Category: Uncategorized

bookmark_borderPost-260: What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Posted on by Peter
A philosopher asks what’s wrong with a picture of teenagers (presumably American) in an art museum who are — Ah, let me just repost the picture:
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A picture taken from the Maverick Philosopher blog

It seems they’d rather stare at frivolous content on tiny screens rather than have a look at these great works of art.

Some will say we can’t blame them; maybe they don’t really like art (that’s okay, isn’t it?); maybe they already looked at the pictures and are resting; and so on. The fact is, though, that these kinds of museums (among other places) were once a kind of hallowed ground, and represented an awe-inspiring experience. One was to treat them reverentially. This would very likely be greatly diminished by widespread and constant use of “mobile devices”.

Most of us (in rich countries) now spend much or most of our waking lives in the “virtual/digital” sphere in some way (see #250); some people have come to cocoon themselves inside the virtual world and hardly “exist” outside it. This is troubling. If the purpose of life is authentic experience, existing in a virtual bubble world may seriously diminish it. The virtual world can be a poor substitute for the real in important ways. It can also enhance it, if done right, but I am not sure how to ensure that or even what it means to do it right.

I resisted getting a smartphone until the very end of 2013 (See #22), which was a real shock to Koreans by 2012 and 2013. I told myself it was because of money, but really I think it was because of philosophical principle. In my nearly nine months in Germany and Estonia in 2007, I somehow existed with no phone at all. Can you believe that? It’s hard to imagine now. I occasionally had to make phone calls and did so using pay phones. Pay phone? Yes. You may remember: Telephones, often in free-standing little booths, in public places. You dropped in coins to make a call…

bookmark_borderPost-259: [Korean] To Each Country Its Own…Alcohol Culture

Posted on by Peter
In September, I wrote something very brief about differing attitudes towards alcohol in different countries. I posted it here as #235. I’ve now expanded the argument into a full essay, directly below. Grade not know yet.

I am not good enough at Korean to write fully-nuanced, coherent, smooth (much less grammar-error-free) arguments. In my translation here I try to preserve the awkward wording.

나라마다 다른 “술문화”

많은 사람들은 나라마다 다른 문화가 있다고 알지만 대표적인 좋은 예는 모릅니다. 밑에 쓴 글에서 미국/한국/이슬람국가의 술문화를 비교하겠습니다.

우 선, 미국에서 온 저는 미국의 술문화에 대한 설명을 하겠습니다. 사실, 미국의 전통문화는 술을 싫어하는 편입니다. 특히, 옛날에는  술을 싫어하는 사람들이 많은 것 같습니다. 여러 주에서는 일요일에 술이 팔리는 것을 법으로 금지합니다. 그리고 밤에 너무 늦게 술이 팔리는 것도 법으로 금지합니다. 또한, 미국에서 술의 세금이 다른 나라에 비해 높습니다. 마지막으로, 미국 경찰은 밖에서 술을 마시는 사람을 보면, 그 사람을 꼭 감옥에 데리고 가야 합니다. 따라서, 미국의 문화는 술에 반대라고 할 수 있습니다.

한국과 미국의 “술문화”를 비교하면 한국문화가 술을 더 좋아한다고 할 수 있습니다. 한국은 술에 반대하는 법이 별로 없는 것 같습니다. 예를 들면 한국에서는 24시간 동안  술을  쉽게 살 수 있습니다. 또한 술을 자주 마시는 한국사람들이 미국사람들보다 많은 것 같습니다. 많은 한국 회사원들은 “회식”에서 술을 많이 마신다고 합니다. 미국에서는 그 관습이 없습니다. 미국사람들은 한국의 술이 관계가 있는 회식문화를 알면 놀랍니다.

반대로, 이슬람 국가에서는 술을 법으로 늘 금지합니다. 이스람 종교 때문입니다. 전통적인 이슬람교인 나라에서는 “술문화”가 없다고 볼 수 있습니다. 그래서 우리는 이슬람 교인 사람들이 “회식”할 때 뭘 할지 궁금할 수 있습니다!
Each Country Has its Own Alcohol Culture

Although a lot of people know that each country’s culture differs, they don’t know any representative examples. In the below essay, I will compare American, South Korean, and Islamic alcohol-drinking cultures.

First, as I am from the USA I can explain about U.S. alcohol culture. In fact, American traditional culture tends to dislike alcohol. It seems that, especially in the past, there were many people who disliked it. In some states, alcohol sales are banned by law on Sundays. Also, sale of alcohol in the late evening is banned. Furthermore, in the USA taxes on alcohol are high compared other countries’. Finally, in the USA the police have to take people whom they see drinking alcohol in public to jail. Accordingly, we can say that American culture is “against alcohol”.

If we compare American and South Korean “alcohol culture”, we can say that Koreans like alcohol more. In South Korea, there seem to be almost no laws against alcohol. For example, in South Korea people can buy alcohol 24 hours a day easily. Furthermore, it seems to me there are more heavy drinkers among Koreans than among Americans. In many Korean companies, drinking with coworkers is common. In the USA, we don’t have this custom. If Americans learn about this alcohol-drinking culture in Korean companies, they will be surprised.

On the other hand, in Islamic countries, alcohol is always banned by law. It is because of the Islamic religion. Traditional Islamic countries have no “alcohol culture”. Therefore, we might wonder what the Muslims do during outings with coworkers after work!

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See also:

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bookmark_borderPost-258: Pearl Harbor from the Japanese Perspective

Posted on by Peter
I was sent this article today from a relative:
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So Japan’s official museums don’t treat the famous attack on December 7th as something shameful, a sucker punch (there was no declaration of war). We ought not be too surprised. Who wants to depict their own history that way?

Our historical memory of Pearl Harbor is something like this: “The sneaky Japs attacked us without any shred of provocation at all just because we were there; Imperial Japan was so irrationally hyper-aggressive that they would attack anyone, given half a chance”.

From my reading (especially a book or two on this subject by historian John Toland), the Imperial Japanese government in 1941, though definitely aggressive, was not irrational.

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The Roosevelt government had recently organized a trade embargo against Japan (to protest Japanese aggression in China). Resource shortages would soon begin to bite, slowing everything down, especially a potentially devastating oil embargo. What do you call a modern army without oil? Useless.

There were long debates about this in Tokyo throughout 1941. The hawks said that the embargo meant Japan, already at war in China, had no choice but to secure resource-rich Southeast Asia — Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines (British, Dutch, and American possessions, respectively, at the time) — to retain access to raw materials and keep things rolling. The Europeans could not be expected to fight, given the situation in Europe at the time.

During the debates in Tokyo, the doves pointed out that war against any European possessions in Southeast Asia would very likely mean war with the USA, and certainly so in the wider-envisioned campaign which included conquest of the Philippines. So the choice was: Prepare for war with the USA, or begin to rein in the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” project (Japan’s decades-in-the-making plan to unite East Asia under Japanese leadership; i.e. Japanese imperialism and its network of puppet states, satellites, and allies-to-varying-degrees).

The hawk lobby in Tokyo won the argument, of course, and so Pearl Harbor went ahead. Even the hawks conceded that a long war with the USA would be impossible to win, given the USA’s size and potential in war, so they planned a sneak attack to weaken the U.S. Navy, conduct a quick and efficient war in Southeast Asia, and try for a settled peace.

Malaysia and the Philippines were also invaded on the same day as Pearl Harbor, and Indonesia the next week. British Singapore surrendered within two months; oil-producing Dutch Indonesia fell within three months; and in the Philippines, the main body of American troops surrendered within four months at Bataan. This wider view of things can explain how Japanese might see Pearl Harbor as “just another battle”, as the article’s title has it.

