Category: Banalities & Journaling

Caveat: Facebook Updates

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Internet & Blogging

I was just explaining to a friend that I have a passive-aggressive dysfunction with facebook. I didn't explain it very well. This video that I just now ran across explains it much better.

So please forgive me for not always logging on to facebook or for not clicking or noticing things you do there.

Plus, that update guy in that video reminds me of a boss I used to have. Which reminds me of something a coworker said today that made me laugh: "I don't want to see any more academy boss faces!" Heh. What are "academy boss faces"?

 

Caveat: Three lullabies in an ancient tongue

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Not My Poetry / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

For parts of tonight's content, I am indebted to various posts at the Sullyblog. But not these first parts. I was reading some excerpts about Emma Goldman on some libertarian sites. Two quotes:

"The individual is the true reality in life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called “society,” or the “nation,” which is only a collection of individuals. Man, the individual, has always been and necessarily is the sole source and motive power of evolution and progress. Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against “society,” that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship." – Emma Goldman

"'What I believe' is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect." – Emma Goldman

Not sure how this connects, but I had an insight about cosmopolitanism. It's really the main thing. Cosmopolitanism is the sense that we are all citizens of the world as a whole. When we have this sense, we are able to participate intelligently in the modern world. If we don't, there are going to be problems.

What I'm listening to right now.

King Crimson, "The Court of the Crimson King." I remember listening to King Crimson a lot a very long time ago.

Lyrics:

The dance of the puppets
The rusted chains of prison moons
Are shattered by the sun.
I walk a road, horizons change
The tournament's begun.
The purple piper plays his tune,
The choir softly sing;
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue,
For the court of the crimson king.

The keeper of the city keys
Put shutters on the dreams.
I wait outside the pilgrim's door
With insufficient schemes.
The black queen chants
The funeral march,
The cracked brass bells will ring;
To summon back the fire witch
To the court of the crimson king.

The gardener plants an evergreen
Whilst trampling on a flower.
I chase the wind of a prism ship
To taste the sweet and sour.
The pattern juggler lifts his hand;
The orchestra begin.
As slowly turns the grinding wheel
In the court of the crimson king.

On soft gray mornings widows cry
The wise men share a joke;
I run to grasp divining signs
To satisfy the hoax.
The yellow jester does not play
But gentle pulls the strings
And smiles as the puppets dance
In the court of the crimson king.

16 "And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." – Matthew 6:16-18 (RSV translation)

Caveat: Post-3000

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling

My friend Peter has adopted a convention of titling each of the posts of his new blog with the post number (e.g. “Post-1: A blog”). It’s similar to my own stupid convention of prefixing each post with the word “Caveat” (e.g. “Caveat: Dumptruck“) – as if that ever even made sense except in the rarest of instances (e.g. Caveat: Emptor).

I like Peter’s convention better than I like my own, but he thought of it and I didn’t. He’s doing well with his new blog, I think.

My blog…. well, looky there: this is the 3000th post according to the blog administrator thingy. I started the blog in August of 2004, but in the first 3 years I probably made about 50 posts, total (most of which were during a 2005 trip to Europe), so that number of 3000 has been built largely since the summer of 2007.

I think it was only in late 2010 that I made a sort of “commitment” to posting at least once-a-day, and I’m pretty sure I’ve averaged two posts a day for more than a year now.

My friends and family were visiting my blog a lot during the era when the blog was automatically cross-posting to facebookland, but a technical problem a few months ago ended that temporarily, and my general, philosophical disillusionment with the facebook has meant that I haven’t worked very hard to fix it. I suppose there might be an element of passive-aggressiveness to this “cutting off,” too – perhaps testing to see who’s really interested in what I’m doing, as opposed to the mindless link-following encouraged by the facebook’s format. It’s not unlike how I bury these little fragments of snark behind a wall of digressive prose.

Regardless, my visitor counts have been declining. This doesn’t, actually, bother me that much. My real-life visitor counts (i.e. social interactions outside-of-work) have been declining lately, too – I’ve been in an antisocial phase, as I’ve already remarked elsewhere.

What I’m listening to right now.

Radiohead, “All I Need.”

Caveat: 감동을 주는 학생 관리의 전문가가 되십시오

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

This is the fifth question (section heading) from the handout entitled “초등부 강사로서의 나의 역량 자가 진단” (roughly, “self-diagnostic of my abilities as an elementary teacher”) which we discussed in a meeting a few weeks back – I discussed the first, second, third and fourth questions prior.

감동을          주는           학생     관리의

impression-OBJ give-PASTPART student management-GEN

전문가가            되십시오

professional-SUBJ become-DEF-FORMAL-IMPER

Become an impressive student management professional.

Actually, it’s not a question, like the others. It’s an imperative. Do it!

This really seems to be a reference to the 상담 (“counseling”) role that I happen to have discussed at length in my exact previous post. In that sense, it doesn’t really apply to me, since my interaction with parents is quite minimal, mostly due to linguistic causes (i.e. my poor Korean) rather than a desire on my part to avoid it.

Nevertheless, I would also take it to mean issues of what we might call “classroom management.” In that sense, it’s important. Classroom management is hard. I have been having a lot of incidences of my lesson plan coming up “short” recently – I finish what I intended to do and still have 5 or 10 minutes of class left. When that happens, I will often just “chat” with the students for a while, or tell a story or play a game, but it does feel like a classroom management failure at some level, and it’s been happening enough that students are starting to expect it, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea. This is what you might call the time-management aspect of classroom management.

In the area of handling disruptive students, I’m more confident. I feel like over all I handle these situations well, and without too often invoking “higher authorities” (i.e. the dreaded “If you do that again I’m going to take you out for a visit with the 실장님” [front desk lady] and then having to live up to that threat).

In the area of record keeping, I think in fact I exceed my fellow teachers, yet I’m actually not very happy with how I do. I would love to have it all in a database, but the raw fact is that I’m too lazy to build such a database, and certainly management is too lazy to provide such a database except in the most rudimentary sort.

Overall, in the area of “Impressive student management professional” I would give myself a B-.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 짱!!

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

When I was in middle school (or as I knew it in those dark days, “Junior High”) I was most definitely not popular. I was nerdy and shy and even more antisocial than I am now (which is saying a lot).

So I suppose there is some redemption in being sufficiently popular among a clique of 8th graders at my hagwon to find this written on the whiteboard when I walked into the classroom this evening.

picture

It says, inside the blue border, “제라드 샘 짱!!” 제라드 [je-ra-deu] is a misspelling of my name, perpetuated not by my students but by my fellow teachers. It’s forgivable. 샘 [saem] means “teacher” (cf Japanese sensei), and 짱 [jjang] is a student slang term that means “the best”.
So you get, “Jared teacher [is] the best!!” That’s gratifying.

