postal scrotum: Max on spirituality, science, etc.

Max writes:

In defense of what I wrote on your blog, I think Richardson did misunderstand me somewhat. However, I believe he didn't know the context of the situation. Let me explain. Before I begin, two points. First of all, I thank Richardson for the admonition that not all Christians interpret the Bible literally. Point well taken. Secondly, I would like to admit that my purpose in writing you about the religious debate between me and my friend did have something to do with satirizing her position.

Ordinarily, however, I'm not very sarcastic, cynical, or satirical these days (now that I am, in my own estimation, more mature—people generally don't like to be criticized). I especially try to refrain from being cynical when it comes to others' religious beliefs. The problem here was that my friend kept rubbing her religiousness in my face.

We were having general conversations about her life, mine, and the state of the world, but every twenty minutes or so she would bring the conversation back to religion. About how every major decision she had made in life was due to God. About how God has made all the good things she has done possible. About how if only mankind obeyed the laws laid down by God, there would be no evil in the world.

Still, none of this really bothered me; she has a right to her beliefs.

But she was also playing preacher, trying to win me over to her viewpoint of the universe. Hence the "debate" that we had. Let it be known here, though, that I didn't voice much of my cynicism to her; I reserved that for your blog.

What I didn't like was how she kept disparaging my position (I don't believe in a Christian God) but how I felt that if I, in the spirit of debate, disparaged her position (she does believe in a Christian God), would be insulting her. I don't know why I felt this way, but I did. Maybe I felt that she was more vulnerable to criticism than me, or that she would take it badly? (I'm pretty good at taking criticism well, I believe.) Can you understand how I felt? Anyway, because of this feeling I had, I didn't debate with her much.

The other thing I didn't like was how it basically came down to her telling me, "I'm right and you're wrong." That bothers me. Apparently, her conscience was not at all troubled by her exclusivist beliefs; with a proverbial wave of the hand, she roundly discounted and discredited all other religions and hundreds of millions of believers. You know, I couldn't help but recall the old line: "If you don't believe in our God, then you're going to hell!"

No one should claim to have all the answers.

My next topic has to do with what you call "atheistic version of fundamentalism." Wow. Cool. I've never heard it put that way before. I think you're making a really important point here, namely that any kind of fundamentalism must be eschewed.

You see it all around you. The materialists—those who don't believe in the existence of anything not directly observable (by sight, sound, touch, and so on)—would have us believe that there is no such thing as a God. Funnily enough, I myself was a staunch materialist until recently. However, I've become more of a spiritual person, in part due to some books on metaphysics that came across my path.

This is an excellent book. It has given me a lot of new insight, and I haven't even finished reading it yet. I was struck when I found out that there is now a substantial body of scientific evidence—yes, evidence collected via the scientific method—that suggests there is a basis to phenomena such as ESP, out-of-body experiences, and reincarnation.

Here's one experiment that was discussed in the book. There are two psychics, each in a sealed room. One of the psychics sits in front of a computer and the computer automatically selects a random image. That psychic looks at the image and concentrates on it, while the other psychic in the next room tries to draw the image that enters his mind. I was amazed to learn that the artist was sometimes able to draw the correct image. I forget the exact results of the experiment, but they were statistically significant.

To conclude, my point here is that I think spirituality (religion) and empiricism, two extremes, can meet halfway. It doesn't have to be either one or the other (I think you would agree?). And I was intrigued to learn that science has made and will continue to make inroads into the understanding of our spiritual side.

Pax,

Max

Very interesting insights.

I would probably be like James Randi and treat any claims of psychic power with great skepticism. If it should turn out that several carefully conceived batteries of experiments yielded statistically significant results, I would, at the most, say, "This warrants further study."

Science, especially lab science, relies on repeatability for independent confirmation; it also relies on what the philosopher Karl Popper called "falsifiability." Falsifiability is not the ability to fake an experiment, but the ability to disprove a particular claim through empirical means. Carl Sagan's famous "dragon in my garage" chapter of his The Demon-Haunted World addressed falsifiability and the question of an unfalsifiable claim's veridical worth (zero, in Sagan's opinion).

For now, the evidence seems to lean significantly toward the view that psychic powers do not exist, despite millennia of claims to the contrary. First, defining what a psychic power is is a hairy business. Second, getting experimental subjects who are willing to sit repeatedly for experiments can be a touchy matter, and then there's the question of methodology.

[NB: I would be curious to know more about the lab conditions in the image-reading experiment mentioned.]

As for the idea that science and spirituality can meet halfway... I think there's something to that notion, but I won't delve into that topic here.

Quick note about materialists: they do believe in the existence of things not directly observable, though I think they would say that "believe" isn't quite the right verb here, given what it implies religiously. Atoms and molecules, for instance, would be considered a given by materialists-- a brute fact of existence. The ultimate composition of atoms and molecules is still the subject of keen exploration and will remain so for years to come, but that they exist is beyond dispute. The same can be said of macroevolution, which is also not directly observable, but which is nevertheless considered a brute fact-- not a "mere theory," as some creationists would have it-- by all legitimate scientists.

There have been many attempts at describing the nature of the conflict/dialogue between science and religion. Some, like SJ Gould, would say that science and religion represent "non-overlapping magisteria," each pursuit confined to answering the questions only its methodology can answer. Others see science and religion, not as conflicting, but as pursuits occurring within an as-yet-unnamed larger paradigm. Still others view the matter in an almost Manichaean way, seeing science and religion as destined for eternal conflict, with only one side representing "the good" or "the right." I think a mature dialogue requires tolerance and patience on both sides. As you say above, Max, "No one should claim to have all the answers." The humility born of scientific skepticism and the humility born of religious virtue seem in line with that conviction.

More on this later.


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the road to hell is paved with sick birdies

Well-intentioned Buddhists aiming to gain merit through a ceremony may have released birds afflicted with avian flu on an unsuspecting populace. In an article written by the appropriately named Dikky Sinn, we read:

HONG KONG - Something was strange about the little brown bird found dead from bird flu in one of Hong Kong's busiest shopping districts.

The scaly breasted munia usually lives in rural areas of the territory. So how did it and five others come to be in a bustling urban district — raising the threat of exposing residents and tourists to the virus?

Experts think the birds may have been used in a Buddhist ritual that frees hundreds of birds to improve karma. So, with worries rising in Asia about a new outbreak of bird flu, officials are urging that the religious practice be stopped to protect public health.

Hong Kong is hypersensitive about disease outbreaks — especially bird flu. The illness first appeared here in 1997 when it jumped to humans and killed six people. That prompted the government to slaughter the territory's entire poultry population of 1.5 million birds, and the disease has since largely spared this city of 6.9 million people.

But authorities remain on alert, particularly with new outbreaks in other parts of Asia.

(via Drugged)

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bref parcours bis

This post by the Praiser of Time Past nicely sums up the problem with South Korea's attitude toward North Korea. Especially that last part from Chamfort.

Mike offers a hilarious YouTube clip of Peter Sellers performing the Beatles' "Hard Day's Night" in the style of Olivier doing Richard III.

Justin, who has an unerring sense when it comes to cool links, digs up this freakish YouTube clip of Mary Poppins. The clip has been retooled into a 21st-century-style movie preview trailer making "Mary Poppins" out to be a horror movie: "Scary Mary." And it works. Justin also shows off his mad ghetto grill skillz. Burn them animals!


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laundry morons

My dorm has two washing machines on the fifth floor, which is also our building's top floor. I live on the second floor, and tromp up with my weekly double-load. Normally, there's no problem: the two washing machines are almost always empty, and I'm able to do laundry without fear that my clothes will be mishandled by people coming after me.

But for the second week in a row, I have had problems with the clothes dryer because some lobotomized fucknut insists on filling it with laundry detergent.

I normally pull out the dryer's filter to empty it before starting my own drying cycle. Both last week and this week, I have pulled out the filter only to find it caked with a nasty combination of lint and powdered laundry detergent. More detergent is visible inside the dryer's drum, and inside the bottom of the slot where the filter is normally tucked. In both cases, last week and yesterday, I cleaned everything out as best I could, then started the cycle. The clothes have dried without a problem, and I think the rotation of the drum naturally ejects any of the extra soap I might have missed in my cleanout. My clothes show no trace of soap, and the dryer seems to be functioning well, all things considered.

Nevertheless, it is infuriating to think that some dumb asswipe has been trying to introduce detergent to the dryer. I decided to do something about the situation, and left notes in three languages (Korean, English, and French for the hell of it) on the dryer's door, saying:

PLEASE DO NOT PUT LAUNDRY DETERGENT IN THE DRYER. IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW TO USE THE DRYER, PLEASE COME SEE ME (Kevin, 201).

I hope the notes remain on the dryer for the entire week, but I suspect that one of the concierges will quietly take them down, then speak briefly with me when I'm on my way out the door. Grrrr.

What sort of buck-toothed, pea-brained, sheep-fucking bumpkin puts soap in a dryer?


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Ave, Gord!

One of the Koreablogosphere's most prominent Canucks is currently traipsing through China, but he's written a very interesting screed on Deepak Chopra, religion, and science. In his comments section, Gord "calls bullshit" on a remark about scientism, which is a topic I plan to address soon. My previous post, pregunta religiosa, was meant to be a prelude to this, my upcoming post. Stay thou tunèd.


