American Elections.. with Onion highlights

There is a certain amount of morbid fun watching the lead-up to the elections in America. Kind of like watching a dead animal lying in the sun, there are twitches and noises that could indicate some for of life, but in your heart you just know that its simply a swarm of scavengers taking what they can from the bloated corpse that was one a vibrant living thing. The good thing is that no matter how deep the rot, how putrid the landscape and how truly horrible the decay is, you can be damned sure that no investigative journalist has the balls to roll the beast over into the light and expose all those maggot ridden channels in the flesh of the once great beast.

Well that’s pretty much used up my ‘morbid metaphor for the day’ quota so I’ll get down to brass tacks.

It seems that you can’t be a serious presidential candidate until you’ve ghost written a book. Once you’ve done that, your books go out into the stores where the capitalist impulse causes consumers with delusions of intelligence to buy the book of the candidate they already favour, so that they can congratulate themselves on how wonderful their choice really is. Its a trend that has been repeated throughout time, we have to reinforce our uninformed opinions, by swallowing large chunks of relatively unrelated information, that we can stretch to fit our existing bias.

I’ve noticed that the book stores have shuffled their candidates books of late. Pride of place is the harried looking Obama, telling us it’s all about hope while wearing an expression that screams “Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into”. This book looms at us from a prominent display at eye-level, one assumes indicating that this is where the consumers interest lies. Down and to the right (pun intended), lies the Clinton pile, and from it beams the face of your 4th grade teacher, or possibly a past-her-prime dominatrix, I’m not sure which. Her expression seems to say, “if you don’t make me president I’m going to give you a good thrashing young man”.

There are republican books too….. somewhere, possibly balancing out that short leg of the cashiers chair. No one seems to want to read about republicans, maybe they are the good guys this time around, but we’ve heard so many of Bush’s lies that if a republican claimed that the sun will rise tomorrow we’d all be up early just to check.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Of course as the Onion well knows only the Shadowy Overlords can select an American president, but people forget that it is the presidential assassins that determine how long they get to stay there. With that in mind I’ve got my legion of brainwashed willing followers on standby ready to take matters into their own manicured hands.

This is Jasmine, she is one of my favourite minions with a penchant for wearing furry animal hats. She is a Libra (go figure) who likes cuddly animals, blueberry Vodka Cruisers, the color lilac, and taking headshots at 3,000 meters.

Then there is Christy, she’s a lovely girl who like Romantic Comedies, long walks on the beach, skinny dipping, and can kick the shit out of an enraged Sumo.

Gotta go now… the nurse says its time for my medications………….

Do I look fat in these Genes?

A couple of millions of years of evolution have left us with some massive baggage. When you major in psychology the near-mystical phrase “it’s all in your head” becomes the mantra for nearly every vice, deviant act, and illness imaginable. Its only when you actually have to put the academic theory into practice that you begin to wonder how it actually got in their in the first place. What makes us do what we do? What drives us into blatantly stupid and destructive habits?

The answer my friends is evolution. That’s right, evolution is out to kill us.

For millions of years we were hunter gatherers, scavenging for seasonal fruits and berries, digging for edible roots and occasionally hunting meat. Meat is a huge source of energy, it was even the most efficient way for use to fuel our evolving bodies and demanding brains. Of course the efficiency of consuming meat was limited by the expenditure of energy to get it in the first place. Hunting is dangerous and exhausting work when you’ve only got a heavy rock and a sharpened stick. Population levels were probably pretty static during those times, predators, accidents, illnesses and starvation keeping the packs small.

Then came the time of cities, fuelled by the invention of agriculture we were able to settle in fertile regions and grow crops. We domesticated animals to supplement our grain diets, and we hunted for fish and molluscs in the rich coastal lands. It is a pattern that is repeated from Sumeria to Japan, as more nomadic peoples learn that they can settle in fertile areas and spend less time on gathering and more on breeding. Now our biggest predators are other tribes, and our numbers are kept down by inter-tribe conflict, disease and our ability to harvest the resources effectively.

Next came the boon of pottery, the one technological advancement that allowed us to harness these rich areas across all seasons. With their new ability to boil or steam food, they gained access to abundant resources that had previously been difficult to use: leafy vegetables, which would burn or dry out if cooked on an open fire; shellfish, which could now be opened easily; and toxic foods like acorns, which could now have their toxins boiled out. Soft-boiled foods could be fed to small children, permitting earlier weaning and more closely spaced babies. Toothless old people, the repositories of information in a preliterate society, could now be fed and live longer.

