# Self-Organized Criticality and Neuronal Avalanches in SIRS Networks with Depressing Synapses

Neuronal networks can present activity described by power-law distributed avalanches presumed to be a signature of a critical state. Here we study a random-neighbor network of excitable (SIRS) cellular automata coupled by dynamical (depressing) synapses that exhibits bona ?de self-organized criticality (SOC) even with dissipative bulk dynamics. This occurs because in the stationary regime the model is conservative on average and in the thermodynamic limit the probability distribution for the global branching ratio converges to a delta-function centered at its critical value. Analytical results show perfect agreement with annealed simulations of the model and enable us to study the emergence of SOC as a function of the parametric derivatives of the stationary branching ratio.

 Comments: 4 pages, 5 figures Subjects: Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems (nlin.AO); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) Cite as: arXiv:1405.7740 [nlin.AO] (or arXiv:1405.7740v1 [nlin.AO] for this version)

# Obtiuário: Robert Lee Zimmerman

Bob foi meu primeiro orientador (de Iniciação Cientítica) e foi muito importante na minha formação e estímulo para continuar na Física.
De Sergio Mascarenhas:

Sérgio Mascarenhas
Instituto de Estudos  Avançados, USP, São Carlos.

# Multiverso e Ajuste Fino: o que ler?

Cut and paste do ótimo post de Luke Barnes:

# What to Read: The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent life

I’ve spent a lot of time critiquing articles on the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. I should really give the other side of the story. Below are some of the good ones, ranging from popular level books to technical articles. I’ve given my recommendations for popular cosmology books here.

## Books – Popular-level

• Just Six Numbers, Martin Rees – Highly recommended, with a strong focus on cosmology and astrophysics, as you’d expect from the Astronomer Royal. Rees gives a clear exposition of modern cosmology, including inflation, and ends up giving a cogent defence of the multiverse.
• The Goldilocks Enigma, Paul Davies – Davies is an excellent writer and has long been an important contributor to this field. His discussion of the physics is very good, and includes a description of the Higgs mechanism. When he strays into metaphysics, he is thorough and thoughtful, even when he is defending conclusions that I don’t agree with.
• The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, Leonard Susskind – I’ve reviewed this book in detail in a previous blog posts. Highly recommended. I can also recommend his many lectures on YouTube.
• Constants of Nature, John Barrow – A discussion of the physics behind the constants of nature. An excellent presentation of modern physics, cosmology and their relationship to mathematics, which includes a chapter on the anthropic principle and a discussion of the multiverse.
• Cosmology: The Science of the Universe, Edward Harrison – My favouritecosmology introduction. The entire book is worth reading, not least the sections on life in the universe and the multiverse.
• At Home in the Universe, John Wheeler – A thoughtful and wonderfully written collection of essays, some of which touch on matters anthropic.

I haven’t read Brian Greene’s book on the multiverse but I’ve read his other books and they’re excellent. Stephen Hawking discusses fine-tuning in A Brief History of Time and the Grand Design. As usual, read anything by Sean Carroll, Frank Wilczek, and Alex Vilenkin.

• The Cosmological Anthropic Principle, Barrow and Tipler – still the standard in the field. Even if you can’t follow the equations in the middle chapters, it’s still worth a read as the discussion is quite clear. Gets a bit speculative in the final chapters, but its fairly obvious where to apply your grain of salt.
• Universe or Multiverse (Edited by Bernard Carr) – the new standard. A great collection of papers by most of the experts in the field. Special mention goes to the papers by Weinberg, Wilczek, Aguirre, and Hogan.

## Scientific Review Articles

The field of fine-tuning grew out of the so-called “Large numbers hypothesis” of Paul Dirac, which is owes a lot to Weyl and is further discussed by Eddington, Gamow and others. These discussions evolve into fine-tuning when Dicke explains them using the anthropic principle. Dicke’s method is examined and expanded in these classic papers of the field:

A number of papers, while not discussing fine-tuning, are very relevant as they discuss how the macroscopic universe depends on the values of fundamental constants. Here are a few good examples.

Here are a few good review papers, arranged in order of increasing technical level.

## Technical scientific articles

Here are some of the papers that have performed detailed calculations of specific fine-tuning cases, in chronological order.