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veggie question

Can a moral vegetarian legitimately own a meat-eating pet? I'm trying to work out the implications here: by the moral vegetarian's reckoning, humans should not eat meat because of the suffering they-- we-- cause through meat-eating. The idea of animal suffering is linked to the idea that animals can be viewed through a moral prism: they have rights, hopes, dreams, and needs. Does this latter stance imply that moral vegetarians see animals as moral agents? If so, then some animals must be morally superior to others: all meat-eating animals must needs be morally inferior due to the suffering they inflict. The best pet to own would be a ruminant, I imagine-- something large and stupid that feeds only on grass or other plant life. But even pet-owning should be frowned upon if the deeper issue is animal suffering, yes? And how exactly does one assess the level of an animal's contentment or suffering? To what extent can we say that we know what is going on in an animal's mind?

I think moral vegetarians base too many assumptions on unprovable claims involving animal subjectivity. "Go thou and eat a burger!" I say.

*By the way: the above spiel is full of holes and isn't meant to be taken as a serious argument. While it's true that I don't quite get the moral vegetarian stance, I'd have to work harder to formulate a decent argument against that worldview.


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Ave, Max!

Max sends me a link to this site, which leads me, in turn, to this very gratifying image.


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bref parcours: great reads

My buddy Mike is worried about the disappearance of what many philosophers call "libertarian free will." I'd venture that Mike has little to worry about: even if we become capable of tracing every single human impulse back to a previous physical cause such that nebulous concepts like "mind" and "will" need not be invoked as explanations, there will always remain the question of predictability. Although not often explicitly included in philosophical definitions of freedom, it is usually implied that freedom contains an aspect of unpredictability. This is not to say that freedom is merely a form of randomness; after all, random phenomena do not demonstrate the existence of freedom. But a free creature, and that creature's interactions with its environment and with other, similarly endowed creatures, will produce possibility trees that ramify in surprising and unpredictable ways. Rest easy, my friend. You're as free as you need to be.


The Party Pooper explains why we must gloat about Michelle Wie's thrashing by a significantly younger (and shorter) Japanese-American chickie. Key quote:

Now some of you may question why I gloat over Michelle Wie's dramatic failures. To tell the truth, I had never had anything against Michelle Wie until her father opened up his mouth to Korean reporters about how 'the only thing American about Michelle Wie is her passport'. He basically played the Korean nationalism card to get some sweet advertising contracts for his daughter and did his little part to set back Korean-American relations in the States just that much further. Honestly, if Korean-Americans are to become fully accepted into American society (as most should be), idiots like this need to shut up and keep their nationalism (and implied racism) to themselves.

Max has some great posts, including one about the very creative French class he's running. My class isn't nearly this exciting. Yet.


A few days ago, the Marmot showed off this YouTube video of a Canadian dude, who calls himself Kimchiman, doing a strange and funny sendup of "Arirang."


Charles's January 6 piece regarding his podcast is quite educational. Masochist that he is, Charles seems to prefer "honest criticism" to words of encouragement. Knowing Charles as I do, I can say the man is his own worst critic and needs no help from others when it comes to self-assessment. I thought his podcast was a fine first effort, given that he had followed my last-minute suggestion to ditch the script and simply talk. Speaking as a teacher (not as Charles's teacher, of course, but as someone who spends a lot of his time being encouraging), I tend to think that too much criticism early on in the learning process does more harm than good. Success experiences are paramount; stumbles need to be seen for what they are, but they also don't need to be set in bold relief. Later on, critics of the learner's effort should indeed become less forgiving and more "honest" in their criticisms, but during those crucial early stages, standing back and letting the learner make his own mistakes and discoveries is far more important than informing him of his errors, about which he is doubtless already well aware.


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YES! Big Hominid in the sex shop!

My buddy Tom has a "radio" show (actually a DMB cell phone broadcast) called "New Red English," which airs at midnight. NRE is devoted to teaching the raw stuff-- i.e., sex and scatology. Tom has already done several dozen shows, and is thinking of inviting me on one evening (actually, the shows are recorded in the afternoon, not the evening). This is relevant to later events, so please bear with me a moment.

I spent a good chunk of today helping my buddy out with his house-hunting, using my so-so Korean to bolster his so-so Korean as we tag-teamed various real estate agents, peppering them with questions about utilities, facilities, neighborhood shops, contractual issues, and all the rest.

In the evening, I had to go in the direction of Itaewon, to Hannam Market, to pick up some Metamucil for my recalcitrant ass. Tom said he needed to visit a sex shop he'd been to before in order to get props for his show, so we headed Itaewon-ward by subway and walked in the direction of the Itaewon Hotel. Don't ask me why a radio show needs props, but that's how it goes: Tom wanted sex shop items for his next broadcast. He was particularly obsessed with obtaining a double dong, i.e., a long, flexible dildo with "heads" on both ends for two eager vaginas to snack on at once. I think the idea is that Tom wanted to scandalize his producer, who is a woman.

While my blog is characterized by plenty of raunchy humor, I can't say that I've incorporated much raunchiness into my personal life. I've never actually been inside a sex shop before, this despite having lived in Europe, where sex shops are as exposed and ubiquitous as tits on a topless beach. This particular sojourn, then, was a first for me. Another cherry popped.

A shop labeled simply "Adult Shop" in English is located across the street from the Itaewon Hotel; we went up the narrow stairs and found ourselves in female heaven: the shop was pretty much wall-to-wall dildos, with plenty of other adult products thrown in: "Gimp"-style masks, leather bikinis, riding crops, whips, bondage gear, various creams and elixirs, and perhaps most humorously, boxes of batteries.

The old lady who ran the shop greeted us with a wide grin; Tom talked with her a bit while I simply drank in my surroundings. I think I'm going to tell my Smoo students about my adventures this coming week. Maybe not my high schoolers (the early-acceptance high school seniors whom we call shin-ip saeng, or "freshmen"): while I doubt these girls are as innocent as they portray themselves, it seems somehow wrong to write words like "dildo" and "butt plug" on the white board. I might risk broaching the topic with the girls in my Intensive 3 class; they seem sturdy enough to face such material without quailing or giggling, though I'm sure they'd rather talk about such things with a female teacher, not a large, leering male.

I eventually began talking with the shopkeeper. I asked her what sorts of people visited her shop and she immediately said, "Americans. Koreans never visit, though they sometimes send an American friend in to make a purchase." She expressed regret at not being able to speak English-- "It'd make things go a lot easier." So we talked about language learning. The shopkeeper scoffed at Korean kids who spend six months to a year outside Korea, then come back showing little to no improvement in their English. I told her that her generation (which is also my mother's generation) had done much better on that score: that was the generation of people who came to America to work, to survive, to start a new life, and many of those people now spoke English quite well, if not perfectly. Many foreigners coming to Korea these days also apply themselves to Korean study, and learn Korean more rapidly than previous waves of foreigners.

It was a strange talk to be having while surrounded by plastic dicks, but I imagine that, from the shopkeeper's point of view, the items in her store were nothing more than products for sale, no different from a grocery store or electronics mart. About three-quarters of the way through our conversation, some white dude walked up to the shop's door, saw me and Tom inside, and hesitated. He eventually worked up his courage and came in, but damn, did he look sheepish about being there. I don't blame him: I've seen the window displays of sex shops in places like Germany, but can't say I ever had the nerve to walk into them. Tonight's excursion was a plunge into another world, almost as though I had been sucked into the realm of the female id, a strange paradise in which disembodied penises, not angels, were the heavenly host.

Good night, sweet princess. And flights of dingles sing thee to thy rest.

Then, Tom's shopping complete, we got the fuck out of there. Tom said he would be going back tomorrow; the shopkeeper looked pointedly at me and said, "It'd be nice if you both came back." She was apparently relieved to have a "customer" who spoke some Korean.

This ranks among the strangest evenings I have ever experienced in Korea. My major regret is that Tom is a guy.


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pregunta religiosa

You look around you and realize that you are surrounded by people who just don't get it-- people who really should know better. If only they made an effort to understand how things actually are, they would be far less of a danger to themselves and those around them. What frustrates you is that you are so obviously right, and these jerks-- of whom there are far, far too many-- are so obviously wrong, and it makes you want to slam your head against the wall every time you have to deal with them. Their misguidedness (or is it stupidity?) constantly amazes you. You hold some hope that your point of view will one day triumph and become the majority worldview, but for the moment, prospects look dim.

So the question is: who are you? A dogmatic atheist or a dogmatic believer?


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the unbearable lightness of French class

I had six people in today's 1pm French class, which was a net gain of one person from last week. However, of the five people who attended last week, three were missing. One told me yesterday that she would be dropping because she lives far away, which makes the long commute for a one-hour class more of a pain than it's worth. A second student called this morning to say her stomach was "killing [her]," so I imagine she won't be showing up for this afternoon's English Circle, either.

French class went well, otherwise. We moved beyond the alphabet to simple greetings and basic vocabulary, and class ended with applause, something that's pretty rare for me when teaching. I think the girls are caught up in the novelty of weird pronunciation and spelling; this novelty will wear off once it becomes obvious that French, like any language, requires work to learn.

I'm morbidly curious as to which students will or won't be returning next week.

After class, the main office sent another high school student up to my office to talk with me about the advanced French class. We spoke for about twenty or thirty minutes in French, and I must say, this girl gave me a run for my money. She lived in France for five years, from about age seven to age twelve; she has a fantastic accent, not to mention a very natural, fluent delivery. I was able to speak with her at full speed from the outset, and it was something of a shame to tell her that I had cancelled the mid/advanced class because no one had shown up last week. I'm actually regretting that having said that to her, because the girl wants to maintain her French. That makes her the perfect conversation partner, because I share that goal. Alas. I did tell her, however, that I might consider reopening the French class if she found some French-speaking friends. I think this is for the best; it hardly seems worth it to have a class with only one student.

