Tag: culture

Mandatory dating class

South Korean universities have courses that make it mandatory for students to date their classmates. Students have to date each other in 3 randomly assigned pairings. Courses on dating, sex, love and relationships are trying to increase coupling and eventually birth rate. Most young korean woman and men don’t want to have kids. They reason it would be too difficult to balance family with work pressures. They would consider trying to have children “if the economic conditions were right.”

Pagans against Genesis

The final great pagan opponent of Christianity was the emperor-philosopher Julian the Apostate (331-363 CE), so called because of his conversion from Christianity to Neoplatonism. He ruled the Roman Empire for only the final 2 years of his life, and during his short reign he did his utmost to restore and promote pagan Hellenism at the expense of Christianity. His major literary attack on the Church, Against the Galileans, underwent the same fate as the anti-Christian writings of Celsus and Porphyry: we have only fragments quoted by his later opponents (especially, in Julian’s case, the bishop Cyril of Alexandria in his Against Julian). In his polemics, Julian pays attention to the book of Genesis, particularly its early chapters. He admired Judaism because it adhered to its ancestral traditions and he castigated Christianity for its having abandoned these traditions, especially Judaism’s sacrificial worship. His attempt to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem was part of his program to restore ancient religious practices. Yet that did not prevent him from regarding many Old Testament passages as absurd.

Swiss Finishing School

Neri added that one should plan to provide, among other things, 2 “surprise breads” and 600 hors d’œuvres. As for drinks, 30 bottles of champagne should suffice, but, along with some nonalcoholic options, one must also have on hand 4 bottles each of whiskey, gin, and vodka “for the men who don’t like champagne.” Neri then accelerated the slide show, presenting a procession of structurally unsound canapés and encouraging a discussion about whether each appeared too large to be eaten in a single bite, as a canapé should be. Most of the tightly cropped photographs did not include forks or wineglasses, so it required some imagination to assess their scale. Before class let out, Neri invited the students to come to the front of the classroom and practice holding, in 1 hand, a cocktail napkin, an appetizer plate, and a champagne flute. Mila, a 30-year-old who grew up in Guinea-Bissau, bravely volunteered. Neri showed her how to pinch the stem, palm up, between her ring finger and pinkie, slide the plate between her thumb, index finger, and middle finger, and then tuck the napkin under the plate and over her middle finger. All this was to be done with the left hand, leaving the right available for introductions. Mila absorbed the demonstration attentively and glanced up at Neri for a nod of encouragement before attempting the feat on her own. She aced it on the first try. “It looks more complicated than it is”.

The Rock will become President

Robin Sloan has a charming new short story that imagines how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will become President, first by playing the role in an imaginary movie. Along the way, there are some poignant thoughts about the nature of our political imaginations, the role of new media like Instagram in shaping public perception, and the ways leadership can, spell-like, be brought into being. Can you imagine him on the debate stage? The way he’ll look alongside his opponents in the primary? A line of normal, rumpled humans, and then this towering figure. A political revolution: his suit will fit.

teamLab Borderless

When we were in Tokyo earlier this month I went to teamLab’s Borderless interactive exhibition at the Mori Building digital Art Museum in Tokyo. To say we were blown away is almost an understatement. The 10k square meter space has ~12 very large experiential spaces, each of which would have been worth the price of admission. The different spaces combined light, sound, and 3D design to create pocket universes that either stunned people into blissed out silence or made them run around gleefully. I wasn’t expecting it to be as magical as it was.