win contests, reluctance to admit mistakes, or sympathy for the patient will sometimes drive scientists to lapses or bad decisions.
What can we learn from the decline of the United States?
We can learn that the following phenomena are bad signs.
♦Too much government spending on military and war (Iraq and Afghanistan, War on Terror)
♦Huge national debt ($12 trillion)
♦Slow to start tackling environment and energy issues (the Kyoto Protocol, the fall of GM)
♦The extremely wide gap between the rich and the poor (The top 20 % earning almost 50% of the income generated in the U.S. / A leaked Citibank memo says the top 1% of households account for more than the bottom 95% of households put together; the decline of the middle class because of offshoring; loss of pension and houses because of financial crimes; lack of regulations on the financial, insurance, credit, and pharmaceutical companies)
♦Insufficient safety net (the healthcare system that serves the insurance companies)
♦Broken education (Although the Obama administration is restoring environment for real education, decades of neglect has had American children falling way behind in every category except for confidence; 4o million Americans cannot read and write over the 4th grade level, and 40 million can read but cannot comprehend what is written; decline of creativity)
♦Media propaganda (sponsored by large corporations; fear mongering, less serious issues than rather irrelevant issues; too much focus on fashion, celebrities, and entertainment)
♦Unfettered capitalism (corporations: profit-pursuing machines for shareholders, trying to make money from anything/anyone; competition: making people see each other as their opponents/enemies, not as their fellows, and dismiss those left behind)
♦Losing soft power: attack without a cause, civilian casualties, torture
1) To meet the needs of the extremely poor, we need only less than ( ) % of income of the rich world.
2) Why are the issues of the poor the issues of women?
1) one
2) a. Most of the poor, the illiterate, and HIV/AIDS patients are women. Therefore, helping poor women will directly reduce the number of the poor. b. Women use their extra money for the benefit of their family such as houses to shelter themselves from elements and education of their children, so that money spent to improve the lives of poor women will also improve the lives of the next generation.
For most people on earth, democracy is better than other systems. However, democracy does not always bring about good results. What do you think prevents it from working properly?
1) The consensus of the majority is not always right. (e.g. Hitler, the old Japanese military government, Iraq War)
2) It is lobbyists, who persuade politicians to vote for or repeal registrations, that actually pass the bills, and most of the time lobbyists are interest groups and enthusiastic activists who do not always represent the majority opinion. (e.g. pharmaceutical lobby)
3) Media propaganda controls public opinion. (e. g. Fox News, main media not reporting significant information)
Scientists are not monsters but decent people. However, science is not free from serious accidents, crimes, and scandals. Why do you think science sometimes go wrong?
Like other things in this world,
1) science follows the money, and funds are not always properly allocated because of lobbying.
2) pressure from big corporations or the government prevent them from doing the right thing.
3) scientists are human beings, too. Desire for fame and money, urges to win contests, reluctance to admit mistakes, or sympathy for the patient will sometimes drive scientists to lapses or bad decisions.
2010年10月16日土曜日
Class Supplement (A Marvelous Victory)
打つ手がなくなるまではあきらめるべきではない。何も変わらないと思える状況が一気に変わるという事が歴史の中では何度もあった。世の中を良くしてゆくのに流血革命は必要ない。世の中を良くしたいと願う人々の小さな実行が多数集まることによってより良い社会が実現されてゆくのだ。そして未来が現在の積み重ねの先にあるという意味では現在を人間らしく生きること自体がすばらしい勝利なのだ。
A Marvelous Victory
In this world of war and injustice, how does a person manage to stay socially engaged, committed to the struggle, and remain healthy without burning out or becoming resigned or cynical?
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia in that most sluggish of semi feudal empires not only startled the most advanced imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II-the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die?
And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China renouncing its most fervently held ideas and institutions, making overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise, perplexing everyone.
No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening so quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be created in the newly independent nations, from the benign village socialism of Nyerere's Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin's adjacent Uganda. Spain became an astonishment. I recall a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade telling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism being overthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists, Communists, anarchists, everyone.
The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective spheres of influence and control, vying for military and political power. Yet they were unable to control events, even in those parts of the world considered to be their respective spheres of influence. The failure of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan, its decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most striking evidence that even the possession of the nuclear weapons does not guarantee domination over a determined population.
The United States has faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in Indochina, conducting the most brutal bombardment of a tiny peninsula in world history, and yet was forced to withdraw. In the headlines every day we see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over the presumably powerless, as in Bolivia and Brazil, where grassroots movements of workers and the poor have elected new presidents pledged to fight destructive corporate power.
Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it's clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience-whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just.
I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Wherever I go, I find such people, especially young people, in whom the future rests. And beyond the handful of activists there seem to be hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas. But they tend not to know of one another's existence, and so, while they persist, they do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing the boulder up the mountain. I try to tell each group that they are not alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power that can transform the world.
Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not being foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of competition and cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many-where people have behaved magnificently, it energizes us to act, and raises at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, City Lights Books
A Marvelous Victory
In this world of war and injustice, how does a person manage to stay socially engaged, committed to the struggle, and remain healthy without burning out or becoming resigned or cynical?
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia in that most sluggish of semi feudal empires not only startled the most advanced imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II-the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die?
And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China renouncing its most fervently held ideas and institutions, making overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise, perplexing everyone.
No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening so quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be created in the newly independent nations, from the benign village socialism of Nyerere's Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin's adjacent Uganda. Spain became an astonishment. I recall a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade telling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism being overthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists, Communists, anarchists, everyone.
