A Diplomat in Japan

I just finished reading Sir Ernest Satow's A Diplomat in Japan. It is not a breathtaking piece of literature, but a highly informative, if slightly skewed, window into the fall of the bakufu in Japan. His is certainly an exceptional story, coming to Japan in 1862 as a student translator with the British legation. He ended up mastering the language and being present at the most critical moment in the making of modern Japan.

Satow's view of the world is certainly as a man of privilege and power. He isn't insufferable but could surely be termed a man of his times. However, he isn't a blathering racist or an uptight pawn of the empire. He is a member of the elite, interacting with other elites in fairly extraordinary circumstances. The book was a good companion piece to the insanely popular NHK historical drama Ryoma Den, which I have been watching, pretty much, of my own free will. Although Satow only mentions Ryoma once, and that by his hilarious pseudonym, Saidani Umetaro, characters from the drama suck as Kido and Saigo show up frequently and as actual humans.

My real interest in the book was twofold. First, seeing the area that I live in and indeed the Japan of that time through Satow's eyes was incredible. The moment he crossed the mountains from Uji to Fushimi and caught sight of the Kyoto that he was forbidden to enter certainly made me ache for a time machine. One of my favorite things about the area that I live in is it isn't too hard to picture what he saw. I could probably set out this weekend and find the hill.

But at last we reached the summit, and gained a magnificent view of the great plain below, in the centre of which lies the mysterious and jealously guarded Kioto, like a Japanese Mecca, in which it was death for the heathen foreigner to set his foot. pg. 266

Second, wait, Let me pause before going into this reasoning to say that I am very skeptical of picking out little things in history, connecting them to the present and declaring that they are representative of any national character. Nevertheless there are chords that stretch through a culture and things in the past that have made or present will still be able to be seen in our future in a way that tomes like Gunfighter Nation illuminate for us. These kind of anecdotes dot the narrative laid down and one can only picture Satow coming on these scenes anew and not being able to see them manifest in our present.

For the idea then entertained by every Japanese was that the ford of the stream was too great for a boat to live in it, and that a bridge was impossible. As it has since been successfully bridged, the probability is that this belief was purposely inculcated. pg. 234

For anyone who has lost hours in modern Japan having explained to them how something completely feasible is utterly impossible, I think this will ring true.

It seemed curious...that the common people should be ready to obey him, but the Japanese...had a great appetite for being governed, and were ready to submit to anyone who claimed authority over them. pg 357.

Controversial. Possibly racialist. Up for debate? I should point out that he is referring to the "lower classes" here, not the samurai who, as befits the origin of their name, would submit to being governed, but would also kill to not be governed. Marinate on it.

A wretched being, who had been to the Untied States and had picked up a few words of low English was put... to wait on me, as if I was so ignorant of Japanese as to need an interpreter. It was explained that he was the only one of the clan who understood European manners. pg. 277

There is a lot going on here. I rather enjoy Satow's arrogance in this respect. He began his training in classical Chinese and was charged with translating documents from the Mikado and the Shogun. So, some samurai's throw a guy in front of him who speaks some sailors English in an attempt to communicate. I won't pin this one on the Japanese, this happens to me frequently in America when older gentleman who used to serve in the Navy gleefully give me their repertoire of Japanese. Classical it ain't. This passage also illustrates a trend I saw a good deal of as an exchange student and then as a friend of exchange students in the US. Often, new speakers of a language pick up the speaking habits of their cohort. And why wouldn't they? My Japanese is certainly shaped by playing football and spending a lot of time in fighting gyms. The only issue I have is when people aren't cognizant of this phenomenon and assume that a limited understanding on their part shapes the whole on the other. This is a bit of a stretch in the discussion, but the teacher next to me just asked, "Foreign people who come to Japan really like Japanese food don't they?" My completely non-entertaining response was that people who chose to visit Japan had an inherit bias to liking Japanese food, being willing to try new foods, and saying nice things as they were in another country. Swinging back to the original point, often, especially in my line of work, a person who has some foreign contact, whatever that might mean, is put in charge of handling you as you are foreign and can't interact on the same level with Japanese people. It doesn't matter if you are a professional in a world of professionals and the person placed in charge of you was a hard drinking working holiday visa college drop-out.

