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Greenwood's old friend, Ron living in Manhattan Beach and Greenwood living in Seven Mile Beach has been exchanging their views on various aspects of the world through email over more than 6 years. With the permission of Ron, a record of mails exchanged in 2001 was compiled in chronological order. The same records of 2002 will follow when available.

Our family collection of Jazz is very humble. It is a set of 10 CDs. This is what my wife has purchased as an album. It contains briefing on each music. Among them, I like “As time goes by” best. It was used in old movie called “Casa Branca” made in 1942. My son is an enthusiastic fan of Jazz. He has huge collection of his own taste. When he was a student he was a member of a Rock Group. I hope Ken Burns’s documentary film is broadcasted here sometime.

Only my son joined family gathering, in New Years Holiday. My daughter was in London to meet her boy friend now back in London.

Mr. Greenspan is doing his best. Regardless his effort our economy is becoming worse. A professor in Kyoto University published a very pessimistic view on the future of Japanese economy. According to him, any option, which Japanese Government can take, results in rapid decline of GNP in 2005. Main reason is the Government spending in the last 5 years to save us from liquidity trap. Very few people agree on his view here.

The economy is more and more on people's minds. Krugman has a series of informative columns over the last two weeks. In California (and for Krugman) the electricity crunch is also a dominant theme.

Krugman neatly ties the two problems together in his column of Dec 31st - "Real Reality's Revenge". Basically he sees that the over-investment in last year's "New Economy" helped investors ignore the growing need for extra power generation, so that a severe capacity shortage developed. This has been compounded by the ill-designed Deregulation of the California industry, which actually rewarded power generating companies for underinvesting.

Of course, he can crow about his opinion, as he was one of the few commentators who dared to expose the bubble nature of last year's boom. This time, he is surprisingly cautious in commenting on whether the market has gone from bubble to panic.

One of the surprising things here is that most expert commentary has taken the position that this is a momentary bear market, which will soon end. On the other hand, the market itself seems to be continuing rapidly downwards (in Blue chips as well as in the Nasdaq market). I myself have moved some of my portfolio into money markets and out of Growth Funds). In just one of his columns (27th December) Krugman admits that it is possible that the US market MIGHT follow the Japanese model but believes this will not happen. I hope he is right, since there still seems no way out of the problems in Japan. (K, of course, still believes in his "radical" cures). I certainly agree with him in that column - seeing the main risk to be on the political side, where the Bush administration may be able to pass huge tax cuts and undermine the country's fiscal good health.

If you've not seen them recently, I recommend his columns as the most enlightened discussion on these worrying topics.

Your visit to Mt. Echingo Komagatake looked very arduous. As you say, it is very beautiful and I can understand the motive for going there. Its surprising that a 2000m peak should take so long, since the slopes seem fairly gentle. Perhaps the horizontal distances were large.

Tomorrow, the first of Ken Burns' programs will be broadcast. I'll tape it so I get the music that's supposed to be there. Most critical comment has been very positive, but there are some reservations here and there. I'd also like to hear your son's opinion when it is eventually broadcast there. He is somewhat rare in being a Rock musician who is also a Jazz fan. My sons have very little interest in Jazz, mostly confined to the Blues which is basic to both Jazz and Rock.

I have read all Prof. Krugman's articles in the last few weeks. I fully agree on his view. In addition, I also read the latest article on 10th January. In this new article, he said, "... almost all economists now agree with the position that monetary policy, not fiscal policy, is the tool of choice for fighting recessions. " I think, on this point, Japan failed to fight recession. Our government has to rely on fiscal policy only. Because Bank of Japan refused to apply monetary policy. It is interesting to see how Bush maneuvers US from now on.

As a man who entirely spent his life in energy industry, "revenge of smoke stack industry" also pleased me. Any brain could not survive without stomach. Californian case is a proof of ill designed free market goes wrong way. We should be prepared to the fact that it takes some time for feedback control by market mechanism reaches stable condition.

My last mountain climbing to Echigo-Komagatake pushed me to the extreme of fatigue. There had been three reasons. Firstly, my weight was too heavy (70kg) at that time. Secondly, I had to carry heavy gear for overnight stay and suitable for winter season. Thirdly, long up and down path along the ridge.

His favorite music is Soul and Jazz, not Lock.. I miss understood him. He specially likes Herbie Hancock and Bernard Purdie,

When he was a college student, he was a member of a band mainly paying Soul Music like D. Angelo and Marvin Gaye. His part was basic guitar. He has no knowledge when Ken Burns's documentary on Jazz will be broadcasted here. He says only NHK can take such a long 18 hours series.

I am attaching a column from the LA Times yesterday. Its by Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor during the first half of the Clinton Administration. Later in that administration, after the Republicans took over the Congress, Clinton moved a long way to the right, politically. This alienated many of his liberal supporters, including Reich. Reich's views are considerably further to the left than Paul Krugman and he is a bit shrill.

According to Reich in the article, Greenspan threatened Clinton into balancing the budget. Having watched and listened to Greenspan I believe what he said was more like; "The budget deficit is so large and growing that the only way I can hold down inflation is to increase interest rates". I also disagree with him about the average American not benefiting from the Clinton years. Record low unemployment and significant reductions in poverty and disparity of income are part of why most Americans stopped worrying about the economy (as he acknowledges).

It's significant that such a liberal economist as Krugman has bought Greenspan's version of this relationship. Reich is seen nowadays as something of a left winger; I can understand why he became increasingly unpopular with Clinton.

However, it seems both he and Krugman (and I) believe that the Bush Administration will push ahead with their massive tax cut for the same reason that Reagan did - to cut taxes for their supporters. All the discussion about the economy is so much window dressing. It'll be interesting to see how much mischief he can get through the Congress.

Although widely respected, Greenspan is constantly criticized - either for doing too much or too little. Having second-guessing critics attack him from both sides hardly helps his judgment.

Continuing with my Control System analogy, I would say that last year he moved too slowly and cautiously at first (1/4% increase in interest rates at a time), and the economy continued overheating. He kept on throttling back, finally increasing to a 1/2% change. This overcompensated and we are now dropping too quickly. This year he seems to have learned from last time, and has responded with a 1/2% change initially. This is perfectly in line with a well tuned control system, where the initial response is large, followed by smaller "valve" position changes. We still need some faster-acting, perhaps automatic, cascade slave control; I'm afraid I've no idea what that could be.

I've watched the first three of Ken Burns' documentaries- they really are fascinating. I think both you and your son should enjoy and learn from them.

It is indeed interesting to see what Mr. Bush will do for the sake of his politics. Without flexible president like Mr. Clinton, Mr. Greenspan may have to struggle with US economy alone.

If control theory was correctly applied in the design phase of deregulation of Californian electricity system, Californians could avoid the recent imbalance of supply and demand. Is it harmful for your life?

NHK normally provide us good documentaries, but I wonder Ken Burns' documentaries will be selected here, because of relatively small Jazz fan in Japan.

I have found an article "Listen to the Jazz Ken Burns Ignores" in http://slate.msn.com/ . I couldn't understand the detail.

How do you think about a decision of president Bush on Californian electricity crises. The decision seems letting Enron eating delicious cake. Due to your great contribution, collections of English Jokes in my HP is expanding.

I read the article. It was very interesting and I can understand some of their frustration. However, it rather goes off on a tangent. I agree with them that Wynton Marsalis has a strange view of Jazz. It's become very popular, since he is so articulate. However, the article takes a very New York view of Jazz, one that is different from that in almost every other part of the US.

Jazz continues to thrive in NY City (Manhattan mostly). When I spent a week there in 1999 I had the chance of hearing more good Jazz than I get in many years in LA. Most of the Jazz here is either played by Hollywood professionals, moonlighting from their day jobs, or old-time "West Coast" Jazz ( players in our age group). It is very polished and well played, but, in my opinion, not very interesting. There probably is good Jazz in a few other cities, like Chicago and San Francisco, but it is definitely a diminishing art form as far as popular taste is concerned.

Many people have opinions why this is so, including Marsalis and Mnookin. I'm afraid I have a deeply pessimistic view that the decline is partly because Jazz has become so fragmented. The article clearly illustrates this. But, in my view, the main reason is that the most talented musicians no longer take up Jazz. I listened to one of the tunes mentioned in the article and found it very well played and interesting from a rather European Music point of view - intellectual if you like. In many ways it reminds me of LA Jazz, although on a higher plane. But - my appreciation was lukewarm, not enthusiastic.

Wynton Marsalis illustrated the point inadvertently during one of the earlier programs in the series. He discussed one of Louis Armstrong's most famous recordings - that of West End Blues in 1928. At the beginning of the tune Armstrong plays a solo trumpet introduction that is less than 15 seconds long. This is one of the most exceptional passages in all recorded Jazz. Marsalis illustrated this introduction during the program, actually playing it. Feeling that he'd not got it exactly, I later played the original. What a difference! Comparing the most famous and successful Jazz trumpeters of 1928 and 2001 showed just how far Jazz virtuosity has collapsed - there was no comparison at all. No wonder Jazz is not popular.

I believe all musical artists, styles and schools (and all art for that matter) go through a bell-shaped time curve. What classical musician / composer today could compare with Mozart or Beethoven? Classical music is another "endangered species". Unfortunately my taste is in these obsolete forms, I've not had much appreciation for popular music since the days of the Beatles or a little later. Today's popular music leaves me cold. Jazz, along with classical music, is probably condemned to being a vanishing relic from the past, appreciated by other relics like me.

There is a double game going on in the US economy right now. On the one hand there is definitely a slow down. 4th 1/4 GDP was up only 1.4%, the smallest gain since 1995. Alan Greenspan believes the current 1/4 will show little or negative growth: he definitely didn't get his soft landing.

Today, as you know, the Fed cut interest rates another 1/2% to 5.5%. That's 1% this month.

More alarmingly, consumer confidence took a big and unpredicted drop last month. Probably due partly to financial reports, but possibly due mostly to frequent announcements of big layoffs from many companies. Although unemployment remains at record lows, I see the danger that, if it does get worse, the result could be a self-fulfilling downward spiral towards the Japanese style economy. No doubt that is what the Fed is trying to avoid.

The danger now seems to be that the control system is getting into oscillation; let's hope not. This, of course could have the most threatening world-wide effects. Hold onto your seat we may have a rough ride ahead.

The whole thing is made much more unstable by the second game going on. President Bush seems to feel the need for some political achievements to shore up his weak position due to the close election. He will, no doubt, be coming out with many proposals in addition to those he's made already. They will be framed in the most attractive terms, but probably will revolve around traditional Republican goals. Specifically they will be (with the cosmetic label following in brackets):

Cut Taxes, especially for the rich (Stimulate the Economy) Eliminate Environmental laws (Solve the energy / electric power shortage) Increase Corporate Welfare (Provide incentives for......fill in the blank......)

Note: even Alan Greenspan has been pulled into the tax cutting group, however weak his endorsement. I think we will see the Federal Surplus shrink at record speed, getting us back into huge deficits before you can blink.

Not a happy letter, I'm afraid, but there is not much to feel good about here right now.

Congratulations on your long trek. 32 other books sounds like a tremendous load. I wonder that you had the time; I doubt I've read as many, even with my leisure available. Perhaps you use the long train ride.

I also found his book presented a great width of insight into many things that others had not connected before. Many of his reconstructions were very convincing.

The main question I had for you was to do with several references he makes to the use of Japanese and Chinese writing systems while discussing why different cultures resist new inventions. This was first in a chapter called "Necessity's Mother" in the U.S. book I read (page 248) then later in the chapter "How China Became Chinese" (p. 333) and also the epilogue "The Future of Human History as a Science" (p. 418).

These mainly deal with reasons why we continue to use well established tools, even when better ones are available. He quotes the present day use of kanji instead of the kana system in Japan and contrasts this with the adoption of the Han'gul alphabet in Korea. Finally he speculates on the consequences to American competitiveness if only the US had kept QWERTY, while the rest of the world adopted the better Dvorak typewriter keyboard. (I'm rather unconvinced about the last point, since the US has stubbornly kept to the old British physical units while the rest of the world has standardized on the metric system - and it doesn't seem to have a terribly bad effect). (For the second half of my career I was hoping for the US to change - since I thought it would simplify things.

In fact I NEVER had to use the metric system!) What do you think of his (brave? ill-advised?) statements about the writing systems in Japan and China?

I saw a very interesting documentary the other night. It dealt with a human skeleton found in Washington state a few years ago. At first the police suspected murder and called in a forensic expert to examine the evidence. He at first thought the skeleton was of a modern Caucasian man, but then discovered the tip of a stone weapon embedded in the hip bone. The man also had received many other severe injuries, any of which could have caused his death - very unusual for a modern human.

He had the remains carbon dated. They turned out to be 9000 years old - older than the ice age which supposedly had prevented migration from Asia. He and others looked more deeply at the remains and concluded that they were unlike any modern race, but were closest to the Ainu people of Japan.

Since then anthropologists have explored coastal Alaska and found that there were human relics along the very edge of the ocean, dating from the ice age. Also, other, similar remains have been found in other parts of the Americas, who definitely were not related to present day American Indians.

So, the reconstructed history goes that the Ainu-like people who first colonized Japan also got as far as the Americas (North & South) during the ice ages. They either were not numerous or were absorbed by the much larger migration from Asia after the ice melted.

I'm glad that you are enjoying the jokes I pass along to you; it seems this is one of the main functions of the internet!

When Japan imported Kanji from China in AD 500, it was the only character they can use at that time. But soon they invented Kana, Japanese alphabet. Then they realized that combined use of Kana and Kanji is the most efficient way of reading. Kanji has its own meaning and fastest character for reading. Like alphabet, Kana takes some time for reading and understanding the meaning. Once Kanji is written by any person, many people can read it. Therefore, though learning and writing Kanji is not efficient, total social efficiency of communication through written character is the highest when Kanji is used with Kana. In this respect, Kanji started like Qwerty but survived by adaptation.

About 100 years ago, when Japan again opened door to international society, serious discussion was made whether we should use alphabet for Japanese writing and concluded that traditional method is the most efficient way. When I was a child, I didn't find any difficulty of reading or understanding the meaning of Kanji. It naturally understood. But I felt great difficulty of writing them. This difficulty comes from the fact that I have to remember how to spell 2,000 different Kanji correctly. The main reason of using PC now is that it saved us from writing Kanji. With PC, what I have to do is just select correct Kanji from many candidates that PC presents us. In this respect, you can say that PC saved us from writing them and changed writing activity into reading.

Now Macintosh and Windows use Icon in GUI environment. We understand Icon's function is what Kanji has. Nowadays, we do not regard Kanji as a means of enhancing your prestige but just a convenient tool for conveying your will or feelings.

