(LJ readers, pop on over to my site to read this post if the videos I embed beneath the cut aren’t working… LJ sometimes takes the videos in stride, and sometimes hates my embedding anything….) At some point or other I stumbled onto the existence of a Korean by the name (or pseudonym?) of Yoon Sook Jin (usually written yoonsookjin) who achieved some degree of fame online doing those sing-along webcam type videos which, since the dawn of Youtube, have been competing with cat photographs for how much bandwidth can be, er, used up in unentertaining entertainment. But you know, …
Month: July 2008
Christopher Hitchens Visits Room 101
Hitchens wrote a book about Why Orwell Matters. Looks like he learned one of the lessons of Nineteen-Eighty-Four during his own trip to Room 101. Here is what he had to say about it.
Got China?
A couple of them in this post on a blog I just discovered (in the Columbus, was-already-there sense), The China Beat. Particularly cool are the piece on Li Wei at 1000 Words and Virtual Shanghai. Plus why Jonathan Spence absolutely, totally rocks like a motherf*cker. (More here.) Listen to Spence’s Reith lectures here… even if you do skip the long (and iffy) question periods. Or download the MP3s (from links listed) here. I’m listening to lecture #1 now — which is about Confucianism, by the way, and thus of interest to all you Korea-watchers — and the big question is: …
The Expattes Compleynte
Roboseyo and The Korean (of Ask a Korean) have teamed up to pose a question that really does strike to the heart of the corner of the Internet that deals with Korea in English: Why do expats in Korea complain so much [online]? Note that I didnt use the word “blogosphere” anywhere: though lately I’ve been spitting insults at The Marmot’s Fleas (as I call the commenters at The Marmot’s Hole) the way some cowboys (used to?) spit chaw, let’s face it, there are other sinkholes of negativty, the forums on Dave’s ESL Cafe being a prominent one, and Dave’s …
For the Two People Interested…
I’ve uploaded the last of my 2MB Demo pics, from the last big night (July 5th), here. Oops! Some were from the Catholic “Emergency” Mass, and thus are now in this set. Some were from the last big night, July 5th, in this set. I found some pics from earlier on, too — the best guess I can make is June 11th, in this set. I added a couple to the first set also, shots which I found just now in the wrong folder. And of all things, a shot from the trip I made to the local temple on …
On the Ajumma Slain in North Korea, and Anti-Communist Paranoia in the South
Well, I heard about this when I got home last night, and when I got up this morning, I found that Marmot’s Hole had a post up on the story. The comment thread, and a subsequent post by Andy Jackson (and its comments), were of course filled to the brim with vitriolic snark on the recent protests, which everyone is still calling the US Beef protests, though the whole thing was a much bigger mix of issues than just beef. Though at least the first commenter on that post pointed out how poorly it reflects on so many at Marmot’s …
From Paris to New York… by Land?!?!?
I was browsing Manybooks.net’s new additions, and I happened upon this: Many who read the following account of our long land journey will not unnaturally ask: “What was the object of this stupendous voyage, or the reward to be gained by this apparently unnecessary risk of life and endurance of hardships?” I would reply that my primary purpose was to ascertain the feasibility of constructing a railway to connect the chief cities of France and America, Paris and New York. — From Paris to New York by Land, by Harry de Windt (1903) Eh? A transatlantic railway? Oh, no, they …
Do You Now, or Have You Ever Lived in South Korea?
If so, my friend Charles is collecting info on what foreigners pick up as part of Korean oral culture. There’s a link from this page in his online journal. Go on, help a guy out: he’s clever-yet-nice, he’s (fairly) clean, he’s probably even a good dancer, and he needs results, results, results for some kind of academic something-or-other thingiedoodle. Plus it only takes a few minutes. And if you don’t, I’ll tell your mother. So GO!
Gender Iconography & Transformations in Korean Pop Culture: What Can We Learn From Japanese Women’s SF?
A lot of attention has been paid to Wonder Girls, to sexual imagery in advertising, but what about images of men an masculinity in Korean pop culture? This picture-laden post looks at both through the lens of a paper on SFnal treatments and transformations of gender in women’s SF in Japan by scholar Miri Nakamura. It’s long, it’s big, it’s one of those posts. Hence the excerpt.
Fake Beef Consumers? Media Failsafes and Media’s Future
It’s true that Koreans are not nearly so freaked-out about US beef as they were a month or two ago. The numbers are changing. ROKDrop writes that: With pictures of people lining up outside of meat markets with coolers in hand to buy US beef undoubtedly public opinion is going to shift greatly in favor of US beef. Well, yes, that’s true. And yet… Amusingly, or depressingly, I’m not sure which, both the Joongang Ilbo and the Maeil Gyeongjae (Daily Economics) have already had to issue apologies for using staged photos with fake consumers to accompany stories on the, er, …