No more phony doctors, please.

I'm taking back the word doctor for all the real doctors in the world. When I heard Christopher Hitchens call Karl Rove, who never even graduated from college, "Dr. Rove," watch I realized something had to be done.

The is what a doctor is: a person skilled or specializing in healing arts; especially : one (as a physician, dentist, or veterinarian) who holds an advanced degree and is licensed to practice. (www.m-w.com) Admittedly, every dictionary also defines doctor as someone who holds a doctorate. But it's time for that nonsense to end. Ph.D.s, J.D.s, and Ed.D.s are whatever they are -- usually researchers, lawyers, and educators, respectively -- but they, not to mention uneducated devil-spawn like Karl Rove, are not doctors. Stop calling them that. You can call coaches "Coach" and professors "Professor" and senators "Senator," but please, don't call them "Doctor." Save that for the, ahem, doctors. If you don't, I'm going to demand you start calling me Bachelor Sibble, and my wife won't like that.

The Yankees ... (sigh)

I have to say something about this. I've long said that no one can break my heart like the Yankees. Being a Yankee fan is tough. When I go to a baseball game here in Hiroshima, I of course root for the home team. It's exciting when they win and a bummer when they lose, but no one here expects them to win every game, let alone the championship. And what I mean by "expects" here is not "predicts" or "thinks," but rather "demands." Yankee fans demand victory. There is no other way. Maybe I could enjoy this terrible season a little more if I could actually watch the games, but here in Japan, I only get highlight reels and up-to-the-minute scores. And when the news is always bad, it's not fun. The Yankees have lost four in-a-row, and are 3.5 game below .500. If you don't know what that means, just know that it doesn't cheer me up when I'm feeling homesick.

Yay! I'm not a militant.

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 75% Apathetic Atheist 67% Spiritual Atheist 50% Angry Atheist 42% Militant Atheist 33% Agnostic 17% Theist 17% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Please post your results in the comments section of this thread.

Medieval Dentist

I had visit number three of my second root canal treatment today. My dentist is hardcore, man. He does the whole procedure with no anesthetic. I know. That sounds either impossible or extremely painful, doesn't it? Well, let me assure you, it's not impossible. Also, because of this, it takes like half-a-dozen visits. He drills into the tooth until he hits the nerve (yes, this hurts a lot), then injects the tooth with some drug that's supposed to "kill" the nerve. It doesn't do a very good job, especially when it comes to drilling out the actual root canals, which is what I went through today. If you drill deep enough, eventually, you will find some living nerve. That's what happened today... on all four roots. Not a good time.

The misspelling I hate the most...

... is definitely "definately." GAH!

I can forgive most misspellings. Let's face it: English spelling is hard. Rules are hard to remember and nearly all of them have exceptions. And some exceptions themselves have exceptions: 'I' before 'E' except after 'C' except when said 'ay' as in 'neighbor' or 'weigh'... except, of course, for 'seize' and a long list of other exceptions. Not such a useful rule. Anyway, my real beef with the "definately" crowd is that most of them wouldn't misspell any of the simpler forms from which this word is derived. Look.

Einstein wasn't sure the universe is FINATE. (No.)

There's a DEFINATE smell of cheese in this room. (Looks like a bodily function.)

Yet, tack on a 'ly', the brain goes into long-words-are-too-hard-for-me mode, and suddenly DEFINATELY looks A-OK. Eww, bad pun. Sorry.

So, if you suffer from this most unforgivable of spelling errors, check out this website. If that doesn't cure you, you might consider buying one of these to serve as a reminder. (I might just get one to show off my Grammar Nazism.)

So, until next time, remember, Spell Check Saves Lives.

Scientology and an Angry British Journalist

Just in case you were thinking of giving the Church of Scientology any undue respect, watch this episode of Panorama, an affairs programme on the BBC. Did the British dude's tantrum remind anyone else of Steve Ballmer's Monkey Dance? Well... without the dancing, of course.

The devil made him do it.

A teenage father from Texas, looking for work as a preacher (Not a good start, is it?) cooked his baby in a hotel microwave. She survived. Now Mommy wants the little girl back because, in her words, "He would never do anything to hurt her." Blame the devil. Ah, Satan: the righteous' scapegoat since 30 A.D.

Now, if a holy man wants to get high on meth and have a romp in the abominable hay with a male prostitute (a la Ted Haggard), that's fine with me. I won't judge you. Sounds like a good time for all. And it helps the economy. But cooking babies. I'm afraid I'm going to have to draw the line there. There's something seriously wrong with Texan Christianity. First, George Bush, now this? Ugh.

Two things

I watched The Paper Chase today. It seems to be required watching for all would-be law students. It was good. Professor Kingsfield wasn't nearly as scary as I've heard. Perhaps I've successfully prepared myself for the horrors of the Socratic method, and have become pre-desensitized. Nevertheless, I don't imagine I'll be cucumber cool the first time I'm humiliated in front of 60 other students who get off on seeing each other fail.

Numero dos: I've decided to sleep for eight hours every night. 10-6. Maybe 12-8 once school starts, but for now, I like 10-6.

When showing up is good enough / Goodbye CNN

No, I'm not talking about my job!! Paris Hilton, amateur porn starlet, got her jail sentence cut in half for "good behavior." Apparently, jail officials weren't expecting her to show up for her court date, so when she did, it made a good impression. Link

In a related story, I am officially abandoning CNN.com for BBC News as my main news source.

Turtle Butt

Finally, I can say it was all worth it. After two years in Japan, I can at least go home with no regrets. Sure, I got married and will be a father in less than two months, but this is big.

