Scribblings of the Metropolitician

JK – Just Make a Blog, Dude

JK - The reason why I think your argument isn't convincing is that it's all a function of your narrow, singular experience (which is a limit all of us have) combined with your continuing to read that experience through a lot of assumptions that are not as necessarily as a priori "true" as you think they are, combined with the fact that you seem to read everything through the lenses of national categories (the Japanese do this, the Koreans do that) and equivocation (blacks in Japan experience X, Korean Americans in the US experience Y, therefore whites in Japan should experience Z).

It doesn't work this way, if you really look at the peculiarities of the situation, along with some of its informative parallele.

You seem to be setting up a straw man that frankly, I don't think exists in the monolithic way you describe it to be such that you can represent yourself as being on the receiving end of this singularly crazy chimera of white men in Korea. Yeah, there are a lot of annoying white people here who don't recognize their own (largely male) white privelege and only see the examples of their apparent discrimination and don't see how their very mode of existence here depends on their whiteness and their passport. Or whiteness as the passport, as the case may be.

Yet, the majority of those people grumble to themselves or people like themselves, they might complain about it on some blogs, but the majority of those people don't turn into pro-Japanese Korea-haters. Come on, dude. I know you're really put off by the site in question, as I am, but let's both be real and admit that that is a particularly unique site. Yeah, it touches a nerve with many white expats, but there's a big difference between MAKING a site versus passively becoming part of its community.

And pattern describing the "typical" white male expat who dates and even marries a Korean woman, comes to or lives in Korea with "open eyes" and then over the years, builds up a bank of derision and anger at being discriminated against and then "explodes" in fits of anti-Korean rage – man, it just doesn't jibe with what I've seen.

And given your previous comments that seem to so prominently assume that people like Matt were dissed by Korean women and are just angry, or by extension, that Korean men overseas who give white men shit for being with a Korean woman become the source of such rage for those white men – I think that they explain your psychology much more than the apparent motivations of the white men in question. In any case, it's a pretty weak accusation.

From what I've seen – and this seems more reasonable than your explanation, although I question the very utility of linking romance with Korean women to eventually hating Koreea, but – the majority of men who date Korean women and marry them are reasonable people who don't become wild Korea-haters, but actually have had to find ways to deal with the occasional rebuff, stare, or comment from folks.

And we have to think about generations and how things change. The majority of white men TODAY who get married to Korean women whom *I* know and see around - and I have attended several such weddings just recently – have made great affective committments to their spouses. It's part of the process of getting married to anyone. They've already come to terms with being the odd-man-out, and also generally know a lot about the culture, many of them speak conversational Korean, and definitely do not "hate" Korea or even Korean men, as you tend to assume.

Am I defending all white men? No. I'm not even working within such a paradigm of "us vs. them" regarding white men and whomever else. But I am saying that if you're talking about WHITE MEN WHO MARRY KOREAN WOMEN, the majority of them don't end up becoming Korea-haters.

In fact, the people whom I think you're talking about – people who seem to cheese you off to the point that I don't even think you're being reasonable anymore, like Matt – are not typical.

Even if you're talking about the majority of expat blogs written by white men, I don't think the majority are Korea-hating, right-wing Japan-boosting sites, nor do they go on and on about hating Korea, as you say they do. The majority of sites in the Korean blogosphere – as in any blogosphere – are personal and reflect the stage of life where the blogger is at. Most are English teachers trying to give wry and witty observations on life in Korea, being an outsider for the first time, strange and quirky cultural differences, weird food tales, and the like.

The majority of Korea blogs are remarkably mundane and apolitical, existing as functions of the blogger's experiences. Since the majority of these blogs are functions of people generally experiencing what I call the "Stage 1" of life in Korea – "Oh, there's lotsa Korean people and look, they have a different logic than me, and look, weird food, and wow, I'm a minority for the first time in my life, and gee, I wish I could be understood for who I am instead of whom I appear to be" – and there's nothing wrong with that.

