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."
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.
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Yet. What they say 100 years from now will burn your ears off. Their epic ballads used to make the elves cry, but ever since the rise of the throbbing container ship, they dish more scat than Mozart.
"Mommy, I'm going to get a tattoo!"
"You stay away from licorice pasta (*). You hear me! Have you never heard old Missus Sturm (**) sing that horrible coda? She crooned and crooned for half an hour. It w
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.
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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
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Practically all the scientists asked about it know what order of magnitude the fishing quotas should be, but they are always set higher for political reasons.
Then there's the huge bycatch problem.
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Yes, the oceans are completely mismanaged in general, whales are only part of that, but they are an important part - they're a major factor in ocean ecosystems. Since 1900 we've seen a decline in whale populations on the order of 90% for species such as fin whales, which of course has a major impact on the other species that are linked to them.
But if we have problems even getting agreement on whales where countries like Japan unilaterally do their own thing and screw much of the rest of the world on it, the
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You can enforce stuff in your own waters - that's what your navy is for, and even then many countries are unwilling to have those quotas - so that their fishermen can fish themselves out of a job and crash their own industry? It's crazy.
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".
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This is ridiculous logic. It's limited to Japan because Japan is one of the few countries that wanted to continue whaling and still decided to remain in the IWC. The other whaling countries saw the direction the commission was headed and refused to join up.
I have not once heard any of the anti-whaling countries tell Japan, "Look, stop taking advantage of the loopholes so we can figure out a system of sustainable whaling for all countries. " The focus is entirely on figuring out how to stop Japan from whali
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You'd only think it's ridiculous logic if you're incapable of pursuing logical argument yourself. There's absolutely nothing in what I've said that is illogical, you seem to be repeatedly trying to imply logical fallacy where there is none. You may disagree, but that's a different issue.
Your comment illustrates why you are failing to grasp the argument still:
"It's limited to Japan because Japan is one of the few countries that wanted to continue whaling and still decided to remain in the IWC"
This merely rea
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That really is the situation though, and it's why in recent years Norway has slowed it's whaling industry
Sure, but is this a good thing? The minke whale has a high reproduction rate and competes with other (slow reproduction) whale species. Norway has been hunting the minke exclusively. The secession of that hunt will mean that the minke will out-compete other species, driving those to extinction. Human hunters are the ultimate cause of this, we un-balanced the situation. We should also carefully monitor, culling where needed, the situation until a better balance can be achieved. A hysterical "all whaling must
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The minke whale outcompeting other species argument goes against pretty much everything we know about the way ecosystems and evolution work - a species is limited by the food supply available to it, and minke can only continue to increase in numbers whilst there's enough food to support that, if they have an evolutionary trait that allows them to outcompete other whales that's nothing to do with human action - that's pure evolution and that's absolutely something we shouldn't be pretending we can manage, be
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Once again, nature does a great job of balancing populations
Not when man, unthinkingly, gets involved. Like with whales, where we hunted the biggest ones, the ones with the slowest population re-growth. Until we have un-done what we did, keeping the faster reproducing species that have recovered nicely under control is paramount. That's how we un-do some of what we done.
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Re-read my post, I explained why that's not true. If you still don't get it then you don't even know enough about the way in which survival of the fittest and population balance interact to even be arguing the point you are.
This discussion is meaningless if you don't even understand the basic scientific principles behind the point which you are arguing as it just means you're arguing from a point of ignorance.
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I get your point. Man can decimate a species so that other species come in and take their place, and then man should do nothing to prevent the second part. I would rather have the blue whale, but I understand you don't think we should try to prevent it from going extinct due to our bad actions in the past.
I gather you are completely against the rabbit fence in Australia too then. Just let the indigenous species in that continent go extinct.
We all have different values. I have no problem with mindfully, and
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No, you don't get the point, you still don't, which is the fundamental problem.
Species compete for food, which is the fundamental crux of your argument, but a species numbers are limited by food supply - when a species reaches a large enough size beyond which the food supply can no longer sustain it the population of that species will cease to grow, and will plateau out.
