Canada proposes an intervention – and its own “Canadacy” in our upcoming elections – because they’ve noticed we’re hurting.
This video is funny on so many levels. I hope it works out.
Category: Politics, Economics & Current Affairs
Caveat: From Pyeongyang to Dënver
I’m not really very well-informed on this, but I’ve formed an opinion anyway. North Korea remains more-or-less stable for two reasons: 1) the state leverages traditional Korean communitarianism to get buy-in from groups that would otherwise resist (mostly the “bureaucratic class” and/or the low and mid-ranking military); 2) the economy is much more pre-industrial (i.e. feudal) than people have been thinking – many (if not an outright majority of) North Koreans are existing in an essentially pre-industrial society based on subsistence agriculture.
I have formed these opinions partly just through reflection – I read articles about NK often, but I can’t really point to specific articles that caused me to develop the above view. If I run across something specific in the future, I’ll try to remember to add them to this post or some future related one.
The below graph (from Brad Plumer at Wapo’s Wonkblog) is an interesting summary (and never forget that before about 1960, North Korea was more industrialized than the South – a legacy of Japan’s colonial industrialization policies for the peninsula and the fact that the North had at least some coal).
Mientras tanto… what I’m listening to right now.
Dënver, “Olas gigantes.”
This is a Chilean music group. I think the diaeresis (or “umlaut”) on the “e” is just a playful bit of typography, as opposed to symbolizing anything, although there are some native languages of Chile that use the double-dotted diacritic on certain vowels to indicate laxness or centralization in their orthographical systems, and the word “dënver” has a certain Mapudunguny look to it (I studied the native language Mapudungun at Univ. Austral de Chile in 1994) – but Mapudungun itself doesn’t use “ë”. I don’t know if the group’s name has something to do with the American city of Denver, either.
Letra
Dijiste vamos a nadar,
nunca he visto olas tan gigantes,
dijiste qué nos va a pasar.
Y que todo va en bracear,
y hacías con los brazos
de manera circular.
Entonces nos lanzamos a nadar
y las olas explotaban
como si nos odiaran,
y nos golpeaban sin piedad,
y yo braceaba y braceaba,
no servía de nada, daba igual.
Es que yo en ti confiaba más,
yo sólo seguía sin más
tu físico espectacular.
Así que simplemente me dejé llevar
y ahí vi como pasabas,
toda doblada tu espalda
y no vi más.
Caveat: Immoral Government
A blogger named doctorzamalek who runs a blog called Object Oriented Philosophy (yes, I'm a bit of an avocational philosophy nerd) writes on the current US political scene, in a way that I feel like quoting (and leading to several layers of embedded quotes, as he cites NYT who cites Romney).
Romney may be saying this just for campaigning purposes, but it’s still worth talking about it:
“It is a moral imperative for America to stop spending more money than we take in,” Mr. Romney says in the ad, which will be running when he arrives in Iowa on Tuesday for a bus tour and an orchestrated blitz of appearances by surrogates leading up to the caucuses on Jan. 3.
No. There is nothing “immoral” about spending more than you take in. This practice has a name: investment. Did I spend more than I took in while studying for my various degrees? Of course I did. And it might actually have been “immoral” not to do that, since my entire future depended on it.
There's not much I feel I need to add to that.
Caveat: Helicopters, Dictators, Kids, Snow, Life.
I live about 10 miles from the North Korean border. Mostly, I can totally ignore this fact. Today, while I was walking to work, I was reminded, as I saw not one but two Korean military helicopters passing overhead, in the cold blue sky. Understandably, the Korean military is probably doing things.
The Onion conveyed the hereditary Stalinist, Kim Jeong-eun’s insecurities.
Meanwhile, yesterday I had fun with first-graders. Three of my phonics kids drew self-portraits on the blackboard, during the break. I thought it was cute. They also drew Christmas trees for me, later.
What I’m listening to right now.
The Youngsters, “Smile (Sasha Remix from Involver).” Euroelectronica, I guess.
Walking home in the dark, it was snowing. First real snow, I would say – the other was a false alarm. This is the real stuff.
Side observation (or trivial pondering of the day): why do Koreans with foreign cars (like BMW’s and Chevys) drive worse than Koreans with local marques?
Caveat: The Atheisticist
I have decided to coin a new word, “atheisticist,” for use to describe atheists who are offensive, in the same way that sullyblog uses the term Christianist (apparently he coined it) to describe Christians who are annoying because of their shallow hypocrisies, militancy and/or dogmatic ideological rigidities and intolerant attitudes. The term Christianist is meant to parallel Islamist. Similarly, I would conceive Atheisticist as the same sort of parallel.
Having thus coined a new word, I shall apply it posthaste to the recently deceased philosopher/gadfly/atheisticist, Christopher Hitchens. There’s some irony (or poetic justice?) in my imitating the sullyblog in this, since apparently sullyblog and the hitch were pals.
