One American study reported that Americans are inclined to dislike smokers more than obese people. This study said that 17% of people disliked smokers in 1991 and they increased to 25% of people in 2011. It seems that Americans take tougher stance on smokers than before.
On the other hand, there were 12% of people who disliked obese people in 2011 and this is less than 16% of people in 2003.
What do you think about smokers and obese people?

When we consider which animals are clever, what do we think of ? Should we compare the brain weight of animals ? That would mean whales are the most clever, but that is wrong, isn't it?　And so there is an interesting index, which measures the rate of brain weight to body weight. It is called the encephalization quotient.
If a cat is 1 in this index, then a human is 7.6, a dolphin is 5.3, a chimpanzee is 2.4, a whale is 1.8, a fox is 1.6, a gorilla is 1.3, an elephant is 1.3, a crow is 1.3, a dog is 1.2, a sparrow is 1,a  horse is 0.9, a lion is 0.6, a cow is 0.5, a pig is 0.4, and a chicken is 0.25.
Do you think which animals are clever and which animal is the most clever?

One day the engine of a propeller plane which was flown by a famous test pilot stopped during a flight. He managed to land on the ground and searched for the cause. Then he knew that a mechanic had poured incorrect fuel into the propeller plane.

When he knew this fact, rather than getting angry at the mechanic and booting him out, he only said "I am sure you will not repeat this mistake again. I am asking you to overhaul my plane tomorrow." He didn't just blame the mechanic but also he was successful in making a mechanic have confidence and responsibility. This pilot is very cool.

The most dangerous food in Japan is moti(rice cake). About 4000 peoples in Japan die every year due to choking on もち. In near the close to another year, moti is often eaten. There are some delicious Japanese foods with moti in them like Zouni. Oshiruko. However. you must pay attention to eat them. Especially, old peoples. Because their power of swallowing is weak. I like moti and it is delicious but be careful if you eat moti. Please chew it well and don't eat it quickly.

Do you take care food life?

In 1970s, many U.S. people had lifestyle diseases like cancer. heart infarction, brain infarction and obesity, And so The U.S. government made doctors search conditions of sickness and nutrition around the world in the year 1975. In the result, they knew that The U.S. people consumed too much salt, sugar, cholesterol and saturated fatty acid like butter.

The U.S. government felt responsible for their food life and advised people to eat less of the food that caused disease.. And they knew Japanese food is healthy because they are much used pulses and fish. So, they got to eat them more. In the result, the number of fatalities which were caused by lifestyle diseases decreased in the U.S.

What are serious problems in your country?

A declining birth rate and a growing proportion of elderly people is the one of the most serious problems in Japan. The Japanese people who were born around year 1948 is called "baby-boom generation" and their numbers are many. And now they are getting older and the Japanese government has used taxpayers' money for their social security costs like pension credits and the costs will continue to increase in the future.

On the other hand, the birth rate in Japanese is declining, and now it's 1.43. The Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry in Japan calculated that populations in Japan would decrease from about 120 million to about 100 million in the year 2050. Population decreases cause stagnation of the economy because of a decline in both consumption and labor. The Japanese government is trying to solve this problem, but there is no solution in sight.

The World Economic Forum reported the most recent rankings of popularity in sightseeing. The rank follows in descending order from most to least: Spain, France, Germany, the United State of America, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia. Italia, Japan, Canada.
They said Japan has a high standing with regards to sightseeing resources like culture, safety, health, and transportation infrastructure but low standing regarding costs. To what country do you want to go? And what country have you been to that was good?

It seems the book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" , written by French economist Thomas Piketty, is now selling well in the USA. The central idea of this book is that capitalism broadens the economic disparity and so we must tax the rich more in order to share it with many people.

The reason why this book is now selling well in the USA is because its content is about economic disparity. I read the news, in which the people in the USA are now concerned with economic disparity. They are angry about the monopoly on wealth by a few people and they begin to demand distribution of the wealth.

What do you think about economic disparity and to tax the rich more?

 I can see the people who wear clothes printed with strange English. I think the people who wear clothes like that don't know the meaning of those words.

Many years ago, I asked my mother to buy a hat. The hat my mother bought had the word "Bitch" printed on it. It is a dirty word, isn`t it？ If she had known the meaning of the word "Bitch" she never would have bought it. 

Jupiter might become the sun if it has a lot more mass. The reason is because Jupiter is a huge gas giant planet and it's made up of elements similar to the sun. It is said Jupiter need the 80 times more mass than it has at present to become the sun.
However Jupiter is the biggest and massive planet in the solar system. Jupiter captures and shifts the orbit of many miniplanets and comets which go to Earth by its big gravitational force. It is good Jupiter doesn't become the sun.

What do you think what is the most dangerous animal for people?
Lion? Shark? Venomous spider? These aren't correct.
A certain information says that number of people killed by animals per year is as follows.
Lions killed 100 people.
Crocodiles killed 1000 people.
Tsetse flies killed 10000 people by its bioagent.
Dogs killed 25000 people.

Top 3 is as follows.
3. Snakes killed 50000 people.
2. Human killed 475000 people.
1. Mosquitos killed 725000 people by its bioagent.

