So, I presume everyone’s heard of the row between Google and China, over the (obviously state-sponsored) hacking of Google accounts in the hopes of nabbing those pesky Chinese democracy activists? If not, this article might catch you up. It contains at least one howler: The California-based company, which launched in China in 2006, said it would quit the country unless the government relaxed censorship. On Tuesday, the Chinese government said Google and other foreign companies had to obey the country’s laws and traditions. The howler being that if you know even just a little about China’s traditions and history, you …
Tag: history
It is to Flunk
I was grading a stack of student assignments — specifically, feedback on readings, which I make them do on the theory that it helps them prepare for discussions of the texts — when I ran across a particularly saddening passage in response to “The Multiculture,” an essay about Torontonian multiculturalism, which I’ll only paraphrase here: If I were a Torontonian, I would look at foreigners in two ways. In one way, I’d see them as invaders, because they would be speaking foreign languages and bringing foreign customs to my land. But I would also see them as bringing new life …
Muddlings Both Helpful and Not-So-Helpful
First, the not-so-helpful: It’s amazing what happens when someone really, really thinks that, say, “traditional” means “good.” For example (and yes, this is a paraphrase): After reading the essay, I think that we can’t say Japanese radio in Korea was good for Korea. Yes, it allowed us to create a popular music of our own, at a time when intellectuals were insisting that traditional (court) music was the only “pure” Korean music. But since that music was influenced by Japanese pop music of the time, we can’t really say it was a way of resisting Japan. But since it had …
Korea Society Talk on Robo Taekwon V
Plenty of SF readers who come through here aren’t necessarily interested in Korean history and culture in general, so it’s unlikely they’d be listeners to the Korea Society Podcast. However, for those who have an interest in global SF and pop culture, there’s a podcast you might want to check out over there. It’s a recording of a talk given way back in February 2008 by Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park, a prof at Notre Dame. The talk is titled “Our Toys, Our Selves: Robot Taekwon V and South Korean Identity.” (That’s a direct link to the MP3, so if you …
Ada Lovelace Day
Argh! I missed it–unsurprising, since I’ve been deluged with work and email, and since I also spent more than an hour after a long string of classes today, helping some students figure out how to find an angle for their article for the magazine we’re working on. (So if I haven’t replied to an email, it’s coming soon, dear reader/correspondent.) Well, Nalo and Jetse both blogged for the occasion, among, I’m sure, many others. But I did not let Lady Lovelace go unnoticed on her special day: when one of my students claimed (today, in Media English) that the “first …