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crevé

I am one tired motherfucker. Apologies if blog posts seem to be more about link whoring or reader mail (to be sure, the reader mail is worthwhile), but I hit the ground running when this semester started, and the pace hasn't let up.

My actual teaching schedule-- the one I'm paid for-- isn't all that bad. I teach Monday through Wednesday, from 9:40am to 12:10pm, and then from 3:05pm to 4:30pm. On Thursdays, I teach the same schedule, except my afternoon begins at 1:30pm instead of 3:05. On Fridays I am, in theory, free, but I've chosen to conduct two unpaid classes for my students: a one-hour French class and a two-hour English Circle. Prep for these classes is fairly easy, and the classes themselves are fun (hell, I received a text message from a student last week saying she thought our first French class had been great fun).

My two morning classes are Freshman English. The current crop of freshmen is quite a contrast to the previous crop of inbred droolers and nosepickers. I teach two advanced-level groups, and they haven't let me down yet. Not a single major discipline issue this time-- no attitude problems, not even from the princessy chick who worried me at the beginning. She's made a point of showing off how sleepy she is every day, but she's responsive to classmates and to me.

The freshmen have been involved in their project: the construction of "A Freshman's Guide to Smoo," which we will publish late next week. They have had layout and cover design meetings, and the various groups are in constant consultation with each other, following a "mixer" sequence I have found useful. Class essentially runs itself now; the girls are self-motivated and self-organizing. This is far better than sticking to a regular textbook.

In the past, I've heard students claim that "lack of a textbook" equates to "lack of structure," implying that one is learning nothing in such an environment. To combat this perception, I ask my students to provide me with slips of paper on which they have written two vocab/grammar items learned either in class or during their independent research, thus eliminating the possibility of anyone whining that they "haven't learned anything."

Students also finish each class by writing up a very quick action plan-- a "promise" that details what they will be doing during the time before we meet again. That's been very helpful, because I now check student progress against their promises. Some promises have been rather vague, but I simply ask for physical evidence of effort, and this leads to concrete answers. Fantastic classes.

My Mon-Wed afternoon Intensive 3 Reading/Writing class is doing well, too, despite being a bit less dynamic than the freshmen. What worries me-- and tires me-- is my three-hour-long Thursday class, the one that goes from 1:30pm to 4:30pm and leaves me feeling more flaccid than a dead gaebul.

I'm teaching a course in Greco-Roman mythology, a course I am singularly unqualified to teach. It's been a fantastic learning-- and relearning-- experience for me, but I can't say that the two classes I've taught thus far have been successful. Three hours is tough for anyone to endure, least of all a bunch of girls with short attention spans.

Our big boss wanted this, though: she wanted students of different ability levels to be mixed together and "learning" the sort of material they might encounter in a Western class; she wanted them exposed to lengthy lectures and tested in a more or less Western way.

But I can't and won't do that, and the same goes for my colleagues. I've largely abandoned the teacher-centered approach in favor of student-centered activities that prompt the students to produce language instead of merely absorbing it. Korean students spend literally years in the passive role; it seems a shame that twenty-five percent of this term's Intensive program has (mis)conceived as a way to keep students passive.

The students are being asked to do things they simply aren't capable of doing. Only part of my class was able to give brief presentations about the Greek heroes Perseus and Jason. The ensuing discussion of issues arising from those myths limped along painfully, because the lower-level students in the class simply didn't have the vocabulary to add their thoughts.

In such situations, many Korean students exhibit a "tarantula reflex," i.e., when suddenly placed in a foreign environment, they curl in on themselves and do nothing. One girl in particular does this in my Mythology class. I'm torn between sympathy and annoyance whenever she falls silent and slips into neutral. On the one hand, she's not doing anything I haven't seen done by dozens, if not hundreds, of other Korean students. On the other hand, I know that, if I were teaching an English Level 1 class full of Hispanic students, I'd have a happily noisy classroom, a classroom of students unafraid to make an effort to speak-- which is to say that the tarantula reflex is a function of culture. In my judgement, the reflex is objectively bad: in language classes, silence is death. You can't learn to speak a language if you don't make the effort to speak. This means somehow transcending Stephen Krashen's famous "affective filter" and grunting whatever comes to mind, no matter how incomprehensible.

I was at the office until 3am Thursday morning, having been at Smoo since 9:30am on Wednesday. By the time I left, I had crafted a magificent, 20-page handout for my Mythology students, filled with exercises that would keep them talking and, I hoped, thinking. I even managed to include some movie viewing time: we here dealing with Greek heroes, and I wanted my students to see snippets from the movie "Troy," to compare the on-screen action with the legends passed down to us from Homer and all the rest.

It was good to over-prep, but the students, despite the activities and my best efforts at keeping their attention, were dying on me. Many were tired. Some were yawning. Last week, I had eleven students; today, there were only eight. One girl had told me, last week, that she wouldn't be here today, but the absence of the other two girls did not bode well for the future. A colleague of mine reported he had only six students today, out of ten last week. I know how he feels. We both suspect that some of the girls in the Intensive program are going to assume that Thursday is "Skip Day."

Only two of the three groups were able to make presentations today (the Jason and Perseus teams, but not the Theseus team), and within those groups it was obvious that only one or two members had done any actual research before their presentation. I managed to get us through a quick and dirty survey of Heracles/Hercules, and we took a very brief look at Achilles and the Iliad. However, we didn't have time, after watching "Troy" clips, to move on to the rest of my handout, which included a survey of Homer's Odyssey, a rundown of Joseph Campbell's monomyth paradigm, and the homework assignment based on that rundown, which would have been to map a story (such as a film from the Star Wars trilogies or a book from the Harry Potter series) onto Campbell's template, to discuss our findings, and then to discuss whether Campbell's formulation works. I'll be tackling all that next week.

Suffice it to say that, by 4:30pm on Thursdays, I'm wiped out. I have emails to answer, projects to do at school (including creating the MS Excel grading file I usually create every semester), and things to keep me occupied at home. I can't face any of them right now. If you're reading this blog entry after a sweaty day spent constructing a ten-mile split-rail fence, I apologize for the whining. You're right: I have little to complain about. Then again, dealing with stuporous adolescents can sometimes be much more taxing than engaging in physical labor.

POST SCRIPTUM: I do want to make it clear, though, that this has been a far better semester, thus far, than the previous one, which ended not with a bang, but with a dying leper's whimper.


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postal scrotum: more about the Bible

Richardson writes:

Kevin,

Your friend Max details a conversation with a Christian friend who takes the Bible literally, and (apparently) is poorly equipped to defend her positions. First I would caution him that not all - in fact many - Christians do not take all parts of the Bible literally (as I wrote before). Second I suggest that if one wants to argue about the Bible in such a manner, they go up against those who best able to debate the position (and here I say that I am not that person), rather than argue with the weaker and mistake their position for that of "Christians" in general. He didn't say he was doing that, but then why make a point of speaking of debating someone like her?

V/R
Richardson

I agree with the first part of this paragraph. Regarding the second part of the paragraph, I'd say (without knowing how Max himself would reply) that, because Max was talking with a friend, it's likely that their conversation simply drifted in that direction; this almost certainly wasn't a formal discussion. I doubt that either Max or his friend had been looking for a debate, and my reading of Max's anecdote is that he wasn't making a generalization about all Christians. After all, Christianity is far too large a phenomenon for anyone to reduce it to a few simple elements (although there are those, including Christians themselves, who will try).

Nathan, who, if I'm not mistaken, has described himself as "post-Christian" before, writes:

Hi Kevin,

I continue to enjoy your blog postings. Regarding the idea of biblical interpretation, I thought I'd throw in my two cents worth, inspired by your blog, as I was, only a few days ago, with my three brief commentaries on Genesis (NB: here, here, and here).

I couldn't help noticing a reference to the question of biblical interpretation. There seems to be a misconception on the part of many people that Christian fundamentalists interpret the Bible literally. The alternative is sometimes stated to be allegorical interpretation.

There are several problems with this view. First, no fundamentalist is a complete literalist. For example, when Ps. 18 tells us that "Yahweh rode on a cherub and flew," nobody takes that as anything other than a figure of speech. (The ironic thing there is that when it was first composed, that image probably was imagined in literal terms, as storm deities did ride on horses and or chariots.) So fundamentalists are not pure literalists, even if they are, at times, approaching ancient texts without either a modern critical apparatus or a real ancient Near Eastern worldview.

The second problem is that the horrors of the Bible neither cannot nor should not be explained away by allegorical interpretation. The program of the Bible is violently exclusivist, from the genocidal instructions ordering the extermination of even babies, to the laws that mandated death for homosexuals, to the Apocalypse of St. John with its lake of fire-- again, reserved for homosexuals, oridinary people, good polytheists, etc. Under the circumstances, if there's a spiritual message there, it's not one that deserves veneration.

Oh yes: by the way, my students-- whenever I've asked them-- have always said that Dokdo is much less important than the issue of North Korea. In that regard, I think I've actually had a few LINK volunteers in my classes.

Cheers,

Nathan

Here, too, I agree with Nathan and Richardson regarding the literalism issue. This is something I noted in my 2005 post on biblical literalism: there are degrees of it:

There are, of course, degrees of literalism. Most Christians take it as a basic article of faith that the man Jesus did, in fact, rise from the grave-- i.e., that the resurrection was a historical event, not simply a "new reality" that had sprung up in the minds of Jesus' disciples. Christians may differ, however, about the historicity of other events described in the Bible. A Christian might believe, for example, that Jesus rose from the grave while simultaneously dismissing the two creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2 as myth. This inconsistency is strange but common. I suspect that many Christians simply choose not to think about it.

