Japan is, perhaps more than any other country, strange to the west. There are many far off lands and many exotic cultures, but that of the Japanese, even today, stands apart. There are good reasons for this, to be sure. For 250 years Japan chose to isolate herself from the rest of the world. Under
It is early 1862, and Ulysses S Grant has just won two major battles. Fighting tooth and nail in Tennessee as he forced his way south in an effort to splinter the Confederacy and cut off vital supply lines, the victories were the largest the Union had achieved at the time, and earned Grant a
Generally speaking, thought experiments are not dangerous. As useful tools for “gaming” out a scenario, they could certainly point to a danger in the future, but they are not traditionally a problem for those who conduct them. Such an idea would, for much of human history, feel ludicrous. But we live in unusual times, and
Generally speaking, cryptids are easily disproven. Such fantasy creatures belong entirely in the imagination of the more creative sections of humanity, but such secret, unknown species do not exist. There is no giant forgotten ape hiding in the forests of north America, nor is there something similar in the Himalayas. There is no relic population
In the 13th century in Iceland a poet and a scholar named Snorri Sturluson wrote two great masterpieces, texts which cast a shadow to this day. In his Poetic Edda and his Prose Edda his beautiful writing captured much of ancient Norse tradition: their people, their history, and their gods. These texts are a vital
There is much we don’t know. We may have made extraordinary strides on understanding the limits and levers of reality in the past few hundred years, but we have more questions now than when we started, and far more questions than answers. We do not know who we are, or indeed what we are. We