Pill-poppin'
When you get sick in Korea, with anything, the doctor writes you a prescription. Not that that’s unlike the west, of course. The drug companies worldwide make sure that the medicowhores push chemicals on their patients relentlessly. But in Korea, this is actually a new feature of the medical landscape – until recently you were able to just walk into a pharmacy and say “I’ve got this pain right here,” and the pharmacist would load you up with armloads of drugs.
The law was changed a few years ago, and the pharmacists kicked up a big stink. To no avail, happily.
But no matter the illness with which you have been diagnosed, you always get the same number of pills. Five. Regardless of whether you have cancer or a common cold, ulcers or an ear infection, you come away from the pharmacist with a string of little sealed wax paper packets, in each of which is 5 pills, of various colours and sizes. Without fail. I’ve never actually checked to see if these variety packs of pills change depending on the illness with which you are currently stricken, but I am curious as to what they might be.
Fine Tuning
My good buddy the mighty Bearman (why not go say hi – he’s one of the friendly ones!) has sent me a screenshot illustrating the sort of problem that yhbc was talking about here, on IE 5/5.5, with the new layout. I hope I’ve corrected it, but I don’t have access to that browser. If you’re using an older version of IE and things look messed up, please leave me a comment. Thanks!
Threadneedle Musings
I posted this over here a few days ago, to resounding silence, which could be due to the fact that a) it’s bollocks, b) no one cares, c) no one read it or d) a combination of the three. But since I’m nothing if not pigheaded, and it gelled a couple of things for me in my mind about both the questions of identity that were doing the rounds recently and the cross-blog conversations idea that I’ve gone on about before, I’m going to cross-post it here. Because I can, and because I like feedback, even though I am a little gunshy tiptoeing through the backdoor back into Smart Person Land. Still, forward!
I’d add to what Shelley and David have said about ThreadNeedle and blogs, just off the top of my head, my take on it : that in the online ‘asynchronous discussion communities’ that Dan mentioned below in /m106, you have represented yourself through the things you say and have said in that community. There may have been an additional body of work, but this was secondary to the text-representation of yourself that accreted, word by word, as a result of your participation. My personal example of this would be my participation at Metafilter over the last couple of years.
This is a trivial observation, I know. But your avatar was effectively yourself as you chose to represent yourself via your comments and conversations.
When we talk about a weblog, though, I think it’s profitable to talk about two separate entities created as an adjunct of our online presence, at least the one that derives from the weblog itself : the (for lack of a better word) publication and the person.
Now certainly, the ‘publication’ is a mirror, to whatever extent, of the person writing it. We see many weblogs that stop here at this point, that have no commenting systems enabled, or that pay little attention the ‘community’, that are traditional web logs (ie collections of links with minimal commentary) or diaries or photoblogs or warblogs or god knows what…but that are intended less as manifestations of the person behind them than publications about that person or their interests.
Another dimension, though, comes in with weblogs that have comment threads, that encourage and participate in conversations with other weblogs/webloggers. In this situation, the weblog not only becomes a publication about something (which might, in the case of more diarist-type blogs, be the person who is writing it) but a representation, an avatar of that person. The weblog itself becomes an active extension of the weblogger’s identity (I wish I’d thought about this during the recent conversations around the blogs about ‘identity’. Ah well.) The weblog is something that is carried with them (or is an extension of their identity online…? I’m not sure about this bit at all), and the cross-blog conversations that occur as a result of this, in posts and their comment threads, are in a way a new and larger version of the sort of discussion types we’re historically used to, that Dan mentioned in his earlier post. A version that carries a body of work, a more deliberate one, along with the community member.
Does this make sense? I’m riffing here, and I have to admit that I haven’t read David’s book yet, so the sort of thing I’m trying to get a handle on (and communicate at the same time) might be old news.