The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective spheres of influence and control, vying for military and political power. Yet they were unable to control events, even in those parts of the world considered to be their respective spheres of influence. The failure of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan, its decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most striking evidence that even the possession of the nuclear weapons does not guarantee domination over a determined population.
The United States has faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in Indochina, conducting the most brutal bombardment of a tiny peninsula in world history, and yet was forced to withdraw. In the headlines every day we see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over the presumably powerless, as in Bolivia and Brazil, where grassroots movements of workers and the poor have elected new presidents pledged to fight destructive corporate power.
Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it's clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience-whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just.
I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Wherever I go, I find such people, especially young people, in whom the future rests. And beyond the handful of activists there seem to be hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas. But they tend not to know of one another's existence, and so, while they persist, they do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing the boulder up the mountain. I try to tell each group that they are not alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power that can transform the world.
Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not being foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of competition and cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many-where people have behaved magnificently, it energizes us to act, and raises at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, City Lights Books
2010年10月15日金曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
158. 2010/10/15 Woken up by some monotonous low frequency sound at around 1:30 a.m., repeatedly woken up by something like a shot in the head, hand and fingers when going back to sleep. Hands and fingers twitched without my intention. Felt as if I had a concussion when woke up at around 8:30. Last Sunday, I could not stand sleepiness and fell into sleep in the daytime. Between or near the end of the sleep, I suddenly became awake, opened my eyes, and clearly felt that my eyeballs moving in rhythm in time with the pulse I felt and had felt in sleep. The noises in my head, which usually sound like lines of electron flows, were making wavy sounds also in tune with the pulse. / Last week, I started taking trains to go to Shibuya for work on Thursday. Yesterday ―, this Thursday, I had a kind of return to nightmare of abusing crowd on the train, who come rushing unusually close to me in a bunch with strange evil shine in their eyes. I escaped the largest of them at Otemachi station from one car to the next, which was not crowded at all, which I used to experience until this spring and every day until last year. And before that, the next car, and the next and the next…, used to be full of the same kind of crowd many of whom with mobile phones between which and me they look with an expression of something like a sadistic joy. But this is on the better side of the scale of harassment thrown upon me. Over that past eight years or so, I have experienced more kinds of harassments than one could think of, including physical harassment, some of which I had had experienced on Tozai-line before but not everywhere every second every day like this eight years. It seemed 99.999…% of the people in Tokyo, probably in Japan and possibly all over the places in the world where mobile phones are used, had turned into demons.
2010年10月10日日曜日
Class Supplement (早稲田国際AO入試 Are Libraries Obsolete?)
Are Libraries Obsolete? 解答のポイント
主題： 図書館は電子情報の欠点を補完して情報への十分なアクセスを保証する民主主義の牙城なのでインターネットに取って代わられることはないだろう。
本文該当箇所 第１段落 Access to information is as critical component of any democracy and a lack of support for libraries will lead to a decrease in the number of libraries, fewer library services, a dearth of resources, and ultimately a lack of access to information. This may be good news for totalitarian regimes, but it is not good for people who prefer living in free countries. 情報へのアクセスは民主主義の重要な要素であり図書館への援助不足は図書館の数の減少、図書業務の減少、情報供給源の欠乏、そして最終的には情報へのアクセス不足へとつながるだろう。これは全体主義体制にとっては良い知らせかもしれないが自由主義国家に暮らすことを好む人々にとっては良くない。
問１ 現代社会において図書館が果たす機能は何でしょうか？
考え方 主題の「情報へのアクセスを保証し民主主義を守る」を押さえ、「情報へのアクセスの保証」を第２～５段落（インターネットの３つの欠点《①古い情報やローカルな情報がない ②信頼性が低い ③流動性が高い＝簡単に失われる》と図書館の利点の対比）を使って説明する。注 インターネット中心の書き方にならないようにする。
本文該当箇所 ①古い情報やローカルな情報 第２段落First, the Internet is relatively new and few web sites are even 10 years old yet. 第一にインターネットは比較的新しく設立後10年のサイトさえほとんどない。Libraries, of course, house this kind of information on microfiche format. 図書館はこのような情報をマイクロフィッシュ判で所蔵している。第３段落A similar problem would be encountered if trying to research the history of a particular institution―say a university. 特定の学校たとえばある大学の歴史を調査しようとする場合に同様の問題に遭遇するだろう。the most likely source would be the library archives. 最もありそうな情報源は図書館の書庫だ。②信頼性 第４段落search engines do not advise on the reliability of the information provided. 検索エンジンは提供される情報の信頼性に関して指導を行わない。 The books and resources in a library collection, however, have been selected by professionals who have knowledge and understanding of the resource. Library reference books, however, are carefully researched and selected by professionals which a commitment to acquiring reputable sources. しかし図書館収蔵物の情報資源は情報に関する知識と理解のある専門家が選んでいる。図書館の参考書は立派な情報源を入手することに専念している専門家たちが注意深く調査選別している。③流動性 第５段落It must also be kept in mind that information on the Internet is fluid. In other words, the information can disappear at any time. インターネット上の情報は流動的であることも念頭に置かねばならない。言い換えれば、情報がいつでも消える可能性があるのだ。While it is true that books may go out of print or book burnings may occur, this sort of losing information does not compare to the frequency, ease and extent of losing electronic information. 確かに本は絶版になるかもしれないし焚書が起こるかもしれないが、この種の情報喪失は電子情報消失の頻度や容易さ、範囲とは比べ物にならない。
解答のポイント例 Libraries are the stronghold of democracy which allows and ensures free access to full and reliable information in this digitized society. They preserve old or specific information that cannot be found on the Internet, and have reliable resources carefully selected by professionals. Also, paper books cannot be lost so easily as electric information is and they keep concrete evidence of information in ink and paper almost forever.
