Japan, Twenty Years Later

By: | May 30, 2019
A woman rides a bike past a stone wall, topped by a green hedge, topped by pink azaleas.
Unchanged: The road in front of my old apartment.

Recently I visited Japan for the first time in more than 16 years. I lived in the southwestern city of Kumamoto from 1998 to 2000, and other than a visit in December of 2002, I’d never been back.

So, on April 16, there I was, finally back in Japan, and I was happy. So happy. I loved having the language back in my ear and in my mouth; I loved being in the land of orderly public transportation, kind strangers, green tea, and mossy tree trunks. I loved living there and I loved being back.

People keep asking, though, so here are some of the differences I noticed.

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Outmoded Diseases: Spermatorrhea

By: | May 29, 2019

This post originally ran March 22, 2016. But it deals with a truly timeless topic: male masturbation.

Gents, are you prone to fainting fits and epilepsy? Are you lacking “balmy and vital moisture”? Do you have weakness in the penis? Has your seed spawned sickly babes that either die quickly or always complain?

Then you might be suffering from spermatorrhea (or if you’re British, spermatorrhoea), the excessive involuntary loss of semen.

But losing semen is just the beginning. “In spermatorrhea, the body becomes a sieve, losing vitality from every orifice. Semen leaks away not only in ejaculations and nocturnal emissions but in urination; sweat oozes from every pore, creating the clammy palms of the self-abuser . . . Over and over again, doctors imagined the body as a leaking vessel,” writes Ellen Bayuk Rosenman in Body Doubles: The Spermatorrhea Panic.

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Guest Post: Bright Buggies, Bright Futures

By: | May 28, 2019

In rural central Pennsylvania, in a long narrow valley originally named Kishacoquillas, now nicknamed Big Valley, the Amish buggies are not black and grey but white and yellow. You might think these unusually bright buggies might signal a more laid-back Amish population, but it’s just the opposite: the two sects represented by the two buggy colors – the Nebraska Amish in white and the Byler Amish in yellow – are the oldest and most conservative Amish churches in the country.

In their quest to simplify, the men of the Nebraska Amish wear no suspenders. The Byler Amish sport a single strap over one shoulder. Neither sect uses zippers or buttons or any form of electricity or telephones or propane or indoor plumbing. But both groups accept modern medicine. So enthusiastically, in fact, that last weekend they raised $280,000 in one day by auctioning quilts, crafts and farm equipment to support the Central Pennsylvania Clinic, a new medical clinic opening in Belleville, in the heart of Big Valley.

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The Youth Bulge

By: | May 27, 2019

Being married to an economist means many things. For one, it means losing a lot of arguments. Economists are like the physicists of the social scientists. They insist that, when you boil off everything else, their discipline is the one the perfectly describes how everything works.

It also means that you get to hear a lot about bizarre concepts built out of words that you recognize. This seems to be a feature of all social science. I understand what “systems” are and I know the word “change,” but put them together and they mean something utterly baffling.

Capacity building, transaction costs, simulated warfare, informal institutions, rent-seeking – all of these seem simple enough when you read the words but quickly devolve into nightmarish labyrinthine rabbit holes when you make the mistake of googling them. They should take a cue from physicists and just invent new words.

So, I’ve stopped listening. Or, more accurately, I’ve deciding to take these weird phrases at face value. “Underdevelopment, uh huh, imperfect information, sure, public choice theory, – yeah totally.” I assume the first is about puberty, the second is about stupid people and the third has something to do with choosing a Porta Potty at a concert.

Which is why I snickered when my wife mentioned the importance of the “youth bulge.” Mexico, it seems, is not taking advantage of its youth bulge properly and is losing out on opportunities. The only bulges I remember from my youth were just embarrassing.

But, like all the rabbit hole phrases my wife uses, it’s actually a truly incredible concept and may decide the final size of the world’s population.

