Some weeks, things really do raise my hackles. It’s the concatenation of all kinds of things that are probably universal, but which in Korea are much more in-your-face or more, I don’t know, commonly accepted. What’s hitting me more and more is how the atmosphere of acceptability impacts negatively on individuals and on society in general. That’s what I’m focusing on now, here in this post.
Tag: politics
No Art Ever Came From Such a Dulled Soul
A few weeks ago, Lime and I had argued about something — one of those dumb, petty, transient arguments that all couples have — and I went for a walk to cool off. As I walked along the street, I saw something awful happen. There was a thin black cat on the sidewalk, coming towards me, and it was so skinny that it reminded me of that poem of Basho’s about the girl cat, so thin on love and barley. Except that this cat wasn’t beloved, wasn’t fed on barley. It was so thin on rats and garbage, poor thing. …
The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler… and What We’re Missing Today
This book came up at a party I was at, and when she heard that I had it on the bookshelf, but hadn’t read it yet, told me I could probably get through it in a couple of hours. I scoffed, because I’m a slow reader, but she was right, that was all it took. Properly speaking, I never bought this book. Lime snagged a box of books on some online Korean doctors’ message board, and bought the box for the Robin Cook paperbacks, but a few other things were included, such as autobiographies by the Clintons, a copy of …
Tech We Need
Boing-Boing reports: Biologist Rupert Sheldrake stabbed at lecture. And to think I imagined, immediately, that it was some IDiot. But it was, apparently, a deranged visitor from Japan. I seriously wonder whether it’s going to become easier, or harder, to pinpoint whether another person is a nutball or not as we get more deeply embedded into the Net in our daily lives — I mean, as the interfaces get more and more distributed to everywhere instead of just on little screens in front of us. The scary thing is that to use the advantage, we’d have to be giving up …
Eh?
This Associated Press article had me saying, “Eh?” Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton accused rival Sen. Barack Obama and his allies of trying to stop people from voting as some of his backers have called on her to drop out of the presidential race. The Obama campaign rejected the charge, dismissing Clinton’s criticism as “completely laughable.” Yeah, I don’t know that I have an opinion on this whole Obama/Clinton thing — I’m more disenchanted with Clinton, like most people, for the obvious reasosn, but I’m honestly dubious about the ability of anyone to change Washington, let alone America, with all …
Define “Muslim” (UPDATED)
UPDATE: See the comments section, particularly Liadnan’s comment and my reply to it. Maybe the news report was even less competent than I thought! Richard Dawkins has been taken to task at times for his assertion that raising a child in one or another religious tradition is a form of child abuse, as it constitutes an abuse of the trust given one with a child. My friend Marvin and I have been discussing the intricacies of this issue over at his LJ (in the comments, but do read the post!) but I ran across an article online that demonstrates how …
You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Fight For Your Right To…
Readers at LJ: click here to check out this post which has been gobbled up by the horrible Moloch that lives somewhere in Livejournal’s API. Yeah, I gotta say, after having been around some Tibetans in Northern India, and hearing their stories first hand… I am so not into the Tibetan Buddhist theocracy, and think they probably were living off the slave-like labour of the Tibetan people, just like China’s official party line claims. But colonial occupation and genocide isn’t really much in the way of help for the Tibetan people, regardless of what the Chinese official party line claims. …
The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens
I rarely inhale books, but today was one of those days. I whipped through this book, disillusioned — who’d have thought I could be more disillusioned than I had been? — yet not really surprised. Doubtless, some interpreted this text as an attack on Mother Teresa, but if you read it carefully, it’s much more an attack on the media — conservative and liberal alike — that, during the woman’s life, glossed over major issues in her work and beliefs, issues that the majority of human beings would probably take issue with if presented directly, and beatified Mother Teresa in …
Stuff From This Week
UPDATE: This post has finally been reconstructed. Enjoy! UPDATE: Somewhere from a third to half of this post disappeared. I’ll rewrite that soon. But not today, as I’m (dramatic flourish) feeling ill! It’s been a busy lazy week. Since there’s nothing new in Gordland, I thought I’d just dump some links. I don’t do this often, but since I’ve just been catching up and surfing around (aside from a rewrite I’m working on) I have lots of stuff to share. I’ll subdivide it all by headings. One more thing: for the LJ readers out there, there are some Youtube videos …
New President
Not the one I was rooting for. Nor the one the vast majority of my students claimed to be rooting for. I’m curious to hear how the ongoing “independent investigation” of various charges of manipulation of the price of shares will go. Especially since he’ll be immune to prosecution while he’s President. He’s, ahem, promised to step down if there’s proof. How can proof be ascertained if he can’t be prosecuted? Hmm? That’s all I’m going to say for the moment. Oh, and is family name is really 이, which sounds like “E”, not Lee. We all know which e-word …