Particle Physics Parameters

Cosmology Parameters

## Philosophical articles and books

• Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology, Ellis (2006). An excellent review of some of the philosophical issues raised by modern cosmology, including fine-tuning. See also “Philosophy of Cosmology” by Chris Smeenk.
• Universes, John Leslie – A tremendously clear exposition of what conclusions we can and should draw from fine tuning. Leslie loves a good analogy, and his choice of illustration is almost always excellent. Another must read.

Part of the reason why the fine-tuning of the universe for life is of such interest to philosophers is that it is often used as a premise in an argument for the existence of God.  A lot of the literature on the fine-tuning argument, pro and con, misses the mark by a large margin, in my opinion. Here are three of the best expositions of this argument.

Unsurprisingly, such claims have not gone unchallenged. Here are some of the best responses.

• Does the Universe Need God?, Sean Carroll (2012) – A good, if brief, response to the arguments above. I recently presented fine-tuning with Carroll in the audience and he gave some good comments. I wouldn’t mind seeing him give an extended response.
• See also the books by Leonard Susskind and Alex Vilenkin (and, though I haven’t read them, Brian Greene and Stephen Hawking) for a defence of the multiverse as the correct explanation for fine-tuning.
• Probabilities and the Fine‐Tuning Argument: a Sceptical View, McGrew, McGrew and Vestrup – A critique of the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God based on skepticism as to the applicability of probabilities to hypothetical universes. At least two of the authors are theists. See also this paper by Bradley Monton (though I don’t think that the “old evidence” problem exists for Bayesian theories of probability.)

# A Secular Case for Intentional Creation

By Clay Farris Naff | November 18, 2011 |  21

Scientific American Blog

“Does aught befall you? It is good. It is part of the destiny of the Universe ordained for you from the beginning.”

– Marcus Aurelius, Stoic Philosopher and Emperor of Rome, in Meditations, circa 170 CE

“’He said that, did he? … Well, you can tell him from me, he’s an ass!”

– Bertie Wooster, fictional P.G. Wodehouse character, in The Mating Season, 1949

People have been arguing about the fundamental nature of existence since, well, since people existed. Having lost exclusive claim to tools, culture, and self, one of the few remaining distinctions of our species is that we can argue about the fundamental nature of existence.

There are, however, two sets of people who want to shut the argument down. One is the drearily familiar set of religious fundamentalists. The other is the shiny new set of atheists who claim that science demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that our existence is accidental, purposeless, and doomed. My intent is to show that both are wrong.

I do not mean to imply a false equivalence here. Concerning the fundamentalist position, my work is done. Claims of a six-day Creation, a 6,000-year-old Earth, a global flood, and so forth have been demolished by science. It has not only amassed evidence against particular claims but has discovered laws of nature that exclude whole classes of claims. To the extent we can be certain about anything, we can rest assured that all supernatural claims are false.

The “New Atheist” position, by contrast, demands serious consideration. It has every advantage that science can provide, yet it overreaches for its conclusion. The trouble with the “New Atheist” position, as defined above, is this: it commits the fallacy of the excluded middle. I will explain.

But first, if you’ll pardon a brief diversion, I feel the need to hoist my flag. You may have inferred that I am a liberal religionist, attempting to unite the scientific narrative with some metaphorical interpretation of my creed. That is not so.

I am a secular humanist who is agnostic about many things — string theory, Many Worlds, the Theo-logical chances of a World Series win for the Cubs  – but the existence of a supernatural deity is not among them. What’s more, I am one of the lucky ones: I never struggled to let go of God. My parents put religion behind them before I was born.

I tell you this not to boast but in hopes that you’ll take in my argument through fresh eyes. The science-religion debate has bogged down in trench warfare, and anyone foolhardy enough to leap into the middle risks getting cut down with no questions asked. But here goes. Read more [+]

# Critical avalanches and subsampling in map-based neural networks coupled with noisy synapses

Abstract
No Citing Articles

M. Girardi-Schappo1, O. Kinouchi2,3, and M. H. R. Tragtenberg1,*
1Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 88040-900, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil
2Departamento de Física, FFCLRP, Universidade de São Paulo, 14040-900, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
3Center for Natural and Artificial Information Processing Systems, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Received 23 August 2012; revised 29 May 2013; published 27 August 2013

Many different kinds of noise are experimentally observed in the brain. Among them, we study a model of noisy chemical synapse and obtain critical avalanches for the spatiotemporal activity of the neural network. Neurons and synapses are modeled by dynamical maps. We discuss the relevant neuronal and synaptic properties to achieve the critical state. We verify that networks of functionally excitable neurons with fast synapses present power-law avalanches, due to rebound spiking dynamics. We also discuss the measuring of neuronal avalanches by subsampling our data, shedding light on the experimental search for self-organized criticality in neural networks.