Anyway (*takes a breath*) – I see these weblogs, the blogs that are not only ‘publications’ about something but also representations of the personality behind the words (and are this way because the weblogger has comments threads and/or engages in cross-blog conversations in their main posts and/or blogrolls people (the use of the word ‘people’ here is deliberate) as an acknowledgment of community), avatars that engage in conversation, to be the audience at which Shelley‘s ThreadNeedle is aimed. And I think (hope) that the service might be a major step forward, if it reaches critical mass.
(Also, don’t forget to add your two bits to the conversation about Threadneedle still going on here.)
A Possibility
A door has opened today, just a crack, and it looks as if it might just be possible for me to go back to Australia sometime in the next year or so. Until I was chatting with my old friend/old boss earlier today and the discussion turned to the real possibility of me returning Oz-ward, I hadn’t realized how much I love and how much I achingly miss Sydney.
*crosses fingers*
What am I going to be able to bitch about if I leave Korea again, though?
Public Service Announcement
And now, as a special public service announcement, here’s some stupid sh-t that was running through my brain this afternoon as I made some chicken cacciatore :
Since it seems we’ve been saddled with the monicker ‘warbloggers’ for the forseeable future, I thought we should open up some more niches for folks, you know, so they don’t feel left out. You can have hours of fun, if you’re so inclined, assigning your friends and neighbours to the right Tribe, a la the Harry Potter thing. If I had the energy, I’d make one of those stupid f–king quizzes. But I don’t. So… onward!
I propose the foundation of the following new BlogTribes :
Any additions?
The Hundred Thousand Years War Q&A
What is happening in Cro-Magnon Territory and the Neanderthal territories?
Cro-Magnon forces moved into key Neanderthal towns in the Big River Caves at the end of cold season to try to halt a series of suicide attacks on its citizens.
There were many casualties in the military operation which also sparked a wave of protests in the Neanderthal world and led Cro-Magnon Territory’s main ally, That Other Tribe, to call for killmaker withdrawals.
The action caused much hardship among Neanderthals and the militant rock-throwing campaign against Cro-Magnon Territory has continued since.
So how did the violence begin?
The Neanderthal intifada, or uprising, broke out at the end of The Long Cold Season When The Mammoths Died.
Analysts say the atmosphere at the time was ripe for an explosion. Neanderthal frustration that years of the peace process had failed to deliver their political aspirations was intensified by the failure of the Deep Cave summit in Hot Season.
Then Cro-Magnon hard-liner Arshon visited a site in Shared Hunting Grounds known to Neanderthal Shamen as the Noble Sanctuary and to Cro Magnon Ghost Talkers as Happy Killing Floor.
The Neanderthals viewed the visit as provocative because the hunting ground lies on territory captured by Cro-Magnons in the Grandfather war and is at the centre of the fierce dispute over the sovereignty of Shared Hunting Grounds. It ended in bloody clashes at the Shamen tents, which quickly spread through the occupied Neanderthal territories.
Correspondents say the visit was intended to underline the Cro Mag claim to the hunting ground and its holy sites.
What has happened to the peace process?
One of the weaknesses of the Father Times peace process was that it deliberately left the most difficult issues – the status of Shared Hunting Grounds, refugees and borders – until last, in the belief that this would make them easier to resolve.
These issues were finally discussed when the former Other Tribe Chief Clon made an all-out attempt to bring then Cro Mag Ghost Talker Ehurak and the Neanderthal leader Yasafat together at The Other Tribe’s long house.
An agreement was in sight, but talks broke down over failure to agree on the future of Shared Hunting Grounds and – to a lesser extent – the fate of Neanderthal refugees.
Cro-Magnon leaders believed they had been generous to the Neanderthals, while Neanderthal negotiators rejected the proposals as inadequate.
The two sides came even closer to agreement when they met during The Long Cold Season When The Mammoths Died. But this, too, ended in failure.
There has been very little progress on the diplomatic front since Arshon took possession of the Leader Bone more than a year ago.
