The above applies to yours truly, and that proofreading work I was doing over the weekend. I found the Edgar Allan Poe story online. Here's the link, if you want to read it yourself. Mrs. Kang is using Poe's story to support her argument about the "duplicity" of American culture, whose checkered historical track record (slavery, war, etc.-- you know the litany) stands in shameful contrast to the ideals we constantly preach.

I'll be honest and confess that Mrs. Kang's paper thoroughly pissed me off, and while I kept a very civil tone in my proofreading notes, I let her have it-- as politely as I could-- with regard to the sloppiness and incompleteness of her argumentation (this isn't unique to Mrs. Kang, by the way; the academic culture in Korea doesn't exactly cultivate methodical thinking and good research habits). I've become less cruel in my old age in how I evaluate folks; as I've gained greater awareness of my own foibles, I find it's harder to pass judgement on others. But Mrs. Kang's argument, and the poisonous school of thought it reflects, raised my hackles, and I couldn't take this lying down (if you don't mind one lame cliché following another).

In general, I don't write about patriotism as such, because my stance on such matters is fairly philosophical: nations come and go; they're not forever. Carlin's at least partially right when he says, in reference to gung-ho conservatives who are easily angered by flag-burners, "I leave symbols for the symbol-minded." This I can understand. But at the same time, we have to remember that we don't move through the world as if we owe it nothing. We are constantly in debt: in debt to the earth, to the water, to the sunlight, to our food, to our family, to our friends, to all that gives us care and sustenance, and at some level, even philosophical folks like me have to recognize that the notion of country is included in this great list of indebtedness. Among my various debts, I owe my country. I'm not giving this issue any absolute weight, mind you, but it still has to mean something to say that I've grown up in America, been nurtured there, enjoyed a free, open, and pluralistic environment there-- a place where a man can write raunchy stories, study religion, and gleefully mock political figures for his small reading audience of a couple dozen.* One way to show appreciation for all these gifts is to defend, when appropriate, the caregiver.

[*TECHNICAL NOTE: Yes, I'm actually doing a lot of that while here in Korea, not in America. True. But I did it while in the States over Christmas, I'll be able to do it there again when I go back, so if you want to nitpick the geography issue, I hereby cordially invite you to EAT ME.]

So that's where I am right now, mentally, in dealing with Jang-woong's big sister. I saw her paper as heavily ideological, almost nonchalantly anti-American (it's written for an audience that will simply nod its head sagely at every mention of American imperialism and colonialism and materialism and corporatism, etc.), and I felt I needed both to get some frustration out of my system and educate her a bit about Other Points of View. As people like the Air Marshal have argued, most Americans are not unaware of what the world thinks of us; quite the contrary, the world makes sure we know its opinion of us. But the countries that call us to the carpet don't often seem to turn that same critical gaze back on themselves, and so their critiques are very one-sided. This isn't to suggest that everyone in America is free of the grip of ideology, partisanship, and nationalist zealotry; that would be a naive thought. But when emotions rule us, we forget that our opinions, arising as they do in the moment, are never the end of the story. And while I may not hold some absolute privileged perspective, I nevertheless know a lot more about my own country than Mrs. Kang who, bless her misguided heart, plainly doesn't know shit about it.

This evening, I was all set to put up a cartoon about John Kerry fucking sheep, but this proofreading affair bothers me a little too much to concentrate on that right now. It was very hard to sit down and go line by line through this anti-American diatribe, correcting spelling, rephrasing sentences, adding polite remarks and critiques... and eventually I cracked. Here are the general remarks I left at the very end of Mrs. Kang's draft. You'll see I've tried my best to remain as polite as possible, but know this: it was very, very hard to do.

GENERAL REMARKS: VERY interesting paper so far! I’ll be curious to read the rest. I think the overall argument needs to be made more coherent, however. Several points:

First and most important, what is your primary purpose in writing this paper? Is it to critique modern, 21st-century American society by using Poe’s story as ammunition in the critique, or are you commenting on the historical ironies of America’s past history, i.e., at the time of Poe? This is very unclear. If, as I’m guessing, your purpose is to critique contemporary America, then you’ll have to provide much more evidence that relates Poe to our times—more connective evidence and arguments.

Many non-Americans use terms like “imperialism” and “colonialism” without understanding what they actually mean. Many Americans also do this! Your paper, in order to avoid confusion, needs to present clear definitions of these terms (even as footnotes; that’s OK) for your arguments to be stronger. Is America, in fact, an empire? This is an important question, and answers vary. Many Americans will argue that this contention is ridiculous, especially if one compares America’s behavior to that of China (a truly imperialist country, eating Tibet and threatening Taiwan!), the old empires of Western Europe, or the Roman Empire. In all such cases, imperial powers physically dominate other countries, force them to pay tribute to the central government (Beijing, Rome, etc.), and cruelly suppress open criticism—none of which America does. If America is imperialist, it is perhaps “culturally imperialist” or “economically imperialist,” though you’ll have to redefine “imperialism” away from its classical definition for this to make sense (and people will challenge a redefinition!). So long as countries relate to America on economic/trading terms, it is far less clear that America “dominates” other countries. Market forces and national sovereignty play important roles in trade. I’m not saying that America therefore isn’t imperialist. Perhaps it is! I am, however, saying that your paper will need to present strong evidence in favor of the imperialism argument, beginning with a clear definition of words like “imperialism,” “colonialism,” etc.

A more direct connection needs to be made between the notions of exploitation and colonialism. I haven’t read Poe’s story, so I don’t know how much evidence his book will provide. If his book doesn’t provide enough evidence in your favor, you will have to research elsewhere for various thinkers’ opinions on exploitation and colonialism. (QUESTION: Is The Narrative a novel, a short story, or something else? This should also be mentioned at the beginning.)

As things stand, the paper is rather unfairly balanced in a very anti-American direction. This makes any critique much less convincing, because it appears motivated by emotion-driven nationalistic ideology, and little else. Because only leftist and postmodernist sources are cited, a very distorted view of the actual situation is presented. This needs to be corrected, because it’s quite obvious that American history is NOT merely one of domination, hypocrisy, and alienation. If it were, then people would have no reason to desire a life in America, and there’d be no immigration to our shores. If your purpose is to provide a convincing critique of American culture and values, the critique must be balanced, or it will be little better than propaganda. This is why I provided some counter-arguments to your contentions: NOT to discourage you, but to encourage you to reply to them by amassing evidence and presenting a fuller argument in favor of your point of view. It is indeed true that America is inconsistent in how it views itself and the world (what country isn’t?), and our history is replete with hypocrisy. But Americans often appreciate and welcome trenchant critique of their own culture, because they are generally idealistic and constantly trying to improve it. A constructive critique’s purpose is to make things better, not merely pass negative judgement. So again, what are your motivations for writing this paper?

Allow me to congratulate you on your English skills, which are far better than my written Korean skills! At present, I would be unable to write such a complex paper in Korean!


______________________


Grrrrrrrr. Write in with comments if you want. I turned Mrs. Kang's four-page, single-spaced paper into a seven-pager with my voluminous critiques, and she's still got another half to give me for proofing.

UPDATE: With thanks to Dr. Horace Jeffery Hodges, I now have a link to a very good short essay (much shorter than Bill Whittle's ponderous screed) by Joseph Nye on the question of America and empire. And Dr. Hodges also provided a link to IndependentPhilosopher, whom I'll blogroll and plunk down right next to AnalPhilosopher. The prof who runs IndependentPhilosopher, Dr. William Vallicella, says this about his philosophical position:

My philosophical position may be described as onto-theological personalism: I defend the view that individual persons form an irreducible and ultimate ontological category, and that within this category self-subsistent existence is the prime person. This is the theme that unifies my seemingly disparate investigations. Thus my critique of the anatta doctrine of Pali Buddhism subserves this end, as does my rethinking of themes from the great but now neglected native Californian philosopher, Josiah Royce. The same goes for my critique of Heidegger's phenomenological approach to Being, as well as my critique of the logical approach to existence found in Frege, Russell, and Quine.

This is obviously a position I disagree with, which will make Dr. Varricella interesting and frustrating reading, much as Dr. Keith Burgess-Jackson is. And that's one way to land on the blogroll. Thank you, Dr. Hodges!

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In honor of consummate Photoshopper ALLAH, I give you:



I'm not sure I made that lipstick mark look, well, human enough. That's OK... we've got some cartoons on the way that explore the non-human angle of this so-called "affair."

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The return of the Deity! But this time the theophany is over at Carpemundi's blog, where the site is preparing to say "Adieu." "Adieu" literally means "to God," and as you'll see when you go over to Cerebral Bypass, it's only proper that God Himself should put in an appearance to say, "Right back atcha'!"

(Let's just hope this isn't the planetbound god from "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier"-- the one who, as petulantly as Kim Jong Il, demanded a shuttlecraft of the Enterprise bridge crew.)

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If you've never read the exchange between Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast (a transplanted Austrian who's been living at the monastery in Gethsemani, KY) and Robert Aitken-roshi, Zen master and founder of the Diamond Sangha, I highly recommend The Ground We Share: Everyday Practice, Buddhist and Christian, a book that re-creates their conversation as a transcript.

I don't want to talk about the whole book, but about the one very important thing I took away from it. It involves, for Christians, a significant reconceptualization of God that I find therapeutic. In Brother David's words:

Well, you interpret supernatural as above the natural, but that’s not the only way the word can be understood. Super may mean "above us," but it may also be simply an intensifier. We can say, for example, that one thing is fine and another is superfine, meaning finer than the first. In the same sense, one experience may be natural while another is supernatural. Natural derives from the verb "nasci," to be born. In the sense I intend, supernatural is closer to birth—to the source from which everything gushes forth—than the merely natural.

Those of us hailing from classical theistic traditions tend to imagine God as Other, assuming God is somehow at an ontological remove from the rest of us. Brother David, who trained under some of the same Zen instructors as Aitken-roshi, offers a different way to approach the God question by declaring God the most natural thing. God is nothing special-- he's the spirit of the valley, as the Tao Te Ching calls the Tao.

I say this is therapeutic because, if you take Brother David seriously, you immediately eliminate the urge to reach for God. Just scratch your ass. No reaching necessary.

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BravoRomeoDelta at Anticipatory Retaliation links to a hilarious and insightful disembowelment of Paul Verhoeven's 1997 "Starship Troopers." What makes the review so cool is that the reviewer obviously knows something about tactics and training. One thing he hints at, but doesn't really cover, though, is this question of the Bug meteor-- the one that smacks into Buenos Aires and kills millions.

The Bug home planet of Klendathu is located almost all the way across our galaxy, which if I remember correctly is something on the order of 100,000 light years wide (a light year is about 6 trillion miles; it's a unit of distance, not time). The bug meteor takes only one year to arrive at Earth, which means it would have to have been travelling, oh, about 60-70,000 light years per year, which would therefore be 60-70,000 times faster than the speed of light.

[UPDATE: Maybe I'm wrong about our galaxy's diameter. In fact, maybe scientists are wrong, too. Here's an article suggesting that the Milky Way's size has been overestimated.]

Let's ignore, for a moment, the temporal problem posed by Einsteinian relativity-- questions of time dilation and such, and concentrate on the question of the meteor's mass. I can't claim to have a firm grasp of relativity theory in its general and special forms, but isn't it true that an object's mass approaches infinity as it approaches the (theoretically asymptotic) speed of light?

So what we have is a huge meteor traveling far, far faster than the speed of light, with infinite mass...

...and all it does is flatten Buenos Aires?

The ability to accelerate huge rocks and fling them at distant targets with such scary accuracy would make the Bugs worthy of some of the more grandiose villains in the Star Trek universe, let alone the "Starship Troopers" universe. The impact of that meteor should have been at least analogous to shooting a cue ball with a .357 Magnum.

But here's another problem. Go back to that moment in the film when the Rodger Young is on its training mission to Jupiter. Remember that it encounters the Bug meteor and loses its communications array?

Given what we know about the meteor's frightening speed, the Rodger Young's encounter with the meteor shouldn't have gone as it did. The scene, as filmed, only makes sense if the Rodger Young were flying backward, facing Jupiter but in fact moving toward Earth, because the ship's position relative to the meteor was, in cosmic terms, relatively static.

Anyway, go read the review. Oh, it's cruel. But the reviewer's a fan of the movie's special effects, as was I. So it's not all darkness and desolation.

NB: An interesting paper on both Heinlein's and Verhoeven's Starship Troopers can be found here.

I'll lump in another fan critique, this time of Harry Potter. Two things:

1. In Book Two, doesn't Percy take five points from House Gryffindor? And in Book Five, don't they make a big deal about how prefects aren't allowed to take points away?

2. In Book Four, when Harry's foot gets trapped on the trick stairwell (after he's lost his golden egg, the clue to the second task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament) and the Marauder's Map has fluttered down out of his reach, why doesn't Harry use the "Accio" summoning command, which he learned in order to get through the first task?

Anyone with answers to these burning questions for our times, please write in.

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I've been sick and had to cancel my private class on Friday, so getting out of the house to schlep over to a meeting in Kangnam on Saturday was a bit dicey. Luckily, all went well and my asshole didn't explode (cf. Eddie Murphy's hilarious outtakes in "The Nutty Professor" for the pop-culture reference).

My meeting was with two ladies, one of whom runs a placement agency that finds foreign teachers and sets them up at university posts on a per-semester basis. The other lady, Kris (also Korean), was one of the teachers, but also a friend of the boss. Kris speaks English very well (go figure-- it's an English-teaching job!), and her main role this evening was to be the interpreter. Luckily, my Korean's good enough that we were able to get along mostly in Korean, or maybe I should call it a Korean-skewing Konglish.

I say that Conrad would envy the gig I got because it's at Seoul Women's University, just a few subway stops from where I live. I may have to take digital pictures of my class. The fun starts in late March.

Woo-hoo!

Yes, men are pigs, and we're all destined to become bacon in hell.

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...and the people said, "Amen!"

You think I'm joking about the ass thing, don't you. Well, lookie here:

The Lord said to Moses, "I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name." Moses said, "Show me your glory, I pray." And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, "The Lord"; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But," he said, "you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live." And the Lord continued, "See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."

(Exodus 33:17-23, NRSV, emphasis added)


And you thought I was kidding. Didn't think God ever flashed people, did you.

FOOL! Now you know better!

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This one is for the ladies.

[For foreigners who might not know the way it works in Korea, there are two romantic "holidays": Valentine's Day and the so-called White Day (nothing racial implied, despite the Klan overtones). On Valentine's Day, the women do stuff for their men. On White Day, the men do their thang for the ladies. And there's a third and sadder "holiday," Black Day, for those with no Significant Other, like yours truly. On that day, we get to eat jjajang-myon, or Korean-style Chinese pasta in black bean sauce. And usually this is done all alone (or occasionally with a sympathetic friend). Jjajang-myon is actually one of my favorite fast foods, so I'll be celebrating my misery rather happily.]

Here's your cartoon, folks. Now behold the mystery of love.













(c)2004 Kevin Kim, BigHominid.com Publishing, Inc. (etc., etc.)

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Clones are in the news these days. Korean clones.

But they've never been news to me.

I was trained to kill clones, you see. For years, the scientists would clone me and make me fight myself.

It was always messy.



I was ordered to have no mercy. I had to eat my clone's head after every fight. They told me it would make me smarter. Thousands of fights and thousands of brains later, all I know is that... I taste pretty damn good.


[This post is dedicated to Lorianne Schaub of Hoarded Ordinaries: Zen teacher, writer, naturalist, doctoral student, and of course, blogger. Go visit Lorianne's blog here, or rifle through her manifold profundities here. Lorianne's the one who suggested I do something on clones, but I noticed that everyone else had gotten to the subject first. So instead of Photoshopping you an Al Gore sporting multiple schlongs ("I invented the dick bouquet!"), I offer you this exercise in gratuitous violence, which of course all Buddhists naturally aspire to. Lorianne's already killed several Zen students as an example to the others in her sangha. "Battleaxe satori in the spirit of Nan Chuan," I think she calls it. Her neighborhood is also strangely cat-free.]

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It started out innocently enough. I got an email from my friend Jang-woong's sister (a different sister, not Mrs. Oh) asking for help with proofreading a paper she has to present. Half of it arrived this evening. I started reading... and was simultaneously fascinated and flabbergasted at what I was being asked to proof.

Here's part of what I received, still in Konglish, but perfectly understandable. Obviously, postmodernism has thoroughly soaked into Korean humanities academe.

---

The Duplicity of Traditional American Values:
Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

I.
Americaness or traditional American values like individualism, independent spirit, liberalism, or protestantism are nationalistic rhetorics that would integrate America as a unity through its mythical traits rather than concepts standing for America or American itself. Actually the United States has grown a great nationalistic nation from the beginning of history of many kinds of immigrants and many trials has been made to analyze the national identity of America from the memorial of the mass since a historian, George Bancraft wrote the book "American History" on 1834. In the course of time, American history that has been formed through the American immigration that got back to primitive nature for freedom in the 17C and American Revolution that declared the independence from the England in the 18C and development of Democracy has agitated for the Edenic America.

However, the above viewpoint is contradictory to the reality of American society whose history is not of the creative myth but of alienation for human beings. The fact that America has formed the unitary nation and national values is not based on consensus but on conflicts of different races and opinions. And this kind of deconstructive standpoint has been supported by many left historians and postmodernist as well as multiculturalist in recent years. So, this thesis, upholding the opinions, aims at showing the doublefaced Americaness or American values through The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (hereinafter referred to The Narrative) by Edgar Allan Poe.

The Narrative written at the renaissance of American literature with the rise of nationalism infusing patriotism into the American people after Revolution. Thus, it shows a pattern of typical American literature which shows unreality, Adamic character, pursuit of identity and etc. However, the national consciousness promoted at this period has some limitations in terms of white man's society alienating natives, slaves and women. Accordingly, the truth that are shown by white boy, Pym, with vested rights, who are equipped with traditional American values reveals duplicity of America and its future. And, the sufferings and nightmare that Pym went through stand for the collapse of American dream and optimistic view that cover up the conflict and alienation of American society.

The contradiction of American society is caused by not only the facts that immigrants from England can not be inseparable with the tradition but also that their liberal democracy and calvinism are incompatible with the sacrifice of natives and slaves. To be like, the Americaness and its limitation in the The Narrative is American self-consciousness to be free from the Europe tradition shown with the America's trial to avail itself of the tradition in other side and its liberal democracy that runs parallel with the ideology of racial discrimination. Finally, The Narrative ends with Pym's hideous and dismay nightmare that stands for the American future alike because the breaking of the American values that integrate American people means negation of American optimistic future.

II.
American values such as individualism or independent spirit that have originated from American history with Democracy and Calvinism can be found in the characters of the fictions like The Narrative, Moby Dick, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, etc. Pym's journey as the main theme of The Narrative is also clothed with American literature typicality that seek escape from real world leading to quest for future as in the case of Ishmael or Huckleberry Finn. Americans, due to their historical features, aspirate for the break off with old-world and distinctive Americaness, and this yearning leads to the expression such as 'American Dream' or American Adam'. As it were, it means a construction of new society that can serve for the great cause of human emancipation as for a life worthy of man clearing off old-world evil.

The characteristics of Americaness can be found in that of Pym's journey. He begins his travelogue by saying that "My name is Arthur Gordon Pym(7)" and evokes the extraordinarity of his travel with words "I will relate one of these adventures by way of introduction to a longer and more momentous narrative(8)". His way of talking shows American self-consciousness due to a lack of tradition, having taken it into consideration that America itself didn't have any national sentiment.

Pym severed relations with his family to make a trip. Heading for a wharf, Pym who is disguised with seaman cloak said to his own grandfather who called his name, "sir!, you are a sum'mat mistaken. My name, in the first place, bee'nt nothing at all like Goddin(21)". Having considered Pym's words "My grandfather was more attached to myself, I believe, than to any other person in the world, and I expected to inherit the most of his property at his death(7)" his behavior stands for American independent spirit that is one of distinctive American values.

However, the attitude as above is not consistent. None the less Americans try to their own individuality distinct from European's on the one hand, they, on the other hand, try to identify themselves with European and follow their successive history. First of all, Pym begins his story by mentioning urge of several gentlemen to share his story with American public. They insist on it that to give Pym's story to American public is his duty as a American. But Pym would refuse to publish his story because he fears lest that public should think the story is "a merely an impudent and ingenious fiction(3)" except his family and friends. But, mentioning the public convinced of the plausibility of the story, Pym tries to persuade the readers to believe his fictitious story as true. About the affair, Nelson claims that Pym's join hands with the gentlemen who urged to publish his story means that he participates in the imperialistic history of Europe imposing the white's superiority(94).

Perhaps most important is that when Pym making voyage from curiosity was shipwrecked he was saved by the ship, Jane Guy, that was of England and by which the purpose of his journey has changed. Pym participated in her future in body and mind planning to discover new islands around India for a trade. Having pursuing the market values from the marine products and natural resources in the Tsalal island Pym and his company discovered on the voyage, they are the very image of European imperialists. That is to say, Pym claims to stand for strategy of colonialism to make a profit with white's intelligence and power.

The shores of these islands abound, in the proper season, with sea lions, sea elephants, the hair and fur seal, together with a great variety of oceanic birds. Whales are also plenty in their vicinity. Owing to the ease with which these various animals were here formerly taken, the group has been much visited since its discovery.(145)

Much excited in the values of the islands, Pym and his company plan to make a great profit by trading with their needless things like beads, nails, saws and other similar articles. This pattern of trade, so to speak, is also a pattern of imperialism which not only European historians and American call as informal imperialism or free trade imperialism.

Moreover, exposing the history of the Tsalal, Pym put American imperialism on the same line of European one by saying that it was first discovered by the Portuguese, and was visited afterward by the Dutch, the French and America finally. Despite holding up a would-be slogan, "Manifest Destiny", American Expansionism premising superiority of the Anglo-saxons leads to the contradiction America identify itself with dignity and power of many European empires including England.


------------------------------------------------------------------

1) A myth, the dictionary tells us, is a notion based more on tradition or convenience than on facts; it is a received idea. Myth is not just fantasy and not just fact but exists in a limbo, in the world of the Will to Believe, which William James has written about so eloquently and so perceptively.

2) A phrase used by leaders and politicians in the 1840s to explain continental expansion by the United States revitalized a sense of "mission" or national destiny for many Americans.

3) The view that Anglo-saxons inherit their language and dispositions such as courage and independence spirit from the German has been dominant over England since 17C. The Anglo-saxons believe their past is same as the German's. Similarly, American people who take themselves as descendants of England tend to believe their dominant culture derived from the country.

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excreted by Kevin  at 9:31 PM (click link to leave comment)

Oh, treasure the moments when I'm nice. Here once again, a bit of brush art. The image is available at my CafePress shop in several forms, though I'd probably recommend a tee shirt. Click the screaming ("fire scroton torpedoes!") alien on the sidebar to go shopping. Otherwise, stare at the pic and think happy thoughts.

Did you know that Bill Watterson used a brush for most of his "Calvin and Hobbes" art?



Steel yourself. I'm working on some Valentine's Day comics for tomorrow. Expect at least one humped sheep. Not "one-humped sheep."

Fool.

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I had to make that the title of this post so Justin can satisfy his lust for "ego-Googling" (i.e., searching out your own name/info through Google to see what results come up... I do this all the time, and I suspect a lot of you do, too: it's a bit like pausing in front of a large mirror when you're on your way somewhere).

Fascinating and funny blog, plus IT'S A JAPANBLOG! Finally, I've got a Japanese angle to replace Internet Ronin (though I hold out hope that Jedi Master John Eckard in Sendai will start up a blog... the gent's got a lot to say, and he says it so damn well). I still feel bad about removing the Ronin from the blogroll... maybe I found his blog during a very busy period in his life, which would explain the infrequent posting. Perhaps I should lumber-waddle over there and see what's up these days. It really was a damn good blog (plus, it looked nice).

Anyway, Justin's ego-Googling netted him another Justin Yoshida, which he found creepy.

The links that can be found by ego-Googling are sometimes surprising. I hunted down the site of another Justin Yoshida last month! I left a message in his guestbook, but haven't gotten word back yet. What do you know? He plays CS, just like me. Heh.

This guy must actually be me, from an alternate universe or something. Maybe the metaphysic membrane between our realities was temporarily ripped and he somehow fell through. It should be interesting if we hook up sometime - he apparently lives in Hawaii so it's conceivable I might make the effort someday. If he's not hiding from me, that is. I can be weird sometimes, maybe he thinks I'm a maniac or something. Come to think of it, the thought of another Justin Yoshida is kind of scary. What if he goes aggro and kills a bunch of people or something? It might reflect poorly on me, you know. Twenty years from now when I'm introducing myself to people they might say, "Yoshida... Aren't you the guy who blew up a tour bus full of Chinese tourists and sold their remains as humuhumunukunukuapuaa pudding at Hanauma Bay?"

Justin wrote a post on the dedication of the Japanese "salaryman" that gave me a chuckle. It says in part:

Ulcers. Yes, it seems everybody has them around here. Like everyone else, I have a horror story. Two years ago, my senior partner on a prototyping project sat up quite suddenly in his seat and handed me a stack of documents. His eyes were bulging as he bent over and proceeded to noisily vomit blood into the wastebasket. Then he slumped over in his chair and the girls in the room started screaming. When the departmental manager left the room to find the nurse on call, homeboy opened his eyes, pointed to the aforementioned stack of papers, and said "tanomu wa" (Get it done.).

Now, this guy is a legend. He is the most dedicatedist motherfucker I have ever met, and a pain in the ass to work for because of his scrupulousness - he put the "ei" in "einaru", if you know what I mean. And he ended up spewing entrail juice. Coincidence? Hardly. So that is the moral of this story - the most dedicated person in the office always ends up vomiting blood.

The End

Blood-vomiting isn't a bad way to end up on the blogroll. Welcome, Mr. Yoshida.

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Damn, this took a long time to do. But here you go: Harry Potter and the Tragic Tackle live and in color for your amusement and enjoyment.

So I guess we answered that question, didn't we: I posted the nasty cartoon before the Philosophical Challenge commentary. Comme le con que je suis. Like the shmuck I am.











































So... should I do a strip...? Should I do one in color...? Hmmm...



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For whatever reason, I'm seeing some sort of glitch in my essay, On Mindfulness. I don't know why it's doing what it's doing. The glitch appears toward the end of that essay, in the paragraph beginning, "For the Buddhist, there is no fundamental 'you.'"

Strangely enough, if you sweep your cursor over the paragraph to select it, the paragraph appears normally in a text editor when you paste it there.

I have no idea why this is happening to that essay in particular; the other essays were taken from the same word processor and so far show no weirdness. Maybe this is another Blogger archiving quirk. If the problem persists, I might just remove the post and retype it as a new post later on. In the meantime, to read the occluded paragraph, just select, copy, and paste it into a new text editing window somewhere, and you'll see it just fine. I did.

UPDATE: Hmph. I just looked at the archived essay through my Mac's Safari browser, and there's no problem. Maybe it's a Mozilla quirk.

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Someone found my blog after doing a Yahoo search on the following string:

tell me how to write a fucking abstract
for a fucking academic fucking paper

I doubt this site will prove to be any fucking help, but you're welcome to fucking stay. We're not afraid of bad language here, or of the crude directness of "one-finger Zen," as Lorianne so artfully termed it.

NB: new posts have been added to my "sacred and profane" section at the waaaay lower end of the sidebar. The same warning as always applies to the shaky nature of my Blogspot permalinks. Apologies in advance for difficulties.

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This is sure to become his favorite show. If not, all the cast members will simply go back to being flogged. (via Drudge)

[UPDATE: The ML informs me that the above link doesn't work. As I discovered by trying the link with three different browsers, the link opens only on Mozilla. Sorry, folks.]

The Maximum Leader's blog features quite a few good posts.

First, a warning: THE CANARY IN THE MINE SHAFT IS DEAD. If the ML himself smells trouble for the Republican party, then there's trouble for the Republican party.

Next, a post by Smallholder on the National Guard issue.

And finally, the Maximum Leader covers (or uncovers) one of my favorite (hell, most men's favorite) topics.

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My thinking exactly:

I tried to read Sartre long ago, in order to grapple with existentialism, but as soon as I discovered Camus, he seemed completely flat in comparison. Camus was a phenomenal mind and a far richer writer than Sartre, and he remained human. He was a thinker, rather than an intellectual, let alone an "absolute" one. The difference, perhaps, is in an appreciation of what we don't know, a love of what we can actually cherish - love, friendship, political freedom - and a refusal to apply ideas to reality as if there were no need for compromise or restraint.

Andrew Sullivan brings back memories. If you had to choose between L'être et le néant (Being and Nothingness) and L'étranger (The Stranger), which would you choose?

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Yes, yes, yes... I've got a book report due, and it's not ready yet.

Meantime, go read Kensho Godchaser's very interesting post on Mel Gibson and religious pluralism, and be sure to check out the comments section for writingwolf's insightful remarks. These folks aren't far from where I stand. In fact, writingwolf's position sounds an awful lot like Panikkar's "dialogical dialogue"-- i.e., you're not in the game because you expect the game to finish: the way is the goal; the dialogue is itself dialogical.

There's also some discussion, in the post and comments, of postmodernism and subjectivism. The term "postmodernism" has become about as vague and useless as the term "Hinduism"-- it's an umbrella rubric covering a very wide and often-disparate range of thought and action.

I personally have no trouble conflating PoMo and subjectivism, because that's in fact what so much PoMo is. From many PoMo-ers' point of view, Enlightenment rationality, with its objectivism and scientism, are both epistemological and moral mistakes (cf. again, Edith Wyschogrod's Saints and Postmodernism, which lays out the case for the PoMo condemnation of rationality as a major contributor to the "death event" that was the 20th century), which is why the stress was placed on a more subjectivist approach.

But that's not all: many PoMo thinkers would object to the very notion of a "subject"-- and in this antifoundationalism/nonessentialism, they have much in common with most Buddhists. This nonessentialism is in fact what gives certain PoMo-ers the grounds on which to reject the charge of subjectivism.

A decent book of postmodern theory that presents PoMo in all its hairy alterity is Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations by Steven Best and Douglas Kellner. It's a text designed for undergrads, but still pretty heavy reading-- not something you take to the toilet with you unless you're planning on dropping a mile-long turd.

What's cool about my blogroll is that I can move from this exploration of pluralism and alterity to Glenn, who's obviously not in a mood to deal amicably with The Other:

ATTENTION RETARDS

I know some of you don't like that word but I really could give a shit about what most of you think.

If you think you're getting something special... then you are a motherfucking moron and I ask that you leave this website and proceed to jump off a fucking bridge you dumb ass, know nothing, blog skimming, close minded, rude piece of shit retard.

And the misanthropy-mitigating finale:

May the force be with you.

So you're not necessarily doomed to hell.

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NK Zone's Rebecca MacKinnon interviews Canadian Irwin Oostindie about his recent project, Axis to Grind, filmed in North Korea.

First, an artist? Please, Ms. MacKinnon, talk to someone with a useful angle on reality. It doesn' t have to be a politician or a military professional, but just a person with an expertise in something other than self-indulgence. Who cares what Oostindie thinks? Do I care what sean penn thinks when he visits Iraq, or even the Reverend Jeese Jackson? His opinions are even less authoritative than mine, and no one has to sit through a film to get my angle.

Dictators love people like Oostindie. He has just enough intelligence to be usable. If North Korea was the unwitting victim of natural disasters, then certaintly the world would not hesitate to help North Koreans. The conflict is also more than a cold war leftover, and its amazing how limited Oostindie's view of history is for a westerner. I expect such myopic fantasies from South Koreans, reared on fascist myths and left-wing conspiracy theories, but a Canadian should be more critical.

A right kick in the balls, that! Cheese is Christ!

Eh?

While you're at it, check out the Infidel's post on Japan's upping the ante with NK.

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Valentine's Day is coming up, so I thought a good way to test my fledgling coloring ability would be to color in an old cartoon of mine. This scenario has been available to friends for a couple years now as a B&W greeting card (I hope to be selling more of those pretty soon), but here it is again, live and in pulsating Technicolor.

(You'll note that it's also where I got my tagline.)

If I were doing this comic strip as a regular thing, the name would be "Cosmic Import."







And for comparison's sake, here's what the pic originally looked like:











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You know, the thing about visiting Conrad's site too often is that you end up seeing tits everywhere. And it changes you, it really does.

See?





I've been working hard to colorize those cartoons, and didn't even get to finish Philosophical Challenge yet. Just two... damn... pages to go. Instead of reading about religious pluralism, I've been learning all those nifty Photoshop functions: smudge, blur, sharpen, sponge, burn-- it's a regular BDSM bordel in my hard drive.

It took literally hours to figure out how to color a background, and I'm still not sure I understand how best to do this. But such are the perils awaiting the obtuse autodidact. For the moment, it's actually far easier to alter photos than it is to manipulate cartoons.

Here I am showing off one of my more unusual skills.





Yes, this comes in handy when you want a seat on a crowded subway.

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My goddaughter's little sister, Emma, just had a birthday. Emma's as adorable as my goddaughter, and according to her daddy, she likes visual stimuli. So this was her birthday "card."





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At the end of the most recent "le parcours coréen" post the Hominid asked about the origin of "shooting your wad." (At least before it became associated with sex.) It is my understanding that the expression comes from flintlock muskets. The gunpowder was wrapped in a wad of paper, which was torn off at one end and poured down the barrel of the gun before the musket ball was rammed down with the "ram rod." When you fired your musket, you shot your wad. Referring to the wad of gunpowder. I could be mistaken, but am reasonably confident of this.

Carry on.

HOMINID'S UPDATE: Yes, I do think the Maximum Leader's nailed it. The man has a big brain. It promises to be very tasty.