Let me take this opportunity to wish Nathan happy trails as he leaves the wilds of Smoo.

Nathan's Genesis commentaries are, by the way, well worth more than a few minutes of your time.

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my students have spoken

Perhaps Joshua has a point. According to my students, twenty-two million oppressed North Koreans are not more important than Dokdo.

Sheepish NB: I don't know what possessed me to write "Jason" instead of "Joshua" earlier.


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postal scrotum: on the Bible and farts

Apologies for Blogger's "scheduled service outage" earlier on.

Max writes:

Kevin,

Here's another for your blog. (By the way, apparently no one has given us any feedback on my missive concerning the reporting of violence in Korea. Or do I need to look in a certain place?)

Thanks for your interesting post on interpreting the Bible and the Corsair link (and the links on the Corsair's blog, too!).

Your post was timely because, reading the Corsair's post, I was reminded of a recent conversation with a devoutly Christian friend of mine. During our discussion about the Bible and religion, she affirmed her immensely strong faith in God. On the other hand, I said that while I do hold true to some kind of spirituality, I don't believe in a Christian God per se.

My friend takes the Bible literally and she roundly dismissed my belief that the Bible is meant to be allegory. In her opinion, the Bible is to be interpreted literally. She used inane reasoning when she told me, "Now, one plus one equals two. Just because you don't agree with that fact doesn't make it untrue." How ironic that she was using scientific logic to make an unscientific assertion (namely that the Bible is the word of God).

I didn't even bother arguing with her, because I knew I wouldn't get anywhere. When I had earlier asked, "Why would a supreme being like God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? What's the point in causing such human suffering?" she responded, "God says that His ways are often beyond man's ken." What a neat little trick she used to explain away all the illogical aspects of the Bible.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed that story.

To end on a different note, seeing as how you're the self-acknowledged Master Blaster of Flatulation, I have a new phenomenon to report to you (it's new to me, anyway). For a while now, I've been on a bodybuilding diet, which means multiple meals per day, which consequently translates into more gas. In addition, I seem to have developed a nasal allergy, which means I can now sneeze anywhere, anytime. Well, sometimes, I am unfortunate enough to sneeze while farting. And boy, let me tell you, it hurts like a bastard at the nether end.

Yours faithfully,

Max

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Ave, Todd!

Todd Thacker sends me the following link to a Moste Usefulle (and Moste Kinkye) Booke of Englishe.


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Ave, Gypsy Scholar!

O, most flatulent post!

I am reminded of the bear who, after consuming an entire deer, passed wind for the first time in his life and cried, "HOLY--!"


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Kevin gets it sort of right

Thus I have been judged by Corsair. See here. In his email to me, Corsair was actually less charitable, saying I had it only "half right." Heh.

I'll have to talk later about the difference between science and scientism, but I don't have time right now. Meantime, read Corsair's post, which riffs off my "plumbing poem" analogy and makes some good points.


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subway accident in my hometown

Not a line I took very often-- the Green Line. It apparently jumped the tracks, and at least 18 people were hurt.

With little warning, the northbound Green Line train began to shake and bump as the wheels of one of its rear cars left the tracks about 3:45 p.m. Part of one car hit the wall of the tunnel. Shattered glass and other debris tumbled to a car floor. Lights went out and shouting passengers ran through darkened cars, according to witnesses.

I don't normally think about disasters involving public transportation, but in the back of my mind I know that it would suck immense, leprous balls to be caught in one. The screaming, the shoving, the reflexive crotch-grabbing (one's own or others')... not for me.

While I've never been in such a crisis situation, I've seen plenty of weird shit on the Seoul subway, including an incident last February involving a crazy, red-faced dude who was busy trying to kick out subway windows. Dad was with me at the time. We kept our cool and observed the dude with some amusement. The passengers had all given the guy a wide berth; he was making good progress on one window in particular.

If all the world's a stage, then subways are life's black box theater: I've seen fights between grown men, I've seen vomiting drunks, I've been stared at by people who looked as though they figured I needed taking down. One thing I've never seen on the Seoul subway, however, is sex. I did happen to see this in the most unlikely of places, however: the "Red Square" of Georgetown University in Washington, DC. The GU campus main entrance is at 37th and O Streets, NW. If you go in through the main gate, the first thing you see before you is the famous statue of our founder, John Carroll. Walk inward past Johnny, then turn right when you're at the Copley Building. Keep Copley on your left, and keep walking straight for almost a minute. Once you're past Copley, you find yourself standing on a sea of red brick; across the way is the ICC Building, in which I took most of my French courses. That sea of brick is Red Square.

It was perhaps 2am some fall night during my sophomore year. I was walking through Red Square on my way back to Copley Hall, which was my dormitory at the time. If you stand in Red Square and look out toward the Jesuit cemetery, you notice that Red Square actually morphs into a sort of amphitheater plus a set of stairs. I remember hearing a noise, and walked closer to the edge of the amphitheater. There, out in the open, was a couple in mid-rut, going at it quietly, clothes rustling.

Couldn't see faces. Thought about shouting just to shock 'em. I had to admire their brazenness, mating in plain view. I walked on, and that was that.

All of this is to say that, if you're going to be in a subway accident, you should plan well and keep some condoms handy. Because you just never know.


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Ave, Joshua!

UPDATE: Joshua's reply to this post can be found here.

---

Joshua of One Free Korea left the following comment inside what has now become a 400-comment thread at the Marmot's Hole-- the thread about Gerry Bevers. I don't normally wade into the Marmot's comment threads much anymore, but someone visited my site after stopping by that thread. I saw the visit on my SiteMeter, traced it back, then while scrolling down the thread (which I'd last seen when it had only 90+ comments), I found this awesome little rant (ranticle?) from Joshua:

South Korea is weaving itself into a cocoon where only procrustean groupthink will be permitted on a growing list of off-limits subjects, mostly concerning national disputes with the neighbors, and mostly enforced vicariously through non-state actors. I don't deny that plenty of this goes on in the United States, too, although most of our political orthodoxies are constructed in the name of tolerance, and the courts are mercifully balanced in their correction of excesses.

We saw how South Korea's government and various self-appointed thugs censored open debate about North Korea, and as a result, South Korea lives in a strikingly dangerous alternative reality about the North that no other nation shares. That cocooning has effectively marginalized South Korea in multilateral diplomacy, and has contributed to the unfolding failure of that diplomacy to keep the Korean peninsula peaceful and nuclear-free.

Korea is now doing the same to its relations with Japan... over two barren piles of guano that Korea has occupied for decades, and which hardly anyone in Japan cares about.

Then we have the asinine movement to replace the descriptive term "Sea of Japan"-- which denotes a sea surrounded on two sides by Japan-- with "East Sea," which makes no geographical sense for anyone who lives east of longitude 138 E (or, more succinctly, for anyone outside Korea).

One supposes that open debate about Koguryo will close next.

Koreans thus force not only other Koreans, but every citizen of every nation, into a series of binary choices between Korea's alternative reality and those that prevail among its more populous and powerful neighbors. Korea is not unique in doing this (Turkey gets special props for its denial of Kurdish nationhood or the Armenian holocaust), but Korea is nearly unique in its combination of intellectual hostility and blind presupposition that we'll all take its side.

Imposing groupthink worked for a while in North Korea, but aside from a few dozen unmedicated schizophrenics in juche study groups, it hasn't persuaded many others. Indeed, if you visualize a society that demands unanimity, it's strikingly compatible with equally silly ideas of Korea's racial purity ("we must all look and think alike"). If that succeeds in a modern, industrialized, and supposedly open society, it's very bad news for anyone hoping to change North Korea by exposing its people to new ideas, through permissive means or otherwise.

One can only hope that North Korean groupthink will break down faster [than] South Korea can impose its own version.

Wow.

I'm all in favor of a total pullout of US troops from South Korea and an official statement by our government that "North Korea is entirely South Korea's concern. Our only warning is this: should a nuclear device be detonated on American soil, no matter the actual source, the United States will immediately launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against Pyongyang and the entire DMZ, thereby forcing NK soldiers and citizens to move northward to China for refuge."

OK, I admit I'm joking. Kind of.

I do think our troops should bugger out. Korea needs greater exposure to reality, even at the expense of regional stability. I don't, however, think that groupthink in Korea is the whole story. Koreans often present a unified public face, but the private reality is far different: disagreement abounds. You don't have to go far to see that Koreans are in engaged in spirited debate with each other about all the geopolitical topics that vex us Americans. I'm charitably assuming that Joshua's rant is directed not so much at all South Korean citizens as at elements of the Korean government (and, perhaps, at certain large Korean businesses). If so, I agree with him. If Joshua is suggesting that Koreans as a whole see the big issues only one way, then I respectfully disagree. The picture is decidedly more complicated than that.

[NB: One thing I resent, as an American, is hearing that Americans all think and act the same way. Bullshit. I heard this accusation frequently in 2003. It might not have been obvious to non-Americans, but the 2003 Iraq war caused a great deal of division and debate-- much to our credit, I should think. How scary it would have been if we had all, down to the last citizen, blindly decided to go to war.

Consistency demands the same charity when looking at a country as complex as Korea. As I've noted before, Korea has certain cultural parallels with Switzerland, in that both countries are populated by mountain people who spent centuries in valley communities, forming local loyalties and caring little for what went on past yon ridge. That mentality is probably still at work on some level in both countries today. My point is that such mountain people are, in the aggregate, far more diverse in their opinions than one might initially expect. Following Andy Jackson's excellent posts on Korean politics has only confirmed this notion for me. Were Andy to follow Swiss politics, he'd probably note parallels with Korea rather quickly.]

