Caveat: Trick or treat? Chaka Chaka!

Yesterday was halloween. I was trying to teach the phrase “trick or treat” to my first graders. I gave them pumpkin cut-outs for them to draw faces on, then we would go out to the lobby from the classroom and say “trick or treat” to the front desk lady, and attach our pumpkins to a wall and hopefully get some candy.

As we marched out of the classroom to the lobby, the kids all in masks or witch hats, I would say “trick or treat,” and they would gamely (lamely?) try to imitate. But by the time we got to the lobby, they had given up on the difficult-to-pronounce “tr-” part of the phrase, and were simply saying “chaka chaka” when I said “trick or treat.”

It was like a dance line: “trick or treat!” I would say. “Chaka chaka!” they would answer. All in good fun.

Here’s Jeonghyeon, a third grader, wearing my hat and coat and wielding my devil’s pitchfork and mugging for the camera.

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Caveat: ((lambda (x) (cons ‘RIP x)) ‘(John McCarthy))


;; John McCarthy, creator of the LISP programming language

 ;; at MIT in the 1950s, passed away last weekend.
;; LISP is the coolest programming language in the universe.
 ;; This blog post (minus the picture) is a program:
;; it can be run at caltech’s tinylisp

((lambda (x) (cons ‘RIP x)) ‘(John McCarthy))

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 ;; xkcd elaborated:

Lisp_cycles

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Caveat: 102) 부처님. 저는이 세상에 질병이 없기를 발원하며 절합니다

“Buddha. I bow and pray not to suffer sickness in the world.”
This is #102 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).


100. 부처님. 저는이 세상에 전쟁이 없기를 발원하며 절합니다.
           “Buddha. I bow and pray not to be at war with the world.” 
101. 부처님. 저는이 세상에 가난이 없기를 발원하며 절합니다.
          “Buddha. I bow and pray not to be destitute in the world.” 
102. 부처님. 저는이 세상에 질병이 없기를 발원하며 절합니다.

I would read this one hundred second affirmation as: “Buddha. I bow and pray not to suffer sickness in the world.”
I say that, currently suffering sickness. Well. Such is life. It’s not a severe sickness, setting aside certain subtle inclincations toward hypochondria that I sometimes experience.
What I’m listening to right now.
[UPDATE 2024-04-19: The link to the music video has rotted. Yay internet! Sorry…]
Sarah Jarosz, “Left Home.”

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Caveat: Language Identity Ambiguity Syndrome

I was installing some Java add-on on my computer and walked through a series of text/approval windows that appeared like the one below.

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Obviously, Java needs to work out some language-compatibility issues. This isn’t that uncommon with software in Korea – but it seems to arise mostly in the context of computers with “language-identity ambiguity syndrome” (LIAS), where user selected some strange middle ground between only-Korean and only-English (or some other language). Such as my computer.

Meanwhile, I wonder if the Java add-on will work?  I have no idea – I just kind of clicked the most likely buttons, based on experience with other such install windows. Who knows?

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Caveat: La vida es sueño

No he podido encontrar fácilmente la fecha de composición del poema, pero parece más bien temprano que tarde. Con su título, el poeta Huidobro hace referencia al famoso drama del mismo título de Calderón de la Barca.

La vida es sueño

Los ojos andan de día en día
Las princesas posan de rama en rama
Como la sangre de los enanos
Que cae igual que todas sobre las hojas
Cuando llega su hora de noche en noche.

Las hojas muertas quieren hablar
Son gemelas de voz dolorida
Son la sangre de las princesas
Y los ojos de rama en rama
Que caen igual que los astros viejos
Con las alas rotas como corbatas

La sangre cae de rama en rama
De ojo en ojo y de voz en voz
La sangre cae como corbatas
No puede huir saltando como los enanos
Cuando las princesas pasan
Hacia sus astros doloridos.