The Japanese totally underestimated American resolve to win the war, once it was begun, of course.

See also:
Post #23: “On Iwo Jima Isle / At Iwo Jima Memorial“
Post #24: “High on the Hill Suribachi“

bookmark_borderPost-257: [Korean] “Our Second Winter Vacation”: Recollection of the Blizzard of ’96

Posted on by Peter
Those of us born before 1990 or so and who lived in the northeastern USA at the time will remember it.

The Blizzard of ’96.

I was reminded of it in the first three days of December 2014, as snow gently fell on us in the Seoul region. I wrote the below in Korean on the third consecutive day of snow. I post here a revised version (after some corrections) and a translation to English.

겨울에 대한 추억: “2차겨울 방학”
어렸을 때 겨울에 대한 추억이 오늘 생겼다.

미국에서 태어나고 살았던 나는 1996년 2월에 초등학생이었습니다. 그때, 공부하고 있었던 우리에게 “2차 겨울방학”이 갑자기 생겼다. 어떻게 할 수 있었을까? 눈이 참 많이 내렸기 때문이다. 즉, 눈이 100cm이상 오던데 정말 많았지 않았니? 보통 우리는 크리스마스에 방학이 1-2주일 동안 있는데, 2월에 있으니까 이것은 “2차, 1995-6 겨을 방학”라고 할 수 있다.

우리 도시의 길들은 빠르게 눈이 쌓였다. 눈이 너무 많기 때문에 “학교버스”가 동네마다 들어갈 수 없었고. 그럼으로 학생들이 학교에 가지 말라고 했다. 뭐니뭐니해도, 학생의 안전이 제일 중요한다고 생각 한다. 그래서, 모든 학교들은 일주일 동안 수업을 취소하기로 했다. 눈이 너무 많이 왔기 때문이다. 그때는 우리가 얼마나 기뼜는지 모른다! “눈의 천국”이라는 말 밖에 놀랐었다. 눈사람 만들기 뿐만 아니라, 재미있는 썰매타기도 많이 할 수 있었다. 공부는…하지 않았다.

하지만 한국에 수업이 위에 설명했던 취소되는 일이 별로 없는 것 같다. “학교버스”가 없는 것이 그런 이유라고 할 수 있다. 또한, 한국에 눈이 심한 것이 아니다. 한국은 수도권에 2014년12월1~3일에 눈이 왔지만 교통이나 대한 문제가 별로 없는 것 같았다!

Winter Recollection: “Winter Vacation, Round Two”
Today I was reminded of a pleasant winter memory from my childhood.

I was born in the USA and was in elementary school there in February 1996. At that time, we students suddenly got a “second winter vacation”. How could it have happened? Because a whole lot of snow fell. Actually, more than three feet of snow fell, which we have to say is a lot. Normally, we got 1-2 weeks of vacation at Christmas time, but this was February, so we can call it “1995-6 Winter Vacation, Round Two”.

Snow quickly piled up on our city’s streets. School buses could not go into any neighborhoods because of the snow. Therefore, students were told not to go to school. Students’ safety is, after all, thought to be the most important thing. All the schools decided to cancel classes for a week because of the snow. What joyful news this was to us students! We played outside in the “winter wonderland”. We not only made snowmen but also could enjoy a lot of sledding. As for studying…we didn’t do any of that.

In South Korea, though, it seems to me that there are almost no days on which school is cancelled like this. We might say that the reason for this is that Korea has no school buses. Additionally, in Korea snow is not a serious problem. In South Korea’s capital area from December 1st to 3rd, 2014, snow fell but there seemed to be almost no disruptions at all to transportation or such things.

bookmark_borderPost-256: Like Bitcoins in the Bank (In Which I Enter the “Bitcoin” World)

Posted on by Peter
The words you are now reading were written by a “Bitcoin” owner. By which I mean me. It happened in Gangnam, Seoul on Saturday December 6th. I’ll relate the story here.

Bitcoin is a “digital currency” not tied to any government or bank. I wrote about Bitcoin way back in #28 (“Bitcoin Buyer“) and #30 (“Bitcoin Remorse“). It’s an interesting idea but I’d never bought any until today.

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Bitcoin ATM (Insert cash, get bitcoins, or convert Bitcoins into cash)

I bought 0.0232339 BTC (Bitcoins) for 10,000 South Korean Won, cash, via a Bitcoin ATM machine. One Bitcoin (1.00 BTC) was being sold for 430,000 Korean Won (USD $384) at the time of my transaction. This is up from $60 in April 2013.

My two-hundredeths-and-some of a Bitcoin were uploaded to my newly-created virtual Bitcoin account on the Internet, accessible via phone or computer.

The occasion for my purchase was a meeting by Bitcoin enthusiasts in Seoul. I was invited by my friend N.R. from California. It was a small group, a mix (by my impression) of “tech-oriented” Western expatriates conceptually fascinated by Bitcoin, and crafty Koreans looking for a business opportunity.

Unexpectedly to me, two young, garrulous Iranians were present, with whom I spoke a lot. One is trying to establish Bitcoin in Iran. He helped me set up my account.

The nearby cafe accepted Bitcoin payments so was a natural testing ground for my new Bitcoins.

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My newly-created “Bitcoin wallet” was not quite working yet, and/or the cafe’s Wifi was shaky. After some frustration from the girl working at the cafe, the Iranian Bitcoin enthusiast stepped in paid for my coffee with his own Bitcoins, ending the experiment. The coffee cost 0.0102 Bitcoins, or 4,300 Korean Won at today’s exchange rate (USD $3.83).

We were puzzled about why my new account wasn’t working for sending or receiving payments (yet). Eventually it wiggled its way into working. I transferred 0.0001 Bitcoins [USD 4 cents] to N.R. from California, who’d invited me. It was my first ever transaction.

Realizing my account was now active, I transferred the Iranian back the money for the coffee. Both of these transactions were instantaneous, using my phone to scan a kind of bar-code on the other person’s phone, entering the amount to transfer to him, entering my password, and hitting “send”. So simple. I could likewise transfer Bitcoins to anyone in the world nearly instantly if I simply knew the person’s account number. This bypasses the entire need for the complication and aggravation with banks or other money-sending services (which always take their cut).

Bitcoin has certain serious problems, though, most seriously that its exchange rate has wildly fluctuated over the past two years, spiking and crashing. The first “spike and crash” was in April 2013, which is when I wrote posts #28 and #30, but this was nothing compared to the much bigger spike and crash coming later that year. Here is the exchange rate in USD to the present day:

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It’s a wild world. There is also a possibility of hacking, I suppose, which is one of my main philosophical objections. Investing in Bitcoin seems like playing at a casino.

One way or another, my Bitcoin wallet’s balance stands at 0.013 BTC (something near USD $5.00).

bookmark_borderPost-255: DokiDoki Postbox

Posted on by Peter
My favorite subtype of student at the Korean language program at which I study is definitely the Singaporean. (I might also say the Japanese, but I know only one so it fails to qualify as a subtype.) I perceive the Singaporeans to possess  optimism, humorousness, and openness, even though they study hard they seem basically relaxed, unlike some of the Chinese. It also helps that we can communicate freely, as their English is as native level as my own.

A few days ago, two of the Singaporeans (H.P.G. [Level 4] and T.S.S. [Level 3]) were crowded ’round a phone in the hallway in-between classes. I peered over a shoulder. It was “DokiDoki Postbox” out of Japan; a phone app.

What is Doki Doki Postbox? I didn’t know but soon learned and got on board.

