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I was pleasantly surprised by the wisdom in the comic strip "Frazz"
http://www.gocomics.com/frazz/2012/12/22
"Why should I have to not have something to want it?"
(Trust me - it's funnier in the strip.)
Holiday swag Friday open thread
by liberal japonicus When I first came to Japan, it was at the end of the bubble in Japan, and they basically brought over a lot of college grads to work as assistants in the school system and paid them very well. I was on the program for 5 years, and so saw 5 years of folks go thru the program....
Oh, and world peace (or at least gun control), and better health for all, starting with my wife and myself, and happy lives for children and grandchildren, and all that stuff. Does that count as swag?
Holiday swag Friday open thread
by liberal japonicus When I first came to Japan, it was at the end of the bubble in Japan, and they basically brought over a lot of college grads to work as assistants in the school system and paid them very well. I was on the program for 5 years, and so saw 5 years of folks go thru the program....
I openly sighed for - and have already received - one of those hanging basket chairs, which currently overlooks our Christmas tree, but will in the spring move outside to overlook our pool. You may never pry me from it.
Holiday swag Friday open thread
by liberal japonicus When I first came to Japan, it was at the end of the bubble in Japan, and they basically brought over a lot of college grads to work as assistants in the school system and paid them very well. I was on the program for 5 years, and so saw 5 years of folks go thru the program....
Cleek: would that be Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl ?
Another neat invention
via liberal japonicus This is, to me, 10 kinds of neat. What do y'all think? If you like it, the website is here
This is not new. William Cameron Forbes, as capitalist as they come, was Governor-General of the Philippines before World War I. In his 1929 book on the Islands, he had this to say:
To some of the employers of labor who complained that the Filipino would not work, it was suggested that they add "unless paid."
Worthy of Their Hire
by Doctor Science Why can't self-proclaimed capitalist, free-market businesspeople recognize the law of supply and demand? In particular, if you can't find appropriately-skilled employees when you offer salary $S, Adam Smith says you should try offering $S+n. If that doesn't work, you offer $S+2n...
It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.
(Leslie Gore)
Agreement on Black Friday? This cannot stand!
by liberal japonicus We found an area of common ground here with the question of Black Friday and obviously, we can't have that. My alternate take on Black Friday is that it is like my students who think they can learn the material covered in a semester (or more!) of English by spending the las...
The ULTIMATE Disaster: Current Federal Income Tax Law!!
Coming soon to a cineplex near you
talking with leo...
by russell Back in February, my wife and I went to NOLA to visit some friends, eat some good food, and listen to music. We stayed with our friend Leo and his family. Leo's not his real name, his real name is not important. We'll just call him Leo. Leo is a former colleague of my wife's. He's...
How about 1000 days - roughly the length of JFK's administration, or Anne Boleyn's reign as Queen of England? ;}
Tactician, Plan Thyself
by Eric Martin Given my oft-stated concern about what a potential post-Qaddafi period will look like (would there be purges/an insurgency, would it require a peacekeeping/nation building mission, overseen by which groups/nations, etc.), these paragraphs from a recent New York Times piece on th...
No one (here) is denying that there was a "brutally oppressive dictatorship" in post-revolutionary Russia. That does not make a dictatorship of the proletariat guided by a vanguard party the same "system of governance" as a hereditary constitutional monarchy backed by the Orthodox Church.
So: fail.
Nor would a single case, even if accepted, prove your (universal) contention that "violent overthrows never lead to a new system of governance." I have given you several other examples of where they did exactly that, and could provide more, if I could be bothered.
So: FAIL
And if you had submitted this kind of grand generalization in any of the university history courses I taught for thirty years on three continents, you would be "Failing" for real.
Tactician, Plan Thyself
by Eric Martin Given my oft-stated concern about what a potential post-Qaddafi period will look like (would there be purges/an insurgency, would it require a peacekeeping/nation building mission, overseen by which groups/nations, etc.), these paragraphs from a recent New York Times piece on th...
Ed Haines, are you seriously trying to teach me history?
Tactician, Plan Thyself
by Eric Martin Given my oft-stated concern about what a potential post-Qaddafi period will look like (would there be purges/an insurgency, would it require a peacekeeping/nation building mission, overseen by which groups/nations, etc.), these paragraphs from a recent New York Times piece on th...
violent overthrows never lead to a new system of governance
Utter nonsense. History is full of violent overthrows that led to monarchies, for example, being replaced by completely different (non-monarchic) systems of government, e.g. the English Revolution of the 17th century and the Russian Revolution of 1917.
