Sahara Solar Breeder Plan
A news report about how Japanese scientists are hoping to turn the Sahara Desert into a giant solar power plant:
This project will use the world’s biggest desert, the Sahara, as an energy source. Deserts have ample sunlight over a vast area, and their sand contains lots of silica – the raw material for silicon. So the idea is to build silicon manufacturing plants around the desert and solar power plants in the desert, and use the power generated to build more silicon and power plants in a “breeding” process. In the future, such plants could supply energy worldwide, through DC power lines using high-temperature superconductors.
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Categories: Technology
Issei Sagawa: Interview With a Cannibal
VBS.TV meets Issei Sagawa, a man who murdered and ate a Dutch woman in Paris back in 1981. Sagawa talks about the act of murder he committed, and how he became a free man after being deported to Japan and spending a few years in a mental hospital [warning: Not Safe For Work]:
According to reports, Issei uttered, “I killed her to eat her flesh,” when police raided his home, whereupon they found bits of Renne still in his fridge.
Sagawa was declared insane and unfit for trial and was institutionalized in Paris. His incarceration was to be short, however, as the French public soon grew weary of their hard-earned francs going to support this evil woman-eater, and Issei was promptly deported. Herein followed a bizarre and seemingly too convenient set of legal loopholes and psychiatric reports that led doctors in Japan declaring him “sane, but evil.”
On the August 12, 1986, Sagawa checked himself out of Tokyo’s Matsuzawa Psychiatric hospital, and has been a free man ever since.
You can watch Part 2 of the interview here.
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Categories: Odd / Strange
Chimpanzee vs. Dragon: An Epic Battle
With all the hype going around about the new Harry Potter movie, “Shimura Zoo” decided to go with a fantasy theme for last week’s Pan-kun segment. They set it up so it looked like Pan-kun’s trainer had been swallowed by a dragon, and waited to see how the chimpanzee would try to rescue the human:
As the dragon is nothing more than a stationary mock-up, Pan-kun can obviously tell it is not a living creature. The smoke it spits out seems a bit scary, but Pan-kun seems more confused than frightened.
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Categories: Animal Videos
American Tourists Think Motorola is a Japanese Company
FTV takes to the streets of Tokyo to ask a few random American tourists if they can correctly identify the nationality of the brands shown above:
None of the six Americans could correctly identify the nationality of all the brands. Only one of the six knew that Motorola was an American company. Non-American brands with English-sounding names (Philips and Sharp) also prove to be confusing.
As one guy says, a lot of people in America don’t really pay much attention to brand nationalities. The quality of products is more important.
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Categories: Foreigners in Japan, Technology
Slow Motion Drinking Cat
“Mezamashi TV” uses a high speed camera to figure out why cats appear to drink so elegantly:
It turns out that cats are tapping the surface of liquid and drinking a few drops from the splash that lifts back up with their tongue. It is very different from dogs, which seem to bend their tongues into a little scoop when drinking. The cat’s drinking method doesn’t bring much liquid with each gulp, so their tongue movements are more frequent.
Birds are shown to drink by putting their beaks directly into the water, while elephants suck water into their trunks before blowing it into their mouths.
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- Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
Categories: Animal Videos
Video: Japanese Samuel L. Jackson Impersonator Contest
An English teacher sets up a Samuel L. Jackson impersonation contest at a Japanese university, offering free Disneyland tickets to the student who can best reenact one of Jackson’s famous performances:
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Categories: Odd / Strange, Teaching English