Wednesday, October 25, 2006

A Simple Solution

Below is my comment on "A Simple Solution", the article of TIME magazine issued on October 16th, 2006.

Sensationalism sometimes covers the truth behind the norm believed by many people on earth. So long I have had little doubt that the main killers of children in the developing countries such as India, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia are the avian flu, HIV and starvation until your article gave me an awakening fact of diarrheal diseases as the grave cause of many deaths of those poor children over there.

What is more striking for me is that only a pinch of sugar and salt with clean water can be available for them to revive. I do appreciate your effort to let us know this simple solution for the survival of the children in those countries and do hope as many governments, world organizations and celebrities all over the world as possible realize the importance of this simple solution and mobilize the needed fund as early as possible.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Endangering Asia's Environment

Below is my comment on the article of "Visions of Green" Page 26, TIME October 9, 2006.


“This is a Déjà vu!”. I shouted to myself when I saw the pictures in your article of many bike commuters with masks to avoid heavy toxic at the street of Kanpur, India and a flood of junk trash floating on Jakarta river.

Yes, those are just the same as the scenes in Kitakyushu and other cities in the 60’s and 70’s when Japan became notorious as the archipelago of “Kogai”. I was one of the victims to inhale the choking smog very often at that time.

It is true that the more Asian people get higher income and feel inconvenienced by pollution, the more pressure the governments of those regions get to improve the staggering environment. But the time is running out to save it.

As one of the Japanese who experienced both rapid economic growth and Kogai proliferation decades ago, I am confident that Japan can contribute greatly to the improvement of the deteriorating environments all across Asia and urge Asian friends to further demand our helping hands without hesitation.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Why Can't the English Learn How to Speak?

Below is my comment on the article of TIME magazine, "Why Can't the English Learn How to Speak?" Page 44  TIME, September 25, 2006.

As one of the non-native English speakers struggling to master English accents, I am envy of Lucy Fisher, the writer of this article, having inherited received pronunciation(RP) in her mother tongue even though she has been sometimes embarrassed to be seen as a person of the upper class because she actually belongs to the plain middle class.

As the number of non-native speakers such as the Indians, the Chinese and other Asian people having little sense of the social class in their English is increasing so rapidly, I expect they will soon overwhelm the RP in the motherland and change it to a new “glocal”(meaning global but local) English as the standard on earth.