Elizabethan London's moral panic over the introduction of the rapier.
The incarceration rate of black men in the US has plummeted, from 3.3% to 1.6%. The rate is stubbornly high for older men because of long sentences handed out during the great crime wave, but for 18-19 year olds incarceration has fallen by 90%.
Forbidden Places explores Ilbarritz Castle.
Why do conifers dominate northern forests? (9-minute video)
Was H.P. Lovecraft a philospher? A lot of people have thought so, mainly the ones attracted to sentences like "We are meaningless atoms adrift in the void." Seems to me that his "cosmic indifferentism" would have been old hat to ancient Epicureans and Cynics. Here's a question I find more interesting: was there a connection between his deep pessimism and his racism? Since he thought civilization was besieged by malign forces, did he project that fear onto imagined enemies near at hand?
The three biggest plagues of ancient Rome (under Antoninus, Cyprian, and Justinian) coincided with cool, dry periods.
The atmospheric glow known as STEVE continues to defy explanation.
Classical Mounments does the Temple of Zeus Hypsistos, at Thelsea (Al-Dumayr, Syria).
History and biology of Saffron; the first mention of the plant seems to be in the legendary biography of Sargon of Akkad, which says he was born in the City of Saffron. The first depiction in visual art is a Minoan fresco that shows blue monkeys picking Saffron.
New York City Easter Parade 2024 (NY Times, The Guardian, Daily News). It's great that we have these over-the-top events.
Worried about China, the Australian navy plans to double the size of its surface fleet and acquire eight nuclear-powered submarines. (18-minute video, short article) There is a major naval arms race under way in Asia, costing hundreds of billions.
Speaking of which, a while back the Japanese government announced that they were placing missile batteries in the southern Ryuku Islands (which are close to Taiwan) for use in a possible war with China. Locals complained that this placed them at risk. So now the government has announced that they are building strong bomb shelters on all the islands with missile batteries to protect the inhabitants.
In Turkey, the relationship between a poor fisherman and a stork has inspired a media frenzy. (NY Times, wikipedia, Daily Sabah)
Spitalfields Life walks the Black Path in east London.
The Japanese government expands their program for foreign "guest workers," hoping the scheme will eventually bring in 820,000 people.
Really reaching on this one: "South Korea is launching a high-speed train service that will reduce the travel time between central Seoul and its outskirts, a project officials hope will encourage more youth to consider homes outside the city and start having babies."
And in Italy, the provience of Alto Adige – the Apline area that was part of Austria until WW I – has what may be the most generous child subsidies in the world. But despite this very optimistic NY Times story (parroted at the Deseret News), total fertility is still only 1.7 per woman. That's higher than the 1.27 rate of Italy as a whole, but still well below replacement. Might be worth mentioning that Italy's Catholic, "pro-family" Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, has one child and has never been married.
New result in mathematically physics: not only is the perturbation caused by a butterfly flapping its wings powerful enough to influence large-scale weather patterns, but a new paper argues that the random vibrations of a single molecule are sufficient to unbalance a regional weather system. (6-minute video)
NFTs have made a comeback; as I suspected, they have become a way for museums and other patrons to support artists working in fields other than painting and sculpture, especially digital art.
San Francisco responds to its ongoing housing crisis by enacting further limits on housing construction. The pro-housing mayor tried to veto but was overridden.
Scanning their new 3-D map of the cosmos, some astrophysicists think they see "dark energy" evolving over time.
Senegal managed to stage what looks like a free and fair presidential election.
1 comment:
Really reaching on this one: "South Korea is launching a high-speed train service that will reduce the travel time between central Seoul and its outskirts, a project officials hope will encourage more youth to consider homes outside the city and start having babies."
This feels a lot like the American "access to healthcare" kerfuffle, where people in charge don't seem to understand that "access" to healthcare doesn't mean anything if a person can't afford it.
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