UPDATE 2: Check my comments section, Vomit Vile Vituperation, for some different accounts dug up by the KimcheeGI. And feel free to post comments there yourself. It's nice to get over 100 unique visits a day, but I'm beginning to think you fuckers are afraid of me. Show yourselves so I can correct my aim!

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A couple years ago, Umberto Eco wrote a short piece on why Macs are Catholic and PCs are Protestant. The essay used to hang on the hallway wall of the third floor of the Caldwell Building at Catholic University; I don't know if it's still there.

But wouldn't you know it-- someone wrote a response to Eco. I agree with it, because I never saw Macs as Catholic.

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Everyone's got the goods on the riot from a couple days ago. Here's the Marmot to start you on your journey, but pay special attention to the Flying Yangban link-- the Yangban's remarks on the ritualized nature of riots caught my attention as someone sensitive to ritual studies issues.

Kevin at IA has a long quote from Claudia Rosett of the WSJ. It says in part:

North Korea has been gaming our endlessly credulous system for years. Having admitted in 2002 to running a secret uranium-enrichment program, North Korea is now denying it ever had one. And although revelations about the marketing activities of Pakistan's nuclear godfather, Abdul Qadir Khan, suggest that North Korea was very much in the uranium game, the Washington diplomatic establishment is now gravely pondering whether the U.S. envoy, James Kelly, really heard what he thought he heard. Never mind that North Korea has since pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, fired up its old reactor, announced that it is making bomb fuel and--with all the courtesy of Tony Soprano fingering his gun--invited an unofficial delegation last month to come have a look.

By the accounts of that delegation, by the presumptions of our narrow negotiating concerns, by the lights of the same illogic that looks to despotic and self-interested China to help save our bacon in North Korea, we are for the umpteenth time invited to believe that North Korea's regime is striving to achieve serious internal reform and aching to abandon its nuclear program, if only the U.S. would help.

We do need a coherent NK policy. Whether we have one right now is debatable. While I'm an advocate of a certain amount of diplomatic insanity where NK is concerned, ultimately backbone is more important than froth. The Infidel says over and over that Washington needs to penalize Seoul; I agree: that should be one of the vertebrae in the backbone.

As for the question of China... here's the thing: there are at least two very good reasons to adopt a multilateral approach to NK. First, the simple, commonsense issue of geography-- it's the neighbors who should be most immediately concerned with what goes on in a rogue state. This common sense seems lost on China et al., and one of the results of China's "diplomacy" is the rise of hawkish politics and legislation in Japan. Somewhere, a bitch-slap is waiting to happen. Second, the multilateral approach is diplomatic judo-- a response to NK's constant insistence on reducing the situation to a false NK-US bilateralism.

These two reasons are related to each other. It is indeed our goal to get several parties at the table so they can see and hear, firsthand, NK's raving-- to impress on NK's neighbors the danger that Kim's government represents. The Chinese, being forced to witness NK's instability while in front of Russians, Americans, and South Koreans, will experience a certain discomfort-- one that might lead to action.

The question, though, is what kind of action? Some folks are wondering whether this whole Koguryo flap is China's way of licking its chops before eating half the peninsula (I'm visualizing a postmodernist paper presentation on the subject: "Fellatio-as-Hegemony: A Foucaultian Understanding of Korean Peninsular Politics, the Chinese Agenda, and Swedish Pornography").

The Vulture posts some not-so-flattering pics of the Financial Times, that show a shameful contrast between Japan's behavior as an ally and South Korea's directionless internal flailing.

Ouch. Mike at Seeing Eye Blog disses Dave Matthews. He also notes a tradition dangerous to farm animals. Ah, yes, those lovely, lovely farm animals...

The Infidel has a wry post on creative legality in Korea. And hey-- why the hangdog expression, man? Chow down!

Pop culture demythologization over at Ruminations in Korea.

Overboard is added to the blogroll. Interesting personal insights, rants (the latest is a food/drink rant), and posts about komdo, the Korean sword-way (Andi's a komdo practitioner). I'm afraid to ask Andi why her URL contains the word "babypocket" because she might lop off my fool head. But what better way to drop 60 pounds, eh? Oy! Andi! What's up with the babypocket? You smuggling North Koreans into Seoul?

Anyway, the addition of Overboard continues the liberalization of my blogroll, which started off rather right-heavy but has since branched out. Lefties on the roll now include Cathartidae, Peking Duck, Atrios, Calpundit, Oranckay (sorta lefty?), Kathreb, Brainy Smurf, the Homeless Guy, and Stavros the Wonderchicken, who doesn't want to be known as a lefty, but who wrote this presidential porn piece a while back and, uh, seemed to be showing his true colors. Heh.

Kathreb on trade and anti-American sentiment.

Perhaps the promised post on The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity will appear later this evening. Photoshop colorization of the cartoons I've done is proceeding in fits and starts as I do laundry with my broken washing machine. I'll be curious to see whether I end up posting on religion or on Harry Potter (and Hagrid's nads) first.

Would anyone be interested in a Howard Dean mug based on the previous Dean-penis cartoons? I might do something up for CafePress. But we have to stay current; there's a real question as to whether Dean didn't prematurely shoot his wad in this race.

By the way, before it became associated with sex, do you know where the term "shoot his wad" came from?

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Still working out the kinks of blogging from a Mac. One of the major kinks is that the Mac versions of Netscape and IE browsers won't allow me to see the new version of Blogger's posting software. Mozilla, however, does, so I've downloaded it and now can post like a normal human being.

Go read Owen's very insightful piece on what we should be doing about North Korea. Owen's position is very similar to mine: the military option is the one we don't want, but it does need to be kept on the table. In the meantime, NK food aid needs to be tied to conditions, Natsios aside. As far as North Korea and Bush policy are concerned, I have no trouble with America looking crazy and unpredictable. Serves the fuckers right.

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Oh, I love Photoshop Elements. I can see why Allah stains his glorious pants with this software. It beats the hell out of Corel, which was designed by a team of retarded epileptics. Adobe software always tends to be very intuitive, which stupid asswipes like yours truly appreciate.

So check back now and again to see whether the previous comics (Howard Dean and Company; the Harry Potter parodies) have been redone.

And be on the lookout for new, colorful mug and tee-shirt designs over at the CafePress shop. And quite possibly some new comics here.

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With many thanks to friends and relatives who pitched in, I'm happy to announce that, at long last, I am BLOGGING FROM HOME.

You can't know the relief. No more smoky rooms, gritty keyboards, or strange diseases (we never did find out what that "face weirdage" was about). No more file transfer nightmares (though I thank my brother David for his very useful USB flash memory card). Now I can draw a cartoon or do some brush art, scan it in directly, and upload that puppy from here. No more transportation expenses-- no more PC-bahng fees (still cheap, but DSL is way cheaper in the long run).

All of which means I need to mull over whether I'm actually going to do a comic strip. To be honest, I doubt I'll be able to do more than two or three strips a week, maximum... one important question is regularity. While writing a blog is only a matter of sitting down and typing, doing a comic strip means scanning, tweaking, and FTP-ing. So I'm still in the "maybe" phase.

DAMN it feels good to be home.

[PS: The only problem with doing this from a Mac is that you're stuck with the OLD Blogger software when you blog, even when viewing Blogger through Mac's newest browser, Safari. Not that that's going to slow me down.]

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Far, far too many Quidditch accidents go unreported, so I feel it's incumbent on me to reveal some of the more gruesome in-flight tragedies for your edification. The truth is that, while Quidditch may very well be the most popular sport in the wizarding world, it is played at very high speed, even among schoolchildren.

The following images are somewhat graphic in nature, as they capture the exact moment of a given Quidditch accident. You are advised to proceed with caution, but please keep in mind that these images are displayed for your benefit as a public service.







































This is Colin Creevey. Circumstances of his death aren't entirely clear; some believe that one of the two brooms in question was being flown by Harry Potter, who was hiding in an Invisibility Cloak at the time.








































This incident should never have occurred, but the Quidditch player in question had made a rude gesture at the bird right before his beheading.








































This is a good example of what can happen when an unwary player is hit by two Bludgers at the same time. This kind of injury is, fortunately, extremely rare. Madam Pomfrey was able to recover enough fresh brain matter to piece together something approaching australopithecine-level consciousness, but the boy does little more than eat, scream, and masturbate violently.








































This kind of impalement is also extremely rare. The falling girl is Katie Bell, who had been knocked off her broom by a Bludger. She was rescued before hitting the ground by Professor Snape, who was on his guard. The impaled boy miraculously survived the experience, and wishes to remain unnamed.




















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WHY? you bellow.

Because it turns out that I am not merely the Number One Google search result, but the ONLY Google search result for the following string:

paramitas tee shirt

Dat's right. And there's nothing you can do about it.

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One golfer goes to that great 18th hole in the sky.

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In Ohio, they've got more on their minds than just resisting gay marriage. Priestly pot, for example.

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John Moore at Useful Fools reprints "Thoughts of a Vietnam POW," a missive that expresses, better than I ever could, why you will never-- ever-- find me in an anti-war demonstration. Put aside the question of a war's rightness or wrongness and just dwell for a moment on the question of loyalty to the fellow citizens who strap on the gear, hit the LZ, and do the fighting. Think about the shit a soldier has to go through, put yourself in his or her position, and then read the following:

The rigors and hardships of being a POW aside, I remember the so-called, "Peace Movement," and "Peace Marches and Rallies" that were taking place back home in the USA Our captors were more than willing, within their means, to provide us with any and all anti-US and anti-Vietnam War propaganda. Without a choice in the matter, we listened to the "Voice of Vietnam" broadcasts by, "Hanoi Hannah" and were shown newspaper and magazine photos and articles about those opposing the war back in the States. One of the peace marchers' standard slogans was to, "Bring our boys home now and, alive." The warped thinking of such people was that by demonstrating against US involvement in Vietnam, they'd be shortening the war and reducing the number of American casualties. These demonstrators would also try to make one believe that their efforts would bring POWs like me home sooner. They were utterly wrong on both counts not to mention the detrimental effect their actions had on the morale of our troops and our POWs.

Full disclosure: I'm taking this excerpt slightly out of context; the post's focus is on John Kerry, a vet who led his share of antiwar demonstrations. But the specific issue of Kerry doesn't interest me here. What interests me is the question of how I can look a combat vet in the eye and say, "I was in that demonstration."

One further note: I respect the fact that many demonstrators are sincere. I also support the idea of demonstrations as a valid form of free expression. But that doesn't stop me from passing a very negative judgement on people who are, in the case of antiwar demonstrations, doing something very misguided. In my opinion, anyway.

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Housekeeping items:

1. I'm just about finished with The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity. It's been a fascinating and extremely challenging read, requiring frequent breaks and close brushes with insanity. I'm still not sure I've understood half of what I've read, but I want to do a brief review of the book and then concentrate on its final chapter, "Towards Thinner Theologies," which seems to be expressing a point of view very similar to my own. I'm not done with the chapter, though, so I may be wrong.

[NB: the reference to "thinner" will be familiar to people who've read some Clifford Geertz-- cf. the concepts of "thick" and "thin" descriptions of cultural phenomena.]

2. QUESTION FOR KOREABLOGGERS: Joseph has brought this up before, and so have others-- a communal Koreablog, maybe something along the lines of Living in China. But here's my idea, which I'm sure will be rejected, but which I nevertheless present for your consideration: not simply a communal Koreablog, but one done in the style of The Onion. And let's call it The Yang-P'a. Or maybe as an in-joke, The Flying Yang-P'a. Satirical, fictional articles only-- stuff that's from the double source of your own creativity/wit, and the endless tragicomic material our nonfictional host country provides. Consider it, like The Onion, more of a loving tribute than a kick in the ass. (Uh... I think The Onion's a tribute...)

Hell, I can already imagine some headlines begging for articles:

White Man Surreptitiously Stared at On Subway
Dog Named "Anju" Narrowly Avoids Capture
Missing NK Baby Feared Eaten
Soap Actress Demands Reunification
Shouting Match Fails to Lead to Actual Fight
Chongno Bar District Vomit Splatters "Problem," Official Admits
Koreans Gossip About Foreigner in Foreigner's Presence
Life as LA Taxi Driver "Not What I Expected" Says PhD-holder
Spittle-free Sidewalk Discovered Downtown
Bush Branded Primate
Rest of World Once Again Ignored
Foreigner Proves Unable to Haggle in Namdaemun
Ass Size Linked to Burgeoning PC-bahng Culture
American Role Denigrated
Women Control Finances, Study Shows
Middle Finger Deployed, "P'ak Gyu!" Shouted
Foreign Style Copied
Foreign Influence "Dangerous," Millions Contend
Left-handed Woman Surprises Fellow Diners with Chopstick Ability
Demonstration Indicates Sheeplike Thinking
Overemotionalism Blamed in Suicide
Guilty Boss Weeps, Begs Forgiveness
Woman's Hair Dyed Strange Shade of Reddish Brown
Black Man Sighted With Korean Date
Politician Bribed
Christian Disses Buddhist
Foreigner Attempts to Haggle at Department Store
Squid Eaten Without Hesitation
Noh Finally Pulls Head Out of Ass
Lemon Soju Declared National Treasure #39886
Taekwondo Largely Irrelevant
America Blamed
Latest Culinary Trend is Shi-heom Ji-ok Gaegogi-- Dog Thrown from 15th Floor Balcony
White Man With Large Nose Causes Stir With Fluent Korean


Ahhhh, just think: bogus articles, faux-editorials, spoofs of the ultranationalistic tone... all in the "funny because it's true" spirit.

We would need:

writers (the more, the merrier)
some idea of what the blog's layout would be
a proofer (because I'm a spelling/grammar Nazi, I'd volunteer for this)
an editor (because I quite obviously can't edit myself)
some idea about word limits for various sections
some idea what those sections would be
someone who's actually savvy enough to craft a cool, sleek blog design
--and more... much more.

Which means we'd probably have to meet. Or have an e-meeting. Or something.

Your call. There're a ton of talented Koreabloggers out there, and most of them have a goddamn sense of humor. I think this could be shweet.

Email me if you agree.

Email me if you don't.

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You may have noticed that the Kev-deity on the sidebar is no longer quite so blocky. You can thank the PhotoShop "smudge" function for that. Now the benevolent pneuma of Kevin passes over the quiet suburbs, defending the American right to eat Nutella whenever and wherever we goddamn please.




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Now that the Mac seems to be in working order, and I've got both a new scanner and the very lovely Adobe PhotoShop Elements, you can expect more graphics. Remember these two? Here they are again, but a bit darker and clearer:





Korean political situation in a nutshell





And this, the wisdom we share:






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The Maximum Leader appeared to me in a vision while I was on the pot, and he looked like this:




I don't like it when the Maximum Leader appears this way, because my asshole closes like a trap and refuses to keep vomiting.

His voice boomed through the bathroom, louder than a Howler from Neville Longbottom's grandmother:

Find and kill the frog.

"Yes!" I shouted. "Your every wish is my command!"

Truth be told, I had no fucking clue what "the frog" was.

Then I had the following vision:






It's always nice when divine powers just hand you clues. And to make it even clearer, I was granted a vision of how to kill the frog:






I was to kill it disgustingly, yet deliciously. That much was obvious.

Or maybe the Maximum Leader was saying I needed to kill some French people.


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With thanks to Carpemundi who, sadly, will be rolling up his cyber-tent in a week. Mundi got me some new FTP space, which rocks. I can't seem to get back into my old FTP space, and have no clue why. But these hurdles can be overcome.

I promised you nasty cartoons, didn't I.

And I'm not leaving this PC-bahng until I give them to you.

FOUR OF THEM. Scroll slowly to savor. I've spaced them out somewhat to increase the delicious anticipation.



































In honor of the parrot that, at least for a while, was thought to be Churchill's, I offer you the following:





















































What? Not intense enough? Of course not! Keep scrolling down. We're not done by a DAMN sight.






























































































































































I'm still working on a cartoon stand-in for Mr. John "Read My Liplessness" Kerry. I thought about doing a vulture, but I don't want to offend the actual badass vultures in these parts.































































































Keep scrolling, damn your eyes!
























































































Just a little more...

































































































...and here we are. You know, I always thought there was a reason why Dean seemed so soft on Saddam.






The man's got a real hard-on for politics.






















































































































Falling...























































































Falling toward the ninth circle now...























































































(devils)














































































































(demons)









































































































(these are supposed to be subliminal messages, asswipe, so STOP PAUSING and KEEP SCROLLING DOWNWARD)























































































































(sheeeeeeepies)





























































































(Janet)

















































































































(Jackson's)




















































































































(Borg)




















































































































(nipple)











































































































(heh)





























































































And finally... the cartoon you, uh, came for:




Yeah, I think that about sums up where this campaign's been and where it's going.











































































































Let the song of peace be sung throughout the land! Let the oxen low and the pheasants caw! Let the children see my bare ass and take heart!













































Now go and read those other blogs.





























































































Jesus, you're dumb.




































































































You just can't stop, can you.

































































































You want to know whether there's a bottom, right?


































































































Lemme give you a hint.








































































































This is CYBERSPACE, fucker.



























































































































THERE IS NO BOTTOM.

























































































































Bitch.


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From Today’s Daily News Record:

Litter Ban: A Mixed Bag
FDA Mandate Comes As ‘Safeguarding’ Measure After Mad Cow Announcement
By Tom Mitchell

Linville – In American agriculture’s war on mad cow disease, Dennis Stoneburner’s budding agribusiness became a regrettable casualty.

The Food and Drug Administration’s Jan. 26 ban on poultry litter as a farm livestock feed additive abruptly impacts Stoneburner’s farm, which for six years used poultry waste as livestock and lawn food. The FDA mandate follows December’s discovery of a mad cow infected Holstein heifer in Washington state.

The FDA intends its edict as a safeguard against mad cow, technically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, by ensuring that barring litter from cattle quarters will keep BSE-infected fowl droppings from spreading the mad-cow bug. The FDA’s decision to ban poultry litter as a feed source stems from the fact that poultry consume ground feed made from slaughtered cattle. Concern that residual feed may mix with poultry-house litter and later feed cattle poses a faint chance that BSE-infected feed presents a threat.

As poultry litter’s high-protein mix of nitrogen, phosphorous, and sodium make the earthy alloy appealing to cattle farmers and landscapers, farmers collect poultry-house floor litter for sale in both markets.

Grinding Halt
Besides serving his cattle dung-filled edibles, Stoneburner sells litter to neighboring and out-of-town farmers for similar feed: in recent years, the latter trade flourished.

“Farmers came from all over Virginia to buy our feed,” said Stoneburner, whose operation fattens cattle for Midwest markets. “It’s obviously worth more than it is as fertilizer.”

The FDA ruling prohibits feeding poultry litter to “ruminants;” that is, such cud-chewing, multi-stomached livestock as cows.

Rockingham County’s Virginia Cooperative Extension animal-science agent, Troy Lawson, insists that any chance of a litter-aided mad-cow plague remains slim.

“The FDA is taking every precaution to ensure that [a BSE outbreak] doesn’t happen.”

Small Consolation
Federal precautions offer little solace to farmers who rely on litter for extra income.

“It’s a double whammy for us,” said Stoneburner, who five years ago spent $20,000 for an automatic litter-bagging machine, “It’s going to pretty much shut down our bagging operation.”

So the other night, I'm dealing with my daughter, who has the mild stomach flu. She's sitting on my lap half asleep with her head on my shoulder, exhausted at 4am, after puking a couple of times. She then raises her head looking at me. I ask her if her tummy hurts and she responds with a "yes". At that point it's too late. She looks me in the eye, and I get a load of vomit square in the face.

Kids should come with a warning label "Caution: You will get puked on, pooped on, pissed on, and you will not have the luxury of reacting in anything less than a sympathetic manner."

So tell me why we're having a second one? Hell, Max Leader's working on his third one. Isn't anyone gonna tell these Catholics that science has figured out what causes pregnancy?

From the Washington Post:

NBC cut from tonight's "ER" episode a shot of an exposed breast of an 80-year-old woman receiving emergency care, even though the network says it thinks the shot is appropriate.

Prudery. Prudery.

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Here's the President's statement regarding the Massachusetts gay marriage decision:

Today's ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is deeply troubling. Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. If activist judges insist on re-defining marriage by court order, the only alternative will be the constitutional process. We must do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage.

Mr. President, you're standing in the way of progress. I'm now fully in the camp that contends marriage, straight or gay, is a basic civil right. Unlike the position taken by Andrew Sullivan and his faux-federalism, or by Keith Burgess-Jackson and his vrai-federalism, I think that "basic civil right" means something that should be enshrined as an amendment in the US Constitution (cf. my post on gay marriage for how I mean this). Imagine if voting rights were determined on a state-by-state basis, as happened, on a smaller scale, in Switzerland, where the canton of Appenzell gave women the right to vote in 1989 (I was living in Switzerland that year; it was big news). Does this strike anyone else as backward? It should.

But women's suffrage wasn't a given in American history. It wasn't obvious that everyone-- regardless of race, creed or sex-- should have the right to vote. By the same token, it's not obvious to everyone today that marriage should be available to two consenting adults no matter their sexual orientation. Luckily that perception is, slowly but surely, changing. I don't think Andrew Sullivan goes far enough in his advocacy of gay marriage, and I think Keith Burgess-Jackson is wrong to link this to federalism. Marriage as a basic civil right deserves constitutional protection. So if Bush thinks our only choice is to adopt "the constitutional process," well... bring it on!

UPDATE: Liberal defenders of gay marriage, like this commenter at Atrios, aren't exactly helping matters when they say silly shit like this:

Marriage isn't sacred. It's just something some people do to solidify their love - personally, I think it's bullshit - and it's reprehensible gay folks are prevented from it by law.

The guy means well, but Jesus, this is funny. Even when you put that quote back in the wider context of his whole comment, the guy's argument is still, "Marriage is a sack of shit, and it's a damn shame that gay people can't participate in it." Heh.

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Note to the Inner Circle: the old email address is up and running again (finally), so you can go back to emailing me there.

So that means... I once again have access to my FTP space. Which means I can start sticking new files in there.

Which in turn means that... sometime tomorrow... there will be...

...cartoons.

Fiiiiiilthy cartoons.

All done by yours truly.

Definitely won't be work-safe.

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[NB: This is part of an email I wrote a couple days after September 11 to a different friend (i.e., not Chad). I think a lot of us were wondering about God right around then. ]


Did God create evil? My own answer, which is that God isn't a literal anthropomorphic being (thereby making theodicy kind of a nonissue for me), probably won't help address your question, so let's take a more classical approach.

Some ways to look at the question (and all of these are centuries-old points of view):

1. God created everything. Evil is a subset of "everything" in the Venn diagram, so the inevitable logic is that God therefore created evil. Even if Man "fell" during a primordial temptation, then there's still the question of the preexistence of the Tempter.

2. Some people say God didn't create evil. Evil is the result of Man's freedom, not God's design. This still means, of course, that God created a cosmos that has the potential for evil, which means he's still partly (or maybe fully) responsible for allowing it.

3. Some suggest (like St. Augustine) that evil doesn't truly exist (cf. his Confessions, Ch. 7, I think). Just as blindness is a lack of proper functioning in the eye, so evil is a lack of proper goodness (this is John Hick's reading of Augustine in his Philosophy of Religion). Others reply that this is an extremely dangerous interpretation of evil, for it means that something like slavery or the Holocaust or the murder of thousands of people at the WTC is just "apparent" evil, not real in any meaningful way. Are we truly ready to say such disasters are "apparent" evil?

4. Similar to (3) above, some look at evil and say that it's part of God's grand design. This has been called the "hidden harmony" defense of God. Things look chaotic and miserable from our limited human perspective, but if only we could see the cosmos through God's eyes, we'd see that all suffering has its proper place in the grand cosmic symphony. But as with (3), the rebuttal is that it's horrifying to contemplate the notion that something like the Holocaust (etc.) is part of God's divine plan as we march along in this "salvation history." Maybe this is how things work, but is such a God worthy of worship? You decide!

5. Some say evil is simply a necessary consequence of the gift of human freedom. God is available to alleviate our suffering, and perhaps God also suffers with us (Jesus might be considered the ultimate template for that line of reasoning), but God can't violate our freedom by puppeteering us. This, of course, begs the question of God's submission to logical necessity, for surely an omnipotent God can create whatever cosmos He desires—even one where people live the paradox/absurdity of being fully free and also free from suffering. Such universes are possible for a truly omnipotent God.

People create theodicies (theodicy = attempt to reconcile the existence of evil/suffering w/the traditional concept of an omnipotent, omnicausal, omnibenevolent God; more abstractly, it's simply an attempt to make sense of evil's existence) because they want to defend God. If it is somehow proved that God is ultimately responsible for evil/suffering, then one fears that this God might not be worthy of worship. There goes the universe.

I find this reasoning annoying, because the scriptures show plenty of instances where God causes or allows suffering. The Israelites acquire their land largely because God allows them to slaughter the land's previous occupants. God threatens his own people with punishment if they violate his series of covenants. Going further than Abraham and Isaac, God sacrifices his own son on the cross. Lazarus is allowed to fester for four days just so Jesus' divine authority can be cogently demonstrated through a powerful act of resuscitation.

Job perhaps best expresses the attitude of the true believer in the face of the horrible divine mystery when, toward the beginning of the book, he moans, "The Lord has given; the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!" All the whirlwind histrionics of Chapter 38 (etc.) notwithstanding, the authors of Job are not really interested in deeply probing the nature of God; they are, however, interested in exploring our faith-response to suffering.

It's interesting to note that, historically, Jews have been more willing to accept this apparent self-contradiction in God's nature. Elie Wiesel's Night shows poignant examples of this throughout. It's been Christians, though, who insist on a very narrow view of God's supposed "moral perfection," which usually gets defined as the impossibility of God's ever doing anything unloving. Because most Christians fixate on the "God is love" message of the New Testament, they often forget the foundational Hebrew scriptures that paint what may actually be a more realistic and less one-sided way of viewing the divine.

As a matter of anthropology, I tend to think that we instinctively recognize the dynamic balance of forces in nature. Throughout history, Christians couldn't seriously deal with the implications of a totally all-conquering God whose goodness washes all evil away forever and ever. Yes, such language appears in our liturgies, but it's a curious historical fact that the role of Satan/cosmic evil gained prominence over time, such that Christianity has, even today, most or all the characteristics of the ethical dualism found in such systems as Manichaeism or Zoroastrianism. We instinctively know that every yang has its yin; the image of an all-good, unambivalent God runs against the grain of our instincts, and we find it suspect. So we pump Satan up and make him as big as God.

We should still talk about this, but as you well know, theodicy's been around since forever, and no talk, no matter how long, will ever really settle the question; that's pretty much a matter of faith.

[NB: When this email was written, only a few days after 9/11, we still didn't have a clear notion of the body count. I think what I wrote was "5000 people," which is obviously incorrect. I've edited the letter to reflect, retroactively, what we now know about the death toll from that day, and use the generic "thousands of people" to express the same sentiment. ]

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[Another email to Chad. Not meant to be scholarly at all, so no snickering from actual scholars. Consider this more... "pastoral" in intent, as Christians would say. Chad’s question to me was: “What is mindfulness? And I don't want to hear any shit about heartfulness.” My reply--]


What is mindfulness?

Isn't it Louis Armstrong who, when asked what jazz is, said, "If you gotta ask, you'll never know."?

A Zen master would smile at that.

But we're academics, you and I, and our sworn duty is to ruin a perfectly good world by drawing arbitrary schematics all over it. So in that vein, I provide the following answer.

Mindfulness is key in Buddhism, whether we're talking Zen or any other form. What "the mind" is varies depending on the literature you're reading. Indian lit from the first few centuries of Buddhism will reveal an already highly-developed philosophy of mind/consciousness, in part because Hindu thought on the subject had already explored much of this territory. Indian thought has been (ironically, perhaps) downright Aristotelian in its ability to parse and schematize reality. The mind has more functions and states and levels than you've ever dreamed. Bernard Lonergan is a pissant compared to some Hindu and Buddhist thinkers.

I'm going to toss India aside in favor of East Asia, though, because the "mindfulness" I speak of is sourced in East Asian thinking. It's fairly simple, but the problem, as in explaining Zen, is that my words point to an elusive referent. Please keep that in mind as you experience deep dissatisfaction with this email.

Zen mind can be thought of as "beginner's mind" (cf. Shunryu Suzuki's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind). Because Zen is so heavily Taoist in orientation, it is important to recognize the Taoist appreciation for "the potential of emptiness." A bottle isn't useful to me if it's already filled with something (unless it's Everclear). A window is no good to me if it's sealed shut. A mind full of preconceptions (which develops fairly naturally as we get older, gain experience, catalog those experiences and use them to handle reality) is also useless when it comes to mindfulness. Such a mind lives in the world of dualism-- of category, discrimination, division, analysis, etc. This is our world, for most of us: a world of distinctions.

The Tao Te Ching says, "The five colors blind the eye; the five tones deafen the ear." What this means is that the moment we overlay our mental map onto reality (i.e., arranging the colors into five principal colors, as the ancient Chinese did, or creating a pentatonic scale), we blind/deafen ourselves to those phenomena which straddle the borders we've created. Robert Pirsig calls this the "platypus" phenomenon. Define "mammal"; define "reptile"; then along comes an egg-laying, lactating, duck-billed, beaver-bodied platypus. So much for categories. They can only take us so far, and if we're trying to get in touch with the Absolute, than partial credit's as bad as no credit.

But the Absolute is ordinary. We need to be beginners again to see it truly. Beginner's mind, like a child's mind, has no truck with dualism. To experience things with beginner's mind is no longer really to experience, because that verb implies a separation of subject and object-- the experiencer and the thing experienced.

Think about those times you got engrossed in a good book. One of the first things people note when they put the book down is how much time has passed. It wasn't simply a matter of being "engaged." In a real sense, you lost track of time because there was no "you" and there was no "time." Deep engagement in any activity brings this on.

That's mindfulness as I meant it.

There's no good way to put this in words. Absorption in the activity? Not exactly. That's still dualistic: there's the absorber and the thing absorbed. The language still implies "selves" or "entities" at work, and the actual experience contradicts that terminology. "Experience," as noted above, isn't really right, either. No language quite fits.

Of course, this is true of everyday reality, which is where Zen locates itself. No language can properly describe the taste of a watermelon (as Seung Sahn, a Korean master, notes). You have to reach out & cut off a hunk of watermelon to "attain" watermelon. Same for apple juice (thank you, Thich Nhat Hanh). Or chocolate (my own example, arrived at before I ever read Nhat Hanh or Seung Sahn! dat's right! dat's right!). Pedestrian reality is just as unavailable through language as absolute reality, and since a Taoist (and therefore a Zennist) would see the ordinary as absolute, one's "Zenning" occurs whether doing something "deep" like meditation or "prosaic" like gobbling bread with Nutella.

So another way to look at mindfulness-- Zen mind-- is by characterizing it as "ordinary mind." Nothing special, as Zennists say. This is exactly opposite most people's notions of "holiness"-- the idea that the sacred is to be found in the unique, the separate, the numinous, the deserving-of-worship. Zen farts on that stuff. Loftiness and ethereality might characterize other kinds of mysticism, but not Zen.

Ordinary mind just does what it does. To explain it more deeply than that is to analyze it and kill it. But maybe I can say this (oh, how he hedges): it doesn't make waves; it doesn't stir the muddy water. Ordinary mind is settled, but this doesn't have to translate to physical settling. To play tennis purely, to be fully engaged in the game, can be ordinary mind. In this case, ordinary mind is tennis mind, if you will. So then you finish your tennis game, shower up, meet fiancee, and decide you want to bang her brains out that evening. Sex mind can be ordinary mind. When s(h)itting, just s(h)it. When scrogging your woman, just scrog. Be Here Now, as the book title goes.

Obviously, this ordinary mind wouldn't be preached if it were truly that ordinary. But this is what religious traditions tend to notice about our condition: the good life is such an obvious thing, but we constantly miss it. For better or worse, that's just the paradox of being us. Animals aren't burdened with ego, which is why we're often advised to consult them. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard! Consider her ways, and be wise!"

Finally, Zen mind is no mind. Here we can talk both in terms of Taoism and Buddhism.

For the Buddhist, there is no fundamental "you." "Chad" is a convenient designation for a set of processes whose collective momentum is coherent in a certain way right now, but this "Chad" contains no inherent self-existence (the technical term is "aseity," I think). "Chad" didn't exist one hundred years ago; "Chad" won't exist one hundred years from now (unless you cheat and go cryogenic). In the same way, "mind" is itself a set of processes having coherence and continuity for now, but no self-existence. The mind we think we have has never really been there. No "me," no "you," no "mind," no "exist," in the sense of Greek notions of substance, atom, or ideal Form.

For the Taoist, the Tao is flow. We arise from the Tao as distinct waves arise in the ocean; we are reabsorbed into the Tao; at no point do we leave the Tao, nor can our turbulence ever be contrary to the Tao. The waves themselves are Tao! What is mind, then? Flow. Constant flow. Good "shitting." Tao is ordinary. Ordinary mind is Tao.

Openness is important for mindful living. Buddhists speak of karma, the law of action, of cause and effect. I have to be constantly open and observant. If I turn on the stove, then forget it's on, then accidentally place my hand on the burner, I burn myself. Simple. Mindlessness has consequences. But mindfulness, if I can try to express this more fully than with the stove example, is deeply knowing (to the point where there's no more knower/known) that I am part of Tao. Not "deeply" in some pretentious cosmic sense, of course. Just knowing.

All of this simply talks around the subject, but what did you expect? If you can't read a book to find out what a watermelon tastes like, how can you read a meandering, prolix email to find out what mindfulness is?

Good luck, dude. This email was mostly a big, steaming lump of crap, but take out your mental chopsticks and poke through it to find those delicious, still-warm specks of corn and peanuts.