１． 問２ 政府はインターネット上の情報提供にどのようにかかわっていますか？
考え方 アメリカ政府の政府情報削除と中国政府のサイト弾圧の例が出てくるのでこれをまとめる。他に知っている例（イラン政府の国民に対する外部へのアクセス妨害や数カ国によるWikiLeaksへのアクセス禁止や掲載内容への批判など）があれば書く。
本文該当箇所 第５段落The U.S. government, for example, has been eliminating various web sites that preciously published governmental information such as statistical studies or reports by government agencies. 例えばアメリカ政府は政府機関による統計的研究や報告のような政府情報を以前公表していた様々なサイトを削除している。The government of China has railed against certain websites and blocked public access to them, thus restricting access to millions of computer users in that country. 中国政府はあるサイトを非難し公衆のアクセスをブロックして中国の何百万人ものコンピューターユーザーのアクセスを制限した。
解答のポイント例 Governments do not leave the Internet totally free and open. For some reasons, they eliminate web sites which provide governmental information, and they also limit access to the information relating to security or control. Some governments ban public access to or criticize certain web sites that they consider have inappropriate information, including the information of their brutal crackdown on their people or atrocities to other people, and others prevent their people from having contact with the outside world and acquiring or sending out information.
問３ 筆者の考えを述べている文を完成させるのに最適な語を下のリストから選び、次にインターネットに関する筆者の見方に賛成かどうかを述べてください。
この記事の筆者はインターネット上の情報は容易に得られるがあまり（ ）ではないと感じている。 広がっている 否定される 削除される 信頼される 提供される
考え方 第4段落から「信頼される」が答えであることが分かる。説明の具体例は情報源不明、変更・削除が容易、匿名性、Wikipediaへの悪ふざけや素人の参加による信頼性の低下などが考えられる。 解答のポイント例 The source of the information is unclear. / The information can be changed or deleted easily. / Anonymity allows people to exaggerate facts or make up false information. / Some play hoax on Wikipedia. / Not only professionals but also lay people participate in sharing information, which makes information on the Internet unreliable.
☆Extra Question: What can we learn from the decline of the United States?
We can learn that the following phenomena are bad signs.
♦Too much government spending on military and war (Iraq and Afghanistan, War on Terror)
♦Huge national debt ($12 trillion)
♦Slow to start tackling environment and energy issues (the Kyoto Protocol, the fall of GM)
♦The extremely wide gap between the rich and the poor (The top 20 % earning almost 50% of the income generated in the U.S. / A leaked Citibank memo says the top 1% of households account for more than the bottom 95% of households put together; the decline of the middle class because of offshoring; loss of pension and houses because of financial crimes; lack of regulations on the financial, insurance, credit, and pharmaceutical companies)
♦Insufficient safety net (the healthcare system that serves the insurance companies)
♦Broken education (Although the Obama administration is restoring environment for real education, decades of neglect has had American children falling way behind in every category except for confidence; 4o million Americans cannot read and write over the 4th grade level, and 40 million can read but cannot comprehend what is written; decline of creativity)
♦Media propaganda (sponsored by large corporations; fear mongering, less serious issues than rather irrelevant issues; too much focus on fashion, celebrities, and entertainment)
♦Unfettered capitalism (corporations: profit-pursuing machines for shareholders, trying to make money from anything/anyone; competition: making people see each other as their opponents/enemies, not as their fellows, and dismiss those left behind)
♦Losing soft power: attack without a cause, civilian casualties, torture
主題： 図書館は電子情報の欠点を補完して情報への十分なアクセスを保証する民主主義の牙城なのでインターネットに取って代わられることはないだろう。
本文該当箇所 第１段落 Access to information is as critical component of any democracy and a lack of support for libraries will lead to a decrease in the number of libraries, fewer library services, a dearth of resources, and ultimately a lack of access to information. This may be good news for totalitarian regimes, but it is not good for people who prefer living in free countries. 情報へのアクセスは民主主義の重要な要素であり図書館への援助不足は図書館の数の減少、図書業務の減少、情報供給源の欠乏、そして最終的には情報へのアクセス不足へとつながるだろう。これは全体主義体制にとっては良い知らせかもしれないが自由主義国家に暮らすことを好む人々にとっては良くない。
問１ 現代社会において図書館が果たす機能は何でしょうか？
考え方 主題の「情報へのアクセスを保証し民主主義を守る」を押さえ、「情報へのアクセスの保証」を第２～５段落（インターネットの３つの欠点《①古い情報やローカルな情報がない ②信頼性が低い ③流動性が高い＝簡単に失われる》と図書館の利点の対比）を使って説明する。注 インターネット中心の書き方にならないようにする。
