Saotome Katsumoto and the Firebombing of Tokyo: Introducing The Great Tokyo Air Raid

Translator’s Introduction
Richard Sams

March 10 is the 70th anniversary of the Great Tokyo Air Raid. Although Tokyo was bombed more than 100 times from November 1944 to the end of the war, the firebombing centered on the Shitamachi district in the early hours of March 10, 1945, was by far the most devastating air raid on the capital. In less than three hours from just after midnight, 279 B-29 bombers dropped a total of 1,665 tons of incendiaries.1 By dawn, more than 100,000 people were dead, one million were homeless, and 16 square miles of Tokyo had been burned to the ground.

More people were killed in the indiscriminate firebombing of March 10 than in the immediate aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. After the war, while Hiroshima and Nagasaki became symbols of Japan’s suffering and the peace movement, the Great Tokyo Air Raid was virtually excluded from public discourse. Hardly anyone wrote about the air raids that reduced the capital and most of Japan’s other cities to ashes, and the few articles that did appear in newspapers attracted little interest. For a quarter of a century after the war, while memorial services were held every year on August 6 and 9 for the victims of the atomic bombings and covered widely in newspapers and on television, the devastating firebombing campaign over Tokyo and much of urban Japan was quietly forgotten. While school textbooks, novels, poetry and films memorialized the atomic bombing and its victims, silence reigned with respect to the firebombing raids...

The 9 unbreakable rules of the Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner universe


Rule #1: the Road Runner cannot harm the coyote. Warner Bros
The Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, those cartoon favorites from Warner Brothers' beloved Looney Tunes, spent four dozen animated shorts engaging in ridiculous mayhem through the American Southwest.

Though the behavior of the two seemed spontaneous and silly, their comedic timing was a carefully constructed reality made by Chuck Jones, perhaps the most famous director at Warner Brothers' animation division.

Yesterday, Jones' rules for that reality went viral when film director Amos Posner tweeted a picture he had taken at the "What's Up, Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones" exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City:

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These rules come from Jones' 1999 autobiography, in which he wrote:

Just as I decided later that there would be no dialogue in the Coyote-Road Runner series because it seemed like a good rule, or indeed it would be a good rule if it was consistent; all comedians obey rules consistent with their own view of comedy. In my opinion, Jackie Gleason got more milage out of threatening to hit somebody than the Three Stooges ever did by doing so...

Carbon crash, solar dawn: Deutsche Bank on why solar has already won
By Giles Parkinson on 3 March 2015

...

...In a detailed, 175-page report, the Deutsche analysts led by Vishal Shah say the market potential for solar is massive. Even now, with 130GW of solar installed, it accounts for just 1 per cent of the 6,000GW, or $2 trillion electricity market (that is an annual figure).

But by 2030, the solar market will increase 10-fold, as more than 100 million customers are added, and solar’s share of the electricity market jumps to 10 per cent. By 2050, it suggests, solar’s share will be 30 per cent of the market, and developing markets will see the greatest growth.

“Over the next 5-10 years, we expect new business models to generate a significant amount of economic and shareholder value,” the analysts write in the report. Within three years, the economics of solar will take over from policy drivers (subsidies),

Their predictions are underpinned by several observations. The first is that solar is at grid parity in more than half of all countries, and within two years will be at parity in around 80 per cent of countries. And at a cost of just 8c/kWh to 13c/kWh, it is up to 40 per cent below the retail price of electricity in many markets. In some countries, such as Australia, it is less than half the retail price.

The case for solar will be boosted by the emergence of cost-competitive storage, which Deutsche describes as the “next killer app” because it will overcome difficulties in either accessing the grid or net metering policies. ...
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/carbon-crash-solar-dawn-deutsche-bank-on-why-solar-has-already-won-51105

The video sensation that could tip balance against coal in China
By Giles Parkinson on 4 March 2015

For the past few days, the online community in China has been abuzz over a 104-minute documentary, Under the Dome, that has galvanised the population and even major investment banks who believe it may just tip the balance against fossil fuels in the world’s biggest polluter.

Under the Dome, a documentary on air pollution produced by Chai Jing, a former CCTV investigative journalist who had already reached celebrity status in China, has been viewed more than 200 million times in its first four days of release.

It has been widely applauded in the online community, and, most pointedly, drew praise from Chen Jining, the newly appointed Environmental Protection Minister, who thanked the film maker for bringing public attention to China’s chronic pollution issues.

Already, its potential impact is being compared – by investment banking giant Merrill Lynch – to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and Rachel Carson’s A Silent Spring for its potential impact on the coal industry. Because of its endorsement by the Chinese government, Under the Dome could be even more powerful.

Indeed, Merrill Lynch said in a note to clients that the film’s impact could spell bad news for coal miners, coal generators, and oil refiners, and it could also cause ripple effects through the Chinese debt markets, even to the point where the Chinese currency might have to be devalued.

The anti-pollution ...
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/the-video-sensation-that-could-tip-balance-against-coal-in-china-97440