And along the way, you get some righteous indignation about being discriminated against in Korea as a white person for the first time. It's part of the playbook, guy. I went through my own version of that in 1994. Korean Americans go through their own version of this, but instead, you often get "Oh my gosh, I'm really much more 'American' than I made room for in my 22-year-old identity politics, and wow, why don't Koreans see me for who I am instead of whom I appear to be?" From watching all types of people come and go through Korea, I'm struck at how similar the Stage 1 reaction is, as opposed to how different they are.

I'm not saying I want to sit down and listen to the conversations of white people complaining about "finally understanding what it means to be black back home" over beer; nor will I be friends and hang out with people going on and on about how much Korea sucks and America's suddenly great and whatnot. It's so Stage 1 life in Korea - no matter where you go, there's nothing to make someone more patriotic than a year spent overseas. And it can happen in a lot of ways: a Korean American from LA might get all Korean nationalist and "Korean Pride" and "if it's Korean, it's good" for a while (seen a lot of that), while some white folks can get a martyr complex and all "I'm Malcolm X in Korea" (seen a lot of that, too). But most people keep it reasonable, and a few get excited about it over beers. I myself remember in 1996 reading Francis Fukuyama and once yelling duing a beer-filled debate about Hiroshima and the Smithsonian that "They deserved it! I'd bomb those motherfuckers again!"

Wow. The thoughts of a 23-year-old living overseas for the first time in a bar. Yeah, there was no real web back there on the island I lived on, international long distance was still more than a buck per minutes, and there were certainly no blogs or other ways to let off steam. Thank God, in my case. I don't want a record of things I said back then - umm, actually that would be kinda interesting, come to think of it – but the world isn't necessarily a better place for it.

But just try to interpret this "situation" honestly and reasonably – yeah, there's a site out there that really irks you. But what it sounds like you're doing is trying to place every annoying conversation or even annoying person into this singular category of the "angry white man" who, I'm sorry to say, I don't think exists, at least in the cartoon-character form you're describing.

Dude - it sounds like you need to make a blog. Get it out. Express. Add to the conversation. Seriously – that's why anyone – even the people whom you hate – make blogs. It's a vent, an overload cutoff system. It's why I blog. It's why many, many expats blog. It's probably why Occidentalism is a blog. We all got shit to get off of our chests, or something we want to say. You may think that I'm lying down with the devil for even saying so, but whether the blog is about "I Love My Korean Life" or "I Hate Korea" or "Me and My Pet Turtles" or whatever – we all got something to say.

And no matter how you cut it, you obviously have something to say as well. You come here, you go there, you complain of having been unfairly banned, you have an agenda. You also seem to have a point-of-view. People with agendas, a point of view, and a lot to say generally need to blog.

So just do it, dude. I think you'll find that in the process, you'll see it's hard work to keep up with past the first couple weeks, you have to deal with people who disagree with you or even hate you, and yet, you have to find a way of dealing with them in a way that doesn't turn off your readers.

It's a process, a struggle, dude. And for me, something fun to do. In the end, blogging has gotta be fun, else you won't do it anymore. And for the readers, it's gotta be fun, else they won't come anymore. And once your blog is going, I think you'll see a lot of things differently and may just well come to add to something to the greater conversation in the process.

So make the blog, dude. I'm not being cheeky or facetious. I'm serious. Make it – I'll link to it as long as it's reasonable. Even if I find it unreasonable, I'll link to it in a post or two because it' s an interesting story, and I'm sure that readers both here and at Occi would be interested in seeing what you have to say.

Hey – you're guaranteed a much more public birth than most blogs get, so when's the opening date?

Where's Metro?

Whereever you is, I'ma find you and I'ma kill you.

That's to the two heffas who pushed me out of the picture – you know you out there. See me? The Metropolitician? Oh? You don't? That's because there should be one more person standing on the far right – me. And see the two – ahem – ladies standing to the left of former president Clinton? Yeah. Them. The Ones Who Took My Place. Why am I angry? Let me tell you.