He has accused his predecessor of offering the Neanderthals unacceptable concessions and that all Cro-Magnon Territory got in return was violence.
One of the biggest obstacles to final status agreement is the issue of Cro Mag settlements, and Arshon has long been seen as a champion of the settlers’ cause.
The Neanderthal Authority currently controls most of The Big River but less than 40% of the Big River Caves, in non-contiguous chunks that are dotted with Cro-Magnon settlements. The Neanderthals believe there can only be a purely Neanderthal state if the settlements are dismantled.
Why are both sides locked in this violence?
Arshon says there is no room for dialogue as long as violence continues. He said the Ehurak Government tried to negotiate under hails of rocks for several months but to no avail.
The Cro-Magnon leader has shown a resolutely tough paw in his dealings with the Neanderthals – but commentators say his policies have support among most Cro-Magnons.
They support the government’s view that Cro-Magnon Territory is exercising its right to self-defence in the face of attacks from Neanderthal militants on Cro-Magnon civilians and defence forces.
The government accuses Yasafat of failing to contain militant groups like Big Stones Brotherhood and Neanderthal Ghost Eaters which carry out many of the attacks. But analysts are now increasingly arguing that Yasafat is in no position to control them.
The Neanderthals say militant attacks on Cro-Magnon Territory are inevitable as long as there is no satisfactory Neanderthal state.
The militant group BSB has pledged to escalate its activities and intensify the armed struggle against Cro-Magnon Territory. The group’s popularity has soared recently, following the demise of the peace process and general sense of despair.
Could the peace process be revived?
Any common ground that appeared to exist at the Other Tribe’s long house has been all but extinguished by more than a hundred thousand years of fighting.
The only thing that could make the two sides move is outside pressure.
There is hope that proposals put forward by more evolved branches of the species for peace and normalisation between Cro-Magnon Territory and its neanderthal neighbours could provide the much-needed momentum.
Under the terms of the proposal which was debated after The Long Cold Season When The Mammoths Died, Cro-Magnon Territory would withdraw from territory occupied in Grandfather Times and a Neanderthal state would be created with its capital in East Shared Hunting Grounds.
In return, Neanderthal nations would give Cro-Magnon Territory full diplomatic relations, including security guarantees, trade relations, animal skins, and some women.
But this plan will only be taken seriously by Arshon if it is actively promoted by the Other Tribes Big Chief Geush.
So far, the homo sapiens proposal has not led to any moves to halt the violence and revive the peace process.
[Search and replace liberties taken with this article.]
I'm Disco Dancing
I ran into another one of those odd but amusing Korea things as I shambled off to the doctor today to have him insert his video camera into my ears (revealing the most unnervingly unpleasant innerspace vistas I’ve seen in a long time, I must admit. I half-expected to see tiny demons, smoking cigars and lounging on the mounds of reddish-brown crud, poking the souls of the damned in the ass with pitchforks.
Aside to the aside : I tend to patronize practitioners of the medical profession as little as possible, as I’m just a little eccentric that way, and so new technogadgets like the teeny tiny video just blow me away. When did this stuff get invented? I’m kinda keen to make up some maladies just to see what other shiny med-gear surprises might be in store for me! And the patient management software he had, even though it was in Korean, of course, was really freakin cool as well.)
So, anyway, I’m walking down the street and the bass-heavy thumpathump of booty-shaking disco rumbles down the pavement at me. I step aside, matador-like, but it gets all up in my face, and I steel myself to the inevitable.
Although it’s like 33 degrees (that’s about fahrenheit 451 for you Americans out there) and the humidity is pushing 98 percent (i.e. if I hork a loogie, to, like, blend in with the crowd, it would kind of float there in front of me, ghostly as well as ghastly, and then slowly dissolve into a sticky mist), there are two rent-a-dancers outside the new shop in the recently-completed concrete block on the corner.
The new shop is a clothing store for infants called, Koreanically-enough given their dutiful but regrettable obsession with the fruits of fornication rather than the act itself, Baby Boss.