As is often the case in his bloggings on various current events, the blogger IOZ provides the sort of biting, dark and yet shiny, brilliant prose that best captures my own sentiments (almost exactly) RE the recently deceased man. He writes about his own perspective vis-a-vis Hitchens, “As an atheist, I found him as embarrassing as my loudest aunt’s impenetrable Pittsburghese, mortifying in polite company. If the universe were just, he would wake from his passage on Kolob, basking in the angelic light of billions of perfect, white, immortal Mormon smiles.”
This connects back to something I observed about a concept from Bertolt Brecht in this blog entry from a few weeks ago – one man’s heaven can be another’s hell. And nothing would be more hellish for an atheisticist of Hitchens’ ilk than a Mormon Kolob.
Perhaps releated, perhaps not (you decide): what I’m listening to right now.
보천보전자악단 “우리의 《김정일》동지” [Bocheonbo Electronic Ensemble, “Our Comrade 《Kim Jeong-il》”]
This is from the DPRK. Don’t suffer under the illusion that only North Korea produces music like this. You can find very similar things on South Korean television, with merely different themes – it’s thought of as old-people’s music, rather like Sinatra, maybe, in the U.S.
Caveat: Kim Jong Gone
Yuri Irsenovich Kim (the name he was born with) has died.
I assume that this event, the death of the dear leader in the next country over from here, will have some kind of consequence for my life here. Not sure what – I noticed the exchange rate taking a turn for the worse, immediately. There’s economic uncertainty, of course.
But, although the South Korean stock market plunged, South Korean defense stocks jumped 15% on the news, according to Bloomberg. Hmm. Haha.
I’m curious what happens next. As usual.
Caveat: The Psychohistorian for President
It has come to my attention that Newt Gingrich considers Asimov’s Foundation series to have been a major influence in his intellectual formation. Although this perhaps bodes better than some other Republicans’ idolization of, e.g. Ayn Rand, it’s still disturbing, in multiple, incompatible ways. In fact, it’s cognitively dissonant in at least four ways:
- a) Asimov was an atheist liberal, while Gingrich positions himself as a christianist (neo-)conservative (arguably not very plausibly, but still);
- b) despite the above-mentioned fact that Asimov was, politically, liberal, nevertheless the actions of Hari Seldon (the founding psychohistorian – fictional picture at left) in the novels are hardly exemplars of liberal or democratic political action – they more resemble elitist crypto-totalitarianism – more than one critic over the years has compared Asimov’s psychohistory and the emergent Foundations (First and Second) as essentially Leninist-style avant-gardist cabals;
- c) Gingrich apparently shares his interest in psychohistory with none other than liberal(-ish) talking-head Paul Krugman;
- d) Gingrich is hardly like Hari Seldon, despite being influenced by the fictional character’s ideas – the former Speaker of the House seeks political glory and the media limelight, while Seldon preferred to operate in secret, behind the scenes.
I’ll elaborate more, later, maybe.
Meanwhile, what I’m listening to right now.
Eyelit, “Sun.”
Caveat: Immigration Debate
I'm finally getting around to posting a video of my last major debate test with the middle schoolers, which was at the end of October (no debate test for November because of the special test prep schedule, which doesn't have a debate class).
The video is kind of long – I strung together the Monday and Tuesday cohorts into one long video because the topic and proposition were exactly the same. One student's speech and part of another's were lost because of a camera problem, but other than that, it's all the students who participated.
As usual, I haven't put a lot of energy into the minutiae of editing – I cut out the various short exchanges between me and the students in which I provide quick feedback or directions – so it's only their voices.
Sometimes, they are very hard to hear – the sound pick-up on the camera didn't seem to work that well, and there's a lot of ambient noise (especially during the Monday group's debate) that makes hearing them harder, too.
Most of them are clearly not comfortable with public speaking yet, but a few show some progress if you compare them to earlier speeches. A few are more natural with public speaking – they will be the ones who are easier to understand, but keep in mind that they aren't, in fact, the ones with the highest competency in English, necessarily – they're just more at ease with the format.
The topic was challenging, and I think they did pretty well. I gave some guidance but I tried very hard not to let them merely bounce back ideas that I suggested (for both sides) but to forge their own.
The proposition was: "Immigration to South Korea should be encouraged." It's a topical, meaningful, "real" debate proposition, as it's something I bet has been debated in South Korea's legislature in recent years quite a bit. I've written and reflected on South Korea's relationship to the potential of redefining itself as an immigrant-welcoming society in other places on this blog – I won't go into it here, and I was careful not to be too transparent on my own biases and opinions with the kids.
Please don't judge the kids or their quality of presentation or English too harshly – remember they are 7th and 8th grade students who for the most part have never travelled to an English-speaking country. Nor have they had any experience with public speaking – even in their native Korean language. Considering that, they do pretty well..