The premise is simple. You write a “postcard” — a short, text-only message — which, once sent, is delivered to a totally unknown recipient (randomized by computer algorithm within the program’s database of anonymous accounts). You have no way to identify each other once (if) contact is established, except by nationality (displayed as  a flag) and gender. Once contact is established, you can continue the exchange of  “postcards” with the same person until he or she stops responding. You may send only one postcard at a time and must wait for a reply. If the other person breaks contact by not responding to your postcard, you lose all possibility of contacting that person ever again.

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There is an exciting edge to this. It is like an Internet Age equivalent of “a message in a bottle set adrift at sea”, but semi-instantaneous. It also re-creates some of the feel of the very early Internet of the 1990s, when conversations were limited to basic text. I remember many hours peering over my cousin B.W.’s shoulder in Connecticut in the mid-1990s, amazed that he was talking (via modem) late into the night with people around the country. It was a kind of magic to me.

Here is what this program looks like (screenshots from my phone). As mentioned, you can choose only two parameters for your postcard recipient: (1) “World” (outside my country) or “Local” (my country); (2) “Any Gender / Male / Female”.
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Here is a series of “postcards” exchanged between me (the initiator) and a Korean male unknown to me.
Original Korean Conversation
Me: 오. 하이. 요즘 잘 지내고 있죠?
Korean: 아      니      요
Me: 왜 그래요. 설명해 주세요.
Korean: 잘지낼 여유가 없음.
Me: 잘 지내고 할 수 있는 방법이 필요하죠. 내 생각으로…치킨, 삼겹살, 등.
Korean: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ 운동할래요 걍.
Translation into English
Me: Oh, hi. You’ve been well lately, I hope?
Korean: N-o-p-e
Me: What do you mean? Please explain this.
Korean: I’ve been too busy to relax.
Me: We all need ways to enjoy life, don’t we. My opinion…fried chicken, grilled pork, etc.
Korean: Hahaha. I’ll just play some sports.

The space of time between each of these “postcards” was a few hours.

He didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t a Korean native speaker. Other exchanges I’ve played around with resulted in Koreans promptly saying things I could not decipher so I stopped responding to them. Koreans are big into slang.

One of my “world” postcards ended up being delivered to an American female. My country flag displays as South Korea, so I decided to have some fun. I wrote: “Can you tell me a good USA food?” Her answer: “McDonald’s”.

bookmark_borderPost-254: Iraq’s Hollow Army (Or, Why Don’t they Just Partition Already?)

Posted on by Peter
The Iraqi Army revealed itself to be almost completely useless this year, as a relatively small Islamic revolutionary group, ISIS, easily captured city after city. Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest, fell almost without resistance. ISIS now has a de-facto Islamic fundamentalist state, sliced out of the Syria/Iraq chaos. (The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was vaguely sold to average Americans as being to prevent exactly this. Yet ISIS types were efficiently and thoroughly suppressed by Arab fascist Saddam Hussein, so overthrowing him was probably a big….can I say it?).

How pathetic is the Iraqi state’s army? It had 15 divisions, each of 20,000-some men (on paper), but experience shows it may as well have had no army at all. ISIS captured Mosul with an assault force a fraction of the size of one Iraqi Army division (allegedly under 2,000 fighters). This week, the Iraqi government has finally admitted that its army is full of fake soldiers. This has been pointed out many times by the excellent Middle East journalist Patrick Cockburn whom I have followed for much of this year.

Iraq’s 50,000 Ghost Soldiers
By Patrick Cockburn [The Independent, UK]

The Iraqi army has long been notorious for being wholly corrupt with officers invariably paying for their jobs in order to make money either through drawing the salaries of non-existent soldiers or through various other scams. One Iraqi politician told The Independent a year ago that Iraqi officers “are not soldiers, they are investors”. In the years before the defeat of the army in Mosul in June by a much smaller force from Isis, Iraqi units never conducted training exercises. At the time of Isis’s Mosul offensive, government forces in Mosul were meant to total 60,000 soldiers and federal police but the real figure was probably closer to 20,000.

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“Ghost” soldiers may never have existed and just be fictitious names added to the roster, or they may once have existed but been killed or deserted without this being officially noted. In either case, the officer in a unit would keep receiving the salary, though he would have to share it with his superiors. Another scam is for soldiers to kick back part of their salary to their officer in return for staying at home or holding another job but never going near a barracks. Mr Abadi’s figure of 50,000 is probably only a modest estimate of the numbers of Iraqi soldiers who play no military role.

[…] [T]he Iraqi government might be paying for a battalion with a nominal strength of 600 men, but which in fact had only 200 soldiers. Profits would be shared between officers and commercial companies supposedly supplying the army.

Another source of earnings for officers are checkpoints on the roads which act like customs barriers on national frontiers. All goods being transported have to pay a tariff and this will again go into the pockets of the officer corps. These will have paid highly for promotion, with the bribe for becoming a colonel $200,000 (£127,000) and a divisional commander $2m. This money would usually be borrowed and paid back out of earnings.

When fighting began in Anbar province at the start of this year as Isis seized territory, Iraqi army units often found that the supply system was so corrupt and dysfunctional that they did not receive enough food or even ammunition.

[From “Iraq’s 50,000 Ghost Soldiers” by Patrick Cockburn, Middle East corespondent for The independent (UK)]

It sounds like the Iraqi Army (so called) was a kind of giant pyramid scheme, or something close to one. This is simply disgraceful. I am led to conclude that Iraq ought to be partitioned if this is the way that state is going to run things. Syria could also be part of a wider partition. That might settle things down over there.

One proposal, from a thinktank based at Columbia University, partitions Syria and Iraq into four new states: a Sunni-Arab state, a Shia-Arab state, a Kurd state, and an Alawite-Christian state. Why not? Here is their proposal:

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Partition proposal from Columbia University’s “School of International and Public Affairs, Gulf/2000 Project” (link)

Or for only Iraq, here is another proposal I find (this from 2010, before Syria sank into civil war):
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This makes a lot of sense to me.

bookmark_borderPost-253: [Korean] Christmas Tree at the DMZ

Posted on by Peter
Here is something else I wrote originally in Korean. English translation by me just now. It’s from the news today.
북한정부가 크리스마스트리를 싫어한다면서요?

오늘 “코리아헤럴드”라고 하는 신문에 따르면, 어떤 한국 (“남한”) 기독교인 협회가 비무장지대(DMZ)에서 정말 큰 크리스마스트리를 만들기로 했어요. 올해에는 한국 정치가 그렇게 해도 괜찮다고 해요. 기독교협회가 트리를 준비해서 어느 비무장지대근처에 있는 높은 산의 정상에서, 북한사람들이 트리가 보일 수 있게 트리를 놓을 거래요.

북한정부는 이 뉴스 때문에 다시 귀찮아 질걸요…

I Heard that North Korea Doesn’t Like Christmas Trees…

Today, according to the newspaper called the “Korea Herald”, a South Korean Christian group has decided to build a really big tree at the DMZ. This year, the Korean government has said that doing so is alright. The Christian group will get the tree ready and will set it up on the summit of a high hill near the DMZ, so that it will be visible to North Koreans.

I bet the North Korean government is going to become annoyed again, about this…

bookmark_borderPost-251: [Korean] Election 2014 in the USA

Posted on by Peter
Here’s  something I wrote in November 2014 after the U.S. election. As in post-250, it is a Korean original that includes some corrections from native speakers (from a website called Lang-8 in which people get writing corrections from each other). I translated it into English just now.
미국 투표, 2014
미국에서 온 저는 정치에 관심이 있어서 최근의 정치 뉴스에 대해서 좀 쓰겠습니다.