If you have two species competing for the same food source, the ratio of population of species A vs. species B is determined by how fit for
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So ultimately the only way to allow populations to reach natural levels is to leave them the fuck alone, culling only makes the problem worse
OK, so we'll stop all the efforts of keeping the indigenous animals of Australia alive. I disagree with you, but then again, so does most of the people working on the problem. I guess we are all idiots.
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Okay, I have to ask at this point, do you have a reading problem or something?
You'll note that I quite clearly pointed out that balancing of a diminished population in their natural environment, is a very different issue to introduced invasive (i.e. non-native) species.
The very fact you have to ignore fundamental parts of my posts to try and justify to yourself as being right, is plenty evidence enough that you're on weak ground and don't actually have any idea what you're talking about.
I can only guess tha
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Do not try and pretend scientists and experts agree with you
I do not have to pretend. The IWC Scientific Committee has recommended a limited culling of certain types of whales since 1991 (that is more than 20 years) but the IWC choses, for political reasons to ignore its own scientific committee.
Sadly the IWC is controlled (politically, not by vote) by the fringe lunatics in the environmental lobby, and is therefore incapable of making scientifically sound decisions. I'd rather have Japan and Norway ignore the likes of the Paul Watson nutcase and maintain scientific
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The IWC has shown no inclination of returning to a new sustainable whaling system.
Let's look at the facts:
1) In 1991 the IWC's own scientific commission stated that 2000 Minke whales could be harvested per year without endangering the population. Despite this, however, the moratorium continued.
2) Based on the evidence by the scientific commission, the IWC adopted a revised management procedure (RMP) in 1994 for determining which whales could be harvested. Again, the moratorium was not lifted. Instead, it wa
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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
What a load of cluless rubbish. The whale species (you did know there was more than one, right) hunted by Japan, Norway, Iceland and a few others, are not in any way, shape or form threatened by extinction. Haven't been for decades. In fact, the science committee in the IWC has repeatedly stated that some limited culling of these particular whale types should be re-started so as to maintain a balance. If the number of whales grow too much it can also have a detrimental effect on the environment. We could al
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Eat monkeys not whales.
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Agreed. After all, if we eat all the whales we'll have nothing left to nuke.
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Not if you Gamma irradiate it, that kills off all the pathogens, not sure about malfolded proteins....
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heston_Blumenthal
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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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:It's not just Japan (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. Here in the Netherlands universities are funded based on the number of students that graduate and additional grants for specific research projects can be obtained by submitting proposals to national or European government bodies specifically created for this purpose. Private philantropy is basically only a factor in the medical sector, where patient organizations may fund research into specific diseases. Ocasionally companies sponsor research but this can hardly be called philantropy.
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Private philantropy is basically only a factor in the medical sector, where patient organizations may fund research into specific diseases
Good point about medical research: that is a sizable exception. The difference with the model prevalent in the US is that those organizations typically collect many small donations, as opposed to large single endowments by wealthy donors.
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Ocasionally companies sponsor research
Not for long. The Dutch government has apparently decided to slash funding for basic research and replace it with "public-private partnerships" because, lacking any evidence to support this theory, they feel that scientific research should be guided by commercial applications and business opportunities. This philosophy nearly ruined research in the UK. At least in the US (which does a decent, though worsening job of supporting basic research) philanthropic giving is common enough that even non-life-sciences
strategic philanthropy (Score:2)
Ocasionally companies sponsor research but this can hardly be called philantropy.
"Strategic philanthropy" is a business term for charitable activity aligned with the business mission
For example, a local grocery store/pharmacy chain funded a school of pharmacy at one of the local universities
Re:It's not just Japan (Score:5, Interesting)
Private donors are only necessary in societes where the state or other public institutions cannot handle the task (alone). This concepts is well suited for the US and to some extend for the UK, but from my continental European view, this is state business. The term state has a different conotation in Europe. It is the primary organisation of all people. It was founded to guarantee some services (education, research, safety, cultural development, social wellfare etc.) independent from the will of some donors, because they are unreliable (in our cultures).