See, back in 1994–1996, I lived on Cheju Island, where I was a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) and generally a happy camper. Now, were heard that gold ole' Billie was stopping in to visit on his way to Japan, and yes, when we saw the Secret Service agents traveling in pairs around the island doing advance scouting while trying to look "inconspicuous" – white and black dudes built like linebackers walking around in pairs with plastic earbuds and no tourist bags on an island that had less than 20-30 westerners at any one time just don't cut it – we knew it was real.

So we prepared signs, got time off of school, and even got Fulbright to pull some strings and get us press passes so we could get into the Shilla Hotel, where Bill and 03 (Young Sam) were gonna be briefly meeting.

So we were gleefully gleeful as we arrived that day – by the way, Korean Secret Service, I hope you're checking foreigners these days, since you let me walk right past all your checkpoints without checking for my press pass (I guess if you were a foreigner, they just assumed you were with the press at that time) – as we sat inside the hotel, yellow press passes hanging 'round our necks.

Still, there were a few downers.

The big one was the fact that we were basically rounded up and told not to leave the coffee shop area. "But we have press passes!" The Korean Secret Service still wouldn't let us leave, since we were obviously not actually press, despite having the same clearance any member of the press had gotten. But they were handling the bulk of the general security, while the US Secret Service was handling the stuff 'round The Prez.

The US Secret Service had also told us to not flash the signs we had brought, which declared something like "Welcome from Fellow Fulbrighters!" or something. Since I didn't particularly feel like getting shot for suddenly pulling out a huge yellow sign, I decided to nix the idea.

To add insult to (perceived) injury, there were other foreign types in the coffee shop holding area as well – some missionary types who worked in the SDA hagwon. "Heeeey? Aren't they supposed to be honest or something? What were they doing here without press passes?" I thought to myself. Well, the Korean security guys weren't really checking. And even with press passes, we were all in the same roundup. Bastards.

Anyway, one intrepid member of our group – Monica (I'll leave it up to you to decide if her having that fateful name had any role in this) – had disappeared off to try and make a run of it. We had discouraged her from doing so, but Monica was not one to be discouraged.

About five minutes later, as Ted (the last guy in the picture to the right) and I are grumbling about being stuck with the Lying Missionaries off in the corner, who do we see but our friend Monica and William Jefferson Clinton walking together, two-by-two and side-to-side, with her gesticulating and talking as if she were a head of state, Bill nodding and listening intently as they walked. The press corps was snapping like mad at this little piece of wild, unplanned news action. As Kartman would say, "Hollleee sheet, dude."

Ted and I looked at each other with the clearest expression of, "Negro, whaaaaaat?!" on our faces, then looked up again to see Monica pointing us out to Bill, who then gave a big wave, yelling "Come on over and get a picture!" Of course, when the "Leader of the Free World" and Mack Playa #1 tells you to "come over and get a picture," you GET THE FUCK UP, right? We weren't thinking.

All this time, the Korean security dude, who had had his back to all this business going on behind him and was just watching us and stuff in our general direction, just sees me and Ted get up in a start and rush in his direction and the direction of the Leader of the Free World.

Note for Life: Do not make sudden rushes toward security dudes guarding leaders of countries.

Luckily, he didn't pull a gun or club us, but he was very tense and terse as he put out both his hands and was like "Stop!" Coming back to our senses, we stopped, of course. That's when Ted dropped one of the two show-stopping lines he would lay down that day.

"Umm, like the President of the United States just told us to go over there," said Ted in a kind of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure sort of way, because that's how he talked back then.

Ah, that was satisfying. He looks behind him and indeed, POTUS and other security people were gesturing (and he got a nod) like, "Stand down, Korean security dude." Awesome.

But what was NOT AWESOME was the 2 out of the 3 Lying Missionaries to our right suddenly joined the party. What are you gonna do? I'm 23, speechless, and things are whirling around me. And even if I had had my wits about me enough to say, "Hey – you're not Fulbrights!" I would have just been the asshole. They weren't going to kick them out or anything, and I didn't particularly care – yet.

So we all did the line-handshake thing – yes, I shook hands with both Bill and 03 on the same day, so "who wants to touch me? I said, who wants to fuckin' touch me?!" – and found myself particularly speechless and swooning like a middle school girl backstage after an Nsync concert. I stupidly gave my camera to a Secret Service agent – who later told me he was sorry, but he was working and couldn't take a picture with my camera – but we still had Ted's, so no biggie, no biggie. Right? RIGHT?!