지난 화요일(2014.11.4)에 미국에서 투표를 한 후에 가장 많은 결과를 알아볼 수 있었는데, 당일 밤에 아직 결과를 알 수 없었던 선거도 있었다. 그럼 Lang-8 회원 중에도 미국경치에 관심이 있는 사람이 좀 있을을테니 결과에 대해 설명하겠습니다.

수요일 아침에 일어나자마자 미국 투표결과를 확인해봤다. 여러 웹사이트들에 따르면 미국 공화당 (Republican Party)가 쉽게 이겼다. 앞으로 U.S. Senate이라고 하는 미국의 국회에서는 공화당이 의석 53개를 획득했는데 아직 모른 결과 하나도 있지만 공화당 이기겠다고 해서 의석 54개가 있을 것이다. 또한 무소속 입후보자 한 명이 공화당에 들고 싶다고 말했다. 따라서 투표를 이겼던 미국의 공화당은 55 의석이 생긴다고 한다. Senate에는 의석이 100 개가 있어서, 결국 공화당이 “대정당”이 됐다.

투표 하기 전에 공화당이 의석 46 개만 있어서 “결정적인 승리”라고 했다.

미국에서도 외국에서도 정치에 관심이 있는 사람들은 왜 미국사람들이 그렇게 투표를 했냐고 하고 있다. 오바마가 인기가 없다고 한다. 그렇다. 사실은, 오바마는 외국에 비해서 미국에서 인기가 적은 편이다.
 
U.S. Election, 2014
As I am from the USA and I follow politics, I will write a little bit about the latest political news.

On this past Tuesday (Nov. 4th, 2014) in the USA there were elections. Most of the results are now known, but late into the night some results were still not known yet. Well, as there may be some Lang-8 members interested in U.S. politics, I’ll explain about the results.

On Wednesday morning, as soon as I woke up, I checked the USA’s election results. According to various websites, the Republican Party easily won. The Republicans won 53 seats for sure, and one result is still not known but it is said that the Republicans will probably win it, too. Also, an independent senator has said he wants to join the Republicans [this didn’t happen]. Consequently, the Republicans, having won the election, will now control 55 [actually 54] Senate seats. As there are 100 seats in the Senate, the Republicans are the new majority party.

Before the election, the Republicans had only 46 seats, so people are calling this a “decisive victory”.

People interested in politics, inside and outside the USA, are asking why the Americans voted as they did. It is said that Obama is not popular. It’s true. To be honest, Obama has always tended to less popular in the USA than abroad.

bookmark_borderPost-250: [Korean] Where are the Non-Smart-Phone-Using People?

Posted on by Peter
I wrote the below in Korean two weeks ago and posted it to an online forum where people exchange corrections. Some Koreans corrected a few errors. An English translation is next to it (on PC) or below it (mobile devices).
스마트폰을 쓰지 않는 사람이 어디에 있을까?
자, 오늘 아침에 대한민국의 수도권 지하철을 타고 가고 있을 때는 다른 승객들을 볼 수 있었지만 앉아 있던 승객들은 나를 볼 수 없는 것 같았어요.무슨 작고 밝은 스크린 때문이에요.

우리 기차에 앉아 있던 승객들은 24명이었는데, 그때 꼭 23명이 스마트폰을 보기만 (96%) 했어요. “스마트폰 중독”이 있는 대한민국인은 많다고 하죠?

미국 지하철에 있는 스마트폰 습관 비교할 수 있어서 다음 단락부터 쓸게요.

미국큰 도시에도 지하철이 있기는 하지만 2014년에도 미국을 여행하는 어느 서울에서 온 한국인은 미국의 지하철 열차에 들어가자마자 놀라는 것이 있을 수도 있어요: 미국 지하철에 있는 승객들 중에 “종이”신문을 읽는 사람이 많고 “종이”책을 읽는 사람이 많군요! 스마트폰을 쓰는 지하철 승객보다 “종이”를 쓰는 손님이 거의 3배나 있던데요…!

Where are the Non-Smart-Phone-Using People?
Well now, today in the morning, as I was riding in the Seoul area’s subway system, I could see the other passengers, but the others, seated, could not see me, it seemed. This was because of some small, bright screens.

There were 24 seated passengers in our train car, and at that time a full 23 of them (96%) were only looking at their smartphones. They do say that in the Republic of Korea, there are a lot of “smartphone addicts”, don’t they.

In the USA, smartphone use in the subway is very different, so let me write about it next.

In big cities in the USA, we have subways too, but even in 2014 now, a Korean from Seoul who enters a subway car will immediately be surprised by something: A lot of the subway passengers in the USA will be reading “paper” newspapers and “paper” books! As I recall, something like three times as many people use “paper” in the subway [in the USA] as use smartphones….!

bookmark_borderPost-249: Uneventful Thanksgiving 2014 (And, How to Say ‘Turkey’ in Korean)

Posted on by Peter
Thanksgiving Day 2014 passed for me without any indication whatsoever that it was a holiday. That’s because it isn’t a holiday where I am (not counting the U.S. military bases).

On the plus side, I figured out the amusing meaning of the Korean word for “turkey”:

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Turkey is not common at all in East Asia. Most Asians seem to have never tried it.

English? Chinese? No. No.
Strangely, even though the bird is native to North America, there is a Korean word for “turkey” that is neither a Chinese loan nor an English loan (by which I mean a Koreanization of our word “turkey”; it would sound something like “tuh-kee”). The Korean word for turkey is “칠면조” (Cheel-myuhn-cho). A Chinese of my acquaintance tells me that the Chinese word for turkey sounds something like “Hwoh-Jee”, which is not close to the Korean.

The Meaning
From comparing the Chinese characters, I see that “칠” in the Korean word above means “seven” (i.e. the Chinese-Korean number 7) and the “면” means “faces” (either literal or metaphorical, as in a “a two-faced man”). My next guess was that Koreans got this word from Japanese.

I asked good old Mr. Google about seven-faced birds and he pointed me here: “Japanese turkeys have seven faces“.  So, there we have it: In Japanese and Korean, the bird we call “the turkey” is called “the seven-faced bird”. A website called Hiker’s Notebook claims that this odd name “is based the belief that the turkey changes its facial expression in concert with its emotional state.“

Word History Speculation
I’m going to speculate that the Americans introduced turkey to Japan sometime after Admiral Peary opened the country in the 1850s, and when Japan started to exert economic, political, military, and cultural pressure on then-long-stagnant, increasingly-backwards Korea, from around the 1880s, this word (among many others) came with it. This seems to be a reasonable guess.

The Future of the Word for ‘Turkey’ in Korean
Knowing what I know of how Koreans are, though, I hereby predict that if turkey ever becomes popular in Korea, the  English loan (“tuh-kee”) will quickly grow in popularity and either replace the old Japanese loan totally or find a way to co-exist with it. This has happened with chicken. The Korean word is “닭” (dahk) but often you’ll see “치킨” (chee-keen). The English loan (chee-keen), though, usually refers only to “fried chicken”. The pure-Korean word still exists for other forms of chicken.

I’ll be eating a Thanksgiving dinner on the weekend with some good people I know.
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By Rockwell

bookmark_borderPost-248: Thinking About Germany and “The Left” Party

Posted on by Peter
In Post-246 (“Here Comes Bodo Ramelow“) I revisited my time in Germany in 2007, a subject about which I think I’ve rarely written on these pages. One of the things that impressed me there was the myriad of active political and quasi-political movements whirling around. If you read #246, you can see a slice of this.