What the Kaga people feared was that this would lead to its being taken away from them by the Tycoon's government... But they did not venture to say this openly, and alleged therefore various other excuses, such as the inhabitants were not accustomed to see foreigners... pg. 248

Do I need to elaborate on this one? If you have ever tried to rent an apartment, or get a credit card or change your car title or buy an iPhone in Japan you will get a taste of this. You definitely will if you work in the bureaucracy. I have said before that Japan is the biggest nation of excuse makers I can think of. But, to some extent, they have had to be as responsibility is a hot potato time bomb that one has to distribute quickly and then back slowly away from until it is safe to start running.

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TV Lies?

The wife and I have an ongoing.....discussion, shall we say, about the amount that TV, especially Japanese TV lies to you. I contend that the amount is somewhere between always and most of the time. Her contention is that that would be bad so it would be surprising if that wer to happen. By singalling out Japanese TV you may think that I am letting American TV off the hook. I am not, but we live in Japan and the exposure that we both have to American TV is usually trying to force her to watch Treme while she struggles to stay awake or of renting Lost on DVD.



If you have never witnessed Japanese TV you are probably picturing the kind of shows that become notorious in the US. Men seeing who can drink beer in a sauna until they die. Doe-eyed, dyed blonds in pink maid outfits up to no good. Absurd obstacle courses. Those programs must exist, but they aren't the staple of prime time viewing. What is the mainstay of Japanese television is a constant barrage of the same recycled celebrities providing inane commentary on everything that they either don't know about or I don't care about. If you follow martial arts at all you will be familiar with a dynamic. Often for a kick-boxing match the commentary team will be a retired baseball player and a model. They will provide critical information such as, "He is big." Or "He looks mean." Often the model will cry win the man they had tauted to win, but was weaker all along loses. They people are called "talent." This wasn't meant to be ironic. The main qualification seems to be, and yes I will go ahead and finish the though just for forms sake, is to have no talent. You will have a sure hit on your hands if a pop band that can neither dance nor sing, much less play any instruments, hosts a cooking show where they don't really cook.

I had avoided Japanese television for years because it works my nerves as well as rotting my brains. I avoided it until I got married and I could no longer avoid it. My wife, being Japanese, will feel terrible and alone if not plugged into the hive mind. That is largely what television in Japan is. There are only four or so channels and the same people are on all of them everyday. Literally. The real literally, not the figurative one. I should state that I don't mean this as an insult to my wife. I don't like her viewing choices, but, if we were in America, I would certainly feel left out if I didn't watch football on Sunday's and March Madness and everything else that is sewed tenderly into the fabric of our society. It would be normal.

As TV is TV, it is in the habit of lying. The truth is shaped to form the storyline as following reality can get messy. I could just sit back and scoff at all of this ironically, but in Japan, the storyline guides society. There aren't those who prefer MSNBC to FOX or who like HBO and AMC shows and forgo CSI:Miami. It is THE storyline for the nation. It is THE way the world works. And it is an absurd fable.

Last night I experienced a prime example. For some reason at my house we end up watching the same show most Tuesday's. Neither of us like this show. We never say, "I really want to watch that show." We never change or plans to see it or check what channel it is on. It just happens. Cafes usually have Tuesdays off. I am home. She is home. Whatever the cause. The show itself is awful. I am not sure how to translate it accurately in English. It is, according to the title, about witches. But not how we would envision them. Maybe magical princesses. It usually involves a lady in her mid forties who had a run of bad luck, got fat, and then lost the weight. They story will have a few amusing turns and people will call the hero names and she will try really hard, often coming up with a ridiculous diet or exercise program, and then she will triumph in the end. The show climaxes with the witch coming on stage in a soft, white, Warren Beatty like light, where the panelists of cross-dressers, comedians and washed-up pop stars can faun over them.