As we were sitting in the 1-hour picture place in the hotel, exchanging obligatory "Holy shit, dudes" and "That was soooo awesome", the pictures come out, and we were going to pick one and get several blowups. Then Ted dropped the other bomb I would never forget.

"Umm, Mike, there's a slight problem."

I rush over, heart, lungs, and liver sinking, to see that I had been perfectly, masterfully cut off, as if I hadn't even been there. No half-head, no shoulder, nada. Zip. 없음.

I won't even go into the gesticulations, curses, or thoughts of death to the Lying Missionaries Who Cost Me My Picture. The pain has lasted too long, and I have healed.

Yes, healed into an angry, burning, gnarled scar running down the visage of my very soul.

Buuuuut, my death threats to them are now mere jokey blog fodder. Yep. Umm hmm.

Just don't let me bump into you in a dark alley, ladies. 'Cause we got unfinished bidness.

And to anyone in the press corps out there, who has access to files and whatnot in your newspapers, if you can dig up a picture of me from your archives – there were like 10,000 photographers snapping away with cameras far more advanced than Ted's – I'd definitely buy you a dinner, wash your car, and walk your dog. Or wash your dog, eat your dinner, and walk away. Or something like that. Don't worry – I won't eat your dog.

April 16, 1996 – at least if Ted's camera was set right, which I'm pretty sure it was. Anyway, it was the day Bill and 03 met in the Shilla Hotel for his brief tour through Asia.

Help me heal this 10-year-old wound! Oh, the pain! Must...try to...move on...

"Return to the Superdome" – for Whom?

I just finished watching a video piece from the New York Times (on the front page, but I can't find a direct link to the video, sorry) today on Saints fans returning to the Superdome, with people talking about "purging" the ghosts of Katrina and reminiscing about all "those people" who got stuck in there, but rejoining about how "we're back."

Did anyone not notice that every single rejoicing fan and person interviewed was white?

Not a single black face, nor other recognizable "person of color." Either they weren't interviewed (unusual for such a diverse town as New Orleands) or there weren't any to be interviewed (which would also be unusual for the same reason).

Now, I'm not from that city, so I don't know the details of how things go down down there – who generally goes where and what the ethnic breakdown is – but it seems to me that either blacks don't go to the Superdome much, or they weren't on opening day.

Either way, that's a pretty significant part of this puzzle for a real journalist, wouldn't you say, NYT? I mean, given the fact of blacks having had to retreat to the Superdome and all the charged politics of race, class, money, and apparent lack of power – the seemingly very white nature of the "return" of New Orleans residents to the Superdome should be a part of the story as well.

Suggestion: somebody should write a story somewhere entitled "Return for Whom?" and bring a video camera, still camera, and a notepad. I hope somebody did. It would have made a great story.

NTY: You call that piece of pap journalism? Sheesh.

Kudos to the Ministry of Education!

(Hat tip to The Marmot's Hole for this one.)

Well, as much a I ride the Ministry's ass about many of their other policies, sometimes you gotta give them credit.

For all the problems that go along with having a centrally-controlled and managed school system and curriculum, it has its own powers – there are some benefits. One of the downsides of the American way of doing things is that the Department of Education has no overreaching power to force any kind of reform – the federal government can lead with a carrot, but can't force the states to do anything they don't want to do when it comes to education funding, administration, or curriculum. The Constitution's a great thing, but it makes education reform in the US a major bitch.

Enter the Korean system, where everything happens from the top. When a policy sucks, it sucks for everybody. When a textbook is full of unequaal gender roles or assertions of pride in alleged racial "purity", everyone is learning it. And that's been the subject of many a post of mine (here and here and here and here).

But when a decision is made to make a long-needed change, it's done. Like that. "Two snaps up in a circle," and textbooks are all different.

And for those who said I was just seeing what I wanted to see, or that the work "minjok" absolutely, can never be translated as "race", or that I was being too hard on Korea and am a "Korea-basher" – well, eat crow.