Under that it says “Chicken fight.” This is an inside joke with this group of students. I might explain it in a later post – I have some additional materials that require translating first.

Under that it says “판타스틱한데?” [pan-ta-seu-tik-han-de] “Are you fantastic?” Then it says 오잉 [o-ing] with some additional circles thrown in. I think it’s a sort of “ya.” Finally in the lower right it says 이힣힣… [i-hih-hih…] which is just a sound effect of some kind – perhaps laughter.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 원숭이 세척 자주 좀

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

In my previous post, I mentioned a student survey that I’d recently seen some results from. This survey was only among the elementary students, which is a fairly small group for me since my schedule is more weighted toward the middle-schoolers these days. I actually only have about 20 elementary kids, currently, scattered in half a dozen quite small classes. This survey represents 14 of them.

picture

I might talk about the numerical results at a later point. The two things that jumped out at me were a) my highest scores were for having a “fun / interesting” class (second row), and b) there are 2 students who, apparently, would definitely not recommend me as a teacher to their friends (last row, far right box).
What I wanted to focus on here were the 5 free-form comments at the bottom. These are mostly amusing – there is, in fact, only one comment that is serious, and from its content I already know which student wrote it: she is complaining that I don’t return graded essays for the advanced TOEFL writing class in a timely manner. In that, I’m guilty as charged.
Here is a close-up of the comments.

picture

Here is my transcription, with rough translations.
숙제 내주지 마세요.
Please don’t give homework.
한국어로 말해주세요.
Please speak in Korean.
원숭이 세척 자주 좀
clean the monkey a little
좀스피킹 좀 재미있게 해요. 그리고 Writing 검사를 제대로 해주세요.
Speaking is a little bit fun. But please check writing more thoroughly.
원숭이를 깨끗하게 써주세요.
Please administer cleaning to the monkey.

pictureTwo of the five comments received were that my monkey needed to be cleaned. My “monkey” is the Minneapolitan Rainbow Monkey (who goes by the name “Dinner” which is a reference to his relationship with the alligator), which has been mentioned previously in this blog. I took him home last weekend and let him go on a ride in the washing machine, so he’s cleaner now. But I perhaps should make that a weekly custom – he lands on the floor a lot.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Diving giraffes and other miscellany

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Life in Korea / Quotable

A. Have you seen the famous French diving giraffes?

I believe they are computer-generated.

B. Unrelatedly… over the weekend, there were fireworks at Lake Park (호수공원) a few blocks from my apartment – because of the Childrens Day festivities. I knew what they were, but I also thought: that's what it would sound like if North Korea attacked.

Then, yesterday, as I stepped out my apartment to walk to work, the civil defense sirens sounded. "Ah, right," I thought. "It's exactly 2 pm, first Tuesday of the month." That's a typical time for a civil defense siren, although they seem to move around a bit within that general coneptual frame. But normally I'm either already at work or still sitting at home when the 2pm sirens go off. I think I witnessed one once before, some years ago, although they happen every month.

Everyone stopped driving. People in yellow vests went out into the street and stopped cars and even pedestrians. So I was standing on the corner of Junang-no and Gangseon-no for 15 minutes until the drill was over, thinking once again about North Korea. I took out my phone and looked at the Korean-language news site, to pass the time. The first article I read (er, tried to read) was about the USS Nimitz (nuclear aircraft carrier) visiting the South Korean city of Busan [美항모 니미츠호 11∼13일 부산항 입항(종합)]. Is there a pattern here?

In fact, the Norks seem to be behaving better lately. Or else they got what they wanted: South Korea gave them some money recently. Extortion works.

C. Lastly, another bit of miscellany:

"You
should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy;
then you should sit for an hour" – old zen saying (or just someone on
the internet).

Caveat: Sons and Daughters

A Daily Poem / Banalities & Journaling / Book 1 / Life is a Dream / My Poetry & Fiction

I tried to write a poem back on April 22. I didn’t really finish it, but I decided to put it here as-is.
(Poem #8 on new numbering scheme)

Sons and Daughters
The ephemerality of the world is just a stone wall.
There are blossoms on the trees along Gangseon-no.
The suburban pavement exhales.
The air reeks of density,
of garbage
of sand
of springtime
of buses.
There are little square patterns of bricks paving the sidewalk.
I see a discarded umbrella, broken,
its ribs jutting among some weeds.
My students exist in a dream.
I have a couple hundred children,
my alternately charming or obstinate sons and daughters
who then each disappear after a year or two.
My sons and daughters almost never say good-bye.
One day they are in class with me.
One day they are not.
No beginning.
No ceremony.
A month.
A year.
An infinite specificity lies behind this mystery.

picture

Caveat: Antisocial In The Age of Social Apps

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / My Drawings & Paintings / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

There are some – ahem, philosophical? political? – reasons why I don’t do the facebook much, these days. There’s a great write-up on The Atlantic, by Alexis Madrigal, who is a pretty lucid commentator on technology and internet-related issues. His article is worth reading in its entirety, but consider this quote he gives from someone named Mike Monteiro (context… facebook has been comparing itself in its advertising to a utility object – like a chair):

A well-designed chair not only feels good to sit in, it also entices your ass towards it. So this is nothing new to Facebook. Where it gets interesting to me is when you start asking to what end you are designing. The big why. In the chair example, the relationship is clear. If I can design a chair that entices your ass, then you will buy it. I’ve traded money for ass happiness (and back happiness, but that’s less sexy). But it’s clear who the vendor and who the customer is in that case.

Where I have issues with Facebook is that they’re dishonest about who the customer is. They’ve built an enticing chair, and  they let me sit in it for free, but they’re selling my farts to the highest bidder.

This is important. The facebook has, indeed, been a phenomenal utility for me personally. It has allowed me to get in touch with people I haven’t seen in 20 and 30 years, and stay in touch with people I wouldn’t otherwise stay in touch with. But the sort of market-driven dishonesty alluded to in the quote above has always been something I’ve been aware of, above and beyond knowing the extent to which the facebook tracks everything we do online – even on sites unrelated to facebook. If you’re logged on to facebook, they know what you’re doing. Period. And my discomfort with it is higher when I go into these antisocial phases.

You see, I’ve been in a deeply antisocial phase, lately. Enough so, that I need to put out an apology to my friends, aquaintances and relatives who take the time to reach out to me. I’ve got issues – I always have. People who know me, know this. I go into a sort of jibbering withdrawal, sometimes.

My job is my sanity. My job is profoundly social. I spend 5 or 7 hours every day (minus Sundays) interacting continuously with children and adolescents. Mostly, that goes pretty well – on the whole, it goes much better than my interactions with fellow adults. I really don’t get along well with adults, sometimes. This is dysfunctional, probably. But it keeps me sane.