Como las alas de las hojas
Como los ojos de las olas
Como las hojas de los ojos
Como las olas de las alas.

Las horas caen de minuto en minuto
Como la sangre
Que quiere hablar.

Vicente Huidobro es uno de mis poetas favoritos. Las hojas de otoño de estos días, rojas y marrones y doradas, me aparecen en el simbolismo aquí arriba, acompañadas por gotas de sangre y olas de las alas. Pero me pregunto, ¿quienes son las princesas?

La vida es sueño.

Entonces, anoche soñaba con una ciudad paradigmática, que parecía a una media docena de ciudades en que he vivido, que retrataba una media docena de metrópolis que he amado: Chicago, Los Ángeles, México, Filadelfia, París, Seul. Andaba de calles vacías de gente, decoradas por hojas muertas y mojadas al azar. Entre las hojas vi a una princesa, que lloraba la pérdida de un ratón mascota.

Así se puede notar los peligros inherentes de leer poesía surrealista antes de dormir. Hay que notar, también, que siempre sueño mejor cuando medio enfermo.

Debajo, una foto del otro día, mirando hacia el norte sobre el peatonal de Juyeop (주엽) en su cruce con la gran avenida de Ilsan, Jungangno (중앙로), a dos cuadras de mi departamento. Los árboles al fondo se han vestido de colores para los primeros días fríos de otoño.

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Caveat: I love kids’ art

So.  I’ve been kind of sick, lately. This low grade infection feels like it’s floating around my head. Sometimes it’s a sore throat, sometimes it feels more like a tooth ache, then it’s an ear ache.  It’s like some colony of something-or-other is migrating around my head. It makes me very sensitive to spicy food when it’s in its sore throat phase – like the capsaicin stings. So I made curried lentils and potatoes last night, but I went light on the red pepper flakes, and it was horribly bland. I suppose it was healthy, though.

I have a student Yun-jae who is in third grade, but she’s in my most elementary, lowest-level class, which is otherwise a bunch of first grade boys. I think she resents being there, but she’s actually kind of a co-teacher for me because she keeps the boys in line.

I do this thing sometimes where I tell a story, and tell them to draw a picture to accompany the story. This is fun for the lower grades and the lower ability levels. Yun-jae is an expressive artist. Here’s what she drew.

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Don’t ask what the story was – I have no idea. Maybe you can figure it out. It’s got a kind of rebus feel to it, or like a free-form manga (Asian-style comic book). I was really impressed with it – if an old guy with an art degree drew this exact picture, he could sell it at a gallery.

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Caveat: 101) 부처님. 저는이 세상에 가난이 없기를 발원하며 절합니다

“Buddha. I bow and pray not to be destitute in the world.”

This is #101 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).


99. 부처님. 저는 모든 생명이 평화롭기를 발원하며 절합니다.
        “Buddha. I bow and pray to exist harmoniously with all life.” 
100. 부처님. 저는이 세상에 전쟁이 없기를 발원하며 절합니다.
           “Buddha. I bow and pray not to be at war with the world.” 
101. 부처님. 저는이 세상에 가난이 없기를 발원하며 절합니다.

I would read this one hundred first affirmation as: “Buddha. I bow and pray not to be destitute in the world.”
I would only add that poverty is in part, at least, a state of mind.  Not that I deny real causes and inequalities – as a lapsed marxist, I must allow them.  But beyond the most basic needs of food and shelter, most of our needs are manufactured for us by our culture.  Hence true destitution is starvation and exposure to the raw elements – that’s something worth praying against.

On a lighter note, here’s a handy happiness diagram I found online.  

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Observe its truth, in your own life, today.

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Caveat: puro material nostálgico

La mano es la que recuerda…

La mano es la que recuerda
Viaja a través de los años,
desemboca en el presente
siempre recordando.

Apunta, nerviosamente,
lo que vivía olvidado.
la mano de la memoria,
siempre rescatándolo.