I’ve been thinking more about the election result I mentioned in #246, in Thuringia (a German state formerly of East Germany), a place I passed through a time or two or three. The results of their recent state election:

* 28 seats were won by Die Linke (successor of the East German Communist Party) [31% of seats]
[…] [T]he Linke “neo-Communists” are a majority of [the new] ruling coalition, so it’s only fair that their guy, Bodo, becomes the formal leader.

“Die Linke” (English: The Left), which is the reformed Communist Party, won nearly one-in-three seats in this eastern-German state’s legislature. By the way, here is the top banner on the website of party’s Berlin chapter:
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From website of the Linke party (die-linke-berlin.de), as of this writing

(It’s Herren Marx und Engels. These are life-size statues, put up during the Communist era, and still stand in central Berlin. I passed right by them many-a-time. They are in a big open square which is generally deserted.)

Those in the east voting for Linke are generally older people who actually lived as adults under the Communist East German government. Is this, then, a partial vindication of that system and its government?

Maybe. But hear this:

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I passed through eastern German cities, towns, and villages at various times while over there. Political posters are often highly visible in Germany, including in small towns. The Linke posters across eastern Germany, I noted with interest, were adorned with pictures of smiling, white-haired retirees and suchlike, with bland promises about securing pensions and that kind of thing. Far from radical. I also observed the people in these places, the places where one-in-three may vote for this party. The average age seemed quite high; the average “radicalism”, quite low. The people I observed in these smaller towns reminded me of my own grandparents; they kept up their traditions (such as they were), took pride in their towns,  maintained their households, and lived with quiet dignity, as older people do. It slowly dawned on me that this “communist” party was actually kept afloat by…conservatives.

Maybe this is a window into the nature of political thought itself. These east(ern) German voters in their 50s, 60s, 70s who are voting Linke into the 2010s are not “left-wing extremists”. Suggesting so is a bit silly. They are basically conservative people.

This leads me to ask: What is a conservative? If we hold all else equal, maybe a conservative is one who wants [thinks he wants] whatever system existed, say, forty years ago (or some such number of years ago; the recent past), regardless of what that system was, whether it was considered left or right or whatever at the time.

The Linke party itself is actually radical at its core, at its top, and at its (youth) fringes. (I concluded this at the time.) Its eastern voter base may be ‘conservative’, but West Germans who embrace this party may have to be called radicals.

Thus I realized that we can speak of a secondary base of this party — smaller but noisier — in the form of belligerently left-wing youth prone to masked-mayhem and violence, the type that Europeans will know as “Antifas”, and their less-belligerent sympaticos. Their material was highly visible in most parts of Berlin (they don’t call it “Red Berlin” for nothing). But not in all parts. “Ganz im Osten” (as I called it — “in the deep east”) of that city they faced hostile territory and they knew it, or so I gathered. This territory belonged to the infamous Rechtsradikaler (radical right). I noticed this difference in political “turf” starkly over one particular night (and a long night it was). I, along with G.S., an American friend also studying in Germany at the time, walked clear across most of Berlin. It was ambitious, but we did it. (We started near Ostkreuz or Lichtenberg [which is definitely “deeply east”] at 10 PM or so, and ended west of the Westkreuz train station — on foot the whole way. It took us over eight hours. I don’t know whose idea this was, but it sounds like something I’d propose. We arrived past dawn at his apartment in the west [where I was staying for the time being while I sorted out a new place to live].)

Anyway, about the Linke Party. I think we can say Linke is “two parties” that have joined together for convenience’s sake — one is a party for nostalgic ‘conservative’ east-Germans in or near retirement age (see above), and the other a party of and for the angrily radical left. Without the former, the party gets no voters and is stuck in the electoral ghetto (Linke has almost no representation anywhere in West Germany due to the 5%-threshold rule). Without the latter, the party lacks for energy, sags under the weight of political lethargy, and may not have survived to the present day. This was my opinion as an outside observer.

Here is an official document of the party I’ve been discussing, Die Linke (or, in English, “The Left”):
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An official document of the party Die Linke in Germany,
successor to the East German Communist Party

The leaflet is all about “fighting fascism” (whatever that means in this day and age), which is a major theme of Linke material, just as it was for the Communist East German ruling party. As a matter of fact, the Communist Party, in its day, called the Berlin Wall the “Anti-Fascist Protective Barrier”(antifaschistischer Schutzwall). Likewise, one of the “Antifa” slogans I recall from Germany is: “Deutsche Polizisten schützen die Faschisten” (German police protect the fascists).

bookmark_borderPost-247: [My Korean Essay] Methods for Speaking Korean Well

Posted on by Peter
I wrote this essay in mid-November 2014. It received a good grade but has some minor grammar mistakes.

An English translation follows.

한국어를 잘 할 수 있는 방법
어학당에서 공부하는 학생들은 많이 공부하는데도 교실 밖에서 한국어를 잘 못 하는 편입니다. 우리는 한국어를 잘 할 수 있는 방법에 대해 많이 궁금합니다. 지금부터 이야기와 취미로 한국어를 잘 할 수 있는 방법에 대해서 설명을 하겠습니다.

첫째, 우리는 한국인 친구나 한국어를 공부하는 외국인과 사귀어서 한국말로 많이 이야디를 해야 한다고 합니다. 한국에 있는 어학당 학생들 중에 한국인 친구가 없는 학생이 많은 것 같습니다. 그래서, 교실이나 숙제를 할 때 밖에는 한국말을 별로 쓰지 않은 것 같습니다. 따라서, 한국어가 “과목”이라고 생각하는 편입니다. 그런 생각은 한국말을 잘 하고 싶은 학생에게 위험한 것입니다. 예를 들면, 한국에서 영어교육 도 이런 문제가 있습니다. 학생이 영어문법을 많이 공부하기는 하지만 고등학교를 졸업까지도 영어로 이야기를 해본적이 별로 없다고 합니다. 뭐니 뭐니 해도, 다른 사람과 이야기하는 것이 제일 중요한 언어를 배우기는 이유라고 할 수 있습니다. 그러므로, 수업 밖에서도 연습을 하도록 한국말로 많이 이야기해야 합니다.

다 음으 로, 취미 생활과 관계가 있는 방법으로 한국말을 연습해야 됩니다. 사람들이 취미가 달라서 많은 방법이 있을 수 있습니다. 예로, 미국에서 온 저는 역사에 관심이 많습니다. 그래서, 한국어로 미국역사에 대한 초등학생 책을 사서 날마다 읽습니다. 다른 취미가 있다면 다른 방법을 이용할 수 있습니다. 특히, 한국 드라마에 관심이 많은 여자학생들은 드라마를 보면서 한국어를 연습합니다. 이런 방법을 이용하면 즐겁게 취미 생활을 하고 한국어도 연습할 수 있습니다.

요약하면, 한국어를 잘 하고 싶으면 이야기른 늘녀야 하고 “한국말로 할 수 있는” 취미린 발전시켜야 한다고 생각합니다.

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Original handwritten essay (after many drafts).

Here is a translation into English of the above Korean original (both written by me:)
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Methods For How to Speak Korean Well
Students of Korean, even those who study a lot, tend to be unable to speak very well outside of the classroom. We are very curious about ways we can speak Korean well. Here I will explain about how to improve in Korean with conversation and hobbies.

Firstly, we need to befriend Koreans or other students of the Korean language and speak with them in Korean a lot. Among students of Korean in Korea, it seems there are many who have no Korean friends. Therefore, outside of the classroom or time doing assignments, it seems they speak almost no Korean. Accordingly, there is a tendency to think of Korean as “a subject”. This kind of idea is dangerous for people who want to learn Korean. An example of the same kind of problem is in English education in Korea. Students study English grammar a lot, but even by the time they graduate from high school, they have almost never used English to speak to someone. When all is said and done, we can say that speaking to other people is the most important reason why we learn a language.  This being the case, we need to be sure to practice outside the class by speaking in Korean a lot.