本文該当箇所 ①古い情報やローカルな情報 第２段落First, the Internet is relatively new and few web sites are even 10 years old yet. 第一にインターネットは比較的新しく設立後10年のサイトさえほとんどない。Libraries, of course, house this kind of information on microfiche format. 図書館はこのような情報をマイクロフィッシュ判で所蔵している。第３段落A similar problem would be encountered if trying to research the history of a particular institution―say a university. 特定の学校たとえばある大学の歴史を調査しようとする場合に同様の問題に遭遇するだろう。the most likely source would be the library archives. 最もありそうな情報源は図書館の書庫だ。②信頼性 第４段落search engines do not advise on the reliability of the information provided. 検索エンジンは提供される情報の信頼性に関して指導を行わない。 The books and resources in a library collection, however, have been selected by professionals who have knowledge and understanding of the resource. Library reference books, however, are carefully researched and selected by professionals which a commitment to acquiring reputable sources. しかし図書館収蔵物の情報資源は情報に関する知識と理解のある専門家が選んでいる。図書館の参考書は立派な情報源を入手することに専念している専門家たちが注意深く調査選別している。③流動性 第５段落It must also be kept in mind that information on the Internet is fluid. In other words, the information can disappear at any time. インターネット上の情報は流動的であることも念頭に置かねばならない。言い換えれば、情報がいつでも消える可能性があるのだ。While it is true that books may go out of print or book burnings may occur, this sort of losing information does not compare to the frequency, ease and extent of losing electronic information. 確かに本は絶版になるかもしれないし焚書が起こるかもしれないが、この種の情報喪失は電子情報消失の頻度や容易さ、範囲とは比べ物にならない。
解答のポイント例 Libraries are the stronghold of democracy which allows and ensures free access to full and reliable information in this digitized society. They preserve old or specific information that cannot be found on the Internet, and have reliable resources carefully selected by professionals. Also, paper books cannot be lost so easily as electric information is and they keep concrete evidence of information in ink and paper almost forever.
１． 問２ 政府はインターネット上の情報提供にどのようにかかわっていますか？
考え方 アメリカ政府の政府情報削除と中国政府のサイト弾圧の例が出てくるのでこれをまとめる。他に知っている例（イラン政府の国民に対する外部へのアクセス妨害や数カ国によるWikiLeaksへのアクセス禁止や掲載内容への批判など）があれば書く。
本文該当箇所 第５段落The U.S. government, for example, has been eliminating various web sites that preciously published governmental information such as statistical studies or reports by government agencies. 例えばアメリカ政府は政府機関による統計的研究や報告のような政府情報を以前公表していた様々なサイトを削除している。The government of China has railed against certain websites and blocked public access to them, thus restricting access to millions of computer users in that country. 中国政府はあるサイトを非難し公衆のアクセスをブロックして中国の何百万人ものコンピューターユーザーのアクセスを制限した。
解答のポイント例 Governments do not leave the Internet totally free and open. For some reasons, they eliminate web sites which provide governmental information, and they also limit access to the information relating to security or control. Some governments ban public access to or criticize certain web sites that they consider have inappropriate information, including the information of their brutal crackdown on their people or atrocities to other people, and others prevent their people from having contact with the outside world and acquiring or sending out information.
問３ 筆者の考えを述べている文を完成させるのに最適な語を下のリストから選び、次にインターネットに関する筆者の見方に賛成かどうかを述べてください。
この記事の筆者はインターネット上の情報は容易に得られるがあまり（ ）ではないと感じている。 広がっている 否定される 削除される 信頼される 提供される
考え方 第4段落から「信頼される」が答えであることが分かる。説明の具体例は情報源不明、変更・削除が容易、匿名性、Wikipediaへの悪ふざけや素人の参加による信頼性の低下などが考えられる。 解答のポイント例 The source of the information is unclear. / The information can be changed or deleted easily. / Anonymity allows people to exaggerate facts or make up false information. / Some play hoax on Wikipedia. / Not only professionals but also lay people participate in sharing information, which makes information on the Internet unreliable.
☆Extra Question: What can we learn from the decline of the United States?
We can learn that the following phenomena are bad signs.
♦Too much government spending on military and war (Iraq and Afghanistan, War on Terror)
♦Huge national debt ($12 trillion)
♦Slow to start tackling environment and energy issues (the Kyoto Protocol, the fall of GM)
♦The extremely wide gap between the rich and the poor (The top 20 % earning almost 50% of the income generated in the U.S. / A leaked Citibank memo says the top 1% of households account for more than the bottom 95% of households put together; the decline of the middle class because of offshoring; loss of pension and houses because of financial crimes; lack of regulations on the financial, insurance, credit, and pharmaceutical companies)
♦Insufficient safety net (the healthcare system that serves the insurance companies)
♦Broken education (Although the Obama administration is restoring environment for real education, decades of neglect has had American children falling way behind in every category except for confidence; 4o million Americans cannot read and write over the 4th grade level, and 40 million can read but cannot comprehend what is written; decline of creativity)
♦Media propaganda (sponsored by large corporations; fear mongering, less serious issues than rather irrelevant issues; too much focus on fashion, celebrities, and entertainment)
♦Unfettered capitalism (corporations: profit-pursuing machines for shareholders, trying to make money from anything/anyone; competition: making people see each other as their opponents/enemies, not as their fellows, and dismiss those left behind)
♦Losing soft power: attack without a cause, civilian casualties, torture
2010年10月6日水曜日
Class Supplement (Happiness is ...)