Still, undeterred by the surrealism of the whole proposition, the young ladies (who are quite stunningly lovely under all that furrowed-by-rivulets-of-sweat makeup) are shaking their booties frenetically, halting only to implore passersby to come in, buy something, anything for chrissakes, just please pretend to be interested, or he’ll beat us again!
Well, I exaggerate a titch, perhaps, for comedic effect, but there was indeed a guy who looked very much the part of The Procurer, red-faced and corpulent, leaning against a mini-van parked across the street, alternately scowling and leering. I suspect if he were not Korean, he’d be called Rocco. Hell, maybe he was called Rocco. I didn’t stop to ask.
Nor did I stop to browse the baby clothes. I hope the girls don’t pay for my inattention later.
I talked about this phenomenon here, too, if you’re interested.
Futzing Around
The new template I’ve been messing around with is live (as you’ve hopefully noticed), even if it’s perhaps not quite ready for primetime…why the hell not, eh? I’m not sure if I’m happy with it, but I wanted to try a couple things (like the category icons). Archives and comments display and so on have yet to be updated.
Should work fine in all modern browsers. Let me know if you have a problem. Any feedback is much appreciated. I haven’t integrated a single damn thing that Mark’s been talking about lately (except accidentally, like today’s, because I hate popup windows too), since I’m a complete bastard but I probably will, once I iron out the bugs and clean up the extraneous crud. Also, I have encountered some folks out there who are super-hip and elegantly snarky, and who have been known to curl their designer-lip at the preponderance of grey and blue one sees all over the place. f–k ya. There’s a reason I wear blue jeans and that 90% of my other clothing is either black or white or grey. They’re easy.
And by the way : happy Canada Day to you all, even if you’re, you know, not.
Edit : The juxtaposition of images used herein is in no way intended to promote or condone the crime of drinking and driving. Driving and then drinking, however, now that’s just peachy.
Pointing
You’ve probably heard of Epimenides’ Paradox. Epimenides was a Cretan, and the paradox that bears his name goes like so :
“All Cretans are liars.”
Of course, if the statement is true, then Epimenides is a liar, and thus the statement is false. If it’s false…well you can see where that one’s going. The same paradox is manifest if you say “I am lying” or “This statement is false”.
This is simpleminded stuff, the kind of thing that was intellectually thrilling when we were ten years old. I know. The self-referential frisson. Bear with me.
Let’s stretch out old Epimenides a bit into something that’s also very familiar :
The following sentence is false.
The preceding sentence is true.
The preceding sentence is true.
Taken separately, each of these sentences is perfectly fine, potentially useful, unremarkable. Taken as a unit, though, we’re back at the bar with old Epimenides, swilling wine and scratching at our verminous beards in bemusement, back in Paradox City, Arizona.
It would be possible, of course, to build a group of 3 or 4 or more sentences, each of which in isolation is perfectly acceptable, but which as a group leads us into botheration again. The way in which these sentences point to one another spawns the whirling core of chaos from which the paradox emerges. The way in which they refer to one another generates all the heat.
There’s a quote, or just a bit of homespun wisdom, I’m not sure which, that surfaces from time to time, one that I seem to recall deploying here sometime in the last year or so, in relation to something or other. It’s also something most of us have experienced at least once, which is why it’s juicy. It goes like so :
If you point at something, a dog will look at your finger, rather than the thing at which you’re pointing.
I used this, as I think most do, to poke fun at people who ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ or ‘can’t see past their own noses’, or just to make myself feel clever. I don’t recall, exactly.
But I’ve been thinking this morning about Epimenides, and my growing dissatisfaction with a whole range of things in my life, and I realized that I’ve been completely wrong all this time.
You see, the dog is right.
It’s the act of pointing that deserves the attention. The actor, who by pointing, attaches significance to that at which he points. It’s the relationship between the pointer and the pointee, if you will, and the fact that the pointee is frequently pointing back – this is where the Good Stuff comes from.