In AD 1200, oldest novel "Genji Monogatari, or Genji Story" was written in Kana only by a women writer called Murasaki Shikibu because at that time women only could read Kana. Murasaki Shikibu herself could read and write Kanji though. But in AD 1700 ordinary Edo (Tokyo) citizen were enjoying printed story written in Kanji and Kana.

Anyway, due to evolution of PC technology, Kanji and Kana are no longer burdens or inefficiency among ourselves. Only problem is that they are not used elsewhere. Our population is not big enough to lead the world. Therefore, we have to use international language for international communication. This is a big burden for us.

I think TV documentary about a human skeleton found in Washington state agree with J. Diamond's theory. Facing negative growth rate, at last, Bank of Japan lowered interest rate a little bit. But our leading political party is still very protective old economy. They still intend to put a big budget on low efficiency infrastructure in countryside. Urban infrastructure remains poor because, urban citizens are always against any development.

Chiyoda needs cash. So my company is on-sale. It seems that there are some who has interest on us. Still I don't know what may happen in the coming week. If the deal is successful, I can retire a couple months earlier.

All Americans feel very badly about the deadly accident between the US submarine and the Japanese training boat. Please accept our profound apologies. The

circumstances of the accident, where it seems civilians were manning some of the controls, is causing much re-evaluation of our Navy's practices. It's likely that the captain will be in big trouble (scapegoat?).

You are, of course, right about Diamond. My faulty recollection was that he had the later, incorrect date for the first immigration from Asia. It seems that he was not aware of the efficiency of reading Kanji. Your explanation comparing Kanji to computer icons was very helpful. I can understand why they are very useful and efficient (as are icons).

Perhaps the composers of icons should learn from Kanji? Some of the icons we use are quite confusing; I suspect that Kanji has a more systematic way of defining symbols. Recently predictions are being made that, as the Chinese increase their use of the internet, they may become the largest group of users. As that occurs it is possible that users of Kanji might have a very large presence in international communication so that an efficient blending of alphabet and symbols might become possible. I'll be very interested to see what happens in the years ahead.

I do have one question. You are able to choose between candidates presented to you by the computer. How does the computer decide which choices to offer you? Do you have to give it a general idea of the topic?

Last night Connie and I visited Santa Monica's promenade, where we had dinner with your motorcycle club. I was sad to see that Remi, the restaurant where we ate, has gone out of business. They had a note on the door thanking their patrons and expressing regret after 11 years in business. The competition among restaurants there must be very tough.

I hope that your personal situation is good, whether or not your company is sold. A couple of months extra retirement time would be an advantage as long as your financial position is not damaged.

From my experience, finding other boat is difficult when your eye point elevation is low. When sailing in a dinghy and wave height is 1 meter, you can only see the top of the mast of other boat. My guess of the accident was caused by relatively low level of periscope when they tried to find other boats before training of emergency operation. In this respect, the captain and his crew may be responsible. But his superior may be guilty for allowing such exercise or Disney-Land type entertainment without escorting boat near harbor where sea traffic is so high. In this respect, the captain is a scapegoat as you suggested. Anyway, our Prime Minister Mr. Mori is in danger of resigning because of his miss judgement when the accident occurred. There are many political games now going on in Japan. Because of this, US Navy may have more political troubles ahead.

Regarding, design of icon, I think it is better to have international standard to set up systematic rules in designing icons or organization which register the design. Actually, MS is setting up the de facto standard.

When 2 byte Unicode becomes more popular, all Kanji and other exotic characters may have unique match with numbers. Then Kanji could be used even as programming language. XML, and Java are constructed on Unicode. XML will help us exchanging data between different systems.

Most popular MS IME uses statistics. Most frequently used set of Kanji is displayed at the top first. Then computers learn specific frequencies and change the order according to the specific user's need. Originally, regulation only allowed 2,000 Kanji but recently approximately 10,000 Kanji are housed in PC, because selection is not so difficult.

The story about Remi reminded me fast changing society in US. It is sad but that gives you dynamic economy.

Biggest problems might be my wife finding me in her house all day long. That is what she sees. So I am thinking to commute to my boat in weekdays. How did you manage these problems when you had retired?

Thank you for your latest mail. Although, I could not see the attached jpeg image from my office, I can imagine it. I would open it tonight at home. The theme is miss communication. The lack of communication also causes disaster. The lack of communication between Commander Waddle and his sonar technician is reported as one of possible causes of the accident. When the commander said there is no vessel around after his periscope investigation, the technician withdrew his estimation of the distance between the two vessels. I have a similar bitter experience of my own. When I found great difficulty in never ending cost reduction and supplying good engineers to the project, I did not insist such view in loud voice in my organization and to the very top man. Because I know that entire organization just blame me not doing my best and the top man does not believe in me and regard me as a coward. Probably, he had the misfortunate of not having good and strong subordinate. But it is also his fault of giving impression that he does not understand what is actually happening and just continue insisting his vision of aggressive market penetration. Emotion is very important to do something, but emotion sometimes overwhelms logical thinking. Chiyoda is now paying the cost of excessive emotion.

I have decided to buy Dell's desk top PC, Dimension 4100, because my note book PC is very old and does not have USB connector for 3 million pixel digital camera which my daughter have given me. This camera is big and heavy but I found the quality is satisfactory. I can also take mpeg pictures. I no longer need notebook PC for traveling business, I have decided to buy reasonably priced desktop. With this new machine, I would also like to enjoy DVD music and video. But most of the clients of rental DVD belong to young generation and it is difficult to find more suitable title or label for our generation. I presume DVD rental businesses are matured in US.

I was very relieved to hear that the US submarine captain has finally apologized to the families of the casualties of the accident. In this country we just do not realize how important such apologies are. For many years the relationship between the US military and Japan has been very questionable. In particular the disgraceful behavior of both junior and senior military personnel in Okinawa for many years has been very troubling to many of us here. I hope that the recent occurrences will lead to some serious rethinking of the whole question.

One of the revelations of retirement has been my realization that, in the turbulence of the working scene, it is hard to strike a balance between getting anything done and listening enough. Now the pressure is off I think I listen far more and realize that I should have done so when I was at work.

It also seems that this lack of listening is far more common at the upper levels of corporate life. Unfortunately, based on most of the management people I've known there seems to be an inevitable selection of less admirable people as one rises through the ranks. I often wonder if being promoted to management level was benificial to me or not. Certainly I enjoyed work more before promotion.

Part of this may have been that I'm simply more interested in technical work compared with personal relations - in spite of a sense of duty that, perhaps, I could bring a more just and enlightened approach to management. However, I'm sure that a big part was simply that I had to deal with less attractive people - particularly higher management. Some of them were thoroughly nasty people - dishonest, ruthless, selfish and egotistical.

I understand how hard it must be to be the head of a large company, especially when hard times threaten its very survival. A company must count itself very fortunate to have a CEO who can combine effectiveness with wisdom and justice. Certainly the hard times Fluor suffered in the 80's brought out the worst in our management culture and brought about all sorts of Machiavellian ruthless actions. Those of us who survived (less than 30%) were lucky - many had to leave engineering altogether.

If its any compensation for you, I took a slightly more aggressive role when I disagreed with management and was, therefore labeled "negative". When things are going badly you are going to be blamed one way or another.

Connie agrees that having a husband around is a big adjustment! She said, as long as you work on the computer in your "office" area of the house, it could be OK. Actually, the most important thing is to leave each other enough "space" in your lives. Its good to have outside things to do, like the boat. Its also good to have time for things you like to do together - we like to walk on the beach for example. In many ways the extra time allows you to grow closer.

The state of the stock markets is causing great uncertainty all round the world. Most opinion is negative about the recent, timid, move by the BoJ. I'm waiting for Paul Krugman to weigh in. Perhaps he feels he has nothing more to add to his long-standing advice. Reports on the papers here say that Japanese opinion is getting increasingly impatient with government inaction over making fundamental structural changes in your economy.

Alan Greenspan didn't cut interest rates this week and Wall Street is in a funk, down again today. One of my favorite indicators is still very negative - the average opinion of newsletter investment advisors. This is very positive (>60%), which is generally very BAD news, since they are generally wrong!

To make things more interesting for me, my younger son has some money in a retirement fund to reinvest and we are going to discuss it tomorrow. I wonder what I can tell him?

I've not looked at DVD's at all. In our video rental stores they are available in parallel with VCR tapes, although the selection is not as good. I've never considered them as an audio source since the only advantage seems to be the possibility of 5 channel music for which I am not equipped. That may change since I have to revise my audio system to be more compact and less obtrusive as part of our preparation for many visitors this summer for our two weddings. (That, incidentally, is occupying most of our time these days since the house will be undergoing major redecoration involving many decisions which are difficult to reach).

I am writing this in my office, because in those days, I have very limited things to do in my office. I almost transferred my responsibilities to those who are going to remain in the company. At home, I am busy in tax calculation. Sorting out my account is very tedious work. I have to input all those figures into my MS Money form sheets.

I have received your mail titled "REWARD!" in my cellular phone without attachment. I will open it tonight at home. I very much appreciate your kind comments about US submarine captain. His apologies and US president's mission were well accepted here. It is always interesting to see the progress of hearing.

My wife continued saying that I don't listen what she says. She is now threatening me saying that unless I change my behavior, no one will continue friendship after my retirement.

I also enjoyed work until I was promoted to manager of process engineering specialized for natural gas industry or manager of project specialized for pharmaceutical industry. But position responsible for corporate engineering department was not comfortable. Because I could not directly communicate people but through middle management. It is very frustrating when you lost direct contact with your men. It is almost impossible to directly communicate 900 people. When you can nominate your middle management, you can do better but here in Japan you have to continue using middle management already assigned by your predecessor. I also encountered Machiavellian ruthless in Chiyoda. It was a horrible time. I admire your I taking more aggressive role when you disagreed with your management and was, therefore labeled "negative". Yes I learned that when things are going badly you are going to be blamed one way or another.

After your letter and after consultation with my wife, I decided to convert my son's room to my office. I will set my new Dell machine in the room and enjoy virtual communication with my friend including you. I found it secures privacy and I can even enjoy a chat with my old girl friend!

BoJ is still bound by old theory. But more disappointing thing is that established scholars in distinguished Universities are still supporting old theory. There are many young economists saying similar opinion like Prof. Krugman but establishments dilute their voices. I think they should retire from the scene.

Probably DVD is not so attractive as you see. Anyway, two spindle DVD and CD-R/RW assures me faster replication of CD-ROM. I found BOSE compact audio system is superior to Sony's huge system.

When I had announced my retirement a wonderful new development occurred in communication. When talking to people of all ranks and inside and outside my own department I found that many would speak far more openly than when I was in my usual position. This applied especially to people who I'd supervised. I was surprised how outspoken some people became who had previously been very careful, especially in talking about company affairs, people and management. I wonder if the same thing will happen in your situation. In the United States people feel the need to unburden themselves when they feel safe from reprisals.

Our house is about to be torn apart. With our two weddings coming up we expect many relatives and other visitors from all parts of the country and of our lives. Naturally, Connie wants the house to look its best. Many things we have been thinking of for years are suddenly urgent! I expect to award our first "contract" to a builder tomorrow. Then we will have to stay ahead of them getting ready for their work. Already we have thrown out many things or moved things into temporary spaces.

By the time August arrives I think we'll be exhausted. Luckily, most of the wedding preparations are being done by Bill, Peter and their girlfriends.

Its interesting that you are also setting up your study room. It seems to be almost universal response to the departure of children and retirement of breadwinners. Many, if not most of my friends here have done something similar. In many ways I have found that I reproduced arrangements I've used in my Fluor office over the years - with differences thanks to Connie's input.

Things seem to be moving very slowly both in Japan and here on the economic/political fronts. President Bush is heavily promoting his tax cut, but it will bog down in the Senate. Meanwhile Alan Greenspan has not moved again and the stock market is very nervous. In fact many of the indices of the US economy refuse to drop. Unemployment remains at 4.2% and some sectors of the economy continue to prosper. Therefore, he may hold off on lowering interest rates, fearing re-ignition of inflation. We will see what happens after the Fed's meeting later this month.

Prime Minister Mori's comments about retirement which have people here very confused. I think he is only a small part of the problem in the light of your comments on the opinion of your established scholars.

I've just seen an excerpt from a new book by Jim Rohwer, an editor of Fortune magazine. (He wrote an influential book called Asia Rising in 1995, about the dominant position he expected Asia to take in the 21st century economy). The new book is a follow up, also very optimistic. One of his most interesting speculations is the way he expects expanding use of the Internet to dismantle many of the old relationships in Japan which will accelerate restructuring. It sounds very interesting, I must try to look at it.

I hope the working out of your taxes and the sale of your company are rapidly and successfully completed. I'm sure it will all be a great relief.

In the very beginning, I had made it clear to the executive member that I will resign after 2 years. Yesterday, it was officially made known to 4-business division manager level. There was no apparent attitude change. Probably they already anticipated what would happen on me from previous experience.

Your story about refurbishing your house helped me to plan how to do on my house next year. It was my wife's long desire to renew interior. But I always put higher priority on acquiring new bike, boat and PC. I promised to do it some time in the future. As you have done it in the chance of your son's marriage, and although I have no definitive marriage schedule of my children, probably it will be next year. It seems opening space for contractor needs careful planning and physical exercise. It is a project and we are professionals for that. Only difference is that we are not paid.

What I will do on my study room is just bore a small hole to pass Ethernet cable. I will use my son's desk as is. Actually, it is an old dining table used when we were young. It seems your room is more comfortable.

Very recently, I am finding more professors supporting Prof. Krugmans suggestion. Probably, they already knew the theory but they didn't have enough courage to speak in public. Once some brave man started saying and found no strong opposition. Then, all people start saying that this is what they strongly support. This is bad Japanese culture. But I hope this become main stream.

I think Conservative Party need complete loss in the coming election. It is upto voters.

I have completed tax calculation and submitted it to tax office. MS Money helped me to squeeze out input error.

Regardless change of ownership, URS agreed to continue technical collaboration with our company, acquisition of my company by a Japanese mining and metal company would be finalized at the end of April. I don't know definitive date of the end of my duty yet.

It was finally agreed among 3 major engineering companies in Japan that they would jointly offer proposals for international refinery projects. LNG project is not included in the agreement.

Finally our government decided to remove bad credit from the banks. But due to lower stock market in those days, amount of bad credit is increasing everyday. Taxpayers have to pay for all of the losses. BoJ also decided to increase money supply, but Prof. Krugman is saying that the direction is correct but amount is not enough.

Chiyoda, JGC and TEC finally agreed to make consortium in the future refinery projects.

I will resign president of current company after change of ownership, which is scheduled in April 2. I will remain as an advisor for about 3 months for transfer of knowledge.

In the last weekend, I drilled a hole in one of the wall of my house for LAN cable and phone wiring. Now my son's room was converted to in-house office of mine. Last night, I commissioned it.

