Korean Hostage Crisis as Seen by Overseas Korean Volunteers

Yesterday, I asked a group of four young Koreans who have come to teach our students computer skills the following questions:

  1. Were the Koreans who were taken hostage missionaries, or what? Is it important to make the distinction between missionaries and volunteer workers?
  2. Are average people in Korea blaming the US for what happened?
  3. Are you hopeful about a diplomatic solution?

Their answers were:

  1. Yes, and YES(!).
  2. No.
  3. ….

So there you go. The news says that progress is being made and the Taliban is promising release today or tomorrow. That would be nice. The Taliban ain’t exactly nice guys, though. I hope everything works out, but let me say this: If you aren’t prepared to sacrifice for your beliefs, why hold to them at all?

cute fish (and not-so-cute fish)

Go see for yourself:
Cute
Not-so-cute
(To my knowledge, I’ve only eaten one of the fish on that list. Hint: It wasn’t the coelacanth)
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In related news, the last of my impossible fish died a few weeks ago, I think. The red one was the first to go, and blue was the last. The whole tank got hit with some horrible gill disease that killed all inhabitants – impossible fish, algae eaters, tetras, and Japanese goldfish. The blue fish hung on a whole month or so longer than the second longest survivor (purple, I think), but in the end he just wasted away. Eventually, we put him outside in a ceramic fountain we have in the garden (aka “the hospital tank”) and (presumably – I haven’t seen him since, but there are places to hide in that fountain) let him go off to the big fishbowl in the sky.
RIP, blue.

24 Treehugging?

Before I got crippled in the bandwidth department, I was on the front lines of 24, seeing more than a few episodes before they even aired on television, so it pains me to read this: Jack Bauer’s Next Mission: Fighting Global Warming
Cry me a river if Jack Bauer drinks California Condor blood for dinner with a dugong fetus apertif; all I really care about is that he kicks ass constantly and consistently… Fuck the Prius delivery routine, fuck solar powered cappuccino makers, and fuck these arbitrary carbon footprints – for fuck’s sake are you all wearing palm frond skirts and organic hemp pantalones, or what? – and give me Jack shooting people’s mothers in the kneecaps in the name of national security already… Is that too much to ask, or what?
Besides, let’s not forget which channel produces 24 – this ain’t the Discovery Channel, yo.