[NB, February 3, 2004: Having learned a bit of Chinese since I wrote this, I’d like to add that the Sino-Korean word for mindfulness, nyeom or yeom, is formed by two simple characters, one atop the other. The first is the character geum, meaning “now,” and the second is shim, which is “mind.” Mindfulness is now-mind.

Oh, yes—Chad’s crack about “heartfulness” comes from a spiel I did regarding the Chinese character hsin (shim in Sino-Korean, shin in Japanese), which can be translated as “heart” or “mind” because that’s its semantic field. In other words, in the East Asian reckoning, heart and mind are not-two. To be mindful, then, isn’t to display a cold intellectualism; quite the contrary, it’s to practice compassionate, open “heartfulness.”]

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[From an email I wrote in 2001 to a grad school friend, Chad, partly critiquing Kenneth Leong’s contention that Zen is a “right-brain” tendency:]

Kenneth Leong in his The Zen Teachings of Jesus wants to make the point that Zen is right-brain oriented. It has much to do with holism, synthetic thinking, mental flexibility, etc. Let me give you a copy of the readings I gave to my students; Leong's chapters are in there, and he does a much better job of clearly explaining things than I can.

However, I think Leong makes a mistake when he emphasizes the artful element of Zen. Quite a few Western scholars have done this: they've described Asian spirituality as relying more upon the aesthetic than Western theology/spirituality does (cf. for example Noss and Noss’s Man’s Religions). Maybe true, but this needs examining. Leong is, perhaps inadvertently, suggesting that right-brained folks are more Zen-predisposed than left-brainers. That, in my opinion, is baloney. Zen isn't found anywhere except in the ordinary, and what one's ordinary mind is can vary from person to person, and from moment to moment.

This is why I suggested reorienting Leong's argument from "art" to "kung fu." Kung fu means, basically, "good effort." Whether one is a left-brained aeronautical engineer, a left-brained accountant, or a right-brained fruit-loop like Jackson Pollock, everyone can practice mindfulness (OK, maybe not Pollock, who was probably well-acquainted with the mind-altering effects of paint thinner). When eating, just eat. When FUCKING, just FUCK. When figuring quadruple integrals in math, just figure quadruple integrals.

[NB, February 5, 2004: On “kung fu” meaning “good effort”: Koreans, when they refer to Chinese kung fu (mostly known as wushu in mainland China, if I understand correctly), generally pronounce the word in a quasi-Chinese way—k’oong-hoo. But when you look at the Chinese characters that make up the word for kung fu, you see that they are gong and bu. Gong means “merit/achievement,” and bu means “husband, man, laborer, artisan, sage, philosopher.” The two together therefore can indeed mean something like “good effort.” So the word is pronounced “gong-bu” in Sino-Korean which, as any Korean knows, sounds exactly like the Korean word for “study.” This isn’t a coincidence: the 3-stroke radical of the 5-stroke gong in “kung fu” is in fact the 3-stroke character in the gong for “study.” So there’s a phonetic, orthographic, and semantic connection: to study (anything), or to practice kung fu, is to invest time and energy in the increase and development of knowledge and skill—“good effort” indeed.]

[NB2: Wushu comes from the characters wu meaning “war/martial” and shu meaning “art/technique.” So wushu is a generic label for martial arts. In Japanese, the same characters are pronounced “bu” and “jutsu” (with the final “u” baaaaaaarely audible!), and in Korea they’re pronounced “mu” and “sool.” So: wushu, bujutsu (bujitsu), and musul. Martial arts. Note, however, that the term “martial arts” will be understood in slightly different ways in each of these cultures. A string of Chinese characters may be the same from one country to another, but that doesn’t guarantee they mean the same thing. Classic example: Korean hapkido versus Japanese aikido. Even a cursory glance at the respective syllabi of these martial arts (or “martial ways,” if you will) shows that they’re distinctly different in philosophy and approach, despite certain commonalities. By the same token, Koreans will tell you that komdo isn’t quite the same as Japanese kendo. There are differences in stance, grip of the sword, etc. This linguistic “problem” isn’t really a problem; it's actually quite common: consider, for example, what “bread” means to an American as opposed to a Frenchman, a German, and a Turk. Say “bread” to these people, and each will conjure up a different (though not-unrelated) image.]

[NB3: A lot has been made of the distinction between “martial art” and “martial way.” The common wisdom is that a “martial way” is the next stage in a martial art’s evolution, in which what began as an external discipline becomes “internalized” and stresses the philosophical/religious aspects of the art more than the practical aspects. Although this is a decent way of describing martial arts in general, the rule falls apart when you begin to examine specific cases. Kenjutsu, sword-art/technique, evolved into kendo (sword-way), yes—but is judo truly a rarefied, philosophical version of jujitsu? Note several problems right away: judo does indeed have a “philosophy” of sorts: Jigoro Kano’s famous utterance, “Maximum efficiency with minimum effort.” But judo is known throughout the world not as a martial “art” or a martial “way,” but as a martial sport—much like the main forms of taekwondo (TKD includes military forms that are much more effective, incorporating close-range techniques that take advantage of knees, elbows, and palm heels). Along with this, the further problem is that jujutsu is a general term covering a very wide range of martial arts and techniques, some of which favor certain kinds of hand and arm movements, some of which are more percussive/external, and others of which are more yielding/internal.

Further complicating the issue is that some martial practices refer to themselves as “ways” even though they’re more properly “arts” or “sports.” Sport taekwondo is a prime example. The name literally means “kicking-boxing-way” (kwon is the Chinese chuan, often translated “boxing” or “fist” in the Chinese context), but sport TKD involves concepts that truly philosophical practitioners find abhorrent, such as winning/losing, and prizes. Martial “ways” tend to view winning/losing dualism with the same disdain found in Zen practice (and as you probably guessed, there are historical reasons for this)—one’s efforts shouldn't be about the acquisition of a trophy.

There’s a lot of back-and-forth, however, between “art” and “way” adherents. Some in the “art” camp contend that “way” practitioners have so departed from the original pragmatism of the “art” that their moves are no longer useful in any practical sense (side note: how many kendoka can practice their art on the street?). There may be some merit to this claim, but it’s still highly debatable. “Way” practitioners reply that “art” practitioners often miss the deeper realities available to them in practice—or, worse, deliberately cultivate all the wrong things. An example of this is breathing technique. Many percussive martial arts practitioners (e.g., in karate, TKD, etc.) encourage “clavicular” breathing, which occurs higher in the torso than “abdominal” breathing. This is done in order to generate more power for the delivery of a blow. The martial “way” adherents frown on this because their own philosophy entails approaching combat with a settled, serene mind-- something encouraged by the discipline of abdominal breathing. It’s not about fierce movements and facial expressions: it’s about calm detachment and harmony.

The debates are old and there aren’t any clear resolutions. I think it’s possible to explore deep realities even if you’re involved in a martial sport, but my own preference is for something that combines pragmatic efficiency with serenity and harmony. The closest thing to that in Korea is probably hapkido, an integrated martial art that combines percussive “external” techniques (kicking, punching, etc.) with yielding “internal” techniques (circular movement, flips, holds, throws, locks). Hapkido, the same three characters as in Japanese aikido, is literally “harmony/integration-energy-way.” One very common, but very wild, translation of these characters is “The Way of Divine Harmony” (this requires a Westernization/spiritualization of the concept of ki, which may or may not be justified). It's a harmless-sounding name for what can be a brutal martial practice.]

[NB4: The move from shu/justu/sul to tao/do is something you can see in the various great religions. Islam is probably the most famous example these days: the move made from an “external” concept of jihad (struggle against others) to a more “internal” jihad (struggle against oneself, one’s own failings). In Christianity, it is perhaps less obvious, but the move from scriptural literalism and an externalized “I-Thou” conception of divine/human relationships to a more internalized (perhaps even “individualistic” in the West), nonliteralist spirituality is an example of the same transition. In Hinduism, the concept of yajna (sacrifice; our Hinduism prof always pronounced this “yugg-nuh”) moves from external to internal, as does the concept of tapas (not to be confused with Mexican appetizers), which moves from a more literal meaning of “heat” to a more internalized meaning of “effort”—that is, the sweat you invest in your practice.

Moves in the opposite direction are also possible. Fundamentalist (capital “F”—the specific Christian movement from a little over a century ago) reaction to the Enlightenment is a prime example: a retreat to literalism in the face of science and reason. Muslim fundamentalism (lower case “f,” the modern usage of the term) in the face of Western progress and values is another example of such a move. And perhaps the most venerable example is what almost immediately happened to philosophical Taoism: within a couple centuries after the probably-legendary Lao Tzu it had become magico-religious Taoism, and that’s the most prominent form of Taoism found in China today. Buddhism has demonstrated some of the same tendencies, which I'm tempted to describe as retrograde— but that's a very non-academic evaluation.]

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[More lewd material from my Mac's hard drive (which I'd named, years ago, "A Very Hard Drive." You have to understand that I love parodying erotica. If you have Scary Spasms in Hairy Chasms, then you already know this--cf. the short-short story called "Interlewd." Well... the following didn't make it into Scary Spasms, but I kind of like it, anyway. Enjoy.]

_____________


Tim’s kiss was deep, tongue-heavy, and passionate. Avid hands yanked at clothing. Belt buckles flew off as if magically impelled. Jenna slyly unbuttoned the pastel shit she had on, exposing two amazingly huge, sweaty beasts that heaved as she gasped in elation. Finally, the moment had come! The shit fell away, unnoticed.

Tim eyed the beasts’ swollen pink nipples slyly.

“I think of you as my best fiend,” Jenna said, pulling him close. He placed his itching hands on the beasts, investigating peaks and valleys like a loving musician stoking the length of his flute.

“You make me so hot,” Jenna shouted, nubile body aglow with lustful intensity. The sex that followed was spastic, agonal, explosive— a heedless descent into the canal. Almost-climax followed almost-climax in quick succession. Moving as one, the giddy young couple assumed all the positions they could think of, plus a few no one had yet attempted. They came to the beaking point.

“Jam that massive pick in me!” Jenna gleefully commanded, and Tim did his level best to comply. Sweat oozed out of his scalp; his vision was going gay. They howled in unison; Jenna’s beasts jiggled wildly as the ecstasy mounted one last time. Tim’s pick cackled like static on wool, bending and staining due to the immense tension.

And then it happened: Jenna twisted and bucked, went ballistic as she ululated, “I’m coming, Tim! Oh, holy cap, I’m COMING!” Tim held on tightly as Jenna’s body mimed the most exciting events of the millennium. Some gas slipped out of Tim’s buttocks; he winced, ashamed he had no way of coking his asshole shut. This was no time to fat.

But soon enough, Tim’s own moment of volcanic delight came; he pulled out of Jenna just in time and placed his pulsating manhood between those massive, fantastic beasts, spaying his lady’s face with bust upon bust of his steaming spunk. His ass cheeks, pushed to the limit, were camping in agony.

They lay in bed, spent and completely unable to move, little blobs of semen dying in patches on the bedsheets. Tim opened up a can of Pingles and asked Jenna if she wanted any. “Not at the moment,” she cooed. Then she looked at Tim, full in the face. “Oh, God. You didn’t use a condom, did you?” she asked. It was a statement, not a question.

“No,” Tim sighed, “I didn’t wap my cock. What can I do about it now?”

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And so it begins! I'm at the Korea University Magic Station PC-bahng, where the computers and operating systems are all more modern, and forward-facing USB ports are in abundance. As a result I am-- yes-- now able to use my lovely USB flash card without having to go through install procedures. Bliss.

I'm digging up some stuff from my Mac's old files, and I thought I'd start off by giving you, Dear Reader, a slice from Scary Spasms in Hairy Chasms, the evil to which I gave foul, bloody birth in 2001. It's one of my favorite stories, and a picture of the cheerful main character can be found on this, a CafePress mug.

Enjoy the story. And if it moves you to buy something (hint hint), I'll gently lick the spaces between your toes.



LITTLE BILLY IN HELL

Little Billy woke to find himself in a cave. He lifted his head off the rough stone floor and looked around, forcing his eyes to focus on his surroundings.

The cave was small, even from Billy’s four-year-old point of view. The cave’s mouth was a tall, barred ellipse that led to a corridor. Billy couldn’t see beyond the corridor’s first twist, but its rocky walls glowed and flickered as if illuminated by flames.

A stabbing pain seared through Billy’s skull, and he suddenly remembered where he’d been five minutes ago: staring up through rows of corn, watching a combine close in on him as he lay on his back, frozen in horror.

Transfixed by this memory, Billy failed to notice when the bars at the cave’s mouth slammed open. A cheerful voice boomed, “Welcome to hell, Billy!”

The child spun— and gaped.

Before him stood a ponderous, hirsute, naked man of such immense and twisted proportions that Billy felt simultaneously queasy and hysterical. The man was hugely fat; his enormous body was covered in scarlet skin that dripped with sweat, and two very large cattle horns sprouted from either side of his head. His legs terminated in cloven hooves. He looked a lot like a perverse, sumo version of Darth Maul. The visitor’s eyes glowed red, and evil mixed with good cheer radiated from him in a searing aura. Billy clapped his hands over his mouth to prevent himself from screaming.

But he screamed anyway: Billy’s buttock cheeks parted and let loose a piercing, girlish outcry that sounded exactly like his own voice.

“Lesson Number One, Billy! You can’t hide your thoughts from Me!” With that, the elephantine figure burst into a thunderous chuckle, infernally avuncular. Fat rippled seismically. Flames of delight burst from his nipples and singed his chest hair, then guttered out.

Without missing a beat, the horned man said, “By the way, I am Satan— your new lord and master. But you, Billy, may call Me—” he squeezed out an obscenely long, trilling, blatting fart. “Only My best friends call Me by that name!” The Devil leaned close, forcing his sulfurous miasma into Billy’s unwilling nostrils. “You are My friend, aren’t you, Billy?”

Billy’s hands were still clamped over his mouth. “No! I hate you! Go away!” his buttocks shouted defiantly.

The Lord of Dung grinned a sly grin, his lips peeling back to reveal a jumble of sharp, uneven fangs. “Billy,” he said indulgently, “if you want to talk out of your ass for all eternity, by all means keep your mouth covered or closed.”

Billy said nothing, but his hands finally fell to his sides. He eyed the Devil with a mixture of curiosity and terror. “So, I’m in hell?” he finally managed. “What did I do to get here? Only bad people go to hell!”

Satan shook his head in mock sadness. “Unfortunately, Billy, hell is also a repository for evolutionary dead ends. Inbred white folks are major fodder here. Taking a nap in front of a combine is a huge biological no-no, a sure sign of congenital stupidity. So now you’re here. Like it or not. Forever.” Even when he spoke in a normal voice, the Devil’s words slammed into Billy like the bass resonance of a thousand Bose subwoofers.

“Thing is,” Satan continued, “I suspect your parents will be joining you shortly. In accordance with their own genetic deficiencies, they are planning their deaths out of remorse for having lost you. They purpose to kill themselves by stripping naked, filling a bathtub with water, getting in the tub, and then dropping a toaster in the water.” Billy’s eyes widened in horror.

“Alas,” the Devil rasped out a mucus-filled sigh, “the toaster will not be plugged. Your already-naked parents will make several more suicide attempts, dragging in an interesting variety of unplugged household appliances. The concept of an extension cord will not blossom in your father’s dim consciousness for at least thirty minutes. In the end, however, both of your parents will be killed, not by electrocution, but by the sheer weight of the family refrigerator, which will topple onto them en chemin to the bathroom.”

Satan rolled his red eyes. “Billy, in a sense, you should be glad I’m holding you in isolation from such bestial puerility. Think: if you were planning to electrocute yourself by sitting in a tub of water, would you need to strip naked?” The Evil One underscored this point with a wet belch. He scratched his exposed crotch, holding up rolls of fat with one hand while the other granted him relief from hell-lice. Then he sniffed his fingers and blew on them, scattering pubic dandruff in a fine cloud.

“But now, the time has come to mete out your eternal punishment, My boy. Only you may determine the manner of your suffering.”

Billy shrank back, pressing himself against one of the cave’s jagged walls. His eyes darted wildly about, seeking an escape, but no egress presented itself.

Satan rumbled, “It’s easy, wormling. What are your favorite foods?”

In spite of himself, Billy felt hungry. Without thinking, he said, “I like pizza! And... and chocolate ice cream! And hamburgers! And hot dogs! And cherry pie! And dill pickles! And bleu cheese dressing! And tapioca pudding! And burritos! And popsicles!” Each item appeared on the cave floor as it was named. Greedily, Billy named twenty other foods before he finally came to an ecstatic stop.

“Excellent, Billy!” Satan beamed. “And now... the punishment! You are hereby doomed to eat these foods... forever!” The Devil raised his beefy arms, and flames shot in coruscating patterns from his armpits, garishly punctuating his infernal pronouncement.

Billy wasn’t impressed. “But I like these foods,” he said.

“Bring me the CUISINART!” Satan yelled over his shoulder. His shout echoed down the corridor. A moment later, three minor demons scurried in, dragging with them a food processor the size of an iron cauldron. The demons removed the device’s top and messily chucked all of Billy’s food into it as the boy watched in abject dismay. One demon’s finger hovered over the Cuisinart’s “start” button, but Satan held up his hand.

“Hold! The mixing cannot begin until I’ve added a little spice!” He turned himself around and settled his humongous ass on top of the processing unit’s transparent container as if it were a huge toilet. His buttocks wiggled with impatience, ready to discharge their foul cargo. He turned to face the wide-eyed boy, a terrible grin exposing his jagged fangs. “Watch well, Billy! I love you thiiiiiiiiiiis MUCH!”

With that, the Prince of Darkness gave a mighty grunt and blasted a torrent of diabolical feces into the mass of Billy’s favorite foods. Billy stared as the container began to fill with something that looked like a fetid admixture of guacamole, lightning, and Hershey’s chocolate syrup.

“Oh, Billy—” Satan cried in mock distress, “I should warn you— I ate a HUGE dinner, and I don’t know... if... I... can... STOP!” He threw back his head and cackled. The cauldron continued to fill at an alarming rate. The thunderous noise of evacuation was deafening.

“Nooooooooooooo!” Billy finally managed to scream.

It ended as quickly as it began. Satan hopped nimbly off the Cuisinart, timing his leap perfectly with the filling of the container. “Done!” he cried, throwing his meaty hands in the air and miming a gymnast’s spike. His face glowed with self-satisfaction. He hopped about in an agitated way, shadow boxing and making “oof! oof!” noises as he punched at an invisible Ali or Tyson.

The demons slammed the lid onto the container and hit the processor’s “start” button. Billy’s food melded with Satan’s crap in a final and irrevocable way.

When it was done, Satan presented Billy with a silver bowl. “Drink up!” he boomed. “You got all your favorite foods in there, just like you wanted! I’ll come back in a few thousand years to see how you’re doing, Billy-Boy! Meantime, I have to round up your pulped parents. Oh, yes— the Cuisinart was set for ‘eternal flow,’ so you’ll NEVER run out of the sludge! Knock ’em back and enjoy, little man! Haw haaaw HAAAAAWWWW!” With that, Satan and his demons left the cave. The bars slammed shut, leaving Billy with his meal.

Sobbing, yet feeling irrationally hungry, Billy struggled with the Cuisinart’s lid, finally prying it back open. The revolting odor of Satan’s stew blasted into Billy’s face and mind with hurricane force. Grimacing, he scooped a measure of poop goop into his bowl and began his forever feast.

_

When religious exclusivists dialogue... is it dialogue? (via Allahpundit)

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(via Drudge) People are in a tizzy about an upcoming "ER" episode that'll feature-- get this-- an elderly woman's breast.

For Christ's sake, fucking RELAX, asswipes. As others have pointed out-- it's prime time, i.e., the adult hour. You kind of expect adult material during the adult hour, yes? Remember when people were shocked by David Caruso's bare ass (not to mention words like "dick," "asshole," and "bitch") on "NYPD Blue," years back? Aren't we over that shit yet? Obviously not.

Sex doesn't mix well with religious sensibilities, and this is especially true in American public life and consciousness. I'm tempted to say the problem is related to monotheistic hangups, but that claim proves to be patently false when you examine prudery in Buddhist countries and contexts. So it's not specifically a monotheistic problem, this sex complex, though I still think it's very much related to religion. Ask the Taliban what they think.

"No clits! All we ask is NO... FUCKING... CLITS!! Is that so hard to understand? Oh-- and no tits, either. Beards are OK. Long, hairy Osama-beards. We make our women wear droopy headgear because it makes them look like they've got beards, too. Sexy. Ever watch that scene from 'Monty Python's "Life of Brian"'? You know-- where all the bearded people stoning the blasphemer turn out to be women with fake beards? Overpoweringly sexy, that scene."

If your anti-breasticle argument is that "my kids don't need to be exposed to this," I'd have to ask, "Why are your kids watching TV that late?" America's not Korea, where kids stay up until the ungodliest hours. Give the kiddies a book.

In the meantime, unpucker the Sphincter of Righteousness, O my people. For your own good.

_

Just a note to my brother David.

_

Kevin at IA notes that the press isn't the best indicator of how the Korean public feels about an issue; public demonstrations are. Kevin dumps on politicians, the press... anyone within anus-range.

Speaking of politicians: another one bites the dust. (courtesy Marmot)

The Vulture is understandably pissed by the star-sympathy for traitor Robert Kim, who's being spun as a misunderstood hero by his Korean homies.

Meanwhile, Seeing Eye Blog notes another Robert Kim in the making. No, I'm kidding-- this guy might not turn traitor.

But you never know, do you!? YOU JUST NEVER KNOW!!

[ /William Shatner ]

Oranckay sometimes seems to have more love for dictionaries than for fellow humans.

Joseph the Infidel says:

...the only solution which doesn't oppress the North Korean people is a gradual economic approach punctuated with a multinational campaign against proliferation and illicit activites. The more the world considers North Korea a moral crusade, rather than as the political mistake it is, the more North Koreans will suffer.

While I was at the KDI library today, I photocopied an article out of a journal devoted to East Asian affairs. The article was written in late 2003 and suggested much the same thing. I'll be writing more extensively on this article, which proposes "a Korean solution to the US's Korean problem" and advocates a re-prioritization (on the US side) to be more in consonance with Seoul's attempts at working toward reunification. It's interesting stuff, but my gut feeling is that this won't work because Pyongyang's reunification dream brooks no compromise and is in no way synonymous with either South Korea's or the US's vision of reunification. The US is better off looking out for its own interests.

Excellent posts at Budae Chigae. Here's one re: NK commandos (part 2). And here's one re: Ip'chun (beginning of spring, something recently denied by that perfidious US marmot, Punxsutawney Phil).

Who'd'a thunk? Flying Yangban mulls over some commonalities between American Southerners and Koreans.

Jeff gets us ready for the post to end all posts re: BoA, who will save us all.

Rathbone Press looks at the Body World controversy. Owen comes away a bit nonplussed ("What is it with Germans, anyway?"). Meanwhile, Glenn is like, "If this exhibit comes to town, I am THERE." OK, that's not exactly what he said. What he said was, "I've seen some of the pics and if that exhibit ever came to Northern Cali I would be there because it looks BAD ASS."

Kirk (whom I've decided to keep on the blogroll despite his attempt to kill me with that Hello Kitty surprise attack) has several good posts up. A Korea-related one notes that Japan has given itself permission to enact sanctions against North Korea-- not that Japan has any definite intentions to do so right now. Here's another one on the issue of South Korean credit card debt, which is getting way out of hand in a country that doesn't quite get moderation. I'd agree that the US isn't exactly a paragon of moderation, but we've dealt with revolving debt a lot longer. As a result, Americans generally don't look at a large credit card bill and decide to kill themselves.

Holy Shit! Party Pooper's blog actually has something new! And it's a very cool post on the English. Maximum Leader, take note.

_

Dr. doCarmo, despite being one of my closest friends, NEVER READS THIS FUCKING BLOG. Yes, I know he's busy-- very, very busy. He's got a lovely Sri Lankan girlfriend. He's a tenure-track English prof. He's a part-time musician, and he's working on both a second novel and a new short story.

The net result is... he never keeps up with my current events. An email from Steve comes, and it's always, "Yooooooo. What've you been up to?"

You'd know if you read my goddamn blog, you bunghole!

Anyway, Steve did his PhD work at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. Bedlam, as the locals call it. One of the profs there (now retired) was none other than Dr. Jonathan Frakes-- yes, the father of the Jonathan Frakes who played Commander Riker on the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" series. I saw the guy once while visiting Steve on campus. You could see the resemblance.

I mention Steve and Lehigh because of a Steve/Lehigh connection I just saw: Steven Den Beste's latest focuses on an art exhibit over at Lehigh.

Just thought Steve should know. If he manages to tear himself away from work, art, and love, that is.

Heh... the boy's got a life.

_

And here's what he says:

Can we trust a Democratic president to defend the country adequately enough? Toughie. So far, none of the Dems has even begun to make the sale to my satisfaction. But, again, that has to be weighed against whether the country can live with bankrupt big government Nixonism as a price for national security. Second toughie.

This is what I said earlier (January 14, but also January 29):

I think people are going to see two candidates, Democrat and Republican, and understand their choices to be: economy or national security? Obviously, the issues aren't that simple, but those two ideas will be at the heart of the choices we'll have to make in November. And I'm further betting that more people will fall on the side of national security, assuming, as I do, that we'll find our way out of the economic quagmire somehow.

PayPal needs to design a "pay for prophecy" button. Not that my observation is particularly radical or astute, but then again, most people claiming prophetic powers are in it for the money. Buy my book or buy some BigHo products, bitch.

_

I'm sitting in a library on the Korea Development Institute grounds. This is where my cousin works. It's 11:20AM as I write this; we're doing lunch at noon.

Nice place. The 'brary is stocked with English-language books.

Here-- check out Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense. The man's trying so hard to be a good theist. And I'm still not buying it.

_

I still haven't figured this shit out, so I'm not going to regale you with loads of emails gone by. In fact, I think I'm going to call it a night since I've got to get up at a normal hour tomorrow morning (i.e., about 6:30AM). I'm meeting one of my cousins around 8:30AM. He apparently wants to give me a tour of his new place of work... and I'm supposed to remain there through lunch.

Pray for me, if you're the praying type.

_

Over at Seeing Eye Blog. I was rolling.

UPDATE: Go read Owen Rathbone's latest on the backlash against Cardinal Kim and other issues. Korea has looked to Christians for moral leadership before. Christianity was probably a big factor in the propagation of Hangul under the Japanese occupation, and is associated by some with the literacy ethic (cf. Donald Clark on these matters... the Korean alphabet's been around since 1443 [promulgated 1446], but hasn't always occupied the foremost position in matters of reading and writing, for various reasons). Cardinal Kim has spoken out about Korean social ills before; it's only natural that stupid people won't want to listen.

Owen writes:

Whether it be at the hands of China, Japan or Western powers, Koreans have often felt they lacked the ability to shape their own destiny. The division of Korea into North and South is a painful testimony to Koreans' inability to thwart or adroitly harness foreign influences while keeping the nation whole and intact.

I recall my favorite prof at CUA talking about some of the theories regarding the Tao Te Ching, which most people-- including but not limited to the ones whose spirituality has a Barnes & Noble pedigree-- would call a deep little treatise on the nature of reality and what it means to live within that reality. It might interest you to know that some theories are floating around that the TTC may in fact be a Legalist School (or quasi-Legalist) manual for statecraft: a guide for how a small country can survive when surrounded by much larger powers. Go back and read the TTC with that in mind, and you'll be blown away by how different it sounds. It's almost Machiavellian.

This isn't to suggest that the Chinese, throughout history, haven't themselves viewed the TTC as a philosophical work. Plenty have. Surely Chuang Tzu's work seems in keeping with the philosophical themes, though his tone is much more playful and he seems less interested in politics overall. But the TTC is small and very general; its vagueness lends itself easily to a wide range of interpretation. So before you dismiss the Legalist theory out of hand, go back and reread the TTC. No, seriously. I'll wait.

Then write me. Maybe the Koreas should be paying more attention to this manual.

A little less conversation, a little more action, please...

_

My stuff arrived at Korea University, in accordance with the prophecy.

I spent most of today arranging delivery service to move my boxes from KU to my place, setting my computer up (everything seems OK), chewing on Lindt truffles (my favorite: if you ever decide to assassinate me, the quickest way is to poison some Lindt truffles-- especially the blue-label kind), dealing with clothing and shoes and books, and then sitting down to pore through some old emails for blog-worthy material.

My brother David gave me a 128MB flash memory card for Christmas, and I've successfully transferred some old religion-related emails to it. Now, the question is whether I can figure out how to open the card up on this PC. I've plugged the card into the PC's USB port, but I'm still puzzling through the Korean. On my Mac, all I do is plug the flash card into the USB port on the keyboard, and the icon shows up right away. On this PC, you have to go through some process just to get at your own card. Stupid. Bill Gates sucks hairy, cheesy donkey balls.

Many thanks to Smallholder for his thorough-- and frank-- post below. As he might've guessed, I was motivated by the cannibalism issue that everyone else has been talking about. You have to admit it's kind of gross, and sounds rather unnatural to those of us who aren't familiar with the process. Are we any closer to finding more efficient (not to mention safer) methods of introducing loads of protein into the cows' diet?

Also, I have to apologize to all the people coming here from Gweilo Diaries-- horny bastards, all of you. You probably thought I was displaying nipple pics on this blog. Alas, all I did was link to posts and pics, my only constructive contribution being a poem in honor of Britney's tits. Thanks, all the same, for visiting. You created quite a bump in my normally-low numbers (well, they're still low, even with the bump). Heh.

OK... more in a bit. I have to take a quick survey of the blogroll...

_

In a post a few days ago, the Big Hominid asked why we are feeding ground up cows to cows?

In short, ‘cause parts is parts.

In modern beef agriculture, the emphasis is on getting the steers to market size as quickly as possible. In the old days of the cattle drive, the steers arriving in Chicago would be three to four years old. Cattle today finish out at the same size in sixteen to eighteen months. We are able to accelerate their growth by feeding them an artificial diet of grain. This grain promotes fast growth and puts fat onto the carcasses, but does not contain all the protein that the animal needs.

Normally, the majority of the needed protein would be absorbed through grazed forages. But in the packed conditions of the feedlot (http://www.schauscompanies.com/feedlots.html
), no grazing is possible. It is also uneconomical to bring large amounts of bulky forages to the animals. So animals need protein supplements.

The dairy industry has evolved along similar lines; very few herdsmen now include pasture as part of their management plan. Most dairies, like the one in Washington that had the mad cow positive, are confinement operations, so they need protein supplements too (perhaps more; there seems to be some studies out there that show that excess protein can be pushed into increased milk production).

So industrial scale farmers need protein supplements. These protein supplements can be very expensive. Since farming is a low margin business, it is essential to find the cheapest protein supplements possible.

Slaughterhouses have protein-rich wastes that would be otherwise be discarded. Waste = cheap. So many feed companies bought the bones and offal, ground it up, and fed it back to the cows.

Cannibalism (at least for cows) pays. The attitude is that protein is protein; the source doesn’t matter.

Another source used in protein supplements is chicken slaughter wastes. Feathers evidently contain a relatively high amount of protein, so they are ground up and fed to cattle as well.

But my personal favorite is chicken bedding. I live in the Shenandoah Valley, which is a poultry production center. Huge two story buildings house upwards of 100,000 chickens at a time. They produce a lot of crap, which is absorbed by the sawdust bedding. When the chickens are shipped to slaughter, the immense amounts of waste are a real problem. This isn’t like your grandpa’s farming where the manure is all composted and added to the garden. We are talking hundreds of tons of stuff. You can’t spread it on the poultry farm’s land because the land cannot absorb the dense concentration of feces. You might remember the pfisteria scare in Maryland a few years back. It was caused by chicken crap.

Some of the poultry bedding is trucked out to other farms and spread as a soil amendment. A bit stinky, but it can be used to fertilize pasture (though I don’t do it because I’m don’t want the chemicals that have passed through commercial birds on my land and because I’m afraid that any bedding would bring in all sorts of nasty diseases to afflict my household flock). But even with some going back to the land, there is still a lot of poultry crap.

As a result, we periodically see adds in the Harrisonburg newspaper for “poultry litter for fertilizer or CATTLE FEED.” I shit you not. Pun intended.

Chickens are inefficient in their digestion. Much of the feed value of the grain they eat passes through their bodies and is crapped out (if the Big Hominid will contemplate his waste after a meal of corn on the cob, he’ll see what I mean). So the crap has some grain feed value. More importantly, the crap also contains protein. Cheap protein supplement.

And parts is parts, right?

So the answer, Big Hominid, is that we feed cattle other cattle and chicken shit because of the almighty dollar. It makes economic sense.

To paraphrase Churchill, “Capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the others.”

I just saw that I got a hit from somebody at the University of Michigan.

If this visitor to my blog (welcome!) is a prof there, please know that I'm interested in finding out more about your Buddhist Studies program. I'm interested in doing doctoral work in the areas of Korean Seon/Zen Buddhism, religious pluralism, and interreligious dialogue (not necessarily in that order of priority). But I know that, with my current background (which includes an MA in Religion and Culture from Catholic University in DC), I'd probably have to do a lot of remedial work-- my knowledge remains very, very general. I'm currently living in Seoul.

Other universities I'm looking into are: UCLA (ideally, studying Korean Buddhism under Dr. Buswell), George Mason University (ideally, the Cultural Studies program, but working with Dr. Young-chan Ro if at all possible), and SUNY Stony Brook (ideally, the Philo program-- with as much work as possible under Dr. Sung-bae Park).

Visit often, ignore the remarks about Janet Jackson's nipples, and feel free to contact me via the means indicated on my sidebar.

Hapjang.

_

Britney might not like showing off her nipples, but Janet's not so shy.