After this came a long series of small advancements in agricultural and storage practices, yet this is still recent history as far as our DNA is concerned. In only a few generations we’ve gone from the constant threat of starvation to an overabundance of food. The human race went out of control, not only did we GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY, but we still had enough surplus food to waste on such frivolous things as thinking beyond our next meal. More food gave us the flexibility to work on our minds, which in turn gave us more food and so on until we had the world of today.

In today’s world our great hunters can walk 50 feet to a fast food store and spend a few dollars to but enough calories to feed his family a dozen times over. There is no expenditure of energy, hell we even have drive-through to eliminate the need to walk. In order to get the cash to pay for these extremely cheap meals our brave hunter needs to sit behind a desk. After a long hard day of sitting or hero comes home to watch TV or immerse themselves in video games all devices that generate virtual rewards for no real effort [I'll get to virtual rewards in another post].

So here we are, our bodies telling us to grab any food we find, because we never know where the next meal will come from. Its all very logical, our genes give us the best way to survive in a harsh environment. Unfortunately our environment isn’t harsh anymore. When we run it isn’t to escape a predator, its so we can fit into our new pants. When we go in search of food it isn’t an epic struggle that nets us only fractionally more calories then we burned in the search. We are a pampered people, with no risks in our existence bar cholesterol, cancer and car crashes.

But our genes don’t know that. Millions of years of struggle can’t be reversed overnight by a few generations of prosperity. We scoff the fats down because our body recognises them as a good source of energy, we cram sugar into our bodies because it is supposed to be a rare boost of energy. We are all addicted to eating; it’s in our cholesterol saturated blood. Thankfully we’ve spent a few generations expanding our minds, and now we have to use these highly developed tools to stop our expanding waistlines. Our body tells us to do a lot of things that are no longer necessary (and hopefully won’t be again), yet we fight those urges through conscious decisions. We don’t jump on the first fertile female we see (most of us don’t), we don’t club males not of our tribe (there are exceptions), and we don’t defecate close to our food (again there are exceptions). Laws enforce most of these behaviours, but they are laws born from our understanding that instinct should be subservient to thought. So too should the urge to eat be limited by the understanding of what we actually need to eat.

The “Eat Less” Diet

Once again as I stroll these lonely crowded streets I have it shoved in my face am reminded of the differences between developing countries and those that have peaked and have started to stagnate.

My significant other was in Korea only five years ago, and is shocked by the bastardisation modernization of the culture here in such a short time. Nowhere is this more obvious then in the chains of Dunkin Donuts, KFC, McDonalds and Starbucks. Every major street seems to have at least one of theses, and it is around these Mecca’s of imported culture that we see the transition of Asians youth from the petite and slender stereotype to the rounder version that is starting to appear. Dairy, sugar, fats, these have always been around, but until the fast food arrived they were always a very minor part of the culture.

Yes I’m ranting about food again, but on a purely detached and intellectual level I assure you. It breaks my lecherous heart to see fat Korean girls… it really does… and the only culprit I can see is the fast food chains. Sure there are always a few folks that are bigger the average, but obesity is a modern, and self-inflicted disease.

Before food became abundant, and when manual labour was the mainstay, there simply weren’t obese people. Eat less, exercise more, that is the common sense mantra to weight loss. I used to think that some people had a legitimate excuse, glandular problems or maybe even the pseudo-psychological ‘food addiction’ excuse. I’ve changed my mind. People are fat simply because they eat too much, and with the introduction of high fat, low nutrition foods, eating too much leads to obesity. The problem begins in those ‘developed’ countries we hear about, places where people have the time to eat long meals, and where food is cheap and plentiful. If you take into your body enough calories to maintain eight people then of course you are going to end up looking like a zeppelin.

Gluttony, if you’re religious then its a sin, if your not then it is a waste of natural resources and a way to commit slow suicide.

Pointless fact for the day

Hollywood started as a temperance colony in 1887, a sober alternative to the bright lights and temptations of downtown LA. I’d like to leave you with one of Hollywoods finest imports Kate Beckinsale

“Hollywood: teaching the world its only natural to hate Americans”

Blatant Barbarism and the death of Written English

I’m stumped, I truly am, baffled, bemused and slightly annoyed. I remember all the seminars from the late 90’s and the buzz words of small businesses, and it seems one of those buzz words, referring to the power of an idea, concept or product to sell, is now a no-no. Now I have no beefs with a reputable company protecting its good name from misuse (I assume they have a good name, as I’ve never heard of them before today), and they are quite within their rights to protect any recognizable intellectual property in the form of a unique brand. My only question is “if this wasn’t already a generic phrase then why was it turned into headline a product?”