One consequence of this, however, is that when I get into one of my antisocial phases (like recently), I am utterly burned out on interacting with people beyond that daily 5 to 7 hour window. That’s why I only log on to facebook once a week, and why I turn off my cell phone when I get home.

Please, friends, don’t take this personally. I just… need my space, sometimes.

I drew this doodle earlier today.

picture

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Absurd Debate Topics

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

Sometimes I come up with a "filler" lesson plan that's so successful that I end up applying across most of my classes. Recently, because of the end of the test-prep period, I had some mixed ability middle-school classes that weren't part of my regular curriculum. In these contexts, I get asked to put together a one-up lesson plan for a "speaking class." "Just teach them some speaking," my boss says.

In earlier times I would get stressed about these one-up classes, but no longer. I view them as a laboratory and as a chance to try things out. I have a little folder of ideas that I can pull something out of.

One idea I had was to do some "absurd" debates. I've done these before, but always very detailed and well-developed over several classes, in the style of my regular debate curriculum. This idea was a little different: get the ideas out there, brainstorm for maybe 15 minutes, and put the kids to debating right away.

This idea only works if you've already got most of the students (if not all) fully familiar with the basic debate format. Now that I've been doing this a while, I could be confident of this – most of the students, if they've had "Jared teacher" before, have done debate at some style or level.

With this prerequisite out of the way, this "absurd" debate lesson was wildly successful. I never saw so many normally bored or disengaged or struggling students begin to laugh at the propositions and giggle at the prospect of defending one side or the other of these strange propostions. A few students took a while to "get" the exercise, but once they did, they too were fully on board.

Here is a list of the absurd debate propositions I came up with.

"Santa Claus is a criminal."
"Black is the best color."
"Aliens make the best friends."
"Unicorns are better than zebras."
"A smartphone is smarter than a dog."
"The moon is made of green cheese."
"The earth is flat."
"The teacher is a ghost."
"This debate is boring."

I've done a few of these before, and may have mentioned them, but never all together like this. I need to come up with more – this has been one of the most successful speaking debate classes I've ever done. I never have had so many students muttering to themselves phrases such as, "재미있구나" [jaemiittguna = this is interesting]. It's very gratifying to hear this, as a teacher.

Caveat: Can’t. Wake. Up.

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

The dream was a nightmare.

I don't have nightmares
often, but when I do, the worst ones are the ones I call "trapped in the
dream" nightmares. They are a sort of lucid dreaming, I suppose, where I
become aware that I'm dreaming, inside my dream, but then I am unable
to wake up, despite wanting to or trying to. 

This nightmare was exceptional in that not only was it
this sort of dream, but that it was "nested." There was sleeping and
dreaming within the dream, and then I was trapped in that dream and then
I woke up into another dream that I became aware was a dream and tried
to wake up from in turn. It was like the movie Inception, except I
didn't like that movie very much, although my dislike of it was more in
that it elided over the philosophically interesting parts in favor of
incoherent violence. So perhaps the philosophically interesting part got
embedded in my brain anyway, to express itself later in this nightmare.

In the dream, I was camping and hiking with my friend Bob along with a group of my current elementary students.

The area we were hiking through resembled northern Minnesota at first, but as the sun ramped down in the sky, the children were complaining and the land began to look desolate and empty, full of rocks and spindly trees. Everything became brown and gray. We came to a stream that was clogged with algae and autumnal-looking swamp grass at the bottom of a slight incline, and Bob proposed setting up camp.

As we set up camp, the children discovered a skeleton. And, then, another. Soon we realized the entire area was littered with the bones and skeletons of humans and animals, but the sun was setting, so we couldn't really move camp at this point. We made a fire and cooked something bad tasting. Some of the children complained but several were having swordfights with femurs.

I stared around at a desolate plain of bones.

Finally it was late at night and the moon was full. I found a place to put my tent but the air was warm, so I decided to sleep outside. I lay down and fell quickly asleep. It's always very strange to fall asleep in a dream. But it's much stranger to then be inside a dream inside that dream, and thinking, "I'm dreaming."

I couldn't wake up. I had this notion that the stream had risen while I slept, and I needed to wake up. I felt like I was lying in water. I couldn't wake up. I struggled, trying to move a muscle or twitch or blink, trying to wake up. I couldn't. I could feel the water rising.

Then bang, I was awake. My eyes popped open, and I knew instantly I was in another "layer" of my dream. I was in my apartment, but there was water raining down from the apartment above me, through the ceiling. It was logical enough – I'd been dreaming I was wet by the stream because of the water flooding into my apartment. I got up and realized that several Korean workmen had already entered my apartment to try to figure out what to do about the leak, but the were utterly ignoring me. It didn't strike me as odd they'd entered my apartment while I slept, but I was disturbed that they weren't talking to me.

"Am I a ghost?" I pondered. "Or just an ignorable foreigner?" I tried to move some of my possessions, that were getting wet from the flood. They were heavy, and the water was everywhere. Then I noticed a doorway, with an open door, in one wall of apartment. "Now where did that come from?" I wondered.

I went through the doorway to find a closed, musty room, full of junk. Like my father's living room – it smelled of too many books and the arid, oppressive atmosphere of Los Angeles in late summer. But it was dry, I reasoned. So I'll move my things in here, away from the flood.

I started to carry things but everything was very heavy. The workmen, after bashing a hole in another wall and my ceiling, had mostly staunched the flow of water but everything was damp and there was trash and rubble everywhere. They were crouched around a portable gas stove in the center of my apartment's floor cooking ramen and doing shots of soju and yelling at one another cordially. They continued to ignore me, and I felt very conscious that I was somehow "broken."

So I went into the musty room and lay down on my damp bedding which I'd unfurled onto the floor, and fell asleep. "This time, I can wake up for real," I said to myself, reassuringly.

But I couldn't wake up. I pushed against the cobwebs of sleep and couldn't push through. I clawed and cried out and spun my head on the pillow.

"Can't. Wake. Up." It was the sort of nightmare where you just know you're screaming, or moaning, or moving around.

Finally, I awoke. I'd planted my face against the heating cabinet – had I hit myself on it?

It was morning and my apartment was bright. I have to go to work early today – it's Saturday. Full schedule.

What I'm listening to right now.



Trauma Pet, "1."

Caveat: Debate Methodology

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

My main debate classes are for the middle-school students, these days. But when I worked at LBridge, we had a full elementary debate curriculum for the speaking component of the EFL curriculum, and I remain a strong believe that debate is great way to teach EFL speaking, especially in Korea where getting kids to do spontaneous conversation is sometimes quite challenging.

I further believe it needn't be reserved for high-level students only. I've been experimenting with teaching debate to my intermediate elementary students exactly the same way I teach to my middle schoolers, in the BISP1-M 반 (cohort).