Yesterday featured a chubby girl who was watching TV and decided she wanted an American boyfriend so she moved to America. While there, in New York City of course, she found the perfect guy, wrote a manga about him, fell in love and got married. Everyone was amazed. She also dropped 20 or so pounds in the process. They showed a picture of her and her husband and told everyone how her manga was more popular than Harry Potter in America. I was sitting at the computer studying kanji and smelled something fishy, not just from y kitchen. During the whole story I had been voicing my disapproval, saying that someone who moved to America to get a boyfriend was pathetic and should be embarrassed to admit to it on TV. When the statement was made about the popularity of her manga, I immediately realized that that made the story verifiable and decided to check it out. Five seconds on Google later, I came up with this. This is an interesting story, but it is surely not the same thing. The wife was taken aback, my exposure of the falsehood of the storyline was rendered such, "So she is really famous!"
"Well, she is in the newspaper." I answered. "But look at the story. She was homeless and she got divorced and she was an exchange student, not just a boyfriend hunter. The story isn't true. It was much more textured and said a lot about the artists grit and the nature of trying to make it in America. It had all been sanitized into a vapid love story that only played to Japanese conceptions. Look, she says that American college was harder than Japanese college." I laughed, knowing the truth and being glad that the lady had realized it. "You just love to make fun of Japan!" I could pursue that argument, but rather I make the declaration, Japan just loves to make a fool of itself.

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Don't Blame JET

Well, the title was fortunate because I don't. Apparently there has been some uproar over the recent opinion piece by Debito Arudou. Who could have seen this? Before I weigh in, two points.

1. I generally like Debito even though I think he writes like a clod and might be a miserable bore to hang out with. I often say that complaining is the first step in a democracy and I think he is doing some serious stamina training on that first step. But if he didn't, who is?

2. There seems to be a particular rhetorical trait of my generation, or maybe it is of every generation and I just came to understand it as I grew into making arguments. I am not sure what to call this thing, this pattern, this discussive course. It goes something like this, "I don't agree with one hundred percent of what you are saying and I can find some small pieces that might or might not be flawed based largely on my opinion and the way I understand a few facts so your argument and how you feel must therefore be wrong." I think that part of this arose from a culture, internet and pre-internet, that found people rewarded for having "a take" more than having an opinion. For having something to say more than having actually, something to say. But that is just my observation.

Here is Debito-san's article on the JET Programme, of which, I am an illustrious alumni.

Where Debito goes wrong, as I have observed before, is that there are many different classroom environments than the one's he describes. Most teachers tell kids, "It is okay to make a mistake." Most classrooms are very forgiving. The real issue is that the Monbusho, the school boards, the schools and the individual teachers have no idea what they want from English education or from ALTs. The whole system in constrained by the racialist view that non-Japanese can't be real teachers and so the curriculum and approach are in the hands of people who may or may not be able to speak English. Most English teachers I have met have never been out of the country. Most high level English speakers I have met, would never be permitted to be teachers and would have been hard pressed to get into the system and to have spent time abroad.

I am glad that Debito points out that JET isn't necessarily about education. True and true. It know has alumni in government and business around the world. I am one of the few exceptions that stayed the course and went broke doing so. JET has never been about bringing in good teachers or shaping good teachers, although it does sometimes by accident.

As I have said before, under the current approach, and that is an important caveat, I think English should be done away with as a subject in junior high. It can have a meaning and a purpose, but right now, it is rudderless and foundering.

Here are a sampling or responses. I am not calling them wrong or right. As we all know; Every situation is different.

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Two Weeks

Two weeks between postings is becoming regular and is ridiculous. A large byproduct of being married is that, while you still have a lot of free time at night, it isn't free time sitting around writing about stuff. Maybe it is just harder to concentrate, maybe it is because writing is a lonely game anyway. Who knows. In the mean time, Alabama lost, America tied, the Braves barely made the playoffs and are trying to bail out. I have gotten into several fights in the teachers room and then made up. It is hot everyday in October and I am being stung my mosquitoes. I have also completely given up on the Japanese educational system. Oh yes, I am also very busy at school and the computing situation has changed for the worse.