Las fantasmales imágenes
se irán solidificando, 
irán diciendo quién eran,
por qué regresaron.

Por qué eran carne de sueño,
puro material nostálgico.
La mano va rescatándolas 
de su limbo mágico.

José Hierro, de "Cuaderno de Nueva York" 1998

 

Caveat: Random Things Found Online

Unrelated randomness, found online, for a Sunday.

This is an angry bird, as seen in the wild.

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This is a 6 bit digital adding machine made of wood.

Interesting.

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Caveat: only 600 megabytes

"Did you do this assignment?" I said to the student.

"I can't," he replied.

"Why?"

"My brain only 600 megabytes.  That's 700 megabyte question," he explained.

I think he deserves credit for creative excuses.

Caveat: 100) 부처님. 저는이 세상에 전쟁이 없기를 발원하며 절합니다

“Buddha. I bow and pray not to be at war with the world.”

This is #100 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).


98. 부처님. 저는 맑고 밝은 마음 가지도록 발원하며 절합니다.
        “Buddha. I bow and pray to bear a clear and bright heart.” 
99. 부처님. 저는 모든 생명이 평화롭기를 발원하며 절합니다.
        “Buddha. I bow and pray to exist harmoniously with all life.” 
100. 부처님. 저는이 세상에 전쟁이 없기를 발원하며 절합니다.

I would read this one hundredth affirmation as: “Buddha. I bow and pray not to be at war with the world.”
I’m not sure if this is supposed to be “not to be at war with the world” or “that  there is no war in the world.” There is a pronoun with both a topic and and subject marker, and then the strange verb 없다 [eops-da = not to have] (which essentially slots two subjects, grammatically, with I as one subject and war as the other). So it means “I don’t have war” or “War doesn’t have me” or “Around me there is no war” or “Around war I am not.” Or something like that. Translating it clearly is challenging, given my limited understanding. I suppose from a pragmatic standpoint, all of these are roughly similar.

All of which is relevant in the context of Qaddafi’s death yesterday, which leaves me queasy despite his possibly deserving to have died – did he die fighting, or was he summarily executed? I’m guessing the latter, and that makes me uncomfortable, just as it did with Osama bin Laden.  When did summary execution once again become the norm? I thought sometime during the 20th century we decided, at a globally collective level perhaps – but most certainly at the level of “Civilization” – that such things as summary executions were uncivilized.

It’s so pleasing that the future Space Emperor signed off on this Libyan project. Um. Not. Then again, the quote from Lincoln (at link) is the right sort of foreshadowing – Mr Lincoln wasn’t exactly a pacifist, was he?

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Caveat: Occupy Your Mind (with Economic / Political Analysis)

I'm not necessarily deeply impressed by the social movements currently happening, that are going by monikers prefixed with the word "Occupy" – e.g. Occupy Wall Street. Rather than be critical of the lack of a clear program or set of demands, however, I'd rather be critical of the evident lack of clearheaded, genuine, scientific-spirited analysis. This is not just lacking on the left, though.  It's just as lacking in anything on the right, of course.  If not more so. Apparently no one has a monopoly on muddleheadedness.

Here is an interesting fact I found recently.  I saw a pointer to a review of a recent book called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. I read the review and was impresed.  At some point, I may work to acquire the book – perhaps I'll see it out on a table at Kyobo Mungo or another Korean bookstore with a good English book section. This happened with another book I recently started, called 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, by Cambridge University heterodox economist (and coincidental Korean) Ha-joon Chang.

The above mentioned review led me to a list on the wikithing about something called the Wealth Gini. Roughly speaking, the wealth Gini is a ranking of countries in the world by the "fairness" (equality) of their relative distribution of weatlh (not GDP or income, which I find less compelling).  Saliently, South Korea is fourth from the top (Japan is the top), while the USA is fifth from the bottom (Namibia is the bottom).  

What do these facts mean?