The lesson follows a 3 or 4 class period pattern. First class introduces the topic and proposition, which follows a debate topic given in a really badly made "teaching newspaper" such as are popular here. The topic in April was "South Korean schools should adopt a 'free semester' system."

A 'free semester' system sounds like a big deal, but it really isn't. The suggestion is that Korean students spend too much time preparing for tests, with a mid-term and then a final each semester. A 'free semester' would be a semester with only one test instead of two. Yay, freedom! Sort of. The idea is that some given semester in middle school would be liberated from a mid-term, and time would be devoted to exposing students to career-planning type activities instead. This is middle-schoolers we're talking about… that said, I think what's being proposed has some parallels in some European models of education, in particular in Germany.

We did some discussion, and found that the students seemed to have a pretty good grasp of the issues.

For the second class they complete an essay either supporting (PRO) or opposing (CON) the proposition. I read the essays and return them with minimal correction (to keep things moving along fast). Then the students have a "panel" debate, where sides and positions are mostly up to them or sometimes chosen randomly.

Here is the panel debate with these BISP1-M kids, which we did on April 10. (Turn the volume down – when I made the video the sound got cranked).

The next class, they are to present memorized 2 minute speeches on the same topic, either PRO or CON (their choice if I'm in a good mood, randomly if I'm not – my mood being contingent on how well they've been doing on other homework and suchlike).

This is what I call the debate speech test, and I use a scoring rubric to give a test score which is their monthly grade. The scoring rubric weights effort and presentation style heavily – it's possible to get an A on the test merely parroting ideas from my own lectures or from the newpaper. This is because I don't see debate class as being primarily about critical thinking or problem solving, but about building confidence and fluency. So in this way, the students often memorize and assemble points from my talking or from each other, too.  I think that's OK.

Here are debate speech tests for this same class, which we did on April 17. (Turn the volume down – when I made the video the sound got cranked).

Caveat: Ozone &c.

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling

I love to walk home in a cool rain, just as it's beginning or slackening. In the dark, wet streets, buses or bicycles go zipping past. My perception is that Spring is arriving late but fast this year. Spring always seems to come fast, I suppose: one day, the trees are bare, then another day, there are blossoms, then another day and all is bright greening.

Today the air smelled of ozone – is that Chinese yellow pollution dust, or something local? Or is it the way we get here on rare occasions, when the rain comes from the west and smells of the desert out somewhere near Mongolia?

What I'm listening to right now.

Trauma Pet, "Yearning."

Caveat: 강사로서의 자부심을 느끼고 있습니까?

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

This isn’t an aphorism or proverb, but rather a section heading of a handout from a staff-meeting a week or two ago, which was entitled “초등부 강사로서의 나의 역량 자가 진단” (roughly, “self-diagnostic of my abilities as an elementary teacher”).

I bring these Korean language handouts home and over time I study them, if I get the motivation. It’s rough going, but occasionally they offer insights into how my boss is thinking, or at least, how he feels he should be thinking.

The first section heading of this “self-diagnostic” is “강사로서의 자부심을 느끼고 있습니까?” (“do I feel pride / self-confidence as a teacher?”). The problem is that “pride” and “self-confidence” are both offered as translations of 자부심, but I’m not sure they are the same thing.

Does the term mean both? Do these concepts of “pride” or “self-confidence,” in particular, work differently in Western psychology? I would feel comfortable saying I have pride in my teaching, but I couldn’t never fully agree that I have self-confidence in my teaching. Excessive self-confidence in teaching leads to close-mindedness, which is the bane of effective teaching in my opinion. For me, feigned self-confidence is crucial in the classroom, but true self-confidence elusive – and I don’t view this dichotomy as a bad thing.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Wingdings

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

An advanced-level elementary student was writing an essay for me in the computer lab the other day. She printed her essay and came running to me in either feigned or real panic. She showed me the printout, below. Obviously, something was amiss.

"Teacher! What's wrong. The printer is broken," she complained.

I went and looked at her screen and then again at the document.

"The printer isn't broken," I sighed. "You need to stop playing around with font choices in Microsoft Word and spend more time writing your essay."

Wingding 002

What is this font you speak of, O master?

I have been in a very strange mood, lately. I feel like an old man in a rest home for the mentally deranged. Just a feeling…

What I'm listening to right now.

Harry Nilsson, "Without You."

Caveat: Entropy Engines

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Science & SciFi

I found this rather mind-blowing article at a website called Physics Buzz. It's about some theoretical modeling work being done in the field of AI (artificial intelligence). I can't begin to claim to really understand it – and that's just the layman's article, I wouldn't dream of trying to read the actual published paper. Apparently there are some interesting results emerging from a simulation program they call "Entropica" that suggest that just programming something to seek the "most possible future histories" (which sort of suggests something quantum-mechanical but I don't think it really does) leads to intelligent-seeming behavior. Is it really intelligent, if it's just trying to maximize entropy? Very weird and interesting. A few paragraphs from the summary:

Entropica's intelligent behavior emerges from the "physical process of trying to capture as many future histories as possible," said Wissner-Gross. Future histories represent the complete set of possible future outcomes available to a system at any given moment.

Wissner-Gross calls the concept at the center of the research "causal entropic forces." These forces are the motivation for intelligent behavior. They encourage a system to preserve as many future histories as possible. For example, in the cart-and-rod exercise, Entropica controls the cart to keep the rod upright. Allowing the rod to fall would drastically reduce the number of remaining future histories, or, in other words, lower the entropy of the cart-and-rod system. Keeping the rod upright maximizes the entropy. It maintains all future histories that can begin from that state, including those that require the cart to let the rod fall.

"The universe exists in the present state that it has right now. It can go off in lots of different directions. My proposal is that intelligence is a process that attempts to capture future histories," said Wissner-Gross.

I predict that if the research behind this article turns out to be "real" – in the sense that it isn't later falsified or found to be lacking in rigor – that it could be a more-than-incremental step in the development of AI (i.e. revolutionary).

Caveat: Leaders & Problems

Banalities & Journaling / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable / The Wonders of Work

I have two unconnected observations about "business" – I've been in a kind of involuntary "MBA" mode of thought, lately. I'm not really meaning to – let's just call it a relapse to an earlier life. This mode of thinking is brought by the many very serious conversations we've been having at work about the business of being an English hagwon in what is becoming an increasingly difficult context.

First, a meme-pic that was floating around the internet recently. I definitely agree with the concept here.

Business

Second, a quote I ran across – I'm not sure who said it. If you think about it carefully, you will see it's meaning. And it puts a different perspective on solving business "problems."

"Everything you think is a problem is somebody else's income." – Anon

Caveat: Still Home

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling

Two years ago yesterday, I moved back to Ilsan after my strange year in Jeollanam, and started my new job at Karma.

