Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Although it's hard to gauge their true intentions, the capitalists at Business Week Magazine do have some good points to make about the upcoming election. Read about it here.
By the way, we already have a direct vote system for presidential elections in South Korea. Imagine that, the "champion" of democracy out-democratized by a bunch of yellow people.
By the way, we already have a direct vote system for presidential elections in South Korea. Imagine that, the "champion" of democracy out-democratized by a bunch of yellow people.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
So I am dismayed, as my cell phone has somehow managed to lose all of my stored phone numbers. Ever want to hear from me again? Then give me a call. You DO remember my number, don't you?
It's blogs like Riverbend's and Jo Wilding's that make me ashamed of my own, where I do little more than talk about myself. Go read them.
Sunday, July 25, 2004
I found out that not only has this blog been blocked from Korea, but every blog on foreign servers has been blocked from Korea. This is part of the current administration's damage control, to counter the political fallout from the killing of a South Korean in Iraq about a month ago. Apparently, various bloggers had been posting pictures and videos of a graphic nature concerning the killing, which have been forbidden (the fascists!) in Korea.
Of course this is month-old news, but I don't think I've ever commented on Kim Sun-il's untimely demise at the hands of Iraqi fighters. And I really don't have a lot to say about it, other than to note that Mr. Kim had been working for a South Korean firm which had been selling various supplies to the US military in Iraq. I think he knew the risks of trying to make a profit off of the suffering of others (namely, the Iraqi civilians brutalized by the American occupation), and I don't really understand why all of South Korea got in an uproar when his gamble didn't pay off.
Imperialism is a high-stakes game. I guess Koreans wouldn't really know anything about that.
Of course this is month-old news, but I don't think I've ever commented on Kim Sun-il's untimely demise at the hands of Iraqi fighters. And I really don't have a lot to say about it, other than to note that Mr. Kim had been working for a South Korean firm which had been selling various supplies to the US military in Iraq. I think he knew the risks of trying to make a profit off of the suffering of others (namely, the Iraqi civilians brutalized by the American occupation), and I don't really understand why all of South Korea got in an uproar when his gamble didn't pay off.
Imperialism is a high-stakes game. I guess Koreans wouldn't really know anything about that.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
The traffic to this blog has been pretty low lately (click on the little blue square at the bottom). So, to prevent alienating what little readership I might have, I suggest not reading the following post, if you are easily offended.
Thanks.
Thanks.
I was amused to find this article in Zmag today, especially after listening to Galwang's analysis of the concept of American masculinity with respect to Erich Fromm's book, earlier today. The brief Zmag article discusses the influence that male "macho" thinking has on the aggressive foreign policy in this country, and goes on to gently suggest that perhaps the need to assert their unbending manliness is what drives the political thinking of hawks in America. Being a somewhat blunt person myself, I prefer the less subtle and more direct explanation put forth by George Carlin on his rant about the first Persian Gulf War:
"I also look at war itself a little differently from most. I see it largely as an exercise in dick-waving. That's really all it is: alot of men standing around in a field waving their dicks at one another. Men, insecure about the size of their penises, choose to kill one another. That's also what all that moron athlete bullshit is all about, and what that macho, male posturing and strutting around in bars and locker rooms represents. It's called 'dick fear.' Men are terrified that their dicks are inadequate, and so they have to 'compete' in order to feel better about themselves. And since war is the ultimate competition, essentially men are killing one another in order to improve their genital self-esteem. You needn't be a historian or a political scientist to see the Bigger Dick Foreign Policy Theory at work. It goes like this: 'What? They have bigger dicks? Bomb them!' And of course, the bombs, the rockets, and the bullets are all shaped like penises. Phallic weapons. There's an unconscious need to project the national penis into the affairs of others. It's called 'fucking with people'. So as far as I'm concerned, that whole thing in the Persian Gulf was nothing more than one big dick-waving cockfight. In this particular case, Saddam Hussein questioned the size of George Bush's dick. And George Bush had been called a wimp for so long, he apparently felt the need to act out his manhood fantasies by sending America's white children to kill other people's brown children. Even his name, 'Bush', as slang, is related to the genitals without being the genitals. A bush is sort of a passive, secondary sex characteristic. It's even used as a slang term for women: 'Hey, pal, how's the bush in this area?' I can't help thinking, if this president's name had been George Boner...well, he might have felt a little better about himself, and he wouldn't have had to kill all those children. Too bad he couldn't locate his manhood."
Of course, making fun of heterosexual masculinity (or what passes as such in this society), is like shooting fish in a barrel. So I'll do it too.