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Japanese Education: For the Loss

Think about a school. All of the subjects that are taught and the teachers and students that work there. It is a junior high. Now picture a subject. Let's go with math. It is a big school so we will say that there are twelve math teachers. Eleven of these teachers have a reasonable exposure to math. One of them can do trigonometry. Some of them can multiply fractions. The majority of them know some simple algebra and all of their work has to be checked by the twelfth teacher who is completely proficient in the discipline of math. This teacher might make a mistake or two, but they know how to check on it and correct it and they understand the underlying principals involved. Not only can they do calculus and trig, but they use it in their life daily. The other teachers pretty much forget about math the second they leave the classroom. They don't read math books, or watch math on TV or navigate ships or moonlight as accountant. The one teacher who is capable of all this stuff, what do we figure about them? Are they the head of the department, or responsible for lesson planning? Do they get paid a higher salary? Are they tasked with making sure that the teachers who are weaker in the subject, much weaker in some cases, get up to speed and that their classes are imparting the correct information? Do they get bonuses like the other teachers? Is their job secure? If they find that some teachers are teaching students that 2 +2 =5 or that 20% of 100 is 33, do they have the ability to solve that issue and get things back on track? If the answer to all of these questions was a resounding belly laugh of a "no" would you be surprised? You should be. It would be absurd. Imagine the whole country hanging their heads and wondering why their math scores were so low and that their economy had been passed by China. Now, change the word "math" to "English" and substitute whatever you like for the equations. That is everyday that I am at work.



I am not saying this to aggrandize myself, although I think that I am good at my job, or to blow of some steam, even though the pot has boiled out and over and is burning through now that the last drop has evaporated. I want people to understand what a backwards, counterproductive, self-defeating system English education in Japan is. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, ridiculous. Laughable. A farce.



It is test time here at the junior high. It has been going to be test time for the last half of this week since the schedule was made at the beginning of the school year. This means that with an English listening test happening first thing Wednesday morning, English teachers will be scrambling to throw something together about four in the afternoon on Tuesday.



It has just occurred to me that before telling you about the listening test debacle of yesterday, I should first take you on a tour of how the listening test is recorded. I will substitute our hypothetical math teacher with me, a somewhat hypothetical English teacher at the largest junior high in Osaka prefecture. Look it up. One of my jobs at school is to provide the voice on the listening test. Why? Because I can actually speak English. Not that every teacher can't. Some can, surprisingly. Usually a script is handed to me as we walk into the recording room and I realize how fraught it is with awkward or even mistaken English which I try to correct on the fly. The recording room here is like the recording room in most junior highs I have been in, a small, dusty room with stacks and stacks of unused, expensive equipment lining the walls and piled on the floor in boxes and cases, left sitting where they were brought of the truck. There is always a large soundboard, like in a radio station with an MD player and other audio equipment attached. Dust covers this pricey table as no one has touched it. Cardboard covers the inside of the windows but the sound of balls whacking of of the fencing on the outside echoes. Through this room is a door to a smaller room, like a closet where stacks of unused audio equipment, mixers and mic-stands and chords, take up the majority of the space. In the corner behind the door is an old desk, with its metal drawer smashed in. On the desk sit two VCRs, a mic and a small, two-channel, audio mixer. The VCR on the bottom is used for playing an old tape that someone made years ago of hand drawn letters on a piece of poster board that read "Listening Test" in Japanese. A line runs through the middle of the tape when it plays but sometimes it bounces up or down. It dances around and turns to a covering of static. Sometimes it disappears. The video output of the bottom VCR feeds into the top VCR which is there to record this image over and over for as long as it takes to degrade into nothing and then someone will wonder how to make a new one and probably rig it up just like this tape was in the first place. The little mixer and Mic, one you would probably pick up for your home karaoke set, has an RCA out which goes into the audio in of the top VCR so that its audio is recorded over the slowly dying video image. That is how we record listening tests. When it is finished and the time for the test has come, the tape is transferred to another VCR which broadcasts to all of the TVs in the school. It is much the same system that we used when I was a junior high school student and we found that we could record 1970s funk songs over TV ministers and laugh as they coincidentally jumped and pranced in time to the music. That was at least twenty years ago. But it isn't the worst that I have seen. At my last school they would carry cassette decks into the recording room, set them on the mixing board and record the test into the little mic embedded next to the speaker, as tens of thousands of dollars of equipment set unused in boxes on the floor.