I’m not selling things here, I’m not a sales guru, and frankly business annoys the hell out of me. What I am trying to do is communicate in the most efficient and accurate way I can a few of my ideas. This may not be a particularly important task compared to some, but that doesn’t mean it is completely without merit. It is however a task that would become truly daunting if I had to analyse every pairing of words I used just to see if someone, somewhere, had laid claim to it. I wonder if Rahul Wadke over at http://sify.com/finance/ got a warning with his article too?

I’m certainly now aware of the can of worms that can be opened when using this particular coupling of words. Even when the coupling has no real link to the product so vigorously protected by what must have been an automated search and reply bot. I don’t often write about commercial things so in this case it should be easy not to use that particular combination again, and I certainly won’t do so intentionally. This does however raise questions that I have to ask as a teacher…. “should we have a list of trademarks for each class?” “Should we teach students word X and word Y, but then warn them they can’t use X and Y together because someone you’ve never heard of in a country you’ve never visited, has claimed it?” 

Welcome to the twenty second century ladies and gentlemen, a world where choice of words has to be considered not only on merits of the words used, but also on what obscure brand has taken one or two common words from the language, slapped them together then demanded that no one else use them. I do however find it fascinating that one potential interpretation of a two-word phrase has apparently become legally protected, freezing it out of common use. This is an attack against the very nature of the English language and its constant evolution and adaptation. 

At first I though I was being subjected to a cleaver type of advertising spam, in fact I really hope that that is the case. I really hope that the latest comment on my rather obscure blog [seen here] isn’t actually legitimate, for if it is we are sliding down-hill at a rapid pace.  It would be a sad day (akin to Paris Hiltons attempt to Trade Mark “that’s Hot”) when a common phrase, one used in marketing textbooks, economic papers, online press and your daily newspapers is proprietarily owned. As I stand (sit actually) here I wonder whether marketing and business lecturers around the world are trembling in their boots.

 

I take my hat off to something that goes beyond the much feared stifling of free speech, and takes it to new level. This is an attack on language, the thing that allows us to reason, communicate and even think. Control the language and you control the thoughts….. George Orwell must be getting so smug (apart from the being dead thing).

Darwin is Dead, his ideas live on!

     Ignorance may be bliss, but only for those entrapped in its sticky grasp. Nowhere can such ignorance be seen in such myopic levels as in the Creationist movement. “What is the Creationist movement?” I hear you ask, breathless with anticipation (or maybe not, I can dream). There is an attempt to displace the scientific theory of evolution with a belief that the world was created literally as the bible states. Now possibly we could say that to God a ‘day’ can be whatever length He says it is, but a literal translation of the old testament (of whichever variant/translation/edition happens to be your ‘one and only true version’) brings in all sorts of problems even with the order in which things were created. It is one thing to say “I believe this” it is a whole different game to try and convince others that your belief should be considered science because my revised edition of a translation of a translation, of a translation of an ancient text says something that in english might say so.

      Theory. Now there is a word that Creationists throw about like its an insult. Evolution isn’t real, its just a theory, not a Law like the Law of Gravity. I have some news for you, science stopped using the term Law shortly after it passed puberty and started to mature. Each theory is a development of existing theories, it must be provable, be subject to testing and it can be refined as knowledge increases. A theory is a living thing, and in the case of evolution it has itself evolved. Certainly Darwin was the first to champion evolution and to come forward with a possible mechanism of how evolution works, but we are a good 200 years beyond Darwin now, and in that time a lot has changed. There isn’t a serious scientist out there now who discounts evolution, they may not be Darwinists, but debate is over the mechanisms of evolution not whether it exists.

      Creationism is an illogical philosophy at best, and flawed theology at worst. It is not, and never will be, a science. You can safely say that creation is the work of God and that He guides it with an unseen hand. No one can disprove that idea, it is still compatible with evolution, and its a nice thought… but it is NOT science.

      One of the things that bug me most are the reoccurring arguments raised by these creationists, arguments that have been refuted again and again. So many of the previous true believers have themselves ‘recanted’ yet the arguments that they used and now reject are still being wielded like the dull bludgeon that they are. All those “the earth is only young” stories like Luna Dust theory, disproved. All the evidence was mixed up by the flood, disproved. How unique, and perfect nature of the human eye and how it could not have evolved piecemeal….. guess what? Easily disproved. 

      The other thing that bugs me is the apparent lack of faith these people display. Faith is supposed to be a gift from God, a belief in things unseen and unknowable. Its a test, pure and simple, but I don’t think its rigged for folks to fail. Yet the faith of creationists is so weak that they are frightened by a high-school biology lesson. Why is it so important that their creed be state approved? There is a creeping surrealism [1] that comes with hearing of yet another challenge to get ID (intelligent Design, the creationists latest camouflage) into schools across America. If such a numbing idiocy is allowed to occur in America it will be only a matter of time till it spills across the waters to Americas loyal mimickers.