Growing up in Korea, my parents and the adults around me did give me an impression of what it meant to "be a man"... just like in America, we were given standards to live up to. This was when I was quite young, but I remember being impressed upon that to be considered masculine was to act responsibly, honorably, and respectful towards others. Not that these traits were not expected of women: I think that those were the expectations put upon all mature, grown-up individuals in Korea... and in my male case, to be considered masculine was to become a mature person. Which is not to say that there are no prescribed gender roles that people face in Korean society, but the standards of attractive character that people aspire to live up to there are not so dependent on gender. Mature is sexy, if that makes any sense.
So it was something of a change for me, to move to a society where I was considered more on the effeminate side, if I were to act in a reasonably well-behaved, respectful manner. In order to be considered manly here, I'd have to work far harder than that: I would have to be forceful, assertive, and domineering. I would have show others my burgeoning confidence by being cocky and nonchalant, to the point of being irresponsible. I would have to be aggressive and territorial, in order to prove to the whole world my towering manhood. I would have to disrespect certain portions of the population, such as women and gays. These people, I would have to bring into submission.
Well, I never did like trying to live up to the standards of others, and having to change to American standards after moving here was too much. So, I kept my old Korean standards, and I settled for the emasculated image that came along with it here. And that was ok... I'm still busy working towards being a Korean man someday.
note: Galwang also recommends more Fromm.
"I also look at war itself a little differently from most. I see it largely as an exercise in dick-waving. That's really all it is: alot of men standing around in a field waving their dicks at one another. Men, insecure about the size of their penises, choose to kill one another. That's also what all that moron athlete bullshit is all about, and what that macho, male posturing and strutting around in bars and locker rooms represents. It's called 'dick fear.' Men are terrified that their dicks are inadequate, and so they have to 'compete' in order to feel better about themselves. And since war is the ultimate competition, essentially men are killing one another in order to improve their genital self-esteem. You needn't be a historian or a political scientist to see the Bigger Dick Foreign Policy Theory at work. It goes like this: 'What? They have bigger dicks? Bomb them!' And of course, the bombs, the rockets, and the bullets are all shaped like penises. Phallic weapons. There's an unconscious need to project the national penis into the affairs of others. It's called 'fucking with people'. So as far as I'm concerned, that whole thing in the Persian Gulf was nothing more than one big dick-waving cockfight. In this particular case, Saddam Hussein questioned the size of George Bush's dick. And George Bush had been called a wimp for so long, he apparently felt the need to act out his manhood fantasies by sending America's white children to kill other people's brown children. Even his name, 'Bush', as slang, is related to the genitals without being the genitals. A bush is sort of a passive, secondary sex characteristic. It's even used as a slang term for women: 'Hey, pal, how's the bush in this area?' I can't help thinking, if this president's name had been George Boner...well, he might have felt a little better about himself, and he wouldn't have had to kill all those children. Too bad he couldn't locate his manhood."
Of course, making fun of heterosexual masculinity (or what passes as such in this society), is like shooting fish in a barrel. So I'll do it too.
Growing up in Korea, my parents and the adults around me did give me an impression of what it meant to "be a man"... just like in America, we were given standards to live up to. This was when I was quite young, but I remember being impressed upon that to be considered masculine was to act responsibly, honorably, and respectful towards others. Not that these traits were not expected of women: I think that those were the expectations put upon all mature, grown-up individuals in Korea... and in my male case, to be considered masculine was to become a mature person. Which is not to say that there are no prescribed gender roles that people face in Korean society, but the standards of attractive character that people aspire to live up to there are not so dependent on gender. Mature is sexy, if that makes any sense.
So it was something of a change for me, to move to a society where I was considered more on the effeminate side, if I were to act in a reasonably well-behaved, respectful manner. In order to be considered manly here, I'd have to work far harder than that: I would have to be forceful, assertive, and domineering. I would have show others my burgeoning confidence by being cocky and nonchalant, to the point of being irresponsible. I would have to be aggressive and territorial, in order to prove to the whole world my towering manhood. I would have to disrespect certain portions of the population, such as women and gays. These people, I would have to bring into submission.
Well, I never did like trying to live up to the standards of others, and having to change to American standards after moving here was too much. So, I kept my old Korean standards, and I settled for the emasculated image that came along with it here. And that was ok... I'm still busy working towards being a Korean man someday.
note: Galwang also recommends more Fromm.
I use a phone card from AT&T to keep in touch with friends in Korea. Lately, every time I make a call to Korea, I get a friendly recorded message saying that my phone card bills are being monitored by the FCC . Well it wasn't always friendly: when the message first appeared, it was a recording of some guy with a gruff voice making the announcement... but after a couple days he was replaced by the cheerful and lifeless computer voice. I have no idea if they are monitoring my actual calls as well; perhaps I got some bad attention because I work in a government laboratory with laughable security and am making phone calls of a personal nature out of the country. Better keep a close eye on me.