Caveat: Preoccupied
My friend and former LBridge colleague Christine commented on my post about the Occupiers from a few days ago. I think her criticisms and points are completely valid. Certainly, I am not making any claim to a better sort of politics or activism than the activists – I am an armchair activist, at best. A bourgeois marxist with zero praxis.
But I’m a strong believer in the idea that minds cannot be changed through confrontation, and my main discomfort with the occupiers is that they seem to thrive on a sort of aimless confrontationalism that comes across as confrontation-for-the-sake-of-confrontation, which would be the worst sort.
Perhaps if I was there among them, I would feel differently. In past lives I have been “down in the crowd” in some types of political activism, generally rooted in a commitment to anti-war movements. And as the Arab spring has been showing, or the colored post-Cold-War revolutions of 1989-91, activism can yield spectacular results in the right geopolitical setting.
So the question is, is the setting right, in the US, right now? Seen from afar, dissatisfaction with the system certainly seems incredibly high. In my own self, it’s high enough that I dread going back “home.” I’m happier to be an outsider in someone else’s dysfunctional system, e.g. South Korea at the current moment.
Anyway, I’m just meandering, here. I don’t mean to come across as anti-Occupy. I just had a cynical moment of reactionary libertarianism.
Caveat: Yay, America!
I say that in the deepest irony. The “pepper spraying cop” of the recent UC Davis incident has gone memic, with a tumblr dedicated to photoshopping him into just about everything imaginable, most images full of obscure cultural references and cruel satire. My personal favorite was his elevation to a new, 2011 version of Lady Liberty – see below.
It’s interesting watching all this from abroad – it gives some distance, some cultural perspective. It’s not like South Korea doesn’t have its own pepper spraying cops (or the rough equivalents) – in fact, I would almost say that it was South Korea that perfected the difficult arts of both public rioting and of the police repression of said rioting – these American occupiers and their pepper-spraying cop friends could learn a lot from a careful study of the last two decades of Korean history – they are rank amateurs in comparison.
Nevertheless (or perhaps, because of this), there is something disturbing, depressing, and, yes, ironic that South Korea seems so… settled and calm, these days, while other parts of world, including places not so far from where I was born and raised (such as UC Davis) are undergoing these social upheavals. I tend to want to start studying gini coefficients, and suchlike.
From a broad economic and/or politico-historical perspective, let’s just say… mistakes may have been made. I’m feeling depressed about the future of my passport-issuing polity (because I don’t like saying the word “nation” with a possessive pronoun like “my”).
Caveat: Occupy Someone Else’s Space
“Occupation is more exhilarating and instantly gratifying than the hard slog of advancing political and social change” – Wendy Kaminer, at The Atlantic, November 18. This really was the first criticism of the Occupy Blah-Blah movement that really clearly summarizes my own discomfort with it.
Kaminer goes on to suggest (in different words – I’m extrapolating) the idea that the Occupiers are hypocrites, because they are setting themselves up as an “elite” of their own sort – an elite who are somehow more politically aware than the remaining 99% who remain clueless, conforming sheep. And that’s the point – the remaining 99% aren’t clueless – they know just as well (if not better) than the Occupiers what’s going on, and how things work. But they prefer to attempt to advance social and political change using other methods – less confrontational, in-your-face methods.
The main thing I like about the Occupy Whatchamacallit movement is mostly that they provide a kind of loony, far-left counterweight to the loony, far-right idiocies of the Teapartiers. I keep hoping the two groups will somehow accidentally reach a political critical mass while passing each other on the streets, one day, and then suddenly cancel out, like so much matter/anti-matter, in an explosion of useful political change.
Caveat: Immigration to South Korea
Recently my debate classes completed a unit I put together on the topic of immigration. Despite the fact that I have admitted (on this blog) strong personal views on the subject, I try very hard to hide those opinions during the class, because I really want to get the students to competently address both sides – that’s the spirit of a true debate class, and also because I hate the idea that I might be indoctrinating them somehow (they get enough of that from their Korean teachers).
For their final written test, they have to write a “speech” for either the Pro or Con side of a proposition similar to (but not exactly the same as) one we have done in class, without using notes – although I typically allow them to use their dictionaries.
I had two students to whom I gave perfect scores. Below are their essays – I’ve typed them up “as is” from their test papers, retaining the spelling and grammar exactly as written (really, not that bad considering these are two Korean eighth graders who have never lived outside of Korea) with only minor adjustments to punctuation.
The proposition was: “Immigration to South Korea should be encouraged.” I really feel quite proud of their work, and the reasonable clarity of their arguments.
Hyeonguk wrote for the Pro team:
Hello? I’m Ted from Pro team. Our team absolutely think we should allow and encourage immigration to Korea. We have three strong ideas. After you hear my speech, you’ll also think encouraging immigration is good and why it is good for Korea and you.
First of all, immigration is a right. Immigration is a right that we can’t stop and restrict. Immigration is a right like liberty. If we restrict immigration, it’ll be not only like slavery, but also like restricting their freedom. So I absolutely think we should allow immigration because it is a right.