Eloquent blogic ranter "Who is IOZ" captures some of my feelings (eloquently, of course) with a recent post entitled Costaguana.

I am really enjoying the United States these days.  It has come more and more to resemble the sort of tawdry, ramshackle, sweaty, tumbledown, corrupt Greeneland that it was always destined to be–or that it always was but managed to hide behind a mountain of dollar-menu burger patties and tip-hazard SUVs.  Well, it sort of sucks to live in a decrepit police state, but at least it finally feels a little more like a real country: demonstrators, work stoppages, tent cities, felonious oligarchs helicoptering to-and-fro, private security firms, a hapless and yet still terrifying apparatus of state repression.  A fat cop on the edge of cardiac arrest swinging a knightstick fruitlessly at a dirty kid.  Forever.

Amen.  

I remain ever-more-happily self-exiled.

Caveat: Perfectionism; Perception

picturehere are some students who know so much more than we give them credit for.

Some of the teachers were sitting around earlier, in the staff room, and Curt and JJ and I were trying to puzzle out why it was that a certain student had quit the hagwon – her mother had apparently said that she was most dissatisfied with the debate class. My debate class … that is my hugest, most innovative undertaking, so far, at Karma Academy. Well, we didn’t really reach a conclusion – but I didn’t feel on the defensive about somehow having been the one to “cause” her to leave the program. It wasn’t that sort of conversation – it was just wondering what might have left the student in question unhappy with it.

Anyway, some time later one of my students from that same class came into the staff room. She was clearly bored, and on the prowl for some kind of distraction. I was on a free period, and her cohort hadn’t started yet, so she was killing time. These students from the debate class are pretty advanced, and we can have interesting and wide-ranging conversations. She told me that lately she was doing more homework.

“I do homework when my life is boring,” she explained. “Then when my life is interesting, I don’t study. So my grades go up and down.” She made a rocking wave motion with her hand.

This struck me as a brilliant bit of self-analysis. She’s a very insightful student, I thought. Somewhat in passing, I mentioned the student who had left the program that we’d been talking about earlier.

She said it was obvious why the other girl didn’t like the debate class: “She was a little bit too proud of herself. She saw in that class that she couldn’t be the top student, so she didn’t like it.” I was stunned with how succinct and perceptive (and brutally honest) this was, as it jibed well with my much less clear hunches as to what had left her unhappy with the class.

There is a certain type of perfectionism that brooks no true competition – I can speak of this with some depth of understanding, as I have perhaps been guilty of it myself, as some points in my life.

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Caveat: Napping at Cold Dawn

I was so tired last night when I got home from work around 1045, but I went to bed at my more or less normal time, 1 am, and then woke up at 630, wide awake. I thought maybe I wouldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up and had a cup of coffee and checked my email. I wanted to listen to the news on internet streaming radio, but Minnesota Public Radio is having one of its member drives, which is appropriately named because it drives me crazy, and being a member, I don’t even get the frisson of feeling guilty about it.

I started KCRW (Santa Monica), which is another radio station I listen to, but then suddenly, finishing my coffee, I was sleepy. I thought I should take advantage of that, and so I went back to bed, to try to add up to a more normal amount of sleep for the night. I’m not interested in replicating the Korean universality of sleep deprivation experiences.

It was only a one hour supplemental nap, but very strange-feeling, the way insomnia-induced “catch up” naps can be. All these disconnected, intense-seeming dreams. I sleep on the floor, Korean-style, with my head close to the windows in my little apartment, so I could feel the chill dawn air outside – maybe all the way down to freezing last night. I haven’t bothered to try to figure out how to turn on the heat in my apartment, yet. Sleeping when the air is cold is always a little bit like camping. Camping makes me think of northern Minnesota, which makes me think of Dylan. Or vice versa.

What I’m listening to right now.

I had Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” (with Johnny Cash), but I realized I’d blogged that song before, so I replaced it with “Hazel,” by Bob Dylan (embedded from some Portuguese site). [UPDATE: Link rotted, replaced with “official audio on youtube.]