As for Koguryo... my own feeling is that Korea will tolerate this nonsense from China for far longer than it might tolerate even a facial tic from Japan. For whatever odd reason, Korea as a whole continues to make moon eyes at China, much to China's delight. Korea's former status as a Chinese vassal state seems to have been largely forgiven and forgotten. A personal example of how cozy things are these days: my buddy JW, now working for POSCO Steel, has been asked to take Chinese lessons. Sign of the times, boys and girls.


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thief!

Motorcycle-ridin' Jeff was discharged from the hospital on December 23 (Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, dude), but he decided to take a little memento from the hospital with him:

...as I looked at my x-rays, i noticed a bright white twisty-looking thing in the middle of my thigh bone near my knee. I had never noticed that before. It was much brighter white than the screws or the titanium plate. I asked what it was. I was told that it is the end of a drill bit that broke off inside my bone when they were drilling screw holes. That broken drill bit will apparently be my friend for life, as taking it out would apparently mean slicing open the inside of my thigh, breaking or drilling a larger hole in my thigh bone, yanking out the broken piece, sewing me back up again and going through the entire healing process again. I think I will let it stay there.

Give it back, Jeff!

On a side note, I must say that this doesn't improve my opinion of Korean health care. I've been lucky so far (very good dentist, OK school clinic, always good pharmacies), but I wonder what delights await me should I ever find myself in a traffic or hiking accident.


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quelques remarques

A few posts ago, I talked about the genre mistake wherein an idiot uses a poem about plumbing as a reference for fixing his leaking sink. That example is partly based on reality: my sink has been leaking for about the past week-- tiny, intermittent drops at first, then gradually turning into a steady drip-drip-drip. I'm either going to fix it myself this evening or, if the job surpasses my meager skills, pass the job off to our building staff tomorrow.

I was in the office well into the evening on Friday; a student of mine dropped by after I had finished with my English Circle at 6pm, and we ended up talking for about three hours. She gave me two rather large gifts: a gigantic plastic tray of butterfly cookies (they're good, but they need to be eaten with milk or something), and a large pack of La Vache Qui Rit cheese cubes (fromage à tartiner, bon sang!). Too bad the two foods don't go together; I need to get some decent crackers (or a baguette!) to go with the cheese.

Saturday turned out to be snowy and cold. I spent it indoors, doing little other than laundry. Today, then, is all about the crap I didn't do yesterday, including lesson plans. Oy.


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MORTAL KOMBAT!

Nathan fights a tiger and wins, but it's a bloody struggle.

(Seriously, if you don't like looking at the sight of blood, don't click the above link. Me, when I see blood, I just get hungrier.)


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interesting

Most of my Western coworkers call it "marking." I appear to be the only one who refers to it as "grading."


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funeral aftermath

My dad and my brother David both wrote to me about Uncle Ed's funeral. They seem to have come away with very different impressions of the proceedings. All I know is that, when I go back to the States, I need to factor in a trip to Texas to pay my respects.


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they drink in every detail

Yesterday's free classes went well. I had five eager students for French class; we went through basic pronunciation by starting with the French alphabet. After practicing the sounds and reviewing the names of the letters ("aash" for H, "zhi" for J, "doo-bluh-vay" for W, etc.), I put students to the task of asking each other for the spelling of their names. All this took longer than I thought: about forty minutes out of the hour. We then did a few exercises out of a new textbook I'm using called Initial. The textbook is all in French, which is the way I like it. Students looked at a map and began to learn the French names for countries in Western and Central Europe. The idea wasn't to get them to memorize the names; that would have been too much. Instead, the exercise simply asked students to look at a list of country names and check the names of four countries that share a common border with France.

Pronunciation caused a lot of giggling, as it did when I taught French in America. Some sounds, like the French "u," are cause for merriment everywhere, it seems. I usually tell my students that we don't have the French "u" sound in American English, but that's not entirely true: remember "Valspeak" from the 1980s? Those California Valley Girls popularized the expression "totally tubular," and the first "u" in "tubular" was, effectively, the French "u." Come to think of it, the "o" in the Valspeak "totally" often sounded a bit like the German "ö"-- Du bist so schööööön! (Imagine mooing.)

The class was great, and the hour flew by. This stuff is old hat; I can teach it in my sleep, quite unlike Greco-Roman mythology.

That was 1-2pm. My 4pm English Circle had six students. We spent a lot of time planning what we wanted to do for our remaining six weeks, and settled on the following: watching "Kill Bill, Volumes 1 and 2," cooking an international meal (ha ha-- Mexican and Vietnamese, with Nigella's chocolate mousse as a followup!), seeing a play or musical (the girls are leaning toward The Lion King; I asked them to find out whether the performance would be in English or in Korean), playing board games, and finishing the semester with... I should've known this would happen... a Korean food fest. I'll be cooking ddeok-bokki.

A lot of laughs during our two hours together; the English Circle is mostly freshmen, plus one undergrad student whom I'd taught a few semesters ago.

The mood was spoiled twice by me and my errant biology, however. No, I didn't accidentally fart (though I suspect that day is coming). The first problem was that a tiny little spit bubble escaped my mouth while I was talking at one point. It was small enough not to be seen by the inattentive, and it didn't land anywhere near a student, but I suspect everyone saw it because I reacted by reflex to it. No one said a word, of course. These aren't American students, who will pick up on every moment the teacher falters and react right away to it.

The second problem was even worse. To my horror, as I was breathing through my nose, I felt a dried booger in my left nostril coming loose. Each cycle of breath-- inhale, exhale-- was making the booger swing as if on hinges, tickling my nose hairs and alerting me to impending disaster. I was in the middle of brainstorming ideas with my students, turning toward the chalkboard to write notes, turning back to the students to gather ideas, when it happened: the booger flew out.

And it wasn't small.

Luckily, I was turned toward the chalkboard when it happened. But I think at least two students saw the furtive launch, as they were seated close enough to the wall with the chalkboard to have picked up alien movement. The booger shot straight downward, bouncing on the great curve of my gut, then landing somewhere on the floor. Snot defenestration. Again, no one said a word, but I was... how shall I say... mortified. I felt like a diarrhetic ballerina on stage. There was nothing I could do except keep talking. The show had to go on.

Good thing this isn't summer, or I'd be dealing with the ass crack sweat issue.

I'm not betting that my two biohazard moments went unnoticed. Girls everywhere are sharp in general when it comes to assessing one's look; because they are trained from an early age to recognize and prevent the occurrence of Situations That Mortify, I'm assuming that these two incidents will have been filed under "for future reference" and "approach Kevin with caution-- he is armed and dangerous." It might almost have been better to fart in class. Fuck.

But the session ran a bit overtime and everyone was still cheerful, as though nothing had happened. We are now all looking forward to a "Kill Bill"-fest next week, and my veteran undergrad asked me, post-booger, if she could borrow my DVD of "Equilibrium." Since she was closest to me when the terrible event occurred, I take her continued willingness to talk to me as evidence that all is forgiven.


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postal scrotum: on the Bible and self-contradiction

Richardson writes:

Kevin,

I hope your covering the difference between Genesis chapters one and two gets some interested students to read the Bible more – and that they will do a little research, aside from the Bible, to help in their understanding. It got me to look into it a bit, at least for what those more scholarly than me (in addition to you) on the matter have to say:

LINK 1

LINK 2

LINK 3

Hebrew vocab, vastly different styles of writing, and greater context aside, if one doesn’t take a strict literalist view in looking at the Bible, one won’t have a problem with chapter one vs. chapter two; I view the two stories of creation as outline vs. detail. I don’t even take the six days literally, but view them more as eras of development of the universe, solar system, and Earth.

Such a view makes nitpicky positions like this

LINK 4

irrelevant, IMO.

Maybe I’m presumptuous in interpreting what I think is literal and what is not, but when people read the Ten Commandments they’re understood to be literally followed, and Revelations are understood to be representations but not literal. When creation is viewed in the same manner, geological history as we know it makes a lot more sense, and I’d even say that in many ways geology would serve to reinforce what’s in Genesis.

Hopefully those students looking into this will not get stuck in a literalist interpretation and become discouraged.

V/R,
Richardson

Richardson, thanks for the above links. The notion of scriptural contradiction isn't new, of course; the debates about these verses have been going on since at least the Enlightenment if not before. As people began to view the biblical scriptures as more than just untouchably sacred writ, they came to evaluate the scriptures as literature, noting narrative points, gauging writerly style, and eventually coming to the realization that the Bible might be divinely inspired, but that it is also very much the product of human hands.

If my students are encouraged to read more of the Bible, that'll be great. I remember one pastor I know saying that that's often a problem among Western Christians-- Bible literacy. Literacy isn't enough, though; scripture needs to be wrestled with, and I think that approaching the Bible with an overly literalist outlook is a recipe for constant insecurity and disappointment.

Editorial inconsistencies are shot through the entire book. This isn't to say the Bible should be discarded or discredited, but such problems should be a heads-up to the overly literal crowd, to wit: if the Good Lord did indeed have a hand in developing this magnificent work, He didn't say He was going to make things easy for His readers. Personally, I prefer a scripture loaded with inconsistencies and contradictions to one that is smooth and absolutely self-consistent, like an over-lawyered document (my apologies to lawyers... hee).