GDPは経済の実情を正確に反映しているとは必ずしも言えず環境コストも計算に入っていないので、世界同時不況と気候変動への覚醒を機に見直しの必要性が呼びかけられている。現在、GDPに生活水準や環境コストを盛り込む考えもあるが、経済指標としての有用性への問題が懸念されるため、他の指標との併用が望ましいと考えられている。
元の記事： Happiness is ... (Newsweek)
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/16/should-we-tweak-gdp-to-measure-happiness.html
元の記事： Happiness is ... (Newsweek)
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/16/should-we-tweak-gdp-to-measure-happiness.html
Class Supplement (早稲田国際AO入試 The Climax of Humanity)
The Climax of Humanity 解答のポイント
主題： 21世紀は人口・経済・環境のバランスが課題であるが、環境コストの換算・導入を地道に行うことで環境に負担をかけずに経済発展し貧困問題を解決することができる。
本文該当箇所 第3段落 These three concurrent, intertwined transitions―demographic, economic, environmental―are what historians of the future will remember when they look back on our age. これら3つの同時で絡み合った推移（人口・経済・環境）が将来の歴史家が私たちの時代を振り返った時思い出すことだろう。第8段落 In recent years, economists and environmental scientists have come together to hang a price tag on nature’s benefits. 近年、経済学者と環境科学者が集合して環境の利得を換算してきた。 第9段落When the environment is properly accounted for, what is good for nature is often what is good for the economy and even for individual business sectors. 環境の適切な明細説明がなされれば、自然に良いことは経済や個人経営部門にとってさえしばしば良いことなのだ。第10段落 If decisions makers can get the framework right, the future of humanity will be secured by thousands of mundane decisions: how many babies people have, where they graze their cattle, how they insulate their houses. 政治家が枠組みをきちんとできれば人類の将来は、生む子供の数や牛に草を食ませる場所や家の断熱方法など何千ものありふれた決定によって救われるだろう。
問１ 文章と表１によれば以下の文は正しいでしょうか間違っているでしょうか？解答欄にTrueかFalseと書いて答を示してください。
a. 商品や業務に支払われる値段は一般に関連環境コストを含む。False
本文該当箇所 第7段落More broadly, the prices we pay for goods and services seldom include the associated environmental costs. より一般的には私たちが品物や業務に払う値段はめったに関連環境コストを含んでいない。(価格は環境コストをめったに含まない。)
b. 極貧の減少は世界の全ての地域で均一だ。False
本文該当箇所 表１ （減少度には地域差があり激増している地域もある。）
c. 増加率は減ったが世界人口は依然として増加している。True
本文該当箇所 第2段落After several centuries of faster-than-exponential growth, the world’s population is stabilizing. Judging from current trends, it will plateau at around nine billion people toward the middle of this century. 数世紀間の指数関数的以上の成長後、世界人口は安定しつつある。現在の傾向から判断すると、今世紀半ばにかけて約90億人で横ばいになるだろう。
(「 安定しつつある」＋「2050年ごろ停滞」= 安定傾向にあるがまだ増加中)
問２ この文章は「ビジネスは必ずしも自然の敵ではない」のであり、私たちは経済と環境の福利を査定する新しい方法が必要だと提案しています。
a. この文章で述べられた最近の方法は何ですか？
考え方 第8段落該当箇所を自分の言葉で言い換える。「価格に環境コストを含める」がどういう仕掛けなのかを説明する。注 b. の答え（この方法の有用性）と混ざらないようにする。
本文該当箇所 第8段落 In recent years, economists and environmental scientists have come together to hang a price tag on nature’s benefits. 近年、経済学者と環境科学者が集合して環境の利得を換算してきた。
解答のポイント例 the approach with which to assess and include environmental costs in prices / include damage that nature will have through economic activities―resource depletion, environmental destruction, etc.―in prices as environmental costs, and have producers and consumers pay for the damage 環境コストを算出して価格に含めるアプローチ。経済活動によって自然が受ける損害（資源減少、環境破壊等）を環境コストとして価格に加え、生産者と消費者に損害の支払いをさせる。
b. なぜこの方法を使う価値があるのですか？
考え方 環境コストを考慮しないことによる悪影響が改善されることを示す。知っている「経済活動による環境破壊・地元経済の崩壊」を例として使う。
本文該当箇所 第9段落When the environment is properly accounted for, what is good for nature is often what is good for the economy and even for individual business sectors. 環境の適切な明細説明がなされれば、自然に良いことはしばしば経済や個人経営部門にとってさえ良いことなのだ。
解答のポイント例 decrease of extreme poverty caused by environmental destruction (global warming, destruction of ecosystem, etc.) / prices will include collateral damage such as decline of fishery caused by overfishing or oil well development, famine caused by global warming, or increase of the number of cancer patients caused by the use of fertilizers and insecticides or radioactive waste disposal → businesses and producers will make efforts to lower environmental costs→nature and people’s lives will be protected→good for the future of humankind and economy in the end 環境破壊（温暖化・生態系破壊等）と環境破壊による極貧が減る。／乱獲や油田開発による漁業衰退、温暖化による飢饉、農薬使用や放射性物質廃棄による癌患者増加などの損害を環境コストとして価格に含めるので企業・生産者は環境コストを下げる努力をし、自然と人々の生活が守られ最終的には人類の将来・経済に良い。
c. アマゾンの熱帯雨林や別のあなたが選んだ関連例にこの方法を適用するときにどのような困難があると思いますか？
考え方 環境コストを計算する場合の問題点を想像する。環境コストの計算対象は｢アマゾン熱帯雨林｣のような自然自体なので流動的で未知数の要素を含んだものを数値化することの困難が考えられる。
解答のポイント例 The ecosystem is so complicated that it is difficult to estimate its economic value. If you wanted to make a precise calculation, you would have to count the number of all the species in it and investigate the relationships of these species such as food chain and symbiosis, and then simulate and quantify the character and degree of damage it would incur in case of its destruction. However, it would be almost impossible to do this with an ecosystem such as the Amazon tropical rainforest, which is vast, is full of unknown factors, and keeps changing. Therefore, patience and very careful research and assessment would be required in practicing such an approach. 生態系は非常に複雑なのでその経済価値を見積もるのは難しい。正確な計算をしたければ生息する種全てを数えて食物連鎖や共生のような種の関係を調べ、それから破壊された場合に生態系が被る損害の性格と程度をシミュレートし数値化しなければならないだろう。しかし広大で未知の要素が多く変化し続けるアマゾン熱帯雨林のような生態系を対象にこれをすることはほとんど不可能であり、このような方法の実践には根気と非常に注意深い調査と査定が要求されるだろう。
☆Extra Questions:
1) To meet the needs of the extremely poor, we need only less than ( ) % of income of the rich world.