URL:
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevE.88.024701

# Tarefa a fazer: elaborar um crackpot index para conspiracionistas

## The Crackpot Index

#### A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics:

1. A -5 point starting credit.
2. 1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.
3. 2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.
4. 3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.
5. 5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction. Read more [+]

# Estatísticas Musicais para aula de Estatística Aplicada II para Psicologia

12/08/2013 – 03h07

Estudo mostra que maioria das pessoas escuta sempre as mesmas músicas

IARA BIDERMANDE SÃO PAULO

A opção de ouvir toda e qualquer música nova está a um toque na tela. E você vai sempre escolher aquelas mesmas velhas canções.

Quem crava qual será a sua seleção são os autores de um estudo feito na Universidade de Washington sobre o poder da familiaridade na escolha musical.

A pesquisa foi feita com mais de 900 universitários, autodeclarados apreciadores de novos sons. Pelo menos foi isso o que disseram em questionários prévios. Curiosamente, o lado B dos participantes apareceu quando foram confrontados com escolhas reais entre pares de músicas. A maioria optou por aquelas que tinha ouvido mais vezes.

Ouvir sempre a mesma música não é falta de opção ou imaginação. Segundo o coordenador do laboratório de neuromarketing da Fundação Getulio Vargas de São Paulo, Carlos Augustos Costa, é coisa da sua cabeça.

“O cérebro não gosta de nada complicado. Se você ouve um som novo, tem de parar para entender, mas se a música tem padrões familiares, é sopa no mel: você decide imediatamente ouvi-la.”

Familiar é um padrão musical que a pessoa sabe reconhecer ou um estilo associado a memórias positivas.

“A música que você já conhece tem um valor emocional enorme. Cada vez que você a ouve, a associa a uma sensação de prazer e, quanto mais ouve, mais reforça essa associação”, diz a neurocientista e colunista da Folha Suzana Herculano-Houzel.

 Editoria de arte/Folhapress As dez músicas mais lucrativas, nacionais e internacionais

# Mãe

Em homenagem à minha mãe, falecida dia primeiro de agosto passado. Em duas versões, uma para meus amigos religiosos, e outra para meus amigos ateus.  A figura se refere ao conceito de mãe da década de 1960-70, quando eu era criança. Acho que, hoje, eu incorporo para meus filhos algumas perguntas que eram da mãe. Ou não?

# Para Sempre

Por que Deus (o Acaso) permite
que as mães vão-se embora?
Mãe não tem limite,
é tempo sem hora,
luz que não apaga
quando sopra o vento
e chuva desaba,
veludo escondido
água pura, ar puro,
puro pensamento.

Morrer acontece

com o que é breve

e passa sem deixar vestígio.

Mãe, na sua graça, é eternidade.

Por que Deus (o Acaso) se lembra
– mistério profundo –
de tirá-la um dia?
Fosse eu Rei do Mundo,
baixava uma lei:
Mãe não morre nunca,
mãe ficará sempre
junto de seu filho
e ele, velho embora,
será pequenino
feito grão de milho.

# Quien habla solo espera hablar a Dios un día

Via Nestor Caticha:

### Quien habla solo espera hablar a Dios un día

(Sevilla, España, 1875-Collioure, Francia, 1939)

Retrato

Mi infancia son recuerdos de un patio de Sevilla,
y un huerto claro donde madura el limonero;
mi juventud, veinte años en tierras de Castilla;
mi historia, algunos casos de recordar no quiero.

Ni un seductor Mañara, ni un Bradomín he sido
-ya conocéis mi torpe aliño indumentario-,
mas recibí la flecha que me asignó Cupido,
y amé cuanto ellas puedan tener de hospitalario.

Hay en mis venas gotas de sangre jacobina,
pero mi verso brota de manantial sereno;
y más que un hombre al uso que sabe su doctrina
soy, en el buen sentido de la palabra, bueno.