People killed each other in an annual average of 725000 people. It's a very sad truth.
Mosquito have many dangerous bioagents which cause serious illness like Yellow fever and Dengue fever.
Is your answer correct? If you want to know about this more, check it.
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Most-Lethal-Animal-Mosquito-Week

One Japanese event in April is  the Hanami. Japanese people eat and drink under the cherry blossoms. We call this Hanami.
One Japanese event in May is the Flying Carp. Flying carps  are decorated in the bigining of May and they symbolize the hope for social success and health of young boys because a folk story said that  carps  could only go up a certain fall and so that they could become dragons.

Japanese soccer had been weak for a long time until a few years ago. The reason is that baseball has been the most popular sport in Japan. However the Japan Football Assosiation wanted to strengthen the Japanese soccer and  so they established a profesisonal soccer league in Japan in 1993, which is called J league. Since then, Japanese soccer has been developing at high speed.
The Japanese national soccer team made a debut at the World Cup in 1998 and Japan and Korea jointly hosted the World Cup in 2002. We first passed the first round of matches in 2002 and got to the World Cup in 2006 and 2010. We again passed the first round of matches in 2010 and get to the Word Cup in 2014.
Japanese soccer became popular with its development. Now many Japanese soccer players can play soccer in European League. They help Japanese soccer develop. 
The Word Cup in 2014 is coming soon. I am looking forward to it. Are you interested in the World Cup?

Are you happy?
Recentry, the 2013 World Happiness Ranking was made public by the United Nations. The countries with the highest levels of happiness go as follows,
1.Denmark
2.Norway
3.Switzerland
4.Netherlands
5.Sweden
North Europe is leading.

There are some pieces of advice to be happy in an article.
・Don't compare yourself to others. Live your own life.
・Choose things by yourself. We feel more motivated to choose things by ourselves than to do things under compulsion.
・Love people. There are studies that show that people feel happy when they love someone.
・Appreciate every day. Feeling grateful for being alive is the most important thing to being happy.

 What do you think about happiness? What do we do to become happy?

An American seventeen years old boy was mistakenly shot by a policeman in the USA and died. When the policeman visited the boy's house, the boy had a Wii remote control in his hand. The policeman mistook it for gun and shot him. It's a tragdy. When the policeman realized his mistake, he broke down crying. The boy had joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and his friends say " He was a good guy".
In 1992, a Japanese foreign student was shot to death by a man in the USA. This tragdy was also caused by mistakes. A Japanese foreign student who was dressed up for Halloween visited the man's house because the time was during Halloween. The man mistook him for a holdup. The man said "freeze", but the Japanese foreign student got close to him with a laugh and said " I came for Halloween party". He was shot.
The accident which happened to a Japanese foreign student caused a alarm for gun society in the USA in Japan.
What do you think about these two accidents and gun society?

Do you know about Bitcoin? This is virtual money which is circulated on the internet. This money isn't emitted by most central banks. I don't know the detail, but this money is made by mathmatics on some computers. I didn't know about this money until recently, when I heard a news story about its jump in worth. One Bitcoin was worth of one dollar in the beginning of 2013, but it was worth twelve hundreds dollars at the end of 2013. Its worth increased twelve hundreds times.
This money has some merits like easiness of remittance to other countries and low cost of fees. And this money have some troubles like money laundering and not to be recognised by goverments around the world. So if a government controls the use of Bitcoin, the worth of it will plunge. In fact, when Chinese government announced it would control the use of Bitcoins, the worth dropped by half. Do you want Bitcoins?

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It's an American holiday. His speech is famous even in Japan. He fought racism.
I like a rock band U2. They sang a song about Martin Luther King, Jr. The song is "Pride".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxFY861LR2E

Van Halen is a big rock band. They were famous for doing pranks like throwing TVs from the windows of hotels in the 80's during their grory days. I hear that they demanded in their concerts contract that M＆M's chocolates without the brown ones had to be prepared backstage. If they saw even one brown chocolater backstage, they made a great fuss and smashed up their backstage. Were they overindulgent and arrogant ?

The answer is "No". They checked if there were any brown chocolates backstage when they first arrived there. And if there was even one brown chocolate, they demanded a full check of their stage requirements. They said, " If there is even one brown M＆M, then certainly there must be some technical glitches because no one read the contract. We almost could failed our show. " . They are really professional.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlq0lYB3iSM

I wrote that atomic power generation is convenient ('convenient' seems to be wrong, my friend taught 'useful' is correct) in a resent entry because I thought atomic energy creates huge amounts of electricity at a lower cost than other methods of electrical production. But now I believe this thinking may be wrong, because if nuclear power plants have accidents like the one in Fukushima, Japan, it will cause serious damage to our society.
So which methods of electrical production are better? Thermal power generation expels a lot of carbon dioxide and causes global warming. Power generation by natural energy from sourses like the sun, wind and water cost too much and their electrical output is to small. But they are less harmful to our society than other methods. I think it is important to evolve new technology to genarate power from natural resourses in larger quantities and at lower cost. So we will make a lot of electricity without big cost.