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On Competence

By: | May 24, 2019
John Wick, supremely competent at killing people

When a society uses a suite of technologies that a single adult can master in his or her lifetime—building a house from scratch, farming, spinning cotton, making medicines, having babies, hunting, fishing, singing and dancing—then it is possible to attain a high level of competency in nearly every major task an adult may be called upon to do.

In the highly specialized western society in which I live, this is not the case. Most of us are completely inept at most things. I cannot build a house, or farm, or fish very well, or sing or play any instruments or do virtually anything well except write. I needed expert help to have my babies and my one attempt at spinning cotton, in the Peruvian Amazon, brought my audience of skilled indigenous people to tears of helpless laughter. Most of us are in this boat. If we can program software, we can’t make a good omelet. If we can make a good omelet, we can’t repair a lawnmower or pass a history test or do even a cursory tango. Most of us suck at most things.

Despite the toll that division of labor has taken on our individual competence in most realms, our admiration for competence is undiminished. We are impressed with people who can weld or make their own beer or do that thing with a frying pan where you flip everything by tossing it into the air. Our cinematic heroes are usually hyper-competent: James Bond, Sherlock Holmes–even the endearingly sociopathic John Wick, who has efficiently killed more than 300 people in his three films.

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All Hail the Diatom

By: | May 23, 2019

Millions of years ago, there they were. Floating around, taking in the sights as much as a single-celled organism can, turning carbon dioxide into oxygen, supporting the food chain—diatoms did all the things that they still do now. And then, they died.  

When they died, they drifted down to the bottoms of lakes and rivers and the ocean. Their silica-packed cell walls remained and piled up, over time becoming chalky deposits called diatomaceous earth.  

They’re still out there, of course, the diatoms, doing all those helpful things for us. But today it is the shells of their former selves that I praise and thank. Diatomaceous earth has saved my sanity more than once. It is known to fight pests by drying up their exoskeletons. It also can be used to filter important liquids, such as drinking water, wine, and beer. Diatoms were there for the pinworm incident. They were there for the beer that I needed to drink after the pinworm incident. And now, they are here for my strawberries.

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Abstruse Goose: Witch Hunt

By: | May 22, 2019

Our boy, Abstruse Goose, has gone missing again. We sympathize: anyone posting anything on the regular is bound to run dry sooner or later. (The exception of course is the People of LWON.) Anyway, luckily AG has left an archive of cartoons, some of witch turn out to be timely.

https://abstrusegoose.com/597

Conversation: Erik Plays Chess with Squirrels (UPDATED*)

By: | May 21, 2019

One day Erik and I were chatting happily about birds and birdfeeders, all sweet reason and collegiality.  Then he said he’d found a squirrel-proof birdfeeder. And the conversation turned dark. Words were said in haste. We eventually calmed down enough to state our cases in a pleasant, civilized manner.

[NOW WITH UPDATES. See below*]

E: It’s a question of thumbs. I have them and squirrels do not. Thus, I believe that I will prevail over these horrible hairy creatures. I mean, okay, technically squirrels have little thumb-like digits. But they are gross, so they don’t count.  

A:  We completely agree about the nature and character of squirrels.  Where we disagree is over whether thumbs make any difference. Squirrels are smarter than we are.  Can we instantly calculate the distance, velocity, and gravitational drag necessary to leap from one tree to another and nail it every time?  We can not. So when you tell me you have a birdfeeder that squirrels can’t outsmart, I can place no faith in your account.

E: Technically I have three birdfeeders. And a plate of rotten bananas that the internet says attracts waxwings. And while, yes, the local squirrel seems to access them with ease, that’s about to change. We put people on the moon. Not me personally, but my species did. Do you see any acorns buried in the lunar dust? No, you don’t. I’m confident I can beat a squirrel. FYI – there are SO many good videos on YouTube.

A:  Internet videos are not evidence.  I have been collecting evidence for decades.  I hung a birdfeeder on the branch of a full-grown maple, strung a thin wire from a high branch to the feeder, maybe 50,000 feet of wire.  Squirrels went down it headfirst, like up/down was the same as across, made no difference to them, and ate all the birdfeed.

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