From the Hankyeoreh article quote in the link right above:

"Additionally, expressions that reinforce discrimination against those of mixed-race backgrounds and immigrants, as well as excessive emphasis on Korea as a nation of "one blood," will disappear from textbooks."

So that means the government acknowledges that there indeed was material that did indeed "reinforce discrimination against those of mixed-race backgrounds and immigrants, as well as excessive emphasis on Korea as a nation of 'one blood.'"

And since I'm giving the Ministry kudos, you can't say I am "just negative," right? Sure, there's more critical stuff on this blog than "대~한민국!" – but that's what you get with a social criticism blog, right? If you want hand-clapping and "대~한민국", just pick up any tourist brochure, book in English published in Korea, or Seoul Magazine.

Here, you get reasonable social critique – and if and when there's "positive" headway made on an issue I otherwise critique, I am more than happy to point that out. But signs of such progress, as is true for any society with certain social problems kept locked in by social inertia and the interests of the powerful, doesn't come easily or often.

But when it does, I'm as eager to point that out as criticize it. Otherwise, what would be the value of making the critique in the first place?

Kitty Porn

I thought my cat – Orenji – was pretty innocent, especially since he was neutered early and still tries to act like a baby. Recently, I was shocked to have this encounter. I was vexed, very vexed.

It was also a chance to play with my new program, Comic Life, that came with my Mac Pro. It rocks. Please excuse this indulgence, my cat narcissism, and publishing of kitty porn. Orenji's one-and-a-half years old – so what does that make him in human years?

If Orenji or I smoked, I think we'd need to share a cigarette.

"Zen"

A lucky shot on one of the last summer nights in Shinchon of a pair on a moped that was speeding by at breakneck speed, which prevented me from getting more than two shots off as a tracked them with my arm. The second shot missed, so this was a lucky "hole in one" shot in which the subjects – and the entire picture – ended up being perfectly framed on the first push of the shutter button.

The moment of detached tranquility on the young ladies face – priceless.

The Need for a "Critical American Studies"

This is a short piece I am writing for the American Studies Association of Korea, as a new member of the group. I am going to be a discussant in an upcoming academic conference dealing with the discourse of race in the aftermath of Katrina. It should be a nice way to get back on the academic wagon.

Anyway, they asked me to write something about American Studies in their newsletter. I'm gonna edit it down later, but want to submit it as a short essay-in-progress, in its full fotm. Please excuse the repetitiveness. Anyway, here goes:

The Need for a "Critical American Studies"

As an undergraduate double major in History and "American Civilization" (Brown University's name for "American Studies"), I once found myself railroaded into a conversation with an elder visiting professor from England, who had asked me what my major was.

When dutifully replying to his question, informing him that my major was "American Studies," he raised an eyebrow and smirked as he asked me, "Is that not a contradiction in terms?"

I was not amused. But I was also not confident enough to think of anything witty, sharp, or erudite to say. He also had a British accent. I just nodded nervously and mustered a weak smile.

As a teacher of US History for 2 years in two private high schools in Korea, I have constantly fought the fallacious belief that "American history is only a couple hundred years old, while Korea's is 5,000." As an experienced teacher in this subject, I am able to easily dispatch these uninformed notions of "history" as being solely defined by physical borders, rather than cultural continuity, population movements, and the exchange and preservation of concrete information. Using the former definition, South Korean history began either in 1948 or 1953, depending on your point of view. Similarly, American history is far more rich and complex a story; in the same way one cannot say Korean history began in 1948, neither did American history begin in 1787, 1776, 1620, or even 1492.

And finally, as returning lecturer in "Understanding American Culture" at 외대 and a Ph.D. candidate with several years of teaching experience at the university level back at Berkeley, I have had to adjust to the many students' initial suspicion that my course would be just be a booster for American imperialism or national superiority. Most of my students have been quite surprised to see the critical approach with which I look at the history and culture of the United States.

