Big in Japan: Japan fights global warming with shorter baseball games

by Matthew Firestone on

Today is April 22, which means that if you have any sort of eco-conscious, you have already picked up on the Earth Day theme here at Gadling.

Truth be told, Japan isn’t always the first country that comes to mind when you think of the modern conservation movement. Sadly, the Japanese have something of a reputation for environmental insensitivity, particularly when it comes to their increasing whaling efforts despite mainstream international protest.

However, you don’t need to spend much time in Japan to realize that the people here are in fact becoming more and more eco-sensitive. Since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the country has taken an admirable self-assessment of its role in the global warming crisis.

In fact, Japan has since launched one of the world’s most extensive recycling programs, mandated a decreased dependence on air-conditioning during the hot and sticky summer months, and branded the word ‘eco’ as something trendy and fashionable.

So, in honor of this year’s Earth Day celebration, Big in Japan is happy to bring you the latest environmentally friendly news from the Land of the Rising Sun, namely that Japan has started shortening its baseball games in an effort to fight global warming.

How cool is that?

Although few Americans are aware of the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), it has produced a number of major Major League Baseball (MLB) players including Hideki Matsui, Ichiro Suzuki and Daisuke Matsuzaka among others. Known as the Puro Yakyū (プロ野球) in Japanese, the NPB has a long history dating back to 1934 when it was originally founded as the Greater Japan Tokyo Baseball Club (大日本東京野球倶楽部, Dai-nippon Tōkyō Yakyū Kurabu).

In an effort to make their baseball games more green, the NPB has implemented a plan to shorten its games, thus reducing carbon dioxide emissions at stadiums (as well as fighting boredom by speeding up the pace!). According to an official task force appointed by the NPB, staging baseball games results in huge amount of discharged carbon dioxide due to the movements of players and spectators, as well as the tremendous amount of energy needed to light up stadiums.

On average, game time will be cut by six percent, or about 12 minutes. Teams will be required to spend no more than two minutes and 15 seconds when they change from fielding to batting, and pitchers will be asked to throw within 15 seconds of receiving the ball from the catcher when no runners are on base.

This proposal to cut playing time was set in accordance with Japan’s pledge to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by six per cent from 1990 levels. Sadly however, Japan is struggling to meet its obligations under the Kyoto protocol, though there is hope that this will change in the years to come, especially since the Japanese public has taken on a greater interest in fighting global warming.

From all of us here at Gadling, think big this Earth Day, and remember to respect Mother Earth!

** All images were courtesy of the WikiCommons Media Project **


The English breakfast: Good enough to die for?

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Ask English travelers what they miss most about home, and before they mention mom or dad or friends or their bed, they’ll probably say a classic English breakfast. Over at the Times Online, Giles Coren explains how– delicious though it may be– the 3,000 calorie monster breakfast currently offered by one restaurant chain is slowly killing those audacious enough to consume it.

The English breakfast is often seen as England’s national dish, and it’s a major point of pride among most of the English I’ve spoken with. As Coren puts it: “The French have their croissant and coffee, the Greeks their sheep cheese and olives, but our morning plateful is honest and shiny and pink. Just like we are.”

So how do you squeeze 3,000 calories into a breakfast? Easy. Load the plate with meat, eggs, baked beans, bread, and lots of grease. Keep going. No, still not enough. There you go.

From the article: “The current £7.25 “Olympic” breakfast at Little Chef comprises: ‘two rashers of crisp backbacon, British outdoor-reared pork sausage, two griddled eggs, whole-cup mushrooms, crispy sauté potatoes, fresh griddled tomato, Heinz baked beans and toasted or fried extra-thick bloomer bread.'”

So you eat that for breakfast Monday morning and you’re hungry again, when, Thursday night?

Once again, life imitates The Onion.

Ways to live green every day, by Continental

by Iva Skoch on

Paging through the Continental in-flight magazine last night, I stumbled upon a few “green living” tips.

For example, did you know that:

  • If Americans used one less package of non-recycled paper napkins, it would save one million trees?
  • Ninety percent of the energy used by your washing machine goes to hear the water? Using the cold cycle is much better.
  • Producing and disposing of all the junk mail distributed in the US each year releases as much CO2 as 2,8 million cars?

Continental gives the following easy tips to live green every day:

  1. When you are not traveling, get your morning coffee in a reusable cup. Americans throw away about 40 billion disposable coffee cups each year
  2. Unplug all chargers (cell phone, iPod, etc) when they are not charging their intended device. This reduces carbon emissions by about 100 pounds per year, per charger.
  3. Speed up your shower. Spending just two minutes less in the shower each day could prevent about 400 pounds of CO2 (in the form of energy used to heat and treat the water) from entering the atmosphere each year.
  4. Cut your air travel by half. Just kidding. These are, after all, tips from Continental Airlines.

E.T. Skype home

by Catherine Bodry on

It’s just gotten easier and cheaper to phone home from almost anywhere in the world.

Skype, the internet telephone service that allows users to make phone calls over the internet to other Skype users free of charge, has just announced its new service: unlimited international calls to 34 nations for $9.95 per month. That includes calls made from your computer to land lines and mobile phones. And that’s really cheap.

So if you’re taking a round-the-world trip, say, and your grandmother isn’t ready to learn how to use Skype, then you can call her at home from an internet cafe. No more phone cards and learning how to use the various public phone systems that seem to change with each country.

It might not be long before even E.T. can really phone home.

Pilots forced to cut corners on safe fuel levels, networks say

by Jeffrey White on

To what extremes will airlines these days go to cut costs? Passengers might be alarmed to find out one of the more worrying answers uncovered in a major NBC and MSNBC.com investigation: Fly their planes knowingly on low fuel levels.

The networks have delved into a Federal Aviation Administration database of non-public safety complaints to unearth a significant amount of safety concerns raised by pilots themselves, who say airlines are forcing them to fly major commercial airlines with too little fuel.

The networks quote internal memos from Continental Airlines that appear to take pilots to task for making “indiscriminate” fuel stops en route to its hub at Newark Liberty International Airport, saying that they cut down on profit sharing and pension funding.

The Transportation Department last week released a report saying flights declaring minimum or emergency fuel levels are increasing for routes into Newark, based on a sample of 20 landings.

The FAA says all flights must have enough fuel to reach their destination plus their farthest alternate airport, and then must carry another 45 minutes’ worth in addition to that, the networks say.

The FAA also gives pilots final say in the amount of fuel they carry on their flights. But the networks’ report says that increasingly, the judgment of pilots is called into question if he/she raises concern about the amount of fuel designated for the flight in the flight plan

Says one captain quoted in the report: “I, as captain, have final authority on what I deem is a minimum safe fuel load for the flight or do I not.”

Read the investigation: It’s thorough and explains the extent of the concerns, and also includes excerpts of pilots’ complaints.

As Gadling’s resident cockpit expert, I’d be keen to read Kent’s take on all this, if not on the thrust of the networks’ investigation than in general on the role pilots have in setting fuel levels for flights and just what it means for a plane to be descending claiming minimum or emergency fuel levels.

As someone who has never been in the cockpit, I’m out of my league in these matters. Is this report something that should concern us?

What strange things have been found on planes?


Click the image to read the bizarre story…