As many of you know by now, there’s a segment of the Korean population that is, or at one time was, crazy about the computer game Starcraft. So crazy about it, in fact, that you see all kinds of kitschy stuff floating around online centered on it. First, I posted a a Starcraft story sung/told in the venerable Korean pansori tradition. This time, it’s a Starcraft cartoon that you can view over at ConnectKorea. I have no idea what most of the song is about, beyond the experience of this poor little alien whose fighting ability is almost nil, but …
Month: March 2005
I Only Wish
This week, Dan asks: What 5 events or things would you like to see in your lifetime but are skeptical that you will? In my lifetime, I’d love to see a controllable form of nanotechnology developed that could be used for general purposes. Unfortunately, I think this will take at least several hundred years, and more likely a few thousand. But it’s be nice to see. I’d love to see massive reforms to what “free market” means, where the legal incentives for being a good business proprietor—and the disincentives not to be a bad one—were delivered down through the ranks …
A Trackback is Like An Open Door
A trackback is like an open door: it beckons, and when you walk through it, you find such a vast array of distractions and entertainments that you can easily spend an hour or two in rapt fascination. I am trying to consolidate my bloglines subscriptions these days, to reduce the number of subscriptions I have, because even though I read my subscriptions mainly in RSS-feed form, I still have over three hundred on my list and can’t keep up. But this morning, I rediscovered the joy of just wandering through a link, over to a bunch of other pages, and …
Now I Didn’t Expect This!
Take the quiz at dicepool.com via Marvin, who’s a mere d6, muhahaha.
The Indefatigable Mr. Sterling
Where does he get his energy? As usual, lots of fascinating stuff going on at Bruce Sterling’s Beyond the Beyond. Bruce explains what he’s doing hanging out with designers (and talks about his writing a little too); discusses the SXSW Conference and his new line of work; delivers some wonderful eye candy; brings up a controversial new Turkish SF novel about a war with America, and points at other works of war-SF; and gently brings the garage experimenters back to our attention. And if you look around, you’ll see all kinds of fascinating things his students have been designing for …
What Do You Give the Man Who’s Got Everything?
This one’s for you, Adam Lipscomb. What do you give the man who’s got everything? The answer’s really simple, I think, because, frankly, such a man probably doesn’t exist. For example, I don’t know anyone who knows how to build a guillotine. Though I can think of a few friends who would put one to extremely good use, given half a chance.
Spiked Mountain
Over at Korean Media Watch there’s a post from a while back, that I’ve run across again since I’m adapting my bookmarks to the del.icio.us format. It’s an interesting debunking of the allegation that a photo proves the story that the Japanese colonials spiked the mountains of Korea in an attempt to geomantically ruin the Korean spirit. Actually, if you ask me, it doesn’t sound so far-fetched, whether or not it happened—Japan’s geomantic superstitions were certainly still extant at the time! I have no compunction using this legendary project (true or not) in a short fiction story I’m now working …
Ko Un
A while back, AsianWeek.com had a piece up about the Korean poet Ko Un. He’s been translated, and I do want to check him out, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Soon, hopefully. Hey, here are some poems of his, translated by… yep, that Brother Anthony guy. I don’t know how good he is, but he’s sure prolific in his translations!
Hilarious
From Burningbird, a discussion about the new, controversial (?), proposed Google Autolink toolbar feature turns into a hilarious revelation of how men think about hyperlinks. (via Pharyngula)
Those Abusive Vegetarians, Whoops, I Only Mean That About The Vegans
Ozzie Yobbo provides a link to a really sleazy bit of Australian journalism that claims that vegetarian diets are child abuse… oh, wait, no, only Vegan diets are likely to be bad for kids, ah well, too late to change that title. And too late for you to get your money back for the newspaper, too. Of course, anything who knows anything about humans in any culture besides their own would note that, oh, wait, Indian diets often don’t have a lot of meat in them (as one of the commenters at Yobbo’s page points out). So the way Indians …