Additionally, we should use methods connected to our hobbies to practice Korean. Everybody has different hobbies, so many methods are possible. For instance, I am from the USA and I am interested in history, so I bought a Korean-language American history book for elementary school students and I read it every day. If a person has other hobbies, other methods are possible. Particularly, the female students who are highly interested in “Korean dramas” [Korean TV soap operas popular in East Asia in the 2000s and 2010s] can practice Korean while watching them. Using this kind of method, we can enjoy our hobbies and also practice Korean.

In summary, those who want to speak Korean well should increase the amount they speak in Korean and also develop “hobbies that can be done in Korean”.

bookmark_borderPost-246: Here Comes Bodo Ramelow (Or, Reminiscences of German Politics)

Posted on by Peter
A German state will have a “(neo-)Communist” leader for the first time since the fall of Communist rule twenty-five years ago, I read today.

The state will be Thuringia (Thüringen), formerly belonging to East Germany.

The leader will be somebody called Bodo Ramelow (born 1956). Here he is:

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Bodo Ramelow, Politician

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I know what you’re thinking. “He doesn’t look much like a Communist.”

Or, maybe you’re thinking “Bodo Ramelow sounds like a pro wrestler’s name.”

I agree with both sentiments.

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The interesting thing is that good ol’ Bodo is a product of the West. He was born, raised, and educated in West Germany, I read. He moved to East Germany after right the fall of the wall and immediately got involved with the revived SED (the Communist ruling party of East Germany through 1989) which was then calling itself “the Party for Democratic Socialism” (PDS) and which now calls itself “die Linke” (The Left).

Bodo will take the helm as “Minister President” of Thuriginia following that state’s election in fall 2014. Here are the results, with my attempt to transliterate onto U.S. politics:

  • [91 seats allocated, based on a mixed system of proportional voting and U.S.-style “most votes wins” contests:]
  • 34 won by the CDU (Christian Democratic Party, akin to moderate U.S. Republicans) [37% of seats]
  • 28 won by Die Linke (successor of the East German Communist Party) [31% of seats]
  • 12 won by the SPD (Social Democrats, akin to the left-wing of the U.S. Democrats) [13%]
  • 11 won the AfD (a new party, “Alternative for Germany”, similar to the U.S. Tea Party circa 2010) [12%]
  • 6 won by the Green Party [7%]
  • 0 seats were won by the Free Democratic Party (akin to the free-market wing of the Republican Party)
  • 9.7% of voters voted for parties that won no seats (including the FDP) due to the “5%-threshold rule”. (Most of the usual FDP voters voted for the new AfD party this time.)

A coalition government is to be formed unless one party gets a majority, and that never happens in Germany. Any group of parties, if their combined seats constitute a majority of the legislature, can form a government. If you count these up, you’ll see that the Linke [31% of seats] and SPD [13%] and Greens [7%] have a 51% majority, so they can exclude the CDU and AfD. The thing is, the Linke “neo-Communists” are a majority of this ruling coalition, so it’s only fair that their guy, Bodo, becomes the formal leader.

Communists and Anti-Communists in Berlin
I was in Berlin, Germany for most of 2007. I remember noticing how much the continued presence within German politics of the “neo-Communist” (die Linke) annoyed certain factions in Germany. The party’s remains strong in the east, where older people’s votes keep it a significant force.

This all reminds me of the high energy of street politics in Germany. Radicals were kinetically active in a way I never saw in the U.S. or anywhere else. Stickers, leaflets, posters, and graffiti were everywhere. It meant that people took this stuff seriously. A lot of it was clever. “Political subculture people” were also easy to spot by their manners of dress, manners of carrying themselves, places they’d hang around, and even haircuts.

I still have, somewhere, a booklet-manifesto somebody who called himself a professor handed me. It was in German, and expounded his theories on why we need Marxism now more than ever, from what I could gather. He was standing on a street corner but as street-corner people go, he seemed normal. We talked a short while. He realized after a short exchange that I was not a German native speaker. I lied and told him I was from Denmark, which he seemed to accept. I ended up walking away with not only his cream-colored booklet containing his Marxist manifesto, but also an equal-sized cream-colored booklet on Buddhism. I think he’d written both. I think his name was something like Rolf.

Anyway, this stuff made life interesting.

I made a habit of studying any political graffiti or suchlike that I found in Berlin. I recall one leaflet, produced I expect by right-wing radicals, that said something very close to “Zwei Jahrzehnte Nach Mauerfall, Kommunisten noch überall!” (“Two decades after the fall of the wall, Communists still rule us!”). This cleverly rhymes in German. It was in reference to the fact that the “neo-Communist” Party (to which the above-pictured Bodo Ramelow belongs) was then in coalition with the SPD ruling Berlin. Accompanied was a cartoon picture of a man smashing a red star with a sledgehammer. This kind of thing was a common sight in Berlin, though far-left material of the same kind was more common to see.

Update, 11/22: Another part of this above-mentioned anti-communist leaflet comes back to me. In smaller letters, it urged the reader as follows: “Politischer Kampf den Roten Banden” ([Let’s wage] a political struggle against the red thugs). It then identified several communist groups by name (including the political party now called “die Linke”) around the red-star being smashed by the heroic-looking cartoon man.

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bookmark_borderPost-245: On the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Posted on by Peter
As I was writing about “November 11th, 1918” (post-242), another anniversary was being commemorated. The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I think historians of the future ought to use the two (11-11-1918 to circa 11-11-1989) as  bookends, to fence off a coherent era of history. It is convenient, or poetic, or something special anyway, that the period is exactly seventy-one years to the day. Those seventy-one years were an era of wild political-ideological struggle, unseen, really, before or since.

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  • November 11th, 1918 : WWI ends as the armistice goes into effect at 11 AM. That war really brought down the old aristocratic order in Europe. As a result, politics was “opened up” very widely, perhaps more widely than it has ever been, before or since. Formerly-fringe “radicals” proliferated everywhere.

  • 1918 through the 1960s: A lot of stuff happens, in a lot of directions. As the smoke clears, Soviet-model Communism is arguably the biggest winner of the decades of political struggle after 1918. Certainly the biggest if looked at in relative terms; from zero communist states on the map in 1917 to something like half the world in the 1960s.
  • November 9th and 10th, 1989: The Berlin Wall Falls. The East German Communist government allows free border crossing and anti-communist radicals quickly take to smashing up the wall. The same was happening everywhere across the Soviet bloc in these months, but the symbolism too profound to not focus on Berlin. Breached late in the day on the 9th, free movement persisted on the 10th. As the sun rose on November 11th, still no crackdown. It must’ve been clear to everyone by, say, lunchtime (11 AM?) on the 11th that “Soviet-model Communism” was finished as an ideology and force in the world. The East German Communist state had gone out with a whimper. (The ex-Soviet bloc faced dreary years ahead. Ukraine: In 2013 [before the coup and ongoing civil war] Ukraine’s economy was, incredibly, still only two-thirds its 1989 size. See post-194).


November 11th, 1918 to November 11th, 1989: The Era of Ideological Struggle.

