Category: Web

I read this article this morning and can’t stop thinking about it:
Terror in the Skies, Again?
If you were the author, would you have gotten up and done something? If there really were air marshals on that flight, what the fuck were they waiting for? Perhaps they didn’t have “probable cause,” i.e., one of the “musicians” to emerge from the lav and ask another if they had more matches, “cuz the fuse is damp with ketchup.” I have this sinking feeling there were no air marshals on that flight, and the crew was simply going by the handbook to placate the passengers. If so, that’s just a horrible mindfuck. But I certainly wouldn’t put it over the airline companies at this point.

19. Is it round? Yes.
18. Is it made of metal? No.
17. Is it multicolored? No.
16. Is it straight? No.
15. Do you clean it regularly? Yes.
14. Does it use electricity? Sometimes.
13. Can you use it at school? Yes.
12. Does it get really hot? No.
11. Does it have writing on it? Sometimes.
10. Is it a common household object? Yes.
9. Does it move? No.
8. Can it be used for recreation? No.
7. Do you open and close it? Yes.
6. Does it come in different colors? Yes.
5. Can you lift it? No.
4. Can you control it? Yes.
3. Is it outside? Sometimes.
2. Is it smaller than a loaf of bread? No.
1. It is classified as Other.
Go get owned by an AI.
I even threw it some loops, switching between an American and Japanese POV (regarding electricity, coloration, etc.) and it still guessed correctly. Wow.
I know that some of you will contest my answer for #8 but I was truly doubting it would guess correctly, so decided to give it a break. Underestimated my future electronic masters, yes I did.

Happy belated BV to the Ho. I’m in the middle of his book. It’s sitting in my throne room, bookmarked with toilet paper. Damn fitting, I must say.

Hot from the inbox:

Fellow blogger,
I am sending this message to the bloggers on my blogroll (and a few other folks) in the hopes that some of you will print this, or at least find it interesting enough for comment. I’m not usually the type to distribute such messages, but I felt this was important enough to risk disturbing you.
As some of you may already know, a wing of the South Korean government, the Ministry of Information and Culture (MIC), is currently clamping down on a variety of blogging service providers and other websites. The government is attempting to control access to video of the recent Kim Sun-il beheading, ostensibly because the video will have a destabilizing influence. (I haven’t seen the video.)
Many Western expat bloggers in Korea are in an uproar; others, myself included, are largely unsurprised: South Korea has not come far out of the shadow of its military dictatorship past. My own response to this censorship is not so much anger as amusement, because the situation represents an intellectual challenge as well as a chance to fight for freedom of expression. Perhaps even to fight for freedom, period.
South Korea is a rapidly evolving country, but in many ways it remains the Hermit Kingdom. Like a turtle retreating into its shell, the people are on occasion unable to deal with the harsh realities of the world around them. This country is, for example, in massive denial about the atrocities perpetrated in North Korea, and, as with many Americans, is in denial about the realities of Islamic terrorism, whose roots extend chronologically backward far beyond the lifetime of the Bush Administration. This cultural tendency toward denial (and overreaction) at least partially explains the Korean government’s move to censor so many sites.
The fact that the current administration, led by President Noh Mu-hyon, is supposedly “liberal”-leaning makes this censorship more ironic. It also fuels propagandistic conservative arguments that liberals are, at heart, closet totalitarians. I find this to be a specious caricature of the liberal position (I consider myself neither liberal nor conservative), but to the extent that Koreans are concerned about what image they project to the world, it is legitimate for them to worry over whether they are currently playing into stereotype: South Korea is going to be associated with other violators of human rights, such as China.
Of the many hypocrisies associated with the decision to censor, the central one is that no strong governmental measures were taken to suppress the distribution of the previous beheading videos (Nick Berg et al.). This, too, fuels the suspicion that Koreans are selfish or, to use their own proverbial image, “a frog in a well”– radically blinkered in perspective, collectively unable to empathize with the sufferings of non-Koreans, but overly sensitive to their own suffering.
I am writing this letter not primarily to criticize all Koreans (I’m ethnically half-Korean, and an American citizen), nor to express a generalized condemnation of Korean culture. As is true anywhere else, this culture has its merits and demerits, and overall, I’m enjoying my time here. No, my purpose is more specific: to cause the South Korean government as much embarrassment as possible, and perhaps to motivate Korean citizens to engage in some much-needed introspection.
To this end, I need the blogosphere’s help, and this letter needs wide distribution (you may receive other letters from different bloggers, so be prepared!). I hope you’ll see fit to publish this letter on your site, and/or to distribute it to concerned parties: censorship in a supposedly democratic society simply cannot stand. The best and quickest way to persuade the South Korean government to back down from its current position is to make it lose face in the eyes of the world. This can only happen through a determined (and civilized!) campaign to expose the government’s hypocrisy and to cause Korean citizens to rethink their own narrow-mindedness.
We can debate all we want about “root causes” with regard to Islamic terrorism, Muslim rage, and all the rest, but for me, it’s much more constructive to proceed empirically and with an eye to the future. Like it or not, what we see today is that Korea is inextricably linked with Iraq issues, and with issues of Islamic fundamentalism. Koreans, however, may need some persuading that this is in fact the case– that we all need to stand together as allies against a common enemy.
If you are interested in giving the South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture a piece of your mind (or if you’re a reporter who would like to contact them for further information), please email the MIC at:
webmaster@mic.go.kr
Thank you,
Kevin Kim
bighominid@gmail.com
http://bighominid.blogspot.com
(Blogspot is currently blocked in Korea, along with other providers; please go to Unipeak.com and type my URL into the search window to view my blog.)
PS: To send me an email, please type “hairy chasms” in the subject line to avoid being trashed by my custom-made spam filter.
PPS: Much better blogs than mine have been covering this issue, offering news updates and heartfelt commentary. To start you off, visit:
http://marmot.blogs.com/korea/
http://jeffinkorea.blogs.com/
http://aboutjoel.com/
http://oranckay.net/blog/
http://kimcheegi.blogs.com/
http://gopkorea.blogs.com/flyingyangban
http://rathbonepress.tblog.com/
http://blog.woojay.net/
Here as well, Unipeak is the way to go if you’re in Korea and unable to view the above blogs. People in the States should, in theory, have no problems accessing these sites, which all continue to be updated.
PPPS: This email is being cc’ed to the South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture. Please note that other bloggers are writing about the Korean government’s creation of a task force that will presumably fight internet terror. I and others have an idea that this task force will serve a different purpose. If this is what South Korea’s new “aligning with the PRC” is all about, then there’s reason to worry for the future.
PPPS: This email is being cc’ed to the South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture. Please note that other bloggers are writing about the Korean government’s creation of a task force that will presumably fight internet terror. I and others have an idea that this task force will serve a different purpose. If this is what South Korea’s new “aligning with the PRC” is all about, then there’s reason to worry for the future.