Desdeño las romanzas de los tenores huecos
y el coro de los grillos que cantan a la luna.
A distinguir me paro las voces de los ecos,
y escucho solamente, entre las voces, una.

Converso con el hombre que siempre va conmigo
-quien habla solo espera hablar a Dios un día-
mi soliloquio es plática con este buen amigo
que me enseñó el secreto de la filantropía.

Y al cabo, nada os debo; me debéis cuanto escribo,
a mi trabajo acudo, con mi dinero pago
el traje que me cubre y la mansión que habito,
el pan que me alimenta y el lecho en donde yago.

Y cuando llegue el día del último viaje,
y esté al partir la nave que nunca ha de tornar
me encontraréis a bordo ligero de equipaje,
casi desnudo, como los hijos de la mar.

Mas agora teríamos que burilar o poema a partir desse ponto.  Ou seja, o Google Tradutor apenas sugere mudanças, aplica ruido no poema original. Agora, a partir daqui, teríamos que reelaborar o poema.

Ou seja, será que, se eu parto de um bom poema como condição inicial, eu posso obter um poema ainda melhor?

Imagem

Lembranças de infância, um pátio em Sevilha,
Um pomar claro com um limoeiro a madurar;
Minha juventude, 20 anos na terra de Castilha;
Minha história, casos que já não quero lembrar.

Não sou um Manara, ou um grande sedutor
Estranhas roupas, não sei de onde vieram
Mas do Cupido a assinalada seta do amor,
Eu recebi, e amei, a quantas me acolheram.

O sangue em minhas veias procura certa rima
Mas, em meus versos, a primavera corre serena;
Mais que um homem que sabe sua doutrina,
Sinto, no bom sentido, o amor em quarentena.

Ocos tenores, cantando alto pelas videiras
O coro dos grilos se elevando para a Lua.
Distinguir os ecos das vozes verdadeiras,
Simplesmente ouvir a voz que é a sua.

Eu falo com aquele que sempre está comigo,
Quem fala sozinho quer falar com Deus um dia;
O solilóquio é minha conversação com esse amigo
Ele que me ensinou o segredo da filantropia.

Afinal de contas, nada devo enquanto escrevo,
Vou para meu trabalho e para meu salário,
A casa em que habito, a roupa que manejo,
O pão que me  alimenta, a cama, o armário.

E quando chegar o dia último desta viagem,
A partir o navio do qual é impossível escapar;
Acho que a bordo, com bem pouca bagagem,
Estarei quase nu, como as crianças do mar.

# Finding the Higgs? Good news. Finding its mass? Not so good.

## “Fireballs of doom” from a quantum phase change would wipe out present Universe.

by  – Feb 19 2013, 8:55pm HB

Ohio State’s Christopher Hill joked he was showing scenes of an impending i-Product launch, and it was easy to believe him: young people were setting up mats in a hallway, ready to spend the night to secure a space in line for the big reveal. Except the date was July 3 and the location was CERN—where the discovery of the Higgs boson would be announced the next day.

It’s clear the LHC worked as intended and has definitively identified a Higgs-like particle. Hill put the chance of the ATLAS detector having registered a statistical fluke at less than 10-11, and he noted that wasn’t even considering the data generated by its partner, the CMS detector. But is it really the one-and-only Higgs and, if so, what does that mean? Hill was part of a panel that discussed those questions at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As theorist Joe Lykken of Fermilab pointed out, the answers matter. If current results hold up, they indicate the Universe is currently inhabiting what’s called a false quantum vacuum. If it were ever to reach the real one, its existing structures (including us), would go away in what Lykken called “fireballs of doom.”

We’ll look at the less depressing stuff first, shall we?

## Zeroing in on the Higgs

Thanks to the Standard Model, we were able to make some very specific predictions about the Higgs. These include the frequency with which it will decay via different pathways: two gamma-rays, two Z bosons (which further decay to four muons), etc. We can also predict the frequency of similar looking events that would occur if there were no Higgs. We can then scan each of the decay pathways (called channels), looking for energies where there is an excess of events, or bump. Bumps have shown up in several channels in roughly the same place in both CMS and ATLAS, which is why we know there’s a new particle.