Re:It's not just Japan (Score:5, Informative)
Private donors may be necessary, but they are abhorrent. The technology to practically produce Butanol was done partly with public funds but the patent is now held by Butamax, a holding company for DuPont and BP. If you try to produce Butanol, a carbon-neutral 1:1 replacement for gasoline with improved emissions, they will sue you.
Fuck private donors, I'd rather public research. It might go slower, but we the people could see the benefits of our investments sooner. Or, you know, at all.
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because they are unreliable (in our cultures).
Well, they're unreliable in our culture, too. Now if only our government took care of its citizens as well as yours does.
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Private donors have a dark side to them: institutions that live on donations become slaves to the donors, and donors' ideas may not (and usually don't!) align with what's generally good for the academic integrity of an institution of higher learning.
My pet peeve: collegiate sports in the U.S. Many in the academia somewhat reluctantly agree that providing public entertainment is not necessarily in the core mission of, say, a Big Ten university. So, in an ideal world, they'd be able to simply disband the foot
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Agreed. I admit I was surprised to read this.
Slavoj Zizek said once that there's an element of hypocrisy in charity and philanthropy, e.g. Soros fixes with the right hand what he breaks with the left one, and that the rational thing to do is to put together a system (taxation, for instance) in which philanthropy would be unnecessary. This scheme is what I'm familiar with, and so far it works.
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I think that's right. Philanthropy of the scale and type referred to in the summary is really quite an American thing (I wouldn't even extend that to the rest of the English-speaking world to be honest).
One nice thing people around here (Australia) will generally say about Americans, despite the fact that poking fun at Americans is somewhat a (light hearted) national pasttime here, is that they are generous. They generally mean this on a personal level, but having lived in the US for quite a while myself, I
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.
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* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodobashi_Camera [wikipedia.org]
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".
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Agreed. The US has a culture of philanthropy far, far larger than exists anywhere else (including other Western, English-speaking countries). It's immediately obvious if you spend any decent amount of time in the US (particularly in medical, artistic etc. fields) how much reliance is placed public donations, both large and small, compared to other countries.
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 Economi
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I think the problem is more systemic than this. For many different reasons, medical research is a rather poor-paying career, compared to other careers available to kids smart enough to go that route (such as finance), so even if some rich people do give some funding, it's not enough to overcome the poor conditions for that career overall, and these research fields don't get that many really smart people going into them. It's not just Wall Street, or rich people wanting more research into b00b enhancement,
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So, who decides what is "needed"?
And how much will it cost to bribe him/her/it to make my chosen career "needed"?
Or, for that matter to make my (hypothetical) ex-wife's career not "needed"?
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While it hasn't got anything to do with tax, Australia's immigration policies are based on such a concept.
There's a list of 'needed' careers, or careers in demand that gets updated from time to time by the relevant government agencies (relying on figures from the Bureau of Statistics and Department of Employment and Workplace Relations). If you have qualifications in a needed field, you'll find the immigration requirements significantly relaxed compared to others. Here's the current list of 'desired' occupa
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Philanthropy good? (Score:5, Insightful)
This was my first thought as well. (Score:5, Interesting)
In a good system the resources are already there, and as far as I know that is pretty much the case in Japan. So the only logical conclusion is: "Philanthropy is a solution to a problem that shouldn't (and in this case doesn't) exist."
The problem with funding like this is that it empties public research into private ownership by making funding the goal of schools. The first and foremost goal of schools is and should be to teach.
In California, we have this terrible system which from the article seems to be on the brink of being exported to Japan.
To put things in perspective, almost 36% of all taxes in California go to education ($49 Billion FY2012-2013 : http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/agencies.html [ca.gov]), and that's not including money from bond initiatives for stem cell research or other earmarks which end up at research universities, and it's not including the costs of education as part of rehabilitation for the mentally ill or incarcerated prisoners, which end up being another $18B (drill down on the numbers on that government site).
If you consider only K-12, there are 9,600 publicly funded schools serving 6.2M students (http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/pn/fb/index.asp); that's a cost of $63,000 per student, working out to ~$4M per school.
