Category: Society and Culture
-
On “Citizenfour”
Last Thursday, I filed my last articles of 2016 for work. Buzzer-beaters, to be sure, but I celebrated all the same by putting on a movie. There was nothing remotely festive on my flash drive, it was a bit too late to dig up alternatives, and the US Congress’ Intelligence Committee had just released its…
Written by
-
Defining Dictatorship
Last Friday, November 18, the family of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos secreted his body into the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes’ Cemetery) for a long-contested burial. The Philippine National Police and the country’s armed forces secured the area, and a chopper from the national air force flew the strongman’s body down from Ilocos to…
Written by
-
What’s the word?
From Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones, which I also mentioned over here and which I’m still reading: “Peoples of color” sounded awkward if translated literally, so I used the standard Chinese term for minorities: shaoshu minzu. Of course, that was just as odd in English: “small-number ethnic groups.” Perhaps somewhere in the world there was a language that handled this issue…
Written by
-
Cross-posted from Tumblr: Unit 731
(In response to this post.) I’ve been interested in Japan’s Unit 731 since it came up in a bioethics class back in college. Recently, I read a journal article on the subject written by Tsuneishi Keiichi, one of Japan’s top biowarfare specialists, and several details stood out. “It is said that Ishii [Lt. Gen. Ishii Shiro, the…
Written by
-
Ancient civilizations and failures of imagination
A couple of months ago, the BBC reported new findings on puquios, which are spiralling holes scattered across Peru’s Nasca region. Through satellite imagery, a team of Italian researchers deduced the purpose of the once-mysterious holes: based on their placement and proximity to settlements, puquios seem to be part of a complex water retrieval and…
Written by