I don't know about the rest of you, but Janet Jackson's nipple, of which Drudge posted an exquisite closeup (the nipple was decorated with a star-shaped ring/piercing straight out of the Borg Queen's wardrobe), left me hungry for more.

Mmmmm. Ooooooolder women.

The Vulture has the scoop on the whole "was it intentional?" story.

Jeff of Ruminations in Korea provides the yummiest closeup link of all, so you can see the Borg piercing up niiiiiice and close.

My tongue hasn't stopped flicking for minutes now. They're not gonna drag me out of this PC-bahng this evening. I think I'll just unzip right here and hump the computer. Give new meaning to the phrase "got it in every input."

_

Oooooooh, yeah. We're pumped. Know why? 'Cause we HATES DA CULT LEADAZ, dat's why.

Here's the relevant article. A Korean cult leader, now 72, has been sentenced to death "for ordering his aides to kill six followers between 1990 and 1992."

The Suwon District Court handed down the death penalty to Cho Hui-song, 72, chief of the Yongsaenggyo cult, who had been arrested on charges of plotting to murder his own believers who tried to challenge his doomsday theory or threatened to reveal his wrongdoings.

The court also sentenced to death believer Ra Kyong-ok, 61, on charges of murdering the victims at the request of Cho. Another believer Kim Jin-tae, 64, was given life imprisonment for assisting Ra in the criminal act, while two others were sentenced to 15 years and 12 years for their involvement in the murder.

Somewhere, a large and hairy hominid is dancing.

_

The Plantinga post is done, baby. (Simply scroll down if this link goes wild.)

I also added a Britney haiku to the previous poetry blog. (Same here-- scroll down.)

I've paid the damn Customs tax. My computer arrives Tuesday-- probably in the afternoon. Next step: drag my stuff to my place from Korea U., where it's arriving (am anticipating several short taxi trips here); set up the computer; iron the wrinkled clothes; set up more books; and start looking for a DSL service so I can begin blogging from home. I'm impatient to kiss the smoky PC-bahng culture good-bye.

_

In South Korea this time, not the North: teachers may end up being evaluated by parents and students. Thus disappears the old notion of the respected teacher. Eat my shorts, seonsaeng-nim!

A teacher evaluation system is set to be introduced as early as March while the college entrance examinations will play a less role in deciding students' admission to a college, according to Vice Prime Minister Ahn Byung-young on Monday.

"Since the teachers' qualities are the sole source of public education we need to find a way to encourage our teachers to be on alert," said the vice prime minister who is concurrently serving as the minister of education and human resources development in a special lecture at Jinsun Girls' Junior High School in Kangnam, southern Seoul.

The education minister argued the nation's public educators need to be on their toes to develop themselves just like any other workers in other fields. "The quality of education depends on the quality of teachers," he said.

[...]

The committee, however, is still debating over whether to have teachers be evaluated by their students and school parents, according to the official. "An evaluation system by students and their parents needs to be reviewed over a long period of time. We will announce our final proposal at a public hearing in some time around March," he added.

Once and if the new system is introduced, public school teachers in all elementary, middle and high schools will be evaluated by their colleagues and possibly by their students and parents every year and receive ratings on their performance.

Such ratings may be used in deciding promotions, appointments and layoffs of teachers, according to the ministry. However, how much effect the new teacher evaluation system will have on the nation's public education as well as whether the system will be introduced still needs to be seen as both the teachers' groups including the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers Union, a progressive teachers' organization, and parent groups such as the School Parents' Association for True Education have all expressed their opposition to the government proposal.

Alas...

_

A big thank you to the KimcheeGI and his lovely wife for a rib-sticking Korean meal, very interesting philosophical, political, and blog-related discussion, and warm hospitality. Today started off as a nothing-much day, then got a helluva lot better, thanks to y'all.

The "Plantinga and pluralism" post will appear BELOW this one, in the current "Plantinga and pluralism" location. Bear with me-- this might take a few hours. Meanwhile, take a stroll through my blogroll and enjoy this little piece in honor of Annika's hatred of Britney Spears and her invisible nipples.

ALL HAIL THE TWO BRIGHTEST
OF THE THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT

a deconstructive analysis
of Britney Spears's nipples
I will explore her
transient mammary antipodality
excellent evanescent areolae
illusory summits--
Everest through beer goggles
twin peaks, oh so deus absconditus
Jacques Derrida
that horny old whore
he wants a lick
or maybe two
but who can nibble
what isn't there?
O Britney of Mystery
smooth-breasted vixen
liberated from conventional aesthetics
by the almighty scalpel
icon of the beauty myth
art thou Athena or Cassandra?
perhaps neither:
perhaps sad Demeter
mourning the occasional disappearance
of nipple-Persephone
jiggling tumuli
giggling stimuli
--just as
cornholing a kitty (HELLO, KITTY)
is not the same as getting pussy,
a man cannot titty-fuck
That Which Is Not Truly Titty
OOOOOOOOOOO
BRING THY NIPPLES BACK TO US


And a followup haiku for Britney:

Your breasticles are
TESTICLES! That's right, they're just
one big chest-scrotum.
_

[UPDATE: The new post on Plantinga appears below this one! Scroll down!]

I'm going home early, but in this space, sometime in the next 24-36 hours, will be my review and critique of Alvin Plantinga's chapter, "Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism," from The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity.

You already know what I'm going to conclude about Plantinga, because I outlined my own stance in this post. So don't expect surprises-- just expect a bit more detail.

I do recommend Philosophical Challenge for people who want to get up to speed on the debate as it revolves around John Hick's version of the pluralist position (actually, there are many pluralisms), but pluralism is more than Hick. If anything, I'd say the granddaddy of all pluralists is Raimondo Panikkar, who in his many, many writings on the subject has anticipated just about every pro- and con- argument from every possible angle. Panikkar isn't a "models" person, either, and he's persuaded me that that's the right way to go.

Here's an incomplete list of books I've read that deal in some way or other with questions of pluralism and dialogue:

Abe and Lafleur (ed.). Zen and Western Thought.
Abe and Heine (ed.). Zen and Comparative Studies.
D'Costa and Knitter, eds. Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered.
Jacques Dupuis. Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism.
Richard Friedli. Le Christ dans les cultures.
S. Mark Heim. Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion.
John Hick. A Christian Theology of Religions.
-----. An Interpretation of Religion.
Stephen Kaplan. Different Paths, Different Summits.
Hick and Knitter, eds. The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions.
Paul Knitter, No Other Name?
Hans Kueng. Le christianisme et les religions du monde. (I have only the French edition, alas. I assume the English title is Christianity and the Religions of the World or something similar.)
Raimondo Panikkar. The Intrareligious Dialogue.
-----. Myth, Faith, and Hermeneutics.
Byron Sherwin. John Paul II and Interreligious Dialogue. (this book was declared "AWFUL!" by Rabbi Irwin Blank at CUA).
David Tracy. Plurality and Ambiguity.
Twiss and Grelle, eds. Explorations in Global Ethics.

For Buddhist reinterpretations of Christian thought (more often than not, these books are written by Christians! ...long story, but an important one... maybe I'll tell it sometime):

William Johnston. Christian Zen.
John Keenan. The Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana Reading. (Very academic, but this book kicks serious ass. Yogacara angle.)
-----. Meaning of Christ: A Mahayana Theology. (This came first. Also kick-ass.)
Robert E. Kennedy. Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit.
Kenneth Leong. The Zen Teachings of Jesus.
Thich Nhat Hanh. Living Buddha, Living Christ. (OK, yeah, he's a Zen [Thien] monk.)

There's more. But this gives you some idea where I'm coming from.

And for your edification: The KimcheeGI sent me a link to another very interesting post on the upcoming Mel Gibson film, "The Passion of Christ." The post is a great survey of various reactions to preview screenings of "The Passion," and covers questions like Gibson's religious affiliation, Gibson's father's adamant Holocaust denial, antisemitism, etc.

We have to make sure we're not talking past each other in this discussion: those of us with a religious motivation to push pluralism aren't going to be too responsive to the academic's desire to preserve religious variety for variety's sake, as if we were talking about biodiversity or adopting Hagrid's love of fierce and monstrous life forms. Religious diversity and biodiversity aren't analogous: whereas, in the real world, we do have both scientific and humanitarian reasons to maintain biodiversity, it's debatable whether we really need to retain shameful vestiges of our sociocultural past, as enshrined in such attitudes as religious exclusivism. I think a case can be made that exclusivism does more harm than good, and must therefore be combatted.

To people who appreciate exclusivism, the snake story (or more accurately, one of several versions):

Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow.
She took the snake home and nursed it back to health.
One day the snake bit her on the cheek.
As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?"
And the snake answered, "Look, lady, you knew I was a snake."

_______________________

PLANTINGA AND PLURALISM:
A REVIEW AND CRITIQUE OF HIS DEFENSE
OF RELIGIOUS EXCLUSIVISM

Alvin Plantinga is a big name when it comes to philosophical issues of warrant, justification, and rationality. I've been aware of his exclusivist stance for a while, and admit that, as a result, I've never been motivated to read him. Since I've been slogging through the interesting-but-difficult chapters of The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, though, I thought I should stop and report a bit on my internal dialogue with Plantinga's chapter in this book, which is titled "Pluralism: a Defense of Religious Exclusivism."

My initial reaction after reading the chapter was: Plantinga ain't so tough. I thought I was going to be in for a dense, impossible read, but Plantinga is actually less obscure than many other thinkers. It also helped that Plantinga's chapter is very focused, and the range of his argument is narrow (or "parochial," as I described it earlier).

Plantinga is fighting a defensive action in this chapter. I don't know what his larger project is, but if this chapter is any indication (and it seems to be in consonance with what I [vaguely] know of his other work), then he's restricting himself to a certain set of pluralist accusations which he considers unjustified.

By the time I finished Plantinga's chapter, I was pretty much in agreement with him.

Plantinga is interested in refuting the idea that exclusivists who hold their positions-- despite having had the chance to hear and evaluate other positions-- are somehow exhibiting arrogance. He also concerns himself with the question of whether an exclusivist's beliefs are justified, rational, and warranted.

A quick examination of these three key terms:

Justification:
1. "The central core of the notion, its beating heart, the paradigmatic center to which most of the myriad contemporary variations are related by way of analogical extension and family resemblance, is the notion of being within one's intellectual rights, having violated no intellectual or cognitive duties or obligations in the formation and substance of the belief in question." (p.180)
2. Non-arbitrariness. (Ibid.)

Rationality:
Plantinga distinguishes five distinct but related senses of rationality:
1. Aristotelian rationality. Man is a rational animal in that he has ratio-- i.e., he can "look before and after, can hold beliefs, make inferences, and is capable of knowledge." Plantinga considers this form of rationality largely irrelevant to his discussion. (p. 183)
2. The Deliverances of Reason. If Aristotelian rationality is generic, a more specific type of rationality is one where reason is viewed "as the source of a priori knowledge and belief." (Ibid.) Further, "It is by reason thus construed that we know self-evident beliefs-- beliefs so obvious that they couldn't be false. These are among the deliverances of reason. Of course, there are other beliefs-- 38 x 39 = 1482, for example--that are not self-evident but are a consequence of self-evident beliefs by way of arguments that are self-evidently valid; these too are among the deliverances of reason." (Ibid.)
3. The Deontological Sense. This is about "intellectual requirement, or duty, or obligation: a person's belief is irrational in this sense if in forming or holding it she violates such a duty. This is the sense of 'irrational' in which, according to many contemporary evidentialist objectors to theistic belief, those who believe in God without propositional evidence are irrational." This kind of irrationality is a failure "to conform to intellectual or epistemic duties." (p. 184)
4. Zweckrationalität. This is "means-end rationality." It's "the sort of rationality displayed by your actions if they are well calculated to achieve your goals." (Ibid.) Plantinga questions whether this type of rationality applies to belief at all. (p. 185)
5. Rationality as Sanity and Proper Function. I.e., "absence of dysfunction, disorder, impairment, pathology with respect to rational faculties." (Ibid.)

Warrant:
The "coherentist" view of warrant is: "...what constitutes warrant is coherence with some body of belief." (p. 187) If I'm understanding this correctly, warrant can be understood as what I have when my beliefs are both justified and rational. Warrant, then, is the quality of integrity of belief. It's an indication of how strongly one's beliefs can and do correspond to reality.

Plantinga's tour through the various pluralistic objections of the exclusivist position end up at the conclusion that the pluralist is unable to make his accusations without subjecting himself to the same critique-- i.e., being "hoist on his own petard," as Plantinga writes. He is willing to concede the contingent nature of belief-- i.e., were he born in Madagascar, his beliefs would probably be different-- but here again, he contends that this is no less true for the pluralist who, if born and raised in another circumstance, could very well end up a non-pluralist.

Keep in mind that this whole chapter is a defensive action. It's a demonstration-- and a fairly convincing one-- of the epistemic and intellectual parity of reflective exclusivists and pluralists.

But as I noted before:

The problem is that, by Plantinga's own argument, if exclusivism is safe from the accusation of arrogance, and pluralism shares the same epistemic and moral plane as exclusivism, then the accusation that pluralists are arrogant also fails. I'm sure Plantinga realizes this; as I said, his argument is very parochial-- his only purpose is to rebut the typical accusations made against exclusivism, not provide a wider, "objective" justification for the rightness of exclusivistic beliefs. But I'm amused because Plantinga has given pluralists the ultimate insulation against the countercharge that their pluralism is itself somehow arrogant and oppressive. By claiming epistemic and moral parity-- and nothing more-- Plantinga inadvertently reminds us that the substantive discussions lie elsewhere: outside the paltry issues of warrant and justification.

I've never contended that the exclusivist position is irrational, though I've said plenty of times that it's arrogant. Plantinga is suggesting that, because pluralism is a specific position among specific positions (something also contended by S. Mark Heim as he lays out his Rescherian "orientational pluralist" position), the same charge of arrogance can be leveled at the pluralist. Upon reflection, I tend to agree, and this doesn't keep me awake at night. If the basic point is that no point of view can be all-inclusive, then I grant this willingly. To put it boldly, pluralism contains its own exclusivism-- but there's no reason to view this as ironic or self-contradictory.

Plantinga and Hick are staring at the same human evidence and arriving at completely opposite conclusions. Hick is saying, "Belief is highly contingent, therefore we can't assume our beliefs are any more or less legitimate than other people's beliefs." Plantinga is saying, "Belief is highly contingent, therefore we have no justification for assuming our own beliefs are less legitimate than other people's beliefs."

So if I grant Plantinga's point about epistemic parity, where does this leave the anti-pluralist? If, in truth, you can't accuse a thoughtful exclusivist of arrogance, then on what grounds can we charge the thoughtful pluralist with arrogance? Plantinga has, as I've argued, nullified that entire line of argument for both sides-- but this still leaves all the basic questions open. Here's one issue I wrote about before, and it's a serious one:

Plantinga's argument conveniently glosses over the issues implied in normative beliefs, and doesn't deal at all with the hegemonic nature of most traditional religious truth claims. He doesn't seem to understand that the exclusivist isn't merely content to continue believing what he believes-- not if his set of beliefs includes a missionary impulse, which it often does, especially in the case of the Abrahamic faiths. For the monotheistic exclusivist, contrary to Plantinga's misleading formulation, it's not just a matter of "I'm right and they're wrong"; rather, it's "I'm right, they're wrong, and I'm going to get them to change."

Because Plantinga restricts himself to a very narrow issue in the overall discussion, he avoids such obvious issues as the one above. People like Hick feel obliged to deconstruct those aspects of christology that are normative, while preserving Christ's (obvious and undeniable) uniqueness. Uniqueness was never really an issue in these discussions; normativity, however, was-- and is.

Plantinga suggests something I reject utterly (p. 176):

So what can the exclusivist say to herself? Well, it must be conceded immediately that if she believes (1) or (2), then she must also believe that those who believe something incompatible with them are mistaken and believe what is false. That's no more than simple logic.

[NB: The (1) and (2) mentioned in the above quote refer to these two propositions:
1. The world was created by God, an almighty, all-knowing, and perfectly good personal being (one that holds beliefs; has aims, plans, and intentions; and can act to accomplish these aims).
2. Human beings require salvation, and God has provided a unique way of salvation through the incarnation, life, sacrificial death, and resurrection of his divine son.]

Like many theologians since at least Aquinas if not before, Plantinga relies heavily on the principle of non-contradiction, which is fundamental to logic (Aquinas even applied this principle to God's very nature: the single major limit on God's omnipotence is his inability to do what is logically contradictory). But since we're talking about religious beliefs and realities, I think it's important to question-- forcefully-- the pride of place given to logic in such discussions.

Before I go further, I'll grant that a system of belief can't have much systematicity if logic (reason, rationality, etc.) doesn't enter the picture. Mental and spiritual anarchy are just anarchy. This should be pretty obvious to anyone. Even unreflective people whose belief systems are inherited (Plantinga deliberately avoids talking about these people in his argument-- another move I disagree with, given how many such folks there are) have worldviews that, so long as you find the right angle, are more or less coherent.

The problem, though, is that in religion we're constantly faced with paradox. Pluralistic thought-systems such as those abounding in Hinduism routinely violate the principle of non-contradiction-- in how they envision the roles of various divinities, for example, and/or in the meanings of core terms. Perhaps, as Robert Aitken-roshi argues in The Ground We Share, there are no paradoxes in nature, and paradoxes are a function of the mind. This still doesn't make the issue of paradox irrelevant to the discussion at hand-- and as any Zennist can tell you, you eventually have to put reason aside if you plan to go deeper. In Christian language: reason is never an equal partner with faith.

So I'll back up a bit and register a major disagreement with Plantinga on this fundamental issue. It's a disagreement I have with a whole host of Christian theologians who, still in thrall to Greek thought, insist on importing the ghost of Aristotle into their theological discourse.

Finally, Plantinga fails to convince me of the innocence of his stance. Here's what he says at one point, as a rebuttal to accusations of arbitrariness (in his section on justification):

Am I then being arbitrary, treating similar cases differently in continuing to hold, as I do, that in fact that kind of behavior [in this case, he's talking about King David's adultery in the Bible] is dreadfully wrong? I don't think so. Am I wrong in thinking racial bigotry despicable, even though I know there are others who disagree, and even if I think they have the same internal markers for their beliefs as I have for mine? I don't think so. I believe in Serious Actualism, the view that no objects have properties in worlds in which they do not exist, not even nonexistence. Others do not believe this, and perhaps the internal markers of their dissenting views have for them the same quality as my views have for me. Am I being arbitrary in continuing to think as I do? I can't see how.

Plantinga, in the above paragraph, is arguing that he's justified-- not being arbitrary-- in condemning racism. Given the way that Plantinga's argument in this chapter so completely levels the playing field, where does this leave us with regard to the racist? If beliefs are contingent (i.e., depending on various factors), then it's only reasonable to expect that a person who's born and raised in a racist household will hold racist beliefs.

Plantinga would probably argue from moral grounds, as a Christian, that combatting racism is a worthy activity. He'd adopt this position knowing full well that a certain set of people-- racists-- aren't going to be happy about this stance. We could say that Plantinga's anti-racism excludes racists in that their stance places them in opposition to Plantinga. Fine. Plantinga, then, will act according to whatever internal justifications he has found or created for his beliefs, convinced of the rightness of his cause. Plantinga's trying to connect his justified anti-racism with his justified exclusivism.

You see that Plantinga's argument here has little bearing on the harmful reality of racism (granted-- if you're a racist, then you can't see this). As long as we're talking about justification, rationality, and warrant, we can glibly posit that the racist point of view is justified (by its "internal markers"), rational (thoughtful racists can present reasoned arguments for their position-- anything from science to scripture to personal experience, and might be able to do it very civilly), and warranted (i.e., the weight of the justification and rationality is enough to convince the racist of the coherence of his belief).

So at that point... we've just argued in defense of racism.

This is what leads me to believe that Plantinga's argument is, in the final analysis, completely irrelevant. I happen to agree with him that racism is something to be combatted, and I don't particularly give a shit about the racist's own point of view-- how justified, rational, and warranted it is. Much the same discussion is going on these days about the Islamic fundamentalist's point of view. It's possible to climb into the terrorist's mind and understand why he's thinking and acting a certain way, but as we've noted before, understanding doesn't translate to condoning.

Since I see exclusivism in its strong and weak forms as a form of bigotry that does oppress people in ways that are analogous to racism, I will use Plantinga's argument to submit that exclusivism has to go-- and this conviction is justified, rational, and warranted.

Perhaps an exclusivist is indeed being sincere-- and perhaps not being arrogant at all-- in consciously assuming responsibility for the logical consequences of his beliefs. I'm not convinced this is the case, but am willing to grant this point for argument's sake. However, this point isn't particularly relevant. The relevant question is how to evaluate the content of those exclusivist beliefs, and this involves being empirical and looking at their history and practical consequences. If we as a nation have been able to conclude, collectively, that slavery was an evil that deserved to be banished, then by Plantinga's own argument I feel comfortable concluding the same thing about exclusivism.

_

A decent overview of the whole "China claims Koguryo as its own" flap here.

Some interesting points from the article, relevant to current events:

The Chinese may be laying the groundwork to dispute the current border with North Korea and, if they find it to be in their interest, claim more territory, scholars say. They also argue that China is trying to head off any attempt by pockets of Korean speakers on the Chinese side of the border to eventually become part of a unified Korea.

"The Chinese are trying to use a novel claim on history as an insurance policy for the future of its border with Korea," said Yeo Ho-kyu, a historian at Seoul's Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. "This is not the first time the Chinese have tried to do this. They did the same thing before they claimed Tibet. Now, they are trying to use history as a weapon to wield influence in an area that is historically Korean."

One China-- a policy we abet, and which keeps our politicians relatively silent on issues like the disappearance of Tibet and the debate over Taiwan's status. What keeps us from speaking out too loudly about all this is the economic angle: we don't want to lose China as a trading partner. The Chinese market means too much to us: we have a vested interest in... investing in China.

One of the things I used to believe is that market penetration is key to changing repressive political systems. The fact that China's economy is, effectively speaking, no longer communist is a reflection of the efforts of not only politicians, but businessmen who, along with products, import values. Unfortunately, that doesn't keep our companies from running into (moral and legal) trouble when they collude in China's crushing of human rights.

The problem: US corporations aren't under any obligation to be moral paragons; their purpose is stay focused on that bottom line. While our way of doing things might rub off on other people, it doesn't have to. In China, for example, a lot of Chinese Internet firewall technology comes to them courtesy of American companies. This latest round of articles on Microsoft's involvement in Chinese repression of its people (and what an irony, eh? Bill Gates: humanitarian!) is another case in point: business isn't a sure raft for the importation of Western democratic values.

As a result, I'm revising my own position on this. Business is, at best, one possible engine of change, and nothing more.

When Andrew Natsios argued that the people of North Korea got a glimpse of the outside world when NGO and other aid workers were working in their country, his point was that our mere presence in a totalitarian regime has the potential to create ripples of destabilization as people are confronted with heretofore unasked values questions.

What China and Microsoft are demonstrating is that Natsios's vision may have some merit, but it's also more than a little optimistic. When we focus on China in particular, we are faced with the uncomfortable realization that it's going to take a lot more than business ties to change a huge, powerful, and repressive one-party government. And when we zoom back to a more international scale, we have to consider China's frank imperialism, which dwarfs America's own (assuming you even accept the idea that America is imperialist in the classic sense; I disagree, but agree with Bill Whittle's "empire of the mind" argument).

China stares hungrily at Tibet, then eats it. It's staring hungrily at Taiwan, and might well be waiting to pounce on a weak North Korea, given the chance. Is the above-quoted Korean scholar being paranoid? Based on China's rapacious history, I don't think so. Tibet's gone, folks. Tibet, as a people and culture, effectively exists in Dharamsala, India, with the Dalai Lama. It exists in pockets across the United States, where grass-roots individuals, if not politicians, have taken an interest in its preservation. But Tibet doesn't exist in Tibet-- don't believe the Chinese lies.

And Taiwan's next. North Korea might well be on the menu, too. I wouldn't be surprised. Koreabloggers argue that Korea needs to start worrying about what happens when the US leaves and China is leering at it from down the street. When they argue this, it's China's imperialism-- imperialism in the good ol' classic sense, not the newfangled one-- that they're talking about. Watching American-style Korean programs isn't the same as being told by the occupying power that you actually belong, heart and soul and history, to America-- that you were, in fact, American all along. Therein lies the bullshit of the "America is imperialist" argument.

Meantime, trust China as far as you can throw it.

[NB: the Tibet link was Salon premium content, but it's aged sufficiently that it's now available to all. It's also one of the better Salon articles I've read.]

_

You'd think that a big, rich country like Saudi Arabia would do a better job of hosting an event that is one of the five pillars of Islam: the Hajj.

But no. This happens all the damn time.

Meanwhile, in Iran: prelude to revolution?

_

Here's a link to a brief post by Carpemundi over at Cerebral Bypass. Carpemundi links to a very long, very involved article that deals with fundie Islam and (based on a scan) seems to focus largely on Sayyid Qutb.

Dan, have you read this gent before (the article's author, I mean, not Carpemundi or Qutb)? Are you familiar with his work?

_

Everyone's talking about the revelation: some of NK's concentration camps have been gassing prisoners to death as "experiments." Needless to say, this is sick-ass shit, and yet another reason why Kim Jong Il and his whole regime must go. A quick survey of articles and blogger comments on this subject:

Yahoo News, via Dan Darling/Regnum Crucis.

The Marmot.

Oranckay, quoting from Reuters.

The Infidel makes a point I agree with:

I'm not sure how this story benefits anyone's cause. On one level the information is value-neutral: knowing this really does not help any policy-maker decide what to do.

True. We're merely confirming stuff we've long suspected about the nature of this regime. The Marmot's post (linked above) warns us about the reliability of testimony from defectors:

I have no idea how reliable these reports are -- one generally has to weigh the tendency for North Korean defectors to "sex up" their stories in order to please their hosts against the truly nasty nature of the North Korean regime.

Something to keep in mind.

The Marmot and the Infidel part ways, though. The Infidel writes:

I'm sure there are many ideologues who know exactly what to do with this information, but they're the hotheads I'm most worried about. Given the historical record the Chinese and Japanese have in the region for experimentation and incarceration, though, I'm not surprised by this, or that bureaucrats confuse an Heredity "Rule" with a tyrannical whim. How many generations will it take for east Asians not to equate legality with vengeance, rather than compromise? With this urgency to give North Koreans a positive reason to trust each other and the outside world, it is imperative the first impression left by foreigners is not the overwhelming, righteous fury of a military strike, or the underwhelming rabbit punch of an assassination.

[...]

Washington, and regional powers, need to find discreet methods to punish the North Korean elite without inflicting any more suffering on the general population. It' s not the tactics themselves, but the lack of coordination, which frustrates progress.

Some of this is similar, at least thematically, to Andrew Natsios's position in The Great North Korean Famine (see links on sidebar for my multi-part review of his book).

The Marmot's conclusion is somewhat different:

Nevertheless, those are some pretty horrifying tales, and they make you wonder about those who think that it's a good idea to help North Korea's leaders remain in power.

This is probably closer to where I stand, but as I hope I made clear in my Natsios review, I'm deeply, deeply conflicted about this. As a result, I'm sympathetic to both Natsios's and the Infidel's points of view. The people who lose as we play these games (and the Infidel confirms Natsios's contention that these games are being played clumsily) are, always, the North Korean citizens themselves.

I'm not an advocate of war with North Korea, however. In fact, I'm in favor of the Infidel's pragmatic first step:

The first tactic involves a [return] to isolation, which is blunt, but others, notably Japan, have already started. So far, this looks petty and nationalistic, and is not supported by the response from any other of the regional powers. Each participant is as willing to watch another suffer Pyongyang's condemnation as arrive for a photo opportunity. As long as China and [Japan] are not cooperating, it doesn't really matter what Washington does. Seoul seems more likely to follow Beijing's lead, or act contrariwise to Washington's policy, and Russia is a spoiler. Therefore, Washington should isolate both Koreas, but devote itself diplomatically to nudging Tokyo and Beijing closer together.

Maybe the Infidel and I don't mean the same thing by "isolation"; maybe we do. For me, it means presenting a cold, unyielding front to North Korea: insisting on Verification Above All, the precondition to end all preconditions. Without unrestricted access to NK's deepest inner workings, we get nowhere. If NK complains that this is a violation of its sacred sovereingty, then after we stop rolling around on the floor with laughter, we should pick ourselves up and tell NK with a straight face to go fuck itself: verification, closely followed by irrevocable dismantling, is the price you gotta pay for food & aid, bitch.

I imagine the Infidel and I would disagree about the role of humanitarian aid in this. On balance (again, I don't like this stance, but I can't see it any other way), I think we need to ignore Natsios & Co. and restrict food and fuel and other forms of aid. First, because I think a lot of it does get diverted, and Natsios himself isn't reassuring on this subject. Second, because it's the ultimate truth test for South Korean claims of empathy for/loyalty to the North. If they're really willing to help, then this rich, fattening half-peninsula can damn well foot the bill for its "brothers" across the DMZ. Third, as I argued in the conclusion of my Natsios review, it turns out that years and years of sanctions do indeed result in a military advantage for whoever attacks a sanctions-ravaged country. Iraq stands as proof positive of this. I don't advocate war, but we're investing in the future, militarily speaking, when we squeeze. Sanctions don't unseat a regime, but when done viciously, they do knock the stuffing out of a military.

It bugs me, though; it bugs me a lot, this talk of squeezing and sanctions and being unyielding. I'm sitting here in this nice, climate-controlled PC-bahng, talking very glibly about people not even 50 miles away from where I'm writing-- people who are right this moment suffering from the cold, forced to spy on each other, being dragged off to prisons and concentration camps, being programmed with Kimist propaganda, scrounging for grass and frogs and dead things, living a cosmic lie while trying to hold on to the tattered remains of a Confucianistic past. How real is their suffering to me? How real?

In any case, I'll be first in line if we do one day capture Kim Jong Il. Damn him for forcing us into this kind of thinking. Damn him for what he's done to his people. Damn him to fucking hell.

_

JRR Tolkien is often credited with creating the "fantasy" genre. I don't want to get into the debate over how true that is; for me, I'm satisfied that the claim is true enough, because so many fantasy novels since Tolkien have, in lesser or greater measure, borrowed from his variegated palette of themes, characters, and plot elements. For the purposes of this discussion, I actually want to focus more on the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, since I know it far more more intimately than I do the LOTR series. I've read and reread the Covenant series more times than I can count, and have been known to reread it several times in a single year. In fact, it's probably because I've concentrated so hard on Donaldson that I'm really not all that well-read in the genre as a whole.

[NB: Living in Korea as I am, I haven't touched the series for the past two years.]

The purpose of this essay isn't to compare the series' relative "merits" so much as to note parallels, highlight dissimilarities (huge ones, in my opinion), and investigate religious tropes-- many from Hinduism and Buddhism-- found in the Donaldson books. I'm going to have to assume you're familiar with both series, otherwise it'd take too long to write summaries that do them justice.

I tend to think that Donaldson's heavy borrowing from Tolkien was quite deliberate, because ultimately the First and Second Chronicles, if read in conjunction with Tolkien, turn out be a heavy-duty subversion of the latter. Thomas Covenant, the principal protagonist in the First Chronicles (and co-protag in the Second, along with Dr. Linden Avery, from whose point of view most of the Second Chronicles is told), is as many reviewers have described him: an anti-hero. If one of the requirements of the heroic myth (as Joseph Campbell lays out the "monomyth" paradigm) is that the hero bring back a "boon to his people," then Covenant, who belongs in "our" world, brings little to nothing back by the end of the sixth book. Any good he does devolves to the fantastic Land in which he finds himself.

In Donaldson's world, there's a Ringbearer-- the internally conflicted, often-bitter, often-cowardly Thomas Covenant, a leper who's about as far from that trouper Frodo as you can get. The ring itself is completely the opposite of the One Ring in Tolkien's world: it's a ring of white gold, which is the embodiment of "wild magic" in Donaldson's world-- the power-principle that forms the keystone of the Land's very existence. It represents empowerment, freedom at its most radical-- not enslavement and attachment, as does the One Ring for its corporeal bearers. Elves and dwarves from Tolkien have their analogues in the Woodhelvennin and Stonedownors-- who are human, but who represent two distinct traditions of magical and societal lore: woodcraft and stonecraft (did you know that "craft" is derived from a German word meaning "power"?). Tolkien's orcs are Donaldson's Cavewights; perhaps the "engineered" Uruk-hai are analogous to Donaldson's ur-viles (creatures described as "roynish" by Donaldson-- the only books in which I've seen that word). Minas Tirith is a template for Revelstone; the White Tree at Minas Tirith, symbol of Gondor, is reminiscent of the old Gilden tree in Revelstone's courtyard. Tolkien has Wargs; Donaldson has kresh.

The Land has its version of Sauron, and he lives on the edge of the map, too: this is Lord Foul (silly, cartoonish name, but Donaldson isn't afraid of name-related corniness: another baddie is named Drool Rockworm! Try that on for size!), also known by his title, the Despiser. As Covenant hears various creation myths and cosmologies, he learns that Foul is the son or brother of the Creator (in whose existence not everyone believes), perhaps working alongside the Creator as the Earth was formed, sowing it with evil. In some of those stories, the Creator struggles with Foul and imprisons him on the Earth, locked away inside the Arch of Time. But this creates a problem: the Creator cannot defeat Foul without reaching through, and thereby breaking, the Arch. This would undo creation, which despite its ills is still worth preserving. So the Creator, much like the machine world in The Matrix, has to send a champion, someone who is free to act in a destructive or beneficial manner, as he chooses. For this reason, Covenant, a man full of unresolved paradoxes, is chosen. His freedom is what keeps him from being a mere tool of the Creator.