Tonight, I am planning to enjoy Mozart's opera "Cosi Fan Tutte" in DVD. This DVD was recommended by a Japanese critic as most enjoyable opera. I misunderstood that most of the singers in opera are fat and ugly. They were valued only by their voices. But originally, opera was not like that. He says that we can enjoy opera as a drama. It is conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and directed by late Jean-Pierre Ponnelle.

Recently, I happened to know a hidden story about a car that you still love. It is called "Nissan Fairlady" in Japan. As you may know, once a second automobile manufacturer in Japan, Nissan fell down to 3rd company after Honda. And they accepted a French CEO Mr. Carlos Gohn to reform the company, Recently new CEO decided to start selling a new series of sports car for young generation and call it "Nissan Fairlady". Probably it may be called DATSUN xxx in US. Mr. Yutaka Katayama, who was once a CEO of DATUN US and now 92 years old, was a key person who brought great success in expanding Datsun car sales in US. But Mr. Ishihara who was a president of Nissan at that time hated his success and felt threat to his empire and call him back from US and hired him and ordered to stop manufacturing and marketing "Nissan Fairlady" and erase all success story about Datsun car from company history. He even put pressure on media not mention of Datsun car and Mr. Katayama. Of course, an American Journalist Mr. David Haberstam was beyond his control. He already reported this fact in 1987. This behavior was the starting point of the decline and fall of Nissan. The story is very similar to power struggle in Chinese empire in 16 th Century.

Thank you for the inside information about the downfall of Nissan/Datsun. The renaming of Datsun was widely regarded here, even at the time, as a major blunder. I remember much discussion about company politics at the time, but did not realize the details about Messrs. Katayama and Ishihara.

One of the least appealing characteristics of the higher reaches of company management is the role played by the egos of the various managers. Lee Iacocca of Ford was successful in a similar way; he was behind the development of the Mustang and made Ford much more profitable as a result. However, the Ford family (who still controlled the company then) realized the value of his services and made sure he was promoted to top management, but he could never aspire to the top job, which was held by Henry Ford (grandson of the founder).

In spite of his good position, Iacocca left to assume the top job in the then-troubled Chrysler. With massive help from the US Government and strenuous efforts from the company it recovered and became the most profitable of our car companies. At that point, a couple of years ago, Chrysler merged (some say was taken over) with Daimler. Since then their business has crashed and they are now losing Daimler a great deal of money.

This is not yet as bad as the ill-fated takeover of the Rover car company by BMW a few years earlier (I think Honda may have owned it at the time). After Billions of $ of losses, BMW is in the process of trying to sell the remains. It seems that the British factories have resisted all attempts to modernize. I believe that all surviving sizable companies are either owned by (Ford and Vauxhall) or have been taken over (Jaguar, Aston Martin, etc.) by US or other companies.

What we are seeing is a battle for survival in an overpopulated worldwide industry - similar in many ways to the Engineering business. I held four jobs in my career, three with operating companies and the last at Fluor. In every case I was hired when they were in an expansion phase. At first, while business was increasing, things were very happy. Then, when downturns came, everything changed. In one job (5 years) I survived two separate layoffs when 2/3 of my department were laid off. After the second layoff I looked for a new job on my own behalf.

I hope you enjoyed Cosi Fan Tuti. It is one of Mozart's best operas and I've seen good comments about Harnoncourt's version (although I've not seen or heard it). With the increasing number of Americans who have weight problems there hasbeen increasing attention paid to claims that they are discriminated against on account of their weight. The Opera singer field, at least, is one where it doesn't seem to matter. From your comments I gather the singers in that version were not fat. The other night I watched the Academy Awards ceremony. It would seem that fat people need not apply for film roles. Some actresses were thin to the point of starvation! I'm afraid that the Hollywood phenomenon of paying attention only to appearances is now another disease which is stalking the whole world.

I'm glad to hear that your company plans are now firmed up. You can now do some personal planning without the need to worry about the company. I've found that very invigorating.

Our house renovation is in full swing. We've evacuated three rooms and crowded all our furniture into the rest. My study is full of kitchen supplies and smells wonderfully spicy. Part of our plan calls for me to thin down my audio equipment to make it less obtrusive in our family room. The outmoded parts are now transplanted to the garage. I set it all up yesterday - much wiring and furniture arranging. It replaced my oldest stuff, which dates back to the 50's - a vacuum tube FM receiver and integrated amplifier (1 channel mono!). The garage sound is now updated to the '70's - stereo. I hope your office works well, including your own LAN.

DVD of Harnoncourt's version of "Cosi Fan Tutte" was somewhat disappointing for me. I think the critic over valued this DVD. It was recorded in 1988 for videotape and then converted to DVD. Therefore, recording quality is not good as recent CD. Secondly, opera was played as if it were Hollywood movie. But they could not spend enough money for sets and for costume as Hollywood movies does; it looks like cheap soap opera. Singers looked all right. Their weight were medium to slim.

Advantage of DVD is that you can easily select certain section from the entire program and play it as you like. Advantage of using PC as DVD player is that you can enjoy DVC sold in US here in Japan. Combination of Dell's Dimension 4100 and BOSE audio system is that it has minor problem of noise when you increase volume level.

Any way, my intension was to learn beforehand the story of the opera before enjyoing live opera to be conducted by Mr. Ozawa in next month here in Tokyo. It is worth doing so because the seat will be the best in the theater and ticket was most expensive.

Your trip to the opera sounds great; I'm not surprised you are getting familiar with the opera first. We were able to visit maestro Ozawa at home in the Boston Symphony hall several times while I was stationed in Boston in 1995-6. He is rated as one of the world's great conductors - I certainly agree with that rating. The BSO must agree too because he's been there for many years.

Its surprising that the sound was compromised. By 1988 the technical difficulties had been pretty well solved. Perhaps the technology was just not applied properly. Producers of videos are notorious for ignoring the sound. Some of the most interesting recordings in the last few years have been analog recordings from the early days of Stereo in the 50's and 60's. The ability to manipulate the sound has allowed remastering onto CD's to make sound far better than the original and not that far behind the latest technology. Its also surprising that the Dell - Bose system is noisy. With modern systems there should be no audible noise no matter how loud the level is set.

The DVD medium has been a great disaster caused by marketing strategies. The idea of having different formats around the world is the most short-sighted in decades. No doubt the industry felt it could make more money that way. Another difficult area is over copy protection. Every now and then the industry announces a coding method claimed to avoid damage to the sound. Predictably two things then happen. First, the audio fraternity listen to it and prove the sound is degraded, then some hacker finds a way to bypass it. Ridiculous. As you probably know there are many law suits here between the RIAA and various computer .com companies. In the meantime, I've done nothing about my computer CD-RW drive. Just too many other things going on with our two weddings. (I did get one of my sons one for Christmas - a Sony. It was very reasonably priced).

I have been familiar with maestro Ozawa only through TV. It was my first experience to enjoy his live. We could even hear his breathing because our seat was within 2 meters distance from him. He was very energetic at his age. I was inpresed very much from his sincere attitude to his team. I saw an admiring eye of young girl violinist when he stood on conductor's stage. I also witnessed a visiting oboist taking photos of Ozawa during curtain call. Probably a chance of plying under his commandship would be very scare.

Live opera was far better than DVD. But seeing DVD opera beforehand helped us to enjoy live play far better than first encountering it without knowledge.

Noise from Dell - Bose system is synchronizing with flashing light of DVD player. I think sound card is picking up noise emitted from DVD flashing light system. Dell didn't notice this problem. Now we are entering best season of the year. In California, you can enjoy it any time in a year.

My boat was finally launched in April 11. I name it Roca, as it was build in Bergium and came over to Japan round that Pt. Roca located in far west point of Eurasian continent. This weekend is my first time with her.

I believe the maestro will be leaving the Boston SO. I don't know what his future will be. That makes yet another of the major US orchestras looking for a conductor. (NY, LA and many others have been changing lately.) I imagine Boston will miss him very badly. He is very well regarded there, even loved!

Your boat looks great. I looked at it on your home page. A true engineering evaluation. I'm sure it will be a great joy. No doubt you have many plans for further testing and enjoyment.

I'm afraid the US Navy has not delivered justice over the submarine accident. Its true that the Captain is losing his job, but he'll get an honorable discharge and full pension. He's also had offers from private industry and will probably end up quite wealthy as a final result. Many Americans find that quite disproportionate to the things he did. In my mind the worst thing was the authoritarian climate he produced on his ship which intimidated the crew members from questioning anything he did. I'm afraid that is all too typical of the military mind (and many executives at Fluor too).

I note that the local party chapters of your Liberal Democratic Party have delivered a rebuke to the party's "establishment" in voting overwhelmingly for Mr. Koizumi. Do you think this means the chance for real change? One comment I read was that the party may tolerate him until the elections for the upper house in July, but then get rid of him via internal intrigue. I gather he is a very controversial person.

Since the party has been in power for so long, I wonder if there is a parallel to Mexico and the old USSR. In both of them, the increasing economic and social problems brought about by the unyielding policies of the old parties led to the leadership of reformers (Zedillo and Gorbachev). They, in turn, freed up the elections which allowed a different party/leader to take power by democratic means (Fox and Yeltsin).

The US economy still doesn't seem to be able to decide whether to go into recession or not. The Stock market rose wildly when the Fed cut interest rates to 4.5% last week, but a good part of that has been given back already. Meantime Europe also is looking sickly. Interesting times we live in.

It seems that maestro Ozawa couldn't resist a plea from Vienna Opera House. Probably it was a special place to him. I found the berth is very difficult place to maneuver, specially in a windy day so that I decided to add remote engine control units just under tiller to speed up engine control. Though, I still believe feed back control is not enough. A kind of feed-forward control, taking into account the wind effect is the must. To achieve this, I need exercise in calm day and later challenge in windy day.

Your word "authoritarian climate" reminded me a new book written by Nobel laureates Amartiya Sen, called "Development As Freedom". He made it clear why economic development actually has a better chance of arising under democracy than under authoritarianism.

In the past few years our Liberal Democratic Party was under strong control of authoritarian person called Mr. Nonaka. He was a kingmaker who had sent

Mr. Obuchi and Mr. Mori to the chair of Prime Minister. This time, he tried to send back again former Prime Minister Mr. Hashimoto and failed. Mr. Nonaka climbed up the ladder of power from the very bottom (he was brought up from a family of lowest class of feudal society) to the real top of the power. What an irony! As his personal success is a good example of the strength of our modern society. I had met his brother on business and respected his style. Anyway, we are expecting Mr. Kiozumi do break thick atmosphere covering Japan. I support what he had done to date except nominating old gentleman to financial minister and this old man persuaded old chairman of BOJ to stay.

Recently, I have enjoyed a very old English movie made in 1941. It was a story about Emma Hamilton, a mistress of Horatio Viscount Nelson. I never imagined Lord Nelson had a mistress and imagined it is a fiction. But after consulting with Encyclopedia Britannica, I found it is a real story. A life is a little bit complex than I imagine.

Our paper reported prominently on Mr. Koizumi's speech to the nation. He certainly seems to be very popular at the moment (87%). From an American point of view his speech was fairly routine, but I can understand the impact there where politicians do not usually appeal directly to the voters.

Its interesting that he appealed especially to women. Here, we have become quite accustomed to women filling all sorts of roles. I feel that one of the big contributions to our rising productivity has been finally allowing women to do top level work instead of "women's work". Many women here now fill influential and highly visible roles.

It will be most interesting to see how his upcoming struggle with Mr. Nonaka and the other old guard turns out. Even though Paul Krugman does not like some of his economic approaches, I feel he may influence Japan in much more fundamental ways than merely economic ones.

Our economy keeps on sending contradictory signals. Almost everybody expects the Fed to cut another 1/2% off interest rates later this month (to 4%). The stock market is very volatile, often moving several % in one day, in both directions. I gather the Japanese market is the same. Incidentally, the increasing profits of the oil companies are finally reflected in Fluor's stock.

Allowing for the split into Fluor and Massey Energy, the stock now sells for about $80 (up from a low in the high 20's on the same basis). Previously, Fluor has never been able to stay up above $70 for long; who knows if this time is different?

I'm not sure what you are proposing for "feed forward control" in your boat.I'd guess you mean this is best achieved through the skipper's experience - building up by first attempts on calmer days.

Your findings about Lord Nelson are not too surprising. I've long been skeptical about the virtues of "Great Men". It probably comes from living in

Chicago where most prominent politicians eventually end up in jail (including one of the most respected State Governors while I was there).

There is beginning to be a fundamental debate here about energy and the environment. The repudiation of the Kyoto treaty is only a first shot. Opinion here is starkly divided. Those on the left feel that the administration wants to dismantle most environmental safeguards and concentrate on more energy production and company profits. The right side opinion is that we are in trouble because of excessive environmental standards and excessive regulation of what should be a free market. I am saving this letter frequently while I type because we are expecting power cuts any time today. (We are having some warm weather in CA and many power plants are down for maintenance to get ready for summer).

One interesting aspect is the renewed push for nuclear plants. These include new designs for which great claims of safety and environmental advantages are being made - such as the Pebble Bed Reactor. I'm currently in a debate here with some other retired engineers over the pebble bed. Opinions are very divided. We agree nuclear power does not emit greenhouse gas, but then differ.

We are now just over one month to the American Homebrew Association Convention in Los Angeles. I'm in charge of organizing the judging of the final round of the competition associated with the event. Naturally, as in any volunteer organization, things are not going very well. We'll have a meeting tonight to try to get things back on track. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Then, of course, the next month sees our two weddings. Needless to say I'm still busy with the house. At the moment putting back together my Audio system in a new and much less favorable location.

We are also disappointed with Mr. Koizumi's speech. But what is important is what he is going to do. Women's vote is also very important here. But most of women are still confined to women's work.

As Paul Krugman pointed out today in his MYT articles, shortage of refining capacity in US may be pushing up Fluor stock.

My word "feed forward control" means manual control taking into account of the prediction of the future movement of the boat under strong wing.

I have read that Mr. Chainy is pushing Nuclear power again. Japanese government's official answer for Kyoto protocol is Nuclear power. But peoples here are against new installation of Nuclear power plant in their back yards. Therefore, all projects are behind schedule. No one knows what the future will be. Any way, Mr. Chainy is in favor of Haliburton. And Haliburton is an owner of KBR. Then KBR is an owner of Chiyoda Corporation. All tied up in energy chain business. Eventually, what ever he propose, it may be good for Chiyoda. I left Chiyoda but I missed the chance of selling Chiyoda's socks. Now the value is one tenth of what I spent for them. I hope it start rising like Fluor's stock

I have found many photos of you in the home page of your SBC Club. It seems you are enjoining the activity.

I hope your coming two weddings successful. I still couldn't expect such opportunity.

I tested my Dell-Bose system with a new DVD of Sara Brightman and found the recording is comparable to good quality CD. It seems that new recording are taking full advantage of the capability of the new media.