Genesis has at least three authors. The books of the Pentateuch/Torah have strands that can be classifed in four major schools conventionally labeled J, P, D, and E: Yahwist, Priestly, Deuteronomic, and Elohist (if I'm not mistaken, "J" for "Yahweh" simply reflects the fact that many of the foremost biblical scholars were and are German). The Priestly account of creation dominates Chapter 1 and spills over into Chapter 2. This awkward division is the result of bad editing and versification early on-- something that is corrected in most modern Bibles through improved paragraph indentation and other forms of text editing.

I'm somewhat familiar with certain certain scholarly (?) attempts at "saving" Genesis from self-contradiction, such as can be seen in some of the links you provided. Clever reinterpretation of the Hebrew (and it's not always obvious whether Christian thinkers have consulted with Jewish thinkers on these points-- these are originally Hebrew/Jewish works, after all) is done to show that the two stories somehow actually match perfectly. I'm not sure why there's this mania for demonstrating the Bible's self-consistency. If we accept that the scriptures were written even partly through human action, we shouldn't be surprised to find very human problems in them.

It's usually the literalists who are at pains to resolve all "apparent" contradictions. They've got a lot to address, after all. A sample of typical inconsistencies covered in Bib Lit:

how long was Jesus' ministry?
what was Jesus' final utterance on the cross?
how many angels were at the empty tomb?
what did God say at Jesus' baptism, and who heard it?
was Jesus crucified during Passover? before? after?

That's just Jesus and the gospels. Old Testament accounts present many more problems, as do other parts of the New Testament. One could spend one's entire life chasing after these inconsistencies, and some people have done just that, but... what the hell for?

I see the situation this way. Parents are never perfectly consistent, and when we're kids, especially when we get into our teens, that inconsistency can be bothersome, even a cause for disrespect. "Ha!" we think. "My parents don't know everything, and they don't practice what they preach!" The immature might take those flaws as grounds to dismiss parental wisdom and authority entirely, as some very childish people do. But as we get older and, we hope, wiser, we begin to realize that those contradictions, while remaining contradictions, do fit into a larger picture-- a subtle one that can't be seen when looked at directly. The awareness of this larger picture is our first real, practical glimpse into the true mystery of who our parents are: they are not, we discover, merely the sum of their faults-- they are something more, something we will never totally understand. By analogy, then, a mature person can eventually embrace scriptural contradictions as signposts to be followed with the eyes of faith-- signposts for people who don't need neat, clear-cut, absolutely self-consistent answers that are, in the end, completely useless for dealing with the fuzzy logic of human existence.

This is why I can't stand Pat Robertson, whom Drudge linked to the other day because Robertson made another stupid "God told me an enormous disaster was in the works" announcement. One thing people need to grow out of is the idea that God is a parent who wants us, His children, to be perpetually stunted, such that God is always providing, er, intracranial voice messages and nature-defying miracles to prod us along and keep us from tripping over ourselves. Whatever true spirituality is, I think it's something much deeper than literalism, parlor tricks, and special effects.

Regarding this:

Maybe I’m presumptuous in interpreting what I think is literal and what is not, but when people read the Ten Commandments they’re understood to be literally followed, and Revelations are understood to be representations but not literal. When creation is viewed in the same manner, geological history as we know it makes a lot more sense, and I’d even say that in many ways geology would serve to reinforce what’s in Genesis.

I wrote a post on biblical literalism a while back. Here, from November 2005:

on biblical literalism

As for this:

Hopefully those students looking into this will not get stuck in a literalist interpretation and become discouraged.

Because many Christian scholars from all countries have been hard at work trying to resolve scriptural contradictions, usually for apologetic (as in "apologia," not "I'm sorry") purposes, I'm sure that, if my students are sufficiently motivated, they'll find plenty of Korean-language info online that addresses the inconsistencies in the Genesis accounts in some manner or other. In a strongly Christian country like Korea, I'd guess that there's no shortage of such information.

For me, Occam's Razor suggests that simpler is better ("Do not multiply entities beyond necessity" was the original caution, I think). The simplest explanation for the difference between Genesis 1 and 2 is the one known to anyone who has taken a Bib Lit class anywhere other than at a fundie Bible college: two different authors from two very different traditions and time periods, each influenced by creation narratives from the surrounding culture, wrote very different accounts of the Beginning. Their stories were later redacted and stitched together into a single, not-quite-seamless account, with no thought to questions of form criticism, which wasn't around back then.

I decided to see what my Oxford Annotated Revised Standard Version had to say on the matter, and the footnote was curt regarding the creation story that begins partway into Chapter 2: "This is a different tradition from 1.1-2.3 as evidenced by the flowing style and the different order of events of creation."

I agree with your hope that my students won't get stuck in literalism. There are far better things to be doing than trying to resolve contradictions that are, in my opinion, the true gateway to the holy: they're the Good Lord's way of saying, "Kid, you better figure this out for your damn self." Heh.

While I'm at it, I should take a moment to address certain of my atheist readers who view scriptural self-contradiction as absolute proof of the Bible's overall uselessness. While I am not a literal theist, I like to think that the best scientific attitude is one that remains open to possibilities, including metaphysical ones. I seriously doubt that the Judeo-Christian God exists, and that He exists in the form described in the Christian Bible, but I am open to the idea that reality nevertheless has an ineffable numinous aspect. Influenced as I am by my readings in Buddhism and Taoism, I'd say that this Numinous is nothing more or less than the ordinary reality we see and experience every day. That nirvana is this samsara. But all religious scriptures and traditions-- not just the Christian ones-- contain contradictions. These are to be welcomed for the work they provide, and for me, spirituality is, at bottom, work. Like Jacob, the believer needs to wrestle with the angel. Like Jacob, he's going to lose. But if wrestling leads to a moment of, as Karl Rahner might put it, self-transcendence, then it's worthwhile.

Yes, yes: scriptural literalism leads to all sorts of human stupidity, which we see on TV and read in the papers. But literalism is not the fault of scripture: it's the fault of how we approach scripture. Imagine finding an eloquent poem about plumbing, then attempting to use that poem as a guide for fixing your leaking sink. The poem is blameless; the idiot who mistakes a poem for a handyman's fix-it manual is the problem. Human stupidity resides inside the skull, not on the page.


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in praise of my Korean colleagues

I wrote earlier that I ended my Thursday dead tired after conducting a three-hour class in Greco-Roman mythology. My Korean colleagues, however, have been given monster schedules this semester, and three-hour TOEFL and TOEIC classes are de rigueur for them. However tired I might be, multiply that fatigue by two or three and you'll have a sense of how tired my coworkers are-- and two of the three women in my office have kids.

Some people think teaching is a piece of cake, that you just walk into class and rattle off some bullshit, then go home and fart around in your free time. While my job does offer me plenty of free time (especially compared to my previous existence as a hagwon prole), I also spend quite a few hours in the office, working on lesson plans and designing activities for students. My Korean colleagues often do the same; given their teaching load, they have little choice.

If there's one thing I truly wish for my colleagues, it's that they be paid what they are worth. It's well and good for outsiders to say that Korean employees perpetuate the problem by failing to complain to the right people about work conditions, but bosses and the larger university system are primarily to blame. It's one of the great injustices of the education system here that a foreigner can be hired almost sight unseen for an important job, while a Korean national with the same or greater teaching load will be (1) treated with disrespect by most bosses, (2) paid less than her foreign colleagues, and worst of all, (3) be given little to no employee benefits.

My own salary is modest, but it's more than what these ladies earn. They are not on contract, and they are paid by the hour, which means their pay can vary from term to term. Imagine being a mother and not being guaranteed a steady income at an otherwise decent job. At least two of my colleagues have to do outside work just to keep up. Ideally, these ladies should receive a salary that is 30-40% greater than mine, plus benefits.

If you think this blog post sounds as though I'm gearing up to say something to my bosses, well... you're right. I'm not going to say anything yet because this requires some thought, and I certainly don't want my words and actions to impact my colleagues negatively in any way. They don't seem unhappy about what they do; they merely seem tired. They also have not asked me to speak on their behalf, which means I have no right to act cavalierly. I've told them, though, that if they ever feel like complaining, they'll have my open, unquestioning support.

I should also make clear at this point that caution is needed because my bosses are, whatever their human failings, basically decent and well-intended people, which is why I decided to renew my contract with Smoo, and why I will likely renew yet again in April. I may grumble, perhaps a bit too often, about certain goofy command decisions made by the higher-ups, but I'm aware that, during my time here, I've also made my share of mistakes and can't exactly claim a moral high ground. If anything, I think it would be nice to open a discussion with the bosses about slipping Korean nationals into a fairer salary structure. That's all-- a discussion. Just enough to open the door to further possibilities. I'm not planning a crusade. At the same time, I don't think it's right to let this injustice-- and it's one I have to witness every day-- pass.

Damn... for all my dislike of unions, I think I'm starting to sound like a union rep.

In any case, I started writing this post to express respect and admiration for my Korean colleagues (who may or may not read this; they know about my blog but don't seem keen on following it-- ha!); they do a hell of a lot of work for not nearly enough compensation. Hats off to them.


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weak from the week

NB: While I aspire to the wittiness of Malcolm's post titles (scroll a ways down his blog to see what I mean), I know that I'll never approach his spare eloquence.

What a week, O Rodents!

On Tuesday, the first day back at work, we were herded into large, empty classrooms and given long lists of students to interview for level placement purposes. I interviewed sixty; I imagine my colleagues did the same, if not more. Unlike previous semesters, the rolls this time around are swollen with freshmen-- 180 or so. We had lower numbers in our intensive classes (only about thirty enrolled this term), and we interviewed most of those students as well. It turned out that, because of low numbers, one of my intensive classes was cut. More planning down the drain. This frustrates me, because I've been quietly but persistently advocating moving the registration period to a much earlier date every semester, thereby giving both the main office and us teachers the time to figure out what our numbers will be, without our having to suffer the bullshit of sudden cancellations.