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Caveat: 99) 부처님. 저는 모든 생명이 평화롭기를 발원하며 절합니다

“Buddha. I bow and pray to exist harmoniously with all life.”
This is #99 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).


97. 부처님. 저는 자비로운 마음으로 살기를 발원하며 절합니다.
         “Buddha. I bow and pray to live with a compassionate heart.”
98. 부처님. 저는 맑고 밝은 마음 가지도록 발원하며 절합니다.
        “Buddha. I bow and pray to bear a clear and bright heart.” 
99. 부처님. 저는 모든 생명이 평화롭기를 발원하며 절합니다.

I would read this ninety-ninth affirmation as: “Buddha. I bow and pray to exist harmoniously with all life.”

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Caveat: My dog bit my internet cable

One of my students cleverly updated the old “the dog ate my homework” meme, today.

When my advanced students write essays for me, they are required to email them to me before the class starts – that gives me an electronic copy and it makes it easy to negotiate corrections and due dates, etc.

pictureToday, I was pointing out I hadn’t received an essay from her in my email inbox, and she said, in all seriousness, “my dog bit my internet cable, so I couldn’t send the email.”

Nice excuse. I asked if she printed it out, she said she didn’t have a printer at home. “Really?” I asked.

She handed me something scrawled on some scrap paper, probably in the ten minutes before class started. “I see,” I concluded.

I was laughing very hard, though. The students couldn’t understand why. I tried to explain, but it was lost on them.

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Caveat: 자몽

pictureI found, in my local supermarket, for the first time ever, grapefruit. From California. Labelled as 자몽 [ja-mong], which I think is a Korean neologism for grapefruit – the dictionary gives the Konglishy 그레이프프루트 [geureipeupeuruteu]. In the dictionary, 자몽 is given as meaning citron, which is a different kind of citrus altogether.  But regardless, this is the first time I’ve ever seen grapefruit in the produce aisle anywhere in Korea.  I bought some – because I love grapefruit.  So much for living on local food, low carbon footprint, right?
I made some pasta with tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and garlic, and had dinner. And I cut sections of grapefruit and ate them as dessert. Kind of a boring life I have, I know.

I was watching this Korean drama, but the sites I habitually use to download English subtitled versions of the dramas are rapidly disappearing – the copyright police seem to be active. So I was left hanging, unable to watch the rest of the series. I’m annoyed by this – the pay site that had subtitles was so horrible (streaming at very low speeds and quality such that the shows were essentially impossible to watch) I quit my membership. If anyone reading this has advice on where to find subtitled Korean TV materials, please, please help me.

Saturday night my friend Basil was visiting up from Gwangju, where he now works, and we went to that Russian place he introduced me to.  I had borsht and svekolny (beet/garlic salad). It was really good. I wonder where one can find beets in Korea? I want to make my own borsht, but borsht without beets is sacrilegious. I bought some brown rye bread from the Russian bakery in the same neighborhood there – the clerk speaking Russian and me speaking Korean, and sort of communicating – and I had some of that, toasted, as breakfast.

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Caveat: Falling Around Ilsan

Walking from work yesterday, I had my camera. I took some pictures of fall-colored trees. The weather was humid and overcast but summer’s heat is gone. It drizzled a little bit.

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“It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude; enjoying a crowd is an art; and only he can relish a debauch of vitality at the expense of the human species, on whom, in his cradle, a fairy has bestowed the love of masks and masquerading, the hate of home, and the passion for roaming… Multitude, solitude: identical terms.” – Charles Baudelaire.

The picture below is a redwood tree growing in the Juyeop Park esplanade.  It’s a Chinese-origin dawn redwood, that loses its leaves (needles) in the winter.  A strange plant, but seeing them (they’re all over Ilsan) always make me think of my childhood in Humboldt.

