Posts Tagged: Technology

Technology — 4 Comments
19
Mar 07

Visit Japan with Google Earth

The earth as we know it.

Last month I got a new computer, a Windows Vista PC with enough power to run Google Earth! I’ve been playing with Google Maps a lot lately, particularly after I discovered you can manually alter the zoom level to go in further than you thought possible, like this section of Africa in which you can clearly see a man with his camel.

Google Earth is even more fun than playing with the satellite photos on Google Maps.

Google Earth combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips.

Fly to your house. Just type in an address, press Search, and you’ll zoom right in.

Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.

Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings.

Save and share your searches and favorites.

Here are some screenshots I took on my ‘flight’ from space to the Imperial Palace Gardens in Tokyo.

Approaching Japan

Tokyo, one of the world’s most densely populated cities…

Coming down in Tokyo

Zooming in on the Imperial Palace Gardens…

And hovering over the Imperial Palace Gardens

And across to the Mori Building in Roppongi Hills…

A quick trip to the Mori Building in Roppongi Hills.

Google Earth is a great toy. It’s free to download and you’ll find yourself checking out sights you’ve never seen before, from angles rarely seen by anyone. Zooming in on the Mori building as I did above, brings up a plethora of little buttons which show beautiful photographs taken from the skyscraper and surrounding areas. Fly around Mount Fuji, visit the Japanese alps, or go to Okinawa. You’ve got the whole world at your fingertips.

The Google Earth download page lists the requirements your PC or Mac needs to run the program, and I guarantee that if your machine is up to it, you’ll zoom in and out, and glide around the globe so smoothly, you’ll think you are flying.

Japan — 9 Comments
11
Mar 07

The Japanese might live forever!

We all know that the Japanese have one of the longest life expectancies in the world. Peter McGarry suggests that a combination of the right diet and lifestyle is the reason why the Japanese live so long, listing things such as fish, soybeans, wheat and walking as important factors. However, in a country which has one of the highest rates of tobacco consumption, it is still an amazing statistic.

One of my students recently visited an ‘organic food’ restaurant in a bid to stay healthy, and told me how the owner of the establishment tries to prove the need for organic food by analyzing the patrons’ blood!

Drawing bloodApparently the restaurant is affiliated with a health clinic, so within the restaurant you can give a blood sample and study it under a microscope. The problem is that since only qualified doctors and nurses are allowed to draw blood, the staff ask you to draw your own! While my student wasn’t too keen, her friends eagerly took samples with syringes and were able to see the movement of their red and white blood cells.

While this may encourage some people to go back to the restaurant, I find the idea of eating in a place where people take blood rather off-putting. This story did however tie in nicely with the topic of ‘health in the future’ which I’ve been thinking about lately.

I envision that in the next decade, there will be home appliances that can check your health, just as a doctor does, and tell you exactly what you need to eat and in what quantities to get healthy. I’m no expert, but if the doctor can make a report listing your blood pressure, cholesterol level, amount of fibre, and all that other important stuff, why can’t a machine?

Maybe this ‘health appliance’ will print off a shopping list for you, and further into the future, it might even cook dinner for you! If that’s the case, and our bodies have the perfect balance of minerals, vitamins and everything else, would we not live longer? Would aging be delayed by decades? Could we even reverse the affects of aging?

Perhaps that won’t be necessary though as according to another of my students, when his one-and-a-half year old daughter was born, he paid the hospital to store a sample of blood from her mother’s womb. The hospital will keep it frozen for ten years until he has to pay again. The hope is that if his daughter ever becomes seriously ill or loses a limb, DNA from the blood can be used to heal her, including cloning body parts that need replacing!

It’s all a bit freaky really, but as technology develops, perhaps we could all live forever!