Wednesday morning started well. My first class, at 9:40am, was Freshman English. The girls were bright and attentive, even though they weren't quite as proficient as I would have liked. They worked well with me during the standard getting-to-know-you icebreaker exercises, and we ended up having a lot of laughs. I mistakenly let them out ten minutes early, but it wouldn't have made much difference: the next activity would have required far longer to complete.

My second class, the 11:00am-ers, were also freshmen and also pretty good, though not quite as animated or motivated as the first class. As all teachers and public speakers know, you can very quickly get a feel for a room's collective temperament, and it was obvious that this group contained a few droolers and giggly whisperers, along with one very princessy chick whom I'll have to keep in line. She's not a bad kid, but I'll have to keep my eye on her.

My third and final class for Wednesday was my Intensive 3 reading/writing class, and they turned out to be a fine bunch. That class has only eleven or twelve people, whereas the frosh classes have sixteen and seventeen people, respectively.

Some of the girls in FroshEng ended up in my intensive class, so I got to see them more than once.

Today, I taught my two FroshEng classes, and then had my monster class: a three-hour CBI (content-based instruction) course that is the brainchild of our big boss. From the beginning, I had great misgivings about this course. What the boss wanted was essentially for us to lecture for three hours on a topic in order to give students a taste of what life in Western academe would be like.

While I think immersion is generally a good thing, it has to be total immersion to be effective. Confusing SL and FL environments is a fatal mistake. You cannot simply throw untrained students into a serious lecture environment and expect them to whip out pens and start taking notes. What I do at Smoo is all FL: when the students leave my class, they immediately revert to speaking in Korean. FL teachers have to factor that reality into their pedagogical approach; using the "throw English at them until some sticks" technique is rarely effective.

In my case, I was originally asked to teach history,* which is probably my weakest subject. I politely declined history, and then made the mistake of asking to teach a subject somewhat closer to my area of expertise: philosophy of religion, interreligious issues, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, religious studies, and the like. The answer was "no." Why? Because those topics might be "too controversial." Ugh. What did I get instead? Greco-Roman mythology.

Having spent a lot more time in recent years devoted to the Hindu pantheon, I can't say that I've kept up with the Greeks and Romans, so a good bit of my "vacation" (ha!) was devoted to reading up on the shenanigans of the Greco-Roman divinities-- forces of nature, titans, gods, goddesses, heroes, and all the other weird creatures that arose through violent, murderous, and incestuous interaction.

I eventually decided to rebel, to some extent, against the requirement of the lecture component. I thought it would be hellishly boring for my students, who I knew would be of mixed abilities. I wrote up a few activities that would require the students to talk with each other, something I felt they would be more comfortable doing than trying to take notes while I droned on and on. I did include a shitload of material for a brief Kevin-spiel here and there, but my primary goal was to make the class more student-centered and less about lecture. Wikipedia's articles on Greco-Roman religious practice and mythology were helpful,** as was Pantheon.org, which needs to go on my sidebar. Edith Hamilton, of course, played a major role in my prep, but not Bullfinch. I ended up over-prepping, truth be told, but this turned out to be a good thing.

The Greco-Roman Mythology class began at 1:30pm. The students came in, all bright-eyed as usual; some of them were students from my regular FroshEng and Intensive classes, which produces some sunny smiles and chirpy greetings. Little did they know what horror awaited them.

The fuckup happened within the first five minutes and poisoned an entire hour. I crashed and burned when I opened the session with my discussion of basic concepts: a list of vocab words I wanted the students to chew over and define for themselves, in groups. We had eleven students, grouped 4-4-3 at three different tables. Discussion began... then faltered... then a gloomy silence fell as the students reached the paltry limits of their myth- and religion-related vocabulary.

And that's why it was good to have overprepared. I had reams of material on hand. We struggled through the basic concepts, and then I whipped out my gigantic sheaf of notes and told the students I would be leading them through a summary of Hesiod's Theogony, which is the main source for legends about the Beginning in Greek reckoning. The original work (available as e-text here, with notes and comments) was too long for my purposes, so I made do with Wikipedia's wordy summary (though I'm thinking I should have stuck with Edith Hamilton instead).

The students perked up at this point, because Wikipedia and I were giving the girls the uncensored version of the narrative. Koreans grow up learning about myths and legends from other cultures, and are very familiar with Greco-Roman divinities, most of whose names they know in forms that are closer to the original Greek pronunciation than the names we anglophones know. However, those myths are often transmitted to Koreans in watered-down comic book form, material readable by children and not bound to include any of the ugly, gritty tropes from the original story.

So my students watched me ape disgust at the thought of incest. They laughed as I pantomimed Ouranos' (Uranus') reaction to having his dick sliced off by his son Kronos, who had done the deed at the prompting of his mother, Gaea (Gaia, Earth). I mimed Kronos' picking up the severed dick and throwing it into the ocean, and stopped my histrionics periodically to offer snide commentary about how foul and perverse these myths actually were. Incest was particularly creepy for my students: Zeus, as you know, married his sister Hera, and Ouranos regularly had sex with his mother Gaea. Oh, yes-- I also mimed Ouranos' stuffing of his children back into Gaea's womb, then used my big, swollen belly to depict the pain that Gaea was going through, with her children stuffed back inside her.

This part of the three hours was probably the best. The students didn't quite get the various cycles of creation (beginning with primordial Chaos, then moving onward to the various other forces, titans, gods, and so on), but they understood enough for us to move on to the next phase, which was the naming of the Olympian gods in both the Greek and Roman manner. We covered ten of the twelve Olympians (my sources noted that the identity of the remaining two Olympians tended to vary depending on the storyteller), and briefly touched on their famous roles (a lot of people didn't know Hephaestos, a.k.a. Vulcan, le dieu forgeron).

Somehow, time passed more or less amiably. That second hour, the one during which I mimed my heart out and did my best to make the Theogony come alive for kids who could barely speak any English, was probably the best of the three. The third hour, while not as lively as the second, wasn't too bad, either. Having stolen a last-minute idea from a coworker, I went the comparative route, giving students passages from the Rig Veda (the famous creation hymn, RV 10.129) and the first two chapters of Genesis. I think the students were weirded out by the vedic hymn, which includes a series of slyly posed questions that make one believe the writer/s was/were in on some weird joke.

I managed to sneak in some remarks about my own field of study, and this led to an interesting tangent. One thing I had wanted the students to think about was the question, "What is religion?" They were as stumped in the third hour as they had been in the first hour,*** so during that third hour I force-fed them one possible way of looking at religion: religion can be thought of in terms of belief, action, community, and truth/reality. The first three elements are self-explanatory (of course, you could argue about whether "community" necessarily belongs in that list), but it was when I focused on the "truth/reality" section that the discussion got interesting.

By "truth/reality," I mean the objective, absolute reality to which religion is a response, and which is therefore the template for the truth a given religion proclaims. "What's the truth according to Christianity?" I asked my students. It took some doing, but I got the two or three Christians in the class to note that there is one triune God, and that Jesus (i.e., God the Son) died for all our sins. "What's the truth according to Buddhism?" I asked.

No one seemed quite clear on this, and there were no Buddhists in the class. Finally, one student attempted an answer: "Buddhism says that... we can all become gods?"

Yikes.

I wrote the Chinese characters for "no-self" (mu-a) and emptiness (gong) on the board and spent a few minutes attempting to convey what those terms mean. I probably focused more on the no-self idea (and, sadly, didn't get into dependent co-arising or any other core Buddhist concepts), and that's when a student asked the million-dollar question. Not knowing how to phrase it in English, she asked in Korean, "If there's no self, then what about hwan-saeng?" In the Buddhist context, this term would be translated as "rebirth." In the Hindu context, it would be "reincarnation." I explained that the Hindu concept generally includes a solid, unchanging atman (self, kernel of personal being), whereas the Buddhists see "self" as particulate, fundamentally nonexistent, the parts flowing along together thanks to the momentum of karma.

To illustrate this, I grabbed a handful of coins from my wallet, put them on the desk in front of me, and pointed at the group of coins. "That's my 'self,'" I said. "Now watch." I then put my hand on top of all the coins, and shoved them so that they all slid together as a group across the table's surface. "You still see a group of coins, moving along together," I said. "But look at how they move. Nothing's really holding them together, except the push I gave them." I'm not sure the students got it, and I doubt I convinced my questioner of the doctrine of no-self (which puts her in the company of people like Dr. Vallicella), but I did the best I could on short notice.

Not long after, I freaked out the Christians in the class by doing a comparison of the two creation stories in Genesis, laying out the steps of creation in Chapters One and Two in columns on the blackboard for all to see. It dawned on the students that the second story, from the J (Yahwist) tradition, was disturbingly different from the first (the P, or Priestly, tradition). I had printed out the Genesis passage from an online source; one of the Christians asked me, after class, whether the story really looked that way in an actual Bible. I leered and said, "Yes; go check out a Korean Bible tonight!" she left looking rather troubled.

Heh. Mission accomplished.

Seriously, though: I don't derive quite the cruel satisfaction I used to from going through the whole "the emperor has no clothes" routine. After a while, such behavior seems childish. My purpose today was merely to do a bit of comparative work (I have Nathan to thank, in part, for the inspiration); giving my Christian students something new to think about was an incidental benefit.