I have tried to change these practices wherever I have been. The other teachers look at me as if I just suggested that viruses were caused by germs and not seasonal temperature changes and revert back to their old ways as soon as I turn my back like children sneaking cookies from the jar.

I was surprised last week when the older lady who teaches the third years, let's call her "T-sensei", asked me to make the listening test. She is one of two third year English teachers. The other is younger and went to college in America and, for the most part, teaches English very well. I praised him highly to our principal last year, and now he is the head English teacher and a year or two younger than me. Let's call him "O-sensei." I don't mind making the test. I was glad that they think enough of me to find me capable. However, I teach every class in the school, all 28 of them. All 1,053 students. When making a test it is very difficult for me to dead reckon the general ability level and what material has been covered in which class and so on, so I asked what was to be included. It was determined by T-sensei that there would be ten questions; four pertaining to "_______makes me______." Four on the subject of "______is called ______" The last two would be about how to give directions regarding trains. I prepared a rough draft and showed it to T-sensei on Monday.
"Hmmm. mmmm. It would be nice to have pictures."
"Ok."
"Hmmmmmm."
"Yes."
"Let's not do ten let's do eight."
"Eight total questions?"
"Yes, let's do two on 'make' two on 'is called' two on directions and the last four on the present perfect tense."
"So ten questions total?"
"Yes, eight."
"Two plus two plus two plus four. Ten"
"Yes. Here are some examples in the book."

Needless to say this conversation between two professional English teachers took place in Japanese because one of them would have found it impossible in English. I ran out of time on Monday and was left having to skip a first year class to clear time to make it on Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday morning on the staircase T-sensei says to me, "I am thinking we should make the listening test easier this time. Their level isn't so high." That was okay with me, however all I have ever seen of their English tests is the script I am given to read. I have never seen the answer sheet that the students will read from or the grading system that will evaluate and process it. In this vacuum, I made the test, skipping two hours of classes, going over the teacher's edition of the text books, which I am not in possession of as non-Japanese are not usually issued teacher's editions and importing lots of pictures for the answer sheet as requested. I attempted to adjust the dialogues to subjects we had touched on in class. For example, instead of "I have a dog who is fat and white, but we call him 'Pochi.' Do you like foreign countries Ratna?" Or whatever oddness usually surfaces, I made the statement, "His name is Obama, but I call him Mr. President." As we had talked about in class how it is rude to call a head of state "Obama."

It was a very nice looking test. I returned to my desk, satisfied, with final drafts copied and scripts prepared. Not being able to locate T-sensei, I saw O-sensei at his desk. I brought the test over. We are on fairly good terms.
"Here is the test I came up with, tell me if anything needs to be changed."
(Again, this is all in Japanese. This teacher is the head of the English department but cannot converse in the language without a great deal of patience.)

He hung his head in his hands. "This won't work. This is no good. I can't understand it."
"In what respect?"
"What is this question asking? I don't understand. The students will never figure it out. This. It is too easy."
"Is it too easy or too hard?"
"I don't understand it."
I was fairly upset. "Then don't use it. Make a new one, but don't ask me to make a new one as the only guidelines I had were issued by you."
"I don't know anything about that. Who told you to do what?"
"T-sensei."
"What did she say?"
"She gave me a rough outline and some examples."
"It won't work."
"I am sorry. I am not in class everyday. I don't know their level."
"It isn't a level problem, it is a test making problem."
"Then don't use it. Make a new one. It won't hurt my feelings if you throw it out, but you can't asks me to make something and give me no information on what you want or need and then say it isn't what you wanted because I don't know what you want."
"Maybe we can use the middle two questions if we change the answers."
"I am not asking you to use my test to make me happy. I don't care. I have other things I could have been doing. If I am not helping you I have other work to do."