Donaldson isn't writing about the passing of a previous age and the beginning of an Age of Men. His story, in contrast to Tolkien's, is intensely personal, and especially in the First Chronicles is almost always focused on the moral dimensions of Covenant's struggle within himself and with his surroundings. A question Covenant received on a piece of paper from an old beggar in ocher robes in the first novel, Lord Foul's Bane, haunts him constantly. It's the "fundamental question of ethics": how does one act in a situation if one is unconvinced of its reality?

[Side note: in a Comparative Ethics class, I gave a presentation on narrative ethics that made significant reference to the Covenant series, and to this question in particular. I derided the "fundamental question" as not very fundamental, because most of us don't go around questioning how real our surroundings are. Our prof, Dr. Barbieri, contradicted me, however, and suggested that the question was indeed fundamental to ethics, because it's the question of caring. When we care, it's because something is real to us and/or important to us-- that's what matters. Having thought about this since CompEthics, I think I'm inclined to agree with the prof. If, for example, I'm willing to think in terms of further starving the North Korean populace to reach a political goal, it could be argued that the citizens' suffering isn't real enough to me. That doesn't settle any ethical questions, but it does frame the ethical issues in a very affecting way, because now it's incumbent on me to explain in what way, and to what degree, I do in fact relate to the suffering of North Korean people. How real is X to you? Not a bad question to keep asking and re-asking.]

There are great dissimilarities, though, between Tolkien's and Donaldson's cast of characters. I don't know who, exactly, would match up with Donaldson's Waynhim, creatures who are the diametrical opposite of ur-viles. I also see no obvious parallels to the Bloodguard-- or to the Lords, for that matter. Donaldson's schema in the first trilogy is actually set up more like a chessboard: you have the Lords (the good guys) in Revelstone in the west (!) and the evil Lord Foul in the far eastern (!) reaches. The Giants of Donaldson's world are nothing like the wild, stone-throwing mountain giants in Tolkien (they have more in common, temperamentally, with Rowling's giants in the Harry Potter series), and while Sauron's Nazgul are somewhat analogous to the three noncorporeal Ravers who serve Lord Foul, one major difference is that Ravers can possess you. Plus, there're only three of them.

In Donaldson's world, we're exposed to a wide variety of creation myths. There are the myths known to the people of the Land, as explained above. In the Second Chronicles, we learn the story of the Worm of the World's End-- a very different creation myth (familiar to the Elohim) from the stories told in the Land. In this myth, a great worm that's been eating its way through the cosmos eats its fill, curls around itself and comes to rest. Its exposed surface is what eventually becomes the Earth. The dragon-like children of the Worm, called Nicor, roam the seas. Should anything rouse the Worm, the earth will come to an end. We learn that, in the Land, plenty of people are agnostic about the existence of a Creator. But all people, whatever their theological stance, swear the Oath of Peace and serve the Land (First Chronicles, obviously; in the Second Chronicles, the story begins with everything in ruins).

Both LOTR and the Covenant series are sensitive to the issue of karma-- action and its consequences. Both highlight the way that seemingly isolated events can have significant repercussions: compare, for example, Gollum's role in LOTR to the incident in Lord Foul's Bane where one of Covenant's friends, a Giant named Saltheart Foamfollower, chooses to give a healing balm to a fallen enemy instead of to a child named Pietten, who's been placed under a curse of sorts. Pietten, burdened with his curse, grows up to be a perverse and (literally!) bloodthirsty man.

One of the most wrenching examples of karma in Donaldson is Covenant's rape of the teenaged Lena at the beginning of the story. Lena gives birth to Elena, who is killed many years later, and whose spirit is enslaved by Lord Foul to act as a leader in the siege of Revelstone, Lord's Keep. Elena holds the Staff of Law, which is destroyed when her spirit attempts to use it against Covenant, and this in turn opens the door to the entire Second Chronicles: without a Staff of Law, a regenerated Lord Foul is able to wreak havoc on natural processes and create the Sunbane, whose only purpose is the slow and painful destruction of the Land and all living things.

Donaldson's habit of providing his characters with religiously or symbolically significant names is a religion student's dream. In some cases, the names have a direct bearing on a character's status; in others, they don't. One Waynhim, whom we meet in The Illearth War, is delivered to the Lords at Revelstone after having been tortured by Lord Foul. Its name is dukkha, the Pali term for suffering (the reality of which is the First Noble Truth of Buddhism). But the three Ravers, each of whom sports two or three names, aren't named in a way that reflects their character. Each has a Sanskrit name: turiya, samadhi, and moksha. The first two terms are descriptive of meditative states, while moksha, Sanskrit for "release" or "liberation," is a term found in Hinduism.

The Raver's other names seem to come from Judeo-Christian tradition.

turiya > Herem
moksha > Jehannum
samadhi > Sheol

Herem, a word I don't know, can apparently mean "destruction, jihad, or excommunication" according to this interesting online source on name meanings in Thomas Covenant.

Jehannum is a Latinized version of gehenna, the word Jesus uses to describe hell or an undying fire. Gehenna was the huge garbage dump outside the walled city of Jerusalem; it was always on fire, as people were constantly fueling it with garbage. It was a powerful metaphor for consumption, rejection, and expulsion... and of course, people today still tend to imagine some version of this field (or lake) of fire when they imagine hell.

Sheol is the Hebrew term for the land of the dead, often found in the Old Testament. Many also equate this with hell, which is perhaps justified in its later usage, but that's not the concept being referred to in the Old Testament.

Covenant meets the Elohim in the Second Chronicles, and any Bible scholar will tell you that "el" is a particle meaning "god" or "divinity." The Hebrew God is referred to as "Elohim" by certain Old Testament authors. In the Second Chronicles (btw, the Elohim are very briefly mentioned in the First Chronicles), the Elohim do seem rather godlike-- they're beings of pure Earthpower, nearly indestructible, and able to morph into any shape. As many beings in Buddhist cosmology do, they spend most of their time engaged in contemplation, though from the anguished, human point of view of our protagonists this appears to be little more than a divine version of self-absorption. The Elohim don't manifest a bodhisattva ethic.

Religious concepts are shot through the entire series. Earthpower, mentioned above, is almost exactly analogous to the Chinese conception of ch'i (which Koreans and Japanese call ki). Ch'i-gung (or kigong in Korean), is the discipline of manipulating ch'i/ki to one's purpose, and this is what the various loremasters, human and non-, do with Earthpower in its many manifestations. Elohim (like Findail the Appointed) can make themselves dense or misty, corresponding to older concepts of "light" and "turbid" ch'i. (NB: Not all Chinese conceptualized ch'i the same way!)

[NB: Ch'i/ki bears a lot of resemblance to the Hindu notion of prana, which can also be thought of as breath, or vital/cosmic energy (compare also w/the semantic field of Gk. pneuma-- breath, spirit). Given Donaldson's background, perhaps prana is what he was thinking of when he created Earthpower.]

A kind of Manichaean ethical dualism is obvious in Donaldson as well, as embodied by the Creator (the old beggar whom the protags meet in both Chronicles) and Lord Foul. But Covenant, self-conflicted and paradoxical, becomes despite his flaws the symbol of human freedom, because he realizes the only way out of his dilemma is to embrace the contradictions of his situation. In the end, Covenant defeats Lord Foul because the specific question of the Land's reality becomes intimately intertwined with Covenant's love for the Land. Covenant owns up to his own paradoxical nature.

Having spoken so loftily of the series, though, I will submit one complaint. Covenant's relationship to his white gold wedding ring is never made satisfactorily clear to me, and while I'm not uncomfortable with ambiguity these days, I've always felt that this was too important a question to deal with sloppily. Donaldson, I think, goofs it up in both Chronicles. Although Mhoram tells Covenant the vital secret, "You are the white gold," this is contradicted at several points. In the First Chronicles, it's contradicted by Covenant's lack of mastery of the ring, which seems to require another magical item to trigger it, no matter how much passionate rage Covenant is able to summon. If the ring is truly an expression of Covenant's will or nature, then by the end of the First Chronicles it should have been more easily accessible to him.

The Second Chronicles only makes the situation worse by introducing Linden Avery, who, as it turns out, is able to use Covenant's ring herself-- even while Covenant is wearing the ring. Donaldson does an excellent job of portraying a disillusioned Covenant who feels his messianic role has been usurped: he's no longer necessary. Unfortunately, Donaldson does this a little too convincingly: toward the end of the sixth book, White Gold Wielder, I too was sure that Covenant was mostly useless, little better than a plot device for the requisite defeat of Lord Foul (one reason why I don't like the Second Chronicles nearly as much).

The Covenant series also deals with the issue of fate and freedom in an interesting way: Covenant, who belongs to "our" world, enters the world of the Land and returns to "our" world in the same condition in which he entered it. So if, for example, he's been severely beaten before entering the Land, then by the time his adventure in the Land is over, he'll be back in his beaten-up state. Because of this, Covenant can't know whether his experience in the Land is real or a dream. The Second Chronicles makes this more urgent: Covenant, in order to save his wife from cultists, allows himself to be stabbed in the chest by one of them, and this is the condition in which he enters the Land for what turns out to be his final adventure. One of the most touching moments, again in White Gold Wielder, is when Covenant, while in the Land, sits down to shave off the beard he's grown so that, when he dies, his corpse in the Land will resemble his body in "our" world.

No actual resolution of the fate/freedom issue is reached, which is only appropriate since this is an old philosophical problem. LOTR also deals with this problem in its own way, I think, though it relates the fate/freedom question to the issue of one's duties and loyalties-- the burdens we bear because we must, because the times call for it. People have noted before that Tolkien's experience in World War I would have made him especially sensitive to such themes.

Another important religious concept in the Covenant series is that of Law, which I take to be a nearly-exact analogue to the Hindu notion of dharma. Dharma is a word with many, many translations in English; for our culture, dharma's "semantic field" is both wide-ranging and rather smeared. Dharma can be role, or law, or function, or truth, or simply the nature of things. Buddhists added the notion of "teaching" to this, but even their conception of dharma-as-teaching is firmly tied to the previous Hindu notion of dharma.

It's interesting that the smooth functioning of dharma, in Donaldson's cosmology, requires something like a Staff of Law-- a physical embodiment of dharma. For me, this doesn't sit too well, because it raises a host of theological questions, like "how did the world run before the Staff was made?" Or maybe the Staff is appropriate: Hindu tradition includes the image of a "cosmic tree," usually portrayed as upside-down, rooted in the sky and branching toward earth. Trees, of course, are archetypes and found in all sorts of religions-- in Donaldson, the first Staff of Law is crafted from the One Tree, and the Land was originally covered by the immense One Forest, before humanity came in with axe and flame.

The human communities portrayed in Donaldson also include hermitages (e.g., Waymeets... although these might actually be closer to French or Swiss gîtes, esp. in their use) and solitary practitioners-- the Unfettered, who can be regarded as a close parallel to the Hindu samnyassin, a forest ascetic, or to Buddhist monastics who, in the manner of Taoist sages, follow the dharma as hermits. The Creator, who's described as an old beggar with a bowl, wearing an ocher robe, is a Hindu monk, since ocher/saffron are monastic colors. The weaponless Bloodguard are almost comically East Asian in their stoic demeanor, their martial prowess, and their barely-checked passion-- they represent, in some ways, warrior monasticism. The Lords, who don't seem at all monastic (they often seem more like a police force, responding to the Land's needs as they arise), might actually be more at home in JK Rowling's world than in Tolkien's. I can imagine Lord Mhoram having a pleasant chat with Dumbledore, and sharing Hagrid's strange love and compassion for all living creatures, no matter how fierce and ugly.

Donaldson's cosmos is too theistic to suggest philosophical Taoism, and I tend to think that, since Donaldson lived with his father in India, Taoist concepts don't figure prominently in the First and Second Chronicles. But Donaldson's cosmos is truly cosmic-- unlike LOTR, where our concern is human-scale and focused primarily on the fate of the characters, the First and Second Chronicles are concerned with the fate of a whole universe, both in the macrocosmic sense (literally the whole of creation is at stake) and the microcosmic sense (Covenant's internal state). The reign of Sauron spreads blackness and misery over Middle Earth, but not in the sense that "the very bones of the Earth are groaning in protest"-- a sense we do get in reading Donaldson. It's creaturely misery that's important with Tolkien.* Donaldson's narrative is almost environmentalist at points: the characters who beg for Covenant's aid are motivated by their love of the Earth, not just its people. Covenant's actions, especially in the Second Chronicles, often put the entire Earth in jeopardy, and Covenant's fights with Lord Foul are, ultimately, for the sake of the entire cosmos.

Ultimately, it's not wise to write Donaldson's series off as a Tolkien rip-off. True, Tolkien provided most of the tropes which Donaldson borrows and displays in his narrative. But what Donaldson does is craft a story that is in many ways completely different-- especially in terms of the interior reality of the protagonist-- from Tolkien's project.

If you've never read Donaldson's series before, I highly recommend it. Thomas Covenant is a leper-- that's the curse he brings with him from "our" world. Even when he's been cured of the disease itself by a magical balm, leprosy's effect on his mind and heart are what drive the story. You'll probably hate Covenant through most of the First Chronicles, but you may discover that your feelings change when Covenant finds himself.

That website I linked to previously says something provocative: Donaldson may be returning to the world of the Land with a third trilogy. The scoop:

It has been alleged on Usenet news (see Dejanews) that in [an] article in "Realms of Fantasy" by Robert Holdstock et al. Donaldson [has] said that the first trilogy is themed on conflict with the adversary, the second on victory through sacrifice and the third will(?) be about victory through acceptance.

I hope there's truth to the rumor. It's always neat to take a trip through the Land.

UPDATE: Another interesting Thomas Covenant link. By the way, we didn't even talk about the paradox inherent in Covenant's name: the first name evokes a doubter, while the last name evokes promise and commitment-- i.e., faithfulness. Very Paul Tillich, that: doubt should walk hand-in-hand with faith.

UPDATE 2: Here's a link that works (at least for now). The scoop is that Donaldson is indeed writing a new set of books... but it'll be four books, not three-- a tetralogy. Hmmm. In Korea, 4 is an unlucky number. Choice quote from the article: Stephen R. Donaldson, creator of the fantasy classic Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series, whose last volume appeared 20 years ago, will conclude it with a final four novels, in a deal just made with Putnam. The house's editorial director, Jennifer Hershey, bought North American rights to the new quartet from agent Howard Morhaim and will publish the first of them, The Runes of Earth, next fall, with a Berkley paperback to follow in 2005. The tantalizing phrase "movie rights" also appears in the article. Some online jockey suggested that the Covenant series would work well on the Sci-Fi Channel. I tend to agree. The problem with making a Covenant movie is that people will be too quick to do exactly what I've been talking about: dismiss it as a Tolkien rip-off, especially after the yeoman's work of Peter Jackson. A Sci-Fi Channel miniseries is, to my mind, the perfect format for Covenant, which is written very episodically.

So be on the lookout for The Runes of Earth. Let's hope Donaldson hasn't deteriorated like Larry Niven. His Ringworld Throne was unreadable-- almost as bad as fiction by Barbara Hambly.

__________________

*I anticipate some resistance from the Air Marshal about this point, and am willing to grant that, if you view LOTR in the larger context offered by a work like The Silmarillion, Tolkien's project is just as cosmic-- if not more so, since Tolkien actually relates Middle Earth's predominant creation myth in exquisite detail. I still contend, though, that if we restrict our view only to the LOTR trilogy, what we get is a more anthropocentric (and therefore less cosmic) plot. LOTR's characters don't seem nearly as filled with Earth-love or Land-love as Donaldson's characters do.

_

Noh Mu Hyon's been mulling over moving the capital down south. I happen to think it's a great idea because, as things stand, Seoul's not in a pretty place should war break out. Might sound silly, especially if you're convinced that Seoul won't be heavily shelled and/or war will never break out, but I think a southward move can buy the leadership some time in the event of a crisis. What I don't completely understand is why Noh isn't thinking of simply naming a city-- like, say, Pusan-- the new capital. It sounds like he's planning to build this puppy from the ground up. If so, then I can see why the opposition is complaining.

True: just because the national capital moves, this doesn't mean the city's financial and cultural center will shift away from Seoul. Plenty of countries and American states have small capitals overshadowed by more famous cities: Albany/NYC, Tallahassee/Miami, Sacramento/LA, Bern/Geneva, Bonn/Munich, etc. all come to mind.

This from a JoongAng Ilbo article on the subject:

Opposition parties reacted angrily yesterday to a comment by President Roh Moo-hyun that the transfer of the national government out of Seoul would herald an important change in the country's leadership.

In Thursday's event held at Daejeon Government Complex Mr. Roh said, "Moving the administrative capital means a change of the ruling forces." He then added, "If you browse through history books, new leadership moved capitals so that they could take root in a new land, away from the turf of the old leadership."

As late as Jan. 14, Mr. Roh has downplayed the significance of his plan to relocate the capital to an undecided city in the Chungcheong provinces. Aware of public resistance to moving government agencies and the National Assembly out of Seoul, he had stressed that the new administrative capital would be a theme-city with a population of around 500,000.

The changed nuance of Mr. Roh's wording added to the controversy stirred by the venue of the event. His detractors called the event, in which the president unveiled his blueprint of lessening the concentration of business and politics in Seoul and diversifying it to others regions, as a get-out-the-vote function.

If nothing else, I think it's right to keep the leaders out of immediate danger. They don't all have access to Dr. Evil-style spacecraft, after all. But building this from the ground up...?

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Who designed Spirit's software? Bill Gates?

This from a Post article about the two NASA Mars landers, Spirit and Opportunity:

On Friday, NASA erased 1,700 files from Spirit's flash memory, making it more manageable for the rover's random-access memory. Engineers then rebooted Spirit.

"I am pleased to report it appears to be working just fine," said Glenn Reeves, chief engineer for the rover's flight software. He said NASA by Sunday should be able to declare Spirit "fully recovered."

Gimme a break.

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Amritas makes the case for phonics as opposed to whole-language learning. I'm a product of phonics, as are many in my age group. Whole-language makes sense for certain languages like Chinese, where you don't have much choice but to use something like a whole-language approach, but it makes little sense when you're dealing with languages that have alphabets or syllabaries.

The problem with whole-language is analogous to the problem with memorizing Chinese characters: if you encounter a totally unfamiliar word (or Chinese character), you're screwed. Especially at the beginning levels of learning, where a student is encountering nothing but unfamiliar words, this approach makes very little sense. For Chinese language (and, by extension, Chinese culture), rote learning is a virtue-- a utilitarian virtue. This isn't necessarily the case in "alphabet cultures."

Phonics all the way. HOO-AH!

[NB: This is a long but fascinating article. Highly recommended. BTW, Miyake says that even Chinese characters are phonetically accessible. I can see his point, I suppose, but I also know I've encountered characters that have completely stumped me, and those had to be memorized, no ifs, ands, or buts.]

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Oh, for God's sake, Kirk. There really was no reason to post this. What were you thinking?

Man, I used to think you and your blog were cool. Now I'm gonna have to drop your ass from the blogroll. Or shoot myself. It didn't have to end this way, dude.

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Tacitus saith (paragraph breaks added to give you a breather):

Earnest grad student John Kearney suggests that the English naming of the Muslim god as "Allah" rather than "God" helps [perpetuate] the notion that this god is different from the God of Jews and Christians. That notion is, in his view, false. But are there objective truth claims to be made on such matters? Is the sameness or difference of a deity a provable assertion (in this life, anyway)?

As a Christian, I'm not inclined to view the Islamic god as the same God that I worship -- too many behavioral differences. This tends to raise hackles, both among Muslims with a vested theological interest in promulgating a contrary notion, and among the politically correct for whom denial of any religious claim (excepting, usually, those of orthodox Christianity) is synonymous with bigotry.

But this makes no sense. Nonassent to unsupportable assertion is, at worst, impolitic, but this is not the same thing as a moral wrong. And besides, I'm willing to apply the principle in the other direction: why should a Jew (or a Muslim, for that matter), view the Christian God as the same deity as his object of worship? Trinitarian, no real divine temporal law, a sacrificial messiah -- not exactly a close match.

If those of other faiths want to deny the reality or identity of my God, well, it's on them, and that's why they're of other faiths. I would hope that the intellectual forebearance would be extended to me as well. Just because ecumenical concurrence is polite doesn't make it true.

If you were following the discussion in previous posts here and on Ryan's blog, then you've heard something like this before: exclusivism doesn't have to lead to violence (Tacitus uses the phrase "intellectual forbearance" in this regard). But with Tacitus as with others who've argued this, the glossed-over factor in this discussion is secularism. This, not "enlightened exclusivism," is in my view what keeps people of different religious traditions from killing and/or subjugating each other.

I don't think it's legitimate to talk about religious beliefs as if they have some sort of a priori reality and are somehow abstracted from their social context. The secularism of the American nomos is what provides an "ambient tolerance" and fosters an egalitarian pluralism not possible in most other places in the world. To ignore secularism's role in religious tolerance is to miss the crucial reason why exclusivists aren't more openly at each other's throats.

As for the specific issues Tacitus raises here (one God or many?)... much depends on your angle of approach. If you approach the question theologically, you'll find people who'll argue that all the Abrahamic faiths are referring to the same God. But others, equally theologically, will argue that's not true. Some Christians, for example, insist on perpetuating the falsehood that Muslims worship a "moon god." And Tacitus' argument that the various monotheisms have mutually foreign conceptualizations isn't new. Maybe Mavrodes's reading of Hick is right and we're looking at a spiritual marketplace that is, effectively, polytheism.

Others will approach the question from a more mystical or philosophical angle, and plenty of other angles besides. A walk through the comments section of this Tacitus post shows a pretty representative cross-section of various views.

Enjoy.

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I admit that Coca Cola is one of the greatest of my innumerable weaknesses-- Lindt blue-label chocolate truffles being perhaps at the top of that list-- and it doesn't help that Korea's latest batch of Coke cans (in Korea, they're smallish boogers at 250ml, so I usually buy two) features a sexily-drawn female warrior from a computer game called "Lineage II"-- a game whose soundtrack I hear nightly in this PC-bahng and others.

The girl on the can is quite obviously a slim Western blonde, dressed in what appears to be a tunic-cum-miniskirt and figure-accentuating corset. Her head sports World War I Flying Ace/Tatooine Podracer goggles (they're propped atop her crown, not covering her eyes), and she's got a sword or two strapped to her back. Plus, she's fondling a gigantic war hammer.

My kind of woman.

So of course, being a cartoonist myself, I stare and admire the lady's lines, and the lechery appreciation for the female form that produced them. Blondie stares back with an expression that says either, "I'm going to smash your nads with this war hammer if you come any closer," or "I'm hungry for your crotch salami but can express my carnal desires only by castrating you and eating your head."

Mmmm.

Coke.

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I thought about taking up Carpemundi's call to do some comparative work on the Lord of the Rings series versus Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but I'm all essay'ed out right now. The seeds of an essay are sprouting, though, so maybe we'll see some mutant shoots in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, I'll report something else I saw on the subway today: performance art!

It was amazing, if a bit subdued by nutty American standards-- certainly nothing on the scale of the dude who set up a toilet on a street corner in the Georgetown portion of DC, then pulled down his pants and sat there a while (if you saw the movie "Jackass," then you've seen the next logical step to this performance piece).

A bunch of garishly-dressed college students poured into the Line 1 train, half of them carrying digital cameras, half of them carrying clothes and hangers. The students with clothes began to hang them up by hooking the hangers through the swinging grips normally held by passengers. While this was happening, the students with cameras began taking pictures, mostly of the students with clothes, but also of us passengers. Soon this turned into a parody of fashion shoots, with some students posing by the hung clothing (remember: people are hanged, clothes are hung, and some of us gents are well-hung). When the doors opened, everything was quickly taken down and the students rushed out, at which point two of them unfurled a huge banner and flashed it to us inside the train. If I'm not mistaken, it was an ad for a college fashion exhibition (...dae hak p'ae-shyeon jeonshi-hwae...?).

OK, so maybe it wasn't performance art as you snotty purists would reckon it. But it was still a pretty cool event on an otherwise dull subway ride.

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I've been tutoring my Korean buddy's sister, Mrs. Oh,* in English. She's been taking the TOEFL over and over (!!!) in an effort to improve her scores, and I was recruited to help her with her essay-writing technique. It's been pleasant, but today we hit our first significant conceptual impasse, and as is true in so many such cases, it's very much a matter of culture.

Toward the end of our hour, I told Mrs. Oh that her written English is great (which is true; and her spoken English is quite good, too), and that the main problem seemed to be time-budgeting. Mrs. Oh's general strategy, whether practicing for TOEFL essays or performing on the actual test, is to just sit down and write the essay. She almost always ends up not having enough time to finish, and so she rushes through the essay's final phases.

The technique I'm recommending to her is pretty much the one recommended to most Americans who've been in similar testing situations (think: AP tests in high school, or any number of blue-book exams in college): start with an outline. When you've got a skeletal framework for the main ideas of your essay, it's a lot easier to flesh them out and connect them logically.

Mrs. Oh's been taking the computerized TOEFL. She's allowed to have some scratch paper for brainstorming/scribbling, but apparently she never uses it-- a habit I'd like to change in her. When I suggested the outlining technique during our previous lesson, she seemed very receptive. But today, when I told her I'd be emailing her some essay topics at random throughout the week for her to practice outlining drills, she balked.

"But our teachers have told us that there are only 70 essay topics out of over 180 that are most likely to appear on the test!" she claimed. "I think I should be studying only for those!"

Being the blunt asshole that I am, and not being too interested in this style of learning, I told her flatly, "Ah, that's basically a memorizing technique. I'm trying to teach you a skill that's relevant to the test. If you learn this well, then it won't matter which topic appears in front of you come test time."

We went around and around on this subject for about ten minutes. She got up from the table and came back with a booklet to show me what she was talking about. It was one of those hastily-cobbled, faded-ink Korean publications hated by foreign teachers everywhere, presenting a very formulaic approach to the TOEFL-- and sure enough, it dealt with specific essay topics and rated them according to their frequency of appearance on TOEFLs past: three asterisks meant "very frequent," two asterisks meant "somewhat frequent," one asterisk meant "rare," and zero asterisks meant something like, "this question has never appeared on the exams"-- in other words, "Don't bother studying for this question. It'll never come up."

But as we flipped through the booklet, Mrs. Oh did a double-take, because every single essay question, we realized, was being dealt with via the outline technique-- the very approach I was telling Mrs. Oh to take! There it was, in black and white: the essay topic first, then some suggested ways to break the topic down in outline form. A-HAAAA!! BUSTED, YO!

I'm not sure whether Mrs. Oh got the point, but I'm going to plow ahead with the emailed exercises, anyway. She's a very pleasant woman in general (if a bit tightly-wound), and I don't really blame her for hesitating in the face of a new and perhaps alien method: I've vented plenty while learning Korean. But in my opinion, she needs to be divorced from the conviction that handling the 70 most frequent essays is the best method for approaching an essay test: it's one's technique that matters, not the specific content of each essay.

Mrs. Oh took the TOEFL this past Wednesday and will be taking it again in about a month. We'll see whether my outlining drills have any effect in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, we'll chalk today up as a slight dimming of the glow of our pedagogical honeymoon.

___________

*Actually, she's Mrs. Kang, just like my buddy's last name (Kang Jang-woong), because Korean women usually retain their family names when they get married. But she insists that I call her Mrs. Oh, which is her husband's surname, because she feels this would be more of an American thing to do. I didn't want to get into the whole, "Most Americans would prefer to respect the Korean way of doing this" business, so now she's Mrs. Oh.

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...brought to you courtesy a Korean girl who couldn't have been more than 8 or 9, yet was blimpier than any Korean child I've ever seen. I saw her on the subway today. And I was transfixed. I was just like the Koreans who stare at foreigners. As in, Jesus Lord Shiva Beating the Fanged Hordes to Death with Thy Mighty Lingam, what the hell IS that?? And I thought to myself, "This pulsating blob is the future of this country."

I'm pretty tubba-licious myself, so let me put this in perspective. Back in the mid-90s, it was very rare to see fat Koreans of either sex-- but even in those days, it was obvious that girls were getting fatter, faster, than boys. In general, boys may have to take better care of themselves because they know they've got required military service down the line, and it only adds to the misery to go through boot camp lugging more extra weight than just your backpack and weapons. This hasn't stopped some pre-teen boys from ballooning up, true, but my point is that the fat phenomenon was merely a distant adipose-ripple on the cultural skin-horizon about ten years ago. The ripple has advanced since then, and what initially appeared to be no big deal has turned out to be a veritable tsunami of double chins, exploding buttocks, elephantine thighs, and the kind of massive, fleshy underarms once featured so prominently on "Ally McBeal." Fat folks are everywhere now.

Etiology?

Enter the PC-bahng culture, the return of the video game craze, cell phone text messaging, fast food, junk food, and other artifacts of a prosperous South Korean technological powerhouse, and the net result is more sedentary Koreans (said he while he typed away). I'd say the total Korean biomass is no longer increasing at a linear rate: we're creeping into the geometric, and may soon face logarithmic increases if we're not careful. The people aren't just more numerous; they're bigger. And they're fuckin' hungry.

South Korea's sociocultural acceleration sometimes appears to be a steroid-freak version of America's own, and it's easy to imagine that, in a couple decades, South Korea will find itself with an old, obese populace that is kept alive by constantly improving medical technology. The American situation is scary and getting scarier; South Korea is not really that far behind.

Behind. Heh. Sometimes I just walk into my own puns.

Perhaps what we're seeing, in this awful blossoming of byoo-tox, is some perverse South Korean affirmation of the marxist eschaton as embodied in that Ultimate Incarnation of All Korean Fatties, Dear Leader Kim Jong Il-- Antipode Without Corresponding Antipode, Glorious Ass Crack Baby, Fat-Father to us all. With Fatty Kim as the Korean Omega Point (if I may steal a concept from Teilhard de Chardin), I think we can expect an ever-expanding future for the southern half of the peninsula. The only question is whether Kim's seductive fat meme proves to be the undoing of South Korea (as the populace inexorably morphs into humanoid spam and lies-- gasping, bloated, helpless-- before the rampaging People's Army), or whether South Koreans rise up and eat the entire North Korean populace in a paroxysm of unbridled rapacity-- the ultimate expression of consumer capitalism. Given the Korean love of bone and gristle in so many of their meat dishes, starving North Koreans strike me as the next logical menu item, far superior to the limited delights of boshin-t'ang.

My own philosophical stance, as you might have guessed, leans against "fat acceptance"-- not for aesthetic reasons (this blog has played host to far too many complaints about the prevalent flat-assedness [and -chestedness] of the female populace... I have no problems with curves), but for good old health reasons. And yes, this applies as much to my own blubberous mortal coil as it does to the female populace.

And you know what? I think I'd better stop here, otherwise I might convince myself that I need to do more than hit the gym every couple days. Yes... it's-- it's better not to think about that.

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I don't think the group Cibo Matto has quite the alt-popularity in Japan that it has in the States, but their lyrics are a fun source of Japanglish.

Here's "Know Your Chicken," one of my favorites (keep in mind, the lead singer's a woman):

16 years ago, one day,
I was walking down the street
I was cruising in Brooklyn
You know what I mean?
Something was cooking,
but wasn't yet a chicken.

There was a man,
Selling chicks in a box.
He said, "2 for 1, but 3 for 2."
I said, "That's not bad,
Here's money for you."
One was magenta,
The other was blue.

I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken

One day, the blue one went away.
The other grew up fuckin' well.
She was noisy every night.
I had always chicken-bite.

Then I met a lover
One night, she made me dinner.
Licking finger, I wondered
Where she got the chicken.
Then I met a lover.
One night, she made me dinner.
Licking finger, I wondered
where she got the chicken.

I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken

Spare the rod and spoil the chick
Before you go and shit a brick.
Spare the rod and spoil the chick
Before you go and shit a brick
Spare the rod and spoil the chick
Before you go and shit a brick
Spare the rod and spoil the chick
Before you go and shit a brick

I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken

She went to college to study anatomy
I followed her father's butchery
We got 2 babies. Is it cool?
One was magenta, the other was blue.

I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken
I know my chicken
You got to know your chicken...

You know what happens to people who don't know their chicken? They get yelled at in Japanglish. Here are the lyrics to "Birthday Cake," which has to be heard to be believed:

Shut up and eat!
Too bad, no bon appetit!
Shut up and eat!
You know my love is sweet!

Yes, I'm cooking for my son and his wife
It's his 30th birthday
Pour berries into my bowl
Add milk of two months ago
"It's moldy mom, isn't it?"
I don't give a flying fuck though

Shut up and eat!
Too bad, no bon appetit!
Shut up and eat!
You know my love is sweet!
Shut up and eat!
Too bad, no bon appetit!
Shut up and eat!
You know my love is sweet!

It's food nouveau
It's food nouveau
It's the shape of love
Beat it! Beat it up!
Beat it! Beat it up!

Extra sugar, extra salt
Extra oil and MSG
Extra sugar, extra salt
Extra oil and MSG

Shut up and eat!
Too bad, no bon appetit!
Shut up and eat!
You know my love is sweet!
Shut up and eat!
Too bad, no bon appetit!
Shut up and eat!
You know my love is sweet!

You were born in the 60's
We made a war with the Vietnamese
We loved LSD, we died easily
Can we just say c'est la vie?
So what! Say what! For your own sake
Do you have a headache or heartbreak?
Are you made or broken by the birthday cake?
You may be slow on the uptake
I pour pot in the birthday cake
So what! Say what! For my own sake
Watch out yo! Here I come yo!
I'm gonna change to a rattlesnake
Turn up the TV! Do you agree?
Yeah, I'm talking turkey Take it from me
I'm gonna show my love for my dove
"But it's moldy, mom, isn't it?"

