Lost Nomad noted: In an attempt to prevent suicides among the military, guards in rear areas will be issued rubber bullets instead of real ones. And further noted that this doesn’t address the causes of the suicides. From what older students have told me of what they had to endure while doing their mandatory service, there’s a lot of crap like hazing and abuse by superiors that could drive some people to the ultimate attempt to escape. Unfortunately, as one commenter noted, rubber bullets can be quite damaging at close range, so I’m not sure what this will achieve. More …
Category: ASIDES
I Love Geeks
I studied electronic music in University, but never devoted much time to the fascinating subject. But I am glad that some people are still fiddling and messing around with it, in new and weird ways. Like the guy on YouTube who’s experimenting with Max/MSP to use water as a control device for music: The guy’s webpage is here.
Rich on Capitalism
Rich asks: What characteristics of other systems do you consider desirable? Interesting discussion precedes that question, of course.
The Cremation of Sam McGee
Good narration of this spooky Robert Service poem linked over at Ruminations in Korea. Click here to check it out. It certainly put me back in the drafting mood for my own spooky, nasty arctic story.
A No-Brainer Still Requires A Little Brains, I Guess
Apparently so. WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 — With construction of many new nuclear reactors under discussion, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is grappling with the question of whether they should be designed to withstand a Sept. 11-style airplane attack. Ask yourself an obvious question, and the obvious answer becomes… well, obvious. Especially given that there are potential domestic threats in America, just as there are everywhere else in the world. Oklahoma, people. Remember? You can’t be serious thinking that no water on planes to America makes sense, but that a plane crashing into a nuclear plant and having a remote chance of …
This Actually Did Kind of Amuse Me
Korean unseriousness. A lot of the karaoke stuff doesn’t amuse me, but of what I’ve seen these two do on Youtube did make me grin. (Via Ranting on ROK)
Go go go Haruki!
Well, there you go, Haruki Murakami has Japanese received the Kafka Prize. Good for him, I think he deserves it for The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, if nothing else. Lime bought me a copy of After the Quake the other day and I’m looking forward to it, let me tell you. (Via Writing Under a Pseudonym).
Asian American Mental Health — The Book!
Whilst googling phrases from a potentially plagiarized essay, I chanced upon this book on Google Books: Asian American Mental Health: Assessment Theories and Methods. Man, that sounds like the book to have on hand when reading the comment sections on Marmot’s blog. Not to cast asparagus on Marmot himself, but some of the commenters… yeah.
Firefox or My Computer…
It might be the mousepad, or maybe it’s Friefox. Either way, sometimes when I am browsing the web, when I use the mousepad to scroll down, random pages load onscreen. Like this bridal support group page. Maybe it’s google ads being accidentally clicked, or maybe it’s using some random search, because I know for sure I don’t have this page bookmarked anywhere.
In Case You Noticed…
… the mini-posts section in my sidebar wasn’t displaying for a while. I broke it when I added a second mini-posts section tracking recent workouts, and then forgot to insert a command to rewind the post count for the second miniposts section. If you can see this, when you already know what it says — that that section just got fixed. Of course, for those reading by RSS, there’s been no shift and you haven’t missed anything. Lucky you.