All of these situations give a hint to the different ways people view "American Studies" and its implicit agenda in existing at all. What lessons can America's "short" history offer the rest of the world's "older" countries? Why should we learn about America – don't we already know enough from their movies, television, and other cultural products? Isn't this just more of the same boosterism for American hegemony?

Korea, more than many other countries and cultures in the world, could greatly benefit from an American Studies approach that is inherently critical – as all good scholarship should be – and non-ideological. Given the surge in anti-American sentiment in recent years, especially among the younger generation, a critical American Studies approach is the ideal way to offer a more accurate view into the study of American culture, as it would take place within a mode of analysis that would make it clear that what would be taught would not be recycled American civics lessons or brazen braggadocio about the greatness of American ideology.

Instead, what they would be exposed to would be a mode of critical analysis that would utilize American culture and history as the content, but which the students would soon realize – by following the lead of the instructor – are conceptual tools that can be applied to any society and culture. In this way, the students will start by looking critically at American culture, but in a way that allows a reasoned, complex, and layered understanding of not only American society, but one's own, in terms of patterns of thinking, social structures, and helpful explanative frameworks.

What this requires is the teaching of an American Studies that utilizes specific, clearly defined conceptual tools and approaching the notion of "culture" and "history" within a structural framework that explains as much as it calls things into question.

For most Korean students, such a class is completely new to them, but they respond to it readily and eagerly, now taking the first chance to be critical without confusing that concept with simply being "contentious"; students do more than try to frame American society in a negative light and call this "critical" – they learn an entirely new mode of critical thinking style, one that can easily be applied to their own society.

One interesting thing about most of my lectures is that with almost every conceptual tool I apply to the American case, I usually first offer an example of how it could also apply in Korea. In this way, the connections are easier to make, and Korean students soon learn that this critical intellectual stance is universal, and become better young scholars, thinkers, and hopefully better citizens.

And given Korea's particular and uniquely close ties to the United States – for better or worse – South Korean society is difficult to understand without the close contact and deep influence of American culture, which is why American Studies should be of special interest to many Koreans, if presented properly.

Long past is the time when American Studies can be understood as mere patriotic  propaganda disguised as scholarship, or a diffuse field with little focus. It should be approached as an area of study that strives to clarify and understand one of the most powerful and influential cultures in history, a country and a culture that has left an indelible imprint on every other country and culture in the world – The United States of America.

Given these facts, who could argue that American Studies is in itself not one of the most interesting and worthy fields of study that there could be? And given the present situation and orientation of young students and scholars today, now is one of the best times to present a critical American Studies approach to a population that has such a complex and contentious relationship with the both the place and concept we know as "America."

Signups for Multimedia Production Classes!

Want to learn photography? How about podcasting? Want to learn how to properly produce a podcast in the first place? Want to bring your blogging to the next level?

Announcing second signups for the Multimedia Production classes. The course is 8 weeks, but pretty evenly divided between photography in the first half and multimedia in the second, which we're about to begin. The classes are 3-hour seminars, once per week, some conducted in my studio and a couple spent out in the field, made professional by an 80-inch projection screen fed by a superfast Mac, as well as a secure wireless Internet connection for your use.

We're coming up on the 4th session (next Sunday) of the multimedia production classes, having started to round up the photography portion of the class. For those who'd like to start right away with the podcasting/production/blogging portion of the class, now's the time for signups.

This is the portion that is a lot harder for many people – blogging, audio/video production, and podcasting. It's not rocket science – in fact, it's not so complex. But the learning curve can be steep if you're starting up alone but it's pretty straightforward when explained by someone else.

So far, we've done some basic photo theory, went out on the streets shooting, then did a basic Photoshop workshop in the studio. Next week we do a blogging overview, followed in the following weeks by podcast production, podcast creation, and then connecting the dots together in the blog and with other media formats.

Original image:

After levels control and minimal saturation and contrast adjustments applied (not so apparent in these compressed JPEGS):

Cropping choice 1:

Cropping choice 2:

Al depends on what you want. Here's an example of the photo analysis we did (nice Job, Brendan).

Original (after basic adjustments):

Some of our comments from the session:

Find this interesting? Interested? Drop me an email in the link at the top of this menu.

