갈 데까지 가다
go-FUTPART point-UNTIL go
[One] goes as far as the point [one] will go.
"Pushing the envelope." Maybe. Really, just an essentially literal reading is pretty idiomatic sounding to me, in English: Going as far as one can go.
The picture is one I took at Patrick's Point, California, in 2009.
In my young-ones class, yesterday, we were drawing our own versions of the current Disney book we're reading. The kids drew some horses, for example.
The book is a very simple reader based on the recent Pixar movie, Brave.
Here is the book cover, and the page we were working on.
Here is my version – I always do what I ask the kids to do, as it makes things easier to explain and it's more fun, too.
Here are the kids' versions. I like their horses.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, at That Atlanic, waxes passing eloquent as is his wont on the topic of torture vs the drone-war:
… The president is anti-torture — which is to say he thinks the water-boarding of actual confirmed terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was wrong. He thinks it was wrong, no matter the goal — which is to say the president would not countenance the torture of an actual terrorist to foil a plot against the country he's sworn to protect. But the president would countenance the collateral killing of innocent men, women and children by drone in pursuit of an actual terrorist. What is the morality that holds the body of a captured enemy inviolable, but not the body of those who happen to be in the way?
I present the quote above not entirely in full context – there are other things Coates said that I don't agree with as much. But this paragraph struck to the core of my discomfort with the obvious – to me – fundamental bushcheneyism of Obama's national security policies. Since the main reason I supported Obama in 2008 was his repudiation of Bush's post-ninelevenism, my disappointment, at this point, is complete.
Well, I've lived in South Korea during most of North Korea's nuclear career. They tested another one.
Each time they do one of these tests, I can't help but reflect for a moment how bizarre the whole thing is – South Korea is this prosperous, moderately well-adjusted OECD member nation, but they have this neighbor, you see… a crazy uncle, no less, who throws rocks at passing cars and sits in his yard playing with his gun collection and shooting targets in his kitchen. Further, everyone knows he beats his children and locks them in the basement, and he comes around asking for handouts every few months because he's run out of money.
What do you do with a crazy uncle neighbor like that?
개밥에 도토리
dog-food-IN acorn
[Like] acorns in dogfood.
This means someone or something out of place. "A fish out of water" or "A square peg in a round hole" are perhaps similar English expressions.
Anyway, I like it. I imagine the dog, eyeing his food suspiciously.
I went into the city today. It was bright and sunny but very cold.
Today was the last day of my Lunar New Year holiday for which I have been doing absolutely nothing interesting. I met my friend Peter and we went to the big Kyobo bookstore at Gwanghwamun, where I bought some books to read – 2 history books: why am I so into reading history these days?
I was craving pseudo-Mexican for lunch, so we walked over to this place I know about. But the pseudo-Mexican joint along Jongno was closed. Who ever heard of a pseudo-Mexican joint closed for the day after Lunar New Year?
So Peter and I had pizza and talked for a few hours. He has a plan to hike the length of Korea after his contract runs out. I am full of admiration and jealousy over this plan.
Abel et Caïn
I
Race d'Abel, dors, bois et mange;
Dieu te sourit complaisamment.
Race de Caïn, dans la fange
Rampe et meurs misérablement.
Race d'Abel, ton sacrifice
Flatte le nez du Séraphin!
Race de Caïn, ton supplice
Aura-t-il jamais une fin?
Race d'Abel, vois tes semailles
Et ton bétail venir à bien;
Race de Caïn, tes entrailles
Hurlent la faim comme un vieux chien.
Race d'Abel, chauffe ton ventre
À ton foyer patriarcal;
Race de Caïn, dans ton antre
Tremble de froid, pauvre chacal!
Race d'Abel, aime et pullule!
Ton or fait aussi des petits.
Race de Caïn, coeur qui brûle,
Prends garde à ces grands appétits.
Race d'Abel, tu croîs et broutes
Comme les punaises des bois!
Race de Caïn, sur les routes
Traîne ta famille aux abois.
II
Ah! race d'Abel, ta charogne
Engraissera le sol fumant!
