Good grief, this sounds cool. (There are more posts on the subject, too, of course, like this one, or these ones, over here, if you search around.) Like I said, it sounds cool, but a little hard to set up. Sometimes I wish I had a little stronger background with hardware and building stuff. I think I really would like to have a small steam-powered mash/boil setup. Also, here are some links connected to Belgian beer, which I’m posting here so I can find them again, but which others might appreciate too: I always forget to go and check out …
Month: June 2011
Typology, Teleology, and Essentialism: Comparing Cultures Across Time
I don’t know if I’ll actually undertake this or not, but I certainly have it on my mind. In my Pop Cultures of the English-Speaking World course, I usually teach a segment on the Flapper Girl, inviting students to compare this American, 1920s concept of the “New Woman” with the phenomenon that arose in the mid-2000s, where young women’s consumption patterns began to draw criticism and the label “된장녀” (Soybean Paste Girl) came into sudden and widespread use. While the (Korean) term has kind of melted into the background, it’s still very much present in the minds of young people, …
천군 (Heaven’s Soldiers) revisited: Hanmura Ryō’s Sengoku Jieitai (戦国自衛隊), 독재자 (Dictator), and more Korean SF News
Long ago, I posted briefly about the monstrosity that is Heaven’s Soldiers (천군) a while back (and discussed it in an interview, too), but this is a point that is sure to interest those who, like me, have no access to Korean SF except through film and that small cache of English translations online linked in my sidebar (okay, here you go). As you may recall, Heaven’s Soldiers is a South Korean SF film about North and South Korean soldiers cooperating on the construction of nuclear weapons with which to apparently meet the threat of foreign hegemonic domination or invasion or …
At my local Homeplus Express
There’s been a riot of complaint about the trend in Korea of little local mini-marts run by the big chain stores, like Homeplus/TESCO and Emart. These little shops set up in plain-jane neighborhoods that have, well, not much in the way of mini-marts, and because of the name value and a slightly higher diversity of products, they seem to win out among those who either aren’t grocery shopping online, or who happen to need something right away. (As we did this morning.) The complaints are mostly that these shops are hurting the mom’n’pop stores, and, well, they are. Of course, …
Belgian Brewday: Wonmisan Shiktakju
Shiktakju is probably a nonsensical word in Korean, but I like the sound of it nonetheless. Shiktak means table, specifically the kind of table at which one eats. The suffix -ju denotes a kind of alcohol. Now, normally, it’s appended to the stuff from which the alcohol is made — baemju is snake liquor (baem=snake), bokbunjaju is wild black raspberry liquor, maeshilju is plum liquor, and so on. So it may be that my usage is a nonsense coinage, but on the other hand, some liquors are named for other things. (I don’t know for sure the etymology of baeksaeju, …