Extra sugar, extra salt
Extra oil and MSG
Extra sugar, extra salt
Extra oil and MSG

Shut up and eat!
Too bad, no bon appetit!
Shut up and eat!
You know my love is sweet!
Shut up and eat!
Too bad, no bon appetit!
Shut up and eat!
You know my love is very sweet!

You have to imagine this song being shouted except for the "you know my love is sweet" parts. And you have to imagine the lead singer's voice-- girlish and high-pitched. For you American folks who know little about Asian pop female singers, imagine you're being harangued by a particularly nasty eleven-year-old girl. That's what most such music sounds like.

I love Cibo Matto, but not enough to own one of their CDs. That's why I have a brother like Sean, whose musical tastes range all over: he owns all the CDs. If it weren't for Sean, I'd know nothing about Cibo Matto, Pizzicato Five (at least one song featured in the first "Charlie's Angels" movie), Bjork, Dirk McGirt (formerly Big Baby Jesus, formerly Ol' Dirty Bastard, or "ODB"), etc. Little Bro keeps me from being completely ignorant of what's going on in culture.

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John Kerry, whose campaign seemed to be at a loss for ideas, steps gingerly over the fallen and sputtering Howard Dean and capitalizes on his online fundraising gimmick. I give the man credit for this. Maybe he's been reading The 48 Laws of Power.

NB: The article says, "Kerry and Dean are the only two Democrats skipping public financing. Dean raised a Democratic record $41 million last year, nearly double Kerry's total." Meanwhile, Bush seems to have raised millions just by leaning over and farting. It's amazing and not a little scary.

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If our Mars landers aren't entirely sterile when they make planetfall... are we, perhaps, leaving life on Mars?

UPDATE, January 31: BravoRomeoDelta replies in my comments section. Check it out.

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(Scotsman, via Drudge)

Europe’s long-awaited "single sky" plans were approved this afternoon, promising lower air fares, fewer delays and improved airline safety.

A deal between Euro MPs and governments paves the way for streamlining air traffic management – effectively removing national "borders" in the sky.

Liberal Democrat MEP Marieke Sanders, who steered the legislation through the European Parliament, said: "This will lead to major improvements in safety, and should cut airline delays and aircraft emissions significantly.

"This is only the beginning of a long process towards improved air traffic management in Europe," [lacuna]

Europe's airport operators also welcomed the air traffic management reforms.

Philippe Hamon, Director General of Airports Council International Europe, representing 450 airports in 45 European countries, said: "With the goal of achieving a unified European airspace in 2005, the Single European Sky programme allows for a much needed reorganisation of Europe's air traffic control system. This initiative will ultimately benefit the air passenger by improving safety, reducing flight times and delays, as well as decreasing fuel consumption."

The accord ends the current patchwork of air traffic control sectors in Europe and co-ordinates air traffic control services and operation standards.

That includes closer cooperation between national military air sectors to limit the costly and time-consuming detours civilian planes often have to make to meet varying national requirements on no-fly zones.

WOO-HOO!

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It's all over the news and blogosphere-- the so-called "Spring Offensive" to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Or is it Pakistan? We're not entirely sure, are we.

And because this plan is all over the news and blogosphere, I suspect Osama's hiding out in London. Probably here.

[NB: As an example of where things stand in Korea, I should tell you I'm at a PC-bahng that won't allow me to see the place I linked to in that last sentence. Strangely enough, were I at the Korea University Magic Station PC-bahng, this would be visible. And-- ah, yes-- a side note: KU's rates have gone up, from W1000/hr to W1200/hr. That sucks. It's now about $1.05/hr instead of $0.80/hr.]

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Via Satan's Anus:

AN IRAQI BLOGGER WRITES AN OPEN LETTER TO HOWARD DEAN: He's responding to Dean's claim that Iraqis' standard of living is "a whole lot worse now" than before the war, and his response is quite tart. It's a must-read.

Ali's post says in part:

What did Mr. Dean meant by this statement? I didn’t want to write about it from the beginning despite what I felt and the questions asked by some of the readers. I said, “this is an American affair and I might offend some of my American friends through expressing my opinion”. But the statement was too irritating and insulting and as I said before there’s no such thing as an internal affair anywhere in the world, not to mention the USA, the country in which the tiniest change in policy might well have a great impact elsewhere in the world. Anything that happens in America concerns everyone on this planet, and moreover as an Iraqi who his whole country’s future relies considerably on how the things go on in America I have additional reasons to care about such things.

To summarize my response I was not surprised, but it added to my confusion about the justification of the position of some Americans regarding this issue.

To have such approach from some Arabs and Muslims, it’s more than expected, still nauseating though. To have such an approach from some European countries is also (natural). But to come from Americans? Well, this is just more than I can understand.

I’d like to (debate with) Mr. Dean and his supporters on few points.

I’m not going to comment about the rightness of the statement with more than saying that only a (blind) man would believe it and only a man blinded by his ambitions would dare to say it, but when you say such words, don’t you mean in other words that the sacrifices made by the American soldiers are all in vain? And that these soldiers are not doing a service to the world, nor to Iraqis and not to America. In fact you are saying that since they didn’t do the world, America or us a favour then they’re only doing a favour to GWB and his administration.

Don’t you agree that by saying those words you accuse the American soldiers of one of two charges each of which is worse than the other;

You are saying that, either they are stupid enough to sacrifice their lives for the sake of GWB political future, or they are evil people who love fighting and killing and they are doing this only for money, in other words they’re no more than mercenaries. Saying that you only disagree with the way this issue is handled will also not change the fact that you are only harming your men and women on the battlefield.

By statements like these you deny any honourable motives for the great job your people are doing here. How in your opinion will this affect the morality of your soldiers? Feeling that their people back at home don’t support them and that they’re abandoned to fight alone in the battlefield.

And all of this for what? For staying in the white house for 4 or 8 years? Is it worth it?

And this is not directed only to Mr. Dean, it’s for all the Americans who support such allegations without being aware of their consequences.

Obviously, this doesn't settle any big-picture questions, but this is an opinion straight out of Iraq. The thing I wish Ali had done, though, is offer some specifics on how life is better. For me, I'm honestly curious. Different aspects of the media and blogosphere spin the subject in very, very different ways, so on top of chastising Dean, I'd like to know something of how Ali's own life has improved.

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A comment I happened to catch off BrainySmurf's blog, written by a Brian R. Ruckle:

I just read on a Knoxville, TN area blog that the rumors are Rudy Giuliani is being considered a favorite Bush choice as a replacement for Cheney. Hopefully, Giuliani's ambitions are still in New York.

Anyone want to follow this up?

I, too, tend to view Cheney as a liability, but my original feeling was that Bush should pick Condi Rice as his running mate, pretty much daring the enlightened left to vote against a black woman. Yes, it's playing the race card (something Republicans would generally claim their side doesn't do), but oh, what an effective play it would be. The fact that Bush and Condi are close friends would also help. And Condi's at least as competent as Undisclosed Dick.

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Andrew Sullivan, speaking from the conservative (???) end of the spectrum, puts it this way:

But in the larger choice in this war there really isn't a choice. It's self-defense or winging it. When the consequences of winging it could be a biological/chemical/nuclear catastrophe in one of our cities, I'm not sure we have any real option but Bush.

Unless Cobb is right and there turns out to be a Kerry-Edwards ticket, linking hawkishness with fiscal responsibility, your choices this November will boil down to

A. Do I value defense/national security more?
B. Do I value the economy more?

If Dean steals Joe's Jomentum and waddles to the front of the flock, these choices will be quite stark. I don't trust Dean to do dick for defense, though I have a weird feeling he'd be fantastic for the economy.

As others (like my Dad) have pointed out, issues A and B are, of course, closely interrelated. I understand that. My point, though, is that because these are probably the two most important issues confronting our country right now, people's votes will ultimately reflect which issue, A or B, they feel is more important.

For those of us assigning A and B more or less equal weight, it's another reason to consider writing in Daffy Duck.

UPDATE: Cobb's wrong, it looks like. Edwards won't run on a Kerry-Edwards ticket. He might, however, run on an Edwards-Kerry ticket.

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I like my blogroll because I think I pick good people to inhabit it. These people often save me the work of coming up with my own new ideas, which allows me to actualize my enormous potential for laziness.

Case in point: Ryan Overbey's blog has been a great source for one of my favorite topics, religious pluralism. Here's another post of his on the subject.

And here's what I ended up writing in the comments section to that post:

Nate's talking about something similar to what I'm driving at: less focus on philosophy, more focus on experience and orthopraxis-- "groundless" pluralism, mutual inclusivism, what have you. This idea's actually been around for a while; one early form of it can be found in the mid-1980s writings of Paul Knitter, who stresses a "confessional" approach to questions of religious diversity.

Common ground doesn't necessarily have to be found in the philo/theo arena, though we can't discount the possibility that commonalities may be discovered or established (e.g. the possible parallels some Christians and Buddhists see between Christian kenosis/self-emptying and Buddhist sunyata).

One of the things that your blog is helping me think through is the question of the criteria for failure of philosophical models of pluralism. "These models fail because..." Different critics of pluralist models cite different reasons for why the models fail. Sometimes those critiques have merit and sometimes they don't. My own feeling is that, if pluralists envision a goal similar to what you describe with your Trojan Horse image, i.e., the spreading of an irenic meme, then how well or poorly a model performs can be judged in terms of whether it seems to be doing the Trojan Horse's job.

Viewed in this way, it seems obvious to me that philosophical models fail on an extremely practical level: they're not available to most of the practicing religious public, who generally don't and won't concern themselves with abstruse questions of philosophy. The praxis-oriented approach recommends itself here.

Still fleshing this out, but there you go. Hats off to Nate for a very interesting post.


Kevin

Ryan also passes along the good news that literary theory is dead. Uh... long live literary theory?

And over at Tacitus, the question is: should we be celebrating the list of French officials supposedly in collusion with the Baathist regime? Caution may be called for.

Annika's moved.

Joe Katzman, whom I normally consider one of the sanest voices at Winds of Change, is very, very, very pissed off about this whole "understanding terrorist motives" thing. I'm not sure why this has become such a big problem: so long as one acknowledges the difference between understanding and condoning (a difference glossed over in the French saying "Qui comprend tout pardonne tout"-- he who understands all forgives all), what's the big deal?

Cobb thinks it comes down to a Kerry-Edwards ticket. And he wonders where Spalding Gray is. Apparently the guy's still missing. Yikes.

The Marmot reveals to us why the Cleveland Indians "suck."

Kevin at IA offers us his take on the noble Korean anti-spam war and a decidedly dissheveled James Brown.

The Yangban posts on, among other things, the Christian connection in NK/China.

Kirk posts on Tokdo.

Meanwhile, Kensho Godchaser talks about his love of languages.

Glenn offers even more perspective on the new role that porn plays in his online life. I hate to disappoint the morality police, but I wish Glenn luck with this project and hope he ends up raking in the dough. Gotta give him credit for something I'd never in a million years have the brass balls to do. And even if I did end up running a porn site, I sure as hell wouldn't announce it on this blog!

The Maximum Leader's blog is once again host to some lively guest blogging. I have a question for Smallholder, who runs his own farm: What the hell are people thinking when they feed cow brains and cow blood to their cows? What was the original reason people started forcing cows to become cannibals?

The Air Marshal provides some Oscar thoughts, perhaps the most important of which is the very first sentence he writes.

The ML himself posts on family matters, naval power, and whether Rev. Stanger was being a "scoundrel" by appealing to the suffering of children. I posted Stanger's quote because I, too, found it rather provocative. In truth, Jesus probably didn't suffer as much as other people who've been cruelly tortured and killed, but why get into a useless pissing contest about quantifying individual suffering (I address that question to Stanger)?

And that, folks, is why I like my blogroll. Keep those ideas a-comin'.

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Experience.

Understand.

Judge.

Decide.

That's Catholic thinker Bernard Lonergan's cognitional schema in a nutshell. These four major cognitive operations are arranged in what he viewed as a logical sequence, but not necessarily a chronological sequence. This is especially true when you "layer" cognitive operations onto each other to produce meta-operations, such as "experience your experiencing," or "understand your experiencing."

The operations produce imperatives, which parallel the operations themselves:

Be attentive.

Be intelligent.

Be reasonable.

Be responsible.

As an afterthought, years after he'd formulated this schema, Lonergan added a fifth imperative: Be in love.

These operations and imperatives fit into what Lonergan called "transcendental method," i.e., his term for what "method," at its most abstract, means.

Method, according to Lonergan in Method in Theology, is:

A normative pattern of recurrent and related operations yielding cumulative and progressive results.

Your thoughts?

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If this doesn't please the Maximum Leader, I don't know what will.

Break out those nightsticks.

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No sympathy here: SK complains about unfair trade barriers.

In weird counterpoint, here's a Korea Times business editorial that asks Koreans to calm their fears regarding a "colonization" of the stock market. Eh? Koreans are infamous for erecting their own massive trade barriers and they're worried about market colonization? Since Kirk is reporting that the Korean economy might not be improving as fast as previous optimistic numbers made it seem, I feel safe in assuming that "colonization," in this case, means "transmogrification into a colon."

They're checking folks here for bird flu.

Korea's got an unemployment problem, and the government's using tax benefits as incentives for hiring. Tax credits go to companies, not individual employees, in case you were wondering.

Someone in this PC-bahng ate something very stinky.

Not just in America anymore! Behold the Korean PIMP WIFE!

Korean private consumption "remains in the doldrums."

Bird flu affects metal birds.

The Marmot's post on a related subject notwithstanding, another showcase of NK cuisine gets... good reviews. The book's title sounds more like a cunnilingus manual, but maybe that's just me.

Here's the JoongAng Ilbo's take on the same cunnilingus manual. It's a short piece, but it contains so much: NK perfidy, UN cluelessness, and wretched irony.

Here's a flick I'd like to see, even though I know I won't understand 90% of the dialogue. Previews show some "Saving Private Ryan"-style camera work, not that I mind. And as an aside, I'll say that I'm glad Korean cinema is becoming a force to be reckoned with. Now if only the politicians could scrounge up similar levels of self-confidence...

This made me laugh: "North Might Exploit US Elections." It says in part:

Two defense researchers have predicted that North Korea might risk sudden actions to create an artificial crisis on the Korean Peninsula around the time of the U.S. presidential election at the end of this year.

In a thesis entitled, "2004 Security Environment Prospects and Important Defense Developments," published in the latest edition of "Weekly Defense Forum," Choi Kang and Cha Du-hyeon of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses wrote that the possibility still exists that North Korea, in an effort to change its situation, might [take] sudden actions and risk a crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

The two researchers listed missile tests and missile displays, high explosive tests, and naval provocations as possible sudden actions North Korea might take, and stressed that the government must prepare responses to such actions.

The response from the Koreablogger community will be (and rightly so) yawns. If the American public is affected in any way, it'll be in swinging hawkish on defense issues, which might support Bush during the elections, which ultimately works against North Korea. But since when did logic matter to NK?

Anyway, the whole "in an effort to change its situation" is bogus: what the North wants is the maintenance of the status quo, the current Mexican standoff. The situation can't slide too far (or too quickly) in any particular direction, because that will almost surely spell the end of the regime.

And this is why baseball is the national pastime in Korea, not TKD.

Foreign Minister Bang Ki-moon sets himself up to be accused by NK of being an American toady. "Complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling." Amen.

China flushes out the old team and ushers in a new team for the upcoming 6-party talks.

If you're Korean military and KIA while overseas, take heart: your family can receive up to 220 million won!

The Marmot posts a (cough) heartwarming picture.

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The Rathbone Press leaps onto the Koreablog blogroll. I've heard very good things about this blog-- go thou and read.

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Glenn discovers the heady rush that comes with running a porn site: imagine 5000 hits a day instead of his usual 300. I'll be curious to see what, uh, comes of all this.

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Yes... maybe I should blog about what's been pissing me off for almost two weeks.

My family FedExed seven large boxes to me, containing my computer, some extra clothes, quite a few books, some Lipton tea, and some sundries to give the relatives as gifts. All of this was supposed to arrive well before Lunar New Year's.

Instead, all my stuff has been stuck in the Inchon International Airport FedEx Customs holding area because the idiots feel I should pay a tax-- on my own possessions. Why? Because of the sheer volume of items involved.

But, goddammit, nothing is for resale. Just about everything is used, and a lot of it is old, such as the Mac CPU, which dates to 1999 (positively ancient in computer terms). I've been working with family and relatives toward some kind of solution to this mess, but the office is adamant: I have to pay W134,000 in tax.

Tomorrow morning, I give up and pay the fucking tax. It sucks, but there doesn't seem to be any way around it. Many thanks to family and friends who've tried to help.

I'm reminded of what Mark Salzman wrote about his time in China in his fabulous book Iron and Silk: the Chinese bureaucrats loved to play a particular game with foreigners called Let's Make a Regulation. I think something like that is happening here.

FUCK.

Reassure me by buying my book or some of my nasty CafePress products. See the sidebar for links.

UPDATE: Nothing cheers me up quite like an exploding sperm whale.

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One of my faves at Salon, the sexy and super-talented Cintra Wilson, interviews her friend, the Rev. Mark Stanger, who saw a screening of "The Passion" hosted by Mel Gibson himself.

This is Salon "premium content," so I won't be linking to it, but I suggest you go read the article. One thing to note is that Stanger's views represent, more or less, mainstream biblical scholarship (Stanger himself is mainstream Episcopalian), while Gibson's views are more in line with those of the frothing Christian conservatives and their inbred version of "scholarship." Some choice passages:

Cintra Wilson: This film is being touted as the most factual representation of the crucifixion possible; Mel Gibson has called it the most authentic and biblically accurate film about Jesus' death.

Mark Stanger: It's absolutely not.

CW: The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John each give different views of the crucifixion.

MS: Mel Gibson in his remarks after the film took a potshot at contemporary biblical scholarship -- he called scholars "revisionists" who think the gospel writers had agendas. They absolutely did have agendas. It's hard to know if [the film is] historically accurate, because Gospel writers were not trying to do an eyewitness report -- they were producing theological, practical documents of faith to answer questions that were appearing in their communities a half-generation and a generation after the death of Jesus. So it was as if the gospel writers themselves were movie makers. They were trying to interpret things in a way that their people could understand it. They're works of art, theological works, not eyewitness reports. But even a CNN eyewitness report has an agenda.

CW: So, Mel Gibson seems to be arguing that the gospels are factual documents.

MS: Exactly. And that all of the references to the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament, were proof of fulfillment of prophe[c]y, whereas it's most likely that in order to make sense of the events surrounding Jesus' death, the gospel writers searched the Hebrew scriptures to find things.

Folks, like it or not, this is where legitimate biblical scholarship currently stands. Very few Bible scholars, except those from extremely partisan camps, take seriously the idea that the New Testament scriptural accounts somehow represent an actual "fulfillment of prophecy." What you're seeing in the scriptures is hindsight reinterpretation and symbolic narrative. Any shithead can stand up after the fact and say, "See? It happened just as predicted!"

But try explaining that to a fundamentalist.

CW: So, after the crucifixion, writers of the New Testament were looking back at the Old Testament and finding connective threads to make sense of what they were writing?

MS: Yes, exactly, the way anybody looks into their own faith tradition to make sense of traumatic events in their own life. Also, some of these [New Testament authors and their communities] were already being persecuted themselves for their beliefs. So, the way to make sense of that is to show Jesus as a model of patience under suffering. One of the ways [Gibson] tries to produce an air of authenticity in the film is to have the principals speaking Aramaic, the dialect of Hebrew that Jesus would have spoken, and the Roman soldiers and Pilate speaking Latin.

But very chillingly, in the interview after the showing, Mel Gibson said the reason that he had [his cast] speaking those original languages -- and I didn't misinterpret him, because he told a long story to illustrate it -- he said, "If I was doing a film about very fierce, horrible, nasty Vikings coming to invade a town, and had them on their ship with their awful weapons, and they came pouring off the ship ready to slaughter -- to have them speak English wouldn't be menacing enough."

Sigh...

Go read the rest, folks. Mel, you're wacked. And God help me, I'll still be watching your films.

One last snippet from the good Reverend:

I think a 5-year-old who has to get cancer surgery and radiation and chemotherapy suffers more than Jesus suffered; I think that a kid in the Gaza Strip who steps on a land mine and loses two limbs suffers more; I think a battered wife with no resources suffers more; I think people without medical care dying of AIDS in Africa suffer more than Jesus did that day. I mean, I don't want to take away from that, but this preoccupation with the intensity of the suffering, I think, has no theological or spiritual value.

Recent stuff related to this subject:

1. "The Passion" and religious pluralism.
2. A further pluralism wrinkle.

UPDATE: Check out the Salon letters to the editor in response to Cintra's article (again, no links to "premium" content).

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Thanks to the almighty Exploding Cell Phone. (via Drudge)

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On se pose des questions...

Earlier, I noted that Chirac doesn't favor a Taiwan referendum. Now it turns out France wants an end to the 14-year EU ban of arms sales to China. Gee. Connection?

But France's effort, coming as the country received the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, with a lavish ceremony, was derided by some officials, who argue that China's human rights abuses remain too glaring to overlook. "A desire to curry favor with the Chinese president during his state visit to France is no excuse for rethinking a long-standing European policy rooted in principle," Graham Watson, head of the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, said in a statement.

In fact, France stands to benefit handsomely if it succeeds in ending the arms embargo. China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, has one of the largest defense budgets in the world and is spending heavily to modernize its armed forces.

Because of the Western arms embargoes, the country has been largely restricted to buying Russian military hardware in recent years. But Beijing has a long list of items it would like to buy from Europe, particularly French Mirage fighter jets and German stealth submarines.

The European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday to reconsider the ban and referred the issue to a panel of experts. But there was no indication that there would be substantive progress before the next summit meeting at the end of March as France would like.

The Netherlands, for one, has a standing parliamentary resolution that keeps the ban in place until there is clear evidence that human rights in China have improved.

Even Germany, which in December joined France in calling in principle for an end to the embargo, indicated Monday that the time was not yet ripe. "The German government does not feel ready now to lift the ban," the Reuters news agency quoted Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, as saying.

There is some concern that lifting the embargo now would add a destabilizing note to Beijing's relations with Taiwan, already strained by a plan put forth by Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, to hold a national referendum in March on whether to demand that China remove missiles facing the island and renounce the use of force.

China maintains that Taiwan is a province under its sovereignty and that the island's political separation from the mainland is a historical anomaly left over from the country's 1949 civil war. Beijing demands fealty to that position by all countries with which it maintains relations. President Jacques Chirac dutifully repeated his country's commitment within hours of Mr. Hu's arrival in Paris on Monday.

"France is attached to the principle of there being one China," Mr. Chirac said when Mr. Hu raised the issue at the start of a four-day state visit, according to the French president's spokeswoman.

Je n'ai rien contre le peuple français, mais je commence à vraiment haïr le gouvernement français.

I for one don't want to subscribe to the Den Beste argument that France is, for all intents and purposes, the enemy. But shit like this makes you wonder what the fuck the French government is up to, and what propagande they feed the public. It looks like more of the same Gaullist politics-- la France doit servir de contrepoids contre les Etats-Unis.

Que des conneries...

_

All people who fear me
know not to come near--
I'll chop off your dingle
and feed it to deer!

My pants, oh, they're bulging
I'm pitching a tent
the hormones are raging:
have you fucked an Ent?

I'm mean and I'm nasty
I'm dark and I'm cruel
I'm Sauron the badass
so BOW TO ME, fool!

It's Orc groins for breakfast
and elf ass for lunch
then Warg dicks for dinner--
all tied in a bunch!

The oliphaunts cower
I give them a grin
then slip on a condom
of fiiiiine hobbit skin.

I vomit out darkness
and urinate bile--
I mete out destruction
and shit death in piles

The world is my oyster
it's my bearded clam
it's all mine to conquer
for SAURON I AM!

In honor of Peter Jackson and his team, who've garnered 11 (count 'em) Oscar nominations.

_

Some porn-style alternative titles for the winning movies. Yes, I'm thinking these up on my own, though I'm sure some or most of the titles have been thought up already. Filthy minds think alike.

1. Mystic Blowjob
2. Lord of the Cock Rings
3. Bold Mountin'
4. Whorehouse of Sand and Fog
5. Master and Command Me: The Far Side of the Strap-on
6. Whiskerbiscuit
7. Balling The Last Samurai
8. Drill Bill
9. Lost in Fellation
10. Leaky Friday: When Scabs Run
11. Nad Santa
12. Big, Well-hung Fish

AND A BONUS LINGUISTIC NOTE! Courtesy of the Merriam Webster site:

Fart is derived from Middle English ferten, farten; akin to Old High German ferzan to break wind, Old Norse freta, Greek perdesthai, Sanskrit pardate he breaks wind.

_

So I'm trying to figure out a way to get my permalinks to behave. Taking the KimcheeGI's advice, I sent Blogger an email to this effect.

This is their reply:

Subj: Re: [#31535] problem with permalinks
Date: 1/26/2004 3:22:58 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: "Blogger Support" [blogger@trakken.com]
To: "Kevin Kim" [fiercebeating@dwarves.com]
Sent from the Internet (Details)

Please see our Knowledge Base article for further details about
permalinks:

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=119&topic=22

Sincerely,
Kimmy

Hey, thanks, Kimmy!

Here's what you get when you go to that link (NB: I've changed the brackets from angled to straight to make the HTML visible):

Question:

How do I create permanent links to my posts?

Answer:

Permalinks are "permanent links" to blog posts; they're one aspect of blogs that differentiate them from other forms of web content. Some good discussion of their history is over at plasticbag.org.

Permalinks are created in two steps. First, a unique identifier is applied to each post using an anchor tag, like this:
[a name="[$BlogItemNumber$]"] [/a]

(This should go somewhere in your post body. If you include it in the itemtitles section, your post will only get numbered if you specify a title.)

Second, you need to display the permalink for each post. This is usually done in the footer and near the author name:
[a href="[$BlogItemPermalinkURL$]" title="permanent link"]#[/a]

These tags are already present in Blogger's default templates, but could be useful if you're rolling your own.

So... uh... for those of us who're clueless... does the above contain the answer to my question about misbehaving permalinks? At first glance, the answer seems to be no. The final sentence, for example, tells me that Blogger already does what I want it to do. But obviously Blogger doesn't do what I want it to do, dammit.

I don't think Kimmy really took the time to click through the permalinks in my "Sacred and Profane" section to see what I was talking about in my email to Blogger. If I'm wrong, and the above contains the answer to all my problems, please feel free to clue me in, because right now I'm not getting it.

_

Kevin at IA squats over and dumps on Korean image-consciousness.

The Marmot wonders: South Korea to build nuclear subs?

SEB: Canadians live in igloos. And other stereotypes. Convenient segue: while Mike deals with Canadian misconceptions about America here, Steven Den Beste writes a long (what else?) rebuttal to a liberal New Zealander here, in an attempt to disabuse her of her illusions about America. He admits he's probably failed in this.

Oranckay on good dictionaries. I could use something like what he's recommending. Will have to look into it.

The Infidel on dirty birds here, on Not America's Mission here, and on Seoul's leadership here. Oh, yeah-- the question of US intelligence failures here.

The Yangban on the trouble with goat sacrifices these days.

Jeff tackles the harsh reality facing novice lawyers (read the comments, too).

Kirk at the Sheep picks up the Satan's Anus question re: Dems who insist on calling the Iraq project "unilateral" or the coalition "fraudulent" (cf. Kerry's recent remarks). As he says:

I have wondered similar things about how many of the Dems talk about Bush's "unilateral war on Iraq" and the like. I have often wished that an Asashi Simbun or Chosun Ilbo (or their equivalents) reporter were to ask Dean or Kerry et al something along the lines of the following:

Japan and South Korea have both responded to Bush's call and have committed troops to Iraq. Both nations have been close allies to the U.S. for five decades. Both boast first-world economies and manufacture many of the consumer goods Americans use every day. Both have democratically elected governments. What, then, is "illegitimate" or "unilateral" about their participation in Iraq?

This is, I think, a legitimate question regardless of whether one thinks the war in Iraq was a good idea or not. Kerry and Dean et al seem to feel that Japan and Korea matter not a whit in the world. If this is the case, Japanese and Korean reporters should call them on it.

Mingi needs Phillip Morris, and finds pro-Bush people in the most unexpected places.

Peking Duck points to a cool and insight-laden interview he did.

Brit Liberal MP Jenny Tonge (I keep wanting to write "Tongue") has been getting a drubbing from outraged folks offended by her remarks indicating empathy with suicide bombers. Joe Katzman picks up on this at Winds of Change as he addresses people who responded to his thoughts on the subject.

Without delving too deeply into this, I'll humbly suggest that people need to keep their outrage in check for when it really counts. What Miss Tonge said was:

I guess if I was in their [i.e., the suicide bombers'] situation, with my children and grandchildren, and I saw no hope for the future at all, I might just think about it myself.

I think this is being overplayed. Face it, folks, if you were starving, oppressed, angry, and desperate, you'd probably act like a starving, oppressed, angry person. I don't think Miss Tonge's remarks should be taken for anything more than the hypothetical speculation they seem to be. One commenter, Ross Judson, echoes my feelings here:

Joe, you don't seem to be able to draw a distinction between the words "understand" and "condone". I can objectively understand the factors that lead to an action I do not agree with. For each of those factors, I can decide whether I believe it to be justification, or not.

My point is, people go crazy. I think that's what's happened here...Palestinian culture has lost some (or much) capacity for rational thought. I trust that we have not, though.

If you just want to kill'em all and be done with it, then I guess attempting to understand (not condone) their viewpoint makes no sense. Otherwise, you need to understand the factors (even the unreasonable or downright crazy ones) and deal with them one by one.

Do you claim to have a greater sympathy for victims of terrorism than I do? Is there a moral high ground reachable only by excluding rational debate of cause and effect?

I grant Joe Katzman's larger point about moral relativism: we can't pretend to be neutral on this subject, and I don't pretend to, either. But understanding where a terrorist is coming from and being sympathetic to him/her are two very different things. The attempt to understand is permissible, in my opinion. I'm in no way sympathetic. I doubt Ross Judson is, either.

von at Tacitus makes some predictions. Trickster chews on the WMD question (are they or aren't they?). Anticipatory Retaliation provides a more comprehensive look at the WMD question here.

Cobb posts a hilarious fictional dialogue between a customer and a retail store worker.

I always suspected, but now I know it's true: Dan Darling is sick, sick, sick.

Dr. Keith Burgess-Jackson also recommends the book that John Eckard is reading. John tells me he leans a little leftward on the spectrum... KBJ seems pretty hard-right. Scary confluence? I'm gonna have to pick up a copy of Pinker if both the lefties and the righties are telling me it's good. How's the weather in Sendai, John?

John Moore on Canada.

Satan's Anus on the glorious malignancy that is the blogosphere.

Andrew Sullivan lambastes Dick Cheney-- the one Lou Reed sang about in "Last Great American Whale." On a lighter note, Sullivan finds himself in the ideological company of cultural giants like Clint Eastwood.

Den Beste never fails to be shocked by the European nanny-state mentality.

Amritas: the most frequently-used English word is...?

Atrios refuses to give specifics in his reply to Andrew Sullivan's "challenge." That's disappointing, as is his pussyfooting.

CalPundit surveys the WMD issue by asking whether there were any experts who publicly doubted the existence of WMDs before the war.

Via Drudge: D'oh! Did the Dean campaign stiff a deli for nearly $1000? Granted, this isn't exactly earth-shattering news; I'm sure someone in the campaign'll pay the deli folks once they pay attention to the problem. Meantime, it's kinda' funny.

Ooooooh, yes: LET THE GAMES BEGIN! I've been waiting for this for a long, long time. (via Drudge)

Note to self: given how clueless I normally am about these things, I need to be extra-careful about the newest Internet worm.

Libya's not all that happy about losing its WMDs.

Go, Kofi!

Opportunity's pics are revealing geological clues.

This ought to make the Air Marshal very happy indeed.

Take THIS, Atkins Diet! High carbs, low fat!

If you've been following the Taiwan referendum flap (China's been rumbling against it, and so have some Americans), you now have more to entertain you: Chirac pronounces himself against the Taiwan referendum, too. Those Taiwanese never get a break, do they. I feel a special debt to the Taiwanese, not only because my favorite prof at CUA is a specialist in Taiwanese Pure Land Buddhism, and not only because my Dad spent part of his active Air Force stint in Taiwan in the 1960s, and not only because one of my mother's closest friends is from Taiwan-- but because the Taiwanese were the ones who manufactured my lovely 1999-era Macintosh G4 with 450MHz processor. Yeah, go ahead and laugh. You're all going to hell, anyway.

Allah links to Muslim sage advice on oral and anal. Good luck not getting fluids in your mouth. What the hell kind of religion dodges the ancient "spit or swallow?" question??

Damn, it's snowy where I live.

A picture of the oldest t'aegeukgi (South Korean flag) is discovered. Too bad the article doesn't actually SHOW THE PICTURE.

T'aegeuk is the Korean pronunciation of the characters t'ai-chi, or "Great Ultimate" as it's commonly translated. The t'aegeuk is generally a red-and-blue yin/yang symbol in Korea; in China, the symbol often includes little spots like "fish eyes" to show that yin erupts out of yang and vice versa.

Please don't say "ying and yang," or I'll be forced to shoot you. And by the way, in Korea it's "eum" and "yang." The ladies do produce a kind of "eummmmm" reaction in me, so I think that's appropriate.

_

(a post for my brother David)

Smart birds.

Deadly birds.

The bird whisperer.

_

One of the most annoying claims I've heard is that the US has a shamefully high infant mortality rate. This is often cited as evidence of the shoddy state of American health care. Larger argument aside, the claim itself bugs the shit out of me because it just doesn't seem to add up.

