Yakuza, A Brief History
The yakuza need no introduction. The organized crime groups appear throughout Japanese and American films. Next to the Italian mafia, they are the most famous crime group. The name yakuza comes from a losing hand in a traditional Japanese card game. Ya ku sa — eight, nine, three. The group began in the Tokugawa period,…
What an Academic Hoax Warns Us About Research
According to The Atlantic, three scholars wrote 20 fake papers using trendy language and tried to get them placed into high-end academic journals in fields that include gender studies, queer studies, and fat studies. Seven of the articles were accepted, and seven more were in various points of the review process. In academic journals, articles…
Sadako and her One-Thousand Cranes
The first nuclear weapon used in war fell on Hiroshima more than 70 years ago. Most of us have heard the statistics in history class: 80,000 people killed instantly and thousands more died from the after effects of radiation. But the numbers hide the personal stories of lives lost and family members lost. As time…