Race de Caïn, ta besogne
N'est pas faite suffisamment;
Race d'Abel, voici ta honte:
Le fer est vaincu par l'épieu!
Race de Caïn, au ciel monte,
Et sur la terre jette Dieu!— Charles Baudelaire
I once wrote part of a novella on the topic of Cain and Abel. I didn't finish it, but I had titled it "The Open Country" – this was because the version of the Bible that I read all the way through for my Old and New Testament classes in college was the modern New English Bible translation (1970), which renders the first part of Genesis 4:8 as "Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let us go into the open country.'" This is not, actually, the most accepted translation of this verse, which is more commonly rendered "Let's go out to the field." But that latter sounds so prosaic – while the NEB version resonated with me – to such an extent that it became the germ of a story that still sticks with me to this day.
I spent the day working on my reading. I'm getting ready to write some kind of a post about my efforts with trying to read Michael Nerlich's El Persiles Descodificado (which is the Spanish translation of his brilliant work in the original French, Le Persiles décodé). It's dense going – I can spend several hours on only a few pages of this book, which is about 700 pages plus indices and bibliography. I want to do something with it, though. I once noted that Nerlich's book was, in some respects, the PhD thesis that I was intending to write about Cervantes' [broken link! FIXME] Persiles before I dropped out of grad school. So I was relieved, in a way, to find that the book had already been written. It removed from me the burden to do it. Of course, there was a modicum of academic jealousy, blended into that. Is there name for that kind of emotion – relief and mild, intellectual jealousy? – there should be.
So what am I going to write, that will be more than what I just wrote? I want to try to write a summary of my thesis idea, maybe: as it's evolved in the last half decade, or so, since I last attempted to work on [broken link! FIXME] it in around 2005.
Meanwhile, speaking of conspiracies and apophenia (wait, I was speaking about [broken link! FIXME] apophenia?), I found this hilarious website that randomly composes conspiracy theories. I spent some hours on it, learning, for example, that the pope is involved in poisoning people using radioactive isotopes manufactured by IBM on secret bases in Roswell, New Mexico. Get it? It's not unlike the other random text generators I've [broken link! FIXME] found before – but because of the inherent incoherence of conspiracy theories, it works perfectly.
I spent the day having a kind of obsessively Radiohead-centered listening experience. I come away from that further convinced (as I've been convinced, [broken link! FIXME] before) that Radiohead is one of the awesomest musical groups imaginable. Not only is their music great, but they aren't pirate-paranoid – I can download whatever I like, easily. The consequence of this is that I've donated more to the group on their website, over the years, than I've spent on more locked-down music of similar quality. OK, that's enough of a rant, on that.
What I'm listening to right now.
Radiohead, "Karma Police." Multiple ironies. Yes.
The lyrics.
Karma police
Arrest this man
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge
He's like a detuned radioKarma police
Arrest this girl
Her Hitler hairdo
Is making me feel ill
And we have crashed her partyThis is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
When you mess with usKarma police
I've given all I can
It's not enough
I've given all I can
But we're still on the payrollThis is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
When you mess with usFor a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myselfFor a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
행복하고 마음 훈훈한 설 되시고 생각하는 대로 모든 것 이루시는 새해 되실겁니다.
That was the text message from my boss for this Lunar New Year's Day. It's a kind sentiment, but grammatically it's monstrous. Roughly: "May you have a new year in which you accomplish everything, as soon as you think to have a warm-hearted and happy New Year's Day." Which is to say, positive thoughts on this day will ensure success throughout the year. Maybe.
I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror
By dark the world is once again intact,
Or so the mirrors, wiped clean, try to reason. . .
–James Merrill
This dream of water–what does it harbor?
I see Argentina and Paraguay
under a curfew of glass, their colors
breaking, like oil. The night in Uruguay
is black salt. I'm driving toward Utah,
keeping the entire hemisphere in view–
Colombia vermilion, Brazil blue tar,
some countries wiped clean of color: Peru
is titanium white. And always oceans
that hide in mirrors: when beveled edges
arrest tides or this world's destinations
forsake ships. There's Sedona, Nogales
far behind. Once I went through a mirror–
from there too the world, so intact, resembled
only itself. When I returned I tore
the skin off the glass. The sea was unsealed
by dark, and I saw ships sink off the coast
of a wounded republic. Now from a blur
of tanks in Santiago, a white horse
gallops, riderless, chased by drunk soldiers
in a jeep; they're firing into the moon.
