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I’ll be in San Francisco this coming friday through the following thursday.  Such auspicious timing.  Meeting for a business deal, my ten year high school reunion, and two great friends are flying in as well.

Now I just have to think of something quintessentially Japanese to take to SF, and vice versa for the return trip to Japan.  A few ideas come to mind.

From the New York Times:

“For the Food and Drug Administration, if for no one else, aging is not a disease and death is not an end-point. The F.D.A. will approve only drugs that treat diseases in measurable ways” –link

It is 2006 as I write this, and there is a vast consumer desire to live longer.  We already live longer on average than our grandparents by almost twenty years.  I don’t think you will find many people that would happily agree this government position.  Contrarily, we should be actively funding any drug research that appears to promise slowed aging, if only for the callous economic reality that a population that is able to stay young longer could boost productivity.

And then I look at the news and see that democrats have retaken the house and senate, and Wil is pushing for a comment.  I am overjoyed.  This tremendous news signals that there is still a chance that the US might recover from these years of insanity.  There is so much still that needs to change, so much wrong, that it will take decades before the nation is right in its head, if ever.

But it is a great first step in the right direction.  Nancy Pelosi said something wise on 60 minutes recently when asked if she would seek impeachment.  She said that vengeance is pointless.  This election would show that the people are sick of Bush, and afterwards with him a lame duck, we can finally get started fixing what he has done.  Here here.

I woke up this morning to see I had missed a phone call from my boss, so I called him back immediately and he had just wanted to say that even though our game has not been released yet, and was only silently inserted into amazon japan’s catalog monday, it is doing well with presales (#6 in the games category for this week) and is even being mentioned on blogs in other non-Japanese speaking countries. I’m just astounded. Check it out