      There is a nation that claims to be founded on Christian principles yet has no mention of God in its founding documents. Form this very nation springs a movement akin to the flat-earthers. It is one thing to have faith, to love thy neighbour and declare that God is ineffable, it is quite another to say that God is so petty as to tell his loyal followers how he made the universe and then go and plant evidence to make out he was lying. I’m not sure about you guys, but I thought Loki had gone out of business centuries ago.

 [1] “Creeping Surrealism.” According to Achenbach, it’s the nagging feeling that nothing is real anymore; fakery has become so virtuoso that authenticity itself can be legitimately called into question, and most people who can tell the difference between real and bullshit no longer think the distinction matters.

The End is Nigh

Today is a bit of a slow day, and with that comes the opportunity to reflect on the world around me…. and I have to say its looking pretty bleak as China and the USA flex their metaphorical muscles in readiness for the clash to see whether there will be a new superpower. Add to that we have the rise of glorified ignorance enshrined in the Creationist Movement, climate shift, and murders in South Korea so brutal that they actually make the news. To save a few ideas for later I’ll just talk about murder and world domination for now….. trust me you don’t have enough time for me to rant about Creationists.

Recent Murders

For those unfamiliar with South Korea this is a land with no crime. The Korean Mafia does not control the nightclubs, businessmen do not buy sex from underage girls, burglars do not rape their targets so that the shame prevents them from reporting the incident, and Korean business practice does not involve working your staff inhuman [and unproductive] hours. As much as Japan has its giri, Korea has an image to maintain, and it is one that does not gel with the reality.

It is fair to say that Korea is a safe country, far safer then many that the teachers here left behind. The reason the horrible things get so much publicity amongst the ex-pats here is not because they are all that frequent, but because the culture is to cover them up entirely. Korea is terribly afraid of ruining its image, but is ignorant of the fact that being caught in a bald-faced lie about how wonderful they are and how corrupt and perverted everyone else must be is far worse then admitting that sometimes bad things are done by Koreans. A rather potent example of this can be found here.

So naturally when a murder makes the news it has to be sensational enough that the necessity to ’save face’ has been outweighed by the sheer selling power of the crime. So it has been with the latest murders, a mother who beat her son to death then tried to incinerate the body, and most recently a missing child that was found dismembered. [more details can be found here at Korea Beat]

Superpower or Superthug?

Of course the latest chest pounding from China has been attacking the USA’s recent destruction of a spy satellite before it to crash to earth revealing potentially damaging military secrets and technology spilling unused toxic fuel. This is of course nothing like China’s unannounced destruction of an aged weather satellite, something that China took two weeks even to confirm having done.

So now the two big boys have confirmed that they have the power to knock things out of orbit and I’m not sure which approach scares me more; China’s attempt at secrecy or America’s need to showboat first. That’s just antics in the stratosphere; down here at sea level things are looking a little grim too.

China has been developing a blue-water navy at rate that has surprised and alarmed analysts, a navy that looks like its perfect for fending off American aid to Taiwan. Maybe the CIA doesn’t know this, but apparently the Chinese are retaking Taiwan after the 2008 Olympics (at least that’s what the students there told me). Its good to see that the Chinese dragon is waking and flexing its muscles by building conventional and nuclear submarines. Imagine my surprise when I realised that these subs were being constructed in Wuhan, the very place where the students were telling me that they were taking Taiwan ‘back‘. 

Things are looking pretty grim for Taiwan in my humble opinion, and I won’t be looking for a teaching job there any time soon. I’m allergic to flying lead.

So on a lighter note, here is a completely inappropriate soldier snap. Lets just hope that all the Chinese military look [and act] like this….

Poor Excuse for Prose

A long, long, time ago, in a reality far, far, away I used to be able to write. I would sit down and create worlds, and alternate realities, and characters and generally churn out three or four pages per day. I’m not saying it was good, but what I lacked in quality I made up for in quantity.

Eventually there came a day when I decided “No! Enough!” I’m not going to write anything until I have an actual idea that I can a) expand into a decent length story and b) really like. So I stopped writing prose and started running table-top games where I could change direction and style all the time. New idea? New game. It was easy and appealed to my lack of consistency.

Sadly tabletop gaming gave way to LARPing which was a good creative outlet as a player, but sucked the ideas out of me as soon as I started running games. Unfortunately the cosplay-babes never fully materialized, though there were a few cuties My writing went from a dozen pages a week as a University student to maybe a paragraph a month as a working slob. So now I’ m forcing myself to write again, diamonds or drivel, it doesn’t matter as long as I write at least an hour a day to get back into practice.

