It’s one of the standard default haircuts these days in Korea — or something like it — and tons of Korean guys have it. That I despise it, and prefer this haircut:

… is a constant source of mild disappointment for her.

As for contrarianism, I only credit it where the underlying logic makes sense. I suspect the logical backflips needed to justify invading Iraq would not impress me. In other words, I like contrarianism when it’s thoughtful, but I have doubts any thoughtful person could see the invasion of Iraq as a sensible pursuit of a just cause. Besides which, it seems to me even a fair number of leftist Americans were tentatively supportive of the invasion of Iraq at first. So I don’t perceive his position as so contrarian, though of course I also haven’t seen him spell out his opinions on the subject so clearly. Got a link to suggest?

I’ve been to a lot of book signings, and the crowd for that one was one of the largest I’d seen. He would have been there really late if he’d spent a lot of time on small talk.

As for his stand on the Iraq war, well, his contrarian views frequently give him more creditability in my eyes. If you’ve followed his writings, he’s still a credible civil libertarian. Not unlike Dennis Miller, if anyone had been paying attention over the years, it was pretty obvious the man was never a pacifist, and while critical of American power, was not unopposed to it’s use when he thought the cause was just.

Yeah, see, another thing I wouldn’t like about Hitchens. When people are happy to shell out for your books, the least you can do is be a little thankful to them when they ask for a signature. Though the Don Rickles thing did make me laugh…

Yeah, the Red thing (not just Gap but also Motorola and a bunch of other companies) makes me a little, I don’t know, suspicious? Companies exist to make money. Then again, I do believe we could retool them to be more humanist… I just think it’ll take real leadership, and harsh legislation, and not just rockstars who aren’t really all that much more educated on the issues than your average Joe.

As for the Gap Red campaign, I’m sure it’s part of their attempt to clean up their corporate image, but it looks like they still aren’t doing well, if you read the wikipedia article on the company there has been a lot of turnover in the head office, never a good sign.

Yeah, but I’m on Linux and it’s a different ball of wax. Found a few to try out, though. Thanks!

Mark,

Yeah, I could be exaggerating. But Lime recent observations on Koreans out of context actually involved the comment I wrote: “many men… do as little as they can get away with, as long as there’s a woman around to handle it for them.”

I’ll be writing more about that soon, but I’ll say it was an eye-opening comment. (What she said of her female Korean friends mommying their boyfriends, and how males here get mommied not only by moms but also girlfriends, and wives, was quite eye-opening.)

http://bloggingtips.tumblr.com/post/23496063

No worries, man. I’ll rewrite it sometime this week. Argh. Need to find an offline blog editor that saves drafts and stuff…

Sure, though I will point out that I have continued to observe this even when teaching materials that the students connect to better than that. (Recyclable bags? I would never have that in my classroom.) My conversation courses have lots of cool things — things you’d even maybe expect male students to get into more than female, sometimes, like a “plan a bank robbery exercise” — but you still find female students more involved in the exercises.

Could be cultural, however, too. Lime’s observations of the behaviour of Koreans out of context (such as in the airport in Thailand) reinforced her (and my own) impression that many men here simply do as little as they can get away with, as long as there’s a woman around to handle it for them. Which would explain why, in Korea, you never see men running frantically down the sidewalk, but you often see women doing so. Don’t know whether things differ in Japan, though I’d imagine they would slightly. Do they?

I haven’t taught adults myself in over two years, and I miss some of these dynamics that you discuss, sexual and otherwise. In Korea, I wonder if they’re particularly strong between female students and male expat teachers? Not to claim that we’re God’s gift to Korean women, or that all Korean women unconditionally find Western males attractive of course, but in my experience very few single Western men that teach adults of a similar age don’t ultimately make friends and girlfriends with their students. It’s only natural under the circumstances, and it not being very PC doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Personally, despite our best efforts and many years in Korea, neither myself nor any of my Western male friends have managed to make meaningful friends with any Korean men, students or otherwise, and with whatever factors responsible for that operating in the background, the fact that 9 out of 10 of the racist and sexist comments in class came from my male students, and the fact that women tend to better language learners and conversationalists anyway, then I can’t pretend that I didn’t much prefer to teach women, and despite my being aware of this issue, probably responded much more warmly and enthusiastically to them in class too. It probably didn’t help that, unasked, some would give me their Cyworld addresses earlier in the year, and forget that when I decided to check them out a few months later and discovered numerous references to my appearance and my (then) apparently great ass.

I’m wonder to what extent institute owners are aware of and take advantage of this? I know the boss in my first ever job did, because my wife says being told repeatedly by the front desk staff that a certain class had a hot (gross exaggeration) 24 year-old single teacher is what made her decide to take my class. Four years later at a different place, front desk staff extolled the virtues of my coworker instead, although in that case not because he was bachelor of the month, but because being single meant he liked nothing better than drinking all night every night with students, literally staggering to classes the next day with a few “free-talking questions� scrawled on a piece of paper 5 mins earlier. Needless to say, his ensuing popularity kind of demotivated us other teachers against spending so much time and effort on preparation.

I meant to include the link, but forgot. I’ve added it, but I’ll also include it here. The post isn’t exclusively about that, there are other things discussed, but that’s where I wrote about it.

I don’t think it’s very childish or cynical at all, really. More a sensible appraisal of human motivations to receive praise or positive feedback. A little biopsychology goes a long way in explaining a phenomenon that I know I’m not the only one to have observed. (In fact, it was someone I worked with at my first job who presented the idea in simplified form to me, advising me to find a Korean tutor I found attractive as this would help me advance more.)

By the way, I know what you look like, but you know what I look like, too, and I’d bet higher on you than on myself getting on a Korean magazine cover. (Barring arrest for ranting about a certain evil President on a blog, that is.) The point isn’t that supermodels make the best teachers, because attraction is a complex thing. But I will note that my biggest fans among my students are all female… though I treat the guys with the same respect and push them equally, the female students tend to respond to it more positively. I’m certain there’s a hardwired reason for this.