2) Why are the issues of the poor the issues of women?
1) one
2) a. Most of the poor, the illiterate, and HIV/AIDS patients are women. Therefore, helping poor women will directly reduce the number of the poor. b. Women use their extra money for the benefit of their family such as houses to shelter themselves from elements and education of their children, so that money spent to improve the lives of poor women will also improve the lives of the next generation.
主題： 21世紀は人口・経済・環境のバランスが課題であるが、環境コストの換算・導入を地道に行うことで環境に負担をかけずに経済発展し貧困問題を解決することができる。
本文該当箇所 第3段落 These three concurrent, intertwined transitions―demographic, economic, environmental―are what historians of the future will remember when they look back on our age. これら3つの同時で絡み合った推移（人口・経済・環境）が将来の歴史家が私たちの時代を振り返った時思い出すことだろう。第8段落 In recent years, economists and environmental scientists have come together to hang a price tag on nature’s benefits. 近年、経済学者と環境科学者が集合して環境の利得を換算してきた。 第9段落When the environment is properly accounted for, what is good for nature is often what is good for the economy and even for individual business sectors. 環境の適切な明細説明がなされれば、自然に良いことは経済や個人経営部門にとってさえしばしば良いことなのだ。第10段落 If decisions makers can get the framework right, the future of humanity will be secured by thousands of mundane decisions: how many babies people have, where they graze their cattle, how they insulate their houses. 政治家が枠組みをきちんとできれば人類の将来は、生む子供の数や牛に草を食ませる場所や家の断熱方法など何千ものありふれた決定によって救われるだろう。
問１ 文章と表１によれば以下の文は正しいでしょうか間違っているでしょうか？解答欄にTrueかFalseと書いて答を示してください。
a. 商品や業務に支払われる値段は一般に関連環境コストを含む。False
本文該当箇所 第7段落More broadly, the prices we pay for goods and services seldom include the associated environmental costs. より一般的には私たちが品物や業務に払う値段はめったに関連環境コストを含んでいない。(価格は環境コストをめったに含まない。)
b. 極貧の減少は世界の全ての地域で均一だ。False
本文該当箇所 表１ （減少度には地域差があり激増している地域もある。）
c. 増加率は減ったが世界人口は依然として増加している。True
本文該当箇所 第2段落After several centuries of faster-than-exponential growth, the world’s population is stabilizing. Judging from current trends, it will plateau at around nine billion people toward the middle of this century. 数世紀間の指数関数的以上の成長後、世界人口は安定しつつある。現在の傾向から判断すると、今世紀半ばにかけて約90億人で横ばいになるだろう。
(「 安定しつつある」＋「2050年ごろ停滞」= 安定傾向にあるがまだ増加中)
問２ この文章は「ビジネスは必ずしも自然の敵ではない」のであり、私たちは経済と環境の福利を査定する新しい方法が必要だと提案しています。
a. この文章で述べられた最近の方法は何ですか？
考え方 第8段落該当箇所を自分の言葉で言い換える。「価格に環境コストを含める」がどういう仕掛けなのかを説明する。注 b. の答え（この方法の有用性）と混ざらないようにする。
本文該当箇所 第8段落 In recent years, economists and environmental scientists have come together to hang a price tag on nature’s benefits. 近年、経済学者と環境科学者が集合して環境の利得を換算してきた。
解答のポイント例 the approach with which to assess and include environmental costs in prices / include damage that nature will have through economic activities―resource depletion, environmental destruction, etc.―in prices as environmental costs, and have producers and consumers pay for the damage 環境コストを算出して価格に含めるアプローチ。経済活動によって自然が受ける損害（資源減少、環境破壊等）を環境コストとして価格に加え、生産者と消費者に損害の支払いをさせる。
b. なぜこの方法を使う価値があるのですか？
考え方 環境コストを考慮しないことによる悪影響が改善されることを示す。知っている「経済活動による環境破壊・地元経済の崩壊」を例として使う。
本文該当箇所 第9段落When the environment is properly accounted for, what is good for nature is often what is good for the economy and even for individual business sectors. 環境の適切な明細説明がなされれば、自然に良いことはしばしば経済や個人経営部門にとってさえ良いことなのだ。
解答のポイント例 decrease of extreme poverty caused by environmental destruction (global warming, destruction of ecosystem, etc.) / prices will include collateral damage such as decline of fishery caused by overfishing or oil well development, famine caused by global warming, or increase of the number of cancer patients caused by the use of fertilizers and insecticides or radioactive waste disposal → businesses and producers will make efforts to lower environmental costs→nature and people’s lives will be protected→good for the future of humankind and economy in the end 環境破壊（温暖化・生態系破壊等）と環境破壊による極貧が減る。／乱獲や油田開発による漁業衰退、温暖化による飢饉、農薬使用や放射性物質廃棄による癌患者増加などの損害を環境コストとして価格に含めるので企業・生産者は環境コストを下げる努力をし、自然と人々の生活が守られ最終的には人類の将来・経済に良い。
c. アマゾンの熱帯雨林や別のあなたが選んだ関連例にこの方法を適用するときにどのような困難があると思いますか？
考え方 環境コストを計算する場合の問題点を想像する。環境コストの計算対象は｢アマゾン熱帯雨林｣のような自然自体なので流動的で未知数の要素を含んだものを数値化することの困難が考えられる。
解答のポイント例 The ecosystem is so complicated that it is difficult to estimate its economic value. If you wanted to make a precise calculation, you would have to count the number of all the species in it and investigate the relationships of these species such as food chain and symbiosis, and then simulate and quantify the character and degree of damage it would incur in case of its destruction. However, it would be almost impossible to do this with an ecosystem such as the Amazon tropical rainforest, which is vast, is full of unknown factors, and keeps changing. Therefore, patience and very careful research and assessment would be required in practicing such an approach. 生態系は非常に複雑なのでその経済価値を見積もるのは難しい。正確な計算をしたければ生息する種全てを数えて食物連鎖や共生のような種の関係を調べ、それから破壊された場合に生態系が被る損害の性格と程度をシミュレートし数値化しなければならないだろう。しかし広大で未知の要素が多く変化し続けるアマゾン熱帯雨林のような生態系を対象にこれをすることはほとんど不可能であり、このような方法の実践には根気と非常に注意深い調査と査定が要求されるだろう。