My second reason is, it will help our economy to grow. We need more consumers and workers to grow our economy. And immigrants can solve and improve this problem. Immigrants can be a strong promotion to increase our economy. So I think we should encourage immigration because they can help our economy to grow.
My third reason is about aging problem – so-called old people problem. And I think it is the strongest idea that our Pro team has. We’ll go through aging problem soon. Then, we need more young people to work. However, Korea’s child birth rate is low now, but there is a way that we can solve it. It is immigration! So our Pro team think we should allow immigration.
Untill now, I’m talking about why we need immigration. Those are about right, economy, and aging problem. It can be hard for a few years after we allow immigration. However, after we bear it, we can get a lot of benefits. “After a storm, comes a calm.” We should remember this and we should allow immigration to Korea.
Haeun wrote for the Con team:
Hello! I’m Candy from the CON team. Our proposition is “Immigration is good for South Korea” and I disagree with this idea. Nowadays, many people are coming to Korea as immigrants. For example, many Vietnamese and Filipinos are coming to Korea to marry with the farmers or the old man. Also, many Chinese are coming to work in the factory. Like these, immigrations are increasing in South Korea. I’ll tell you 3 reasons why I disagree with the proposition: immigration will lead Korea to have much more unemployment, will cause conflict between Koreans and immigrants, and Korea’s tradition like culture and language should stay pure.
First, I think immigration will cause increase of unemployment. Nowadays, many Chinese are coming to Korea to work in facotry and because the have the low pay, many factory owners like them and it will lead koreans to lose jobs. Also, because most immigrants who come to earn money came to Korea illegally, the owners can threaten them to work more. And it’s a profit to the owners, so they won’t employ the Koreans.
Second, I think immigration will cause conflict between Koreans and the immigrants. It’s a fact that most Koreans are conservative and don’t like the foreigners, especially people from South East Asia. For example, there was a woman who wanted to go to a bathhouse who came from Southeast Asia. However, the owner of a bathhouse didn’t allow her to go in because she thought many people odn’t like the foreigners. And it caused many of foreigners (immigrants) to feel bad. Like these, immigration will cause a conflict and if it gets bigger, it will lead to a social problem.
Lastly, I think Korea’s tradition like culture and language should stay pure. Unlike other countries, Korea’s culture is traditional and it’s a strong point in Korean culture. If you look at America, you can see many culture and languages existing in one country because most of the immigrants have a tendency to keep their culture. And it leads a country to be confused because each of them speaks differently and has different cultures.
These are all of my 3 reasons why I think immigration is not good for South Korea. First, immigration will cause increase of unemployment. Second, it will cause a conflict between Koreans and immigrants. Third, Korea’s tradition should stay pure. I hope the immigration to South Korea won’t increase any more and want not to have the problems between immigrants and Koreans.
I also made a video of the debate speeches (which were somewhat distinct from the topic for the written test), but because the sound quality is poor and because they are not accustomed to public speaking, it’s not quite so impressive as their writing. Nevertheless, I’ll try to post that sometime.
Caveat: Occupations
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))
;; xkcd elaborated:
Caveat: Al Sharpton on Clarence Thomas
“Is it an achievement to have Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court? I don’t think so. I’ve made a lot of my reputation fighting police brutality. Do I really feel better that black cop beat me over the head than a white cop? No.” – Al Sharpton, on The Daily Show, 2011-10-19.
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?
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: C ya
#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.
// – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
}
Caveat: Found Cartographies
If 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"
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.
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.
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.
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
Once 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.
Caveat: Scrooge McDuckery
A blogger named Christopher Carr (at a site called League of Ordinary Gentlemen – a blog name that I somewhat dislike, by the way, because citing it makes me feel like I’m on a street corner handing out ads for a strip club) is refuting some ideas he ran across on another blog by someone named Dr Helen. The level of writing and the way he manages the ideas is spectacular.
He uses the term “scrooge mcduckery” to describe the sort of wannabe-John-Galtism that seems to underlie some portion of the teapartiers. Here’s a great extended quote from the specific blog entry:
Going through the comments over there at Dr. Helen’s and measuring the levels of entitlement, uncompromising self-righteousness, baseless notions of victimhood, and B-team Scrooge McDuckery might be an appropriate exercise for Introduction to Physics students. As if the baby boomers haven’t already been doing this in spirit for years, advocates of going Galt suggest the appropriate response to the democratic government not doing exactly what you-the-one-citizen-among-many like is to sit back and be pampered, as if the baby boomers haven’t already been doing this in spirit for years.
Actually it’s all a sort of prologue to a paean to Victor Hugo and Les Miserables, and, having never been much of a fan of Hugo, myself, I stopped reading it. But the introductory part really captures quite well a lot of what’s caused me, in recent years, to turn rather leftward from my earlier infatuation with Ayn Randian ideations.
