UPDATE (11/09/2006): There are a number of factual errors in this post, as to the derivation of specific Korean pop-music words. Check out Charles’ comment (appended to this post) for more info. Yeah, just goes to show you that you can’t take it for granted when people explain something to you that they actually know what they’re talking about, as I was assured of the derivation of these words more than once, back in my Iksan days. Shrug. Actually, that’s an exaggeration. The title of this post, I mean. Tonight, on the way home from the grocery store, I decided to …
Category: REVIEWS
On Appropriation, Race, Popular Culture, and Dorky White Asiaphiles
So I happened upon this blog post at reappropriate, and it got me thinking. To be honest, I didn’t trawl my way through all the comments that followed the post, but I did read a fair number of them. I was tempted to respond with something snide about how young people are so apt to map their personal anger into statements about the entire world, couched in politics for the greater safety from criticism and negative response. But I decided that, as generalizing and as mistaken as parts of the post are (in my opinion), it’s unfair to respond in …
Shatner & Nimoy, 40 Years Later
Since this clip won’t load on my Ubuntu laptop, I’m saving it for when my office PC is back online, and that means I’m posting it here. Apparently funny interview of the two old space-codgers, passed on by a Clarion classmate, I think it was.
jesus camp trailer
Over on YouTube, you can see the trailer for the documentary Jesus Camp Now do you see why I find it ironic when Americans criticise the Islamic world as being basically religious-fundamentalist?
Argh!
I wrote a nice long review of the Korean movie 괴물 (The Host), and another (shorter) review of the book Hand to Mouth by Paul Auster. However, Firefox locked up and they were lost to the ether. I’m not going to reconstruct them today, but maybe later. Argh. Time to do a bit of writing, and then reading, and then sleep.
Nekropolis, by Maureen McHugh
I picked up Maureen McHugh’s Nekropolis in Seattle while I was there, and read it when I got back to Korea, finishing it during my recent flight to Australia (where my copy became a friend’s copy). When I met Maureen, I told her what a treat it was for me, since her China Mountain Zhang was one of my formative SF reads… I’d read a bunch of Greg Egan and Bruce Sterling and Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar and David Brin’s Earth, gobbled all of that down in the few years before I stumbled onto …
Make Glue Out of Him, It’s Time, My Friends
Shawn has written eloquently about the Harlan Ellison-groping-Connie Willis scandaloid. I think that’s what it’s about, and it’s applicable. How embarrassing for those of us who don’t think that being a writer entails the right to behave like a dick for life. Has the man ever apologized? I read his intro to Dick Lupoff’s Space War Blues, and was amazed how the man seemed unable in any way to apologize. To anyone. He’s lucky Connie didn’t drop-kick him on the spot. I know she’s too classy for that, but he deserved it. Must just be that she’s so much more …
2006 Hugo Awards
Shawn Scarber reminded me that the 2006 Hugo Award Winners were announced last night. I’m surprised, since to me, “Tk’tk’tk” was a bit like Chinese guys in rubber alien suits, but it was still entertaining, I guess. I was expecting “The Clockwork Atom Bomb” to win, personally. Ah well… Shawn’s right: congratulations are in order for all.
Bruce Sterling. Creation Science
I very much enjoyed this piece by Bruce Sterling, titled Creation Science. Especially the bit on how scientists might react if AIs started doing better science than humans. One of those quirky Singularity-type moments where, if you think about it, sounds interesting.
Makes me wanna read the new book
Over at Strange Horizons, an interview with Mark Budz by my Clarion West classmate Tristan Davenport.