The side-bar of this blog declares that the Stage is a space to discuss “the intersections of governance, ecology, demographics, and culture.” [1] This casts a wide net–at times, too wide of a net. It would be much easier to maintain a blog devoted solely to exploring the ‘dynamics of human civilization,’ chronicling the decline […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit.I have been much busier these last few weeks than expected. I did not have time to compile one of these lists back in February, so a few of these readings were published all the way back in January. TOP BILLING “The Play is the Thing […]
Image Source: “Chinese Smallpox Inoculation” (or. image c. 1911), The Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, History of Vaccines Project (2012). Few diseases have caused as much misery and death as smallpox. Smallpox has a 30% mortality rate in normal conditions, but in populations unexposed to the plague the death toll […]
I have long been fascinated by the “deep culture” differences that distinguish humanity’s numerous ethnic and cultural groups. That peoples from different continents and climes have different rules of etiquette, eat different foods, follow different schedules, and worship different gods is well known. But in many ways these differences barely scratch the surface of humanity’s […]
Social life in 21st century America makes a lot more sense when you think of dating as a split market with separate supply and demand curves. EDIT (18/02/2014): The Austin Institute has also published a neat list of the studies it used to make this video. Many are worth perusing.
The annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala bills itself as the most watched television program on planet Earth. [1] I think this slightly misstates the nature of the program. It may be more accurate to describe the Gala as the most widely tolerated background noise for Mahjong-playing, dumpling eating, and hongbao giving celebrations on planet Earth. […]
Late last year Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology published a study titled “The Immigrant Paradox: Immigrants are Less Antisocial Than Native Born Americans.” Given how closely certain sections of the blogosphere cover all things ethnic I was a tad surprised to find that no one has been talking about this paper and its conclusions. This […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. This is the first “Notes From All Over” I have written this month, so this list is a long one. TOP BILLING When We Lose Antibiotics, Here’s Everything Else We’ll Lose TooMaryn McKenna. Wired. 20 November 2013. If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance […]
Why the West? I do not think there is any other historical controversy that has so enthralled the public intellectuals of our age. The popularity of the question can probably be traced to Western unease with a rising China and the ease with which the issue can be used as proxy war for the much […]
Car bomb in Peshawar. Source: Mohammad Sajjad/Associated Press. 29 September 2013. Last week I penned a two–post series on the purpose of and underlying reasons for the savage terrorist attacks radical Islamic groups have launched across the world. I argued that these attacks were not “senseless” acts of violence, nor merely the results of fanatic […]