Cobb has just written a post that gives my suspicions some weight: it's how you play with the stats. Go read & tell others to do so as well. This is one meme that could use some distribution.

_

They say elevators smell different to midgets. I wonder what would befall a midget if everyone in a crowded Korean elevator simultaneously passed long, stinky kimchi farts.

Something like this may be in store for Saddam when he's returned to his people to face "Iraqi Fear Factor."

"Fear Factor," the one in the States, often showcases stunts in which contestants find their heads crammed into clear plastic boxes. "Iraqi Fear Factor," which would feature Saddam in the pilot episode, should be divided into three parts, just like regular "Fear Factor." The second event is usually the gross-out event, and that's where we could challenge Saddam with a Survive the Fart Box-type game: about twenty gassy people fart into plastic tubes that lead into the Fart Box, where Saddam's head is crammed. If Saddam ends up with some Hershey Squirts in his beard, well... that's "Iraqi Fear Factor" for ya'. After everyone's blown their ass-trumpet and Saddam's head is barely visible inside the box, along comes a smiling Joe Rogan with a lighted match. Will Saddam survive?

Saddam wouldn't be playing for $50,000, of course: he'd be playing to save his own ass. With that kind of motivation, he might actually prove a worthy a contestant.

Iraqis will want to see blood, though, so the other two stunts would have to be a bit tougher than what American contestants go through. The first stunt might be something like Walk Through Hot Coals, then Walk Through Broken Glass. I could dig that.

Or maybe Saddam should have to spend 20 minutes in a chum-filled shark tank. Yeah, that'd work.

In fact, let's stick with the shark tank idea and rig the contest so that, even if Saddam gets severely mauled by the shark, he still wins the contest. This wouldn't be too different from how Saddam ran his elections: always victorious!

Patch Saddam up after the shark eats his crotch, whisk him off to the Fart Box, then get him ready for the third contest. In the normal "Fear Factor," this tends to be either something in the grab-the-flag genre or something along the lines of a target-shooting game. In this case I'd suggest using Saddam as the target while Kurds on zipwires fly overhead and take potshots at him with actual rifles. Will Saddam survive?

If Saddam manages to get through the shark tank, the Fart Box, and the angry Kurds, then he gets to live! Which of course means he'll be a returning contestant on the next "Iraqi Fear Factor"! Congratulations, Saddam!

_

People are peppering John Kerry's campaign with superficial comments, so I thought I'd pile on with a substance-free observation of my own.

From some angles, Kerry looks like the actor Jason Miller, who played the younger priest (the one who throws himself down the stairs) in the first "Exorcist." I don't know what this means yet, but it can't be good, especially since Jason Miller is dead.

_

The new attention-grabbing Dean meme has got Matt Drudge's attention, because he's linked to the article in red cyber-ink. It says in part:

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean said Sunday that the standard of living for Iraqis is a "whole lot worse" since Saddam Hussein's removal from power in last year's American-led invasion.

"You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone," said the former Vermont governor, an unflinching critic of the war against Iraq. "But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."

Dean is claiming that Iraqis are not better off. His reasons, as given in the article, are vague (no, actually they're nonexistent), so I tend to view this more as blowhard rhetoric than as a substantive jab at current policy. Let him come forward with a raft of facts and figures, and I'll be more likely to listen to him. I do give him points for posing this question out loud, though. If anything, I think it actually supports Donald Rumsfeld, who in his leaked memo asked for "metrics" to determine our progress in the war on terror. Until solid metrics are developed, people on either side of the issue can claim whatever they want.

Dean's claim may attract attention because we're all sensitive to this topic. The rightness or wrongness of our project in Iraq is very much a function of how well we, in the long term, implement our nation-building plans.

I wrote an essay last year, on July 20, called "The Question We're Not Supposed to Ask." There's a link to it on my sidebar (in the "Sacred and Profane" section), but the link doesn't seem to be working on this PC (fucking Blogger), so allow me to reprint it here.

THE QUESTION WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO ASK

Are they better off?

The answer from most warbloggers, conservatives, and others who supported Gulf War 2 is an unqualified YES.

The question, of course, refers to the state of the Iraqi people. Under Saddam, they suffered horribly, and as days go by, we hear more and more reports of mass graves, of bulletholes in dirt-filled skulls. The Saddam government was, itself, one huge WMD. We found THAT one and eliminated it.

You should know, though, that I personally was against the war, but not for pacifist reasons. Europe pissed me off before and during GW2, just as it pissed off the pro-war crowd (I use the term "pro-war" cautiously, to indicate supporters of THIS military action, not of war in general). I'm glad Saddam is gone. I agree and accept that Saddam's govt had links to al Qaeda (we've got documentation now, plenty) and the dreaded French. I agree we've made mistakes in the past by not pursuing Saddam beyond our stated objectives in 1991. I don't think the current uranium flap is much more than a flap.

But one of my main worries going into this war was the question of unintended consequences. Many conservative bloggers & pundits were and are convinced that this is a cowardly question to ask. After all, isn't freedom worth the risk? Don't the Iraqi people deserve a taste of what we enjoy? In the same breath, such people mention "national self-interest" as one of our reasons for going to war. I think self-interest is a perfectly valid reason to go to war; it doesn't need to be decorated with specious moral arguments that arise only on certain occasions.

But "self-interest" is precisely what motivated me to think about unintended consequences. The Iraq that seems to be forming in front of us is bearing all the hallmarks of deplorable theocracy. Islamic law is to be written into/reflected in the permanent constitution, eventually, and many of the once-oppressed Shiites are becoming more vociferous about where they want Iraq to go.

One of the first religious acts performed by the Shiites after Saddam's fall was a pilgrimage that involved men beating themselves bloody with swords. This, to me, does not bode well. It's right in line with the unintended consequences I've been considering. Without a massive injection of Western secularism, I don't see how, in the short or long term, our experiment in Iraq is going to work in our favor.

In a sense, it's too late to complain. We're in it now. But whether we, as a people, have the stamina, attention span, and money to pull off what really needs to be done is doubtful. And whether, in ten years' time, the Iraqi people will still be unequivocally "better off" strikes me as, at best, an open question. How do you measure happiness? How do you measure security? By what standards?

For me, the jury is still out, and will be for a long time. In the meantime, I do agree with the conservatives who've complained about the gloom-and-doom nature of worldwide journalistic coverage, which has often taken a Chomsky-ish turn. That's why I read around, and I expect you, Dear Reader, to do the same. Meantime, I think we need to watch the behavior of those we liberated and ponder carefully whether they are worthy of the freedom they now have. Sounds cruel, sounds cold, but that's keeping our own interests at heart.

As always, feel free to write in [bighominid@hotmail.com, "hairy chasms" in the subject line]. Or leave a comment.

_

Mingi's Jibber Jabber hops onto the blogroll. Go check it out. Here's a cool slice in the meantime:

South Korean soaps have tested my limits . . . couples not banging ass before tying the knot? Did Jane Austen write these celibate shows? If soaps had sequels, these couples would be seeing marriage counselors because either a) the husband is discovered to be needle-dicked and/or b) the wife was finally devirginized and goes rampant looking for tootsie rolls of different flavors.

The soaps in general suggest premarital sex doesn't exist in this country where the sex industry thrives like nowhere else. South Korean society today doesn't forbid premarital sex. Sure, sex isn't talked about because people think it's improper even to mutter the deadly word in public, but most people have sex in this country and South Koreans should face the truth like the grown-up horn dogs they are, instead of acting like a bunch of clammed-up nuns. After all, the sheer number of rooms in the thousands of love motels in and around Seoul should be an indication of the number of heterosexual sausages that are discreetly tucked into pleasuredom, while laying under the hourly blankets of love motels whose crusty invisible stains I wouldn't want to think about.

South Korean soaps should aim to better depict South Korean life. Then again, if South Korean TV stations did that, it'd be like watching a marathon of horror flicks.


_

It's the title of a documentary film directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, who decided to chronicle the effects of eating nothing but fast food with a camera crew and team of doctors by his side.

The results weren't pretty.

Spurlock, a tall New Yorker of usually cast-iron constitution, made himself the guinea pig in this dogged investigation into the effects of fast food on the body. He ate only at McDonald's for a month - three meals, every day - and took a camera crew along to record it. If a server offered to super-size his order, he was obliged to accept - and to ingest everything, gherkins and all.

Neither Spurlock, 33, nor the three doctors who agreed to monitor his health during the experiment were prepared for the degree of ruin it would wreak on his body. Within days, he was vomiting up his burgers and battling with headaches and depression. And his sex drive vanished.

When Spurlock had finished, his liver, overwhelmed by saturated fats, had virtually turned to pate. "The liver test was the most shocking thing," said Dr Daryl Isaacs, who joined the team to watch over him. "It became very, very abnormal."

Spurlock put on nearly 12kg over the period and his cholesterol level leapt from a respectable 165 to 230. He told the New York Post: "I got desperately ill. My face was splotchy and I had this huge gut, which I've never had in my life ... It was amazing - and really frightening." And his girlfriend, a vegan chef? "She was completely disgusted by me," he said.

Wow.

Lessons learned, eh?

Keith Burgess-Jackson also offers some wisdom on eating well and exercising in his post reprinting an American Cancer Society letter on the preventability of cancer:

The overwhelming majority of the world's cancer control professionals agree that prevention and early detection will save more lives from cancer than any other tool available.

Studies show that about 60 percent of the cancer deaths that will occur in 2004--more than 300,000--will be related to preventable behaviors like poor nutrition, physical inactivity, obesity and smoking.

Something to think about. Mind and body are not-two... my gut is a good clue that something's out of whack.

_

Forget North Korea. Forget religious pluralism.

I just watched the "Aliens vs. Predator" movie trailer. It reveals nothing, looks absolutely corny, but I'm stoked. Fuck "Spiderman 2."

Whoever wins...

...we lose.






Ooooooooooooooooooooo.


_

The final post on this book!

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

Chapter 8, "The International Aid Effort," chronicles what was going on in international circles as North Korea plunged into crisis. In the early 90s, as Kim Il Sung's health was failing and Kim Jong Il was taking over more and more administrative duties, the reports came in that all was not well in the Stalinist paradise: a shortage in funding from Russia in 1991 would lead, Kim Jong Il was told, to food shortages and damage to the public distribution system. Party officials requested permission to appeal to the WFP for aid.

Natsios's chapter deals with the response to this appeal. He observes that people sent in to evaluate the North Korean crisis, like Sue Lautze of USAID and Lola Nathanail of Save the Children UK, ended up with radically different perceptions and judgements of the situation. Of the two, Lautze and Nathanail, Natsios believes Lautze's observations were more accurate and more skeptical of the brave front NK was putting on the famine.

The public distribution system (PDS), which Nathanail uncritically hailed as equitable, was in fact part of the more sinister effort to triage parts of the country (cf. previous posts re: the deliberate isolation of the Northeastern provinces, which have been historically less loyal to the central governing power). Western aid was an unwitting abettor in the inequitable distribution of food aid.

Page 182:

Donor governments, the news media, and the public inaccurately assume that food aid commitments are somehow equivalent to their delivery. But the time lag between commitments and deliveries has plagued famine relief since its modern inception. Although the US government usually delivers on its promises, some donor governments make commitments they do not keep. Others deliberately double count their pledges, thus making them look more generous than they are; this happened regularly during the southern African drought in 1992. Sometimes paperwork and scheduling problems delay the delivery of food aid until six or eight months after it is pledged: the European Union has a particular problem with this, because it depends on member-states to ship the food. US food aid for North Korea would have been pledged from the Food for Peace budget within USAID, but it was purchased and shipped from the US grain markets by the USDA, a process that takes two to three months. Thus, when the White House increased its food pledges in the spring and again in the summer of 1997, hungry North Koreans did not start eating the next day or week. For the purposes of this study, the food aid delivery date to North Korean ports is a more useful standard than the date of the pledge when judging the effects of food aid. But even then the food aid had to be shipped to the receiving cities, which could take weeks given the feeble condition of the North Korean transportation system.

Politics played a role during the entire food aid process, including some hesitation by South Korea to deliver food aid too early: a delay of several months was requested, at one point in 1996-- very likely an attempt by the SK government to induce a premature collapse of the NK government. A sharp rise in NK citizen death rates was one of the effects of all this politicking.

Natsios ends this chapter by comparing Herbert Hoover's Soviet relief efforts in the early 1920s, which featured consolidated leadership and massive resources, with the comparatively fumbling efforts of smaller aid groups to coordinate with governments and each other in an effort to help North Korea. "In short," Natsios writes, "the North Korean effort lacked Hoover's unity of command. No early, single source of huge resources existed with which to negotiate an agreement with Pyongyang. The many semi-autonomous NGOs, the Red Cross movement, and three UN agencies were unable to negotiate with the central authorities from a position of strength."

Chapter 9's poignant title is, "A Great Famine?"

In exploring the question of who the famine's victims were, Natsios notes that, while all of NK was suffering, not everyone suffered equally. Some factors exacerbating the famine included the pre-famine erosion of public health facilities, the severe winters, the cholera epidemics, and perhaps most disturbing, the systematic attempt to use the famine to eliminate those sectors of the population perceived to be disloyal (or not loyal enough). The three-part division of the population by levels of loyalty, a schema laid out by Kim Il Sung in 1958, went something like this:

25% "loyal" class
55% "wavering" class
20% "hostile" class

Natsios cannot draw a conclusive connection, but he notes that a case can be made for "punitive rationing" during the famine based on UN data that showed

32% no malnutrition
62% moderate malnutrition
16% acute malnutrition

[NB: the above isn't a typo. Don't ask me how those numbers are supposed to add up; I'm not a statistician. Perhaps Natsios relied on several UN sources and means to provide only a general reflection of the malnutrition's distribution.]

The ratios look eerily similar to the 1958 class divisions.

I'll remark at this point the bitter irony of introducing class divisions in what is supposed to be a classless society.

The chapter covers some ways of calculating the raw number of starvation deaths and concludes with some assurance that about 2.5 million people, or approximately 10% of NK's population at the time, died of famine in the space of 2-3 years. Again, this chapter didn't discuss how much the military was affected by all this.

Chapter 10, "Political and Security Consequences," does some exploration and extrapolation.

The famine-induced breakdown of the PDS, coupled with the rise of corruption at lower and lower echelons of the society, led to the formation of thriving "farmer's markets." Natsios sees a positive outcome here, in that the people had been forced to shirk communist ideology in favor of a very pragmatic (albeit down-and-dirty) form of capitalism.

Natsios also stresses the role of international aid and porous borders with China in providing suffering North Koreans with an idea of what life is like outside their country. He feels that, as the citizens' resentment of their plight continues to build, it is only a matter of time before the regime loses its grip on power.

Page 230:

The notion that the old order can be fully restored and the historical clock turned back is specious. The scars of the famine are too deep, the embitterment of the population too widespread, and the changes in the economy too profound for the old order to be restored.

I wish I could share Natsios's optimism: the beast still clings to life.

Kim Jong Il doesn't have his father's aura of authority, so many experts aside from Natsios have speculated on how firm a rein he has on his government and military. Natsios contends Kim is nervous, and cites a December 1996 speech in which Kim betrayed "a certain unease" about how loyal the military was.

And on p. 232, we finally get some extended comments about the military!

...in the early 1990s, nearly 40 percent of the sixteen- to twenty-four-year-old population of the country was in the military-- 6 percent of North Korea's total population. Under more prosperous circumstances, this number of people under arms would provide a strong base of popular support for the military and a high level of political mobilization in the society. Under famine conditions, however, the reverse is often true. A large proportion of troops saw relatives die, as it would have been logistically and practically impossible to ensure that all military families were fed, and it is likely that many held the regime at fault. In other words, the regime has a large number of young men with weapons, and although they are in a highly controlled and disciplined organizational structure, many are quite likely unhappy about deaths in their families.

And later on the same page:

But the regime faced another, entirely different, military problem. The famine may have undermined military morale in a way that could be threatening to the state, but it also devastated the combat readiness of the once formidable North Korean military. According to the WFP nutritional survey done in 1998, 75 percent of children under age nine who had been measured were suffering from malnutrition and stunting caused by prolonged malnutrition [sic]. Given that serious food shortages were reported as early as 1988, the current generation of recruits into the North Korean military are remarkably smaller than were their counterparts in the 1970s. Reports from food refugees on the border mention that before new recruits are inducted, they have to go through a fattening-up period to improve their health and physical condition and make them combat-worthy. Several of the refugees I interviewed said that the military was full of soldiers who survived by begging for food from civilians. In areas where discipline broke down, soldiers stole food from civilians at gunpoint. In rural areas military units occasionally organized raids of farming areas. Thus in some areas the once-revered People's Army became a predatory symbol of a utopian-state-turned-nightmare. None of this could have helped military morale.

If Natsios's extrapolation from interviews and other tantalizing forms of evidence is valid, then he's presenting us a picture of a military that is hungry-- and maybe starving, though this is still far from clear, especially as relates to the question of how well-fed the troops at the DMZ are. In any case, Natsios finds it not implausible that a disgruntled military might well be the source for a major coup.

The chapter ends by recapping that nearly 3/4 of NK children are stunted. The US policy toward NK of a "soft landing," i.e., a slow, careful conversion of NK government and society to something approaching, say, Chinese-style market reform, doesn't seem to have provided the people of NK with a soft landing at all. Natsios finds the country's current ruin to be every bit as devastating as the damage wrought by the Korean War. In retrospect, Natsios claims, donor countries should perhaps have concentrated their aid efforts in the Northeastern provinces, where a history of "less loyalty to the center" might have been the entrée for serious reform as unhappy citizens interacted with aid workers.

Natsios's final chapter (11), "What's to be Done?", reiterates Natsios's belief that donor governments could have done much more, but that the fundamental responsibility for the devastation of the NK famine lies clearly on the shoulders of the NK government. Natsios contends that what NK needs most is economic reform-- a change to something more market-friendly. Ideology here is the major stumbling block.

I agree that NK needs such reform, but feel it makes little sense without an accompanying political and societal reform, neither of which can be accomplished quickly or easily. As I've contended, I don't see the citizens of SK and NK as "one people" at present, though it's possible they may become one people again-- with or without unification.

Natsios openly wonders whether the NK government is, finally, at the end of its rope. He wonders whether we might not be seeing some major revolts in the next few years as the desperate conditions prompt people to try desperate measures.

The chapter's final paragraph:

Some Western policymakers opposed the aid program because they feared it would be used to help the massive North Korean military that threatened South Korea and the US troops stationed there during the 1990s. The fact is, however, that the famine relief effort in no way exacerbated the threat; rather, in some important ways it helped to reduce it. The entire effort, seriously flawed though it may have been, sent a startling message to the mid-level party cadres and field officers who were also victimized by the famine and who lost friends and family members to it. The people whom they had long been taught to view as their enemies were feeding them, while their government was not. If a coup d'état should eventually end the regime and a military government come to power, it is likely that the relief effort will have played some role. Moreover, it will have sent a striking message to the new leadership of the country: their so-called enemies may not have been as threatening or as malevolent as they had been taught all their lives. This is not a bad message to be sending under such unstable and unpredictable circumstances. Generosity and decency on occasion can have attractive geostrategic consequences.

I found Natsios's book fascinating and compelling. The fact that he was not merely on site, interviewing hundreds and hundreds of refugees and working with organizations like the Buddhist one he mentions early in the book (KBSM, Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement), but was also involved in high-level planning and oversight lends credence to his insights. His previous experience with famine and his reliance on others with comparable experience (journalist Jasper Becker is cited many times throughout the book) doesn't hurt his case, either.

I didn't find Natsios's book to be conclusive on the question of NK's fighting capability, but it may be asking too much of this book to provide that kind of information. The overall picture I get is of a hungry, but still capable, military. If Natsios is correct about the potential for resentment, however, perhaps the question of fighting capability has a few wrinkles.

I'm afraid I disagree with Natsios about food aid, and what I'm about to say may sound cruel. Although I was against the war in Iraq, I was struck by the paradoxical attitude taken by people before and after the war: the same people who, pre-war, spent their time arguing that sanctions were both cruel and ineffective ended up arguing that the US military's quick push to Baghdad was possible because the people had been broken by twelve years of sanctions.

To me, this means that sanctions were effective in Iraq, though perhaps not quite the way they were intended. The charge that "sanctions are ineffective" relates to the question of a regime's hold on power. I agree that it's unlikely that sanctions alone can dislodge a determined and powerful regime, especially if it has the means to keep its people under its thumb no matter how severe a crisis becomes. But the charge that "sanctions are ineffective" is false if analyzed from a military perspective, and Iraq demonstrated this nicely.

For this reason, if we are to keep the military option on the table with North Korea (and I strongly believe we should), it is important to press our advantage through continued non-aid, or minimal aid at best. Natsios provides compelling reasons for why this is a bad idea; I'm especially impressed by his testimony that aid workers provided many North Koreans with a glimpse of the outside world-- spreading a meme that could potentially blossom into resentment, and thence into action against the NK government. And to be honest, I cringe in guilt when Natsios rails against the ethical indefensibility of starving a people to unseat a government. This is undeniably a cruel route to take, but I see the unseating of the NK government as the proper prelude to the comprehensive feeding and rehabilitation of its people.

But as with other horrible, radical solutions to long crises, the question is time. Prolonging a crisis is undesirable. In World War 2, as many argue, the dropping of atomic bombs probably shortened the length of the conflict and saved lives. I submit that our current willy-nilly diplomacy, slightly firmer under Bush (but not much), isn't helping matters in NK. North Korea's game is focused entirely upon the goal of prolonging its existence-- i.e., gaining time for itself. Any concessions we make simply feed into this because the current Mexican standoff is tailor-made to preserve the status quo. Kim Jong Il has great interest in keeping things as they are, because he's not looking beyond the question of his own survival.

So what are our options? I'd rather not opt for war, but think we should reserve this as a possibility-- and let NK know this. Anything that keeps the country nervous and sweating is good. I'm not convinced we can simply roll over the NK military, however, even if it is in a shabby state. People predicting that Seoul won't be lost in the initial conflict are probably overoptimistic: many will die, on both sides, and not just in Seoul. A diplomatic solution would be desirable, but so long as NK dodges the issue of verifiability and laces its rhetoric with threats and seeming-irrationality, I see little hope on that front.

We do have control over aid, as one of the largest (if not the largest) aid contributors, and we should think of our options in terms of what we can control. Verifiability is out, effectively speaking. Market reforms are unlikely. Free North Korea's advocacy of something like a Berlin Airlift is a noble pipe dream at best. So I'm led to believe that, whether we go to war or not, the best way to accelerate events is through the withholding of aid-- not just food, but fuel and other goods.

This will meet with international resistance. Most of the outcry will be along the lines of Natsios's ethical objections, to which I'm sympathetic. But it will also force countries like South Korea and China to seriously reevaluate where they stand. Perhaps both will decide the time has come to shoulder the burden and feed their hungry neighbor. The price the US might pay for this is steep: all three countries (China, SK, NK) might view the US with deep resentment, resulting in a rapid loss of diplomatic capital in the region (then again, things aren't that pleasant right now). But this might not happen: both South Korea and China have huge vested economic interests in America; it would be more than a shame to lose half the Pacific Rim as a trading partner.

Perhaps the result of a squeeze will be war: Kim diverts a restive military by focusing their rage on South Korea. But the move to war will signal the end for NK. Whether Kim is killed or escapes, his government-- his country as he knows it-- will cease to exist. NK will lose an all-out war, and it's possible that, in the aftermath, great efforts will be made to reunify the peninsula. China won't be pleased if the peninsula reunites under Seoul. Then again, a unified Korea might feel itself to be an equal (or at least comparable) partner to countries like China and the US, and might actually prove to be a friendly trading partner with China. The mingling of South and North Koreans might dilute SK's capitalist culture and make Chinese "market communism" seem more palatable (or comprehensible). A new, syncretic Korea might be born before our eyes.

Who knows? We're not on the other side of this issue yet, and from this end I can't tell what's going to happen.

Neither can you.

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This from the Korea Times:

SEOUL URGES N. KOREA NOT TO SET CONDITIONS FOR TALKS

Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck said yesterday that North Korea should attach no strings to its consent to rejoin six-party talks on its nuclear weapons development.

He also said it was in North Korea's interests to follow the example of Libya, which recently decided to scrap its nuclear weapons program.

And later:

"We believe North Korea should come to the negotiation table without setting any preconditions, and discuss all the relevant issues at the table," Lee told The Korea Herald.

Asked whether the second round of six-party talks could begin in February, the senior diplomat said the countries "hope so, but nothing has been decided yet."

Asking Pyongyang not to set conditions, make demands, or the like is a bit like asking spider monkeys not to whack off in front of children at the zoo. Behold:

Pyongyang has delayed its decision on participating in the talks, reiterating its offer to freeze nuclear activities in return for energy assistance and other concessions from Washington as a "first-phase" measure to resolve the prolonged nuclear standoff.

North Korean solipsism forces it to perceive its interlocutors as fellow spider monkeys, so it's always "you stop whacking off first, then I'll stop" with them. The goal here is to remain firm in the belief that we aren't spider monkeys.

In a nowadays-rare moment of solidarity, SK officials expressed their support of the US contention that NK has a nuke program:

Regarding controversies over North Korea's nuclear capability, Lee backed the U.S. position that the North possesses an atomic weapons program using highly enriched uranium.

"North Korea confirmed its development of uranium-based nuclear weapons when Kelly visited Pyongyang. The United States has concrete information for it and South Korea has not questioned Washington's judgment," Lee said.

It might, however, be educational to head over to the Oranckay blog for this tidbit re: whether the North actually claimed to have a nuclear program, or merely the right to have one.

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Spirit is still having trouble, but it appears that Opportunity has landed without a hitch.

PASADENA, Calif. Jan. 25 — NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars late Saturday, arriving at the Red Planet exactly three weeks after its identical twin set down, and prompting whoops and cheers of delight from mission scientists.

"We're on Mars everybody," Rob Manning, manager of the entry, descent and landing portion of the mission, shouted as fellow scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory burst into wild applause.

The unmanned, six-wheeled rover landed at 9:05 p.m. PST in Meridiani Planum, NASA said. The smooth, flat plain lies 6,600 miles and halfway around the planet from where its twin, Spirit, set down on Jan. 3.

Martians were on hand to congratulate the scientific team:

Minutes after the landing, former Vice President Al Gore and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger strode through mission control, shaking hands with elated scientists.

Apparently, these rovers are tough little bastards:

Swaddled in protective air bags, it struck Mars at a force estimated to be two to three times Earth's gravity. Engineers had designed it to withstand as much as 40 G's, said Chris Jones, director of flight projects at JPL.

"It probably barely noticed it hit anything," Jones said.

Manning said the signals it was sending indicated it was in good shape.

Congrats, team. Now please get Spirit back online.

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I'm surprised that Allah hasn't received more comments for this hilarious Photoshopping of Dean, which Allah himself didn't do.

It reminds me of that picture that started circulating a couple years ago-- the one showing kittens running away from monsters, with a caption that read, "Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten. Please think of the kittens."





Take the "Which FARK Cliche Are You" quiz!



Or how about this version of the kitten theme?

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[NB: Please do yourself a favor and read the previous post first, to put this one in context.]

I recall something my favorite prof at CUA said: missionaries often end up being some of the most open-minded and tolerant people, thanks to the tough style of interreligious encounter in which they routinely engage. Missionaries frequently find themselves becoming friends with, and not attempting to convert, those of different faiths who live in proximity to the mission. Perhaps they never reach a satisfactory compromise with their interlocutors; perhaps they never convince them of anything. But many missionaries do end up in relationships with the unconverted that display great warmth and understanding.

So I don't want the previous post to present the wrong picture: while I'm a pluralist who assigns a largely negative valence to exclusivism on the whole (to the extent we even accept the exclusivism/inclusivism/pluralism typology), by no means do I believe exclusivism is inherently evil. I am, in fact, more and more convinced that Plantinga may have a point regarding the nature of, warrant for, and justification of exclusivist belief.

It's interesting to hear people's perspective on the Jesuits. Having gone to Georgetown, I took classes under quite a few. I found them, to a man, to be scarily knowledgeable individuals, and very open-minded-- something they often attributed to the Ignatian ideals, in which healthy curiosity and scholarly industry are valued. It's no exaggeration to say that many Jesuits are multiple PhD holders and well-versed in several fields-- worldly people, not to mention good drinkers.

At the same time, many Jesuits begin their careers as unbending products of a system designed to propagate the Christian gospel and Catholic dogma. Some older folks I know speak ill of the Jesuits for this reason, and have exactly the opposite perception as mine: they find the Jesuits to be closed-minded, pushy, arrogant, and intolerant. I tend to think that one's impression of a given Jesuit depends on what point in his career you get to know him.

I believe the best and richest dialogue results when people who are well-rooted in their respective traditions come together and frankly hash out their differences. Much that is useful arises from such encounters, which aren't always in the form of formalized, self-conscious dialogue. To that extent, I'm actually not so different from Ryan in appreciating what exclusivism has to offer. If nothing else, it presents a clear, stark, and decisive point of view-- one that's ripe for dialogue.

And pluralism often is the result of such dialogue and exploration (again, we're talking about choices), and shouldn't be denigrated or dismissed as somehow illegitimate: it's part and parcel of the larger process of religious evolution. And regarding formal dialogue, it's good to remember Thich Nhat Hanh's contention that, yes, one should be well-rooted in one's tradition, but dialogue, if it's honest, must include an implicit readiness to be changed by the other (to which I'd add a willingness to risk being reinterpreted by the other). This caution is especially relevant to exclusivists, who often aren't ready to take that step.

UPDATE: On Tacitus, another example of Muslim exclusivism.

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Ryan of Ryan's Lair posts on the controversy over Mel Gibson's "The Passion." He takes issue with two rabbis who were offended by Gibson's supposedly negative portrayal of the Jews, saying:

Two points. It seems pretty likely that men living in the Middle East around the turn of the millennium were sporting beards and had brownish eyes. I don't see how that could possibly be slanderous. I guess we'll have to wait to see the movie in February to know if this charge has any merit.

More importantly, the crux of the anti-Semitism charge is that the movie contains a scene which directly quotes from Matthew 27:25. For Christians who take the entire Bible seriously, you cannot simply ask them to pretend Matthew 27:25 doesn't exist. Literalist Christians cannot repudiate a Biblical passage. Period. If you try to fight them on this, you will lose.

This is a really big deal- these two rabbis seem to be saying that if you are a literalist Christian who accepts the Bible in its entirety as the word of God, you are anti-Semitic. If you think events happened as described in Matthew 27:25, you are anti-Semitic. That puts pretty much all of my moderate-to-conservative Protestant family squarely on the side of anti-Semitism.

In the above, Ryan says "you cannot simply ask them [biblical literalists] to pretend Matthew 27:25 doesn't exist." Yes and no. One of the issues we're dealing with here is the extent to which one's beliefs constitute a choice. As I work my way through The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, I see that different authors have different perspectives on this issue. Some seem to think that one's beliefs really aren't a matter of choice; others feel differently. I personally feel that, if you're amenable to reason and capable of providing a reasoned defense of your beliefs, then it's very likely that you've made a choice to continue believing as you do. Otherwise you're an unthinking dittohead. I personally see no moral value in the dittohead stance, though I'm aware that many have adopted it.

If belief is a matter of choice, it's a matter of reasoned discussion. One can hope to persuade: certainly, this is the exclusivist's hope when he crafts an apologia, so why can't it be the pluralist's? Belief, to the extent it involves choice, is also a matter of introspection and intrareligious dialogue. Thinking Christians do spend time agonizing over difficult-to-reconcile scriptural passages, creeds, sermons, and the like. Many arrive at conclusions that go against the "party line" of their faith-- for example, untold numbers of Catholics use birth control because they've reasoned that the Church's stance is medieval (I happen to agree).

The issue is even more complicated than this, however, because so-called "literalists" may pay lip service to the idea that all the Bible is literally true-- but in practice, literalists are no different from the rest of us in how they pick and choose scriptural passages to justify their stance on various issues. The fundamental dishonesty of the literalist is his refusal to recognize this fact after it's been pointed out ("Who, me? Interpret? I'm just conveying God's word!"). Anyway, I'd disagree that literalists apply their literalism in a wholesale and consistent manner to the Bible. Theirs is not a non-hermeneutical stance, because no such stance exists. To say that literalists "cannot repudiate a biblical passage," then, is only partially correct: the fact is that literalists do tend to ignore the scriptural passages that don't favor their agenda-- this is why there are different camps of literalists, some at odds with each other. So beyond scriptural non-repudiation there is selectivity, there are layers of interpretation and rhetorical stratagems-- the same discursive arsenal found in the non-literalist camps.

Ryan also says, "If you try to fight [literalists] on this, you will lose." I think this is true for most literalists. As a result, the fight to pry people away from their literalism can't be taken to them directly. And at some point it will involve children-- the ones most likely to be receptive to new ideas. That's not good or bad; it's just the nature of such fights.

Ryan continues:

I don't buy it. Not for a minute. This is America. We are not in Egypt. Matthew can be read literally without necessarily leading to blood libel. This whole thing stinks of condescension- it implies that Christians who have read Matthew countless times before will suddenly become anti-Semitic after seeing the events in Matthew depicted on a screen. It implies that Christians weren't reading carefully before. It implies that Christians couldn't possibly have a literalist faith that's compatible with civil discourse and harmonious living with the Jewish community.

Ryan's worry about condescension simply shifts the problem from one sector to another: in this case, Ryan seems to be affirming the exclusivist's right to be exclusivist while denying the Jewish critics the right to their own perceptions and judgements about Gibson's film. I think "condescension" and "arrogance" issues may be played out in the overall pluralism discussion. In the meantime I'd have to ask why the rabbis' perception is a priori illegitimate. Ryan's concern that his family has been unfairly labeled is justified, but is his perception any more or less justified than the rabbis'?