Yesterday, I have received your mail containing an article about Route 66. Thank you very much for sending me. I still remember a TV show called "Tod and Buz" and still hear title music. After our ride, I have seen now old Martin Miller who acted Tod's role making a short ride on Route 66 in NHK TV program about Route 66. Now I know the car used at that time was Corvette.

In September this year, same members are planning to make another touring in Hokkaido and in February next year, we plan to visit New Zealand with bike. As we have to carry our own bike to New Zealand by sea and as I have plenty of time, I would like to stay longer there with my wife and bike.

The Ishihara riders group is very active. 5 degrees C sounds too cold for me! I'm sure that, now you have more time, you'll be able to do a great deal of exploring. We almost visited NZ some years ago when we went to Australia to visit my brother and his family. We chose to break our trip in Tahiti instead, reckoning we could make a separate trip to NZ later. So far it's not come up on our priority list, but is still near the top.

Your boat looks very impressive and the day of the trial run under sail looked like beautiful sailing weather. In true engineering form I see you have equipped it with the latest technology.

Cafe Globe seems completely unaffected by our "dotcom" downturn. They seem tobe getting a great deal of media attention which probably means that they aredoing very well. Your daughter is to be congratulated. I'm glad you enjoy our Strand Brewers Club web site. It had been out of commission for a while because our service provider was one of the "dotcom" casualties and went broke. Our site is back on line now.

Finally, most of our house refurnishing is compete. Just in time, too, because now we are starting to prepare for the weddings in earnest and I am beginning to get busy with the American Homebrew Association national competition final. It is part of the annual convention being held in Los Angeles June 21 - 23. I think I told you that I am coordinating the judging.

We expect to have over 600 entries in 27 different categories. We'll judge them on two separate days and about 80 - 120 judges will take part. Now I'm beginning to get the applications. I have to develop a plan to assign them to the best categories (i.e. not a category in which they have a beer and, if possible, a category they prefer). I find it is already taking about 2 - 3 hours of work a day!

I finally got my audio system back together. The location of the loudspeakers is definitely worse than before and I'll have to do a lot of "tweaking" to try to restore the sound (within the placement limits allowed by house management!). I also have a new receiver (Technics, by Panasonic) which has many capabilities, such as four channel sound, etc. It will take quite a lot of time to explore all that, especially given our schedule through July. However, its good to have the main system up and running again. Listening to a small portable "radio" was really frustrating.

Coordinating 80 - 120 judges may require well-planned instructions to them. I still wonder whether a man can evaluate more than three glasses of beer. Hindrance from previous taste may cause fading sensitivity.

I understand each person has his favorite sound. And each audio system has its own characteristics. I like sound emitted from Acoustimass module of Bose. It launches sound on a column of air rather than directly from vibrating cone like conventional speakers.

I do not have this system but have more compact system integrating small speakers with acoustimass module in one box. With this system, I found CD sold in the last few years has better sound than the older one.

Recently, my wife found an interesting linkage between old Hollywood movie "Casablanca" and perfume called "Mitsuko". Once upon a time, there was a

young man from Czechoslovakia visiting Tokyo. His name was count Kalergy. When he visited an antique shop in Tokyo, he suddenly fell in love with a daughter of the shop owner. Her name was Mitsuko. French perfume maker adopted her name for one of their products because her debut in European society was very successful. When her son grew up, he became a pioneer in organizing pan European idea and anti- Nazism movement. He married a beautiful actress who is elder than him. Because of his political stance, he had to leave his homeland. He moved to Paris but German invasion again forced them to go to French Morocco. Finally they got visa to go to US.

Hollywood took up the story. In the movie called Casablanca, her son who's name is Victor Razro. His wife who's name is Ilsa Razro played by Ingrid Bergman. Hamphrey Bogart who's role was her boyfriend. I am enjoying this very old movie in DVD.

Our Prime Minister, minister of foreign affaires and minister of finance are doing very well now. Thy have their own words and ideas. In the past, they were minorities. But now they are champions and supported by voters. I would like to convey congratulations for forth coming wedding of your son. I hope all go well.

Friday, 25 May, don't forget your towel! Friday is Towel Day in honor of the late Douglas Adams. Remember to carry your towel with you! See

I'm glad to hear that Mr. Koizumi is doing well. The news of the Japanese economy is certainly depressing. The US stock market cannot make up its mind, but lurches up and down according to no discernible pattern. Some pessimistic commentators point out that, even after the big market drop, price/earnings ratios are still very high by historical standards and that it took 25 years for the market to get back to where it had been in 1929. Of course the experience in Japan since 1989 certainly suggests the same could happen again.

The problem of mouth-fatigue is of great concern for judging beer. All tables are provided with water jugs and bland bread or rolls to clear the palate. Most competitions try to keep judges below about 12 beers in a "flight".

You only sip the beer; typically each judge gets about 2 oz., 60 ml. If it is poor, you conserve your capacity for more tasting of the better beers and throw out the rest. If you do this carefully, you'll only drink about the equivalent of 1-1/2 to 2 beers, so that judgment is still reasonably acute. (I, but not all judges, keep the samples of promising beers and re-taste them after I have sampled the others. I've noticed that my taste does vary during a flight, so I can only be fair by doing this.)

Another aspect is the question of personal preference. I've often chosen a beer which I didn't like as much as another entry - because the competition is for beers that match the category. Many entrants have nice beers but have entered them in the wrong category. Its quite amazing how often this occurs, even with experienced brewers. Sometimes I'll brew a beer in a certain style, but decide it would better match another category and enter it there instead.

The audio market here has become very frustrating. On the one hand there are many mass produced systems which offer very good value in certain types of equipment - predominantly the electronic components. On the other hand there are the "Audiophile" components. These tend to be extremely expensive and, in some cases, of very wrong-headed design. Typical would be a vacuum tube amplifier with lots of distortion and low power for 10 - 100 times the price of the mass produced item.

I am a member of the Boston Audio Society. When I was there a few years ago, I participated in many tests where it was clearly proven that it is impossible to tell some types of component apart in truly blind testing. Loudspeakers were just as clearly not in this category and remain the most variable and personal of all.

I'm now looking for the smallest possible speakers for the rear channels (decorator requirements) which have reasonable sound. Since the amplifier has only one set of tone controls, the rear speakers should also have similar coloring to my main speakers. In the mass produced stores there are many examples of miniature speakers, such as Bose. However, to my ear, these have extremely loud very high frequencies (above 6 - 8000 Hz), over boosted bass Woofers, and a largely absent mid range where most of the music content is.

(I suspect this is in response to our teenage market. Where you see an amplifier on display which still has tone controls (most do NOT!), the kids have almost always turned both bass and treble up to the maximum.)

It looks as though I'm going to have to look much further to get what I'd hoped would be easily found items.

Your story of count Kalergy and Casablanca is wonderful. I had no idea what was behind the story.

Recently, I have read an interesting book written by Richard A. Werner called "Princes of the Yen". Mr. Richard A. Werner is a German born economist educated in Oxford. He was a researcher in BOJ and Ministry of Finance over 10 years.

His point is that Bubble economy of Japan was intentionally created and punctured by the same man called Mr. Mieno, ex-Chairman of BOJ. The tool he used was a maximum loan limit to each commercial bank set by BOJ. Economics tells us that prime rate is the tool normally used by Central Bank. But when maximum borrowing limit was reduced by BOJ when they couldn't reach maximum limit set by BOJ at the beginning of the year, they will do their best to lend money to doughtful borrowers such as speculative investors. By increasing maximum loan limit about 10% each year, bubble economy was created and punctured by throttling the valve. No economist, analyst, government officials, politician, media realized the fact.

Then what was his intention. Late Mr. Maekawa who was a senior ex-Chairman of BOJ, wrote a famous Maekawa report, proposing that Japan should make a structural reorganization from the wartime economy established in World War II to an Anglo-American type free economy.

The wartime economy was so successful and destroyed world economical structure. He wrote that the wartime economy is not sustainable. Then the question arose. Established economical structure is so strong, who can reorganize the system peacefully. Mr. Richard A. Werner speculates that Mr. Maekawa influenced Mr. Mieno to make a big impact to Japanese economy unsuspected by anyone.

Recent stubborn like behavior of BOJ neglecting Prof. Krugman's suggestion could be explained by BOJ's another ambition. Prof. Krugman's suggested that BOJ to announce that they will not throttle the valve even in case of inflation. The author says that BOJ tried to put pressure on ministry of Finance to be divided and weakened and putting pressure on Politician to make new law assuring independence of the central bank. Eventually, BOJ succeeded.

The author is very concerned by world trend of giving independence to the central bank. He even suspect Mr. Greenspan's behavior saying that regardless his frequent manipulation of prime rate, net money supply to US market does not reflect the prime rate.

Your story about mouth-fatigue and audio system was interesting and understandable.

BOSE acoustic wave music system

Dear Ron,
As my PC has no speaker, I have to connect BOSE acoustic wave music system when necessary. I am satisfied with this BOSE acoustic wave music system,
but it normally stays in living room and my wife use it often. (See attached photo) I started thinking to buy dedicated one for my PC. I visited PC shop and compared sound of different system. BOSE system designed for PC didn’t give me good impression. I found Cambridge DDT3500 is acceptable. Its
subwoofer can respond to 20 Hz frequency and gave me similar sound like BOSE acoustic wave music system.
In addition to the quality of sound, BOSE only accept analog line input.

Current sound card installed in my Dell PC picks up driver noise. And in any case, I have to buy new sound card, which have digital output connection. I
hope digital connection does not pick up driver noise. I will report when I completed the new project.
Regards,
Greenwood

Thank you for your latest Joke. (English Joke Serial No.78) I consulted with my wife because I couldn’t laugh in the beginning. After using dictionary, she found another meaning for “dead ringer for…”.

Yesterday, I found a big sailing boat moored in visitor’s berth of our marina. Her name was “Thursday’s Child”. She also had an emblem of Earth Island Institute, San Francisco, CA and sign of International Marine Mammals Project. The boat was equipped with solar panel and windmill. As I couldn’t find anyone near the boat, after returning home, I checked Internet and found that the 60 feet boat had sailed from San Francisco to Tokyo in 35 days single-handed. The skipper is 53 years old physical therapist Michael Reppy living in Mill Valley, CA. The mission of his visit is adventure and supporting Earth Island Institute’s campaign for saving threatened Dolphins, Whales and Orcas. I couldn’t imagine that such a big boat can be handled by a single man at 53 years. I checked newspaper and couldn’t find any article about the adventure. Probably he was taking a rest some where.

I'm glad you enjoyed the joke. Colloquial English must be very confusing at times - the language is very loosely structured, with few rules and many improvisations.

One man running a 60 ft ship alone must be something. Did he have lots of advanced automatic equipment? Perhaps he was lucky he didn't experience any big storms. With the Typhoon season now here he may find the way back more dangerous. As you know, the San Francisco Bay area has a very large number of sailing enthusiasts, so his origin doesn't surprise me. Its also a very environmentally conscious area. (Although President Bush is making many converts to the environmentalist cause by what many see as an excessive pro-fossil-fuel industry / anti-environmental strategy.

I have finally found good rear speakers. I returned to the store where I bought my main speakers and found that the same company also makes a smaller version with about 25% of the total volume (roughly 180mmW x 260mmH x 150mm D). These have been approved by the decorations manager. It was quite amazing how sensitive I was to the exact tonal coloration in the mid and high range. Listening to alternative small speakers the contrast was much greater than I expected. I conclude that the art of speaker design is still well ahead of the science (at least among speakers in my price range).

I looked for the Cambridge Speakers, about which I had heard good things from others as well as from you. However, Bose seems to have squeezed them out of the LA market. I was going to look on the internet for local suppliers, but now will not have to.

Your comments on sound cards ring true. Like most things on the computer, the market is very insensitive to sound, being much more interested in the fad of the moment. In the USA, most audio magazines have gone out of business. Even audio appreciators (like me and other members of the Boston Audio Society) find we spend much more time on the computer and much, much less time on audio matters.

Richard Werner's book sounds very interesting; it's a pity its not published in English. I'm sure that Mr. Mieno had a powerful influence on the bubble, but I think there must have been many other factors. I feel that each of these commentators puts his finger on one or other important aspect, but the total explanation is still to be developed - if it ever will. Like Paul Krugman, I think the important thing is what to do about it now. Everybody is very interested in success for Mr. Koizumi.

Your comments about the world economic structure raised some points that I had not heard before. Conventional wisdom here is that the world economic structure was destroyed or badly damaged by the reaction to the economic downturn in 1929. Defensive measures, such as tariffs, produced a downward spiral. It was only the Keynesian war time deficits which finally stimulated the economies and broke the deflationary trap. Since 1945 the world economy has mostly been very successful.

I also thought that the Japanese and German economies, in particular, were reorganized in 1945 by breaking up the old oligarchies. This reasoning was often used (particularly in England) to explain why those economies did so much better than England from 1945 to about 1980. The Maekawa report seems to say the reorganization did not happen. Certainly some very efficient, new companies, such as Sony and Honda, were able to establish themselves in that period.

It will also be interesting to see what happens in China if and when they join the OTC. They will have to make huge changes in their very closed economy to satisfy the treaty at a time when the country is really struggling with disorder caused by the changes they've made so far. (Almost every week we hear of civil disorder in parts of China. One wonders what is happening we don't hear about).

Criticism of Alan Greenspan has been increasing lately. It seems to be a consensus that he went too far with raising interest rates last year and was too slow to bring them down now. However, many of the criticisms cancel each other. One prominent critic has repeated said that all he's doing is following signals given first by the bond market. I feel he is doing remarkably well in a very, very difficult area. Interestingly, the European Central Bank, seems far more concerned with inflation while their economy also looks like slowing down. Could they get themselves in the famous liquidity trap?

Michael Reppy was born in Oxnard and started sailing from teenage. I couldn't see any automatic gear like the huge mechanical linkage device, which Gipsy Moth of Sir Francis Chechester had. But seeing power generator of various kinds, I imagine it is equipped with electronic gear. What amazed me are the huge mast, boom and sail. Razing and lowering main sail may need lots of muscle. The main halyard was damaged; he may need to replace it before return voyage. His intention was to break historical record of 34 days and 6 hrs. But he eventually failed after struggling 34 hrs against concurrent stream near Tokyo. As you foresee, return trip may be tougher.

I understand why Bose squeezed Cambridge Speakers out of the LA market. It is a copy of Bose system. Price is only 1/3 of Bose. It is manufactured in China.

We were taught that old war time system was destroyed after Japanese surrender but what Richard Werner's finding was that war time system was maintained by General MacAurther when cold war started. Japanese bureaucracy and BOJ concentrated in powering money into industry. As a result, primary industry such as steel mill and shipyard soon recovered and second generation manufacturing industry such as Toyota, Nissan, Sony followed. All attributable to inclined money flow into the manufacturing industry.