Even five years ago I still happily described myself as having strong libertarian tendencies, but I’ve become so uncomfortable with these tendencies in recent times that I cannot in good conscience use the word libertarian any more – at least about myself, anyway. Perhaps these years in communitarian Korea, where even the hard-right conservatives still believe in things like universal healthcare and massive government-funded infrastructure projects, has colored my worldview.
I’m not really going anywhere with this, but I so loved Carr’s use of the term “scrooge mcduckery” (and by the way, I loved Scrooge McDuck comics when I a kid – why?). So I had to post this comment.
Caveat: The Right Time
In general, I’m contentedly expatriated. But in some moments, I’m proud that my residual US address is the city of Minneapolis. e.g. My congressman from Minneapolis, Keith Ellison, on the issue of Palestinian statehood, quoted Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The time is always right to do what is right.” He wrote an editorial in the New York Times.
I know there are serious issues between the Palestinians and Israel, and that the problems cut deeply both ways. But denying a people a sovereign state (or, alternately, denying them full rights as citizens) can never be the “right thing to do.”
Personally, I find the so called “one state solution” (latterly espoused by Qaddafi, of all disrepeutable people) to be the most ethically appealing, but I recognize that this is the least likely from the facts on the ground. Then again, who would have predicted in the 1980s that apartheid would have been utterly abrogated less than a decade later, in South Africa? Things change fast once change takes root.
Remember the hundredth monkey? Probably not.
Caveat: enough of the nineelevenism, already
I have decided to call the obsessive tendency in the media to discuss, memorialize and analyze the events of 9/11 on the anniversary of that event nineelevenism. I’m seeing way too much of it – on the English language websites I visit, on English language streaming radio I listen to.
I’m sick of it. I remember that day vividly. I was working in the office in Burbank. Somebody got some still pictures of it on their computer, and somebody turned on the radio. Then one of the bosses had a television on. I made an utterly inappropriate joke, very dark-humor, about disgruntled architecture critics – “those buildings were always so ugly.” Which I believed. I’ve always felt guilty for having made such an insensitive, inappropriate remark, before having realized the magnitude of the situation. I bear it like a little secret stain, a stolen moment of schadenfreude. Yet…
By the second day, I already saw the over-reaction taking shape. Yes, 3000+ people is a lot. But compared to wars and famines going on around the world at that time…
I wonder what date it was that the number of innocent, civilian lives taken by US / “coalition” forces exceeded the number of those lost on September, 11, 2001? I’m not talking about the lives of those who plotted, who combatted, who terrorized. I talking only about the collaterals. I’ve read statistcs that, between Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of collateral lives lost is in the hundreds of thousands. That seems plausible… and deeply inappropriate for a supposedly civilized nation to be implicated in.
I am not a pacifist. But this just isn’t the right thing to do. It wasn’t, not at any point.
By the end of the first year, I felt despair. I took to citing Luke 6:27-31 to people ranting on justice and vengeance – not because I am Christian, but because they claim to be.
27 ¶ But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also.
30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
The iconic image above (which I probably shouldn’t reproduce but I can’t resist) had an interesting write up in the Guardian recently. People love to rant about how inappropriate the mood of the photo is – this idyllic late summer scene, the smoke in the background. But this is humanity. Life goes on.
Look for beauty, don’t dwell on suffering. Seeking vengeance will rot your heart long before it destroys any enemy.
Caveat: Implicit Association Tests
I found a website (named “Project Implicit,” by something called IAT Corp, hosted at Harvard) that makes some claim to evaluate the kind of unconscious mental associations between categories like race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., and other semantic fields (like good vs. bad, American vs. not-American, etc.).
You do these rapid response categorization tests and then the test tells you how you tend to lean in your alleged “automatic preferences.” I harbor all kinds of skepticism about this sort of test, on multiple counts. I might discuss some of these skepticisms later, but for now, I’ll present my personal results on two of the tests (in the spirit of disclosure and for those curious).
The first test I took was with regard to the African-American category (Black) vis-a-vis the European-American category (White). Impressionistically, the alternation between labeling as Black vs. African-American on the one hand and White vs. European-American on the other hand struck me as inconsistent or random, although I can’t say for sure that wasn’t a designed inconsistency (e.g. something intentionally random as a built-in part of the test’s brain-probe, so to speak).
| Below is the interpretation of your IAT performance, followed by questions about what you think it means. The next page explains the task and has more information such as a summary of what most people show on this IAT. |
|
Your Result
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American. |
| The interpretation is described as ‘automatic preference for European American’ if you responded faster when European American faces and Good words were classified with the same key than when African American faces and Good words were classified with the same key. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic preference may be described as ‘slight’, ‘moderate’, ‘strong’, or ‘little to no preference’. Alternatively, you may have received feedback that ‘there were too many errors to determine a result’. |
I quickly felt that I was aware of “how” the test worked – it’s hard to explain so I suggest you just try it for yourself. I admit that from the start, I felt wary (on guard, so to speak) with regard to my own possible prejudice, and once I felt I understood how the test worked, I perhaps attempted to compensate. Assuming that the underlying prejudice I presumed myself to be battling (as a White American raised in a 90%+ white community) was one of preference toward European-Americans, it appears (and I can only say “appears” as I hardly know what all was operating, both in the test and in my own brain) I compensated successfully.