Note: I’ll be happy to post letters for any other bloggers who ask, or help out in any other way possible. Drop me a line in the comments or at:
j@DELETETHESECAPScosmicbuddha.com
I am an avid reader of many Korea-based blogs and wrote a post about it with many excellent links here:
http://www.cosmicbuddha.com/blog/archives/000257.html
Fight the power, brothas!

Fox News Channel To Sign Off In Japan
This was inevitable I think. When they changed to paid subscription in the aftermath of the their first announcement of quitting in 2001, I was happy because the option was there to add the channel to my SkyPerfect TV (satellite broadcaster) plan. The thing is, I half think that they must have wanted an excuse (low subscription numbers) to bail entirely, because the monthly fee was set at 1,000 yen. Not a reasonable amount when you consider that CNN and BBC international editions (in English and Japanese) are free with most basic plans.
So I bookmarked channel 740 as a favorite and it showed up every day (except the 20th of every month, when SkyPerfect unlocked all channels as an incentive to subscribe to more channels) as the single black screen in my slideshow channel surfing routine. Every month for the past year, when my statement for the service would arrive I have considered just making the jump and adding Fox News… In fact, I was thinking about it just yesterday, so this sucks in a way – but then again, I’ll never have to think about it again. It’s not even an option. Nice and clean, black and white, oh so Zen in that it Is or Is Not. And now it Is Not. And I am stuck with Japanese news channels, CNN, or BBC.
I want my news “Fair and Balanced.” (Wow, I almost said that with a straight face.) Let me state that a little better: I’m sick and tired of Paula Zahn in the morning asking people if “Abu Grabe” should be a deciding factor in the continuing existence of the universe as we know it and would like to subscribe to an alternate news channel (other than the Beeb since they are just like CNN in, but blimier). However, 500 yen a month is the maximum amount I’d be willing to pay. I only watch TV news when I’m not in the mood for computers or my hands are busy when cooking, etc. 1,000 yen a month is OK only if there are no commercials (and those 5 minute interval splash screens are in the same category as commercials).

Until today, I had always been under the impression that there were no civilian casualties as a result of Japanese attack on the US mainland during WWII. Wrong:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102499/
Sure, I’d heard of the largely ineffective shelling of oil fields in Santa Barbara, a telegraph station in Vancouver (Canada), and Fort Stevens in Oregon by Japanese submarines, as well as forest fires caused by incendiary bombing done by a sub-launched plane (which were fought by the predecessor of modern smoke jumper batallions, the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion). I’d also read about the balloon bomb project fugo launched on the emperor’s birthday in 1944. However, most of the reports I had read until now lacked in detail regarding effectiveness of these weapons, or simply stated they had caused forest fires in Washington or Oregon.
Starting from the bibliography in the article linked above I will begin researching this subject further as I find it interesting that a minister’s pregnant wife and children could be killed with so little consequence (although the media blackout convinced the Japanese to stop the program, which may haved saved many more lives). Oh, and that the Japanese could have caused a nuclear accident and prevented or delayed the nuking of their own country with paper balloons floated in the airstream. Read the article, it’s a revelation in many ways.

Using piranhas for bait!: Fishing for vampires.
Via Fishing, Drinking, Stinking, the best fishing blog I have ever seen.

How about the ever-popular *hugs* ? (>_< )( >_< ) My intellectual offering for today is a short story written exclusively in the *hugs* format (as in, "You broke up with Brandon? You poor thing! *hugs*”):
*wakes*
*wipes shit out of eyes*
*hungers*
*stir fries kitten with soy sauce*
*savors*
*eructates*
*breaks wind*
*soils pants*
*grins*