Thank you teachers and staff for an incredible school year! pic.twitter.com/qR4lm1a4iV
— Forest Hills Public Schools (@ForestHillsPS) June 5, 2025
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)* is set in a Japanese POW camp on Java in 1942 during World War II. The film explores the clash of cultures and moral codes between British/Allied prisoners and their Japanese captors under the imperial ideology of Bushido and unconditional loyalty to the Emperor. The Japanese officers, led by the traditionalist Captain Yonoi and the more pragmatic Sergeant Hara, view surrender as the ultimate dishonor and treat prisoners harshly, yet are themselves trapped by rigid military honor that forbids mercy or personal emotion. The British prisoners, represented by the defiant Colonel Lawrence and the spiritually scarred Major Celliers, embody a Western individualism that baffles the Japanese command. Beneath the surface, the film critiques both Japanese militarism (which demanded suicidal obedience) and the hypocrisy of colonial empires that condemned Japanese brutality while ignoring their own. The political heart of the story lies in the fatal incompatibility of two imperial systems during total war, where neither side can truly understand or forgive the other. It offers some modest insight into why Americans eschew getting involved in the wars of other nations. * Several trailers claim to the “Official” trailer. History is not about what happened. History is a story about what happened. https://standardsmichigan.com/flying-tigers/ 
Miami University "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence"
David Bowie played Major Jack “Strafer” Celliers, a charismatic, haunted British (New Zealand in the original novel) officer captured by the Japanese in 1942.Celliers is the enigmatic newcomer to the POW camp whose defiance, moral courage, and almost mystical aura deeply affect both the prisoners and Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto), who becomes quietly obsessed with him. His backstory—revealed in a powerful flashback—involves betraying his younger brother to avoid bullying at boarding school, a guilt he carries for the rest of his life and ultimately redeems through a sacrificial act in the camp. Bowie’s performance is widely regarded as one of his finest on screen
The academic calendar of Anglosphere educational settlements quietly shapes life of the mind generally and family life specifically. Its origins lie in the cathedral schools and monastic learning communities of medieval Europe between the 1100s and 1400s. Universities were not originally organized around modern “semesters.” Instead, the year followed the Christian liturgical calendar, agricultural seasons, daylight availability, and travel conditions.
The classic English university calendar evolved into three major terms: Michaelmas in autumn, associated with arrival and beginnings; Hilary or Lent in winter, associated with discipline and study; and Trinity or Easter in spring, associated with examinations, outdoor rituals, music, rowing, gardens, and celebration.
Modern commencement traditions across the Anglosphere are descendants of medieval spring degree ceremonies. Academic gowns, hoods, processions, Latin phrases, formal dining, chapel music, and public recognition all preserve traces of the university as a scholarly guild and religious-civic community.
Before railways, electric lighting, and central heating, universities had to adapt to muddy roads, short winter days, limited candles, cold buildings, and agricultural obligations. Spring therefore became the natural season of culmination, reunion, athletic competition, courtship, and ceremony.
The medieval university was not merely a school but an educational settlement — a self-governing town of scholars, libraries, chapels, kitchens, workshops, residences, and dining halls. That settlement pattern survives in residential colleges, quadrangles, tutorial systems, common rooms, chapel choirs, and formal meals.
Anglosphere campuses retain this ancient emotional rhythm: autumn seriousness, winter inwardness, and spring release. That continuity helps explain why colleges and universities still feel culturally distinct from ordinary commercial society. (Relata: Gulliver Visits the Great Academy of Lagado)
We’re “organized” but not too organized; like the bookseller who knows where every book can be found.
at a conference where you don’t have to present
— Peyman Milanfar (@docmilanfar) April 4, 2025
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Academics be like 👇 pic.twitter.com/6cpVEw3PVS
— Reviewer 2 (@GrumpyReviewer2) April 2, 2024