So here I am, babbling into the ether where very few will be subjected to my musings. I promise I’ll get back to something more relevant and possibly blog-worthy next post. In the mean time I’ll leave with you with Dawn, a vampire LARPer.

White Coats pt1.

Time and time again I am amazed by the sophistication of the Korean infrastructure. Maybe I’m a bit of a bigot at heart, or maybe I’ve just waded through too many “I hate this country” blogs and posts. My most recent example of an eye-opening experience was a medical one, a trip to Yonsei to the International Clinic there.

Now I’m not a Canadian, so I don’t have such wonderful medical system behind me, and I have worked in a hospital. I’m aware of the costs required to run such a big operation and I understand that this is passed on to the consumer/patient. So the $600 for an MRI and $50 for the consultation haven’t proven to be a shock. What was a shock was the professionalism and speed of the treatments we’ve seen so far. That’s the joy of living in a rural area I guess, no doctor wants the boredom of seeing the same thing over and over again, and some of them get lazy so they miss clues when something new comes in. There are good doctors back home as well as bad ones, but they all come with a waiting period.

This place has 6 MRI machines, which is a good indication that Yonsei gets funding that could only be dreamed of back home. The lobby has the look of an airport rather then the narrow, shabby corridors of a hospital back home; there are shops and even a food court. It actually looks like the hospitals here (or at least this one) has the funds to consider aesthetics and not just the daily grind to keep beds open and doctors on staff. I’m told that is how the health system used to be in Australia to, until we abandoned our socialist roots to become more heartlessly capitalist. I could get into a rant now about the evils of a capitalist society, but I’ll save that for a later date.

I apologise for the formatting above, I’m still playing with this wordpress stuff and so far I’m having issues with the CSS interfering with what I’m trying to do.

Just Read It

http://www.deusexmalcontent.com/2008/02/say-what-you-will-requiem-for-tv-news.html

 Seriously.. just read it.

Korean Dumplings

The Korean word for dumplings “mandu”, but if the authorities can be believed it may soon be “kid”. A recent news article, translated version available through Korea Beat, has warned that obesity it 80% higher in Korean children than in adults.

Now this may not seem shocking when you realize [gods it hurts to spell realise with a z] that the older generations went through wars, and famines, and the legacy of Japanese occupation. Even the Koreans of my generation grew up with food and electricity shortages, emphasizing [there's that z again] that the powerhouse that is Korea today is only a fairly new development.

Even so… 80% higher obesity in children can’t be right. I’m seeing some tall Korean boys, an indicator of good nutrition, but the amount of small, round, Koreans is growing too. In order to combat the spread (pun intended) of junk food diets, the schools are no longer going to be able to stock vending machines full of ramyuns (or ramens, a Korean spicy noodle), soft drinks, and chips.

Now to some of us this may look like yet another example of excessive government, but when we get down to it the youth of today will be the leaders and workers of tomorrow, and as such are a resource that needs to be cultivated now so that it may be taxed and exploited to the fullest later. The kids had some interesting ideas about it though, as I found out by asking about the plan as the basis of a writing task … and here are excerpts from a few of them with the original language uncorrected.

“Good. Because, school is must protect students, and make study environment. Coffee and juice don’t need” – S

“I think it’s a good idea because school and government thought junk food or fast food are not good for students health so they banned…. [big snip]… I don’t mind school and government banned eat junk food in school, because I think this rule that I have to keep and it is students duty.” - Jes

“… cokes or ramens are harmful for our health. If allowed, students eat them and they’ll don’t feel hungry anymore. Thus they won’t want to eat meals, so they will become weaker and weaker.” – A

“That is very bad idea I think. The coffees are good to drink and it easy to get off from the sleepy” – J

“I don’t like that idea because its their (student’s) choice to drink coffee or soft drinks.”- Jen

“I think it is good. Because if vending machine in the school I will cost a lot of money. And my health will be terrible.” – M

“I think it is dangerous, because if one student cook something she or he have an accident.” – D

“Junk food has high calorie, but we can eat junk food fast. Today, people always busy. So they should eat fast. But rice with stew is difficult to eat fast ….But junk food is not good to health so I think eat junk food 4 times in a month.” – Ja

“… good idea. Because modern students are not healthy….. And many students think coffee is comfortable to getting off our sleepy days. But it’s not good method…… It is start to go to our bright future I think.” – E 

Now just to reward everyone that is still watching, and to once again confirm that I am a misogynistic bastard, here is an image of what a fat Korean child does NOT look like