Since many visitors to this blog are old Okinawa hands, I thought I’d pass along this site, which has a number of photos from the island from the immediate post-World War II era to the early 1970s:

http://www.rememberingokinawa.com/page/remembering_okinawa_home

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=208450420723769081139.0004ae910732a82aeae60&msa=0

Have fun!

If someone hadn’t already spoiled the ending of last night’s episode of ‘Game of Thrones’ for me, I would have had the same reaction, but not as funny.

I agree with the AV Club reviewer who said that this could be one of the gutsiest decisions by a TV show, ever. I know the show’s simply following the plot of the book, but there have been plenty of productions that lose their nerve and find a way to save a charismatic and telegenic character from the death he or she suffers on the pages – especially when that death comes so early in a multi-part and still unfolding story.

It’s something of a sport among movie lovers to debate where the inflection points in the long arc of Woody Allen’s career are to be found, but it’s a hopeless enterprise, in my book. Yes, ‘early’ Allen is better than ‘late’ Allen, but this kind of a distinction doesn’t really mean much; I think it’s a big question whether or not films like “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” or even “Hannah and her Sisters” could even be made today. Even if they were, how would they be received and reviewed?

Better to just enjoy a good film when it comes along. Allen’s latest, “Midnight in Paris,” isn’t perfect (I think it’s unforgivable to make Rachel McAdams into such an unlikable character), but there are plenty of good jokes, not least of which is the one Allen makes at the expense of Christopher Nolan’s baroque-epic “Inception”, a movie which I loved but whose utter lack of humor diminishes it in my mind, as time goes on.

If a student commits a fairly minor but nevertheless clear-cut act of plagiarism, and is penalized, and promises (after a series of abject apologies) not to do it again – and then turns around and does it again, in a much more egregious manner, for another class, what could explain this decision?

1. A person serially incapable of doing her own original work?

2. A calculation that instructors and faculty are saps, or (more charitably) that they don’t talk to one another and compare notes, so that even if detected she can talk her way out, one-by-one, of the ultimate penalty – i.e., being referred for dismissal proceedings?

3. A conviction, despite evidence to the contrary, that she’s immune to detection and discovery?

What’s the theory of action here?