I don’t remember any of it.

bookmark_borderPost-244: Mao Zedong the Praiseworthy

Posted on by Peter
Suh Teacher was discussing a particular Korean word, “훌륭하다”. This word means “excellent; stately; honorable; respectable; commendable; admirable; praiseworthy.” Listening were the students of our class, 15 in all — thirteen from China, one Chinese-Malaysian, and me. To make sure students understood how to use the word, Suh Teacher asked, “Okay, then, for whom can we use this word? Examples?” It was an open question to the room.
Very quickly came a girl’s exclamation: “Mao Zedong!” (something like “Mao Dzhuh-doong” in Korean, which follows Chinese pronunciation, I suppose). The class did what it often does, which is to laugh in unison. (When these spontaneous eruptions happen, it always seems as if they’d been planned. It hadn’t been “planned”; there is just a Chinese Consensus in the room.) (The concept of “Chinese Consensus” has occurred to me before in classes, so I’ll capitalize it here so as to dignify it with an implied existence.)

I wondered why they were laughing.
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Chairman Mao “the Praiseworthy”
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My impression, from the many Chinese whom I’ve met while studying Korean, is that they really do like that man. At the same time, maybe most are aware enough to know that Chairman Mao, revered back in China down to the present day as he may be, is something of an enemy figure to South Koreans, certainly to older ones. He sent a million men to try to quash the existence of the Republic of Korea in 1950, after all. Hence the awkward laugh. This is my best explanation.

As the Chinese Consensus’ laugh was ebbing past its peak, something completely unexpected happened.

My favorite of the thirteen Chinese, J.G., a male about 20 years old, a voracious coffee drinker and always in good humor, exclaimed “아니요!” (“No!”). It was the first thing anyone had said since Mao was suggested as an “admirable, praiseworthy” figure a moment earlier. J.G. was animated. Along with his “No!”, he  did some kind of motion akin to humorously slamming the desk. It’s not clear to me to what extent he was joking. But he then — and this really was shocking to me — apparently suggested an alternative “admirable figure” in the person of Chiang Kai-Shek, the founder of Taiwan, arch anti-Communist, arch-enemy of Mao Zedong.

The teacher asked if this is who he’d meant. “대만을 만든 사람?” (“The person who ‘made’ Taiwan?”). “Yes”, J.G. said. There was no counter-reaction. The Consensus disintegrated into disorganized giggles and confusion. The teacher moved on.

bookmark_borderPost-243: “The Great Pumpkin Will Appear!”

Posted on by Peter
I had the opportunity to see the Charlie Brown Halloween special I’d seen as a young boy.

Linus evangelizes on behalf of the Great Pumpkin, a supernatural being he believes in. He is convinced that the Great Pumpkin will appear on Halloween Night in the pumpkin patch, and plans an all-night vigil. He tries to get others to join him. No one is convinced. Charlie Brown’s little sister Sally finally gets involved, but she is completely uninterested in the metaphysics of the Great Pumpkin. Rather, she wants to spend time alone with Linus, whom she likes. The attraction is not reciprocal, but Linus gladly takes her on as another disciple of the Great Pumpkin.

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Linus and Charlie Brown

Charles Schulz (the creator of the Charlie Brown universe) wrote and directed the Halloween special in 1966. It first aired on TV in October ’66. Schulz was born in 1922 in Minnesota and was raised in the Lutheran Church. He remained an active Christian till his death.

At one point, Schulz has Linus write a letter to the Great Pumpkin saying:“Everyone tells me you are a fake, but I believe in you. P.S., If you really are fake, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” 

Night comes; the Great Pumpkin doesn’t show up; Sally gets annoyed and storms off; Linus stays loyal and remains at his post. The next thing we know it’s 4 AM, and — shivering and having fallen asleep still at his vigil post — Linus is dragged inside and put to bed.

On the morning of November 1st, the show ends with this exchange:

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Charlie Brown: [Dejectedly] Well, another Halloween has come and gone.
Linus: [More Dejectedly] Yes, Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown: I don’t understand it. I went trick-or-treating and all I got was a bag full of rocks. I suppose you spent all night in the pumpkin patch.
Linus: [Nods]
Charlie Brown: And the Great Pumpkin never showed up?
Linus: Nope.
Charlie Brown: Well, don’t take it too hard, Linus. I’ve done many stupid things in my life, too.
Linus: [Shocked] [Turns angry] “Stupid”? What do you mean, “stupid”? [Flails arms in frustrated anger] Just wait till next year, Charlie Brown! You’ll see. Next year at this same time, I’ll find a pumpkin patch that’s real sincere. I’ll sit in that pumpkin patch until the Great Pumpkin appears. [Finger in the air, as pontificating] He’ll rise out of that pumpkin patch and fly through the air with bags of toys. The Great Pumpkin will appear! I’ll be waiting for him. I’ll be sitting there in that pumpkin patch and I’ll see the Great Pumpkin. Wait and see, Charlie Brown! I’ll see the Great Pumpkin! [End of Show]

We can see this as a satire on any kinds of religionists who talk about (imminent) End Times scenarios, to include (in my view) anyone who talks about the book of Revelation. The show being from 1966, it actually predates the rise of the more bizarre End of Days cults that seem to have proliferated hugely in the late 1960s and 1970s.

At the same time, Linus is a sympathetic character throughout (despite his show-ending diatribe). Watching the show, we want the Great Pumpkin to be real. Linus as a tragic hero. When Snoopy pops up in the shadows, for a split second, we, along with Linus and Sally looking on, want to believe it is the Great Pumpkin itself.

And alas, was Linus’ Halloween (an all-night vigil) really any worse spent than Charlie Brown’s own, who tried to have his fun but ended up with a bag full of rocks?

bookmark_borderPost-242: November 11th, 1918

Posted on by Peter
As I write, it is November 11th. It was on this day in 1918 that the fighting ended in what we now call “World War One” (famously, they arranged the ceasefire to begin at 11 AM). This is why the USA’s Veteran’s Day is November 11th.

One of my great-grandfathers was in the U.S. Army at that time, but he never left the USA. I wrote about what I’ve learned of his experience in post-224 (“My Great-Grandfather’s Piece of World War I“). He was at Camp Devens, MA. Here is a picture of one of the companies garrisoned (not his) at Camp Devens in 1918:

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Part of the company photograph of the “43rd Company”, Camp Devens Depot Brigade (151st)

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I had the good fortune to visit the Camp Devens museum while on a visit to Connecticut in August 2014. The museum is on the former site of the once-enormous Camp (later Fort) Devens. The museum keepers were friendly and chatted at long length. The base was built from nothing in 1917, and has now returned to a state of idleness.
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Full photograph, labeled “43rd Co. 151st Depot Brigade Camp Devens Mass. 1918” [photograph for sale here]

Flash back to early morning Eastern USA time (i.e., 11 AM European Time), Nov. 11th, 1918. How would my great-grandfather, then-21-year-old Earle Hazen, have greeted the news that the war was over? On one hand, his experience in helping run bustling Camp Devens must’ve been exhilarating in its own way, like the CCC of the 1930s. Young men tend to thrive on outdoor exertion. Plus, he was stationed at home so didn’t see the mass battlefield death, the definite downside to war. On the other hand, life has to move on, so he must’ve been excited to get out.

Within two years of the armistice, Earle Hazen was married and within three years, my grandmother was born.

bookmark_borderPost-241: Eating Shrimp Burgers at Lotteria (Or, the Shrimp Burger War)

Posted on by Peter
Since time immemorial, as far as I know, Lotteria has been “the only game in town” for shrimp burger fans,

But, lo, McDonald’s has announced its own shrimp burger to South Korea, and Lotteria, worried, held a “buy one shrimp burger, get one free” in the last week of October to rally the faithful. I carefully investigated.