And as I keep driving in the desert,
someone is running to catch the last bus, men
hanging on to its sides. And he's missed it.
He is running again; crescents of steel
fall from the sky. And here the rocks
are under fog, the cedars a temple,
Sedona carved by the wind into gods–
each shadow their worshiper. The siren
empties Santiago; he watches
–from a hush of windows–blindfolded men
blurred in gleaming vans. The horse vanishes
into a dream. I'm passing skeletal
figures carved in 700 B.C.
Whoever deciphers these canyon walls
remains forsaken, alone with history,
no harbor for his dream. And what else will
this mirror now reason, filled with water?
I see Peru without rain, Brazil
without forests–and here in Utah a dagger
of sunlight: it's splitting–it's the summer
solstice–the quartz center of a spiral.
Did the Anasazi know the darker
answer also–given now in crystal
by the mirrored continent? The solstice,
but of winter? A beam stabs the window,
diamonds him, a funeral in his eyes.
In the lit stadium of Santiago,
this is the shortest day. He's taken there.
Those about to die are looking at him,
his eyes the ledger of the disappeared.
What will the mirror try now? I'm driving,
still north, always followed by that country,
its floors ice, its citizens so lovesick
that the ground–sheer glass–of every city
is torn up. They demand the republic
give back, jeweled, their every reflection.
They dig till dawn but find only corpses.
He has returned to this dream for his bones.
The waters darken. The continent vanishes.
I like this poem. A continental, geographical dream, of the sort I sometimes have.
What I'm listening to right now.
David Bowie, "Andy Warhol." This song takes me back to college.
Here's an image (found online) of Valdivia, Chile, where I lived for 6 months in 1994.
I'm teaching a lot of debate classes, these days: more, by almost an order of magnitude, relative to previous terms at Karma. And I make video of all my students' speeches. And I evaluate the speeches and give scores. This is a laborious process, and part of why I'm feeling overwhelmed with work. But I have decided it's a really great way to get middle schoolers actually talking in English class. The combination of natural adolescent reticence on the one hand combined with the horrifying discomfort of speaking a foreign language they don't feel confident with, on the other, means that getting middle school English students to actually talk is about as easy as pulling teeth from a chicken. But if you turn on a video camera and tell them it's a test, they'll stand up at the podium, shaking and quaking, and give their damnedest. It's a bit coercive, relative to my most preferred methods, but overall I'm pleased with how well it works.
Here's one of my favorite classes, giving some speeches on the debate proposition: "Immigration to South Korea should be encouraged." They complained that this topic was difficult, but they all said it was interesting, too.
As a bonus, this video has a complex connection to an earlier blog post: I'll have to give a door prize if anyone actually identifies the connection. I don't know if I have any blog readers loyal or attentive enough to do this. So this is a kind of stealth-test.
Is it just because I've been reading Cervantes that this strikes me as profound?
I had a 2nd grade student, Anna, who explained to me: "Puppet Has Puppet." The story…
We have been using puppets, to do a role play, in class. The story is a variation on the infamous Little Red Riding Hood. But my collection of puppets doesn't include wolves or little girls or grandmas. So I had the innovative idea of making "costumes" for the puppets, and the kids are loving it. It's a long process, that we're doing every Thursday class.
So there are some side-characters, not part of the classic folktale but included in this version, including a Snail and a Butterfly that Little Red Riding Hood meet on her way through the forest. We were trying to solve the problem of which puppets would "play" these two roles and we made some cut-outs of cloth to represent the Snail and the Butterfly. Then Anna attached the two cut-outs to a wombat-puppet's "hands" and announced her breakthrough observation: "puppet has puppet."
Brilliant.
Here's a picture I snapped – in the staffroom (in front of the distracting bulletin board – sorry) – of the wombat puppet with snail and butterfly puppets attached to its hands. The snail is on the left, the butterfly is on the right. The wombat is wearing a "dress" (more like a cape) because it also plays the role of grandma.