Maekawa Report proposed the necessity of restructuring this war time economical system to more free market driven economy. But didn't mention how. He has hidden the methodology because the restructuring is painful to the public. Instead he influenced his successor Mr. Mieno to cause turbulence in Japanese economy. After 10-year ordeal almost all Japanese now agree painful restructuring. And Mr. Koizumi was elected as Prime Minister. This is well written story.

His point is accountability of central bank is the must in the future and in any country.

Finally, I can draw breath. The last month has been very busy. It was worthwhile, however, because everything went well and all had a very good time. We haven't put photos on the web yet, but one of our fellow local clubs has - many of them! They're at: http://www.PacificGravity.com (Incidentally, the close-up in the right column, about 14 down is not me. Its the competition organizer, Carl Townsend). There are plenty of photos of the competition, but I haven't found myself yet. Naturally, the club concentrated on their own members.

Another great photo was put on by one of the local beer supply stores. I'll forward it separately. It shows the amazing sight of at least 25 real British Beer Engines serving real ale!

An interesting item is that at least one entry was received from Tokyo. I also met an American ex-pat. who has lived in Tokyo for 20 years, but came to the festival. (I don't know if he was the entrant, or how well it or he did). The judging of the beers was handicapped by not having the ideal number of judges. Too many had to work (the competition was Thursday and Friday), or wanted to attend the many presentations, which went on in parallel to the competition. Otherwise it went well and people were very appreciative.

I finally bought my CD-RW drive and have backed up all my hard drive files. As you said, it really can be made to work just like a floppy drive (I have the Adaptec package). I've not tried to use it to make a music CD yet - my computer is quite separate from my audio system.

The rear speakers are fine, but they brought out a problem with my new Panasonic / Technics receiver! Although I bought it in January, I'd not had any rear speakers connected. When I did the receiver started tripping out every time I turned the volume control past 12 o'clock (e.g. not very loud). I checked all my wiring and found nothing wrong. The rear speakers by themselves worked fine on the front outlets. Eventually, the rear channels stopped working at all. Its now in the repair shop under warranty. I hope to get it back soon and hope it works well then.

I see from the news that Mr. Koizumi's program is going ahead. Let us all hope he is successful and that the restructuring will not produce a deep recession. I note that Paul Krugman has been silent about Japan lately.

Today the Fed. dropped interest rates by only 1/4%, less than some people in the market had hoped. Alan Greenspan said that his changes are front loaded, and that they are only just now taking effect. There is also the upcoming tax cut. This will give a quick boost since the government will be mailing out checks to taxpayers this summer. They are expected to spend the windfalls.

I agree with Alan. In fact, based on control system behavior, I am now concerned that we are in a regenerative cycle, with amplitude of both control actions and process variables increasing each cycle. Certainly, the swings of interest rates are getting steeper.

Your spreadsheet really illustrates the nature of the tax cut. I'm afraid Mr. Bush seems to have two main goals in mind: One is to permanently cut taxes by a very large amount which will prevent future Congresses or Presidents spending money on ANY need (Specifically on Health Care and Pensions!). Second is to reward his political contributors - mostly big business, especially Energy and Extractive industries, such as mining. Paul Krugman's comments are barely polite - I can feel that he is seething with anger. He is representative of many people. The defection of Senator Jeffords from the Republican Party illustrates this too.

On the bright side, the California Energy crunch suddenly seems much better. The price of Natural Gas delivered to CA had risen to more than 3 times the price delivered to New York. The oil and gas industry claimed this was just "market forces" even though they were making record profits. The chairman of Enron took home $123 million last year.

When Senator Jeffords jumped ship, the Democrats took over the Senate and announced an investigation into natural gas prices. Suddenly, the price of Natural Gas plummeted to more normal levels. "Market Forces" again they would have us believe.

Another big factor is energy conservation. In spite of ridicule from Dick Cheney, Californians have reduced electricity consumption 11% compared with last year. Connie and I've actually cut ours by 25% - mainly by changing light bulbs to compact Fluorescent ones and being a bit more careful to switch off lights and things like the computer when we're not using them.

The price of electricity here has not actually gone up yet. The new price structure favors conservation, with the "baseline" quantity not increased. The more you use "over baseline" the steeper the increase. I expect conservation to increase once that is in effect.

I apologize for many long subjects - there's been a lot on my mind which I've not been able to pass along. Hope you wade through this all.

I left out the following notes from the Boston Audio Society. I felt they might be of interest. I'm happy to find that all my CD-RW's are of the 74 minute variety. I don't think I'll be trying the others! On the other hand I will be ordering the test CD. I've been a member for many years and managed to attend their monthly meetings while I was in Boston. A very interesting group.

Now, I am enjoying post retirement life. I am still busy though, with supporting forthcoming international PM conference. I have just finished designing conference logo (please see attached logo.htm) which rotate on web page. From tomorrow, I have to prepare conference programs. Enjoying sailing comes after finishing all of my duty.

You didn't mention your family events. I think all went without obstacle. I share your feeling after big events. I checked PacificGravity.com. It seems that this club is very active. Unfortunately, your second mail containing photo of British Beer Engines didn't show correctly. CD-RW is worth having. Adaptec package is de-facto standard. The record of my entire work of the last 10 years could be housed in a single CD-RW disk.

I checked my disks and found out that all my disks are Type 74/650Mb. I afraid Panasonic / Technics receiver may have been assembled in somewhere in Asia. Considering many obstacles awaiting me, I finally abandoned Cambridge speaker system. Instead, I selected Bose speaker system for my PC. This time, the cost was reasonable. The speaker was assembled in Mexico and amplifier was assembled in Korea.

Probably for Prof. Krugman, Japanese government policy is not worth commenting. Despite record breaking number of Koizumi's supporter, his capability is limited. As Prof. Krugman pointed out, without proper support from BOJ, he may encounter big difficulty. Senator Jeffords's brave behavior is reported here in Japan. Now Democrats took over the Senate. Because of his decision, check and balance mechanism is maintained.

Because of high power cost in Japan, energy conservation is our standard practice. Not only fluorescent lighting, I often pull plug out of wall socket. It is worth doing so because, stand-by power consumption is fairly high. Bose system is the worst one.

It seems you are continuing to work (on the conference) even though retired. I'm assuming you'll continue to support the PM work during the future. One good thing about not having a regular job is that one has the chance to take the time necessary to do things as they need to be done properly. I looked at the logo, it's very impressive. The "Motion" file worked well; I got nothing from the logo.htm. Moving images are something about which I'm completely ignorant. Now that your hot summer weather is there, I'm sure you enjoy the chance to go and sail.

Our weather has resumed "smiling" on us. For almost 2 weeks we had (for us) hot, humid weather - perhaps inaccurately, the weather people talk about a "monsoon". Manhattan Beach even had days of >25 C temperatures - very rare for us. However, the pattern is broken and we are back with "climate" instead of weather (Highs about 20 - 25 C, lows about 15 C) with bright sunshine. It seems set for the wedding this weekend.

Plans are complete and the couple seem very well organized. People from out of town start arriving this evening. From now onwards our life is out of our hands and we will go "with the flow".

No sooner had we discussed Paul Krugman and Japan than he had a column in the NYT about his visit to Tokyo. No doubt you saw it. He has "a bad feeling" about the situation. While praising Mr. Koizumi and his team, he is very skeptical that their plans will actually work, given the famous resistance by the bureauocrats, especially in the BOJ. Other commentators here feel that, as his austerity measures bite, he will lose popularity before being able to restore the economy.

I hope and feel the pessimists are wrong. I believe the Japanese people are sophisticated enough the realize how important are the things he is trying to do that their legendary patience will preserve him through the hard times.

Recently I've been revisiting some of Krugman's early writings. In particular, his book Peddling Prosperity. The most impressive thing is how well it stands up 7 years after it was written in 1994. At that time the US was still mired in the low productivity growth of the previous 20 years, with no hint of the explosion of productivity since then. In talking about why the rapid deployment of computers had not worked, he quoted the view that, to take advantage of the computer, it would be necessary to reorganize the whole structure of office work. In another section he emphasizes the fundamental fact that a country's standard of living can only increase in step with its productivity increases. This seems to be a iron law which cannot be denied, but is often forgotten by those who wish for some other solution (mainly on the left, I'm afraid).

This is, of course, exactly what has happened, at least here - as the corporate need to increase profits to satisfy shareholders has fostered wide spread and accelerating layoffs. Up until now, those laid off have been able to find new work in productive areas. Even now, the unemployment rate remains at historically low levels here (although rising). Opinion is very divided about the chance of avoiding a recession. Incidentally, Fluor stock continues to sink. Its now down about 30% from its high of a few weeks ago.

All-in-all, I'm enormously impressed by Krugman's ability to think clearly and to express the most complicated thoughts in simple language. He's also not afraid to praise conservative thinkers or to criticize liberals like himself - something seldom seen in our politicized world.

When the dust settles and the new electric power prices filter through to my bill (next month) I'll let you know what our new rates are. For the record, we're using about 11 kwh per day. Last month's bill, which has parts of both the old and new charges, was $41 for 331 kwh.

We had historically high temperature since July 1. Some 39 deg. C was recorded. In addition, it is very humid. Power companies are now in full operation. Your monsoon is our normal weather. Now, due to typhoon passing south of Japan, we are enjoying cool and dry air in these days.

I stopped sailing in the last few weeks, because lower back pain. But I still made two major mountain climbing with pain. I started taking supplemental food for strengthening cartilage of my spinal column.

As I lost subscriber ID and password of New York Times, I missed reading Paul Krugman's article about Japan. I presume it is July 8 article "A Leap in the Dark". I found now they charge $0.8 for archived article. I also afraid he will lose popularity before being able to restore the economy.

I did not know about his book "Peddling Prosperity" But I agree with you that his way of thinking is simple and clear. After reading his book, "Phantasms in Capitalism", I couldn't stop buying additional 3 books i.e. "The Age of Diminished Expectations", "The Accidental Theorist" and "The Return of Depression Economy".

Now, it is widely recognized that without changing way of business, IT does not improve productivity.

I have seen a very impressive TV program about the rise of Chinese private business firms. From now on, Japanese firms are asked to start selling new goods that no one can imagine.

In my case, last month's bill was $55 for 213kwh (26cents per kWh). In your case, it was $41 for 331 kWh (12cents per kWh) Your cost is still 46% of us.

I talked with Mr. Michel Reppy who sailed from San Francisco single-handed. He returned 4 weeks ago. Probably he is still continuing sailing to his homeport. Strong typhoon is now chasing him.

Its too bad the NYT has changed their policy. You used to be able to go back a month or more without charge. Now I have to remember to check every week!

Krugman's article seems quite penetrsating to me. Here's the text (luckily I have it here).

Thank you very much for your sending "A Leap in the Dark". I circulated it to some of my friends. His comments are in line with his previous thoughts. As he says, without BOJ's correct understanding Mr. Koizumi may fail economically. His staff Heizo Takenaka knows this fact and asked BOJ to do the correct actions. BOJ is quite independent and they refused to do so. I afraid not only Japan but the world would suffer.

I wonder why no politician proposes to change present law giving independence of BOJ from the government. Probably, all nation guarantee independence of central bank from the government. Most of Japanese who worked in private sector are already suffering. Now they feel that government sector should share pain. As you noticed from my previous mail, utility, transportation and communication cost are double of that of US cost. This is the reason why Mr. Koizumi is supported by most of Japanese. They don't care world economy. They just demand productivity in government sector.

I'm glad to see that the LDP won the election. At least, so far, the country seems to be behind him and his reforms. Your comments about pain in the government sector sounds as thought opinion there is shifting towards the attitude of many Americans about government bureaucrats. I think it is probably unfairly harsh here, but it is certainly more pleasant to deal with government people who are on the defensive. In my experience, the government people are generally very cooperative and quite competent. Now I'm retired and eligible for Medicare (government health insurance) I get to deal with both government and private health insurance companies as well as doctors' offices, hospitals, labs, etc.

In general the government people are the most timely in response and almost always correct. Most of the problems have been with the private companies. The doctors' offices and hospitals are the most confused and error-prone.

Most countries do have independent central banks as far as I know. An exception was the UK during the Thatcher years. The Bank of England was then an agency of the government. I don't know if that is still the case. In any event, Prime Minister Thatcher used the bank to further shortsighted government policies (Friedman-type monetary rules) with the predictable bad results. Unemployment rose from 5.4% in 1979 to 11.8% and was still above 10% in 1987. After a brief drop to about 7% it went back up above 10% until she was forced from office by her own party in 1990. Currently it's about 5% again.

I think the US system, where the members of the bank are appointed by the president for longish, staggered terms, is probably the best of many bad choices. The bank is insulated from day to day politics, but subject to long term oversight. One interesting sidelight to the current US downturn is that Alan Greenspan is no longer beyond criticism. If the slowdown does turn into a recession (it hasn't yet) he could be very unpopular. I'm not familiar with how the members of the BOJ are appointed, who appoints them or how long they serve?

I note that the Nikkei dropped after the election. I suppose this is a very natural reaction to the prospect of a real recession. I also see in today's paper that production in Japan dropped 0.7% in June, although unemployment remains under 5%. I think the whole world is, indeed, teetering on the brink. Should the US consumer pull back then watch out!

Recently, I've been moving a little more funds into money market cash accounts from stock mutual funds and, especially, overseas funds. I have a conference with my financial advisor next week - it'll be interesting what his opinion is.

Your comments about Chinese companies was also very interesting. I saw an article that said foreign investment in Asia has changed from about 25% in China a few years ago to 75% lately. No wonder the other underdeveloped Asian economies are in trouble - they seem to be looking at a huge drop in foreign investment. Will we now see a "China" Bubble?

My second son had his marriage on Saturday. It was much smaller than his brother's, with only about 60 guests, but went as well as the other. The setting was a restaurant called the "Inn of the Seventh Ray", a vaguely "Hippie" place in Topanga Canyon which is a rustic enclave in the middle of the Santa Monica Mountains, just outside the Los Angeles city limits. There was even a statue of the Buddha behind the alcove where the ceremony took place. Most significantly, the mother of Rita, the bride, had traveled from Brazil to attend. She will return to Brazil on Wednesday and will come to a last dinner with us tonight.

Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. We had to leave in the late afternoon, so invited the guests to our house to continue the party. More than half of them came. On reflection, I realized that my family has doubled and now tripled in two weeks. I also took many photos this time - 5 rolls of 36. They're being developed at the moment. I expect to be getting many reprints. Peter, my younger son, who is in the computer graphics business, has just bought a new Nikon scanner. We plan to be scanning selected pictures from both weddings (from the negatives). I'll hope to be able to send you a few if and when we do.

