How about that weather!

I have not looked at the data (nor will I, thank you), but this is the coolest summer in Tokyo I can remember. I have activated my air conditioning unit only three or four times so far, the first time being August 2nd. While the United States bakes and Europe melts, Tokyo is pleasant - a dry heat that is tolerable as long as you stray into the shade. Tsuyu was long and sporatic, but it kept temperatures low.

Speaking of heat, that last blog post is about to hit 150 comments - a new record for neomarxisme. Unfortunately, the actual topic once again got lost within a referendum on this blog and then on its "rival" Momus. My lazy Friday post was neither interesting nor new nor particularly offensive, but things reached some boiling point, and I was instantly called "racist" within the first two comments. After a weekend of seeing missives of spite and bile continuously roll into my Outlook Express, the last thing I wanted to do is open up a new essay and endure the same unproductive flamethrowing.

My paranoid suspicion is these angry few aim to make me not want to blog at all, and I will admit: it works. I do other things besides writing for this site, and I feel like it is a tremendous waste of my time to have the same conversation over and over again about why this blog is not allowed to exist. My best bet is to prevent myself from getting dragged into meta-conversations about biases of the participants.

I also plead with you to realize that this blog should not read as a sole source of information on Japan, but I seriously doubt anybody reads me that way.

I will get back to Dignity of a Nation tonight, and I hope the level of hostility subsides a bit on all sides.