Do you like Oasis ? They are super rock band in U.K. They are very famous for a arrogant rock bank by claiming by themselves that they are the greatest rock band next to the Beatles in U.K. I used to listen musics of Oasis when I was a high school student. Oasis was very popular in 90s, so teenagers would not know this great band. At that time, internet actually existed but internet environment was not available in my home, ways to check musics of Oasis are to check music magazines, to go to music shops where I could check new release musics for free, and to watch music TV shows. In 90s, available media was only CD, so I had to rental it or buy it and burned it into MD (Mini Disc). At the time it took more than one our to get to a high school and I used to listen Oasis or foreign musics. I did not understand lyrics in English, but it did not matter as long as music rhythm was attractive. There days, diffuser.com announced 10 best Oasis songs on their online page. I do not know how 10 songs were determined, but I agree 50% on a list of them. Mismatch always exists in anything because everyone has own preference. In the following, I tried to link to videos of them with Youtube for you guys who want to check musics. When I watched videos and listened them, I was very surprised to be able to understand lyrics. I felt my English level growth. 10. D`You Know What I Mean ?
Japanese people have enjoyed it once at least for sure. The picture below is hot spring which I went last December when I went back to Japan.
A few weeks before, my wife found hot spring place at the central California where not every room, but each room has own hot tab of sulfur based hot spring. So we can enjoy own hot spring anytime except from midnight to early morning. It had been almost more that 10 months since I took a bath when I went back to Japan last new year. Although some people knows, Japanese people usually take a bath everyday and put your body in hot water to relax your body. It's one of our customs and culture. That's why we wanted to there. So if you look at a bath tube in Japan, it is deeper and bigger than that of U.S. in order to fill hot water. If you go to Japan, it's easily find hot spring place almos all around Japan country, especially at mountain side. Even in the central Tokyo, hot spring is available, but people do not desire it, because what people desire hot spring for is usually not only hot spring its self but also beautiful scenery actually. In addition to that, local food is available and it is usually included in a price which is one of interesting points in hot spring hotel. We actually went to the Sycamore mineral hot spring in San Luis Obispo at the central California. When I made a reservation, which was a few week before the our stay, the day of the stay was Saturday, its price was around $240 for each room. At first, I thought it was really expensive because it was the price without dinner and breakfast in the following day. They are usually included in a price in Japan. However, we wanted to take hot spring, so we did not have a coice. San Luis Obispo is located to South of San Jose, so there are mainly two ways to get there. One of them is to take HWY 101 which is almost straight road all the way, and second one is to take HWY 1 which is a road along pacific coast, called Big sur. Unfortunately, the day of stay was rainy day, but when I looked at the real time rain map before I left home, there was no rainy cloud around the sea coast, although it was raining around my apartment. Actually I decided to take HWY 1 while hoping that it was fine weather there. But, fortunately it was foggy situation there without rain. I could say I could enjoy 50% of Big sur. Afte taking late lunch at Morro bay, we got the hot spring place. When I opened my door of my car, I felt a little bit of sulfur smell which reminded me of coming to hot spring, which I felt every time when I visit hot spring places in Japan. After completing check in, I got keys of my room and headed for the room. When I open the door of the gate of our room, there is a patio with own plastic bath tub. When I looked it at the first time, I was a little bit disappointed at the looking from Japanese hot spring point of view because authentic bath tub is supposed to be made from wood. At the same time, I accepted that this is American style to maximize functionalities in order to hot spring. The bath tub was empty so I had to put hot spring water by myself to tune tap, which takes more that 30 mins to fill the bath tub at 90% full. Hot spring water its self was very good and I actually tried twice at the night and the morning respectively. Totally, it was very good quality and situation where each room has own bath tub, when I consider the history of American hot spring. It would be less than 200 years, maybe. It still has huge potential to develop own hot spring culture. I'm used to Japanese hot spring but I do not mean that American hot spring culture should be Japanese one.
Do you have a account of Facebook, you might have it with 16% possibility. According to the wikipedia, a number of active users seems to be one billion. It's almost one sixth of the population of the earth. That's amazing number which I have ever heard of.
I just started Facebook a few weeks ago because many my friends recommended me to create an account to keep in touch with each other. However I realized that Facebook is very addictive for me, immediately after I created my account. Facebook shows you a lot of possible your friend in your homepage by analyzing your email account which you tell to Facebook and by analyzing through friends of your friends. Naturally, human being has curious about what our friends are doing right now, and needs attention to show something own happening. Facebook is well taking advantage of this personality of human. So there seems to be a word of "Facebook addiction", in which people always consider facebook whenever it is and wherever you are. People with this addiction starts a day by checking own facebook immediately afte waking up and end the day by checking it again to see if there is updates of friends. The reason why I felt that it is addictive is that I have similar experience once when I was a university student in Japan. At that time, a domestic SNS called Mixi was very popular, in which we could keep in touch. The concept was very similar with Facebook actually, although Facebook advances in terms of technology though. Everyone tell own stories in the site, and share pictures. Everyone spent much time on it by using PC and own mobile phone. Right now, its popularity of active users is decreasing rather being stagnent because many people is moving to Facebook since it has started its service in Japan. What I am feeling is that human being is a creature which is easily to get bored of anything, so if something new concept better than Facebook comes out, then people would move to it easily by throwing away old one. I would not come up with what's gonna come next though. For example, it is very good example that many peoples moved to Facebook from Myspace which used to be popular as SNS in the united states. One of my friends told me that I have to be careful about Facebook in terms of safety because we are supposed to create an account with name, but it is easy to disguise other persones and some peoples use it for own bad purposes. Is Facebook dominating SND industries ? When we look back any industries, a situation is always that a lof companies compete each other, and if one company can go ahead, then it dominate the market. For example, let's look at the CPU industry, at first, many companies were struggling but Intel can win finally right now. I'm thinking that the same thing is happening at the SNS industry, os Facebook would continue to dominate the market in a few years, no matter how its share decreases. However, I'm not sure about this a few years later, there would be destructive innovation like Toyota Purius which would destroy its own gasoline car finally.