I found the first test unpleasant. The business of matching Whites with “Good” words and Blacks with “Bad” words (and then subsequently vice-versa) left a bad taste in my mouth. It was like the underlying message was: “everyone’s a racist, we just want to see what kind you are.” It was an exercise in reinforcing stereotypes, whether positive ones or bad ones.
The second test wasn’t really unpleasant so much as downright ridiculous. It was supposed to look at the European-American/Native-American contrast vis-a-vis the American/un-American (Foreign) contrast. The visual images drew on stereotypes even worse than the first test (see screenshot below). Of course, stereotypes are the point, and therefore it’s utterly conceivable that they’re intentional. Still, it’s awkward for someone who tries to be analytical about these things.
The whole business of what words were “American” vs. “Foreign” struck me as silly – they were all place names – essentially, European place names versus American place-names of Native American etymology. What is this contrast supposed to show? That Americans know the names of American cities? What about the allegedly atrocious geographical knowledge of average Americans? Is this test trying to link bad geographical knowledge with some type of racial (or racist) stereotype or another? Or is it assuming good geographical knowledge? They’re aware that Miami is in Latin America, right? And that Seattle is in Canada? And Moscow is “Foreign” – but what about the guy sitting in Moscow, Idaho, taking the test? I’ve been there. It’s near the Nez Perce Reservation. Did they take that into account?
What does this test really mean? What is it looking at? What does it have to do with nativism, white-supremacism, pro- vs. anti-immigration stances, etc.? It’s obviously complex, but I felt immediately that the test designers had at least as much ideological baggage as I personally brought to the table, and they didn’t even do much work to conceal it. I certainly doubt they had made much effort to evaluate their own prejudices, in the design of the test (especially in light of the apparent socio-linguistic naivety on display in the onomastics).
I felt a strong impulse to try my best to “game” the test. I have no idea whether my effort to game the test worked, but it appears to have, since I got the result I intended: I got myself to show up as a nativist, roughly. But of course, the test designers could argue that I was merely “aiming for” the “automatic preference” I was already ideologically inclined toward. Here is my result.
| Below is the interpretation of your IAT performance, followed by questions about what you think it means. The next page explains the task and has more information such as a summary of what most people show on this IAT. |
|
Your Result
Your data suggest a moderate association of White Am. with Foreign and Native Am. with American compared to Native Am. with Foreign and White Am. with American. |
| The interpretation is described as ‘automatic association between White Am. and American’ if you responded faster when White Am. images and American were classified with the same key than when White Am. images and Foreign were classified with the same key. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic association may be described as ‘slight’, ‘moderate’, ‘strong’, or ‘little to no preference’. Alternatively, you may have received feedback that ‘there were too many errors to determine a result’. |
So what does it all mean? I’m not sure. I might take some more tests and report back – they’re nothing if not interesting.
Caveat: Looking in the wrong place, maybe
Gawker had a screenshot from CNN the other day, showing CNN making a horrible geographical mistake. They were indicating the wrong Tripoli, on the map. Instead of Tripoli, Libya, they were apparently reporting on the Libyan insurrection from Tripoli, Lebanon. Which might explain why no one could find Qaddafi, come to think of it.
That’s really a pretty gross geographical error. It makes me wonder if maybe they’ll throw up a map of Iowa, next – after all, there’s a town in Iowa called Tripoli, too. It would be funny if they found Qaddafi there – after all, I recently heard he was declaring as a Republican candidate – Tripoli, Iowa, is a very logical place to do this, one would think.
Caveat: National liberation and other historical paradoxes
Today is Liberation Day in South Korea. It’s the day that Japan surrendered to the Allies, and 35 years of subjugation to Japanese colonialism were brought to a close. What followed was the division of the peninsula by the victorious powers, and a bifurcated, two-sided neocolonial regime (Soviet and American) that, arguably, persists even today, 20 years after the end of the Cold War.
The North is the world’s only surviving even vaguely Stalinist regime, and the South, despite having shifted to a sort of neolibral democracy (such as it is, and, erm, perhaps not coincidental to the moment in history when the Soviet Union fell), remains the largest “peacetime” host of American troops on foreign soil (i.e. discounting the active war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq).
Despite my cynicism, I continue to believe that South Korea may be the sole genuine success story in America’s highly questionable exercises in “nation building.” I think that this is true, in part, because of the unique geopolitical moment that followed World War II and that the Korean War consolidated – a moment when “democracy” was happily represented around the world by repressive neo-fascist regimes (such as Syngman Rhee and subsequently Park Chung-Hee) – true – but where the lip-service concepts such as freedom were paid would eventually result in an evolution toward more inclusive (if never perfect) political systems.
