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Coming Soon: The Smartest Town in the World “Imagine a city of the future, populated by wind-powered vehicles, with homes running on intelligent software that consume less power.” This is the plan for Fujisawa, Japan, a city about 31 miles to the west of Tokyo. A consortium of large Japanese companies, including Sumitomo Bank and Tokyo Gas, will build the Sustainable Smart Town (SST) on a vacant property where a Panasonic electronics factory used to stand. For the 3,000 residents who will live there, daily life will include electric cars, with charging stations throughout town, solar-powered homes, and a massive town-wide network to monitor energy consumption and reduce CO2 emissions in the area by 70% from 1990s levels. And the whole thing should be fully populated and operational by 2018. This looks to be a very exciting and relevant project. (SST Overview at Tokyo Times, DVice and CEPro) Happiness different for Americans, ethnic Asians “Not everyone sees positive emotions such as joviality and self-assurance as unequivocally good.” If you are of European descent, you may sometimes wonder why your Asian friends seem more restrained and taciturn in situations where you would jump for joy. Likewise, you Asian folks may find it silly and odd that your Caucasian buddies smile and get giggly seemingly at the drop of a hat. Well, according to studies done at the Universities of Washington and Wisconsin-Madison, people of European and of Asian descent are to some extent culturally programmed to show emotions like happiness in different ways. Research suggests that Asian-Americans and Asian-born Asians, in particular, are often unsure or suspicious of expressing happy emotions unless they can determine how doing so will benefit the group rather than themselves. Interesting stuff which, unfortunately, may or may not reinforce certain clichés white and Asian ethnic groups have about each other. (Time Healthland – Asian vs. European Happy) Magic “Money Liquid” in China “Posing as Americans or Frenchmen, they promised to invest their $4 million funds into the victims’ business and even vowed to marry some of their victims.” There are a lot of benefits to the herbs and remedies found in traditional Chinese medicine, even though modern science cannot yet explain how they all work. However, we’re pretty sure there is no sound scientific way to use a magic elixir to convert counterfeit American dollars into real ones. But that did not stop a group of con men, who recently were able to cheat more than 50 victims in China out of more than US $300,000 with promises that such a money-conversion potion existed and actually worked. It seems amazing that anyone in any country would fall for such a scam, but they did. And Chinese police have had a hard time catching all the con artists because some victims had sex with the scammers and became too embarrassed to report them to police. (China Global Times – Money Liquid Con) Hong Kong iPad2 Sales Scam “Eager buyers waiting outside a Fortress outlet in Hong...
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