From BBC News (by way of Marginal Revolution):
Dating by blood type in Japan

The black sheep though seem to be blood group B – flamboyant free-thinkers, but selfish.

“At the interview for my first job they asked me about my blood type,” said a man with blood group B, who wanted to identify himself only as Kouichi.

“The surprise was written on my face. Why? It turned out the company president really cared. She’d obviously had a bad experience with a B type blood person. But somehow I got the job anyway.”

Later, though, the issue of his blood came up again.

“The president was the kind of person who couldn’t take her drink and at one company party she got drunk. So she sent B people home before the others. ‘You are blood type B,’ she said. ‘Get out.'”

There is even a term for such behaviour in Japan, burahara, which translates as blood group harassment.

(more…)

A frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force. (more…)

Jane Austen, Emma, Mr. Knightley’s view of Miss Woodhouse: “faultless for all her faults”. (more…)

There are two spirits that this blog endorses: La Llorona and, of course, the spirit of pure reactionary obfuscation. It is therefore the policy of this blog to use the phrase “wroke havoc” in lieu of the more quotidian alternatives.

Impose upon yourself “a future as irrevocable as the past.”

Another false god.

Women as likely as men to physically attack the one they love.

This is another guy to be added to our list of heros.

I’m guessing Philadelphia is a gun-free zone. (more…)

“A clause in the bill likely would allow most Amish families an exemption from the insurance requirement, but the bill could still create sticky issues for the young people who have not formally joined the church.” (link)

A disturbing aspect of laws with religious exemptions is the notion that religious beliefs are the only legitimate kinds of personal preference. Something matters so much that we pass a law or ruling to make that the way things are, yet there are exemptions for members of religious bodies that don’t think that’s the way things ought to be? Kind of lousy for the person who also disagrees with the law, but for non-religious reasons.

Liberty has to be upheld for everyone. Any law that can justifiably have a religious exemption is a law that shouldn’t exist at all. A person shouldn’t have to belong to a church to get relief from laws running his life. If religious people are only defending religious liberty, and that becomes the only liberty left, then soon enough it will be curtailed as well.

Storing energy in the form of compressed air underground is looking promising. (more…)

“Canadian MPs will be served seal meat this week in support of hunters fighting an EU ban on products from the animals.”
. . .
“Last month, an offer of seal meat caught by indigenous hunters to the world’s leading economic ministers at a G7 meeting in Iqaluit, 200 miles south of the Arctic circle, sparked outrage.” (link)

When women see a Husqvarna chainsaw or dirt bike, they will often let the men in their company know that Husqvarna sewing machines are high quality products. But just think how the market for sewing machines could possibly expand if Husqvarna put two-stroke engines on some instead of electric motors.

Gentlemen whose tastes incline to the historical can do no better than this excellent review of recent writing on the fall of the Roman Empire.