☆Extra Questions:
1) To meet the needs of the extremely poor, we need only less than ( ) % of income of the rich world.
2) Why are the issues of the poor the issues of women?
1) one
2) a. Most of the poor, the illiterate, and HIV/AIDS patients are women. Therefore, helping poor women will directly reduce the number of the poor. b. Women use their extra money for the benefit of their family such as houses to shelter themselves from elements and education of their children, so that money spent to improve the lives of poor women will also improve the lives of the next generation.
2010年10月5日火曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
157. 2010/10/05 Over the several days, I think electric shocks have been lighter and I have been having longer sleeping hours, although sudden strong convulsions without an electric shock in odd places of my body such as in the thigh or in the middle of the stomach happened every night even when I was conscious. Also, early this morning, again the same kind of pulses that came to my eye balls came again. Unlike the ones last time, which had some heat, the one this time had lights. It was as if the flush light on top of a police car was placed right outside of my eye lids. The pulse and the light synchronize and became stronger and stronger until I got up. It subsided in about ten seconds. I have been feeling pricks in the fingers.
2010年10月3日日曜日
Class Supplement (What is Really Human?)
心理学実験の被験者の多くはWEIRD（西洋人、高学歴、先進国・富裕層・民主主義圏出身者）であり、その実験結果は人類全体の心理的傾向を表しているとは言えない場合がある。
元の記事： What is Really Human? (Newsweek)
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/23/what-s-really-human.html
元の記事： What is Really Human? (Newsweek)
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/23/what-s-really-human.html
2010年10月2日土曜日
Class Supplement (Will computers make books unnecessary?)
Consider the following statement. Computers can provide all the information that once could be found only in books, and therefore, it will not be long before electronic technology makes books unnecessary. Do you agree or disagree with this idea?
Essay for Ideas and Expressions:
I do not have the impression that books will soon become antiques that you seldom see in your daily lives, at least in lives of people who read.
Technically, computers and electronic readers can replace books in the near future. In terms of information search, it is usually much more efficient to use computers than it is to go to the library or subscribe to a paper newspaper or two; books that purely provide information such as dictionaries and encyclopedias have almost gone extinct in our daily lives. The screen of Kindle, the electronic reader, is pretty close to the surface of book pages and iPad allows flipping. It might not be long before functions for flipping through, underlining, or writing in are added. Ultimately, the difference will be literally either paper or electric. And I think here is the answer to this question. Paper books will not become totally unnecessary because they exist in the non-virtual world.
First, libraries will keep paper books even though they have been digitizing as many books as possible over decades. Paper books are important resources because of their feature as tangible objects that are ready to be read any time if you just pick them up and open them. Computers need electricity. For fear of blackouts, cyber-terrorism, or accidents that will disable access to or cause damage on digital archive, hard copies will always be kept in libraries and in any archive that preserves important information. Paper books to human knowledge will be what bankbooks are to our accounts. No one would say that bankbooks are unnecessary.
In private libraries, books might gradually disappear but will never be “unnecessary.” Digital books occupy no space and this is attractive for most of us, who do not live in a mansion. Therefore, natural selection, in fact the owner’s selection, of books in our bookshelves which is always at work will be accelerated because more and more cheaper digitalized versions will be available. But I think some books will remain, those books that you have shared some experiences with over years and have become inseparable. They are in the shelf as proof of your life itself. It is hard to imagine readers throwing away their favorite books and downloading kindle books of the same titles. I do not think they will no matter how small apartments they live in. And some of their books will establish the same kind of relationship with the next owners after their death, and this will be repeated until they are worn out and naturally perish. It would take long for all the paper books to disappear this way, and they will just disappear, treasured by someone till the last moment. Therefore, paper books will never become unnecessary.