The students left the lecture with mixed feelings. I'm sure that some were wondering how the hell they would survive another three hours in such a class. They were in a decidedly better mood than they had been during that first painful hour, but it was obvious that That Old Kevin Magic hadn't worked as well as it could have.

Some of the blame definitely falls to me. Although I had been against this sort of sink-or-swim style of CBI, I also knew back in December that I would be teaching a group with mixed levels. While I think the Big Boss was wrong to stress the need for a lecture component (ironically, my overpreparedness allowed me to fill the silence by lecturing at some length), I should have made the decision to ignore my boss's wishes back in December, instead of agonizing at the last minute over how best to shove lecturing into the corner. This waffling on my part led to bad planning and definitely harmed the quality of the lesson I had hoped to teach. It was only after finding myself during the second hour that I averted total disaster, but still... the damage had been done. It had always been clear to me that a motley group composed of students of wildly varying proficiency levels would need special handling, and that straight lecture simply wouldn't cut it. For the next three weeks, I'll follow my instincts instead of letting my boss dictate terms.

Strangely enough, despite all the problems, most of the students were friendly on their way out of the class, and a couple even hung back to ask more questions about Genesis ("Why does God say, 'Let us make man in our image'? Who's the 'us'?"). I ended the day tired as hell and unable even to think (hence the short blog entries earlier), yet somehow still in a good mood. Something-- I'm not sure what-- must have gone right.



Epilogue: Tomorrow, I'm teaching my free French class and hosting the English Circle again, then probably spending my evening at the office madly planning next week's lessons. Friday is, technically, a day off for us during intensive semesters. I sometimes wonder why I do this to myself.





*"Just 'history'?" you ask. Yeah-- me, too. I was wondering what that meant.

**Some of the entries had been vandalized by some prankster. I was simultaneously amused and annoyed. Aha-- the entries in question seem to have been cleaned up. For now.

***Not for lack of insights, mind you, but for lack of English vocabulary. Even though most of the students on my roll were classified as "intermediate" or "advanced," they simply weren't ready for this sort of heavy-duty activity. I felt worse than you can imagine during that first hour, especially when I saw the crestfallen looks on so many of their faces.


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Yesssssssssssssssss!

This pic has been up on Drudge for a few days, and it pleases me to no end. The idea that Mademoiselle Spears might be huddled in a corner somewhere, screeching, "Take it doooowwwwwwwwwnnnn!" while hugging herself and rocking in her own feces makes my nipple hairs writhe in glee.

My problem with Britney has always been twofold. First, she's a terrible singer. Second, she has always looked a little too perfect, too symmetrical-- almost computer-generated. I couldn't relate to someone who looked that artificial.

But I think it was one of my brothers who, a couple years ago, prophesied that Britney's burly Texan genes would one day assert themselves and she would find herself brusquely escorted out of the boutique of slimness and into the wasteland of the "beasty." That's my brothers' term for it, anyway; it's a bastardization of "obese." Brit's not obese, of course.

Not yet.


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what a week!

More on this later. No time to talk now. Too flippin' busy.


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vicious people are scarce

After my previous request, only one person has said she would be willing to embarrass me publicly. (She's not currently in Korea, I assume.) I'm surprised there aren't more takers.


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I've been meaning to say--

When did Cathartidae become a protected blog? I tried registering so as to be able to log in... no dice. It's been like this for a while, too.

Ah, sadness.


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a tribute to my uncle

My Uncle Ed, who is being buried today (Tuesday, Texas time), was, among other things, a fine pilot. The following humble effort is for him.



SIMPLE ODE TO A FLIER


no cloud
sun lance
scream loud
wind dance

sleek dart
tarmac
now, heart!
yank back!

with steely smile, we master the machine
the sun our king, the atmosphere our queen

what limits, what importance gravity?
why land when we have all eternity?


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the lost audioblogs

Charles decided to start podcasting (see here), and I suddenly remembered that I had been itching to stick all my short little audioblogs in one place, now that I have mastered the ways of Odeo.

Without further ado, then, the seven short audioblogs I did last year:


1. The Triumphal Entry

Don't let Kevin near a microphone.


powered by ODEO

2. Boob Planet

My impression of a character on "Retarded Animal Babies." This is one of my favorite lines from the series.


powered by ODEO

3. Satan's Day Tribute

For June 6, 2006:


powered by ODEO

4. Satan's Reply to Rory

Rory complained about the poor audio. Before I could respond, Satan intervened on my behalf.


powered by ODEO

5. Ask Satan

Perhaps my most ambitious podcast. We've got music and special effects and bad Sean Connery impersonations.


powered by ODEO

6. Mike's Birthday Tribute


powered by ODEO

7. A Birthday Message for my Goddaughter

For my goddaughter, on what I thought was her tenth birthday. It was actually her ninth. Whoops.


powered by ODEO



NB: If you get an error message after pressing "play," hit "refresh" on your browser and try that puppy again.


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can you do it?

I need to know whether any of my readers can act ruthlessly if need be, i.e., in such a way as to embarrass someone publicly should they be called upon to do so.

"Ruthless," in this case, means, "able to keep the promise behind a threat."

Don't worry-- I'm not looking for someone to help me beat someone else up. I saw a nifty program on a news website (maybe ABC? CNN?) about weight loss, and it featured the threat of extreme public embarrassment for people who failed to reach their weight loss goals.

I don't want to get into it now, but I need to find two people who (1) are not in Korea, (2) do not know each other, and (3) think they can throw the switch and publicly roast me if I fail to accomplish a certain goal.

Email me if you think you've got the guts. Meanwhile, I have to decide whether I really have the guts to go through with this.


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schoolio

My Uncle Ed is to be buried today (Tuesday) somewhere in Texas, and I start classes in a few hours. It's been something of a non-vacation for me this time around, what with working on the book, tons of lesson planning for the new content-based approach, and various family issues. Things will stabilize eventually. For the moment, I'm thinking it's good to be getting back to work. Vacation, combined with a normally solitary existence, gives a dude too much time to think. I'd rather have some noise around me right now.

Keep those fingers and tentacles crossed for a better crop of freshmen this time around. The incoming group is huge: 180 people, from what I heard. That's almost twice as many students as the normal complement. We'll also be teaching them for seven weeks instead of the usual four or five. Unfortunately, this seems indicative of a trend: as our main, hagwon-style English conversation program continues to dwindle, the frosh numbers keep going up, and those kids are a captive audience. Our bosses aren't stupid: they know there's more money to be had in focusing on the freshmen, who have to pay to take our course.

My schedule, Monday through Thursday:

9:40-10:50 Freshman English
11:00-12:10 Freshman English

1:30-2:55 Intensive 4 Reading
3:05-4:30 Intensive 3 Reading
(THURSDAYS) 1:30-4:30 Intro to Greco-Roman Mythology

I've completely revamped the way I'm doing Freshman English. Having gently insisted on not using the standard textbook this time around, I'm throwing caution to the wind and leading the students through seven weeks of task-oriented, student-centered work. First, the freshmen will all be working on A Freshman's Guide to Smoo, which will require them to do profiles of professors, find out what and where each campus building is, discover the culinary delights of the Smoo neighborhood, and other things besides. This won't be so different from running a school paper, except that the end product will be a spiral-bound guide, which we might even be able to sell for a tiny profit.

The Guide is the first 3.5 weeks. The final 3.5 weeks will be devoted to theater: the development of scripts; the procurement or fashioning of costumes; intense discussions about plot, character, and setting; read-throughs, blocking, rehearsals, a dress rehearsal... and then a performance before an audience. (By the way, if you're in the area, you're invited.) This, I think, will be much more interesting for the freshmen, who will have a chance to do some team-building as well as learn about the school they'll be attending for the next four years. Let's pray this works.

Tuesday isn't actually a class day: we have nothing but hours and hours of placement interviews ahead of us. Joy. With 180 freshmen and 30-some students in the intensive courses, this promises to be a long, long day.

Right-- bed.


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Ave, Metropolitician!

Saddam Hussein's execution spawned an excellent, Korea-related post over at Mike Hurt's fine blog. A great excerpt:

When you're Saddam Hussein, you're no longer a person, no longer an individual, but rather the figure who made policies that affected whole populations – without their consent, and usually beyond the bounds of any semblance of law, morality, or anyone's notion of decency.

And in the case of an entire population held in control by the power of the gun, once they're out from under it, you are literally history. And that's what this is about – starting a clean slate, in terms of history, identity, and being free from the shadow of the past that a still-living dictator inevitably casts. As long as that man lives, you can't really be free of him.

So the question is – why is Chun Doo Hwan alive and well, free and comfortable, living high on the hog in one of the richest neighborhoods in Seoul? When I asked that question to a few Korean friends, the responses were variations on, "Come on – how can you kill a former president?"

My American response would be, "Umm, with a firing squad, lethal injection, hanging, or being dragged to death by wild horses. Choose one."

If the guy was held responsible for all kinds of crimes against the nation and its people, and was given the death sentence by said state, why is he chillin' like a veritable villain in his house in Pyeongchang-dong?

Well, maybe the collective memory of Korean folks is like they say it is – like a thin, tin ramen pot – in that even national indignation cools down as quickly as it heats up.

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MexiOrgy vs. MexicOrgy

It was suggested by some folks that "MexicOrgy" sounds better than "MexiOrgy." I agree, but I can't get the image of a corgi/chihuahua combination out of my head. (Yes, I realize that "corgi" is pronounced with a hard "G.")


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Happy New Year

If nothing else, I could start a career as a bad graphic designer. Like my mock taqueria ad?

Happy New Year, folks, and may 2007 be better for you than 2006 was for me.


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