Category: KOREA

Killer Mini-Campaign

gordsellar0 Comments

I’ve posted before here about using RPGs as a learning tool with students. One of the things that’s important when you do this is to (a) choose a story structure that emphasizes communicative tasks: your students should have to talk a lot, whereas combat is something they want to avoid, or something that must be coordinated when it’s absolutely necessary. That is to say, pedagogically, it’s better for students to end up having to negotiate treaties or beg for their lives than it is to have them running around doing hack’n’slash adventuring, or dungeoneering of the type epitomized in the phrase, “kick in …

Continue Reading

미안하다~아~아~아~아~아~아~앗!

gordsellar0 Comments

So, I haven’t mentioned this: But I’ll get to that in a moment… I posted awhile back about the then-upcoming elections in Seoul, and how the adult children of two candidates had posted about their fathers–one, to our her (frontrunner) dad as a complete dirtbag and a deadbeat dad, and the other (who was then trailing in the polls) to ask people to consider the issues instead of celebrity (like that enjoyed by his father’s dirtbag competition). It occurs to me that I haven’t posted an update on the situation, so, for those who don’t know: the guy whose daughter …

Continue Reading

Georgian England, The Developing World, Crime Prevention, and Internet Trolls

gordsellar0 Comments

Life in Georgian London was an alien sort of existence: it’s hard to wrap your head around it, though there is one analogy I’ve discovered for it that neatly says a lot about the things we take for granted… and also suggests something of our future, too. I suspect the unexpected key is this figure: Yes, our old friend… the internet troll.  I’d argue that, among other things, the Internet is pretty invaluable in keeping humanity acquainted with what it’s like to live in a lawless, unpoliced world. Which is the kind of world that people in the 1730s lived …

Continue Reading

Bev, Gandhi, and Chinese Drivers

gordsellar2 Comments

The other day, I posted this video on Facebook: The responses on Facebook were interesting: https://www.facebook.com/gord.sellar/posts/10152490693171070 Note that it was in the second response that the discussion suddenly focused on stupid things Koreans say to white people, like, “Wow, you can use chopsticks!” or “Please marry someone from your own country.” The second comment. It’s interesting because, as outsiders in a culture, people often tend to try fit their experiences into an understanding of that culture. Which, you know, is skewed by the fact that people tend to remember most clearly, the most offensive and idiotic exchanges they’ve experienced.1 In …

Continue Reading

And Called It… Macaroni?

gordsellar2 Comments

Yes, even in Canada we know the Yankee Doodle song. But like everyone else, as kids we giggle and find that last line in the first verse: Yankee Doodle went to town Riding on a pony; He stuck a feather in his hat, And called it macaroni… Who the hell sticks a feather in his hat and then calls it “macaroni”? What in the hell is that about? Maybe everyone else knows, but I sure didn’t. Not till the other day, anyway. The answer, as for so much around here lately, lies in Georgian England.

Continue Reading