I suffered from back pain quite badly about 20 years ago. Medical help was of little effect. The solution for me (apart from the kneeler for working at the computer) turned out to be back strengthening exercises. I've kept them up ever since and have been little troubled since.

I'll watch out for stories about Michael Reppy. Since he's from San Francisco, there probably won't be a lot of coverage in LA, but I'll be ready for it. Let us hope he can outrun the typhoon and others which could hit him.

I enjoyed “Definition of tragedy” very much. Please allow me to include it into my collections. I found many Ron’s contribution in my list.

I like any kind of engines. Once, I dreamed of building my Jet Engine from commercially available turbo-booster. A Jet Powered Beer Cooler was a fulfillment of my dream. But I never considered using it as a beer cooler. The sound may be tremendous.

I have read “ABCNEWS.com: Accident Ends Atlantic Record Bid”. I have found many hull failures of catamaran type boat. Probably it is structurally vulnerable due to its complex configuration. In addition, once it is capsized, it is almost impossible to recover. But due to its speed, many people challenge catamaran type. It is beyond my selection. Michael Reppy also once selected catamaran and sailed Pacific Ocean to Japan several years ago. But unfortunately his catamaran was capsized and damaged badly. Japanese freighter rescued him. Now he is enjoying 60 foot mono hull boat.

As you may already know, BOJ finally decided to increase money supply. But they are still resistant to accept Prof. Krugmans suggestions. Now some newly elected state man started to change law toward allowing government to have right to change and nominate top man of BOJ. Now BOJ is quite independent and government can do nothing about nomination of top man.

Your second son’s marriage ceremony sounds a little bit exotic. I am delighted to see some photos. We normally see Buddha at funeral ceremony. Marriage ceremony is normally conducted in the shrine, a traditional religious like the one Roman and Greek had. Our Prime Minister Koizumi sent a big impact to our neighboring country when he said that he would visit Yasukuni shrine at August 15. Yasukuni shrine was used by Japanese government in past World War II time as a tool to promote nationalistic emotion. Half of Japanese considers that he shouldn’t. We think he didn’t lean our history correctly.

Today, I learned that total number of Chinese cellular phones now exceeded that of US. It is obvious that 21 century is time for Chinese.

In Japan only Medicare (government health insurance) is dominant. Private health

insurance companies are still at its initiation time. Government people are qualified but very arrogant here.

It seems that the world economic situation is fast reaching a turning point. In spite of many rosy predictions from governments and many commentators, the markets continue to slide. Meanwhile, the economic news seems to blow hot and cold. Economic indicators here have been both encouraging and discouraging lately, but the stock market seems to pay more attention to the bad ones. Some, more thoughtful, commentators point out that US stock prices are still very high in terms of historical Price/Earnings ratio, so there is really no reason for them to rise until company earnings have actually recovered. The P/E ratios of American Companies are still very high, more like those seen at the top of a bull market than those you'd expect to see after a long slide.

Today there is very strong coverage here of the Toshiba company's preparations to lay off thousands of workers, which followed news from Hitachi and Fujitsu of intentions to do the same. Much is made of the fact that many of the workers affected will be in Japan. Toshiba president Okamura sounded just like an American CEO in saying that his "mission is to revive the company and ensure that everyone develops a strong sense of crisis", although he did say that half the cuts would be by attrition. I note also that unemployment there reached 5%, the highest level since the government has been publishing the statistic. I hope that your new Prime Minister, Mr. Koizumi, will be able to keep the public's opinion on his side as the storm clouds gather. I'm glad to see there is some thought about limiting the independence of the BOJ. Of course, it should not just be under direct government control. (You did not say exactly how the members are appointed, especially the top man). In many European countries, the governments are so short-lived that the civil servants have almost complete freedom to do what they like.

A great deal of debate is occurring here about the state of the US budget. It is now apparent that, hardly 6 months into his regime, George Bush has managed to reduce the budget surplus to the point where the government will have to start borrowing from the Social Security surplus. Shades of the Reagan Administration in the 1980's. Paul Krugman seems to write about little else these days. He keeps hammering on the way the administration keeps lying about its true intentions. I wonder if he and many of the Democratic Party spokesmen are getting a bit shrill.

We are now in the phase of sorting and copying photographs. My older son estimates he has over 2000 pictures. They include ones taken by the professional photographer, by friends, his brother and me. They also put a disposable camera on each table for people to use. Next time I see them I'll have my prints ready for both sons, their wives and friends. They'll then put the best ones from all sources into albums, leaving the others to be picked up by friends and family. We've not had the chance to sort out the best for scanning, yet, but hope to get there eventually.

Our wedding was so much simpler, it's hard to believe how things have changed in 30 years.

The US has often lagged in new (especially wireless) telephone technology. Part of this is because the normal system works quite well. When I was in Abu Dhabi a few years ago it seemed everybody had a cell. phone. If you do not have a well developed wired system, then it makes a lot of sense to go straight to wireless. Paradoxically, countries with strong technology of one generation have a tendency to lag in adoption of new technologies because the incentive is less and the vested interest in the old system is stronger.

Oh, yes. I've actually got back to brewing, with my first batch in many months. At bottling it tasted quite good. We shall see how it is shaping up in a week or two. I have my fingers crossed.

I share your view on world economics. What Prime Minister, Mr. Koizumi going to do is what Prime Minister Thatcher did long time ago. Now, he is facing strong resistance from government officers. I feel they hijacked Japan.

2000 pictures are something. I thought putting disposable camera for free use is a good idea.

Your view on slow spread of new technology in mature society is correct. Now China is enjoying rapid spread of new technology. Only hurdle may be their political system. Now home brewing is OK here. But I have too many things to do. Sailing, bike, mountain climbing etc. My lower back pain is becoming better because of taking Chondroitin regularly.

Tomorrow, I am going to start a long ride to Hokkaido over a week on Harley Davidson. After that, climbing on Japan’s second tallest mountain is waiting me. Another two climbing are schedule in this year. At home, I am busy with editing program pamphlets and proceeding CD-ROM for the coming international congress on PM.

Next year, I am actually retiring from all those official duties. My second life starts at that time.

Thank you for sending me many jokes. Virus is always putting pressure on me, because I am currently keeping official documents. I backup them every day.

I thought I'd let you know that our family is all safe; even Jane, my niece, in New York.

All air travel in and to and from USA is closed down; so are all the financial markets. Who knows where this may lead us?

As more news surfaces (which you might not hear on the media ) I'll pass it along.

During my long journey to Hokkaido, I encountered a series of terrorist attack in a small town facing the Sea of Okhotsk. When I returned from coin laundry to my hotel room at 21:00 local time, I found a smoke coming out sky scraper in TV screen which was switched to check weather forecast of the next day. It was live news direct from New York. Soon I saw second attack to the south tower and so on. During my trip, I normally fell asleep around 20:00. But at that night, I kept watching TV until 1:30 in the next day.

In the beginning I saw TV with engineers eye but soon I realized the true meaning of the tragedy.

Yesterday, I returned from 10 days long touring in Hokkaido and read all past newspaper. My wife pointed out that even if Mr. Bush can destroy Osama bin Laden, another Osama bin Laden may come up unless poverty problem in middle east area are resolved. I am pleased you have sent me James Flanigan’s article. We share his views. When I visited Saudi, 5 years ago, I heard that most of the well-educated young generation has no job opportunities there. Their society could not provide them such opportunities. They soon lose pride and start thinking that there is some thing wrong in the global system. Probably, lack of democracy is the key word of bad economic situation in this area. But due to natural resources in Middle East and other area, importing country preferred rather autocratic government there. Because, it is easy to maneuver. Now we are paying the price. In the long run, international societies have to pay more attention to diminishing poverty for their security. Now everyone knows, that killing 5,000 people is relatively easy and military power is useless.

Any way, world is small. One of my wife’s friends told that her son in law escaped from 82^nd floor of the South Tower.

In my trip to Hokkaido, I have driven 3,500 km, most of the time in the rain. Still I enjoyed the ride. During my absence, a typhoon landed Kamakura and torn down a tree in my garden.

Little by little, Americans are grappling with the fallout from Tuesday's attack. I'm afraid there is a great deal of ignorant, off-the-cuff bluster, but many are taking a more thoughtful approach.

Naturally, our politicians are saying one thing and probably thinking another. At least President Bush and his administration seem very well aware of the need to have as many allies as possible, especially in Muslim countries. I hope we can avoid the sort of ill-considered response which will only play into the hands of those who attacked us.

Much blame has been fixed on Osama bin Laden, without any evidence, apart from the fact that most of the hijackers came from the Middle East. Today he issued a denial of responsibility; I doubt many people will put much credence in that, either.

More thoughtful analysis points out that there are a very large number of Muslims in countries all over the world who are extremely angry at the United States. Prominent among them, of course, is Saddam Hussein. My own feeling is that there are probably many plots to attack the US and other western countries, in various stages of preparation and with a wide range of skill and chance of success.

One of the most important debates going on here now is the trade off between security and constitutional rights. It is always very easy to compromise rights when trying to increase security. This discussion will probably intensify as the government proposes changes.

Oddly enough, one of the most interesting columns I've read about the situation came in the business section of the LA Times today. I've taken the liberty of appending it to this letter, because it presents objective information about the Middle East which is generally overlooked. It even echoes some of the things that Osama bin Laden has been saying about the corrupt and despotic governments there (some supported by the US). The article is especially interesting because it is from the LA Times Chief Economist - who generally takes a very pro-business, patriotic attitude. It includes a map which didn't reproduce, so I've constructed a table which compares the GDP's per Capita of the countries involved. That's below the article.

Let us hope that further tragedies can be avoided, although the prospect for the World's Economy must be very bleak right now.

MIDDLE EAST ECONOMIES - GDP, Etc.
COUNTRY	POPULATION	GDP	GDP
	(MILLIONS)	($ per CAPITA)	($Billions)

Kuwait	2.1	16952	35.6
Israel	6.4	16281	104.2
Libya	3.8	7517	28.6
Saudi Arabia	21.4	6992	149.6
Lebanon	3.4	5008	17.0
Turkey	66.7	3454	230.4
Iran	62.5	1753	109.6
Algeria	30.6	1575	48.2
Egypt	62.4	1413	88.2
Syria	17	1047	17.8
Jordan	6.9	1044	7.2
Iraq	23.2	496	11.5

USS Cowpens has departed already. I hope Emily left the vessel as scheduled. Today, Kitty Halk left Yokosuka base guarded by 38 Japanese coast guard vessels and two Japanese Navy destroyers. This is first case in the post world war Japanese history. Mr. Koizumi made the decision. He is going to make new law to follow up new situations. BOJ is also following up corrective action. I suspected that they anticipated such situation. When I returned from Hokkaido Kamakura was very noisy by night landing exercise of Kitty Halk's jet fighter. But now, it is very calm. Bush's address made in capital hill was broadcasted here. It seems that crisis made him a real President.

Although things are more normal on the surface, everybody here is still very disturbed. Mostly there is uncertainty.

President Bush's address on Thursday was very well received by almost all parts of opinion, here and abroad. His initial handling of the crisis had left some in doubt about his response, but he recovered very well in what is probably his greatest speech yet. Indications are that he is resisting those who are urging precipitate action. Lashing out and killing innocent bystanders would be very counterproductive. The prospects of war in Afghanistan are daunting indeed. No doubt the Russians and the British are able to warn us very effectively. Colin Powell, also, was a very cautious general; I expect he's a powerful counselor of careful action. Washington seems to understand that the political arena is much more decisive than the military in this struggle.

A large proportion of our armed forces are being relocated towards the South Asia and Middle East areas; I'm not at all surprised that USS Cowpens and Kitty Hawk are moving. If Emily was unable to leave she might not be in too much danger since I expect little risk to US ships since action would seem to be confined to land based areas. Naval airmen, of course, could be well involved.

One of the ironies of our situation is that our apparent Muslim allies are almost all the shaky, authoritarian governments who produced the climate that led the well-educated young men to join bin Laden in the first place. Sober analysts are predicting a struggle that could last for generations.

Today the stock market made a small recovery here, but almost all opinion seems to be that we are now certainly in a recession. If so, it would be the first time since the 1970's that all industrial countries fell into recession at the same time. The crucial debate is whether the recession will parallel the '70's being followed by stagflation. (Corrected for inflation, the Dow Jones average dropped 75% at that time!) It must be very dangerous indeed if the BOJ is actually acting. (I've not actually seen any news of their actions in the US Press).

On a happier note, my elder son, Bill and his wife Sally have just returned from their honeymoon. They traveled by car throughout Northern California. (Being an employee he hired a Lexus from Toyota for the trip). They followed your route north as far as San Francisco, then went further north. Connie and I took a much shorter 2-day trip up as far as Morro Bay just before the terror attack. It was a nice break to get away even for such a short time. We'll probably do more short trips. Finally, on Thursday, my younger son, Peter, will travel to Brazil where his wife is already visiting her family - that'll be their honeymoon. They are visiting a resort in Northern Brazil for 2 weeks.

While my attempts to cut electricity use have been very successful (currently more than 30% less than last year) I've found big problems with my house heating system. I've been comparing gas and electricity use with a friend in Chicago, Illinois, where the climate is colder than Tokyo. His house is only 2/3 the size of mine and heating degree-days there are about 4 times ours. Last winter I burned more gas than he did!

Once I found that out, I checked my gas consumption for the last 10 years. Almost year to year there has been a steady increase. In 10 years consumption has almost doubled. The increase does not seem to have correlated with changes in life style, such as retiring. The only conclusion was that the efficiency had dropped catastrophically. When things change slowly it's amazing how you can overlook them. A great Process Engineer I turned out to be.

So, yesterday, I crawled around in the narrow space between ceiling and roof where my furnace and its distribution ducts are. I found one length of duct where the thin vinyl cover had split almost along 0.5 metres in length. No doubt that could have been wasting half my heat! I taped it up and will see how things go when I turn on the furnace when winter comes.

I'm also going to check the stack gas temperature to try to see if the heat exchange surfaces are fouled. (When I clean the filter and check out the furnace in the fall I'll try to look at it, but don't know how much I'll be able to see). I'm also planning to put thermocouples or temperature sensors in the attic space to see if I can detect a new duct split. Finally, I'm going to measure the hot air pressure when I first turn it on (with ducts leak-free). If a duct splits I expect to see a drop in pressure and rise in attic temperature. With a bit of luck I may be able to cut my winter gas bills in half.

I share your views on current situation. Newsweek's inside report is very though. Especially "Inside the Mullah's Mind" and "The Allies who made Our Foes" were very suggestive. As you said shaky and authoritarian government in Saudi and Egypt exported terrorists and Mullah in Afghanistan offered hiding place for them probably for Laden's money. Oil money was used for reproduction of fanatic Muslim generation by costly education.

After sorting out Afghanistan, modernization of Saudi and Egypt government style may be next agenda for international community. US Press is now very busy but BOJ actually increased money supply to the market. But without expectation for inflation, consumer demand does not increase yet. BOJ is still against increasing expectation for inflation.