If the claim is that subsequent "systems of governance" were essentially the same because they were not democracies, this is still wrong. See, e.g., the Mexican Revolution of 1911ff. or the Indonesian Revolution of 1945ff, both of which ended in constitutional democracies.
Conversely, various democratically elected governments throughout the world have been subject to "violent overthrow" by complete (non-democratic) bastards, e.g., the Spanish Civil War.
In other words, whatever way you slice it, this is arrant nonsense.
A quite separate, much more interesting, but much more frustrating question is "What does it take to sustain fragile democratic institutions in the face of inevitable opposition to them (often from supporters of the Ancien Regime)?" It's not easy, and it's not surprising that upheavals that manage to create temporarily democratic institutions (e.g., the French Revolution) often lapse back into something more authoritarian.
But claiming that all "violent overthrows" are effectively pointless is itself beyond pointless.
Tactician, Plan Thyself
by Eric Martin Given my oft-stated concern about what a potential post-Qaddafi period will look like (would there be purges/an insurgency, would it require a peacekeeping/nation building mission, overseen by which groups/nations, etc.), these paragraphs from a recent New York Times piece on th...
Debate topic:
EITHER "Resolved: that everyone should be required to re-read [annually?] the books that influenced them when they were young."
OR: "Resolved: that everyone should be prohibited from [ever] re-reading the books that influenced them when they were young."
Show your work.
On not reading V.S. Naipaul
by Doctor Science It's not often that I disagree with either hilzoy or Ta-Nehesi Coates, and rarer still for me to disagree with both of them at once, but today I do. The source describes this as "1892 woman writing impressionist painting", but I haven't been able to figure out who it's by. It'...
Turb: Thanks for the clarification.
Google wipes its maps clean of Indian Reservations
by Doctor Science Stephen Bridenstine is a grad student at the University of British Columbia studying the image of Indians (aka Native Americans) in non-Native American culture. He noticed (h/t Sociological Images): Sometime between the first week of February and the last week of May, American I...
Along the same line: who does Turbulence suppose "signed off" on the omission of Sunrise, and the other cities mentioned in that link?
I genuinely don't get it. If they can lose entire cities of (white?) Americans without evil intent, why can't they lose Indian reservations? What's the difference?
Google wipes its maps clean of Indian Reservations
by Doctor Science Stephen Bridenstine is a grad student at the University of British Columbia studying the image of Indians (aka Native Americans) in non-Native American culture. He noticed (h/t Sociological Images): Sometime between the first week of February and the last week of May, American I...
Let me propose an alternative approach to this dilemma. We (the ObWi commentariat) will promise to read something by Naipaul if Hilzoy will promise to return to blogging here.
I for one would take that pledge.
On not reading V.S. Naipaul
by Doctor Science It's not often that I disagree with either hilzoy or Ta-Nehesi Coates, and rarer still for me to disagree with both of them at once, but today I do. The source describes this as "1892 woman writing impressionist painting", but I haven't been able to figure out who it's by. It'...
The more one travels the world, the more the question arises. I spent most of four years in Australia, watching cricket, rugby (both league and union), and Australian Rules football, as well as tennis and track, and clearly some of the best athletes in these sports - in a sports-mad nation - might well have excelled in others, given an early shift in location. I remember hearing that Aussie cricket captain Alan Border - who at one time was among the all-time leaders in test runs scored - was, on a casual part-time basis, the best baseball player in the country. And entire Aussie Rules teams seemed to be made up of potential power forwards.
One never knows, do one?
Your Friday Sports Equipment open thread
by liberal japonicus I started playing table tennis slightly more seriously than usual about 2 years ago. A good friend of mine who did Chinese as an undergrad and played a lot both while living in Guangdong and when he came back, was looking for a partner to take lessons with him and asked me. ...
Ugh: The answer to your question is simple - never.
"Real" is as real does, and the rules of sport (any sport) are constantly changing, in terms of not just how many people are playing, but who is playing (Ruth never faced a black MLB player), what equipment is like, what drugs are legal (prior to the steroid era, many ballplayers were amped on amphetamines, I'm told), how much access to the highest levels of training/coaching matters, etc.
One of my major gripes with all-time records (most hits, runs, victories, etc.) is that in nearly all sports the number of games/matches in a season is longer than it used to be, so contemporary players can run up more of whatever than "greats" of the past. (Look at Jim Brown's NFL records.)