I will spare you the remainder, but anyone who has been in a Japanese conversation understands that the degree of forward progress is better measured with sundials and farmer's almanacs. It was agreed that it was T-sensei's job to make the test, and not mine. That I am here to help rather than to contribute and that they would call me when it was time to record.

It was now three in the afternoon and the second year teacher who had set-up a time with me the week before stopped by my desk and we went over the script and recorded without a hitch. Around 4:30 the first years teachers came to find me and asked if I could record. This was the first I had heard from them, but that had been expected. The teacher in charge of the listening test is fresh out of college and had never recorded anything before. I am not sure I have ever heard him speak English and I had to show him how to work the double VCR dubbing system. Going in to each recording I always tell the teachers that we are going to knock it out in one take. Partially to encourage them. Partially because the room is small and sweltering and smells like dust. But really, mainly, because I worked for years in radio and adults stumbling over a 5 minute script makes me bleed internally. Teachers whose job is to speak in front of 40 teenagers every day saying that they are nervous when presented with a mic strikes me as foolish.

Halfway through the script, the young teacher began a panic-stricken motion for me to stop. "I forgot that we never taught them question three." It had to do with "Where" and no one could remember if they knew "where" and it was supposed that maybe they learned it in elementary school, or not. As a picture of a cat was already on the answer sheet I suggested that we just ask "Do you like cats?" Everyone chuckled and then considered scrapping the whole thing and rerecording me doing a self introduction. It was now 5pm and I am supposed to leave by 5:15. No third year teachers are in the office. The questions are changed, we go in, knock it out and it everything we recorded disappears from the cassette tape. It takes a while but I find it, an oddity of cassette tapes that things can be lost on them. It is now 5:10.

I find T-sensei in the hall, checking whether students memorized sections of the book that they never understood the meaning of. I ask her if we can record and she cobbles together the scraps of paper that are now the listening test. I glance over them. I realize that some sections involve a part A and a part B so that I will need her to record with me. As we sit down to record she tells me she hasn't come up with questions so I will just have to make them up as we go. Fortunately I am a pro. Halfway through she ask that I stop the recording.
"What happened?"
"You forgot to say 'Number 2'"
"No, I think I said it."
"You didn't. We have to go back and record it again."
"I am pretty sure I said it, but we will check."

After rewinding at restarting, it is there "Number 2" and we are off again. As usual, the script is awkward and flawed. I will try to represent the last question to the best of my ability,

"Mr. Kato has visited Australia and India but he has never been to any other country. How many foreign countries had Mr. Kato visited?"

To me this sounds like a trick question involving a Mr. Kato who happens to have dual citizenship with Australia and India but a strong dislike of travel. T-sensei couldn't understand the issue. It strikes me as a very Japanese question involving several assumptions that could just as easily be not true and an clumsy use of "foreign" which can only be used to solve the problem by making sure that Mr. Kato is Japanese and that other countries only exist in relation to Japan. Maybe I am overthinking it.

It is now past 5:30 and I get my things to leave. This is an tricky point too. It states in my contract that I have to leave by 5:15. Sometimes I stick around when I am helping with soccer or working on something, but I usually take off. Mainly because there is nothing to be done. But it is a barrier. Japanese teachers, in my experience, are terrible managers of time and take great pride in how busy they are and how late they stay at work. So my time being wasted and mismanaged and under-utilized, shouldn't make me angry when I view it as a waste, I should feel satisfied that I did less than I could have and think up ways to do things more inefficiently and cause myself to stay later garnering more respect.

Sometime this week there will be a TV show where experts wonder how it could be that Japan is slipping. How could it be?

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UFC 119: St. James Infirmary

Commissioner White rode to the podium on a plastic toy firetruck carry a go cup full of Micehlob and declared, "We may have left Iraq, but bitches still be dying" He fell off sideways, losing his top hat, beer coating his AC/DC t-shirt and denim vest.

Tavares vs. Audinwood

Hard to care. Not enough data. Tavares has tried to derail his promising career. A toss-up. Tavares by split decision.