Morro Bay was beautiful and has nice berthing place for the boat. I whish to live in such place.

For energy conservation, distributed air conditioning system is recommended. There is no duct and heat loss from the duct. When I designed my current home, I decided to install separate air conditioning unit and space heater to each room. You just switch on necessary unit. Others are switched off. You can replace old unit with new high efficiency unit as needed. Analogy is distributed communication system like Internet against centered telephone exchange system.

I have just returned from climbing Japan's second highest mountain called Kitadake. I enjoyed it very much.

Things here seem to be in a frozen state. Everybody is expecting some sort of military action but, apart from reports of stationing US troops adjacent to Afghanistan, nothing is moving. So far the US public has not been at all critical of President Bush. (Had he been a Democrat there would be a deafening roar of disapproval from our right wing). An example of the "Nixon Syndrome" where only a radical anti-communist could make a deal with communists without disapproval from Congress. Our administration seems to have realized that the terrorists hoped to provoke an intemperate reaction.

Last night our Public TV network had a feature revisiting the Lebanon crisis in the early '80s. The parallels to now were uncanny. Many of Reagan's speeches could be exchanged for George Bush's this month. The conclusion was very depressing since the terrorists basically won the war when the US Marines evacuated Beirut allowing Lebanon to descend into more than a decade of terror and destruction. I hope and expect Washington was watching. I believe that fighting terrorism is extremely difficult without descending to their level of brutality. For example, we haven't had any "copy cat" acts yet. What do you think Tony Blair would do if the IRA hijacked a BA plane and flew it into the Houses of Parliament? At least airport security is tighter in the UK than here. One of our big debates right now is whether to rely on private, commercial, "lowest bidder" security or whether to make it a Federal Government function. The big money lobbyists are pushing hard to keep the private system! Bush seems to be leaning towards that side.

One interesting side issue is that Sept. 11th has apparently taken over as the single most deadly day in the history of the US. Apparently the US Civil War battle of Antietam held the record, something like 4 - 5000 as I recall.

A distributed HVAC system seems very efficient. The ability to heat/cool only selected rooms must give big savings. Here we do not need AC (I actually brought two widow units from our Chicago

apartment, postponed installation until we'd had a summer here, and then sold them before the next summer). Individual room heaters are available here but are generally considered obsolescent. When we expanded our house nobody even considered them. I do turn down the air flow to the guest room when there is nobody there. (Paradoxically, I wonder if throttling back that branch raises the back pressure enough to cause duct failure!). This winter will be a time of careful observation and experimentation.

Your travels this year are epic! I especially enjoyed the pictures on your web site from your trip up Mt. Tanigawadake. They really bring home to me how mountainous Japan must be. Compared to our western mountains they are also very green. Much more rain I guess (also by observing the cloudy weather). I recall your description of the trip to Hokkaido. At about that time I also remember seeing rainfall in one day of almost 100 mm in the Tokyo weather report. Anopther ominous piece of data is the average travel speed in Hokkaido (several sections < 30km/h). Your motorcycle club must be composed of tough riders.

On the wedding front, we are almost complete. Bill and Sally returned last week from a trip to Northern CA as honeymoon. Very relaxing - with several educational winery visits! Peter and Rita are now in Brazil - on their own delayed honeymoon. After visiting the family in Sao Paulo they are now in a tropical resort near Recife near the eastern tip of the country. They'll come home about the 12th.

During the 19th century Morro Bay was an important harbor. The rock was actually a quarry and many CA exports flowed through the harbor. I can imagine how attractive it must be to sailors.

We are also getting back to normal. I've managed to get back into the brewing game. Two batches in the last few weeks, no less. An older brew from last winter won a first prize in the Los Angeles County Fair (Old Ale style).

Every day, I am watching TV. Mr. Bush may have tough time from now. I got an impression that Royal family in Saudi is indirectly responsible for terrorist act in supporting radical Muslim group and educating young generation to such direction. History proved that politics and religion should be separate.

In the past few days, I worked until midnight to finish editing work of Program and Proceedings of International Congress. As I am again attaching another mountains before snow comes. We are worrying that international participants may decline to attend, if terrorist attack in short time.

Thank you for visiting my web sites and sending me many jokes. I am really enjoying them.

In Hokkaido, we run at highest speed of 140 km and stopped only for lunch and refuelling.

When I visited CA, I found Dana point and remembered that I had read "Two Years before the Mast" written by Richard Henry Dana Jr. long time ago. I wonder whether he visited Morro bay. I will check later. Some day, I would like to taste your Beer.

I agree that the Saudis are financing bin Laden. This probably includes the Royal Family, which is very large and has a hand in a very large part of the country's industry and other operations. Like all non democratic governments their main concern is in maintaining their power. To divert the actions of the fundamentalists they seem to have decided to "buy them off".

Its interesting to see the various tactics used by other totalitarian governments in the region - such as the Syrians (who use violent repression), Saddam Hussein (a mixture?) and others. All too often the effect is to move away from democracy. The Algerians were very typical when they called off elections the fundamentalists were expected to win. Today the LA Times had a column suggesting that allowing the fundamentalists to come to power would moderate their behavior. An example was the fact that the Iranians are solid members of OPEC.

Already, in this country, the wildest opinions are being expressed. One commentator suggested this morning that we use the present campaign to invade Iraq! Make no mistake - the advocates of military solutions to all problems have not disappeared here. Their comments have been of a low profile as yet since there is a Republican president, but they are becoming increasingly vocal. They would be deafening if we had a Democratic administration.

I think International Business travel will gradually recover, although I doubt it will soon get back to where it was. The attendance at your Congress will probably depend on how long there is between it and Sept. 11th.

I have now cleaned and tested my furnace for the winter. I discovered yet another (small) hole in the ductwork and fixed it. I think the best way to detect leaks is to feel around the ducts when the furnace is operating (e.g. low tech.). I'm checking my gas meter regularly, although we've not had to use the furnace yet.

It proved too difficult to either check the heat exchange surfaces or to install a draft measuring water column gauge. Both would have required considerable dismantling of the furnace. I decided to leave well-enough alone. I now have two temperature gauges installed around the furnace, one high and the other low. I'm taking "baseline" temperature readings during the day so as to have a comparison for when the furnace operates. I envy your simple, flexible system.

I tried to get performance data on my furnace. Unfortunately, the maker was bought out by the Maytag giant in 1986. The Maytag web site doesn't even list furnaces any more. Do you know the stack/exhaust gas temperature and claimed efficiency of your heaters? When mine starts operating I'll be checking stack gas temperatures, but don't have a reference to check my theoreticalcalculations.

I'm in the middle of a new book. It's about the history of North America from the time of the great meteorite of 65 million years ago which wiped out almost all life there. Along the lines of Guns, Germs and Steel he includes many disciplines in his story. It's amazing how turbulent the history of the continent has been; much more so than the others. For example, during the last ice age the North American ice cap was much bigger than those of other continents, including Antarctica. Its called The Eternal Frontier by an Australian called Tim Flannery, Director of the South Australian museum in Adelaide. He is not as persuasive as Diamond, but still presents many fascinating insights.

In the last 7 days, I worked until morning for editing 50 pages program and 10Mb CD-ROM proceedings, maintaining web site for sharing information among members of the committee handling PowerPoint file of all speakers and as a chairman of technical track, coordinating among speakers. Several times in a day, I backed up all documents in CD-RW. If my PC fails that mean no document and slide for the congress. Peak time has almost past and now I can come back to your mail. Almost 400 delegate gather in Tokyo from 22 countries all over the world such as Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong - China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, UK, USA, Yugoslavia.

As I reserved a rather small hall for the congress, we have to ask additional applicant that we have no rooms for them. But the congress place is in excellent position in the heart of Tokyo near Imperial Palace.

Technical tour is provided for experiential ride on Magnetic levitation vehicle. It runs at the world speed record of 552 km/hour on 18.4 km test track. The two trains run face to face at relative speed of 1,003 km/h.

It seems that, Anthrax is a new threat to the world. Every time, I see white powder it gives me an alarming signal. As you may know our Constitution does not allow to send our military forces abroad. Mr. Koizumi is now fighting to make a new law allowing him to send our forces to help US under restriction of the Constitution.

Coming back to air conditioning topics, even with high electric price in Japan, I use heat pumping unit for bed room heating in winter. This unit could be switched to cooler in summer. As we do not use town gas for bed room heating, it is safer and could be switched off automatically after we fell asleep. We only use gas for living room because it is used around the clock. When you check furnace efficiency, not only fouling, but you have to think excess air used for combustion. Normally, small furnace has no means to control excess air for the cost associated for such device. The furnace commonly used here use forced draft fan for combustion air. Intake air flows outer pipe (approx. 1 inch) of concentric dual pipe and flue gas flows inside (approx. 2/3 inch) all made of 18-8 SS. As a result those duct function as a heat exchanger. Temperature of flue gas coming out the duct is reasonably low. You can touch it without burning your finger at maximum load. I din't know how combustion air quantity is controlled. Because, maker does not disclose the logic of complicated electronic circuit.

My vague memory tell me that there is a hypothesis which claim that if current global warming continues, the ice on Greenland melt and dilute northern Atlantic Ocean. As less salty ocean water stops Great Ocean watercirculation by gravity and cause continued cooling of Arctic Ocean. This may be a trigger of next Ice age. Ice on northern American continent was accumulated like this in the past. This flip-flop action seems still continuing.

The conference seems in good hands. It sounds like a very large undertaking. I hope your attendance is good. It took many bad experiences for me to learn to back up frequently. This seems to be also age-related; although my sons do far more on the computer than I do, at least the younger one is very casual about backup. The Maglev train sounds incredibly interesting. I cannot imagine how one would handle the safety issues of such a vehicle. Are there any plans to introduce such trains into the regular Japanese train system? (It occurs to me that your trains are already very fast and distances moderate - would there be that much time saved?)

Have you noticed the problems with rail maintenance and accidents in Britain since they privatized their railways? It seems very difficult to make a workable private railway system. In the US, with the longer delays now at airports, there is talk of more investment in trains. This has happened several times in the past. I don't expect any more will come of it than previously.

The Anthrax business is dominating the news here too. Now the government is looking into ordering vast quantities of Anthrax, Smallpox and other vaccines. However, it is important to keep a sense of proportion. One commentator made the point that we are expecting many more deaths from influenza this year than from terrorist attack. The public often worries about only what is unusual, ignoring things which are customary. My favorite statistic is that road deaths in the US total over 40,000 each year, so its still true that the biggest risk in taking a 'plane trip is on the road going to the airport!

Let us hope that the terrorists don't have a new, devastating attack of a totally different kind. Today the British announced that they would send a few commando troops to Afghanistan. So far that is the only country to actually do any specific helping in the campaign. Many of our NATO allies say helpful things, but do not actually do much. Therefore, any help, even non-military, Japan could offer would be most welcome. I'm very afraid that the whole world situation is becoming more unstable - a good example is the maneuvering of the Indians and the Pakistanis over Kashmir. I understand the nature of your constitution and realize that many very sensitive issues are involved. The Japanese people should make up their minds without pressure from outside over such a fundamental subject.

I wonder where the heat source is for the bedroom heating pump in winter. I seem to remember some old systems with buried pipes to extract heat from underground. This would seem impractical for a single room system. If outside air is used, wouldn't there be a difficulty with icing when the outside temperature approaches the freezing point? Our thermostat allows 4 different settings throughout the day. We turn the heat down at night, then back up just before rising, down again once the sun is up and we are into our daily activities, then up again in the evening until bedtime. Thus we get some of the advantages you get turning off the heat pump.

The problem of excess air is one reason why I've not really followed up on efficiency calculations. My furnace is very simple (1980 vintage). Air flows in at the bottom of the firebox, through the gas distributor/burner, then upwards through the heat exchanger where the circulating air is heated, and then to the horizontal exit duct. This duct is very short and opens into a box open on the bottom, connected to the stack which goes straight up through the roof. Total height from inlet to top of stack is no more than about 1 metre. The air flow is whatever convection produces. (There is a very simple air/fuel adjustment on the burner which allows the proper mixture to be sent to the burner - like a bunsen burner or gas stove). I'll measure the temperature at the end of the horizontal exit duct and then start calculating. Furnaces with inlet/outlet combustion air exchange are now available here, but of questionable payout. A friend in Chicago, where the climate is quite cold in winter, bought one a few years ago, but his economic benefits are marginal. He's just another engineer who wants an efficient device! In CA the justification would be much less.

My thermostat has a counter which reports how many hours it has operated. I do know the firing rate, so can at least watch the number of hours and my gas meter. The furnace has not really started operating yet, just a few short-lived heating cycles when the setting rises in the mornings. Total firing for the season so far is only 2 hours. I'm keeping track of this information and checking the ducts for leaks frequently. We'll see how it goes this year when the weather gets cooler.

I had great fun in your HP image section. The ocean circulation was not what I expected. At several places the currents cross. I assume this is where one is much deeper than the other. One strange thing was that there seemed to be no Gulf Stream! In the north Atlantic the flow was S.Westerly?

Even more interesting I found the World Energy Use by Types from the IIASA. I noticed the data ended in the early '80's and wondered how things had developed since then. (Just as Stock Market Theories are always good at "predicting" the past).

I found some similar data in the International Energy Outlook 2001 published by the US Energy Information Administration last March. (website is www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/index.html) Among much interesting data they give World Energy Consumption by Fuel Type for 1970 and 1999 and predict 2010 and 2020. The 1970 data are a fairly close match to the IIASA curves. Instead of Wood they include Renewable energy - presumably that includes wood. Renewables are about 6%, roughly double the IIASA wood figure.

The 1999 figures are a very mixed bag. Oil has declined somewhat to about 40%, close to the IIASA. Natural Gas, however, has risen far less than the IIASA prediction - only to about 23% vs IIASA curve's almost 50%. Coal has declined slightly, but far less than the IIASA prediction - only to about the same as N Gas. Nuclear has increased even faster than the prediction - to about 7%. The wildest card is renewables - they've increased to about 8%.

Predicting future usage the EIA sees only slow changes. By 2020 they see oil declining to about 40%, far higher than the IIASA 20% or so. N. Gas increases even more slowly, only reaching 27 or 28%; coal continues its slow decline down to about 20%. Nuclear power drops quite steeply, closely paralleling the coal curve of the IIASA, down to 4%. Renewables hardly change at all.

I think predicting energy future is about as easy as predicting the stock market. Everybody's assumptions are based on their different backgrounds and they are all probably wrong in one way or another. Major impacts, such as Sept. 11 have a totally unpredictable effect. I vividly remember the Fluor Process Engineering dept. coming out with predicted fuel prices for the coming 20 years in the spring of 1973. I think their predicted 20 year price change occurred by Oct. '73! As the old saying goes "Never make predictions - especially about the future".