A dawn redwood tree (metasequoia) in a park in suburban South Korea, with its striking red bark and some of the deciduous needles already changing to brown

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Caveat: 98) 부처님. 저는 맑고 밝은 마음 가지도록 발원하며 절합니다

“Buddha. I bow and pray to bear a clear and bright heart.”

This is #98 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).


96. 부처님. 저는 매사에 긍정적이기를 발원하며 절합니다.
        “Buddha. I bow and pray to think positively in everything.”
97. 부처님. 저는 자비로운 마음으로 살기를 발원하며 절합니다.
         “Buddha. I bow and pray to live with a compassionate heart.”
98. 부처님. 저는 맑고 밝은 마음 가지도록 발원하며 절합니다.

I would read this ninety-eighth affirmation as: “Buddha. I bow and pray to bear a clear and bright heart.”

Here is a picture of an exterior temple wall from somewhere in Jeollanam Province that I took sometime in 2010.

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Caveat: C ya

picture#include “stdio.h”
int main(void)
{
printf(“goodbye, world\n”);
return 1;
// – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
// dennis ritchie, co-inventor of
// the c programming language,
// has passed away.
// computer nerds everywhere
// will mourn his passing.
// – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
}

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Caveat: Army Dreams

I awoke from a dream in which I was "back in" the Army.  These sorts of dreams are not that uncommon, really, for me – my own rather impactful military experience, combined with media images of military life (because of Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.), and combined with the fact that I live in the neighborhood where I was in active service (Northwest Gyeonggi), means these memories pop up pretty easily and frequently.

The dream was strange in that genre, however, because it was a dream in which I was "happily" in the Army – this is not common at all.  I was some kind of officer, it seemed.  And the soldiers under me were my middle school students.  This makes sense.  But this wasn't goofing around – this was serious Army stuff.  We had to establish a camp amid bitter cold winter weather.  But it was going well – unloading trucks, setting up these large tents, establishing a secure perimeter with guards.

There wasn't a lot of "plot" to the dream – it was mostly atmospherics.  Dreams are sometimes like that.   The feel of the "Team Spirit" joint US Army / ROK Army exercises that I remember from 1991, but populated with people from my current life.

Then my father showed up.  He wasn't helpful.  He got in the way, and he needed help.  This is psychologically transparent – viz. Dream Interpretation 101.  But I haven't had much interaction with my dad lately, so it's interesting that it dredged up from my subconscious just now.  Is it the change in weather?  

I awoke to an almost chilly fall rain, plonking outside my open window; rice and coffee for breakfast.

Caveat: 왜저래

Yesterday we had our “Simpsons” Debate Test in my Mon/Weds/Fri cohort middle-school debate class. Today we will have the same debate in the Tues/Thurs/Sat cohort.
I created a unit for my debate class that focuses on learning about the types of mistakes one can make in a debate – meaning reasoning errors and logical fallacies. To make it more interesting, I decided to go with a tongue-in-cheek, humorous theme, and so the debate topic is the “Simpsons” (all the kids love the Simpsons, of course). The other quirk of this unit is that I tell the kids I want them to deliberately make mistakes in their debate speeches. They really get into this – they’ve come up with some pretty humorous and silly reasons to support or oppose the proposition that “Bart is smarter than Lisa.”

One of my favorites, which I paraphrase: “Socrates once said a wise man is a man who says he’s not wise. Bart says he’s dumb, so he must be smart.” Yes, they’re really quoting Socrates (of course, they find the quote in Korean, and so it’s Socrates via translation through Korean, but I do remember a sentiment of this sort from him). Isn’t the internet wonderful?

I took some video and might post some of that later, if I get around to it. Meanwhile, here are some drawings by two of the talented students in that class. It’s a very small class – only 6 students. Claire drew a cartoon of the day’s theme.