Early this November, one of my friend visited me from Japan. He is 2 years older senior to me, and we belonged to a same research group when I was in a university for my physics master degree. He is one of person around me to go PhD course and make a living in the theoretical physicist, although many peoples including me find a job in companies afte graduating a university. Our group research subject was to investigate low temperature condensed matter physics theoretically by using theory of quantum mechanics. The subject is rare to hear for those who do not know much about physics, so one of famous phenomenon in this domain is superconductivity. Superconductivity is situation where electrical DC resistance is zero. Its resulting famous phenomenon is Meissner effect in which magnetic material can levitiate in the air. Physical mechanics were explained macroscopically by BCS theory.
When I joined the group, I had to decide what to research by myself. Therefore since I joined, I checked many online journals in order to find it. A important think which I was thinking at the time was that it's is important to find research subjects which even younger master degree researcher could make research papers. What I was thinking at early age was to be able to research something about gravitational space or microscopic world theoretically, but what I noticed when I grew up was that it would takes much time by following established theories from early 1900s and its subject is very interesting for everyone, so there are so many competitors in the world. I think that people can naturally think what is the space like, how big our univers is, what we can see at the edge of world, what is there if we can loop at microscopic world, and what microscopic materials consist of us. At the time when I chose research group for master degree, super string theory was famous to investigate extreme super microscopic world by thinking that one string consists of world. Depending vibration modes of string, string can be seen something different. I have tried to go over the theory, but it looks almost mathematics and there is no way to verify it because a facility with size of univers is said to be necessary. I gave up to go the direction immediately after realizing how difficult it is to be good at the domain and how much long time it takes to learn it. That's why I chose the condensed matter physics group because theoretical research results can be verified by experimental physicists relatively much easier than it is in the superstring theory. Let me go back to the my research subject, I chose spin hall effect because I felt that this subject looked early stage to be researched theoretically and experimentally. This effect is generally saying that electronic spin can be controlled by electrical field. In our electrical devices, electron its self moving is playing important role to conduct current. In the spin hall effect, electron spin can play important role but it ideally doesn't consume power so it is really ideal devices in terms of industry inovation for low power world. This subject was very attractive in the future and I was thinking to go to PhD course but I changed my mind and gave up it after writing one paper because I gradually came to feel that working as a researcher is not appropriate job for me and I came to lose my interest for it. After all, I found a jobs in a semiconductor company. When I met him early November, it was good weather luckily even though it becomes rainy season. So I took him to Napa and San Francisco. On the way to Napa, we talked a lot while recalling past time and exchanged current situations each others and or our common friends. What I was surprised at was that he said to me that the subject which I was involved is becoming popular right now and it is expanding toward many domain. For example, some researchers work on it to organize mathematical foundation. Some researchers work on applying it to real devices. I was really glad to hear that because I can confirm that my intuitive selection was right at the time. I should follow my intuition for future.
Wikipedia for superconductivity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity
Is there any relationship between memory retention and alcohol ? Recently, I'm thinking about this question internally, because I am feeling that I'm gradually losing memory retention of remember something when I compare it to my past memory retention when I was small. For example, It sometimes take a little bit longer time to recall names of restaurants which I do not go to recently.
I'm suer that aging has impact on it. Generally, it is well known that production of human brain cells decrease after 20 years old, and its decrease is definitely relevant with less memory ability. But, how about alcohol ? I'm a heavy drinker of beer, so I'm concerning how alcohol affect human ability of remember something, memory retention. I have heard of news that alcohol certainly affect memory ability. I have a shocking experience recently when I did a tramp game. One month ago, I went to Sausalito with my friend who was visiting the bay are, and I bought one set of tramp because it looks nice with the golden gate bridge picture on each of card and I did not have a tramp set. When I went back home, I asked my wife to play a tramp game together over beer. She agreed willingly because it was long time since last time of playing a tramp games because tramp games in japan are for teenager and children at home. After getting adult, people don't do this so often because adult people have a lot to enjoy other than tramp games. So we played concentration at first because I wanted to do and I had confidence of it because I used to be a strong gamer of it. After starting the game, I immediately realized that something was wrong because I could not make it. Specifically, I could not remember cards as much as I could used to do when I was small. This was really shock experience for me because I have confidence of not only concentration game but also remembering something. I know a short term effect of alcohol impact on memory as I have experienced it so far when I drunk much. I don't know however a long term effect of it. Is what I experienced at the game a long term effect of losing memory ? According to the new linked below, it seems to be verified scientifically that alcohol affect on impair of memory. Do I need to try to drink beer less ? Sure, I should do it in order to keep my memory ability because I feel once I lose memory ability, it would never come back. Alcohol impact on the memory http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2223136/Two-glasses-wine-day-nearly-HALVE-number-brain-cells-produce.html
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(game)