After 11th September prediction has become even more impossible - even for next week. I think it will be some time before the outlines of the new world order become even a little clear.

It seems that Afgan situation is becoming more tough for Mr. Bush. It is still difficult to change Clause 9 of our constitution. Therefore, new strange law was passed parliament to allow our government over 2 years to help US in military field.

Our constitution is based on the similar philosophy which was taught by Jesus Christ in “The Sermon on the Mount” which says like “But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”

Several politicians are trying to pass unusual law forcing BOJ to announce inflation target figure. But it seems difficult.

I drought Maglev train will come reality under present economic circumstances. Current bullet train connects center of Tokyo to the center of Osaka at same duration. Because airport is far from the city center and additional time is need. Therefore most people use bullet train. For longer distance air route is faster. Speed of Maglev is two times of bullet train. It will connect Tokyo and Nagoya within an hour.

The heat source for the bedroom-heating pump is air. In winter, outside temperature is few degree above freezing point. I never saw icing around outside unit. Some time, temperature drop below zero in the morning. But I never used it in the morning. This means, that we do not feel comfortable in the morning.

It seems that your furnace is loosing heat by heating excess air of which flow is not controlled. Probably convection is too much.

Dr. Wallace S. Brocker’s diagram is rough. Of course he is considering Gulf Stream. It is major stream of Great Ocean circulation. But simplification of illustrating entire circulation neglected detail of the current. Any way, it will take 1,600 years to complete once circulation.

The IIASA curve is based on Logistic curve proposed by Belgian mathematician Pierre Verhulst in 1838 to improve Thomas Robert Malthus’s theory on population growth. I think this model is very simple yet describe any kind of growth under limitation of resources.

Our program is already in printing machine. Tomorrow, I have to stop editing Proceeding and send original CD-R to Sony’s press machine. About 6 late arrival papers will be uploaded to our web site for future down loading by owner of the conference CD-ROM.

Dear Ron,
Probably you already know what you can see in MS Word after specifying font to wingdings and just type in Q33NY. Designer of this font in Microsoft may be surprised.
As I am editing proceedings, I need your help. Please connect to the web site shown below and open CD-ROM Contents then Japanese text of 2nd Keynote speakers, Prof. Ohara. I would like to know whether you can you see Japanese Kanji character or not.
Thank you for your corporation.
Greenwood

Adobe reader
Dear Greenwood,

I opened the link as you asked. Adobe reader displayed the message "Unable to find or create the font 'Ryumin-Light-Identity-H'. Some characters may not display or print correctly".

I saw no Kanji characters. The text was only dots in rows, with a few Roman words and Arabic numbers superimposed on top of the dots. Printing gave the same result.

I suspect my version of Adobe was lacking. That may not be the case for Japanese readers who would probably have a different version.
Ron

Re: Adobe reader
Dear Ron,
Thank you for your quick response. This is what I anticipated. I am happy to know that Adobe reader displayed the message "Unable to find or create the font 'Ryumin-Light-Identity-H'. Some characters may not display or print correctly".
Any way, English translation is provided for this paper and any one can read it. Most of Japanese PC have Japanese version of Windows OS and Adobe reader, so that they can read it.
I am now relaxed because I checked distribution CD-ROM direct from Sonny press machine and found all worked well.
Our media are reporting another air accident which hit Queens, NY. What a coincident. I felt some releaf when I herd that it may be an accident.
Thank you again,
Greenwood

Re: Adobe reader

I'm glad it turned out as you wished, Greenwood. I'm glad to help anytime.

News on the terrorist front is coming thick and fast, with the advances in Afghanistan. We all "have our fingers crossed" that things will work out there with
the development of some form of stable and just government.

It now appears that the experts feel there may have been a massive engine failure.
The GE engines had been the subject of special maintenancewarnings last year.

Best regards,

Ron

Dear Ron,
I have already crossed Rubicon. But today I heard a bad news that some one in IBM US couldn't open two pdf files. Those two are included in my web site. As a cross check, could you check those two plus one important paper as listed below:
(1) Time Table in CONGRESS PROCEEDINGS
(2) Congress Bulletin Rev3 in CONGRESS PROCEEDINGS
(3) 2nd Key Note Speaker, Prof. Shigenobu Ohara's English Translation (Yesterday, you have checked Japanese original.) in CD-ROM Contents.
I afraid this is not a big trouble for you..
Thank you in advance,
Greenwood

Re: Adobe reader

Dear Greenwood,

I was able to open all three files, but there were problems. Nothing serious with the second and third, but bad for the Time Table.

1) Time Table; Got message "Error processing a page. The encoding (CMap) specified by a font is missing or corrupted." I could see the pages but each had only a heading (e.g. Time Main Hall (320 persons) Hall 601 Below the heading were only colored rectangles arranged in columns.

2) Congress Bulletin; Fine until page 5 when I got the message "Unable to find or create the font 'Ryumin-Light-Identity-H'. Some characters may not
display............" The pages continued to display properly and looked OK to me, including the maps, building plans, colors, etc.

3) 2nd Keynote Speaker I got the message "Unable to find or create font 'GothicBBB-Medium-Identity-H'. Some characters..............". Once again, in
spite of the message, the paper looked fine - including the tables, etc.

Only the Time Table was unusable.

Good luck,

Ron

Re: Adobe reader

Dear Ron,
I am grateful for your precise indication of the symptoms. Now I understand that the problem seem to occur, when original writer defined his page of MS Word or Excel with exotic fonts (default Japanese font) for English OS. Even if he specify English font line by line, still the basic page definitions remains behind and create Adobe warning in English OS environment. In the beginning we tested with English OS and found nothing wrong. Because we used sample papers sent from outside Japan. But I couldn't understand why Time Table has such an massive corruption. Probably due to multi-stage conversion from original Excel to Word then to pdf. But still in Japanese OS environment, it is OK. Anyway, we have printed Time Table in the PROGRAM I do hope no serial problem waiting us.
Tank you again. We can explain the cause of problem.
Regard,
Greenwood

Congratulations to all of you in Japan on the birth of a daughter to Princess Masako. News reports here say that there is discussion in Japan now of reconsidering restricting the heir to the Emperor to males only. Given British history over the last tow centuries it would seem without difficulties.

I trust the IPMC conference went well and that you are now well on top of the many things which follow such a massive undertaking. I'm glad you rode the Maglev train and enjoyed your movies. It was astonishing to see the speed with which the countryside sped by - especially the distant mountains which one expects to move slowly even on a fast train. I'm not sure the coach window movie came through properly. It ran for a reasonable time (about 20 s), but all but 3 - 4 s was dark with occasional light flashes - as though it were shot in a tunnel.

The September hijackings have severely depressed air travel here. Booking by bus and rail have risen as a result, even though our long distance trains are awful. Most of our track is maintained only for purposes of slow freight travel and is very bumpy. Therefore, such long distance trains we still have are very, very slow - far slower than 50 years ago! A friend of mine traveled from Oakland, near San Francisco to LA years ago. He said that, as they approached LA, the track was so rough that he was unable to drink a glass of wine for fear of spilling it. Its possible that the increased delays at airports as they increase security checks will make more people think of the train. I'm afraid it will merely increase the number who drive - adding to the crowded freeways here. There are annual fights in Congress to cut off long distance rail subsidies entirely. That would abolish train travel here except for the North East corridor (Boston - Washington) and local commuter trains. I can certainly understand Japan's reluctance to fund the Maglev.

Politics here has largely returned to normal. Both political parties in Washington are busy pursuing their regular agendas. Currently the Economic Stimulus package is stalled because they cannot agree. On the other hand it seems their bill may not be needed since there has been very mixed economic news lately. Although output continues to decline and unemployment to rise (as in Japan and most industrialized countries), most people here believe these are lagging indicators. There is also quite a bit of positive news also, so that the Stock Market has had a really strong rally since September's crash.

Its very interesting to hear that some Japanese politicians favor forcing the BOJ to announce an inflation target. However, I'm afraid if they are forced to do so they may set a low figure that may do more harm than good (I note the Euro. central bank has been slow to cut interest rates because they are trying to keep inflation below 2%). Rumor has it that the US Fed. has an informal target of 2.5%. My fear is that having a conservative "firm" target will only strengthen the hand of bankers who want to restrict the economy. Luckily for us in the US, Alan Greenspan does not appear to be among them. The world seems far more in danger of deflation than inflation these days.

Gas consumption continues to be below last year, about 30% less. I've noticed it is very dependent on the weather as you might expect. We recently had what is, for us, a cold spell - with lows near 5 degrees C and highs about 15 C. During that spell usage was actually slightly higher than last November. I have some "heating degree day" information and will have to take that into account before I can confirm relative performance.

I noticed another report which reflected the dangers of solo Ocean sailing. The American Keith Kilpatrick was stricken with a blocked intestine 1,400 miles from Australia. US reporting on these things is very sparse, so I haven't heard how things turned out, but I assume he was able to get within range of Australian rescue boats. The sea can be a very lonely place and the Southern Ocean the loneliest.

Princess Masako may have been relieved from the heavy pressure to have baby. If next child is girl, without doubt, government will change current law. Ancient history of Japan tells us that we had several female emperors.

18km of the test track of MAGREV train runs almost in tunnel. At the mid point of the test track, the train runs out of the tunnel and run on an elevated bridge. After few kilometers, it again runs into tunnel. Now, because of the advanced tunnel boring technology, it is cheaper to drill though tunnel rather than purchasing expensive land. If I could introduce Windows XP, I can cut long tunnel section.

Two Japanese insurance companies bankrupted because of September 11 incident. Those two companies are poorly managed and September 11 only triggered the end of their business.

Japanese commercial banks such as Mitsubishi also suffered very much from financing Enron. I thought Enron is enjoying high market price of power in California. Their fall looks like a typical syndrome after rupture of bubble economy in Japan. Many company disappeared like that here.

This year, because of supporting PM conference, I couldn’t enjoy sailing as much as I expected. My sailing ambition is not so big as enthusiastic sailor who is going out alone into big ocean. My humble desire is reading books and writing sipping coffee in my cockpit of the boat berthed in calm marina water. I can commute to my boat by train. Now I started to find a portable PC which run long enough on battery alone.

I decided to change from ISDN to subscribers’ line (ADSL). Now, ADSL is most economical like in US. In addition, I am planning to change provider from NTT group to other provider who offers larger server size. This change will give me more freedom in maintaining my web site.

2001/12/8 17:11
Drinking Quotes
Dear Ron,
Thank you for many collection of Drinking Quotes. I added them to my collection of quotes. I specially enjoyed the conversation between Lady Astor and Winston Churchill.
You may loose contact with me in the following week because I am going to switch communication line from ISDN to ADSL and provider.
When I finish I will notice you an new e-Mail adrress.(I will keep current adress for a while anyway)
Best Regards,
Greenwood

Rita, my daughter-in-law, sent me some great pictures of Rio de Janeiro. I'm not sure they will transmit, but hope they do because they are quite spectacular. Perhaps, if they get through you will be able to enjoy and use them.

Please excuse the long delay in replying to your 3 Dec mailing. I'm afraid I got caught up in the seasonal rush to prepare for Christmas and other holidays.

I suppose what we are all celebrating at this time of year is the passing of the winter solstice; from now on days get longer (at least in this hemisphere). I believe mankind has done that from prehistoric times. Most religions have adopted the old pagan celebrations for their own occasions.

Here, we seem to have many things to celebrate. (Apart from my own family's private joys in now having three households). The "war" in Afghanistan has gone better than anybody could have predicted and there have been no more serious terrorist acts since then. One can tell that things are getting back to normal by seeing the behavior of the US Congress. The much anticipated bill to invigorate the economy got completely bogged down in partisan wrangling. In both of it's final, rival forms it probably would have done little for the economy in the short term and would have been ruinous for the Federal budget in years to come.

Mercifully, it no longer appears to be needed. Almost everybody here sees an end to the recession sometime in 2002. A consensus would be about 6 months from now. Many of the economic indicators are supporting this view. Certainly the stock market has bounced back wonderfully from the end of September and seems to take bad news init's stride.

This week I saw an interesting article in the Economist (Dec 8th issue) about Japan and the birth of princess Masako's baby. Their conclusion was that, not only would this likely result in changing the law about female succession, but that it might also lead to much better use of Japan's female population and improve their career prospects. They saw this as one of the few things that could be done to improve the demographic crunch when the large "baby boom" generation starts to retire in a few years. It might also increase the birth rate which they quote as only 1.4 per woman - one of the lowest in the world.

The reverberations over the Enron scandal will continue. Not only are there very serious problems from corporate "transparency" and conflict of interest points of view, but the Democratic Party is eager to exploit the very close relationship between George Bush, the Republican Party and Kenneth Lay, Enron's chairman. The man-in-the-street is also very angry because of the way the company management swindled the employees, many of whom lost their life savings while the top management were looting the company.

Your web site is a wonder. Thank you for your kind remarks about my contribution. I hope the transition to your new subscribers' line ADSL goes smoothly. My brew club has had to change web hosts several times because of the ongoing bankruptcies among dotcom companies here. This has caused us many problems.

Thank you also for the greeting card of your boat. Its much nicer to get a personal card like that. Many Americans now do the same thing, perhaps next year we can try to emulate them.

All my very best wishes to you and your family. I hope that next year will be first of many years in happy retirement, as mine have been lately.

I thought that Brazilians knows how to design cities to match nature. I also admire English people in this respect.

Although, we are not Christian, we enjoyed a concert in near concert hall and a dinner with a family of my wife’s friend in December 24. Her husband is a professor in the faculty of applied chemistry of a private university. He can teach until the age of 70. But I rather decline to do so.

Afghan war is over, but where has gone Osama? I remind my child hood where people talk like Taliban in Japan. All comes from social teaching. It is a responsibility of the leader to properly lead people.

Recent economic situation in Argentina surprised me and I rushed to find Prof. Krugman’s Opinion. I didn’t read it through yet, but it is what I anticipated. It seems that new government is not prepared to change past wrong policy.

After application, it took almost one month for switching over from firstly, switching from ISDN to analog line and dial up connection, secondly switching from analog to ADSL line. In this occasion, I also decided to change provider to a one who offers larger server size. Ten days were spent for conglomerating fragmented web pages into single sever. During this work, I found many English pages specified Shift JIS Kanji font. Probably you couldn’t read some of the pages in the past.

The advantage of ADSL is that speed is 20 times faster and cost is less. It cost me $26 per month including provider and server for the web site. Now we reached US level!

Due to the change of the provider, my mail address has changed. Please revise my address as shown in the last part of my mail.

Certainly, year 2002 will be the beginning of my happy retirement life. I will start from NZ bike ride in February then visit with my wife to England and Ireland in May and June will follow.

E-mails Exchanged Between Ron and Greenwood

2001