Opinion

Quakes are inevitable, huge death tolls are not

If a Category 5 typhoon nears, evacuations are possible; there can be time to move to a safe zone before the pyroclastic flow of a volcano sweeps all in its path. But when the earth shakes, it almost never comes with a warning. Even in the most technologically prepared countries, there’s typic...

Opinion

Musk must preserve Twitter’s most vital function

For all the controversy surrounding his purchase of Twitter Inc., Elon Musk has at least one thing right: Twitter really is “like open-sourcing the news.”The world’s richest man has long been an advocate for “citizen journalism,” but since his takeover of the social med...

Opinion

A Japanese philosophy for the quiet-quitting generation

The world of management is abuzz about the idea of “quiet quitting” — the Gen Z, TikTok-boosted term for doing nothing more at work than the job description demands.Of course, there’s nothing new about this phenomenon — if Gen Z knew how to dial a call, they would under...

Opinion

What the world got wrong about Shinzo Abe

Japan’s former leader, Shinzo Abe, was always a polarizing figure. But the fissures that emerged during his return to power in 2012 were largely brushed aside as the world united in grief over his murder.At the time, a Japan specialist at the Obama-era state department said that one would need...

Opinion

There is no ‘back to normal’ after Covid

Japanese virologist Hitoshi Oshitani has an impressive record fighting pandemics. As one of the leading experts advising the government during Covid, he helped formulate a strategy that has kept deaths in the country with the world’s oldest population lower than any other developed nation, wit...