a history of me

While most international events are ignored by our media (unless they involve the U.S. in some tangential way), you may have heard by now about the unfortunate train accident in Amagasaki, Japan. At least 91 people are dead and hundreds were injured when a crowded train derailed and hit a nearby building, the worst accident of its kind in forty years. I was reading this new article in the NY Times that offers a kind of update/opinion concerning the crash. It suggests that the operator of the train (a young man with less than a year on the job) was probably speeding to make up for lost time.

What bugs me about this article is that it simultaneously "gushing" over the efficiency of Japanese trains and condemning them for being too anal to accept a delay of two or three minutes. Sure, the article quotes some opinions (the journalist isn't just pulling this idea out of his ass) but offers no counterpoint at all. The trains are always on time, it seems, so this poor sap tried too hard to maintain that ideal and people died as a result.

I'm not buying it. My Japanese teacher brought up this story in class yesterday and mentioned a theory I hadn't heard before, presumably because no Western journalist has advanced it yet. She said that the young train operator had a "computer brain," meaning he may have been spending too much time on his computer and consequently began to disassociate himself from reality. Sounds a little strange, yes, but I'd rather have discussion than a hasty conclusion.