History of Japan

Bill Wurtz made a rapid fire, animated, very funny history of Japan. (via Hank Green)

Classics are Fun

A reblog from astinomi's tumblog:

andquitefrankly asked: 13. TRIVIA. GIVE ME ALL THE TRIVIA. please. :)

Ooh! Let’s see, here are some of my favourite bits of classical trivia (I know no other trivia). I should warn you that my idea of amusing trivia is quite… esoteric :’) (A couple of these are a little gruesome)

• Ancient Greek had a pitch accent (i.e. the pitch of the syllable went up or down depending on the accent). This mattered, because once during a performance of a tragedy, an actor got the pitch accent wrong and said ‘weasel’ instead of ‘calm sea’ and we are still laughing about it 2000 years later.
• Once during a battle between Argos and Sparta, the Argive generals told their troops to do whatever the Spartan herald shouted. The Spartan generals figured this out and ordered their troops to attack when the herald shouted ‘have breakfast’
• The tyrant Polycrates of Samos was so lucky in everything that he did that his friend Amasis, king of Egypt, advised him to get rid of the thing he valued the most. This was a golden and emerald ring (?????). Polycrates threw it into the sea. Soon afterwards, it turned up in the belly of a fish that a fisherman had caught and presented to Polycrates. Amasis said, ‘That’s it, you’re too lucky, I’m cutting off our friendship before the gods screw you over.’
• The tyrant Peisistratos of Athens married an aristocratic girl in order to form an alliance with her family, but he thought the family was cursed, so he would only have sex with her ‘not in the customary way’ and I still do not know what this means because my Greek history tutor was the most awkward person ever and would not tell me
• An Ancient Greek word for ‘extravagant dandy’ was ‘someone who is obsessed with fish’
• The Greeks described the sea as ‘wine-dark’
• Socrates didn’t wash 
• Hippocleides doesn’t care
• The great Greek general Pericles was mocked because he allegedly allowed his mistress to boss him around in bed
• It is 100% true that Plato published a serious piece of work criticising Aeschylus for making Achilles top and Patroclus bottom
• This is the what the Greeks came up with to explain intersex people: Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes & Aphrodite, was born a boy but attracted the attentions of a rather obsessive girl who tried to force herself on him. Fortunately for her, they were in a magic spring and she prayed to be joined to him always, so they were joined together in one body that was part male and part female
• In Cyprus, the goddess Aphrodite was represented with both male and female sex organs
• Alexander the Great used to get foreign kings to line up their favourite prostitutes and then he would make a big show of walking along the line and acting disinterested
• Allegedly, Alexander met the cynic philosopher Diogenes and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Diogenes said, ‘Get out of my sunlight.’ Alexander said, ‘If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes,’ and Diogenes replied, ‘If I were not Diogenes, I would also wish to be Diogenes.’
• The Roman playwright Terence, considered by later writers to be the best example of ‘pure literary Latin’, might have been an African immigrant and is widely thought to have been a slave
• Julius Caesar annoyed the populace of Rome because he used to answer his mail during the races
• Cicero was told to change his name because it meant ‘chickpea’ and he responded that he would make it the most glorious name in Rome
• It is 99.9% likely that it is actually the case that Cicero was not let in on the assassination of Caesar because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut
• Caesar once said, ‘I know I am the most hated man in Rome, because Cicero hates me, and God knows Cicero is easy to please’
• Cicero and his brother Quintus seemingly spent an alarming amount of time chasing Cicero’s secretary around, asking for kisses
• The poet Vergil (Vergilius), for sadly modern-esque reasons, was nicknamed ‘Parthenias’ (which renders itself quite nicely as something like ‘Virginia’)
• Augustus nagged all his poet friends to write an epic about him, and when Vergil said he would do it, Propertius published a poem saying ‘THANK THE GODS: someone else is doing it - and it’s pretty good btw you should read it when it comes out’
• The poet Ovid was exiled for a ‘poem and a mistake’ and we STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS
• The emperor Augustus was teetotal and lame in one leg
• As part of his propaganda against Augustus, Mark Antony claimed that Augustus singed off his leg hair
• Augustus responded that Mark Antony was a drunken hooligan. Antony wrote a pamphlet defending himself, entitled ‘On the subject of my drunkenness’. To me this is one of the greatest losses of antiquity
• The emperor Tiberius was obsessed with pears and cucumbers
• The emperor Claudius allegedly ordered for his third wife to be executed, then got so drunk that he had to ask why she was not at dinner
• Claudius had a son who died when he threw a pear core in the air, tried to catch it in his mouth and choked
• Augustus complained that Tiberius used words in their strict etymological sense (or used literal equivalents of phrases that were used in a non-etymological sense), and the emperor Hadrian, when reading about this, commented, ‘It sounds like Augustus was not very well educated if he chose his words according to their usage and not their etymology.’
• The emperor Galba is the only Roman male who is explicitly said to have had a sexual preference for adult males (i.e. of his own age) and not boys
• Hadrian and his wife went travelling with Hadrian’s lover Antinous and an aristocratic woman named Julia Balbilla. At a tourist site in Egypt, Julia Balbilla carved a poem in the style of Sappho on a famous statue. One of my history professors said that this suggests Hadrian’s wife was a lesbian and they covered for each other
• The historian Tacitus was a keen hunter. His friend Pliny went hunting one day and sent him a letter, ‘You won’t believe it, Tacitus, I went hunting, and I enjoyed it! I took all my books and I sat in the shade by the nets and it was so peaceful, I got so much done. You should try it!’