I have a student... in elementary school... and his name... is Turtle Butt. Well, that sounds a bit too much like the name of a Native American in some tasteless jokes I've heard. Actually, his name is Kouta Kamejiri. Kouta is his first name. Who knows what it means. It doesn't matter. The last name is what we're looking at here. Kamejiri. Kame means turtle or tortoise, and shiri means ass or butt. Put them together, a little Japanese phonetics turns the "sh" to "j," and there it is: Kamejiri. Turtle-butt.

I wonder if the Japanese find this as hilarious as I do. Probably not. They're totally obsessed with character meaning when it comes to first names. [Trust me, I know this all too well. My wife and I had decided on a name for our baby, and then she started having second thoughts because she couldn't find a character she liked. Meh.] Half the boys in Japan have the character for big and strong in their name. But when it comes to last names, like Turtle-butt, no one seems to think about the meaning. In fact, I've joked with people about the meaning of their names and they say, "No, no, there's no meaning. Just a name." Sure. Maybe if the characters meant something more exotic than "Moat Field" (my wife's name) or "Mountain Mouth," they'd be a little more forthcoming. When your name means "In the middle of the field" (Nakada), it's not hard to tell what your ancestors did for a living (hint: they weren't samurai).

I did a web search for Turtle-butt in Japanese to see how common a name it is. 12,800 hits. Sibble had about 18,000. Must not be very common. I have a feeling it's a hilarious name, even in Japanese, and I'm glad I found it before I left Japan.

I have ITBS

Iliotibial band syndrome, that is. It's a common ailment among runners. I've been running a lot recently. Apparently, it was too much. I found a nice, 10-mile loop near my house that goes through a golf course and over a mountain. I believe I mentioned it before. Anyway, I guess the mileage, my old shoes, and/or the mountain have not been good to my iliotibial bands. There's a fair amount of pain where they attach to my tibiae. I have to start a stretching regimen before I can run again, and then only for short distances on flat ground. Of course, I'll have to find some flat ground first.

Tokyo!

The first step to getting an American immigrant visa is to have a citizen petition on your behalf. That's me, and I had to go to Tokyo to do it. One of the things I really dislike about Japan is the disproportionately expensive transportation costs. Everything is too expensive here, but nothing compares to the costs of simply getting around. Airplanes and shinkansen (high speed bullet trains) are justifiably costly, but what really blisters my paint is the highway system. I understand. It's the mountains. There are tunnels every couple of miles of every highway in Japan, and that's gotta cost a lot, but it should not cost $200 in tolls to drive from Hiroshima to Tokyo. That's just wrong. And it's the main reason the buses, while by far the cheapest method of travel, are also too expensive (a little over $200 r/t). Imagine driving from New York to Chicago and paying $200 in tolls. Gah.
Sure, there are surface streets, but driving any great distance on them is worse than trying to get through New Jersey without using the Turnpike. Traffic lights every few hundred meters. I took the bus.

Anyway, I took some pictures while I was there. Enjoy.

You're a chef??

I found out yesterday my wife is a chef. Well, not really. She trained to be a chef and has a piece of paper somewhere that attests to that fact, but she hasn't worked as a one in quite some time. Nevertheless, I am enjoying the benefits of having a trained food service professional in the family.

I wonder what I'll find out next...

Pooped.

What a day. I ran over a mountain, through a golf course, through a valley, and back over another mountain. Then Etsuko and I went to the city to see a monkey show and her favorite singer. Between shows we hit her favorite temple. It was quite a sight. I spent about five minutes taking photos of the entrance before I realized there was a whole lot more to go. I'll have to go back and get some more shots someday.

The decision are in, sort of...

I received the last of the law school decision letters yesterday. Here are the full results of the whole admissions process, which I started way back in November. (The numbers in parentheses are the 2007 US News & World Report Rankings.)

(13) Cornell - rejected
(14) Georgetown - rejected
(22) George Washingtong - waitlist
(25) Fordham - rejected
(25) Illinois - accepted
(28) U of Washington - rejected
(31) William and Mary - waitlist
(31) Wisconsin - waitlist
(34) George Mason - accepted
(52) Cardozo - waitlist
(60) Brooklyn - waitlist
(91) Santa Clara - accepted

All the waitlistings are a bit annoying, but understandable. "You're LSAT was good, but we'd like to wait and see if someone with a higher GPA wants your seat before we let you in." I'm not sure why Illinois was so quick to accept me and even offer me a scholarship. I guess being situated in the middle of the world's biggest cornfield makes recruitment difficult.

Sushi!

I got my hair cut today. Then Etsuko and I went to kaiten-zushi! Yahoo! Kaiten-zushi is one of the things I'll miss the most about Japan. Sure, there's sushi in the States, but it doesn't rotate around the shop on a conveyor belt. Take a look at what you're missing.

It's just stories.

I had this in my IM profile for a while. Joe liked it, so I'll share it with the world.

I was trying to explain to my wife the problem of Christian fundamentalism in America, in particular the efforts to install like-minded politicians into positions of power (like president) in order to reverse centuries of social and scientific progress. I told her the Judeo-Christian creation story and related it to the fight against teaching evolution, but she looked puzzled. So, I suggested she think of the Shinto creation myth, in which it is said that the god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami churned the sea with a jewel-encrusted spear, forming the islands of Japan from the drops of sea water that fell from the tip. She nodded, and then paused. Then she looked at me and said, in the way that you say something that is so obvious you're embarrassed you have to say it: "But it's just stories."

I ate too much candy today.

I am debating whether or not to re-activate my .mac account. I would really like to. I just don't have a credit card now. My account was sold to some other bank, I never got my new card, so now I've got no credit card and I still have to pay my bills. Anyway, I'll give this blogspot thing a whirl in the meantime. I've also put some photos up on picasa if you're interested.