Did It Really Require an SNU Doctor?

Grrrrr.

"Fan death."

Here's why it shouldn't take a Seoul National University doctor to refute this ridiculous myth, but rather common sense armed with the basic critical thinking skills and basic science education any high school graduate should have.

Suspicious Fact: Logic
If South Korea is the only country in the world where fan death is officially reported, but many other countries and locales in the world have entire populations that have been falling asleep next to fans and under air conditioners for years, doesn't anyone think anything's wrong with this picture?

It's a logical fallacy and a particularly human foible: gullibility: if you believe something to be true, or real, or concrete, then it is. If an old man dies of heart failure or sleep apnea in any other country where no one believes in "fan death," then the doctor will look more closely and investigate the real cause. If a nation believes that you can die from sleeping in front of a fan – if even the doctors believe it and then ask the family, "Did he sleep in front of a fan?" and the the family confirms – yes, he was! – then fool doctor's eventually gonna write it up as "fan death." And then everybody's gonna believe it, since "a doctor said so." 휴.

Now here's a fan that could kill me, if I stuck a vital appendage in the blades.

Ouch.

Stupid Hypothesis #1: Hypothermia
Why does your body feel cooler in front of a fan? Because you perspire and as the water evaporates, it takes heat away from your body. If you sit in front of a fan too long, you may feel uncomfortably cool. But come on – your core body temperature simply cannot drop to dangerous levels because of air – that is the same temperature as any of the other air in the area – simply because it blows over your body. This is why you feel less cool as you stop perspiring, because as your body is no longer perspiring (because you have less excess heat it wants to get rid of), there is less and less water to evaporate off your skin. When you are all dry and no longer overheated, that's when the fan's air feels no longer cold and more annoying than anything else.

But a fan can only get you down 'round to normal body temperature, but not actually take you down to hypothermic levels. It's not actively taking heat away from your body by reducing the temperature. And even an air conditioner only cools down to a set temperature, and maxes down at 18 degrees Celsius. Yes, air refrigeration technology could cause hypothermia, if you happened to get drowsy and fall asleep in the meat freezer while on break at KFC. Neither a fan nor an air conditioner can reduce your body temperature even within a smidgen of the range to cause hypothermia. I'm not a doctor, but I know I ain't gonna freeze to death because of being in a cool room for a few hours. If frail old people actually died of hypothermia next to air conditioners, then Florida wouldn't be a favorite retirement spot for old folks, now would it? And surely, I would have heard of a case or two in the decades since Americans have been using air conditioners and fans and doing the unthinkable – sleeping under them!

Stupid Hypothesis #2: Suffocation
A fan creates a vacuum by blowing air across your face? Really? In what universe? A vacuum is defined by an absence of air, not its presence.

It's the same silly idea you get when people think they'll suffocate if they stick their head out of a moving car. Dogs do it all the time and they don't die. If this were true, surely one case of "motion vacuum death" would have occurred out of the many people out there racing motorcycles, flying hang-gliders, parachuting, competing in cycle races, skiing, speed skating, surfing...you get the point? Not only is this scientifically ludicrous, the fallacious nature of this belief is pointed out in just about every type of activity that brings human faces into contact with air moving faster than 10 miles per hour.

Really Stupid Hypothesis #3: Carbon Dioxide Asphyxiation
Well, this one's possible – if you have a gas or coal-powered fan. And then you'd be dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, which often happened when old ondol systems malfunctioned. I would have another aunt right now were it not for such a malfunction decades ago. But such is the fear that old people still tend to have, which may have been transferred over to the notion of "fan death."

But let's get real. The motor of the fan produces carbon dioxide that kills you? Say what? Koreanegroes, pleeeeze. A few house plants probably produce more carbon dioxide than any electric fan would. Then we'd have "computer fan death" and people in crowded PC bangs across Korea would be dropping dead like flies. People – there are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of mini-fans whirring incessantly in small, smoke-filled rooms across the nation. Worried about harmful products in the air? Tell people to stop smoking in PC bangs! The tar and other carcinogens from cigarette smoke is actually going to take years off your life, which is why I don't go to PC bangs.