I think that one reason why the current neoconservative efforts at nation-building (in e.g. Iraq) have been such utter failures is because of the historical myopia that is unable to recognize that “nation building” is, in fact, almost never a democratic enterprise. Democracy can take root in nations, undeniably, but nations are rarely constructed as a result of truly democratic impulses – because true democracies are full of people who are not, in fact, interested in being part of this or that nation.
And don’t try to sell me on some kind of American exceptionalism in this matter – the “American” nation was built by a very narrow demographic of middle-aged and elderly white, male landowners, over and against the objections of all kinds of embedded subjugated peoples (Native Americans, women, Catholic immigrant-laborers, Jewish small-scale merchants, etc.), who were only subsequently, through several centuries of struggle and brutal war (e.g. the Civil War), ideologically homogenized into some degree of inclusion. Never forget: even now, Obama talks white – and that’s how he got elected.
Nationalism is – as movements such as Nazism (not to mention Teapartism) should make obvious – all about the imposition of some totalizing ideological regime across an inevitably heterogeneous population. It’s only as a retroactive construct that such homogeneous nation-peoples (such as Koreans or Mexicans or even Americans) choose to perceive themselves as such.
All of which is my way of saying that I have, in fact, come to believe in a certain strain of South Korean exceptionalism, if only in that its relationship to the United States is utterly unique in the history of neocolonialism. There are lots of caveats attached to that, too.
There’s a perhaps-relevant quote, frequently misattributed to Sinclair Lewis (similar to something said by Halford E. Luccock, but probably invented in its misattributed form by journalist Harrison Salisbury). The recent proto-primarial antics of Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry set me to thinking about it: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
To which I will add: Yay, nationalism! Oh, and maybe, as a dash of seasoning, the old Samuel Johnson line: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
Speaking of freedom… What I’m listening to right now.
Kris Kristofferson, “Me and Bobby McGee.”
Kris Kristofferson wrote the song, and this is an early demo version that is currently one of my favorite renditions. There’s a Willie Nelson cover I like, too. I never actually cared for the famous Janis Joplin version that topped the charts in the early 70’s, for example, and I suspect the version that I grew up on was probably one of the Greatful Dead’s covers of it – I couldn’t find anything that sounded exactly right in surfing around youtube, though.
Here is a view of Ilsan’s Jungang-no [Central Avenue], a block from my apartment at the Juyeop subway entrance. I took the photo earlier, shrouded in drizzle – there are a few limp South Korean flags hanging from light poles. I took a long walk today, but didn’t really do a lot. Trying to find inner peace.
Caveat: The Remarkable Chilean Polity
There are possible solutions, within a system-of-government framework not unlike our own (i.e. presidential, bicameral, republican, more-or-less two-party), to the never-ending U.S. deficit/budget crisis. Why is it that the best, clearest explanation of these budget options comes not in any recent news article on the topic of the actual budget/deficit situation, but in a discussion of how Chile, in contrast, seems to have gotten things “right”? Despite the “Great Recession,” the country is currently still running an underlying structural budget surplus!
I found the article fascinating, extraordinarily clear, and refreshing – I very much recommend it. Despite being posted on an economics blog, it’s entirely accessible to those unversed in the obscurities of the dismal science. The blog’s author, economist Ed Dolan, summarizes:
The centerpiece of Chilean fiscal policy is a balanced budget rule of a much more sophisticated variety than the one endorsed last week [relative to timestamp on blog post: 2011-07-24] by the U.S. House of Representatives. The House bill calls for strict year-to-year balance of total receipts and outlays, whereas Chile’s rule requires annual balance of the structural budget. The two are not at all the same.
I suppose it’s very possible that, in a month, or a year, or a decade, we’ll see some collapse of the Chilean polity, putting a lie to its current apparent functionality (as opposed to the U.S. dysfunctionality). Recent geopolitical developments have certainly been full of interesting surprises. But based on my own time in Chile, back in 1994 (when the dictatorship was still quite fresh in everyone’s mind), there was something about the way that country had emerged from its recent political/economic trauma with a sort of “never again” resolve that impressed me profoundly.
Chile is not devoid of problems – the recent clashes between the new, conservative Piñera government and student protesters is a good example of the kind of tensions found there. And like most “tiger”-type, neoliberal economies (including my current home, South Korea), it has huge difficulties balancing economic growth with unequal distribution of wealth and difficult-to-eliminate structural corruption. But having traveled extensively in the world, Chile remains at the very top of my list of favorite places, and though I haven’t been back since 1994, hopefully someday I’ll get back there.
