West Japan Railways (West JR), one of six companies that make up Japan Railways Group, has unveiled a giant “humanoid robot” to work on heavy machinery on its lines…
Interesting that in English the official name is West Japan Railways Company, while in Japanese it’s JR Nishi-Nihon Guruupu (JR西日本グループ), which means Japan Railways West Japan Group. It’s one of six “companies” that comprise what used to be “National Railroad” (Kokutetsu), owned by the government.
JR West is renowned to be badly run and somewhat corrupt. I wonder about this “robot” project. With the increase in “human accidents” (ie people hit by a train), I think it’d be better to hire more workers than to reduce staff and have the top level desk jockeys pocket the…
What jobs have I *not* had would be a better question.
Right…
Lawn mower (right after I got my “working papers” at age 14, along with my social security number — this is now assigned at birth in the US)
Pizza dough maker (seriously, that’s all I did at first)
Pizza maker and deli worker (same restaurant)
Tarred the school parking lot and roof (no idea what this job would be called)
McDonald’s (who hasn’t? Both opening and closing, including cleaning the deep oil fryer. Ugh.)
Gymnasium weight room staff
Gymnasium pool cleaner
Volleyball court setup and take down
Softball umpire (all four work-study jobs at college with a max number of hours per week)
Bookstore clerk (Barnes & Nobles)
Dishwasher (summer time only)
Short order cook (same restaurant as the dishwasher job)
Stock boy (stationery store for all of two days)
Temp worker (stuffing envelopes for three days, yawn)
Blockbuster clerk (out of business video rental store—anybody remember VHS tapes?)
Bookstore clerk (used bookstore in Ann Arbor, mostly stocking and organizing overflow in the basement, although I did help set up a comic book and gaming store annex)
First year composition teacher (this was a paid TA job for one semester in grad school)
Computer software store clerk (mall seasonal job—I got in trouble once for suggesting that a customer try another software store for a game series we didn’t carry rather than lie by saying we’d let him know when we got it; I hadn’t realized lying was company policy…)
Computer salesperson (my first “full time” job—I lasted two months—definitely not slick enough to work for sales commish)
Kinko’s (computer design department)
Weekly newspaper (computer layout)
A small H&R firm (computer design…you can probably sense a trend…)
Assistant language teacher (the jump to Japan)
Language instructor (late night after school cram school for junior high kids)
Assistant Professor (both part time and full time contractual)
Professor (it’s amazing now to see how I wound up teaching TESOL…)
This may not include some odds and ends here and there when I was in JHS and SHS. I worked a lot of summer jobs and Christmas/ New Year’s break jobs. I worked most weekends while I was a full time students, and most Friday evenings, too. I don’t recall the pay for all of them, but I remember the pizza dough job paid $3.15 an hour, and four years later McDonald’s paid a whopping $3.75 an hour.
You know, I’d be very interested to find out what jobs my colleagues have had. In college when I borrowed money to study abroad in Germany, my classmates wandered around Europe for the summer while I returned and had exactly $0 to my name and worked double-shifts. I wonder how many literature or history professors spent summer days getting burned on their arms with 400F cooking oil or getting yelled at by bankers because their document wasn’t printed fast enough…
“Normal means” for whom, exactly? I can’t imagine the average worker in Tokyo will be able to afford this thing. Even if they had a physical space to store in.
And, you know, I think I’ve seen a “flying vehicle” like this somewhere already… 🚁
The South Pole, where power plants are likely to be constructed (without human help…)
“The truth is that nuclear is the only option to power a moonbase,” says Simon Middleburgh from the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University in Wales.
My short story “Two Strikes Against” was selected as the Winner in the inaugural Next Generation Short Story Awards! (Official list to be available next week.) UPDATED: Link here https://shortstoryawards.com/winners.php?year=2024
Basically it’s a story about a Japanese baseball player on Mars, with a twist. It got rejected a couple of years ago by several scifi magazines, so I figured why not try the sports category.
Especially since there was no scifi category.
Just grateful and thankful for the award. I hope you all get a chance to read the story!
(FWIW “Marsball” is mentioned by characters in an early chapter of Bringer of Light. In fact, I was going to call the story that. Very glad that I didn’t in the end!)
Japanese space company Astroscale Holdings Inc has unveiled what it calls the world’s first publicly released close-up image taken of space debris, hailing it as progress toward understanding the challenges posed by trash orbiting Earth.
How NOT to look at their smartphone while zombie walking on a train platform or stairs.
Smartphones should be programmed to send tiny electrical shocks into your hand when you walk while reading them. Put the thing in your pocket until you clear the field.
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
“Where are you from?”
I never understood why this question might rankle some people…until I moved to Japan.
I’ve been in Japan since 1999. “Where are you from?” was one of the first questions people asked me at the time, when I was teaching in junior and senior high schools.