Now that I’ve gotten out of the bathtub and written this down, I realize that what I’ve been saying here applies in good measure to this weblogging stuff as well.
I really was only thinking about my own life, as I tend to do. Your results may vary.
This is a Test. This is only a Test.
This is a test of the emergency broadcast system.
Poop. The upgrade to MT 2.2 has borked my categories a bit, no doubt due to something stupid I did. Please stand by.
Edit : I’m reflagging entries with categories by hand. This is going to take longer than I thought.
Treasure
Koan :
A monk asked Nansen : “Is there a teaching no master ever taught before?”
Nansen said : “Yes, there is.”
“What is it?” asked the monk.
Nansen replied : “It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things.”
Mumon’s Commentary :
Old Nansen gave away his treasure words. He must have been greatly upset.
Mumon’s Poem :
Nansen was too kind and lost his treasure.
Truly, words have no power.
Even though the mountain becomes the sea,
Words cannot open another’s mind.
Like Young Dogs
“For the sake of Korean football and the Korean people, we will go like young dogs at Germany,” says Guus Hiddink, the recently-deified coach of the Korean football team.
I’ve considered and discarded about half a dozen silly jokes, but I feel it’d be best if I just leave a space for you to come up with your own, as mine were invariably rude.
Please take this opportunity to insert own humorous comment here (results may vary, void where prohibited by law) : _________________________________________________________.
There, now – wasn’t that fun?
The game match kicks off in about 4 hours.
Edit : Well, they lost, but it was a good, clean game, and the Koreans have done phenomenally well by getting as far as they have, so no disgrace. Congratulations to them, and to hell with the whiners. In other, related news, North Korean state television picked today to reveal to their citizens that South Korea was actually hosting the World Cup. No mention was made of Japan.
Those North Korean apparatchiks would be a laff riot if they weren’t so determinedly nasty, dim-witted and inclined to wax corpulent like giant bouffant-sporting post-apocalyptic aphids on the refined agony of their own people.
You got a problem with that?
Damn, I like gadgets.
Edit : Microsoft-specific gadgets it would seem, sadly.
Still : neato.
Daehan Minguk! Again!
That was an astonishing semifinal game, and the Korean team makes me proud to be…
…well, you know. Canadian. Got caught up in it for a second, there. But honestly – what a well-fought, sportsmanlike, pulse-pounder of a match. sh-t like this might just make a sports fan of me after all these years.
(Edit : Although, clearly, there are some questions about the accuracy of the officiating.)
There’s going to be one hell of a party here tonight. The game just finished, and it’s cocktail hour on a Saturday night.
Wonderchicken vs (ex-)Space Nerd!
I’m not sure how happy I am to be cast as a Bad Guy in Dune, The Musical, but hey, I’m happy to be cast at all. Beats waiting tables. You take the luck of the 268-million-strong draw, or you go home empty-handed. It’s not lost on me that the casting process occurred under the auspices of a bottle of The Macallan, either, which might explain my inclusion amongst the ranks of the better-known and slightly less prone to outbursts of borderline psychosis.
But it does make me especially happy to be slated to engage in mortal combat (whilst singing something heartstirring and suitably martial, one hopes) with Wil Wheaton. That oughta be heaps o’ fun… but now I’d better start reading his blog a little more often, to study up on his moves! Them Hollywood types is full of devious trickery, I’ve heard tell….
Put up your dukes, El Whea al’ Ton!
You reckon?
“How weblogs straddle personal and social spaces and the potential implications for developing new communities.”
Tom from Plasticbag.org says some pretty cool stuff about some things. Powerpoint, 2.8 Mb. (That’s funny, isn’t it? I wonder who the presentees were…)
Anyway, a quote :
The best, the strongest, the most creative communities can emerge out of the interconnected nature of individual spaces.