And the teachers at the schools in my area are constantly trying to raise funds for books, paper, pencils, and white board markers. At $63,000 per student per year, you'd think they'd buy them a damn box of pencils.
Before you try to claim "that's not a lot per student", realize that the median household income in California is less than that, it's just under $61,000 for the whole family, including all wage earners (U.S. Census : http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html [census.gov]).
I don't know where the hell all this money is going (I'd like an independent audit, please!) but it sure as hell isn't getting to the classrooms, so it has to be disappearing somewhere between the Franchise Tax Board and the classrooms.
As far as higher education is concerned, the colleges around here are canceling classes all over the place. You'd think that the more students they had, the more tuition they'd get, the more classes they'd have, but no, tuition collected is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the almost $10B in taxes paid to them by the state, and they optimize on the basis of revenue instead (hey, why have a student spend 4 years * tuition, when you can cancel a class and have them spend 5 years * tuition instead?). They also optimize it by preferentially admitting out of state students (who have to pay higher tuitions), but that's OK, those students can go to other states themselves, and pay out of state tuition there, instead.
And this is the model school system you are going to hold up for other countries to follow?
Japan: Save yourself before it's too late!
-- Terry
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.
Mea Culpa, I scaled the wrong direction. (Score:2)
Mea Culpa.
The median income is before taxes, and the median houshold with children is 2.5 kids. So 6,300 * 2.5 = 18,900 vs. 61,000 / 2 = 30,500 is still well over half.
-- Terry
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And the simple fact is, any research is good research. If something doesn't work as expected or not at all it's still useful. Many great discoveries started as a series of accidents or failures. The main importance is that these are well documented and shared so other people don't make the same mistakes..
U-T is ridiculously well financed already (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Tokyo U. graduate who had more or less no difficulty obtaining nearly $200k to spend on my PhD work while a student, believe me when I tell you that U-T is rather well off. OK, that's an anecdote, but I know you like data, so how about some anecdata:
The University of Tokyo - the only winner? [chemistry.or.jp]
In particular, note the horrific Figure 1 on the top left of page 2. See the dot way up there? There's Tokyo University, getting assloads more research money than any other university in Japan, even though it doesn't have a whole lot more staff to spend it. Well, that's the data part, here's the anecdote:
The linked document is actually an article written by a University of Tokyo staffer attempting to dispel the "myth" (= fact) that Tokyo University gets way more funding, per person, than any other university (or research institute) in Japan! Amazing.
Though having said that, it's perfectly understandable. As anyone who has spent even a year working in Japanese academia will attest, knowing how to lie with a straight face is probably the single best skill one can bring to their career. Sure, that talent can give you a career boost pretty much anywhere, but in Japan, it's a really big deal. French is for love, perl is for line noise, and - just trust me on this one, dear reader - Japanese is for lying.
It's little wonder, then, that research institutes in Japan are so backward (relative to their insane budgets). (Reason #2, for anyone still reading, is that retirement at (or close to) age 60 is compulsory for all academics, which cuts brutally short the careers of those few brilliant researchers who can pass on their expertise to future generations.)
tl; dr: anyone donating to Tokyo University is stupid and/or has been deceived; it's already bleeding cash.
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If something went wrong, would you trust the US Navy or TEPCO more?
Exactly how is the Japanese cultural tradition of saving face and being vague a good thing there?
Should the evil Westerners who suggested things like gee, don't put all your backup generators in the basement just go away?
Fact is, the Japanese way of doing a lot of things falls short. And no one is more acutely aware of this or paying a higher price for it t
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Nope, the original AC said it was 60 for all academics (implied: in that school). The "in Japan" part? -- you just made that up.
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(another foreigner here) Perhaps you should talk to other people? There are 120 million people in here and most don't fit your description (unless you start judging them as a group, which will likely piss them off - Japanese are rather sensitive to it). As usual, for best experience talk to the brightests, not necessarily the most accomplished.
Too be fair, yes, there is a lot of bullshit in places like universities, but then, is it really that much different than, say, in the US? Sure, it is a different kin
I hope they don't bring it to Greece. (Score:2)
Because 'kavli' in Greek means 'cock'.