까마귀 날자 배 떨어 진다
crow fly-WHEN pear shake-down-INF-PASS-PRES
When the crow flies off the pear falls down.
This is actually about false correlation – mistaking coincidence for causality. This is highly interesting to me, and I like crows and I like pears and I like the zen-koan sound of this proverb. I've made it my new status message on Kakaotalk. Kakaotalk is Korea's ubiquitous instant messenger service that I use on my phone now, mostly to answer the singular question: "teacher, whats the homework?"
I've meditated on false correlation a great deal. There's a name for it, in philosophy: [broken link! FIXME] apophenism.
What I'm listening to right now.
Don McLean, "American Pie." This song seemed very meaningful and significant when I was 17. It seems less so, now, but it's still an excellent song. I remember sitting on a sand dune on Mad River Beach in Arcata, memorizing this song. I spent a lot of time memorizing poetry and song lyrics in high school – is this something nearly universal to adolescence?
Here's is a picture I took on a dune at Mad River Beach in Arcata, in 2007.
"I've
never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of
humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an
adhesive." – Randall Munroe (Author of xkcd comic).
What I'm listening to right now.
Kyasma, "Radioactivity." That's a rather creepy video, but interesting too. Like a feature film in 4 minutes. Well done.
This is a fun lesson. They copied the story (it's not composition, just copy – this is very low level), and read the story to me.
강 건너 불 구경이다
river across fire watching-IS
It's […like] watching a fire across the river.
I guess this means "someone else's business," or one site had "sit on one's hands," which I don't see as being the same as "someone else's business" but I can see the relation.
Last night, I
dreamed I was in Hades. Hades was a windowless library with infinite
stacks and poor lighting. There were dead people around, and one was
advised not to "listen" to them too much. But everyone eventually ends
up listening to the dead people, and their neverending litanies of
frustration, complaint, anger, despair.
One eventually realizes one is
dead, too, in the style of Pedro Páramo.
It’s always amazing to hear from former students. I received the following email from a former student, the other day.
Dear teacher Jared Way
Hello, my name is ___ and I am a high school student now in Korea.
Why I decided to send this message to you is to express my thankfulness to you.
I was an elementary school student maybe 5 years ago, and I still
remember that you have taught me english in academy for quite long time.
Why I still remember you is because (maybe I’m not sure if you will remember me) of the story thay you have told us.
One day you told me that in America, about 70% use Windows as an
personal OS, but in Korea almost 99.99% use Windows just as monopoly.
And you told us about another operating system called ‘Linux’.
I was curious, and I searched over the internet to install Linux on my
computer, but it was too hard for me. So I asked you what kind of Linux I
have to install, and you told me that Ubuntu will be fine. And also
you’ve kindly print some installation manual to me and explained how it
will works, and how to install.
After I have succeeded to install Ubuntu on my computer as a multi-boot,
I still remember that you told other teachers thay I’m really good at
computer! And I also remember thay I have asked some Greek words to you
because i was also interested im Greek language.
Anyway, you gave me an worthy experience to Ubuntu as young, and from that on, I’ve tried to use Ubuntu everyday.
So,,,, now I’m now in “Daegu Science High School”, a school for students
talented in Science, and mathematics, of course still use Ubuntu in my
laptop : )
Because I have experienced Ubuntu when I was young, I could learn many
computer knowledge and my information science teacher in school asked me
to make an lecture resources about Ubuntu and Linux. Also my
information science report on first semester was “Usage of Ubuntu as an
operating system in science high school, and reaserch the relativity
between Android” which I got highest grade, and help me to get ‘A’ in
total.
So, I was always thankful to you to give such a great experience but
cannot,,, but I thought that i must do, and found your homepage and now
writing this long letter.
So, thanks for reading this long long letter, and I hope we could talk each other more by letter or phone in advance 🙂
So thank you teacher Jared, and I’ll wait for your reply~
26 January, 2013
I was very flattered. Daegu Science High School is very prestigious, too. I sometimes see my sharing these kinds of messages here in my blog as seeming overly self-centered or self-promotional, but it’s one of the reasons I like teaching – that knowledge, that comes back, sometimes years later, that I’ve maybe made a difference in someone’s life.
