August 2011
7 posts
9 tags
Sunflowers will heal the world !
Or at least they’ll try to.
Japan decided to try phytoremediation to clean the soils of the radioactive elements spread by Fukushima 1.
Phytoremediation means cleaning the soil with vegetals. Experiments about that have been held in Europe after Tchernobyl, involving broccolinis and sunflowers, and the JAXA (yes, the aerospacial agency, don’t ask me why THEY are involved in this...
6 tags
Beware of the mushrooms
As far as I am concerned, I beware of any mushroom…
A poisonous mushroom is currently spreading in the woods of Shiga prefecture. Even only touching it causes inflammations, so be careful while hiking Shiga forests.
Its name is kaentake and eating it can cause up to dyskinesia and death.
Kaentake is generally cylindrical :
BUT you can face strange individuals with several...
7 tags
We've seen a black hole eating a star !
MAXI, the X-ray observation equipement installed in Kibou, the Japanese experiments laboratory module of the ISS managed to capture for the first time a black hole swallowing a neighbouring star !
To be honest, the American satellite SWIFT detected the same thing at the same moment, but yay for Japan anyway.
MAXI detected a really strong X-ray emission during about 10 minutes, coming...
3 tags
Where is it safe to send your children to school ?...
Well, I don’t really care since I do not have children but a prefecture spending money to make its schools earthquake-resistant probably spends money to make the other buildings that I use earthquake-resistant too.
The MEXT (Minister of Education […] that we used to call Monbusho and that is now nicknamed Monkasho for a reason I don’t get) published the results of its yearly...
5 tags
And then, people you thought would last forever...
And again, I deal with a major piece of news even if I had decided not to…
It seems that a member of the government let slip out that Kan Naoto would resign at the begining of next week. But… who cares ?
SHIMADA SHINSUKE IS RETIRING ! (would I not be a grammar nerd, I would have put several exclamation marks at the end of this sentence)
Shimada Shinsuke, one of the...
5 tags
An american representative attend the...
So today was August the 9th, the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Nagazaki.
A few days ago the commemorations for the bombing of Hiroshima were held, including the mass release of 8.000 paper lanterns with peace messages written on them on the Motoyasugawa in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome.
66 years ago the same river was filled with the bodies of people who jumped in it in need of...
7 tags
Rice art
Long time no see… and the updates will probably be sporadic for the next few weeks.
Since I do not have much time, have a text-light-image-heavy article ! It’s summer, the season of koushien rice art ! Rice art is really popular in Japan (probably because there are a lot of rice fields. But it is more popular than… let’s say wheat art in France, despite the...