Unlike anywhere else I’ve been in Latin America, in Chile I never had any feeling of impending anarchy, I had no sense that authority is inherently not-to-be-trusted – indeed, one of the striking things in the way that Chileans talked to me about the dictatorship and social unrest of the 70’s and 80’s was that they all deemed it to have been so exceptional vis-a-vis the “normal” Chilean national character. If you study the country’s history, you quickly realize this is, largely, self-mythologizing – but that doesn’t invalidate it as a national self-perception. In fact, it makes it all the more remarkable. It is such a contrast to the way dictatorships and official corruption seem to perceived in most of Latin America, where these things are always taken as “well that’s just the way things always are.” In that way, Chile always felt “first world” to me, despite lacking that “first world” level of general prosperity.
In other Chile-related news, I recently read that the town of Arica, in the desert north of Chile, recently received 6 millimeters of rain – a typical amount for an hour or two on a summer’s day in Seoul – and set a new record for most precipitation ever. Arica is notoriously the driest place on earth, with some outlying areas having no recorded precipitation in all of history.
Caveat: Our Potemkin Planet
I'm not even close to agreeing with everything blogger IOZ writes, but this little summary in a recent post really captures a lot of information and ideas in a very compact bit of prose. I must quote:
The problem is in fact not that people need jobs but that people need money, and hobbling them to a desk or factory floor is the only moral and legitimate means of funneling currency into their empty jugs. We need to have fuller employment so that more people are getting paid so that the consumer economy expands ad inf[initum] and repeat as necessary. There are, if you consider it even briefly, a half million or so unexamined assumptions underlying all of this.
He goes on to declare that both democrats and republicans are silly, which I can marginally agree with, but also that Barack Obama is a murderer (which I will grant is provisionally true, but only in the same sense that every modern American president trying to manage an empire ultimately beyond his control has been a murderer). I'm less comfortable with such rhetorical flights. But the preceding thought about jobs cuts to the core of the limitations of life on our increasingly Potemkin Planet.
His conclusion: "Beyond the merely pecuniary and the venial: what does your life mean to you beyond your paystub and your appetites?"
I'm working on the answer to this, and feel I'm making only a little progress. But I agree it needs to be sought.
Caveat: Looters Just Looking for Love
RE the recent rioting in London, I ran across the following telling observation reported by blogger Penny Red:
In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:
"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"
"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."
I remember the 1992 riots in L.A. I was living in Pasadena at the time – they were pretty much an immediate part of my environment. My thought at the time was that part of it was about that feeling of simply not having any way of being heard. And so giving up on efforts to be heard, on efforts at dialog, and just letting it vent into pure rage. I suspect something similar must be what's involved in London.
Given the increasing stratifications (gap between rich and poor) of most Western societies, and the troubled economy and the emphasis everywhere on "austerity" as opposed to expansive (i.e. Keynesian) government responses, we will only be seeing more of this, in the future.
I saw another blogger (I uncharactistically neglected to bookmark so I don't recall who) who observed that it's quite ridiculous that we don't view social welfare spending as a component of the supposedly critical (and generally uncuttable) national security budget. Obviously, the recent and ongoing cuts to social welfare in Britain were major contributors to the conflagration in London this past week. How is that not "national security"?
Caveat: Mitt Lille Land
Maybe a week or two ago, I was surfing the internet looking at news or commentary on the Norwegian disaster. I don’t really have any profundity to contribute, but I ran across this video at some point, and the musical accompaniment has become a new favorite on my mp3 rotation. I’ve always had a thing for songs in languages I don’t understand, I suppose – so the fact that it’s in Norwegian doesn’t bother me at all – Norwegian is one of those languages that’s in the category of “gee I’d really like to study that language someday” – along with about 50 other languages, right?
It’s a haunting tune, and since the bombing in Oslo / massacre at Utoya, has become a sort of informal anthem that Norwegians apparently associate with commemorating the events. The original song is by Ole Paus, and I like his version too – almost better. But here’s Maria Mena’s version, set to video footage from the aftermath of the attacks.
Ole Paus’ version follows below – it’s set to a video made of photo stills from some who-knows-who’s Norwegian vacation – which feels oddly intimate and intrusive to look at, to me – but unfortunately it’s the only full version of the original that I could find. I like its almost vaguely Appalachian sound.
Here are the lyrics. Norwegian is possibly my favorite of the Germanic languages (well, I like Dutch, too, and English has a certain amibivalent popularity in my heart, I must confess – but that may simply be excessive familiarity).
Mitt lille land
Et lite sted, en håndfull fred
slengt ut blant vidder og fjordMitt lille land
Der høye fjell står plantet
mellom hus og mennesker og ord
Og der stillhet og drømmer gror
Som et ekko i karrig jordMitt lille land
Der havet stryker mildt og mykt
som kjærtegn fra kyst til kystMitt lille land
Der stjerner glir forbi
og blir et landskap når det blir lyst
mens natten står blek og tyst
Caveat: Perhaps I’ll just remain an expat
This is stunning information – but entirely in keeping with what's been going on: Apple Now Has More Cash Than the U.S. Government. As of July 28th.
This is so depressing.