The email has some irony, as my own work with Ubuntu Linux ended not long after having apparently evangelized this student – I gave up on Linux, for the most part, in 2009 – it was too difficult to get Linux to behave in its interactions with typical walled-garden Korean internet, for one thing (e.g. Korea’s ActiveX addiction). But the smart phone / Android world created by Samsung is changing this, finally (and fast). Perhaps if I was using Linux, now, I’d have less frustration.
Unrelatedly, here is a picture from walking to work yesterday, from near the same spot where I took the [broken link! FIXME] mist/rain picture the other day.
The thing about computer programming languages is that they're all weird subsets of English, basically (BASICally?).
This was always both interesting and disturbing to me, as a linguist. I have been fascinated by the idea of possible alternatives to that Engish hegemony. Finally, someone is doing something about it – not that it will go anywhere. Some guy is making a programming language based on Arabic, called قلب [qlb i.e. qalab? = heart, core] – here's an article about it at The Reg.
This pleases me both as a linguist and as a former computer nerd. I wish this project the best of luck.
We had a few day’s break from winter, but last night it came back. Here’s what I saw out my window when I woke up this morning.
Here's a graph that shows the true cause of global warming.
Brought to you by venganza.org, better known as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I ran across this image at The Atlantic.
Our bluesky future, prefigured in Beijing – there's something bladerunnerish about it, innit? I think some of the crappy weather here in Ilsan has been a result of eastward-drifting Beijing smog – it's only a few hundred miles west of here, after all.
Unrelated, there's a website for a magazine called The Journal of Irreproducible Results
(which I'd never heard of before). A satirical work, no doubt. I'm
annoyed that they don't have more content online – subscribing to the
paper magazine seems way too old school for my current lifestyle. They
did have an intresting graph, called "All theories proven with one graph."
What I'm listening to right now.
Röyksopp, "I Wanna Know."
간에 기별도 안간다
liver-IN news-NOTEVEN not-go-PRES
Not even news to the liver.
This isn't that hard to translate, but I had no idea what it meant, nor, once I found what it meant with an online search, why it meant that. Allegedly, it means something like "Not enough to feed a fly." Apparently, the idea is that if you eat too small of an amount, the liver, which participates in digestion according to traditional Eastern medicine, wouldn't get the news. Extended metaphorically, it means just something too small to matter, i.e. "Just ripples in the ocean."
Here is a picture of some mist or rain along Gangseonno, walking to work earlier today.
My umbrella broke. How many umbrellas have I broken?
I am a child of the redwoods – of the perpetual dim winter rains of California's far northwest. It is a place where, like in the Pacific Northwest in general, it rains so much that the inhabitants take a dim view of umbrellas as being strictly for visitors and for the weak-souled. Umbrellas are an alien custom. Use an umbrella? Why bother?
I never used an umbrella until I came to Korea. But here in Korea, if you walk in the rain without an umbrella, you might as well be walking down the street naked. People will look at you in alarm, and they will express concern about your mental health. Your friends and acquaintances will insist you're taking your life into your hands by going without an umbrella in even the lightest sprinkle. People in Korea open umbrellas when the sky is gray. And that's setting aside the class of people who open umbrellas when it's sunny, too, because the sun is nearly as fearsome as the rain.
So living in Korea, I decided it's better to just use an umbrella, to avoid the solicitous and saccharine advice of friends or strangers. It wards off overreactions. Sadly, a cheap Chinese-made umbrella doesn't live very long: maybe a dozen or so deployments before a rib breaks. Further, I've found zero correlation between price and life-span: a $30 umbrella lasts the same as a $5 umbrella. So I buy $5 umbrellas at the 7-11 or other convenience store. Frequently. It feels like wasteful consumerism. If someone could tell me what sort (i.e. brand) of umbrella doesn't die after a dozen uses, I would buy it, and not be such a "throwaway" consumer – but I have no idea where or what.