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It doesn't have to be selfless to be good. The person who grew your coffee beans did it out of their own selfish interest to make money to feed their family. The mailman doesn't bring you letters because he likes you, or because he believes that he personally makes society a better place. I didn't move to another country to teach because I have a firmly held belief that what I am doing improves the world. It helps those I teach, and lines a lot of peoples pockets along the way. Selfishness is a good thing,
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People can improve the lives of others by exchanging goods and services? You don't say :)
Using large sums of capital for a perceived "good" is a rather different ball-game. 100 years ago, Carnegie was indeed spending money on the greater good. Society is hugely different today - we know how people live their lives all over the world. You profess that greed and vanity is good. We deliberately keep valuable information hidden behind paywalls designed to benefit a vanishingly small number of people. Do you thi
A bit about Japan (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of people in this thread seem to be coming to the defense of the Japanese university system, but what the poster said is basically true. In addition to not having much in donations, it's not as geared towards research like American schools, being instead more of a place to make good white-collar workers for their industries. They have fewer grad students and less research budgets. I would generally say that the US is better off in term of research.
See this article for an exception that proves the rule:
http://www.economist.com/node/21540228 [economist.com]
And those saying that "It's a state matter, the state should fund all reasearch" - you do know that you can have both, right? In fact the US government spends gobs of money on research, the donations come on top of that.
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I will see your "US governments spends gobs of money on research" bullshit and raise it to a video of Neil deGrasse Tyson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sre6whBOSzE
High taxes and inflation (Score:2)
20 years of high taxes and inflation took away all sorts of purchasing power from the Japanese, whether they would or would not do more 'scientific philanthropy' if they had more purchasing power if government was not stealing their government, I don't know.
But I do know that there would have been much more investment capital in everybody's pockets, and the real driver of useful innovation is not government but private enterprise.
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You know the main issue in Japan has been _deflation_, right?
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Deflation is the boogeyman that the politicians like to throw around, covering themselves with the nonsense propagated by the Keynesian charlatans. Deflation is what Japan SHOULD have, because of how productive Japan is, but instead it has inflation, which is what government creates with all the money printing.
Were it not for the government actions of the last 20 years, Japanese would have 5 times more purchasing power and prices would have been much lower in Japan. Instead the purchasing power is stolen f
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Well, I am not a Japanese and don't even speak the language, but should they seek outside assistance in kicking the bad habits and turning the economy around, I can provide the advice and direction for a very small fee (relative to the huge economic boost that will be created) indeed. Nobody in Europe and US is really listening, in fact most of the world is doing the same damn thing - destroying their own purchasing power and thus economy and society in the worthless bloody currency war, nobody seems to und
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You are intellectually bankrupt, since you can't even see a metaphor for what it is. Putting a gun to the head of a zombie bank or a zombie corporations does not mean an actual projectile weapon, (expletive deleted), it means the end to the public support in the form of free government credit and insurance to those bankrupt organisations and it means a fire sale of all government held assets of those zombie banks and corporations.
They would self destruct within day or hours or even minutes, just like US z
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So you considering counting hairs in my nose to be more useful than reading your posts and listening to your message?
I think he was referring to the "forming a reply" bit.
How the money will be spent (Score:2)
Japan’s university law, however, does not allow public universities to put money into high-yield but risky investment schemes. That makes it nearly impossible for institutions to use the returns on an endowment to continuously support themselves, as the other 15 Kavli institutes do. “You’re better off just spending the endowment,” says Murayama. Murayama says that the money will allow the IPMU to continue wooing foreign researchers by, for example, finding jobs for spouses and helping to place researchers’ children in international schools. The ministry considers such expenditures to be “personal matters” and not reimbursable with public funds.
So instead of spending the money on research today they are investing it. Wow I guess their research is not a sound investment. Even the University doesn't want to spend money on it.
Oh, good. . . (Score:2)
. . . now that the science departments are being supported externally, the Japs can continue to follow the traditions of Western schools - to gut the science departments' funding to build fancy new stadiums and buy more football uniforms!