Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | Gil Asakawa
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Sudoku on the WebOK, I can't stand it anymore. I'm not much of a puzzle person -- crosswords can't catch my attention, and jigsaws don't call out to me. I'm not much of a numbers person either -- hence, I work with words (journalism), not numbers (engineering). So, Sudoku hasn't exactly lit me on fire even though it's apparently the hottest thing in the puzzles and games world. I see Sudoku everywhere, from supermarket magazine racks to fancy bookstores, and electronic games to lots and lots of sites on the Web.

Yellowface afootI know, I know, I'm painting all of the radio industry with an awful broad brush. But let's face it, no one's doing this kind of stuff on TV. A year and a half ago, I wrote my (embarrassingly, most recent) Nikkei View column about Hot 97, a station in NYC, which broadcast a tasteless and racist satire making fun of dead Asians after the tsunami. But similar incidents continue, even up to this month.

I have never flown to Newark yet when there hasn't been a delay. Erin's flight from Denver is now an hour late, and it's past 1 a.m. Newark (EWR) sucks....

Here's one reason I enjoy working in Jersey City's Journal Square: One of the best meals is from the dumpy-looking pizza joint, "Three Guys from Italy," which is run by Latinos. Next door is a burrito joint touting authentic Mexican grub, which is run by... a couple of Chinese women.

Great statement from Scott Brodeur, the nattily dressed Managing Editor for Web Site Development at Advance Intermet, when I asked him how far Grove Street Station is from Journal Square in Jersey City, where our offices are.

I get a lot of inquiries about podcasting because DenverPost.com has had podcasts for a year, from newspapers interested in starting podcasts, consulting companies researching them, and from students working on papers. I recently received a note from a student in England, and I thought I'd post his question and my response:

The current protests throughout the world by Muslims who were offended by caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (the cartoons caused riots in Afghanistan) that originally ran in a Danish newspaper, sparked an interesting discussion among some friends of mine, about the nature of offensive imagery and the role of the media and even of cartoonists. The most inflammatory cartoon was one of Muhammad with a bomb as part of his turban, suggesting that all Muslims are terrorists. Below are edited excerpts from the e-mail discussion.

James Talley, songwriter and real estate agent
The best music – the kind that can stand that clichéd ol’ test of time – has a way of resonating as deeply and fully today as it did back when it was first recorded. That’s what comes to mind when I listen to “Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, but We Sure Got a Lot of Love," the debut album by singer-songwriter James Talley. The album was released way back in 1975, but it sounds as fresh and relevant as it did back then – and as a bonus, it sounds downright hip today, even though it was something of an anomaly back then. Never heard of James Talley? Don’t feel bad, most music fans haven’t.