But we still don’t know precisely what particle it is. The Standard Model Higgs should have a couple of properties: it should be scalar and should have a spin of zero. According to Hill, the new particle is almost certainly scalar; he showed a graph where the alternative, pseudoscalar, was nearly ruled out. Right now, spin is less clearly defined. It’s likely to be zero, but we haven’t yet ruled out a spin of two. So far, so Higgs-like.

The Higgs is the particle form of a quantum field that pervades our Universe (it’s a single quantum of the field), providing other particles with mass. In order to do that, its interactions with other particles vary—particles are heavier if they have stronger interactions with the Higgs. So, teams at CERN are sifting through the LHC data, checking for the strengths of these interactions. So far, with a few exceptions, the new particle is acting like the Higgs, although the error bars on these measurements are rather large.

As we said above, the Higgs is detected in a number of channels and each of them produces an independent estimate of its mass (along with an estimated error). As of the data Hill showed, not all of these estimates had converged on the same value, although they were all consistent within the given errors. These can also be combined mathematically for a single estimate, with each of the two detectors producing a value. So far, these overall estimates are quite close: CMS has the particle at 125.8GeV, Atlas at 125.2GeV. Again, the error bars on these values overlap.

## Oops, there goes the Universe

That specific mass may seem fairly trivial—if it were 130GeV, would you care? Lykken made the argument you probably should. But he took some time to build to that.

Lykken pointed out, as the measurements mentioned above get more precise, we may find the Higgs isn’t decaying at precisely the rates we expect it to. This may be because we have some details of the Standard Model wrong. Or, it could be a sign the Higgs is also decaying into some particles we don’t know about—particles that are dark matter candidates would be a prime choice. The behavior of the Higgs might also provide some indication of why there’s such a large excess of matter in the Universe.

But much of Lykken’s talk focused on the mass. As we mentioned above, the Higgs field pervades the entire Universe; the vacuum of space is filled with it. And, with a value for the Higgs mass, we can start looking into the properties of the Higgs filed and thus the vacuum itself. “When we do this calculation,” Lykken said, “we get a nasty surprise.”

It turns out we’re not living in a stable vacuum. Eventually, the Universe will reach a point where the contents of the vacuum are the lowest energy possible, which means it will reach the most stable state possible. The mass of the Higgs tells us we’re not there yet, but are stuck in a metastable state at a somewhat higher energy. That means the Universe will be looking for an excuse to undergo a phase transition and enter the lower state.

What would that transition look like? In Lykken’s words, again, “fireballs of doom will form spontaneously and destroy the Universe.” Since the change would alter the very fabric of the Universe, anything embedded in that fabric—galaxies, planets, us—would be trashed during the transition. When an audience member asked “Are the fireballs of doom like ice-9?” Lykken replied, “They’re even worse than that.”

Lykken offered a couple of reasons for hope. He noted the outcome of these calculations is extremely sensitive to the values involved. Simply shifting the top quark’s mass by two percent to a value that’s still within the error bars of most measurements, would make for a far more stable Universe.

And then there’s supersymmetry. The news for supersymmetry out of the LHC has generally been negative, as various models with low-mass particles have been ruled out by the existing data (we’ll have more on that shortly). But supersymmetry actually predicts five Higgs particles. (Lykken noted this by showing a slide with five different photos of Higgs taken at various points in his career, in which he was “differing in mass and other properties, as happens to all of us.”) So, when the LHC starts up at higher energies in a couple of years, we’ll actually be looking for additional, heavier versions of the Higgs.

If those are found, then the destruction of our Universe would be permanently put on hold. “If you don’t like that fate of the Universe,” Lykken said, “root for supersymmetry”

# Nerds e esportes: uma pesquisa estatística

#### 10) Quanto maior o QI, menos a pessoa gosta de futebol (ver os nerds). Logo, o futebol emburrece, e deveria ser substituído pelo xadrez como esporte nacional.