The substantial presence of books will be necessary in a digitized society. In archives, paper books will be preserved forever as the originals. In our daily lives, good books will always be loved and needed by their owners until someday they are not available in print, and probably some special books such as the Bible, the Koran or Bruce Springsteen’s biography, whose existence is indispensable for many people, will always be in demand.
Essay for Ideas and Expressions:
I do not have the impression that books will soon become antiques that you seldom see in your daily lives, at least in lives of people who read.
Technically, computers and electronic readers can replace books in the near future. In terms of information search, it is usually much more efficient to use computers than it is to go to the library or subscribe to a paper newspaper or two; books that purely provide information such as dictionaries and encyclopedias have almost gone extinct in our daily lives. The screen of Kindle, the electronic reader, is pretty close to the surface of book pages and iPad allows flipping. It might not be long before functions for flipping through, underlining, or writing in are added. Ultimately, the difference will be literally either paper or electric. And I think here is the answer to this question. Paper books will not become totally unnecessary because they exist in the non-virtual world.
First, libraries will keep paper books even though they have been digitizing as many books as possible over decades. Paper books are important resources because of their feature as tangible objects that are ready to be read any time if you just pick them up and open them. Computers need electricity. For fear of blackouts, cyber-terrorism, or accidents that will disable access to or cause damage on digital archive, hard copies will always be kept in libraries and in any archive that preserves important information. Paper books to human knowledge will be what bankbooks are to our accounts. No one would say that bankbooks are unnecessary.
In private libraries, books might gradually disappear but will never be “unnecessary.” Digital books occupy no space and this is attractive for most of us, who do not live in a mansion. Therefore, natural selection, in fact the owner’s selection, of books in our bookshelves which is always at work will be accelerated because more and more cheaper digitalized versions will be available. But I think some books will remain, those books that you have shared some experiences with over years and have become inseparable. They are in the shelf as proof of your life itself. It is hard to imagine readers throwing away their favorite books and downloading kindle books of the same titles. I do not think they will no matter how small apartments they live in. And some of their books will establish the same kind of relationship with the next owners after their death, and this will be repeated until they are worn out and naturally perish. It would take long for all the paper books to disappear this way, and they will just disappear, treasured by someone till the last moment. Therefore, paper books will never become unnecessary.
The substantial presence of books will be necessary in a digitized society. In archives, paper books will be preserved forever as the originals. In our daily lives, good books will always be loved and needed by their owners until someday they are not available in print, and probably some special books such as the Bible, the Koran or Bruce Springsteen’s biography, whose existence is indispensable for many people, will always be in demand.
2010年10月1日金曜日
Supersonic/Electronic weapon and long term harassment for unknown reasons by a large indefinite number of people
155. Things had not changed much until last night, although I started talking to the ones who I believe are behind the wall. I say things like, “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” “Go ahead,” or “I would rather you hit around here, the spot in my stiff shoulder.” For two nights, the “assault” seemed lighter. But last night, my withering words did not work and strong beams came into my head and legs when was falling asleep, and when I was fast asleep, suddenly my eyeballs and space around them started feeling strong wave-like pulses which became stronger and stronger until I woke up and got up, shouting, “Cut it out!” The wave-like pulse subsided in ten seconds or so. When I woke up in the morning around nine―I wrote last night but actually I went to bed around two a.m. today―I felt dizzy and felt creepy ticklishness in the veins in my legs and lower abdomen. My eyes seem intact.
I found another URL that seems to be relevant to my problem: Directed Stick Radiator
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5940347.html
156. Last night, when I got in my bed, I covered myself with a sheet of insulator coated with thin metallic layer, which is supposed to be placed under a rug. In ten seconds, the electric shock started coming into my head from Room 202. I folded the sheet into a quarter, and put it around my head. A big shock came from under my head. I put one corner of the sheet under my head. Shocks started coming from all sides, stinging all over my body incessantly. I felt as if I had my legs stung by needles. One hit my cheek hard. I gave up and took off the sheet. Beams stopped. I read articles for a while, and slept. I think I suffered shocks into my head while I was falling asleep. Woke up around 5:30 with a video game like noise. Heard voices of men in Rooms 202 and 204. Studied for a while and went to seep with earmuffs. Woke up around 9:00. Felt dizzy. Needle-like pain kept coming back in the lower parts of my legs all day.
I found another URL that seems to be relevant to my problem: Directed Stick Radiator
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5940347.html
156. Last night, when I got in my bed, I covered myself with a sheet of insulator coated with thin metallic layer, which is supposed to be placed under a rug. In ten seconds, the electric shock started coming into my head from Room 202. I folded the sheet into a quarter, and put it around my head. A big shock came from under my head. I put one corner of the sheet under my head. Shocks started coming from all sides, stinging all over my body incessantly. I felt as if I had my legs stung by needles. One hit my cheek hard. I gave up and took off the sheet. Beams stopped. I read articles for a while, and slept. I think I suffered shocks into my head while I was falling asleep. Woke up around 5:30 with a video game like noise. Heard voices of men in Rooms 202 and 204. Studied for a while and went to seep with earmuffs. Woke up around 9:00. Felt dizzy. Needle-like pain kept coming back in the lower parts of my legs all day.
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