"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
by liberal japonicus One thing that the Japanese are exceedingly good at is appropriating things from other cultures and making them their own. Latest acquisition? Halloween! Those pictures are not the best, this page has better photos, though it is for a party, so you may think that this is more staged than real, so … Read more
guest post by wj Note: this is not to say that they cannot win a tactical victory, and take over the Senate next week. Apparently they are odds on favorites to do just that. But let’s look at the possible outcomes of next week’s election: 1)Democrats somehow hold on to their majority, however tenuously. 2)The … Read more
by Ugh This week in celebration worthy surveillance and other intelligence agency and related revelations: Nazis! And not the Illinois kind: "In all, historians told the New York Times, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and Allen Dulles’s CIA hired at least 1,000 Nazis — if not more." Good times! Also, too, this side note from the article, "Along … Read more
by beth, a reader of ObWi who asked to post this
Not only was Arthur C. Clarke a superb science-fiction author, he was also a highly respected public intellectual who contributed greatly to the conceptual development of much of the technology that we’ve come to rely upon in our daily lives.
by liberal japonicus
A very short post about Gough Whitlam, who recently passed away.
Whitlam was a major figure in the 1975 Australian Constitutional Crisis and googling now shows the site http://whitlamdismissal.com/, with the source documents.
by Doctor Science I made my post about subtractive masculinity because I was thinking about fan and gamer culture — and lo and behold, almost as soon as I posted “Gamergate” (which has been boiling along for months) leveled up to get covered by the mainstream press. To cut a very long story extremely short, … Read more
by liberal japonicus Regulars probably know that I am all about the old sh*t. So here are a list of links to some things that have made my heart go pitter-pat. This looks like a great book. I much earlier read Celtic Empire, whose title was ironic, because everyone knew the Celts didn’t have an … Read more
by Doctor Science I’ve mentioned my theory of subtractive masculinity from time to time, but I want to put it down coherently in one place. “Subtractive masculinity” means that out of the universe of possible human actions or qualities, the only ones that a boy can rely on to signal his masculine status are ones … Read more
by regular commenter wj A recent blog post at the Economist looks at a comparison of the financial impact of obesity. And compares it to the impact of a college education. (The Swedish study that they look at finds them to be of the same magnitude. (And even being just overweight apparently has negatives, just … Read more
by Ugh I posted this on TiO almost three years ago but thought I'd bring it up here because of ESPN's 30 for 30 film on a point shaving scandal in college basketball from the late 1970s (and involving Henry Hill of Goodfellas fame no less). So I thought I'd again ask: why is point … Read more
by Doctor Science
I haven’t posted in a while because it’s harvest season for my vegetable loves. Today was Green Bean Day:
The “family share” at our CSA was 4 quarts of PYO beans, which translates to “as many as you can stand to pick”. I ended up with about 6 pounds’ worth, which I was able to pick in about 20-30 minutes.
When I started picking, I was careful to only pick the best beans, the ones that haven’t matured so much that they’re a little woody. After a bit I said to heck with that, and just — picked.
At home, we sorted them into “perfect” and “mature”, and I prepped only the perfect ones for freezing — they’re in the bags in this picture. The mature ones, the heap on the right, have been blanched for about 3 minutes, but I’m not going to freeze them, we (and the people we split our share with) will just eat them over the next few days.
by liberal japonicus My reaction to this Guardian piece entitled “US supreme court decision paves way for sweeping expansion of gay rights” is to wonder if this is one of those Brit usages. Damn Brits, screwing up the language. My next reaction is half between laughing like Nelson on the Simpsons and muttering ‘chickenh**t’ under … Read more
by liberal japonicus
We’ve gotten a few emails that may make their way onto the front page, and this large chart (below the fold) of the history of philosophy is one of them. Avoiding the urge for the obvious (Monty Python citations and puns about Descartes before the horse), I turn this over to y’all