Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: Meat Life
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Today I visited Meiji Jingu to attend one of the stranger rituals I have seen in Japan: the Doll Appreciation Ceremony (oningyo kanshasai,お人形感謝祭). This ceremony takes place once a year under the sponsorship of the Doll Appreciation Society, and is held to venerate those dolls that are being passed out of use. The information we…
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I have recently been spending a lot of time around (white) foreigners in Japan, much more than usual, and a recent experience with a particular pair of them has helped me to understand a kind of increasing discomfort I have with the way westerners interact and the way they perceive Asia. I guess being largely…
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A little-remarked upon aspect of this most recent Australian federal election has been the performance of the Greens. It’s not surprising that the media don’t report on the Greens’ results, since they hate the Greens and they can’t take them seriously as a party, but it is a little disappointing that they haven’t commented on…
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It’s been a long time since Australia had a double-dissolution election, but I have a suspicion we will get this singular pleasure soon, and that it will be fought out between the major parties as a referendum on climate change. I refuse to elevate my suspicion to the level of a prediction, but I’m going…
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We have an election on in Australia, the cradle of democracy, and as always in federal elections an enormous number of fringe political parties have crawled out from under their rocks. We have the Rotating Leadership Party, which is running on a platform of giving every person in Australia the chance to be prime minister…
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Recently I again visited Minamisoma on business, and while I was there I was taken to visit another area damaged by the tsunami. Last time I visited an area near the inner exclusion zone around the nuclear power plant, where I saw how nature is reclaiming the tsunami-ravaged coastline. This time I visited a different…
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A few weeks ago Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was replaced in a leadership challenge by her arch nemesis, Kevin Rudd. She had previously overthrown him in 2010. Gillard and Rudd are leaders of Australia’s “left wing” party, the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and since her replacement there has been a bit of…
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Introduction Every year the Arctic Research Consortium of the US runs a competition to predict the mean arctic sea ice extent in September, and this year I have decided to enter. I have been an avid reader of Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice Blog for the last year, and they host predictions there too. The general…
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Recently I visited some collaborators in Minamisoma, Fukushima, and after our work was done they took me to the exclusion zone around the nuclear plant. We didn’t enter the innermost zone, but traveled right up to edge of it. Similar to Chernobyl, the area is slowly being reclaimed by the wilds, and its level of…
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A recent statement from a spokesperson for House Lannister: House Lannister has heard of the recent events at The Twins, and are shocked by the brutality rumoured to have occurred there. Suggestions that the Lannister family had any connection with these horrendous events are a slander on our good name, and anyone repeating them is…
Compromise and Conceit 