You name any sport, any record, and I'll give you a plausible reason why it, however remarkable, should not be considered any more "real" than the rest. All is flux.
All of which, as you rightly point out, makes sports interesting. But never "real."
Your Friday Sports Equipment open thread
by liberal japonicus I started playing table tennis slightly more seriously than usual about 2 years ago. A good friend of mine who did Chinese as an undergrad and played a lot both while living in Guangdong and when he came back, was looking for a partner to take lessons with him and asked me. ...
Gee, Anarch, it's almost as if you hadn't read the thread to see whether someone else had previously made the same point!
Your Friday Sports Equipment open thread
by liberal japonicus I started playing table tennis slightly more seriously than usual about 2 years ago. A good friend of mine who did Chinese as an undergrad and played a lot both while living in Guangdong and when he came back, was looking for a partner to take lessons with him and asked me. ...
42.
No.
Are We Reaping the Whirlwind?
by Doctor Science It's going to be another very, very bad weather day in the Midwest: From the National Weather Service. Specifically: From Weather.com; more details there. If you are in the zone, please make sure you are never more than 15 minutes from a solid, preferably underground tornado...
WRT the margin of superiority Nicklaus had over all others, there was one substantially greater, if you're willing to accept cricket as a "major professional sport." (And if you're not, look up how many people play it - far more than baseball or US football - and how much the top players get paid. Then repent.)
When Don Bradman retired in 1948, his "test" (= international) batting average was 99.94, and would have been over 100 if he hadn't scored a "duck" (zero) in his very last inning.
The next highest lifetime average then was 60.73 (Sutcliffe), so Bradman was over 65% better than the second best ever.
Over the last 63 years, the second best average, including those whose total number of innings is much lower (30-40, as against the 80+ of Bradman and Sutcliffe), has crept all the way up to 61.53. Bradman is still 62% better than the next best.
Oh, and like Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, and a few others, he lost what should have been his "prime" years to WWII.
Your Friday Sports Equipment open thread
by liberal japonicus I started playing table tennis slightly more seriously than usual about 2 years ago. A good friend of mine who did Chinese as an undergrad and played a lot both while living in Guangdong and when he came back, was looking for a partner to take lessons with him and asked me. ...
OK, but you have to understand the meaning of "root" to Australians.
Are We Reaping the Whirlwind?
by Doctor Science It's going to be another very, very bad weather day in the Midwest: From the National Weather Service. Specifically: From Weather.com; more details there. If you are in the zone, please make sure you are never more than 15 minutes from a solid, preferably underground tornado...
Once again I sit corrected.
Unlike some former Secretaries of State, I am capable of admitting my errors.
Your Friday Firebird open thread
Cause it is Friday here. But not this: But this: The horn soloist at 4:22 is Alan Civil, who played the horn solo on the Beatles 'For no one' and took over Denis Brain's chair in the BBC symphony. Perhaps it is a reflexive grimace at the finale around 6:53, but I'd like to imagine that a...
Gary: Mozilla has Firefox, but no Firebird.
Icons Matter!
Your Friday Firebird open thread
Cause it is Friday here. But not this: But this: The horn soloist at 4:22 is Alan Civil, who played the horn solo on the Beatles 'For no one' and took over Denis Brain's chair in the BBC symphony. Perhaps it is a reflexive grimace at the finale around 6:53, but I'd like to imagine that a...
What Kissinger conveniently forgot to mention was that the bombing of Cambodia was never authorized by the US Congress, which is why it is referred to as the "secret bombing." It was no secret to the Cambodians: they knew they were being bombed, and they knew who was doing it. The secret was hiding this fact from the US Congress, because it was - though IANAL - illegal. In terms of US law, not just the larger geopolitical/humanitarian question of WTF were we doing anyway.
Funny that he didn't mention that.
Your Friday Firebird open thread
Cause it is Friday here. But not this: But this: The horn soloist at 4:22 is Alan Civil, who played the horn solo on the Beatles 'For no one' and took over Denis Brain's chair in the BBC symphony. Perhaps it is a reflexive grimace at the finale around 6:53, but I'd like to imagine that a...
What is the definition of a quarter-tone?
Two oboes playing in unison.
What is the definition of an oboe?
An ill wind that nobody plays good.
Friday evening musical instrument joke thread
I did want to put up an open thread this week and I again thank Doctor Science for putting up one last week. Friend of the kitty, bc queried: How do you make a trombone sound like a french horn? The answer is put your hand in the bell and miss a lot of notes. However to the question How do yo...
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