UPDATE: Para quem não entendeu, o texto é uma paródia…

## International Journal of Astrobiology

### Arwen Nicholsona1c1 and Duncan Forgana1

a1 Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, UK

Abstract

Interstellar probes can carry out slingshot manoeuvres around the stars they visit, gaining a boost in velocity by extracting energy from the star’s motion around the Galactic Centre. These manoeuvres carry little to no extra energy cost, and in previous work it has been shown that a single Voyager-like probe exploring the Galaxy does so 100 times faster when carrying out these slingshots than when navigating purely by powered flight (Forgan et al.2012). We expand on these results by repeating the experiment with self-replicating probes. The probes explore a box of stars representative of the local Solar neighbourhood, to investigate how self-replication affects exploration timescales when compared with a single non-replicating probe. We explore three different scenarios of probe behaviour: (i) standard powered flight to the nearest unvisited star (no slingshot techniques used), (ii) flight to the nearest unvisited star using slingshot techniques and (iii) flight to the next unvisited star that will give the maximum velocity boost under a slingshot trajectory. In all three scenarios, we find that as expected, using self-replicating probes greatly reduces the exploration time, by up to three orders of magnitude for scenarios (i) and (iii) and two orders of magnitude for (ii). The second case (i.e. nearest-star slingshots) remains the most time effective way to explore a population of stars. As the decision-making algorithms for the fleet are simple, unanticipated ‘race conditions’ among probes are set up, causing the exploration time of the final stars to become much longer than necessary. From the scaling of the probes’ performance with star number, we conclude that a fleet of self-replicating probes can indeed explore the Galaxy in a sufficiently short time to warrant the existence of the Fermi Paradox.

(Received April 02 2013)  (Accepted May 24 2013)

# Como ser criativo na ciência?

DE SÃO PAULO

A neurocientista Suzana Herculano-Houzel, 40, dedicou-se nos últimos anos a entender como o cérebro humano se tornou o que é. Seu trabalho a levou a ser a primeira brasileira convidada a falar no TED Global, famoso evento anual de conferências de curta duração que reúne convidados de várias áreas do conhecimento.

Herculano apresentará em sua fala de 15 minutos, nesta quarta, os resultados de suas pesquisas sobre como o cérebro humano chegou ao número incrivelmente alto de 86 bilhões de neurônios: o consumo de alimentos cozidos. “Entre os primatas, temos o maior cérebro sem sermos os maiores. Grandes primatas, com a sua dieta de comida crua, não possuem energia suficiente para sustentar um corpo enorme e um cérebro grande.”

Na entrevista, concedida por telefone, a professora do Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas da UFRJ (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) dispara críticas à cultura brasileira de pesquisa científica, “que não incentiva a originalidade e a diversidade de pensamento”, à pós graduação nacional, “muito fraca”, e ao programa de bolsas Ciência Sem Fronteiras, “do jeito que está, parece demagogia” e defende a profissionalização da carreira de cientista.

 Luciana Whitaker/Folhapress A neurocientista Suzana Herculano-Houzel, que irá falar no TED Global, em seu laboratório na UFRJ

# Brasileiros = japoneses?

Foto: Meu filho Raphael Osame Kinouchi, loirinho descendente de japoneses…

Estava lendo os comentários internacionais de uma TED Talk quando me deparei com isso:

Nick Bikkal. Engraçado que tudo o que está assinalado em vermelho me parece extremamente familiar…

Eu sou um estrangeiro vivendo há 20 anos no Japão. Tenho 2 crianças no sistema escolar. No jardim de infância eu estava muito bem impressionado com os professores daqui. Eles passavam horas preparando as aulas do dia seguinte. Os professores realmente se importavam com seus alunos. Mais tarde, eu me tornei um pouco menos impressionado. Minha filha foi um dos poucos estudantes que ajudaram a obter que uma professora fosse expulsa porque ela mandava mensagens de texto enquanto dava aulas.

Crianças nessa idade começam a ir para os Juku, cursinhos. Eles são BIG BUSINESS aqui. Suspiro! Nos níveis HS JHS as crianças continuam indo aos  Jukus, para que possam passar por um teste para que eles possam entrar em uma escola melhor na próxima nível

O objetivo é chegar a uma das universidades renomadas. O objetivo das universidades é produzir um servidor público ou um empregado de uma empresa de nome como a Sony ou Panasonic, etc. Lá você acaba trabalhando muitas horas extras … nem sempre pagas.

O sistema é muito politizado. Não há moral, educação espiritual. (O “Senso comum”  japonês é algo que deve ser entendido aqui). Japoneses, como as pessoas têm visto especialmente nos esportes internacionais são muito nacionalistas. Eles não se preocupam tanto com os eventos. O que é importante é que se uma equipe representa seu país, eles devem ganhar. Suspiro.