Just outdoor stuff for now: That’s the observatory in the distance in the second pic. Much more coming soon, probably this weekend.
Category: KOREA
From Mt. Sobaek
I’m currently at the observatory on Mt. Sobaek with a bunch of Korean SF writers/publishers/translators and astronomers, for the three-day 2009 SOAO workshop. (2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, by the way.) This is the Korean equivalent of the Launch Pad workshop held in the US yearly, and similarly brings together scientists and SF creators. I’ll have more about this later, including tons of pictures and some video, but for now all I’ll say is that I’m catching just enough of the discussions to kick myself (hard) for not only not having studied Korean much in the last few …
Swiss Cheese News and the Un-Mediagenic Reportage Barrier
Boing Boing has updated — with very little new information — about the case of Dymond Milburn in Galveston, Texas. “Hey, look, a little black girl in her yard! She must be one of those hookers we’re looking for!” “But the hookers we’re looking for are white. And she’s in her yard, with her doggie, fiddling with the circuit breaker.” “SO?!?!? She’s totally a whore. I mean, look at how she’s dressed. What, are you scared? There’s four of us and one of her, bro. Come on, let’s go enforce the law.” [Car door slams.] “Hey, little black hooker girl. …
Gnome!
Usually you’d expect any mention of Gnome here to be related to the version of Ubuntu Linux I use, but this is a Gnome of a different color. Today an enthusiast of the Gnome Press — the company that published a ton of formative SF, like Asimov’s most famous books — discovered my blog and linked me from his own, which is called The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey. He’s got a pretty interesting blog there with personal stuff and stuff about the Gnome Press books that he collects. Yet another SF fan in Korea bubbles up out of …
Minerva, Censorship, Schlerosis, and IPs
Events in Korea these days remind me a fair bit of that Demosthenes/Locke subplot in Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game. If you haven’t read the novel, well, basically a couple of really smart kids hijack the world political debate by posting pseudonymously online, using personae that are, in fact, quite different from their own personalities, sometimes quite consciously, to determine the way the global debate plays out. I’ve posted in the past about the Korean internet, censorship, and the odious “Real-Name System” that has essentially eliminated all possibility of real anonymity online at many websites in Korea by requiring …
Professored
Contract signed. I’m now on the tenure track, and somehow, subtly, professor describes my job title and not just my job. I’ve just came back from having coffee with the two other foreign profs who got signed on at the same time I did, and we had a good talk about the whole thing. It’s a two-year contract, but while my teaching duties won’t change much (and without going into details, my pay stays close to what it has been), I will have some more duties within the department (webmastery ones and some curriculum stuff, so far), opportunities for bonuses …
You Have Nose Star Calipers? AKA Maybe I Should Practice Korean More?
Today’s fun conversation in Korean: ME: You have a nose star calipers?1. DOLLAR STORE CLERK2.: Huh? Nose star? ME: Yeah, you know. Nose star calipers.3. DSC: You mean a nose hair trimmer? ME: Uh… maybe. Nose hair? DSC: Yeah. Like, this? [Makes snipping motion.] ME: No, no. I mean like this… [Makes a buzzing noise, and spins finger round in a circle quickly.] DSC: Oh! Yeah, right over here. ME: What’s this called? DSC: A nose hair trimmer. ME: Ah. Right. Hair. Stars are in the sky, hair is in my nose. DSC: [With a giddy laugh.] That’s right. Shall …
Homeplus Update
Remember how I said they “fixed their website” to allow foreigners to register? Well, ordering is another matter, as I discovered after spending over an hour trying to get the damned order to go through. It’s not my card, because my card works with other sites. It’s something in the way their site handles cards. I imagine it just assumes the name on the card and the name on the national ID# are identical or something like that. Nobody bothered to think through the rest of the process when they “fixed” the website. So maybe they don’t want our business …
Koreabeat Translates Lime
Koreabeat recently translated a post by Lime that was written a few years ago, wherein she criticized the writing courses at a hakwon she’d tried out. She was quite surprised to see this fact. And almost immediately someone assumed she was criticizing white hakwon teachers, when, ironically, she was talking about writing courses taught by Korean teachers to Korean students. Someone also IDed her almost immediately. Now I can’t help but wonder if I know SKFK personally, or what?
Notes for Korean TV Production:
UPDATE (31 Oct. 2013): The video linked in the original post is gone. I think this is mostly the same one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb1ITUzW4NU ORIGINAL POST: <video unavailable> Brown-skinned people are either poor children with hearts of gold or scary witch-doctor/fortune-teller types, which is natural since brown-skinned people are all poor and have inborn magical abilities. No other brown-skinned local people besides poor children and scary witch-doctor/fortune-teller types should be included in shots. If they absolutely must do so, have them appear for no more than one second at a time, and in the background. Have your Korean characters talk to the …