Category: GENERAL

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

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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 …

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And Called It… Macaroni?

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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.

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You’d Watch This Movie, Right? (Or Read This Comic?)

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My wife was trying to figure out what to do with a weirdly-shaped canvas she’s planning to paint, and some riffing led to the ultimate pulp B-movie idea… well, for a certain audience, anyway. I’m thinking it’d be one of those neo-exploitation flicks, like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have resurrected. The image on the painting–a movie poster–features the following: Giordano Bruno, in a torn monk’s habit (with giant rippling muscles visible beneath), stetson, boots & spurs, poised with two sixguns in his hands and a cigar in his mouth, a grim look of determination on his face. Marie Curie, …

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Jeonju — A Culinary Pilgrimage

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I’ve long promised a roundup of places in Jeonju that I’d recommend to people… or, rather, places that I make a point of going when I’m in Jeonju myself. For anyone not in (or going to) Korea, well… this might be of less interest to you, unless you love reading abut amazing restaurants that you’ll probably never visit.

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Things I’ve Recently Learned in the Kitchen

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So, the last few days have been a whirlwind of cooking, and I’ve learned a few interesting things. Let’s see: 1. When you make pesto, grind the nuts first. Then add the leaves, then the cheese. Oil and butter come later, along with salt. Nuts first allows the leaves to be ground up dry, which gets you a better grind. (I didn’t make the pesto, Mrs. Jiwaku did. It turned out really good!) 2. With homemade pesto, substitutions are the name of the game. If you’re unable to use pine nuts–say, because your spouse is allergic to them–other nuts are …

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Another Update, Another Theme Borked

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Well, I updated WordPress. Like clockwork, another stylesheet bit the dust: fonts were all whacked out, menus not working properly, and who knows what else. It was a bit disappointing, but it seems inevitable these days, and at least replacement templates that (mostly) work straight out of the box are common enough. I’ve settled for what you see now, for the moment. (That is, if you’re reading on the page itself.) It has most of what I want, except for a nicely navigable menu at the header. (There’s supposed to be one, but it’s not showing up, and the submenus …

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The Really Intractable Thing: North Korea, Climate Change, and Why We’re Failing

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Over at The Week, a depressing piece on the horrors up North, titled “North Korea isn’t Nazi Germany — in some ways, it’s worse”: Unless North Korea invades or bombs another country, or China gives up its patronage of the Hermit Kingdom, it’s hard to see much concrete coming out of the report. Paul Whitefield at the Los Angeles Times remembers the post-Holocaust slogan, “Never Again,” then throws up his hands in resignation: So what should the world do? What can the world do? Must we accept that in North Korea, basic freedoms — even such a simple thing as the right not …

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The Bloom Effect, Part 1: Context, Context, and More Context

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This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series The Bloom Effect

This post is the promised follow-up to my earlier post titled “Two Disconcerting Trends: Korean Kids, School Systems, And Parental Appraisal.” I have split the follow-up into two parts, as 10,000 words seems too long for a single blog post. This is a sprawling essay discussing: The idea of the Tiger Mom, and some thoughts on Amy Chua’s book The importance of social context in determining the outcome of a given parenting style Hyperschooling and why it is a rasdically new thing in South Korea, and why nobody seems willing to admit it to their kids or themselves “The Bloom Effect” observed …

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Malcolm Gladwell and Journalistic Agenda

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I was surprised, a few years ago, to see Malcolm Gladwell being celebrated by a couple of acquaintances of mine online: after all, I’ve always thought of him as an author of, er, low-quality pop-theory books of the sort that could be boiled down into a paragraph or two, with scanty evidence and a lot of flattering platitudes directed at the reader: The Tipping Point: Social change occurs in a mysterious way involving critical mass: it is society that decides (collectively) how society ought to change, and once consensus reaches a critical mass, the change occurs. Blink: He focuses on the …

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