On this two year anniversary, it’s easy to get nostalgic and think about what I feel about being here. I’ve been much less content about “being in Korea,” lately, as many of my acquaintances know. And my job satisfaction suffers because of that, although even now I don’t think “job satisfaction” is a major factor in my discontent. It’s just that my discontent is negatively impacting job satisfaction.

Not sure that makes sense.

More later.

What I’m listening to right now.

GOSSAMER, “Her Ghost.”

Caveat: A Smoggy Disposition

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

Last night I dreamed I was giving a lecture to some business school. I have no idea why I was invited to give a lecture at a business school – I think lately, I've been thinking a lot about "business school" type things, in the light of the flailing business conditions at my current place of employment. As a consequence, my dream world invited me to give a lecture at a business school.

I was explaining something related to "dispositional" versus "compositional" analysis. Yes, I'd actually put those words onto powerpoint slides and was explaining the difference. Here's the thing: I don't think the meanings I was giving these two terms are really their meanings in some business context, but what I was saying made some sense, if viewed as philosophy or semantics.

I said that "compositional" was about finding the elements that make up some object or process or whatever, while "dispositional" meant finding the intent behind the object or process. This makes sense etymologically anyway, but it made for a very boring dream.

Because that's all I remember. Why do I dream this way? Why, dispositionally, I mean?

Yesterday was very springy here in suburban Seoul. Spring in Seoul always reminds me of winter in Mexico City. The temperature ranges tend to be similar, they are both fairly dry, and there's the smog factor – spring is Korea's smoggiest season – I think it's because of the prevailing winds from the west, which bring us the Chinese eco-disaster, with an admixture of locally produced smog, too.

Having said that, yesterday wasn't the smoggiest I've seen. It was only that the blue sky failed to make it down to the horizon, fading instead to a sort of pale gray.

Caveat: It’s Raining Cats

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

What I'm listening to right now.

My Robot Friend, "It's Raining Cats." This song is derived from that more well-known "It's Raining Men" by The Weather Girls (1982), but with different lyrics. As of this posting, it has 540 views on youtube. I'm predicting more than that.

The lyrics:


meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

By the same auteurs, "Robot High School."

Caveat: W3 is what?

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Internet & Blogging

This is the world's first (oldest) webpage. It's at CERN, where Tim Berners-Lee created the WWW protocols and httpsd web server in 1990-91. That makes the below a 22-year-old website. Interesting.

First_html_588e00fd

I think it's cool they still have it up and available – I'm not sure to what extent it retains its original form, but based on appearances it matches closely with my recollection of what the internet (er… "world wide web") looked like in the very early years.

I'm pretty sure my first experience with WWW was at the University of Minnesota libraries, which were already running the locally developed gopher protocols (which was an early alternate version of www, basically) for their online library catalog in 1993, and they were experimenting with https in the same vein. I distinctly recall seeing "websites" that looked exactly like the above – all white with black text and blue links, zero or quite minimal graphics.

I wrote and published my first website in 1995, in raw html using a text editor, as a first-year graduate student at University of Pennsylvania – I used the now defunct geocities hosting site. I was publishing syllabi and supplementary materials for my Spanish classes that I taught there at that time. I called it "macondonet" after García Márquez's fictional town, Macondo.

I wish I still had the code for those early pages – it would be fun to keep them live somewhere as a sort of nostalgia trip. I was lucky in that I was attending early-adopting institutions at the time the internet was first emerging, and thus I got to be an early adopter, too. I think it's ironic that all these years later, as a teacher, I'm "lower tech" than I was at that time.

Caveat: Teacher

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

Student: "Teacher! How are you?"

Teacher: "I'm good, how about you?"

Student: "Not so good, teacher."

Teacher: "Because of the tests coming?"

Student: "Yes, teacher."

Teacher: "You know, saying 'teacher' all the time is not really how English-speaking students talk. It's 'konglish'."

Student: "I know, teacher."

Teacher: "In the US, students almost always address their teachers by name. So I would be Mr Way. But mostly they just don't say 'teacher' or a name at all."

Student: "Mr Way? Really, teacher?"

Teacher: "Yes, really. So instead of saying 'Really, teacher?' you would just say 'Really, Mr Way?' or just 'Really?' Do you understand?"

Student: "That's … strange, teacher."

Teacher: "I know."

Student: "Goodbye, teacher. See you later, teacher."

i was surprised at how much madison got off

Caveat: ¡Karmatrón!

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish)

Kt00102Karmatrón es el nombre de un comic (historieta) que recuerdo vagamente haber encontrado durante me estadía en México en los 80. Una clase de derivativo de la serie de los transformers, sin duda, pero con curioso subtexto religioso.

Ahora me interesa tanto por su nombre algo irónico (respecto al nombre de mi lugar de empleo acá en Corea) que por alguna nostalgia por su temática.

Kylt01800x600

Caveat: Where Are We Now?

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling

I was huge fan of David Bowie when I was in college, oh so many years ago.

I remained a fan, if not a super enthusiastic one. Once I saw him in concert, while I was in graduate school and Michelle and I were living in Philadelphia. I think it was one of the few concerts I went to during that epoch, in the mid-1990's.

Sometimes I can go for a long stretch without listening to anything by him, but recently I had a chance to hear one of the songs from his new album, which has gotten a lot of rave reviews. I'm inclined to agree – he's aged really well.

What I'm listening to right now.

David Bowie, "Where Are We Now?" That's his new one.

Here's an old one, that I used to listen to almost every day for a few years in the late 1980's.

David Bowie, "Life On Mars?"

Caveat: We are made of the same wood as our dreams

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Internet & Blogging / Language & Linguistics / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

The other day I was surfing the internet. In and of itself, this is hardly an uncommon experience. More often than not, "surfing the internet" involves a lot of returns to wikipedia, "because that's how I roll." Whatever that means.

The other day, though, was more than just a "surfing the internet" moment. I'm not sure why. It was just one of those times when everything seems to link along to everything else, and it feels like I'm following some kind of [broken link! FIXME] apophenic chain across a universe of memes amd meanings.

Thus it was that, starting with a lake in Patagonia, I ended up researching a quote by Shakespeare, via a Nabokovian interlude with an aging dictator in 1955. Hmm.

I had ended up at the lake in Patagonia because sometimes I hit the "random" button in wikipedia (sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes even in Korean). I try to do this at least once a day – just to keep my brain topped off with irrelevancies.

From that lake in Argentina, I found myself researching the 1920 labor union uprisings in Argentina, which led me, in turn, to Argentinian President Yrigoyen, thence to Union Civica Radical, thence to the Partido Justicialista (Peronist), thence to Perón himself. Then things got weird.

There was a reference to a certain character in the the Perón saga, Nélida Rivas. She was apparently Perón's teenage protogée during his first twilight, before the coup in 1955 that removed him. I say "first twilight" because he subsequently returned to the presidency, as a very old man, in 1973 – only to die promptly.