Hunt vs. McCorkle

What people tend to forget in their jaded critiques and professional observations is that Pride was really fun to watch. Fun. And the big, fat jester in the middle of it all, atomic butt dropping Fedor and eating Cro-Cop high kicks like they were tasty cakes, was Mark Hunt. He was also a very skilled striker with nothing to offer on the ground. I like the guy and I want him to do well. I also think his striking is levels above McCorkle. Hunt by KO round 1.

Grant vs. Paulino

Again, not really enough data. We have been hearing about Grant for a while and he shows some promise and a nice single leg. I think it gets him the decision over Paulino.

Lowe vs. Lopez.

Really? Lowe should lose based on his belly-button tattoo. Lopez's record in indicative of nothing. So he beat The Gooch. So what? Errrrr. Lowe by decision.

Mitrione vs. Beltran

I enjoy Beltran, but he is particularly good. Mitrione has actually been fairly impressive. I like his hands. I think he gets the KO in round 2.

Dollaway vs. Doerksen

Which is worse, Dollaway"s sub defense or Doerksen's chin. That is the real battle here, and I don't really care. I have little faith in either. Let's say Dollaway by TKO in the 3rd.

Stephens vs. Guillard

I tried to dislike Guillard for a while, but he is fun to watch. He is also a fellow Gulf Coaster, and a gifted liver puncher. Stephens is a mean little bastard. I would like to think that being at Jackson's will help Guillard develop a plan and fight smart, but has that worked for Cerrone or Jardine? No, not really. However, Guillard's true weakness is sub-defense. Will Stephens threaten him there. This will be a real test of Guillard's chin. Hard to call. Stephens by KO in the 3rd.

Dunham vs. Sherk

I have missed out on the Dunham hype train and I briefly rode the Sherk hate train. I think Dunham is a little overvalued right now, and Sherk is undervalued. But, Sherk has been on the shelf for too long and I rate that pretty high against people. Dunham by decision.

Serra vs. Lytle

I love both of these guys and I think people are a little too cynical about their careers. Enjoy them for what they are. This is an awkward match-up for Lytle, whose skills I respect as much as anyone fighting. Serra is hard to KO and can hit back, hard. Serra is almost impossible to submit and is good at regaining position. I think this goes to a split decision in favor of Serra. I am looking forward to it unabashedly.

Nogueira vs. Bader

I wouldn't say that either of these guys as at a cross roads, but I could say their careers could take either path. What? Nogueira can prove that he deserves his reputation and that he can hover around the top. Bader can prove that his talent will be fulfilled and he can hang at the top. I think there are major holes in Nogueira's game, mainly his defense. I think Bader is a better physical talent. But, I need this fight for Bader to prove it to me. I am picking to Nogueira to get a clever sub in the 3rd.

Mir vs. Flipovic

Is it bad form to say I don't care? Not that I don't care about the fight, I am excited to watch it. However, it doesn't really matter to me who wins. I think Mir has the better shot, but he alternates between solid game plans and brain death. Cro-Cop seems to have had his intimidating uber talent sucked out of him. I would like to see Cro-Cop win, but I don't know how that unfolds. I don't know if his sprawl is still there. I think he can tag Mir on the feet though. Mir seems to love his boxing, but we'll see. Cro-Cop's sub defense has always been sufficient, but he is aging and Mir is much stronger. Errr....I don't know. I am going to call Flipovic by fracturing of Mir's orbital bone with a straight left in the 2nd. How's that?

Take it to the fake bank.

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I-10 in NOLA

Here are some articles on the plan that David brought up. I will have to do some more reading on it. Having not lived there it is hard for me to really weigh in, but I am generally in favor of this kind of thing. When I lived in the Jackson Ward in Richmond a lot of older residents, and younger residents in the know, talked about the way the neighborhood was before they ran the interstate through the middle of it and put an on ramp like a stake in its heart. Around the period of time that interstates were going up, the thinking about planning was rather obtuse.

Update: I just found this Facebook group related to the issue. Maybe they will be the place to get updates. However, their latest status is just an add for working stay at home moms, so....

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