Friday, July 16, 2004
I've been busy all week. According to my advisor, I've managed to finish in just over a week the project he had expected me to spend most of the summer on. It seems he had rather low expectations of me going in. So, he has given me a set of two coupled differential equations to study, which also model the dynamics of a beam plasma undergoing periodic focusing in a magnetic lattice. The difference in this system of equations is that they take into account the effect that the electrically charged particles of the plasma have on each other. Plasmas behave in a complex manner, as I say, because they like to play with themselves.
Today, I managed to generalize my previous program to solve this new system of equations. While extending my Newton's method to do a root search in 4 dimensions (as opposed to the previous 2 dimensions) I found that I had to invert a four by four Jacobian matrix, which is considerably harder than inverting a two by two matrix. Since there are many numerical analysis libraries out there that do linear algebra, such as Lapack, I thought it'd be easy to simply call one of these libraries from my own program to do the matrix inversion for me. I ended up spending the next 5 hours beating my head against the monitor, trying to get my c++ program to link against the fortran libraries, until I finally gave up and wrote my own implementation of the row reduction algorithm, which took about 30 minutes. The penalty for being lazy.
And I finally took some time this evening to sit down and comment my horrendously unreadable program, like a good little code monkey. I think this must be the first time I've given any thought to what exactly I'm doing in my code, as I've found that I'm allocating almost twice as much memory than I need, and that several averaging algorithms that I've written could be speeded up by factors of 50 or so, with no sacrifice in accuracy. So, I've dutifully made comments to that effect in my code, and I will probably never get around to implementing the improvements, as D-bar has just opened, and I don't think I'll be doing any more work tonight.
Today, I managed to generalize my previous program to solve this new system of equations. While extending my Newton's method to do a root search in 4 dimensions (as opposed to the previous 2 dimensions) I found that I had to invert a four by four Jacobian matrix, which is considerably harder than inverting a two by two matrix. Since there are many numerical analysis libraries out there that do linear algebra, such as Lapack, I thought it'd be easy to simply call one of these libraries from my own program to do the matrix inversion for me. I ended up spending the next 5 hours beating my head against the monitor, trying to get my c++ program to link against the fortran libraries, until I finally gave up and wrote my own implementation of the row reduction algorithm, which took about 30 minutes. The penalty for being lazy.
And I finally took some time this evening to sit down and comment my horrendously unreadable program, like a good little code monkey. I think this must be the first time I've given any thought to what exactly I'm doing in my code, as I've found that I'm allocating almost twice as much memory than I need, and that several averaging algorithms that I've written could be speeded up by factors of 50 or so, with no sacrifice in accuracy. So, I've dutifully made comments to that effect in my code, and I will probably never get around to implementing the improvements, as D-bar has just opened, and I don't think I'll be doing any more work tonight.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
My mother keeps calling to tell me about all the fresh and delicious vegetables that she's getting out of her garden, which I had planted and worked on for the month in Ohio I spent at her house. Apparently, the lettuce, sesame, and Chinese cabbage have all grown very well, and the cucumbers and scallions have done better than she expected. Like so many times in life, I feel as if this is another instance in which I never got to see all my hard labor come to fruition, because I moved away too soon. I always felt that way about my aborted high school career in Korea, and I sometimes wonder how well I would have done for myself there, if I hadn't been uprooted once again in an untimely manner. Today, I wish I could see how the pumpkins and the tomato plants back in Ohio are doing.
Well, despite how all that turned out, I look forward to planting another garden for my mother next spring. My mother even has all the plant species planned out.
Well, despite how all that turned out, I look forward to planting another garden for my mother next spring. My mother even has all the plant species planned out.
A trip to D-bar last night turned out to be a lot of fun. I ended up staying until the place closed, during which I had a guiness, a johnnie walker black (on the rocks), a white russian, a three wise men, an irish carbomb, and a pale ale. After all that, I couldn't help but stare at a totally hot couple making out on a couch close to the bar. And of course, both men were not very attractive individuals, but as a couple they had an enviable chemistry, and I suppose that is what matters.
Speaking of good chemistry, I was just thinking this morning that it was on this day exactly one year ago that Hanna politely and ambiguously turned me down. And of course, the feelings haven't subsided, but it's amazing how well I'm doing, all things considered. The blessings of having had plenty of interesting problems to work on during the week, and a bar to pass out in at the end of the week, I suppose. Is this what life after college is gonna be like?
Speaking of good chemistry, I was just thinking this morning that it was on this day exactly one year ago that Hanna politely and ambiguously turned me down. And of course, the feelings haven't subsided, but it's amazing how well I'm doing, all things considered. The blessings of having had plenty of interesting problems to work on during the week, and a bar to pass out in at the end of the week, I suppose. Is this what life after college is gonna be like?