As I looked into this historical personage – she liked to be called "Nelly" – there were all these little glimmerings on the web, only glimpses, of a strange, May-December, almost Lolitesque something-or-other between the General and his protogée. Following, here are some things I ran across.

Firstly, I found brief references to the affair in the online archives (direct from 1970s era microfiche, I suspect, with nary a human hand involved) of many second-tier North American newspapers of the era (e.g. Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 3, 1955 or Spokane Daily Chronicle, same date). I find it fascinating that these are newspapers Nabokov may have read while, having finished Lolita, the book was being prepared for publication – because there are weird parallels, with a [broken link! FIXME] Garciamarquezesque overlay.

Secondly, I found this quite strange reference, in a book at googlebooks, Los bienes del ex dictador (The possessions of the ex-dictator). I quote at length:


En cuanto a la joven Nélida Haydée Rivas no me fue posible tener contacto directo con
ella, es decir, no tuve ocasión de conocerla personalmente pero siguiendo muy de cerca la
narración verídica de los hechos en mi paso por la comisión interventora, debo expresar
que en oportunidad de interrogar al Sr. Atilio Renzi, me dio una completa versión acerca
de la presencia de la menor en la Residencia Presidencial.


Al describirla, me refirió que se trataba de una niña de diecisiete años de edad que tomó
contacto con el Gral. Perón cuando tenía catorce, como integrante de la UES, no muy
hermosa sino más bien suave y candorosa. Explicó Renzi que poseía un espíritu travieso,
transformándose al poco tiempo en una suerte de "fierecilla indomatable" que llegó a
dominar completemente la residencia presidencial. Todos le temían. [Enfásis mía]


My own translation of the above is:


With respect to the young lady Nélida Haydée Rivas, it wasn't possible for me to get in
direct contact with her, which is to say, I didn't have a chance to get to know her
personally, but following closely is a the true narration of events I heard through the
inventorying commision, as I was able to interview a Mr. Atilio Renzi, who gave me a complete
accounting of the young woman's presence at the Presidential Residence.


He described that she was a girl, 17 years of age, who first met General Perón when she
was 14, as a member of the UES [a youth activity league, a kind of Peronist interpretation
of the Communist Youth Leagues or suchlike]; she wasn't very beautiful but she was gentle and
straightforward. Renzi explained that she had a bit of a mischievous spirit, and after a short time she became a sort of "little wild thing" who ended up completely dominating the presidential residence. Everyone was afraid of her. [Emphasis mine]


Nelly-Rivas-with-PeronLastly, however, I found the best write-up at a certain blog by someone named (or pseudonymmed) Sergio San Juan here
(in Spanish) – I am unable to decide if that text is a fictional (or fictionalized) bastard-child
of Nabokov and Borges or if it is, in fact, sincere journalism. I'm not sure that 
it matters, as it is so very well done. Perhaps someday I will make a translation of that post.

Naturally, that last link sent me to Borges, eventually, who was lecturing (in Spanish) on the topic of nightmares and English literature – as was his wont.

That link also got me curious about the tagline at the top of Sergio San Juan's blog: "Estamos hechos de la misma madera que nuestros sueños." This, he has attributed to William Shakespeare.

Of course, finding a Shakespeare quote in Spanish is not the same as finding one in English – it becomes more difficult to get at the original text. So it took a bit of research, but I finally found it. I noted that the Spanish version contains some additional "meaning" that the English seems to miss, and I was reminded of Nabokov's comment that Shakespeare was better in translation (although obviously he was meaning Pushkin's famous translations).

The literal translation back to English of the tag-line phrase above is, "We are made of the same wood as our dreams." This is delightful – imagistic, metaphoric, what-have-you. The original Shakespeare, although famous and appropriately pentametric, seems wooden (pardon the pun) in comparison: here is the extended quote from The Tempest, Act IV, scene 1.

You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismayed. Be cheerful, sir.
Our revels are now ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. (4.1 146-158)

The two enchained half-lines are: "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on." There's nothing wrong with that, but it seems less striking. Perhaps it is rendered banal by four centuries of familiarity and citation.

En cuanto a la joven Nélida Haydée
Rivas no me fue posible tener contacto directo con

ella, es decir, no tuve ocasión de
conocerla personalmente pero siguiendo muy de cerca la

narración verídica de los hechos en
mi paso por la comisión interventora, debo expresar

que en oportunidad de interrogar al Sr.
Atilio Renzi, me dio una completa versión acerca

de la presencia de la menor en la
Residencia Presidencial.

 

Al describirla, me refirió que se
trataba de una niña de diecisiete años de edad que tomó

contacto con el Gral. Perón cuando
tenía catorce, como integrante de la UES, no muy

hermosa sino más bien suave y
candorosa. Explicó Renzi que poseía un espíritu travieso,

transformándose al poco tiempo en una
suerte de "fierecilla indomatable" que llegó a

dominar completemente la residencia
presidencial. Todos le temían. [Enfásis mía]

 

My own translation of the above is:

 

With respect to the young lady Nélida
Haydée Rivas, it wasn't possible for me to get in

direct contact with her, which is to
say, I didn't have a chance to get to know her

personally, but following closely the
true narration of events I heard through the

inventorying commision, I was able to
interview a Mr. Atilio Renzi, who gave me a complete

accounting of the young woman's
presence at the Presidential Residence.

 

He described that she was a girl, 17
years of age, who first met General Perón when she

was 14, as a member of the UES [a youth
activity league, a kind of Peronist interpretation

of Communist Youth League or suchlike];
she wasn't very beautiful but she was gentle and

straightforward. Renzi explained that
she had a bit of a mischievous spirit, and after a short time she
became a sort of "little wild thing" who ended up
completely dominating the presidential residence. Everyone was
afraid of her. [Emphasis mine]

Caveat: Teacher! I hate your job!

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

I have a student named Sangjin. He is quite insane, but in a kind-hearted way and with a penetrating awareness, if not exactly an academically-oriented intelligence.

In class this evening, I was keeping points on the whiteboard for the students. He gave a wrong answer, and per the rules of this system, I deducted some points. It was actually a lot of points, because the points at stake escalate as the class nears the end – this keeps the game competitive right up to the bell.

"Teacher! I hate you," Sangjin said. He was grinning his silly grin.

"Why?" I said, with some sudden mock seriousness.

"Because. Points," he explained, telegraphically.


Psyarms"You're mad because I took away points?" I asked, to confirm.

He nodded and folded his arms, Psy-style (see picture). This is the way Korean rap stars have conversations.

"But," I protested. "That's my job!"

"To take points?" asked another student.

"Or to give points," I suggested, optimistically.

"That's a good job," the other student said.

Sangjin raised his hand. "What?" I asked.