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A Lotteria in Incheon, South Korea. The sign says:
“Shrimp Burger 1+1” (buy one get one free) / From the 28th to the 30th / From 2 to 10 PM

That’s the Lotteria I found. In I went. This Lotteria, like many others, is multi-storey. You can see the second level of seating above. The inside of the ground floor was interesting in several ways:
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I’d like to make two comments about the above scene:

(1) All in the Family (of Companies). The naive foreigner likely wouldn’t guess it, but this “Natuur” brand ice cream and Lotteria are owned by the same parent mega-company (or chaebol, 제벌, based on the Japanese zaibatsu), namely Lotte Group. I learned this from my friend B.W. Cho who now  works for Lotte Group. Any time two businesses are inexplicably collaborating, it’ll mean they are under the same chaebol.

Korean society is dominated by these chaebol mega-companies. The biggest is Samsung. They say that Samsung alone constitutes 20% of the South Korean economy. This shocks Westerners and I think it’s fair to say that it seems “dirty” to us, almost what we’d expect in a dystopian sci-fi world. A few mega-companies control everything? Come on.

(2) Not-in-Kansas-Anymore Grammar. Part-2 here may seem cliche, because it is. But I think it’s worth pointing out: We have very little English in the above scene, but even so we get an awkward attempted semi-pun (“In-Joy Lotteria”). Then on the ice cream freezer we see another grammar error, “Pure, Nature, Freshness” (should be “Natural”; arguably “Fresh”). Oh well. No big deal and proof and testament that this is no Western franchise, anyway. Lotteria began in Japan and South Korea in the 1970s and has since spread across East Asia (though McDonald’s is still king).

Then I read the wrapper:

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Lotteria Shrimp Burger.

CAUTION: This product can be spoiled it should be eaten as quickly as possible.
As quickly as possible! Oh, my. It sounds intimidating, doesn’t it, like it’s a James-Bond-style timebomb.

I did eat them pretty promptly in one sense, in fact earlier than the rules allowed for: The event was supposed to start on October 28th at 2 PM, but I managed to get mine on the 28th at 1:50 PM. Two shrimp burgers for 3,300 South Korean Won, which is about $3.00 USD. It’s not the greatest deal in history but I hadn’t had a shrimp burger in a long time. The two shrimp burgers did the job they were made for well enough. I seldom eat at these kids of places, but when I do I like Lotteria for its shrimp burger (though more usually I order whatever is rock-bottom cheapest, which is usually what they call the “bulgogi burger”).

Many foreigners in Korea say they dislike Lotteria which has always puzzled me. In fact, I’d never heard of “Lotteria” before coming to Asia. Does unfamiliarity breed contempt? Does the strange English (as above) put people off? Do they just feel McDonald’s is their natural place? They say it’s the taste. I don’t see a difference.

Oh, one more thing: The name. “Lotteria” It took me a long time to figure out how to pronounce it. It is pronounced flatly, without accent (that is, it is not “loh-teh-REE-ah”, the style that would fit the Spanish tongue). The name comes from its parent company, Lotte Group. Its original meaning was “Lotte Cafeteria”, shortened to “Lotteria”. This I also know from B.W. Cho, who as a new worker for the company had to pass a test about company culture and history.

bookmark_borderPost-240: “First World, Third World” Travel Essay

Posted on by Peter
From my experience in international travel since 2007 (I left the USA for the first time on Jan. 1, 2007), I’m led to believe that no other rich country on this planet is anywhere near as unpleasant to fly in as the USA. The only airport I’ve ever been in that was less pleasant than the USA’s airports tend to be today must be Manila, designated the “World’s Worst Airport”. (If you go through it for any length of time you will see why. I did.)

I discovered a stinging and incisive travel essay that captures the feeling of air travel in the USA today. Who among us can’t echo most everything the essay says (those who have traveled by air in the USA in recent years)? The writer writes specifically about New York City, a place I’ve been in and out of several times lately. His social commentary about NYC in the quoted excerpts below I can also agree with.

I find it to be good, engaging writing, which can be hard for travel writing to achieve. Here:

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First World, Third World: A Travel Essay
By Peter  Van Buren

You travel a bit, and you wonder what happened. […]

Read the Essay

To the Airport
The subway might be faster, but the segment I’d use for part of the journey was first opened in 1904 and is a hodge-podge of patches and repairs today. The girders holding up the street have been painted by generations of workers over the last hundred years such that when a chip appears, it is deep and noticeable, a sort of archaeological find. Theodore Roosevelt was president when the first coat of paint was applied.

The subway isn’t really an option anyway. Public transportation to the airport, one of America’s busiest, is limited to a single bus that runs irregularly, with limited space for the luggage of the poor souls who need to check something, and drops off at stops at the airport equally convenient to no one. The bus isn’t yours anyway; it is designed for persons commuting out of the areas it passes through headed to work at the airport, staffing your Cinnabon. Some smiles there that don’t reach eyes. At least remember to say thanks.

On your way you pass through their crumbling neighborhoods where the open businesses are often check cashing places, we buy gold cubbies and pawn shops. Some fast food places, who pay minimum wage in the neighborhood while exporting profits to midtown banks. You can actually see over the roofs into Manhattan where the money goes, and where the morning newspaper has an article on “affordable” condos priced at over two million dollars.

At the Airport
The airport, originally built in 1939 (Franklin Roosevelt was President and WWII was just starting for the Greatest Generation) and randomly added to over since, is chaotic at best. At security, foreign tourists look around for validation as they are yelled at to remove their shoes. It all seems inexplicable to many from Third World places the U.S. can’t bully into following America’s security theatre script. The floor we walk on in our socks is still a bit sticky from some spill. Everyone holds their hands over their head inside the scanner, a position of submission prisoners assume. The analogy is only slightly an analogy. But people either believe in it for their freedom as they are told, or just put up with it to avoid the bullying that follows displays of even quiet resistance. Be glad you are allowed to fly at all and have not been put without your knowledge on the No-Fly list for some Josef K. offense.

Everyone on the plane, which departs late without explanation offered to you, is sorted into class. Those with the right credit card, or those who paid more, are treated one way, right down to a silly scrap of red carpet at check-in that to be fair does seem to validate something to some of them, judging by the smiles and the glances back into the lines. The other people are pushed onto the plane in a scrum of unintelligible “groups” to struggle against one another for the limited resources of space to sit, or to store giant amounts of luggage they are forced to carry to avoid usurious fees. The fee has nothing much to do with the airline’s biggest cost, fuel, as the weight is the same in or under the plane. The fee just is there. It’s a kind of modern icon, in other places called disingenuously a “convenience fee,” a fee you pay to buy something else.

On the plane everyone speaks in a bully’s (that word again) passive-aggressive verbiage. Sit down or we won’t take off, and it’ll be your fault, and God help you if the other flyers turn on you. You can’t congregate near the restrooms, even though there is only a tiny space anyway, because supposedly 13 years ago that’s what the 9/11 hijackers did. You are not passengers, or customers. You are all potential terrorists and will be treated as such. Here’s half a Diet Coke as a reward for being compliant.


[Note: Section headings added by me] [Full Essay]

Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People”. A TomDispatch regular, he writes about current events at his blog, We Meant Well. His latest book is “Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent”.

There are certain people in the USA who might view his commentary as “anti-American” (but as he was in federal service [U.S. State Department] for 24 years, he can’t be all that anti-American). The people waving away this commentary as “anti-American” will likely have never been abroad; will likely have never seen anything else; will likely have never realized that the other rich countries of the world seem able to do a lot of things a lot better than the USA can, at this late date. Why? I ask.

The author’s first words above: “You travel a bit, and you wonder what happened.”  People say that the USA is the most powerful and richest country in the history of the world, and it has been so for something approaching a century. What happened?