As for the question of "harmonious living"...

There are too many worldwide examples of religious communities that live in conflict, and where they do live together, they have often struck uneasy compromises that are punctuated by occasional flareups, and the religious communities are often in positions of gross inequality (as has traditionally been the case in Muslim-dominated societies). In America, where secularism provides a "neutral ground" and enforces a certain level of pluralism (or at least tolerance of pluralism), we're insulated from this harsh reality, which is found throughout much of the rest of the world. It would be facile to credit "enlightened exclusivism" with harmonious living. Instead, I'd give most of the credit to the American secularist ethos and its concomitant (but often fragile) pluralism.

So-- my two cents:

If a Biblical literalist decides to burn a cross on my front yard because he thinks he's literally following the Scriptures, he's going to end up with that cross up his ass. Alterity, my balls.

A good question for critics to ask themselves is whether "pluralists" constitute a homogeneous group. My own readings lead me to believe they don't, which makes them a lot harder to identify, classify, and critique than down-home exclusivists. As for exclusivists, who are much easier to identify as a group, the excuse that "they're just being honest about their faith" doesn't cut it, except in the most remote academic sense. What, exactly, does that excuse mean? That it's OK, morally speaking, for cross-burners to burn their crosses? That all religious behaviors, no matter how outrageous or oppressive or deadly, are OK? That sounds an awful lot like the postmodernist's radical affirmation of pluralism-- to the extent that it becomes little more than mushy relativism. Alterity for alterity's sake! In the meantime, clitoridectomies are being performed... but I suppose we should reserve judgement and not pronounce such practices backward, yes? Sorry, but as an interested participant, I can't agree to this-- especially if it were my daughter or sister in question.

Now that I'm struggling through Alvin Plantinga's interesting and frustrating defense of exclusivism in The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, I'm beginning to see where this particular anti-pluralist argument lies: in a very parochial domain, that of "justification," "rationality," and "warrant." Plantinga rebuts what he sees as pluralist accusations that exclusivists are somehow unjustified in believing as they do, especially if they've been exposed to other forms of belief and continue to be exclusivist. The upshot of Plantinga's argument is, "The pluralist can't accuse the exclusivist of arrogance without being hoist on his own petard." Plantinga wants pluralists to reconsider their charge that exclusivism, of itself, is a necessarily arrogant, oppressive, irrational, unjustified, unwarranted attitude.

The problem is that, by Plantinga's own argument (which I'll detail in a subsequent post), if exclusivism is safe from the accusation of arrogance, and pluralism shares the same epistemic and moral plane as exclusivism, then the accusation that pluralists are arrogant also fails. I'm sure Plantinga realizes this; as I said, his argument is very parochial-- his only purpose is to rebut the typical accusations made against exclusivism, not provide a wider, "objective" justification for the rightness of exclusivistic beliefs. But I'm amused because Plantinga has given pluralists the ultimate insulation against the countercharge that their pluralism is itself somehow arrogant and oppressive. By claiming epistemic and moral parity-- and nothing more-- Plantinga inadvertently reminds us that the substantive discussions lie elsewhere: outside the paltry issues of warrant and justification. Thanks, Alvin.

Plantinga's argument conveniently glosses over the issues implied in normative beliefs, and doesn't deal at all with the hegemonic nature of most traditional religious truth claims. He doesn't seem to understand that the exclusivist isn't merely content to continue believing what he believes-- not if his set of beliefs includes a missionary impulse, which it often does, especially in the case of the Abrahamic faiths. For the monotheistic exclusivist, contrary to Plantinga's misleading formulation, it's not just a matter of "I'm right and they're wrong"; rather, it's "I'm right, they're wrong, and I'm going to get them to change." Simplest evidence of this for an American: the Jehovah's Witness' or Mormon's knock on your door. Make no mistake: They want to change you.

Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11, NRSV; emphasis added)

A religious studies student who's worried that pluralism will steamroller religious variety needs to realize that monotheistic exclusivism explicitly intends this very extinguishing. In the above passage, the goal is clearly stated that the whole world needs to become a believer in Christ.

If you think exclusivism's so hunky-dory, wait'll it comes your way, then we'll talk. I deal with this in Korea a lot, especially from my Christian relatives who have trouble understanding why I'm not studying at a Presbyterian mission school and preparing to spread the gospel to all those misguided Buddhists and shamanists. For an example of where Christian exclusivism can lead in a "civilized" country like Korea, read this account by Dr. Frank Tedesco.

It may be true that, as Ryan says, "This is America. We are not in Egypt. Matthew can be read literally without necessarily leading to blood libel."-- but come on-- how about abortion clinic bombings, religion-motivated hate crimes, and the bigotry that flares up and turns into hatemongering websites like Godhatesfags.com? True: there are exclusivists who in their words and actions are not so extreme, but what happens when you press them on these issues? Some will shrug and chalk up any conflicts or inconsistencies to "divine mystery." Others will out themselves and take the firm stand that everyone else is somehow mistaken. Some might view the implications of their beliefs with discomfort when pressed. To the extent that an exclusivist is unwilling to look his own exclusivism in the face, I question whether the label "exclusivist" fully applies to him.

A so-called "multiculturalist" (in the current pejorative sense) would be someone who'd argue in defense of Godhatesfags.com because, well, variety's the most important thing, more important than the question of actually taking a moral stand. Multiculturalism isn't the general pluralist stance. Pluralists make no bones about wanting change; they've evolved since John Hick began formulating his position in the mid-70s, their own arguments having been refined through the crucible of constant debate. My own pluralism at this point is more ethical than philosophical; I have a personal stake in people not killing each other and, more than that, truly and deeply respecting each other. Even if you discount American exclusivism because you think it's relatively harmless (I deeply disagree), you have to admit that exclusivists just about everywhere else in the world continue to spread suffering. Muslim exclusivism stands out as an especially shameful example these days.

I have no trouble with the idea that pluralism contains its own exclusivism and has the potential to generate its own arrogance. But the evidence of history is that exclusivists through the centuries are the ones most likely to be motivated to act violently in accordance with their beliefs-- they're led to more than just arrogance. America isn't Egypt on the whole, but you can bet that parts of it aren't so far removed from Egypt: cf., for starters, that recent exorcism case-- the dead child with the broken back. Such cases aren't rare in America, and US fundamentalism is on the rise.

[NB: by "such cases," I mean more than just exorcisms that leave children broken and dead. I mean the whole list of violent and intolerant acts perpetrated by religious exclusivists, as well as the various bigotries and prejudices found in exclusivist camps.]

Pluralism isn't fuzzy-minded relativism. It is, instead, a clear stance from a consequentialist point of view, declaring exclusivism to be on the whole wrong and immoral, as we see by its fruits. Questions of "warrant" and "justification" are irrelevant to the larger picture, the one provided by the evidence of history. To address pluralism, you first have to address the evidence against exclusivism. To adjudge exclusivism "harmless" is to be blind to what it's done, to what it's still doing. If anything mitigates exclusivism, it's Western secularism-- legislated tolerance. Without that as a fundamental part of the American nomos, you end up with Israel and Palestine. Plantinga is working hard to deny any necessary connection between exclusivism and the wrongs perpetrated by exclusivists. I see his point, but can't grant it fully because the evidence of history is simply too overwhelming. Plantinga's stance takes no account of history.

For people like me, who are interested in the real, practical issues of acute suffering caused by exclusivists (and aside from vague charges of arrogance, I don't think pluralists have been guilty of nearly the same harm), this is more than an academic question: it's about effecting change.

This pluralism question, by the way, is a perfectly integral part of the way religions interact and evolve. I think a lot of people who speak against pluralism tend to think of religions, wrongly, as somehow enjoying a "pure" or "wild" state that gets sullied or corrupted when pluralism enters the picture. This is an unjustifiably reificationist view of religions. I don't think it's at all legitimate, especially if religions are acknowledged to be living, dynamic, interdependent processes. Dialogue and encounter are facts of these processes, just as much as the attitudes of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism.

More on this as I finish Philosophical Challenge.

[NB: This post has been revised, and may go through a couple more revisions. I want to thank Ryan for providing such a great jumping-off point for the discussion. Go visit his blog, folks.]

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fuck?

The normally-civilized BravoRomeoDelta of Anticipatory Retaliation sounds a bit upset. Please take note of the following words, all from his latest post:

poor fucktard
mouth-breather
puss-boy
asswipe
moron
wanker
cum-blister
whackjob
wingnut
dunderhead
musty ballsack
Turdburglar
Assmunch
dumbass
S.O.B. du jour
Dillweed
numbnuts
Spunkbubble
Assjacket
Dicknugget (my personal favorite)
Feckless Crapweasel
cockgobbler
pube-muncher

...and none of this applied to lux bearer. Oh, well.

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With KimcheeGI this evening, I did the Hongdae circuit and met Brian of Cathartidae fame and-- very briefly-- the Drambuie Man. Brian runs a board game cafe called Universalis, not at all far from where the Huimang Shijang sets up. Drambuie Man's bar/restaurant, Hubble Bubble, is also close by.

Most of our time was spent over at Brian's, where the master himself taught us a couple board games, and then I got my ass kicked at chess (REVENGE WILL BE MINE ONE DAY, KIMCHEE GI!).

Just wanted to give a shout-out to two hard-working business owners (and their lovely Significant Others). If you're an expat reading this blog, go and visit Brian's and Drambuie Man's places. Both are quite fun, though in very different ways.

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If blogspot continues to do me wrong re: bad links to my old posts... I may pull a Marmot and move to another, better service. I'd like, in fact, a service that does something like Instapundit's-- i.e., one that isolates the archived post from the rest of the blog when you call it up. Is TypePad the way to go here? Am I really willing to pay for it? Will it let me move my entire blog over? And can I preserve the lovely aesthetic minimalism of my current no-frills template, sidebar and all?

All questions for a later date. I'm off to bed, to sleep the sleep of the asshole.

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To blog about dung is to live a life of dung: it follows you everywhere, oppressive as the Golgothan shit-demon from "Dogma." Case in point: I switched PC-bahngs this evening, moving from the Korea University Magic Station to Cyberspace over by where I live.

And here at Cyberspace, not 20 minutes ago, a frozen bathroom pipe decided to burst, sending foul-smelling water into the PC-bahng.

Being a long-time customer here and noting the manager's distress (he's probably younger than I am) at this newly baptized floor, I decided to grab a mop and pitch in. In true Korean fashion, we set about shoveling the water out the PC-bahng's front door and into the building's stairwell, where it will probably freeze and piss off the old man who cleans the building's floors around 3AM. I asked the manager whether there wasn't some repair service he could call at this time of night. He said no. So we spent 20 minutes just shoveling water. The manager got the worst of it: he had no broom, and so was reduced to grabbing a heavy plastic Cyberspace plaque, about two-and-a-half feet wide and ten inches high, bending down to the ground and literally scraping the plaque across the ground to shovel out the water, thereby sullying his shoes and socks and hands in the process. I can only imagine his misery: his shift is far from over, and now his feet are soaked in shit-infused bilge. I was lucky to get away with little more than stained Rockports. Will probably give my shoes a good washing tomorrow.

Probably.

Mmmm, that lovely, lovely fetor.

Man, what a night. Keep the manager and his assistant (who just arrived!) in your thoughts.

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I'm at the Magic Station PC-bahng on KU campus. A few minutes ago, I took a much-needed break from blogging to go lay down some suppressing fire of the fecal kind... and of course the bathroom stalls were devoid of toilet paper. Luckily, I had a pack of tissues in my chest pocket, so I was ready for this little emergency. All went as planned, and my dark, chunky minons are even now braving the cold drainage/sewage pipes to strike deep into the heart of Pyongyang. The North Koreans'll never suspect a thing. Until it's too late.

Carrying around a tissue pack is a good idea in Seoul, good survival technique. Many stalls run out of toilet paper, or as is the case with most of the public restrooms in the subways, you have to shell out a couple hundred won to get a pack from a dispenser, thereby telegraphing to the world your intentions to pinch off some heavy-duty pumpernickel. I'm not embarrassed by that, but it is inconvenient to fumble through your pockets while your ass is readying itself to perform The Brown Scream.

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A special bienvenue to the Infidel, who returns with his new blog, Kamelian X-Rays. He's on my sidebar, however, as "Formerly Infidel." Of course, I'm always the last to find out about things like this.

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We've covered the first six chapters of this book in three parts. I'd link you to my posts myself, but the Marmot's done it for me over at Winds of Change! Ah-HAAAAA!

Let's jump right into Chapter 7, "The Politics of the Famine," then. A good bit of Natsios himself is revealed in this chapter, since so much of his fight to deliver aid to North Korea was conducted in political arenas.

Natsios's main theme is set off on the first page of this chapter. On p. 141, we read:

From the start, [Ambassador Robert] Gallucci argued for the provision of humanitarian aid to North Korea with no political strings attached, but he was alone among senior State Department officials outside the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Gallucci and [State Dept. official Ken] Quinones did notice that the provision of the [cholera] vaccine had a salutary effect during the negotiations, building goodwill among their normally suspicious North Korean interlocutors.

Natsios ticks off a short list of factors affecting US food aid to NK from 1994 to 1997:

1. (p. 143) History: US policy was to regard NK as a dangerous enemy (still true).
2. (pp. 143-44) Fear in the Pentagon and NSC that food aid would be diverted to the NK military.
3. (p. 144) A debate over the very definition of the term "famine."

Something I didn't know (a drop in my boundless ocean of ignorance): USAID reports directly to the Secretary of State, bypassing the rest of the State Department entirely (p. 147). USAID often found itself at odds with State, and operated under severe State Dept. constraints.

But another problem for NK food aid is what Natsios perceives to be a "critical absence of presidential leadership" (we're talking about Clinton here) during these crucial years-- some of which may be attributed to distraction by the election (i.e., Clinton's campaign for a second term), though this doesn't explain the Clinton Administration's continued reluctance to be proactive after Clinton's reelection.

Natsios includes in this chapter a survey of the role of NGOs on the political process. One of the items I found noteworthy was that NGOs often served a diplomatic function as intermediaries between hostile capitals, relaying messages when opposing camps (US and NK) weren't officially on speaking terms.

[NB: Natsios calls himself "conservative" on p. 149-- something to keep in mind while you read his book.]

By the time substantial US food aid finally started to roll into NK in 1998, the famine was over (p. 151). Natsios calls the linkage of food aid to politcal goals "ethically indefensible," and concludes from events that it's probably more constructive to change government policy than to generate private fundraising. In other words, the most significant food aid is what results when powerful governments, not little NGOs, are moved to act.

On p. 154, Natsios observes that as American media coverage of the famine increased, Washington actually became more resistant to providing food aid to NK. Perhaps by way of shaming the political foot-draggers, Natsios notes the Reagan Doctrine, to wit: "A hungry child knows no politics."

In America, the Korean American community turned out to be a positive force in the provision of aid, but not before some serious lobbying was done to get the community beyond its internal conflict. This conflict was the result of (justifable) Korean American hatred of communism, and a simultaneous compassion for the suffering citizens of North Korea.

Natsios concludes this chapter by assessing US response. In a nutshell:

1. Too little, too late: US response occurred after the great famine was over.
2. Right action, wrong reasons: food aid was the right thing to provide, but it should not have been used as a "carrot" to force NK to change.

Even in this chapter, which is so critical of US inaction, Natsios still stresses that NK played a crucial role in its own suffering. The chapter's final paragraph:

Humanitarian agencies urged that diplomatic interests be kept distinct from donor and recipient government humanitarian programs; however, notwithstanding the Reagan Doctrine, such a separation is not the normal state of affairs. Instinctively, diplomats, military officers, and political leaders use the instruments of power at their disposal to defend and protect the perceived national interests of the state they serve. Unfortunately, each time Western humanitarian agencies were at the brink of convincing their governments to make this fine distinction between interests and ideals, the North Korean government would engage in yet another outrageous act, thus ensuring that donor governments would reconnect food aid with geostrategic interests. The clash of these geostrategic interests with the humanitarian imperative to stop the famine caused the worst paralysis I have witnessed in any major relief effort since the close of the Cold War. Although food aid was ultimately pledged in the summer of 1997 and did arrive, it was two years too late, was sent to the wrong regions of the country, and had no rigorous controls on its internal distribution to prevent the elites from stealing it.

Next up: Chapter 8, "The International Aid Effort."

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Anticipatory Retaliation renames his Mother of all screeds "The Mother of All Blathers," and ends up with the acronym MOAB. As he notes:

I decided that given the fine history of the acronym MOAB from this MOAB to that one to that one, that it just fit in nicely. I mean really, when you've hit the hyperbole, explosion and mormon trifecta, why stop when you could go for the Grand Slam of mixed metaphors?

Then he plunges into the darker side of Camus and The Stranger:

BTW, did you know that an anagram for "Mother of All Battles" is "Met Arab. Shot. Lot fell."?

I hold up Anticipatory Retaliation with pride today because the man continues his MOAB with a post devoted almost entirely to BIG HOMINIDS. Go read it.

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Some PC-bahng are open today, and it's once again cold enough to turn your crotch to stone, so I'm hunkered across the street from Korea University in this underground PC-bahng, clenching and unclenching my mental ass cheeks to squeeze out this steaming, kimchi-flecked mess of a toilet blog. Just for you.

It was a morning full of prostrations (saebae, the traditional Korean bow, with palms and forehead on the floor), and I netted a good deal of spending money... most of which I gave right back to #1 Adjoshi to help pay my rent. We also stuffed ourselves on the traditional meal featuring ddeok-guk-- a soup with a white broth (our #1 Adjumma likes to make the broth thick; other folks prefer their broth clear and thin), filled with chewy sliced rice cakes. Actually, it was ddeok-mandoo-guk-- same soup, plus Korean mandoo (sort of like Chinese potstickers or Japanese gyoza).

In the news and blogosphere...

The Maximum Leader offers pithy insights on frother Howard Dean, the SOTU, politics, a glimpse of the World Order he plans for us all, and a woman in a bikini who is quite obviously not fat. The ML has an interesting take on John Edwards:

While I joked a while ago that I thought that John Edwards would be out of politics soon, it looks like he will linger on for a while more. I still just don't think he has it in him to win the nomination. He is being too nice. Sooner or later he will have to get dirty. Politics is a very dirty business afterall. And while Senate races in North Carolina are not cakewalks, they are nothing like what will happen to you running for President. Overall, I think Edwards (while not getting the nomination) is the Dems' best candidate out there. He talks the talk, but hasn't been in politics long enough to know all his walks. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Karl Rove is most afraid of an Edwards campaign. (Tired to find the link, but couldn't dig it up...)

The ML might be interested to know that ABCNews.com seems to be reading his mind. Here's a snippet from an article about Edwards's hidden negativity:

"The people of Iowa tonight confirmed that they believe in a positive, uplifting vision to change America," Edwards said to cheers.

But ABCNEWS has obtained an official "John Edwards for President" precinct captain packet that includes myriad personal attacks for Edwards caucus-goers to make against his Democratic opponents, perhaps belying this claim.

The document — marked "CONFIDENTIAL AND PRIVILEDGED" (sic) and "NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION" and signed by the senator — encourages Edwards supporters to tell undecided caucus-attendees that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is a "Park Avenue elitist from New York City" and say Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts has "the stale record of a Washington insider" and "has been a part of the failed Washington politics for too long."

The Edwards document also slams Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who opted not to participate in the Iowa caucus, for trying to take "shortcuts to the nomination." The document adds: "Strong, national candidates do not skip states."

Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri is called "a good man" who led Congressional Democrats to lose control of the House of Representatives. "We can't afford another losing national campaign," the document says.

Other information in the packet slams Dean for balancing Vermont budgets "on the backs of the poor and sick," cites "another Kerry exaggeration," and goes after Clark for praising President Bush's "neo-conservative foreign policy team."

But maybe Edwards is (cough) innocent...?

"Senator Edwards was not aware of this document," Edwards' Communication Director David Ginsberg told ABCNEWS, adding. "Once he found out about it, he takes full responsibility for it. He thinks it was wrong and has instructed the staff not to do anything like that again."

Ginsberg also stressed that the part of the document that attacked his rivals "was a small piece of a 50-page caucus training memo including instructions on how caucuses work and the senator's policy proposals." Ginsberg denied any hypocrisy.

"This was a book prepared by the field staff to help them get through the caucus process," he said. "This was prepared for field staffers who had to defend themselves while the campaign was under a barrage of attacks, phone calls, and negative mail."

[QUICK LANGUAGE NOTE: You'll have remarked that I write "Edwards's" as the possessive, while the ABC article writes it as "Edwards'." This is simply a matter of which style manual we're following. During my time at Catholic U., we in the School of Religious Studies were required to write our papers according to Kate Turabian's style manual, which is largely based on the Chicago Manual of Style. If I'm not mistaken, Turabian says that, for prominent ancient figures whose names end in "s," such as Jesus and Moses, the genitive is indicated simply by adding an apostrophe-- "Jesus'," for example. But for modern names ending in "s," another "s" is added. If someone has a Turabian manual handy and wants to correct me on this, feel free, and I'll stop with the extra "s"es. It was, after all, my habit before attending CUA to form possessives in the ABCNews style.]

Annika's Journal, currently run by guest bloggers, finally posts on the SOTU.

San Mateo says no to norae-bahng (song rooms).

The Vulture is down on Bush. I don't agree that Bush and his Administration are Orwellian, and I think it's off-base to dismiss the American public as stupid, because with that attitude it's hard to maintain with any consistency that Clinton's two terms in office were justified. If he was elected by stupid people, and the people get what they deserve...

CalPundit is also down on Bush's "truth deficit."

Wesley Clark says: "It's an absurd issue, and it's one of the reasons I'm running." (via Drudge)

Peggy Noonan on the flap over whether the Pope actually gave an "It is as it was!" thumbs-up to Mel Gibson's "The Passion," a.k.a. "Jesus Christ: Beyond Thunderdome."

Winds of Change posts a cool joke about three samurai.

They've also got a link to some thoughts by Laughing Wolf on gay marriage. Choice Wolf laugh:

The old models of the creation of wealth and expansion of population no longer apply.

So, that also leaves us with the thorny issue of morality. Much of the indignation on the right deals with morality, since that is an easy hot-button emotional topic. Yet, this shows the major flaw in their campaign: morality is tied to religion. So, this begs the question of which morality and which religion will be honored? It also begs the question of which religions actually practice what they preach on this issue?

The heart of the Judeo-Christian doctrine on unions is that marriage is sacred, not to be set aside, and that they cleave only to one another. Divorce is a major no-no. Okay, so go take a look at the divorce rates. Then take a look at the studies that examine such things as adultery and sexuality. Look at the rates for sex outside of marriage and before marriage. In this respect, it is not a pretty picture. Compare this to the rates for same sex unions and activities.

The net result is that there is no evidence that same sex unions will do worse than current religious unions (and may even do better). There is no evidence that same sex marriages will cause a stagnation or decrease in the development of wealth. Modern science provides options in terms of the growth of population as a factor.

What truly matters here are two things. One, can same-sex unions provide stability/growth, and the resources needed to bring children into productive adulthood? Two, will we honor our Constitution which guarantees fundamental rights to all citizens? The latter may well be the most important question we face. We can turn our backs on it, not for the first time, and disenfranchise a chunk of our Citizens. Or, we can accept it as the sometimes uncomfortable thing it is and try our best to live up to its promise. This means holding all Citizens responsible for their actions, especially when it comes to marriage.

We already have a tradition of civil union. There is no legal or logical reason that such can’t apply to same-sex marriage. What is needed is not a defense of marriage act, but a clear separation of church and state. Let those who desire to have a same-sex union do so, either in a church that supports such, or in a civil action. Let those opposed continue to get married in the church of their choice. To do anything else violates the rights, liberties, and responsibilities of the individual, and poses contempt for the Constitution and the Republic.

Now go read Dr. Keith Burgess-Jackson's essay, in which he claims that anti-gay-marriage advocates have legal, if not necessarily moral, grounds for their claims, esp. re: marriage being "about children."

The upshot is this. Defenders of traditional (heterosexual) marriage should not abandon the argument to those who advocate homosexual marriage. They should link marriage to childrearing and, in response to the claim that not all heterosexual couples can or will reproduce, insist that this has moral but no legal significance. Indeed, I'm willing to concede that there is a good moral case for homosexual marriage--where children are involved. But a good moral case is not necessarily a good legal case. The law is eminently justified in drawing imperfect lines. It does so everywhere, and usually without complaint. It should not apologize for drawing the marriage line between heterosexuals and homosexuals.

If nothing else, I hope to have shown that homosexual marriage raises a host of practical issues that are not usually discussed, but that need to be. Since those who argue for homosexual marriage (Andrew Sullivan, for example) are asking that the law allow it and not just defending its moral permissibility, they have an obligation to discuss the messy details that lawyers grapple with on a day-to-day basis. They need to get their heads out of the clouds and put their feet firmly on the ground.

[NB: you really should read all of Laughing Wolf's post and all of KBJ's post to get the proper context. The above quotes, in themselves, don't frame all the issues both writers bring up. Laughing Wolf, for instance, delves a good bit into the history of marriage-- something Andrew Sullivan has also done to forward the argument that "marriage," as a term, has meant different things over the years, a sentiment with which I agree.]

As far as I can tell, Burgess-Jackson has never explicitly laid out his personal position on the question of gay marriage, though my own suspicion, based on his constant efforts to rebut the logic of pro-gay marriage arguments, is that he's against it. I may be wrong; after all, many people against gay marriage cite religious reasons for their position, and KBJ is an atheist. KBJ's main interest where Sullivan is concerned is to point out the inconsistency in Sullivan's faux-federalist attitude. I happen to agree with KBJ here, but only because I think it's necessary to argue strongly for a constitutional amendment that acknowledges marriage to be a basic civil right to be enjoyed by all, regardless of sexual orientation.

KBJ's post makes a big deal of demonstrating the crucial difference between viewing marriage from a moral standpoint and from a legal standpoint. It seems you have to buy this premise-- that the legal and moral aspects of marriage are in fact discrete-- to buy the rest of KBJ's argument. My question is: for what purpose are there laws? Aren't laws motivated by the desire to allow people to live harmoniously, with maximum benefit to the maximum number of people? Can't this desire be described as moral and/or ethical?

While I agree somewhat with KBJ's distinction between legal and moral (for example, I side with folks who say "you can't legislate morality," because they usually mean "you can't legally impose the morality of one specific religion"), I can't grant it fundamental weight: the moral and legal aspects of society aren't as separate as KBJ makes them out to be. Because of that, I can't accept the moves KBJ makes in the rest of his nonetheless-interesting post. And as you know if you've read my previous long post on gay marriage, I'm not impressed by the a priori declarations people make re: what marriage is or isn't "about." The term was and remains a descriptor for a changing reality. The rest of my position proceeds from that basic fact.

KimcheeGI apparently got through the holiday traffic nightmare, but not without cost. Go read about it.

Steven Den Beste invests a lot of time (and emotion, it seems) in talking about something that's supposedly beneath his attention. He comes off as rather petulant.

You do know Ariel Sharon's in trouble, right?

Good God: Starbucks is a monster.

Jeff over at Ruminations in Korea has two great posts up. The first regards an "uh-oh" event: allegations of sexual abuse, by an American doctor, of a Korean child. I agree with Jeff that due process basically gets tossed out the window in Korea when it comes to foreigners, but if it turns out this doctor really did what he's accused of, then let him burn.

The second Ruminations post regards something I also hate: Korean soap operas. But my Mom loves these things; she watches them on cable, on a channel devoted to Korean programming. I've also been told by my relatives to watch the soaps religiously if I hope to improve my listening skills. This is like asking me to sit still while someone plays Garth Brooks. Close friends know of my deep, animal hatred of country music, which almost always produces the urge to fuck shit up, Hulk-style. Luckily for me, I can table the question for now: I don't have a TV at home. HA!

Tons happening at It Makes a Difference to the Sheep, so here's a link to the whole blog. Start at the top and just keep reading.

Tacitus doesn't like how Wesley Clark's been dissing Kerry's military service. I don't know; seems to me that both men aren't exactly honoring vets or the military when they repeatedly cite their own service records for political leverage. But maybe that's just me.

After claiming they have a big dick, then actually inviting some US inspectors to view what they claimed was their dick, NK has proven in recent weeks to be remarkably coy and mysterious about whether it actually possesses a dick. A US expert on dicks contends that North Korea may very well not have a dick.

And that's all the news that's fit to shit. Did you eat that monkey?

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It's freezing outside, I mean. Since I learned the art of keeping warm in my own place, the indoors haven't been much of a problem.

[UPDATE: It's 3 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now, at 11PM.]

I spent a good part of today, Wednesday, outside, just walking around. I wanted to visit the Bonghwasan Station, in the hope that Bonghwasan itself might be nearby and accessible for a short mountain hike, but no. Getting off at Bonghwasan Station isn't like getting off at Gwanaksan Station, where the mountain's pretty much right there.

The air today was so cold that my ears, which were freezing, actually felt like they were burning.

So I'm inside the local PC-bahng where it's warm and toasty. They're closed tomorrow, as almost everything else will be, so these will be among my final entries for the next day or so. Perhaps the Maximum Leader, Carpemundi, the Air Marshal, and the Minister of Agriculture would care to fill in...?

It's the Year of the Monkey, starting the 22nd. What's the monkey all about? Read this Peking Duck entry to find out... and learn why Singaporeans are being enjoined to act more like monkeys.

FINALLY! Free North Korea has a fascinating post on what it's like for NK defectors who try adapting to life in SK. A huge chunk:

Despite his current position as a well-known and respected reporter, Kang had to overcome numerous difficulties upon arriving in the South, including confusion and alienation. He admits that life here wasn't exactly what he had imagined

"When I first came here, I didn't understand why South Koreans kept saying the word, 'stressful' in such expressions as stressful day and stressful life, because I thought I wouldn't have worry about anything as long as I had something to eat," the 36-year-old said.

He added with a smile, "I guess I am now pretty much used to life here because I also keep using the word."

However, Kang says he is still learning about South Korean society despite living here for ten years because the capitalist society changes so rapidly. This is a complete turnaround for someone from North Korea where changes are measured in decades.

Kang definitely is a rarity as a long-time observer of both North and South Korean societies, gaining life experiences and achieving a level of cultural immersion not common for defectors.

Life can be difficult for defectors and Kang points to cultural differences being one of the biggest obstacles they face in their new homeland. But with time and patience these can be overcome.

Unfortunately, there are also some things that are out of their hands like South Koreans' prejudice toward defectors that he has experienced first hand. As Kang points out from his own experience, many defectors have difficulties dealing with South Korean parents when they want to get married to South Koreans. A prospective spouse must come from a good family but for defectors they are often alone and considered as on par with illegal ethnic Korean-Chinese workers staying in South Korea.

Because he studied at a university and prepared for entering a better university before fleeing from the North, Kang says he had fewer difficulties adjusting to the South Korean education system than most defectors who barely learn the basics for survival in a capitalist society during their two-month stay at the Hanawon facilities when they first arrive in the South.

However, unlike some defectors, Kang doesn't completely blame the failures on the government. As he points out, defectors themselves are partly to blame for neglecting their duties to adapt to life here. For younger North Koreans, who tend to struggle more in finding their way, he advises them to toughen up and to never forget what their lives were like in North Korea and China.

Yet the government doesn't get off that easily either. Kang strongly criticizes the government for its lack of preparation for reunification, saying: "I don't see what the government is trying to do for unification. I don't think unification is something that will just happen some day. And even if the peninsula is reunited, how will the government cope with the chaos? President Roh Moo-hyun keeps mentioning about peaceful unification and prosperity of the two countries, but how?"

And that, as Kang sees it, is where the defectors can play a vital role as intermediaries.

"As well shown in the reunification of the two Germanys, I think the defection of more than 3 million East Germans led to the collapse of the communist society and finally reunification. So, the government should accept as many defectors as possible," Kang said.

He added that education for defectors should emphasize that one of their missions here is to prepare for unification and to bring the people of the two nations in closer after reunification by helping them understand each other.

Earlier on, the article mentions that horror stories abound: in fact, many North Koreans have great trouble adapting to life in a bustling capitalist society, and this is strong support for my belief that the "one people" label is tenuous at best. People like Kang make the news because they're exceptional. I agree that North and South can again become one people, but Kimist ideology has so damaged and warped North Korea that reunification will present cultural difficulties that will probably outstrip economic ones.

The Marmot posts a picture that eloquently captures the mess of Lunar New Year's travel.

Interesting post over at John Moore's Useful Fools re: China's global irresponsibility in not alerting the world to the dangers of SARS and "pandemic lethal influenza."

The Flying Yangban notes that Korea will be sending a special detachment of ass-kickers to guard its interests in Iraq. I should hope so! Nice pic to accompany the post.

An old Conrad post on Taiwan playing chicken with China.

Pundits are talking about the SOTU address.

Here's Joe Katzman.

Tacitus did a "live feed" blog of the SOTU. Start here and work your way upward.

Annika's blog, with its several guest bloggers, is strangely silent as of this writing about the SOTU address.

Dan Darling posts briefly on the SOTU. (UPDATE: Dan's also got another post on al-Qaeda/NK connections, which he thinks are tenuous. There might, however, be an Islam-NK link running through the Philippines.)

Satan's Anus on the SOTU.

Andrew Sullivan, like Tacitus, poo-poos this SOTU address. His full commentary can be found here.

Leaping over to France now...

Kensho Godchaser and Ryan discuss France's religious intolerance. Ryan offers another quickie on the subject here.

Hélas.

Validation? Satan's Anus pays a little attention to Korea. But no, this isn't a link to yours truly. There will be no Instalanches today.

Happy Lunar New Year, to all who celebrate it! Now go eat a monkey!

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