"Well, then… Teacher! I hate your job!"

I couldn't stop laughing.

Caveat: far within some maze of habit

Banalities & Journaling / Buddhism & Zen / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Quotable


Way 003
Way 005Below
is a longer poem than I generally put in my blog. But it's in a
slightly different category, too. I was unable to find this poem online.
I can't even find the author online. But I met the actual author, David
Brennan, in Boston in the Summer of 1982. I have a signed copy of this
poem, published by Illeagle Press of Cambridge in 1981 as tiny 14 page
pamphlet with staple binding but high quality paper. Above is an image
of the cover, and at right are images of his autograph on the title page
and the edition page with facing first page.

I
have a vague recollection of spending an evening talking and carousing
with this author, whom I met through a close friend of mine from that
epoch, Quinn-of-Redbank (Stephen from New Jersey) who later disappeared
off the face of the earth after having lived furiously for some period
of time. Stephen was a companion of mine in my creative writing class at
the Harvard Summer School I attended that year.
<digression>Incidentally, for the curious, my conclusion was:
Harvard was fun but way overrated, academically. Note that although
accepted, I did not attend Harvard. My Korean acquaintances find this
fact to be the absolutely most scandalous thing in my entire life
history. This is why my Korean friends don't understand
me.</digression>


Way 007It
was at about the same time that I first read this poem, between my
junior and senior years in high school, that I decided I was a poet.
Erhm… "Poet."

Thirty
years later, I still believe that I'm a poet, although I've downgraded
my quality-of-poet substantially. I do what I do. I am what I am. I
write poetry. Sometimes. Occasionally. How about once-a-month?

On the edition page of this booklet is provided a translation of the cover:

Seals:

W A Y

Like leisurely clouds
and wild cranes
my home can be anywhere
in the universe

Calligraphy by Bob Kopacz.

Typesetting by Rick Schwartz.

The
cover is supposedly the Chinese character "dao" (道, which in Korean is
read 도 [do]) but if that is so, I have some scepticism as to the reading
(from my current cultural perspective), as the calligraphy distorts the
logograph to unrecognizability – not that that's an impossibility, as
different calligraphic styles tend to do weird things. I will continue
to believe that the main glyph on the cover means "dao" (Way) unless I
can find evidence to the contrary. The reason is that it is my name. I mean, at that time, I read it as such. My family name is, after all, Way. The booklet seemed to be addressed to me. Perhaps this had more to do with cannabis than semantics? It was a strange summer.

Since
I was unable to find this poem online, and since it meant so much to me
at one point in my life, I have decided that I will transcribe it here.
I hope that if the author (or his inheritor) runs across it, he will
allow me this luxury to reproduce the poem. As stated in other places, I
will always respect a take-down notice in This Here Blog Thingy™ –
although to date, I have never received one.

Here is David Brennan's poem.

Translations of the Fall

being an experiment in translation across the centuries

and sensibilities (or, a severe mauling, if you prefer)

based on a poem cycle by the Chinese poet Han Yu.

1.

Out this window the iron balcony

holds plants dying in greyed wooden boxes

Clotheslines dance, gulls gyre

Night soundless on the old bricks

The lamp lights my tangled bed

where rhymes of sleep lap my ear

a lake of undone poems shored

by breaths of sex and childhood

I struggle up

in the dawn's oily light

and look at my face

(different each time)

The day begins, ticks on like a clock

I sit at my table – my kingdom, my ocean

with a pen

            daylight roaring over me

2.

Dew on the geometry of rooftops

Sea-clouds tasting high glass buildings

The maples burst, leaves blood lanes

hedges become skeletons, a fly narcotized

by the cold drums the drunken window

I am watching from my rooftop

The world, unstopping, turns

Each of us, unique in kind

plows some round, bears some music

3.

Men's designs move in jerky flights

My interests turn to other times

Unhappy vets talk of lost wars in lost nights

but I've even given up wine

I go about, with my laziness and freedom

walking roads nobody wants

The lanes that leave my gate

bare star-trails seen by few

Home again I swim the texts

words oceanlike and limitless

Who rows these ancient waters but me

Dark ships, drowned suns, the recurrent mysteries

4.

Now the adrenalin fall moves me

What excitement in this blood melancholy

Still I'm vainly unprepared

no scarf and only one glove

Here the flaring of the season's bones

burns the marrow of August

At dawn I close my books and walk

streets between glass and brick

down to the harbor after a night's rain

Grey battleships on a grey harbor

Dragons soaked in grey sleep

5.

In the insect world November's a scourge

For us it invigorates

Yet insect guilt does not die, things

undone and the old sorrows stay

common and pointed as pines

Keep to the kitchen, dream by the hearth

drawn inward by the fire

What happened to the tranquil path?

My fevered connection

to ancients, friends, and poets still at work

has to suit me. I'm working

within a new silence, it is my

                                 hidden retreat

6.

Difficult to get out of bed

Worries bite like fleas, hidden and bloodfed

Noon turns to afternoon

My heart is lost in some other age

or far within some maze of habit

Past loves jab like pricks, a thousand

ideas dagger round me like smashed glass

Fruitless these spinning words

Senseless turnings, impossible rounds

7.

The talons of November

claw through my coat, cold

through to the innards, new season's bloodprints

Damned early falcon of winter

I can barely keep up with my life

drowning in wreckage, wrecked and drowning

Take the flute, finger the keys

play the mood that strikes, strike

the mood as you play, bring some lyric

to this mess, draw the June voice

out of the locked frost

8.

In a battered book of photographs

I discovered a shot of Thelonius Monk

hat on, head back, puffing a halo of smoke

Eyes shut in an ecstasy serene

that magician of notes lights

the film with a shamanic sheen

a brilliance, a stillpoint, the

bloom of the being authentic

And there it all was: brought me

to tears in the dull basement

of that bookstore, illumination

from the cellar of living

And there it all was: life's

passion for life leaping mind to mind

9.

Words, pizza, cigarettes shared

The common din is a tonic

Ideas crackle electric, star-edged

Then guests go and night

wraps me in fulness and loss

The cold sculpts mee

Far within a cave in secret chambers

bison dance on the deep rock

while initiates carry song and flame

Ten thousand years swallowed in a ceremony

Ceremonies of self:

the birth

and the burial

and the birth again

10.

The white rose after

the first frost. A beauty so late, yet stern

with browning petals: a shock

a lament, a triumphing sign

One glyph of whiteness

dies, another comes

Snow and the western wind

offer their extinctions, their beginnings

Caveat: Thresholds

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

There's an article at the new online journal called The Ümlaut about something Tyler Cowen calls the "threshold earner." This is defined as someone who, rather than trying to maximize income, instead chooses an acceptable level of income and adjusts his or her life to stay at that level – i.e., if earning more than that threshold level, he or she can work less hours, or better yet, he or she can change to a less lucrative or maybe more rewarding career.