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Then she drew a class portrait. I’m not sure why she made the two boys in the class so small – Alex is taller than I am. And note that she gave me only 4 hairs on the top of my head.  In the picture, my name in Korean is “왜저래” [wae-jeo-rae] which is a sort of joking “Korean name” for me, because of how it sounds similar to my name. If you type it into google translate, it says it means “What the hell?” – I don’t think it’s that strong, but the pragmatics are similar.

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Finally, Jin drew a portrait of Claire.

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Caveat: 97) 부처님. 저는 자비로운 마음으로 살기를 발원하며 절합니다

“Buddha. I bow and pray to live with a compassionate heart.”

This is #97 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).


95. 부처님. 저는 매사에 정직하기를 발원하며 절합니다.
“Buddha. I bow and pray to be honest in everything.”
96. 부처님. 저는 매사에 긍정적이기를 발원하며 절합니다.
“Buddha. I bow and pray to think positively in everything.”
97. 부처님. 저는 자비로운 마음으로 살기를 발원하며 절합니다.

I would read this ninety-seventh affirmation as: “Buddha. I bow and pray to live with a compassionate heart.”
What I’m listening to right now.

picture[UPDATE 2024-04-20: in the fullness of time, all internet links will rot. The linked video on this page has done so. Let us show compassion toward those rotted links, and toward the incompetent internet giants that make them happen.]

Antonio Carlos Jobim’s instrumental from his album Stone Flower, “Tereza My Love.” As one critic put it: “Brazilian music made for Americans.” But that doesn’t really detract from it, that much.

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Caveat: Where I Work

Work was long today.  I had 8 classes, which is the maximum possible under the scheduling system used.  There were good, bad, indifferent – as usual.  It’s pretty tiring, though, but I felt positive at the end of the day.
I took some pictures walking to work – not sure why, just a random impulse.  Here’s a view of where I work.  It’s the building with the bright yellow sign on the top floor (5th floor), across the street, a little bit left of the centerline of the photo.  The sign says 카르마 [kareuma = karma].
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Note that I’m standing in front of my previous Ilsan place-of-work.

Caveat: Found Cartographies

pictureIf you like maps and killing time online, I highly recommend a site I’ve found called Radical Cartography. I spent way too much time yesterday killing time surfing the various maps and graphs on the site. It’s like when I used to “read” atlases as a kid. Here’s one of Chicago’s ethnic geography that was very interesting.

The website also presents some more abstract, or experimental “maps” or even things that might fit better into the category of experimental “art.” Below:

Terry Atkinson & Michael Baldwin, 1967 
"Map of a thirty-six square mile surface 
area of the Pacific Ocean west of Oahu"
"Scale 3 Inches : 1 mile"

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Caveat: 96) 부처님. 저는 매사에 긍정적이기를 발원하며 절합니다

“Buddha. I bow and pray to think positively in everything.”

This is #96 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).


94. 부처님. 저는 매사에 최선을 다하기를 발원하며 절합니다.
         “Buddha. I bow and pray to do the best in everything.”
95. 부처님. 저는 매사에 정직하기를 발원하며 절합니다.
         “Buddha. I bow and pray to be honest in everything.” 
96. 부처님. 저는 매사에 긍정적이기를 발원하며 절합니다.

I would read this ninety-sixth affirmation as: “Buddha. I bow and pray to think positively in everything.”

pictureThis affirmation is quite important. It is perhaps one of the affirmations that I have in fact been practicing, on and off, for a very long time. It brings to mind the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, writing on Spinoza: “ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation.” I’ve mentioned that quote before, on this blog – it’s one of my favorite and most meaningful, so I come back to it a lot. I found the silly image of Baruch de Spinoza in a random online search.  Philosophical powers, indeed!

At hagwon, yesterday, we returned to the regular schedule (post-시험대비, so to speak), but many of the middle-schoolers didn’t bother to show up – out recovering from their mid-terms, I suspect. So we ended up showing them a movie: Green Lantern. One of the other teachers thought it could be justified “educationally” by having me ask some “comprehension” questions afterward, so I got to watch it too – during which I took notes and imagined I was going to have to write some kind of review. My semiotician’s trope-detector kicked into overdrive, entertainingly.