Making great communities is about celebrating the individuals within them – giving them spaces that they can use to show off their creativity and passionsâ¦
And in return these individuals will themselves build a vibrant, creative and passionate communityâ¦
Making great communities is about celebrating the individuals within them – giving them spaces that they can use to show off their creativity and passionsâ¦
And in return these individuals will themselves build a vibrant, creative and passionate communityâ¦
No argument here.
Transliteration
Jonathon’s talked recently about the way his name is modified by Japanese speakers to make it a word they can more easily pronounce. This is probably why, while watching the World Cup game between Brazil and England this afternoon, I noticed the oddball way that the name ‘Ronaldo’ (who’s still an idiot, as far as I’m concerned) is rendered in Korean.
It’s doubly odd, because Han’gul (the Korean alphabet) is perfectly capable of rendering the name perfectly.
This
which sounds like Ro – Nal – Do, would be the perfect way to go, I’d think. Sounds almost identical, bar the minor differences in the way the ‘r’ sound and the ‘o’ sounds are pronounced in Korea.
But noooo……
For some reason, the Korean spelling of his name on TV today (and all the other times I’ve seen it) looked like this :
This sounds like Ho – Na – Oo – Doo.
What the hell is up with that? I have no idea.
But this creative mangling of the sounds of names and other words imported from other languages drives me moderately batty sometimes, as one of the things I have to do in my work is (for example) to disabuse my students of the notion that the proper English pronunciation of ‘sports’ is ‘suh-PO-chuh’, which is the correct way to pronounce the word as it is written in Korean. This tends to be difficult, as they’ve seen and heard the word in all its Konglish glory every damn day of their lives for 20 years, on the evening news.
Don’t even get me started on ‘Fighting!’
Ah well. That’s what they pay me the big bucks for.
Think, build, lather, rinse, repeat…
Help Burningbird to build a tool that may just enable the next generation of blogspace interconnectedness (never one for hyberbole, me) by dropping your comments and suggestions here.
[further to this and this]
Self-Link Love
My design for 9622.net – which is a MeFi-offshoot community blog created by a bunch of groovy and determinedly silly Metafiltrons who outgrew their cult thread and have been demonstrated to harbour an unhealthy obsession with monkeys – has gone live.
The design strikes a fine balance between a total absence of useability and, well, determined silliness, I think. I just thought I’d link it to toot my own horn, as I’ve never done something like this for a group of people before, and I think it’s pretty spunky. Considering I don’t know jack about design, and just make sh-t up as I go along.
[Please note the liberal use of #006699, which is an homage to you-know-where, of course.]
Edit : [Warning – self-obsessed wankage ahead] It strikes me as I wander around, reading the words of people who know so much more than I about, well, stuff, that it would be, with the kindness dial turned up to 11, charitable to describe me as ‘an enthusiastic amateur’.
I leap into stuff with both feet, I do, like that ‘design job’ I pointed to above, but it seems that I am almost never equipped with the training or tools to attempt anything but make sh-t up as I go along. I keep going at it with guns blazing, but I do wonder if my mock-buffoonery is just a cover to deflect accusations of real buffoonery. In my decision many many years ago to just wander the planet and see what happened (with 10 kilos of books in my backpack, naturally) I couldn’t forsee that the truly Towering Influences in my life, the people that I’d meet in out-of-the way corners of the planet who would shape my vision of the person I wanted to be, would be the mad bastards, tinkerers, and yes, the enthusiastic amateurs.
On nights like tonight, though, when I’m exhausted, drained, and sweating like Corky The Magical Sweating Bear, when I’m reading things people say that I understand, dimly, but that are clearly just signposts to deeper and more tangled thickets of learning, it’s times like this that I begin to suspect my approach to knowledge hasn’t panned out to be as good an idea as it seemed at the time that I devised it. Which was probably on a nude beach in Greece or some damn place like that.
Is this the mid-life crisis of the childless? Damned if I know. I’ll keep you posted.