The article goes on to discuss how this niche of threshold earners is being marketed to – which I find both interesting and uninteresting, depending on which hat I decide to put on. In an older personal incarnation – as a corporate marketing data analyst – I do find it rather fascinating. In my current incarnation – as a half-unfulfilled threshold earner myself – it's depressing and dull to find myself lumped in with Trader Joe's and Uniqlo consumers.

Tj2Hey, now that I think about it… I admit I shopped at Trader Joe's more than a few times when I wasn't a threshold earner, yet now that I am a threshold earner, I don't shop there. Hmm, I wonder, do they really have their demographics right? Or am I just a freakish outlier, regardless of what hat I'm wearing? Or is it just that they don't have Trader Joe's in Goyang, so now I shop at Homeplus and Costco?

Google is amazing. In one minute, I can find a photo (at right) someone posted somewhere of the exact Trader Joe's in Eagle Rock (Northeast Los Angeles on Colorado Boulevard) where I used to shop. It always reminded me of a sort of for-profit coop grocery store (and I yearned for the real coops that abound in Minnesota's Twin Cities or my hometown in Northern California), and that seemed to be the demographic: gentrifying hippies and privatized libruls – and I guess I was one of them.

Caveat: Pure with cicadas, and slowing

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / My Drawings & Paintings / Not My Poetry

Blue_cicadaThis Unimportant Morning

This unimportant morning

Something goes singing where

The capes turn over on their sides

And the warm Adriatic rides

Her blue and sun washing

At the edge of the world and its brilliant cliffs.

 

Day rings in the higher airs

Pure with cicadas, and slowing

Like a pulse to smoke from farms,

 

Extinguished in the exhausted earth,

Unclenching like a fist and going.

 

Trees fume, cool, pour – and overflowing

Unstretch the feathers of birds and shake

Carpets from windows, brush with dew

The up-and-doing: and young lovers now

Their little resurrections make.

 

And now lightly to kiss all whom sleep

Stitched up – and wake, my darling, wake.

The impatient Boatman has been waiting

Under the house, his long oars folded up

Like wings in waiting on the darkling lake.

– Lawrence Durrell

 

 

I drew the "blue cicada in a bottle" at right. I guess this is kind of a summery poem and picture but it's what was on my mind today.

Caveat: a nightmare on the brains of the living

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." – Karl Marx, 1852.

Marx is writing about the memory of the period of the French Revolution, which is 50~60 years old at that point.

It's a bit like us remembering the Korean War.

What I'm listening to right now.



Animal Collective, "Today's Supernatural."

Caveat: The God-Shaped Hole / Azathoth and Buddha

Banalities & Journaling / Buddhism & Zen / Less Banal Than Usual / Life is a Dream / My Photos / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

There's a blogger over at the Website Whose Name I Don't Like, who writes by the name of Jason Kuznicki. I'm never sure on that site who's going by pseudonyms and and who's "real." But regardless, I agree with so much of what he writes. I may have just run across a post he made last year that dovetails nicely with some of my own feelings about the nature of the universe, of god, and the "purpose of life."

I'm not really interested in trying to summarize his ideas, as he makes his point very well, himself, talking as he does about evolution and Azathoth and God-shaped holes (which is a concept originally due to St Augustine, if I recall correctly), so I suggest you go read that post of his and then come back and read the rest of my thinking here, if you're really interested in watching me think about my faith.

Jason seems to be a variety of transhumanist. I think I am  too, though perhaps not so optimistic as he is, but still more optimistic than many bitter atheists of my sort. It's interesting that he brings Azathoth into it – I perhaps had Azathothian tendencies long before I "became" atheist. I see my own atheism as a defense against that sort thinking. I think Azathoth makes a good symbol (OK! like most Lovecraft, a great symbol), but nothing more than that.

You might have noticed I have described myself as an atheist, and yet I used the words "my faith," above, too. I don't see any contradiction in that. It may sound like a joke, but I genuinely consider myself to be a "faith-based atheist." That's because while I am atheist at core, I arrived at my atheism through irrational experience: it came to me as part of a near-death experience and was as bright and clear as the many Saul-to-Paul-like conversions associated with other religious traditions. Furthermore, I am utterly uninterested in challenging or arguing religion with other people – I feel no need, a la Dawkins or Dennett or Hitchens, to change other people's minds. I accept that my atheism is my belief, and other people have other beliefs. When people try to convert me, I get deeply annoyed, and I assume they would feel the same way if I tried to do the same to them. Let's all treat others the way they would like to be treated.

Some of my Christian friends are, of course, deeply puzzled by the fact that I am adamantly atheist and yet also have become increasingly comfortable calling myself a Buddhist. This is like a sort of double-blasphemy vis-a-vis Christianity, and the most hardcore among such friends seem to feel almost affronted, wondering if I'm somehow deliberately doubling down on my heresies.

There are two key reasons for my embrace of Buddhism. First, unlike with many other religious traditions, there is no requirement, in the Buddhist framework, that we believe anything in particular, or anything at all. There are Buddhist dogmas, but there are very few Buddhist dogmatists. I'm speaking of my own experience of course – and that's not to say that I haven't run across a few dogmatic Buddhists in my time. Ultimately, though, Buddhism seems to be not so much a dogma or a religion (although it can be be that, for those who want it or need it or grew up in such traditions) as it is a practice. As such, it's open to anyone who sees benefit it its practices. The second reason I'm comfortable calling myself a Buddhist is even simpler: it's because the Buddhists don't seem to mind having an atheist among them, whereas I've never met a Christian, however kind-hearted and tolerant he or she may be, who didn't carry in his or her heart at least some germ of discomfort with my assertion to my peculiar brand of born-again atheism. For the Christian (or any Christian, anyway, who buys into the key Christian messages of salvation and forgiveness and grace), there will always be an underlying hope or desire or expectation that I will somehow see the light. Unfortunately, I already did see the light – and it made me who I am. No group of Christians, no matter how liberal and tolerant and touchy-feely they may have been (I'm pointing at UUs and Quakers here, among others), has ever succeeded in making me feel welcome as I am, without offering up some subtext of, "gee, we hope you can see what we see, someday." What they see is God, of course.

Jason writes, in his transhumanist vein: "Either we are the immortals, or we are their progenitors. We should live accordingly." This is something that dovetails nicely with Buddhist practice, as I, at least, conceptualize it.

Here are some pictures from my walk home earlier today – Spring treeblossoms on a drizzly April day in Ilsan: Azathoth doing some ineluctable thing.

The back side of Munhwa Elementary.

Drizzle 003

A pedestrian area nearby.

Drizzle 005

The intersection at Gangseonno and Daesanno, halfway between work and home.

Drizzle 008

Back to Top