Friday, July 09, 2004
I've been trying and failing miserably to keep up with the Angry Asian Man's blog, which gets several updates a day, every day. So, I've come to conclude that either this Asian man is angry because he has no life, or that the Angry Asian Man is in fact a collaborative effort of several angry Asian men, headed no doubt by Drew Hu.
One of the entries from the past few days on Angry Asian Man has a link to this article on Chosun Ilbo's English version website. I'm glad that my blog is somehow no longer viewable from Korea, as I'm afraid the article would offend the intelligent, strong-willed and independent women I knew in Korea. (As far as I know, they can't cook very well, either.) Since I have a little more background information than the angry Asian guy, I feel obligated to point out here that Chosun Ilbo is the most conservative, anti-progressive newspaper in Korea, with a history of supporting various dictatorial regimes in the not-so-distant past in South Korea. Furthermore, many Koreans see it as more than a coincidence that the word "Chosun Ilbo" sounds a lot like the Korean term meaning "newspaper with a hard-on", for the apparent inability of its editors to think with their heads. For those who are able to read Korean (who are probably no longer able to see this blog), I recommend reading this website, an entire newspaper devoted almost entirely to debunking the farce that is Chosun Ilbo, and getting a good laugh out of it in the process.
One of the entries from the past few days on Angry Asian Man has a link to this article on Chosun Ilbo's English version website. I'm glad that my blog is somehow no longer viewable from Korea, as I'm afraid the article would offend the intelligent, strong-willed and independent women I knew in Korea. (As far as I know, they can't cook very well, either.) Since I have a little more background information than the angry Asian guy, I feel obligated to point out here that Chosun Ilbo is the most conservative, anti-progressive newspaper in Korea, with a history of supporting various dictatorial regimes in the not-so-distant past in South Korea. Furthermore, many Koreans see it as more than a coincidence that the word "Chosun Ilbo" sounds a lot like the Korean term meaning "newspaper with a hard-on", for the apparent inability of its editors to think with their heads. For those who are able to read Korean (who are probably no longer able to see this blog), I recommend reading this website, an entire newspaper devoted almost entirely to debunking the farce that is Chosun Ilbo, and getting a good laugh out of it in the process.
I got my copy of Sorrows of Empire today. I'm not sure how it'll be, since I haven't read anything by this Chalmers Johnson, but it did come highly recommended. Sooner or later, I'll post about it.
I am feeling quite pleased with myself, as I got my program working after wrestling with it for another day. It is a program that searches for certain well-behaved solutions of Mathieu's equation, which supposedly models the dynamics of a plasma beam confined in an accelerator. It was a great relief to finally see the code work without any problems and do what it's supposed to do. This must be how the people who write MS Windows never get to feel.
In an unrelated note, the blogger spellcheck program keeps pointing out that "blog" is not a word in the dictionary
In an unrelated note, the blogger spellcheck program keeps pointing out that "blog" is not a word in the dictionary
Thursday, July 08, 2004
According to certain sources, my blog is no longer viewable from Korea, which is probably why I don't get very many hits these days. I'm not sure why this blog is no longer available there, as I don't recall posting praise of Kim Jong Il, or anything like that. Drew, was it you???
After neglecting me for the past three weeks, my advisor is finally giving me some interesting problems to look at. In particular, he wants me to write up some code to solve an equation that models the dynamics of a plasma beam confined inside a device known as the Paul Trap. It is important to be able to contain and control plasma beams, according to my advisor, because high intensity plasma beams may end up replacing the high powered lasers used in current Inertial Confinement Fusion schemes.
So, I've spent the past couple of days coding almost non-stop, and wishing I had paid more attention during my CS classes. I have a working implementation of an ODE solver using the Runge-Kutta method, but my program that's supposed to do Newton's method keeps vehemently spitting nonsense at me. But all in all, I'm very relieved to finally have some work to do, and I've been in a happy, busy sort of mood.
So, I've spent the past couple of days coding almost non-stop, and wishing I had paid more attention during my CS classes. I have a working implementation of an ODE solver using the Runge-Kutta method, but my program that's supposed to do Newton's method keeps vehemently spitting nonsense at me. But all in all, I'm very relieved to finally have some work to do, and I've been in a happy, busy sort of mood.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
I've been spending most of my time reading a textbook on plasma physics written by my advisor. The book is mostly over my head, and there were several points that weren't very clear to me, so I went to see my advisor, complaining that I wasn't able to "understand everything in the book". To this, he promptly replied that he didn't understand everything in the book either, or at least not all of it at any given moment. He also warned me that whenever there was a derivation that took up too much space, he would write down the final equation and delegate the derivation to an exercise problem. Suddenly, the reason I had suffered through so many college textbooks became much clearer.
