For those of you who don’t live in Korea, here’s a hilarious article explaining what an ajumma is. In the sauna, should the ajumma let out a fart and people stare at her, she will just leave without saying sorry. Ladies show respect to everyone, even their juniors. They are well aware of etiquettes in public places. They tend to be strict with themselves and generous to others: with ajumma it is the other way round. Really, so very bizarre, and yet sort-of-right, one has to admit sheepishly. At least, right in terms of the Jeonbuk ajummas I encountered on …
Month: October 2006
Write-In Update
This is an update on the Write-In post I made last night. As of 4:30pm on Sunday, I am now at 11,800 words. Of course, this is redrafting, so it’s going more quickly than original drafting. Still, the amount of complicated reworking and rethinking has my brain in knots. Lots of going for short walks and thinking things over today… but it is coming along. It might be optimistic to think I can finish this off tonight, though, considering I need to get my passport application and laundry done as well… UPDATE 2 (2pm, Monday Oct. 23): Well, I’m now …
The Point of Depression
This transcript explores the possibility that like most things in humans, depression has an evolutionary basis, and that it was actually selected for in our ancestral habitat. (via who knows?)
Write-In Progress: How Jjangguk Took Down Kim Noh Wang, The Madman of Pyongyang
Well, this weekend the members of my Clarion West class have organized a write-in, and like many, I am participating. I’m not working on a new story, but rather, on the rather drastic rewriting of my superheroes-in-East-Asia story. The story is, on one level, a riff on the Cory Doctorow story “The Superman and the Bugout”, which is a Jewish-Canadian Superman riff on the American superman story (available as aa PDF, or as a podcast from Doctorow’s site, by the way: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). I think when I read that story (in his great collection, which …
Human species ‘may split in two’, says dimwitted British Evolutionist
Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge. Uh, okay, along what lines? The logical outcome would be two sub-species, “gracile” and “robust” humans similar to the Eloi and Morlocks foretold by HG Wells in his 1895 novel The Time Machine. Now I am laughing. He thinks our over-dependence on technology will lead to this? Look at yourself, Mr Curry: we have no claws, no fur, no fangs. We’ve been dependent on technology since we first were human. And who’s to say, if only two clades emerged, …