So it seems that, even now that a couple of hostages have been released, the (recently somewhat muted) negative sentiments felt by netizens in Korea towards Protestant fanatics (which I wrote about here) still have not ebbed away. Comments on the subject among netizens seem to suggest a continued negative feeling. One of the harshest I’ve heard so far, related to me by Lime, was when someone commented, “We should go to the airport on the day they get back… and bring eggs.” A couple of things seem certain: The hostages who do get released aren’t going to come home …
Tag: politics
Pre-Enlightenment “Rationality” (So-Called) and Aquinas’ “Five Ways”
Why Aquinas’ Five Ways? So. Toward the end of a discussion about whether atheists are angry and unhappy people — by the way, my basic sentiment is that if they are that way, it’s because of all the zealot nutters we have to deal with in life, and that, actually, most atheists I know aren’t all that angry or sad — someone challenged my assertion that Aquinas’ Five Ways is transparently fallacious and relies on all kinds of assumptions that simply need not be accepted by a listener. This was in the course of a discussion that had such amazing …
A Sticky Question
UPDATE: The video is back online, but embedding is now disallowed, by the author’s request. Too bad. But you can go see it here. Original Post: They want to make abortion illegal. Sooooo, then… what should the punishment be, of thoughtful and long-devoted Christians? (For those reading this on LJ, the video won’t embed, so here’s a link. Except, ha, someone put a copyright claim on it. Yeah, RIGHT.Makes me wish I’d downloaded it so I could upload it again somewhere, a few times. Anyway, here’s an article on the same issue, and hopefully the copyright claim gets resolved, or …
News Rage
Lately I’ve been experiencing something new to me: news rage. It’s not the stories in the newspaper that get me. Rather, it’s the Korean news stories that never make it to the English newspapers that get my blood boiling. Stories about teenaged girls being raped and left to die from exposure in the cold, for example; or about a desperate family approaching cops, begging them to help find their kidnapped daughter who is in the neighborhood, and being yelled at for interrupting some fucking cop’s precious sleep — only to find the daughter the next day, raped (of course) and …
Blackface Film Online
I’m reading John Strasbaugh’s history of blackface performance in America, Black Like You, and finding it fascinating, though I suspect that some of his arguments have angered a lot of people. (Even I feel vaguely uncomfortable with some of them, though others seem less objectionable that they are probably thought to be.) In any case, he mentioned a couple of blackface-styled cartoons that had been banned during the course of discussing blackface in films more generally. I thought I’d linkdump it, partly so I can find these links again. All This and Rabbit Stew (1941) Coal Black and de Sebben …
Uncle Ben, CEO?
Uncle Ben, CEO? A slideshow of racist advertising Alexis linked to.
All in a Day
I finished reading a really good book today. Happy happy.But you need to wait for my end-of-April reviews to hear more. I am finally deep into reworking my Korean superheroes story. So far, it’s just small edits and collating the comments from my crit group — the comments I happen to agree with, anyway — but much of tomorrow and Sunday will be taken up with shoulder/digital-grindstone interfacing. After that, we’ll see. I spent an hour this evening with a tiny class of mine, discussing the first page-and-a-half of the graphic novel V for Vendetta with my students, kind of …
Yi So-yeon
I figure as possible the biggest anglophone hard-SF geek in Korea, I should at least mention this on my blog. The Korea Times reported on Yi So-yeon recently, who may be the first Korean astronaut. I don’t know the other guy, but having seen the podcasted video interviews with her on SeoulGlow (which are worth your while) I’m familiar with her and therefore rooting for her. Michael’s been covering the story a lot better than I have, and I’m a few months behind on it, but I wanted at least to note it. One of the odd things I’ve noticed …
Give Up Cars, Save the World
Here’s another reason to like Iain M. Banks. (via a posting on Culture List.)
Who’s More Embarrassing, Ted Haggard or Richard Dawkins?
Over at Goth House Comics you’ll find a “a really long essay about the nature of religion” which I think merits some attention, though I disagree with parts of it. It was, apparently, written in response to this interview with the wonderful, terrible, fascinating Richard Dawkins, whose latest book, The God Delusion, is on my to-read list though, with the number of books I brought back from Canada, it may be quite a while until I actually read it. (And, I should add, Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels is on the very same reading list.) The post reminded me of …