The Lack of Scientific Philanthropy In Japan 107
ananyo writes "The University of Tokyo this week will unveil Japan's first institute named after a foreign donor: the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe. The announcement adds Norwegian philanthropist Fred Kavli's name, along with a US$7.5-million endowment, to one of Japan's most successful institutes. The new center marks a turning point for Japan: to date, the country's universities and research institutes have long had to make do with few philanthropic donations. Strict laws governing university finances, and the lack of a philanthropic tradition, have discouraged the gifts that serve Western institutions so well. To get around the laws, instead of handing the endowment over to the institute, the Kavli Foundation will continue to manage the sum, giving the institute the return on the funds."
It's not just Japan (Score:5, Insightful)
Here, I think "Western institutions" should be understood as "mainly in the US, and to some extent the UK and the English-speaking world". To the best of my knowledge, in all other countries the situation is closer to that in Japan than in the US: the bulk of academic research is performed by public institutions using public funds.
Re:Scientific philanthropy in Japan ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do my moderator points never come when I need them?
a) Philanthropists don't pay for Japanese whaling. It's paid for by corporate investment, government tax breaks, and profits from the sale of whale meat at such popular restaurants as Gansokujira-ya (http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g584700/lang/en/) In this way, it's quite similar to other food-based industries around the world, like the beef industries in the USA and Australia.
b) There are many good excuses for making despicable things acceptable. Luckily, the sustainable whaling taking place in the Southern Ocean isn't despicable. I mean, seriously, it's probably the only sustainable "fishing" market on the planet. Why would anyone complain about it?
c) Finally, whales can't talk, so asking them what they think probably won't result in any useful answers.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously it is not common in Japanese culture to do such big donations. Most likely their society and culture works different from the US/UK culture. This hardly classifies as a problem. Honestly, they have most likely other ways to finance education and science. And when I look at their industry and how good they are with their products, well I guess their system works.
BTW: I do not want a totally US-ified world. It is great to be different.
USA-centric bias (Score:5, Insightful)
"The gifts that serve Western insitutions so well"
Nonsense.
"The gifts that serve US institutions so well". FTFY.
One more typical example of a Slashdot poster / submitter / "author" assuming that US="The western world".
The Lack of understanding... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok.
Before we criticize why they can't donate money easily in Japan, let's think a second.
Imagine that I am rich (and perverted, but then I repeat myself).
Imagine that I really like [insert my favorite not so useful subject. Ok. it's B**bs].
I donate X Billions to University Y IF they study b00b enhancement.
We now have the Countries Finest NOT studying cancer cure...
Or if we want a real world example.
Wall Street sucking up all the smart brains so that they can program the computers than then battle in Economical World War 3.
I think that there might have been good intention for stopping private interest to buy/"donate to" the world of Academia.
Just my 0.05¥
Philanthropy good? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scientific philanthropy in Japan ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that it was, previously, unsustainable, pushing many species to the verge of extinction.
So the international community realised that's a bad thing, because if said species go extinct, entire ecosystems dependent on those species go extinct, less food in the ocean for everyone, loss of species of scientific significance, we're all worse off. As such the international community decided to stop, limiting it to sustainable levels where possible, banning it completely in the case of species that had been hunted to the point of extinction so that they could recover.
The problem is Japan, and a tiny handful of other countries (i.e. Iceland) think they're fucking special and somehow have a right to carry on whaling when everyone else has stopped/drastically cut down. If every country acted like Japan and just said "fuck it" then there'd be no whales left.
So that's what's wrong with it, it's fucking selfish, it's no more culturally significant to Japan than many other countries that have stopped, so their claims of having some special cultural heritage to protect that no one else does are frankly a load of bollocks. It's like being in a swimming pool, and some selfish fuck ruining it for everyone by peeing in the pool when everyone else recognises that's not a reasonable thing to do. Japan is that selfish fuck.
No one is saying all whaling should be banned no matter what, or anything quite to that extent (well, some crazy environmentalists might, but they're not the ones at the debating table) just that it should be sustainable, and that it should be sustainable for everybody, not just the twats who think they're special and the rules don't apply to them such that they believe they can hog some shared resource all to themselves leaving none for anyone else.
Re:Scientific philanthropy in Japan ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Their current whaling program is sustainable, and the rules they abide by are set up by the IWC. Isn't that exactly what you are arguing for? Sustainable whaling? I'm not sure how you can jump from that position to then calling Japan 'fucking selfish'.
The problem is that non-whaling countries absolutely do want to see whaling come to a permanent end. Sustainable whaling was never going to be on the bargaining table, and as a result Japan has to take advantage of loopholes to continue its whaling program.
So which is it? Sustainable whaling for all countries, or not?
Re:U-T is ridiculously well financed already (Score:0, Insightful)
So the retirement age at University of Tokyo is 60, yet you stated it was 60 for all academics in Japan. The government set the retirement age around 60, that means you can retire and start collecting from then on. Tokyo University simply made it mandatory to retire at that age - perhaps they had issues with researchers not retiring. But that wouldn't stop a researcher who's reached the age of 60 at Tokyo University from finding a position somewhere else.
You sound like one of those foreigners who refuses to accept the way things are done here simply because you don't understand the system and constantly tries to change how things are to the ways you think are right. I've dealt with your type before. If you really think things are better in some other system then go there, we don't need your type here.
Re:Scientific philanthropy in Japan ? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you're completely missing the point, even if Japan's catch is sustainable (it's quite arguably not for some species) why should whaling be limited to Japan?
The point is that other countries want to have a whaling industry too to provide food and income, but they understand they can't because it's unsustainable when everyone does it in an uncontrolled manner, so they practice restraint and choose not to. Japan however sees itself as special and doesn't see why it should have to practice restraint like everyone else, and so just selfishly goes out and maintains a whaling industry unilaterally.
Imagine that in 50 years time, we reach a point where there's fuck all oil left in the world and we're running renewables for power, but oil is still useful for production of a few important things that we haven't replaced, so the international community decides that we'll just keep the remaining oil wells for production of that essential product. Imagine then that one country says, you know what? fuck the international agreement, we'll just continue burning the remaining oil off for fuel because we're too lazy to change. That's what Japan's doing regards to whaling - it's decided it's needs are more important than those of any other country and hence the rules shouldn't apply to it. Essentially all IWC members could do what Japan does and cheat the system by claiming scientific whaling despite doing no science on said whales and instead just selling off the meat, but then there'd be no whales left for anyone to catch, and again, dependent ecosystems would also collapse.
The only reason there's a push for an outright ban on hunting some species is because said species are at risk, and because they're species which will take decades to replenish their numbers to more natural levels. No one's saying it has to be permanent, but for the forseeable future it's the only measure that will protect some species.
So yes, it's sustainable whaling for all countries - don't try and pretend anything I've said suggests otherwise. It doesn't, but the "all countries" part is key, and it means "Everyone - not just Japan, Iceland, Norway".
Re:This was my first thought as well. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your numbers for the K-12 education are off by an order of magnitude. The total state budget for K-12 education is $39.2 billion. With a total enrollment in the state of 6.2 million students, then it's an average of $6,300 per student.
What's really destroying education in California is Proposition 13. That single proposition stripped away a significant amount of money earned from property taxes. The housing market has ballooned a lot over the past few decades, but now many properties have an assessed value way below their true market values.