In high school and college the steps in learning Japanese were for me Hiragana -> Katakana -> Kanji in short groups.

I'm curious as to why they simplified the characters for reading and writing, but also retained about 4500~ Kanji characters for written purposes and even to this day names.

With as intelligent as feudal and current day Japanese persons are, why create a visually simple and in some what lower learning curve set of writings other than Kanji? Was it to better self identity the Japanese written language or what?

I can over from the Peter The Great Cyrillic vs Latin Alphabet post, and didn't want to hijack it more than I did. And now my curiosity is bubbling!

We all know that Europeans came to portray Jesus in the iconography and art as a white, dirty blonde, blue eyed man. Of course we've also seen how African Americans have interpreted Jesus as a black man, Latin Americans portraying their figures in more familiar Latino tones. Even in Asian cultures such as Korea and Japan he is portrayed as being more Asian in appearance.

The obvious explanation for this is to make the spiritual and symbolic representations of their faith more familiar and relatable to themselves.

Yet, I'm more interested in how this happened in the West, since we see the first images of "white Jesus" appearing as early as the 5th and 6th Centuries in a time when the racial and cultural mixtures of the former Western Roman and existing Byzantine Empires still had more interactions with people from the Levant whom Jesus would have looked more like.

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Welsh? Irish? French?

Greek fire from what I've always seen is commonly depicted as an ancient greek napalm-like substance, but I have doubts regarding how widely it was used and how effective it was. How was greek fire used, and how often? How destructive was it?

Is there something special about a mosque that gives it the ulu designation, or is this an architectural style, or named after an era or something?

Thanks!

If so, do I report it as income to the IRS? Are there security-cleared accountants who can help me do my taxes? Are there security-cleared IRS tax agents who process my taxes?

To clarify, I have visited a lot of European countries and have noticed a substantial difference in the quality and uniqueness of the food.

It is my opinion but I think it is fairly universally agreed that the UK cuisine leaves a lot to be desired when compared to other areas of Europe. E.g France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, or even Germany.

I believe the reason is cultural and historical but am not quite sure on specifics.

Especially seeing that there is a lot of crossover on other areas of European culture, e.g music, literature, dress.

Hopefully the question isn't too vague.

I know first class was was ridiculously luxurious, but what was the food like in 1st/2nd/3rd? Space per passenger? Life on the ship? Access to toilet and shower facilities? Access to different parts of the ship? I know, for example, they were separated from the moment they embarked, but could a 1st class passenger have gone to the 2nd class areas if they wanted?

Seems kinda random.

Edit: wow, my most up voted post is just a random question that's been floating around in my head for a week. Thanks for the answers!

Following a mass media innovation (TV, radio, printing press, advent of writing, etc.), and after a further period of time where the means of production of the media became accessible to the (well funded) every-man, were there similar bouts of distrust of information sources resulting from the (newly) high volume blending of verifiable information with veiled opinions and disinformation?

post-United States v. Darby Lumber Co. (1941)

I heard something on the radio that bothered me, but finding sources by myself has been hard. Sources -at least apolitical ones- that are about what I heard have not been easy pickings. I used to be, and currently still am, very much on board with the idea of the raise to $10.10.

After all, if an open letter with hundreds of economists agree, who am I to disagree? I do care about my support though, and want to know the history of it. So, please help?

So, here's what I heard: Someone on the radio said, "invariably, raises to the minimum wage since The Great Depression era, in the United States, have hurt middle-low and low income workers."

Q1: Is there any evidence you can cite for this being true/false?

Q2: What are some hard-numbers consequences, good or bad, of raising the federal minimum wage in recent history? Like, during 2009's change for example? Even if it's not invariably one way, I would like to know.

I prefer abstracts from studies, or similarly apolitical sources. If you have them.

Thanks!