The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

Didn't buddharhubarb also mention the chronic overstaffing of many Japanese companies? IIRC he mentioned it when talking about banks, and how they seemed to be stuck in the 70s.

Thats true.
The ATMs here have better hours than the people.
And the banks seem to be full of pretty girls overseen by stern middle aged men, it is like something from old fashioned TV.

Yet still unemployment is high.


One possible reason for things being so outdated here is they missed out on the typewriter age. Due to the complexity of their language people continued by and large to write almost everything by hand well into the 80s when word processors started being able to handle Japanese. One may think that 30 years is long enough for them to have finally caught up and mechanised but...a lot of the guys in senior management started in the before technology times, things are moving, really fast these days compared to how I hear things were even 7 years ago, but still, the old guys remain....

And of course it doesn't explain all the pointless jobs that have nothing to do with writing.

[Habbaku]

Provisional (and subject to change) World-Ship representation is currently thus:

Southerners 25%
Japanese 25%
French* 20%
Irish 10%
Scottish 6%
Welsh 4%
Afrikaners- 10%

I'll bite : why the asterisk?

[Ed Anger]

I wish Stoneman burned more.

[Neil]

Provisional (and subject to change) World-Ship representation is currently thus:

Southerners 25%
Japanese 25%
French* 20%
Irish 10%
Scottish 6%
Welsh 4%
Afrikaners- 10%

Aren't all of those pretty much undesirables?

[jimmy olsen]

Off to two days of totally useless training.

[Lettow77]

 Neil, to an extent they are. We'd have to be careful in the Japanese we picked to make sure they weren't as materialistic and hard working as the average of their race- we need a lazy, gentle land where everything goes pleasantly to seed and a beautiful dilapidation is in evidence everywhere.


The asterisk is for reasons previously explained- the French question isn't entirely settled. Pied Noirs, Occitans and Bretons get preference over mainline french; it isn't clear if other french are welcome at all. All of the above groups fall under "French" though, and so French* it is.

[Razgovory]

I'm afraid to ask, who is the "We" here?

[Neil]

And of course it doesn't explain all the pointless jobs that have nothing to do with writing.

Social policy.  Japan is a country that adopted your coal mining policy.

[Neil]

Neil, to an extent they are. We'd have to be careful in the Japanese we picked to make sure they weren't as materialistic and hard working as the average of their race- we need a lazy, gentle land where everything goes pleasantly to seed and a beautiful dilapidation is in evidence everywhere.

I don't think that's wise.

[Razgovory]

Neil, to an extent they are. We'd have to be careful in the Japanese we picked to make sure they weren't as materialistic and hard working as the average of their race- we need a lazy, gentle land where everything goes pleasantly to seed and a beautiful dilapidation is in evidence everywhere.

I don't think that's wise.

Sort of like setting up for failure isn't it?

[MadImmortalMan]

There is a big pack of coyotes behind the back fence. I can't see them, but they are making a huge racket, which is unusual. I think they might have gotten somebody's pet.

Well, there's some blood and fur in a spot down in the ravine. No corpse. Maybe they didn't kill it,  or maybe they carried it off. Or the owner already came and got it. The fur is all over the sage bushes-- white and a bit long like a sheep dog or something. Whatever it was, it fought well.

[Neil]

Neil, to an extent they are. We'd have to be careful in the Japanese we picked to make sure they weren't as materialistic and hard working as the average of their race- we need a lazy, gentle land where everything goes pleasantly to seed and a beautiful dilapidation is in evidence everywhere.

I don't think that's wise.

Sort of like setting up for failure isn't it?

It really is.  Especially with a people as wholly consumer by violence as the Scots and the Irish involved.

[Lettow77]

 The Scots and Irish will have to be kept at the fringes of civilization. The frontier will be indefinite, so this shouldn't constitute a problem. For real centres of civilization, we will look to the French and Japanese.

But "success" is measured differently than normally, here. We don't want to measure success by industrial output, population boom, or anything like that. Yukkuri is what we aim for.

Eventually, the hateful powers of Man-Home will re-discover us, and the fractious and quarrelsome Celts and Southerners will need to be herded into a coalition; a Frenchman or Southerner of considerable elan will unite all the people under a despotism that derives its legitimacy from the people's acclaim, and a glorious (losing) war will be waged against the despicable forces of progress.

[Neil]

The Scots and Irish will have to be kept at the fringes of civilization. The frontier will be indefinite, so this shouldn't constitute a problem. For real centres of civilization, we will look to the French and Japanese.

But "success" is measured differently than normally, here. We don't want to measure success by industrial output, population boom, or anything like that. Yukkuri is what we aim for.

Eventually, the hateful powers of Man-Home will re-discover us, and the fractious and quarrelsome Celts and Southerners will need to be herded into a coalition; a Frenchman or Southerner of considerable elan will unite all the people under a despotism that derives its legitimacy from the people's acclaim, and a glorious (losing) war will be waged against the despicable forces of progress.

Is it not more likely that all these people will die of radiation sickness?  Still, space technology won't get there.

[Razgovory]

I was thinking of failure along the lines of everyone starves.