Happy Easter to any and all who are celebrating it. Ho ho ho! Er… 깡총!
Month: March 2005
Commies and Rightists Sympatico
Ever think of comparing the Rightist academic freakout that’s been going on in the US with, say, the Chinese Cultural Revolution? Well, if you did, too late. It’s been done, and brilliantly.
A Friday of Fear
This Friday, Dan asks: What are the 5 scariest moments in your life, the moments when you were most filled with fear? You’d think that, for a guy who got into horror novels and movies at a young age, I’d have a lot of answers for this one. In fact, I’m scrambling for five of them. Let’s see. In no particular order: The night before my 16th birthday, I had convinced my parents to let me rent the video of The Exorcist for the sleepover I had with my friends, and I’d recently read that the film was based on …
Racism and Nationalism
Over at The Asia Pages Jodi talks about the differentiation of racism and nationalism, and Bluejives follows up with some quotes about nationalism (and thoughts on nationalism and war, plus a link to a funny comic). I find, as one commenter noted, that racism and nationalism are, of course, different, but that in largely homogenous nations, it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference.
Scientific American Throws in the Towel… Yeah, Right…
Not much to say today, but both Zarq at Weird is Relative and Jamais Cascio at Worldchanging linked to this, the April Editorial from Scientific American, which is a beautiful, beautiful thing: Okay, We Give Up There’s no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don’t mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should …
Kid Battle
Yobbo links to what he finds an interesting discussion. I don’t know, it kind of weirds me out, and I only wanted to observe that as far as I was able to read before I got bored, it was all men discussing this. Fancy that. Ah well, the other thing that comes to mind is that this reminds me of a section in the Dungeonmaster’s Guide in old 1st edition AD&D where the author goes to great pains to explain just how many opponents (of each size) can attack a single character at the same time. Ha, so that was …
Yet More Stupid Remakery
Little question: Why does mainstream American TV refuse to run English-language comedy from England? I’m not going to say British comedy is the best in the world, or that no American comedy is good… though, of late, most anything I’ve seen that is funny has come out of Britain, not America. And I really, really have a hard time imagining any
This Bugs Me
Unlike Tithonius, I am not really into the old Loony Toons. I never enjoyed them that much, rales of the Road Runner aside. Still, I can’t help but be put off by the fact that when Warner Brothers needs to make a few hit shows, it decides to give “a new look” to Bugs Bunny and his friends. I mean, what happened, did everyone creative die in 1972 or something? Really, come on! Does everything have to be a remake, reenvisioning, reimagining… a re-hash? It’s not as if they couldn’t come up with a killer cartoon, with new characters, after …
Great Kids
My 8:30am morning class on Wednesday is a wonderful bunch of kids. They’re young, so very, very young. All college sophomores, advanced level, and really nice kids. They’re still getting used to me, and my class, but they’re the kind of students I dream of when I am teaching a class of unresponsive zombies. They get into the discussions, when they change partners it doesn’t feel as if they’ve been traumatized by the experience, they ask questions when they don’t understand something, or are having trouble expressing an idea in English for the first time… They’re a great class, which …
Dear Reader, What is your think about the Takeshima Day?
Today a student asked me what I think about Takeshima Day and the Dokdo issue. I didn’t want to get into how it’s (a) not a new issue, (b) his country’s biased-assed press (or was it hus buddy who told him the story?) seems to have misled him by making it out to be “the Japanese government” that has declared Takeshima Day, when it’s the little backwater Shimane Prefecture that did it, (c) wow, newspapers are sure selling and nationalist sentiments are sure hot now, aren’t they, and hasn’t he noticed a cycle to this whole pattern? I mean, this …