Links for Later 3-14-15

1. Michael Lewis follows up on Flash Boys. Charles Schwab's sales of its customers' transactions and transaction data to third parties (HFT traders and others) comes up both in the article and the book.
2. Adam Nash of Wealthfront also has a bone to pick with Charles Schwab, citing hidden revenues in Schwab's investment strategy and sweep accounts.
3. Saras Sarasvathy's theory of effectual entrepreneurship gets some thumbs up.
4. Marina Warner's description of the many ways that higher ed is broken (in the UK especially, but a lot of this applies in the US as well).

73 Questions with Daniel Radcliffe

Q. What's the most American phrase? A. A whole 'nother.

Emo Philips on Religion

I've been talking a lot about heresy lately, and repeated this joke without remembering where it came from. Turns out, it was Emo Philips all along.

Nimoy vs Quinto

An Audi commercial featuring smack talking, Spock playing, car driving actors.

Karl Pilkington Meets Michael Palin

Daniel Radcliffe's Guide to Being Daniel Radcliffe

(via Bookshelves of Doom)

I'm not a scientist, man. I don't know whether the Earth is a sphere revolving around the Sun, or if the world is flat, and the Sun is just some guy in a glowing chariot flying overhead. All I know is that one of his horses pooped on my lawn once, and that I flew from Florida to Iowa in the dead of winter for reasons having nothing to do with the scenery.

A Message from the Rosebud Nursing Home

"If you let the Republican voter suppression steal the election, we're gonna burn this motherf*cker down!"

Joss Whedon Endorses Mitt Romney

for the zombie apocalypse, vote Romney.

Really Big

xkcd: click and drag is a really big comic strip. Go explore it.

Update: And here is a zoomable version of the map, which boingboing puts at 46 feet wide, if printed at 300dpi.

Update 2: 30 Easter eggs in the comic

Research Paper of the Day

Dennis Upper, "The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of Writer's Block."

(via Greg Mankiw)

Links for Later 9-1-12

1. Update on the body cooling glove which improves athletic recovery vastly.
2. A short macroeconomic review.
3. Review of David Nutt's Drugs: Without the Hot Air
4. Jon Stewart on Clint Eastwood's RNC chair speech
5. Rachel Maddow on same
6. Flynn's IQ
7. Yoga can't be copyrighted
8. The Music Bed: Royalty free music resource
9. Richard Kadrey's The Devil Said Bang preview
10. The World's Smallest Palladian Villa

Links for Later 8-15-12

1. Bruce Bartlett understands the Keynesian position: the correct medicine (stimulus) was delivered at half the proper dose.
2. Paul Ryan is your annoying libertarian ex-boyfriend
3. Barack Obama is a wizard
4. Hungarian antisemitic rightwinger is actually Jewish
5. Charlie Stross imagines future blackmail
6. PSY dances Gangnam Style
7. Joss Whedon is threatened by Mike Birbiglia. Who wouldn't be?
8. Gore Vidal remembered
9. Krugman: Ryan pick is about flattering our dumb media
10. Jesse Jackson Jr. diagnosed with Bipolar II

Mitch Was a Writer

Mitch Hedberg's advice for comedians: "Remember to write down any thoughts you have that are funny." (via Devour)

Links for Later 6-11-12

1. First objects in the universe spotted, not identified
2. Prometheus from an archeological perspective (funny)
3. Advice for foreign tourists in America (be on time, tip 20%, use utensils sometimes but not always)
4. The final final
5. Laura Jane Grace rocking harder than ever
6. Courage: LGBT Pride events in Iran
7. Peter Thiel's startup class: startup founders are extreme people (the U-shaped distribution)
8. Bowe Bergdahl is still a POW
9. Busted via Twitter
10. Heinz Kohut's final days
11. Death among the Buddhist yogis
12. Death among the snake-handling Christians
13. More snake-handlers
14. Military-grade face transplants
15. There is no best place to advertise; try things and track results

Joss Whedon, Bathroom Coach

Almost Picking Up Chicks

Watch carefully for pointers.

Links for Later 3-22-12

1. Critique of Jonah Lehrer's Imagine
2. "The White Savior Industrial Complex"
3. Monks' marginalia
4. The Supreme Court upholds the laws of nature
5. Dan Savage responds to Rick Santorum "praying for him"
6. Just look at these pop art monstrosities
7. Top 10 lessons of the Iraq War (#1: We lost.)
8. Kony 2012 director diagnosed with "reactive psychosis", colloquially known as flipping out under stress
9. You'll get my Facebook password when you take it from my cold, dead hands
10. Mass Effect's deeply unsatisfying ending to be retconned
11. Stupid debate about reviving the draft
12. Mitt Romney's litigious, anti-gay, billionaire backer
13. Mark Leyner returns!
14. Dangerous Minds threw a heck of a party the other night
15. No, he's not really flying by flapping his arms
16. Giant polaroids of light from a giant prism
17. How Obama tried and failed to sell out the liberals last year
18. Kevin Smith's done making films, y'all
19. Ben McKenzie on Southland
20. "Questions No One Knows the Answers To"
21. China Mieville on monsters