I just finished Notes of a Native Son other night. It’s not on my currently reading list because I’ve only included personal reading, not research for work, on that list. You know, I’m not sure I have so much to say that’s useful, but I think this is the first nonfiction book I’ve read in a while that really blew me away. The essays in it are powerful, illuminating, and brilliant. There’s a sharp intelligence in them that is not at all impeded by the palpable anger that suffuses parts of it, nor by the palpable regret and sorrow that …
Month: September 2006
Whee!!!1!
Yes, I finally went to the library today and got myself access to the OED online, and to Nature online, and all kinds of other resources online. It’s a lovely thing to be able to trawl through ten years of the finest of science publication, and wander through the best English dictionary on the planet, all for free. A lovely thing. And other cool news: I was told I can enter Seoul University’s open stacks with only an ID card. I don’t need to be studying or working there, I just need to bring some ID. I wonder if interlibrary …
Upcoming book on expats in Korea
Over at Galbijim there’s a post on a book project. The content (including text and photos) is to be produced by expats living in Korea and reflecting on various aspects of their lives here. We’re looking for selected articles written by 30-40 expats living in Korea, where they write about something unique to the culture that they love. For example, I’ll probably write about falling in love with galbijjim for the first time, the culture street in Daegu full of galbijjim restaurants, etc…Someone else might want to write about their hobby and cultural experiences with Korean archery. Or their enjoyment …
The Minstrelsy Lecture
Yeah, they got it. What was interesting was just that they missed layers of stuff. After I lectured a bit on the history, we watched a segment of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, and then watched it again with them noting “stereotype” characteristics, and then, when I noticed that most students had only listed a few, we went through it bit by bit and I excavated things like the watermelon stereotype, why a certain comment was sexual humor and sports humor and jailhouse humor all rolled into one, and some of the iconic characters and types in the lineup of dancers accompanying …
Get Outta Here, Beanpole
A listmate from a discussion list for the magazine I write a column for, Cahoots, posted a link to an interesting article: Reuters carried a story titled Ban on skinny models shocks fashion world. The logic is not simply that teenagers emulate what they see on the runway, and go bulimic or anorexic as a result… but rather, it’s just that they want to portray “healthy body images” at the government-sponsored Madrid fashion week. You know, you have to sit back and think about just how dysfunctional your civilization is when the demand that its iconic representatives of womanhood (which …