We didn’t finish the movie, but in the last few minutes of class, I asked the kids what they would do if the alien had chosen to give one of them the green lantern and magic green ring (with it’s seemingly infinite, vaguely Nietzschean powers).

One girl said, confidently, “I will sell it.” I laughed. Money is better than infinite powers of Will. Of course. So… Man. Superman. Billionaire.

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Caveat: Discipline and Punish

I recently ran across a Time magazine article about South Korea’s hagwon industry (“Kids, stop studying so hard!”). It even mentions my city of Ilsan by name.

In some ways, it’s a pretty good introduction to the hagwon industry. It makes several points and observations that have been echoing around my skull in other contexts – most notably, it points out that other countries near the top of the achievement list in education, such as Finland, manage to do so without testing their children into submission.

But that connects to another point the article makes – that the hagwon system is, in fact, much older than Korea’s modernization – there were private “cram schools” in a Confucian mold even in medieval Korea, to help the kids of low- and mid-level aristocrats enter the civil service.

But that connects to a point I’ve been thinking about that the article doesn’t mention: in a Foucauldian sense, the hagwon system might be viewed as a sophisticated and highly successful means of social control (this blog post’s title references the philospher’s work that I obliquely have in mind). Perhaps forcing high proportions of the country’s youth into perpetual states of anxiety and sleep deprivation not only achieves those remarkable and famous South Korean suicide rates, but also guarantees a sort of social quietude that is the envy of many other countries. I’m speaking a little bit tongue-in-cheek, of course.

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Caveat: The Better Angels of Our Nature

The world isn’t really that bad.  Steven Pinker made some observations recently in the Wall Street Journal that I found confirmed some intuitions I’ve had about historical trends, especially with respect to violence.  The fact is that in terms of overall trend, violence is steadily decreasing in the world, despite increasing population.  This graph, in particular, shows his point very clearly.

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If someone would like to try to refute the point being made by the article and emphasized by the graph above, I’m open to argument – but I really think that all the doom-and-gloom people have got it so very wrong about the world, about history, about where we’re at and where our world is going.

The title of this post comes from Abraham Lincoln, whom Pinker quotes in his article.

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Caveat: No More Jobs

“Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.” – Steve Jobs

pictureOnce upon a time, I was a huge fanboy of Apple Corp in its first incarnation (see left) – my uncle’s Apple ][, which entered our household when I was still in junior high in the late 70’s, was my first and most excellent exposure to computers, both as tool for writing and for learning programming. Not to mention killing vast amounts of time with games like space invaders.

Frankly, I’ve always felt that Apple Corp in its second incarnation, post-Jobs-exile, was less thrilling or impressive. I found the latter-day, closed-garden design philosophy personally repugnant (I think this is the open-source programming geek, in me), and I felt the products were over-priced and excessively hyped. More marketing than engineering, basically. I have so far managed to get past 10% of the new century without owning or interacting with an Apple product.

Nevertheless, I believe that Steve Jobs was undoubtedly a Thomas Edison type figure for our age. His passing is premature.

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Caveat: 95) 부처님. 저는 매사에 정직하기를 발원하며 절합니다

“Buddha. I bow and pray to be honest in everything.”

This is #95 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).


93. 부처님. 저는 매사에 겸손하기를 발원하며 절합니다.
         “Buddha. I bow and pray to be humble in everything.”
94. 부처님. 저는 매사에 최선을 다하기를 발원하며 절합니다.
         “Buddha. I bow and pray to do the best in everything.”
95. 부처님. 저는 매사에 정직하기를 발원하며 절합니다.

I would read this ninety-fifth affirmation as: “Buddha. I bow and pray to be honest in everything.”

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