Are there any more questions that this layman can answer? Really. The fact that this must even be addressed in a newspaper is embarrassing.

Korean folks are some of the most highly-educated and literate populations on God's green planet. I think "fan death" is just one of those thing caused by the way knowledge is produced in the education system, along with a glaring lack of critical thinking skills.

COROLLARY GRIPE:
A university student of mine once tried to point out a logical fallacy to me by offering an "illuminating" question told her by her professor. It had to do with the demonstrating how correlation does not equal cause, which is a basic misunderstanding that many untrained minds out there make.

So we were having our little discussion when she smugly posed the question to me, as if I was going to actually get caught in her paltry intellectual trap: "Do you know why the incidence of rapes and the consumption of ice cream rise and fall in almost 1:1 correlation?" No, I didn't, nor did I want to even waste time on some silly answer that I was sure about to come.

I simply said that yes, I knew perfectly well that correlation and cause were different, much as my waist line and the expansion of the universe were not causally related but more of a factor of time (and its effect on my slowing metabolism and levels of laziness). But she decided that she "had me" and gleefully provided the answer: "It's because of temperature! In the summer, it's hotter, so want to eat more ice cream and girls wear less clothing, causing more men to be sexually tempted."

Oh. My. God. Apparently, her professor is a "trained" social scientist in possession of a Ph.D. at Yonsei University. Apparently.

Yes, I agreed, no causality between ice cream consumption and rape. Duh. But the temperature alone as a correlating explanation, resting atop the specious assumption that higher skirts and more ass means more incidents of rape? Surely a social scientist is going to look deeper than that. So here's another, far more reasonable hypothesis for the "obvious" relationship between more revealing clothing and a higher incidence of rape:

Maybe – just maybe – instead of assuming that men are walking around getting woodies and inevitably wanting to rape women more – given a certain probability and incidence of rape in a society (and surely there might be some fluctuations over time), perhaps in the summer there are more opportunities for such incidents to occur, made possible by the greatly increased levels of certain kinds of social interactions that occur at a more frequent rate in the summer, as defined by greater amounts of free time to socialize on vacations, trips, group outings, and the like – and if we're going to bring temperature into the picture, it's far more plausible to argue that people are simply outside and socializing more – which is true, given the fact that people aren't sitting outside in bars, verandas, even convenience stores during the winter as much or for as long as during the summer. Even if you're thinking in terms of pure space and seating alone, most social venues gain more seats and potential clients because of the ability to sit outside – which is enabled by the temperature that the professor seems to be trying to point out as a correlating factor.

So the prof's right in trying to use an interesting example in trying to point out this logical error – too bad his reasoning was simplistic and reliant on some pretty specious assumptions themselves. With professors like this, who needs urban myths?

The American Equivalent of "Fan Death"
For the American equivalent of "fan death" – produced by a lack of reasoning skills that's due to an over-abundance of bullheaded ideology combined with a basic misunderstanding of science and what it asserts, more than a lack of critical thinking skills in and of themselves – check out my post on "Chuck D – Public Enemy Number One" and the irksome insult to both faith and reason defined by so-called "intelligent design."

Let's Review:

THE KOREAN CASE
[lack of basic critical thinking skills] + [sensationalist media lacking same] + [decision to not use solid science education] = "fan death"

THE AMERICAN CASE
[bullheaded ideology] + [decision to turn off critical thinking skills] + [lack of solid science education] = "intelligent design"

Any questions?

All Clouds Have a Brushed Aluminum Lining

Well, a pretty bad week has come to an end, but with one upbeat note.

I now own one of the fastest and most flexible personal computers in the world.

It's a dual dual-core Xeon Mac Pro, which a friend helped procure for me, since I've been hit so hard financially between moving and Hardware Disasters #1 and #2 that I needed a new computer. Not only that, since I directly depend on a computer for my income stream, not having one for 1-2 weeks would not just set me back X amount, but would actually prevent me from even starting to make it back.

Those who read my previous couple posts will understand why the next logical step is a professional Tower of Power, so once I had weighed the options and made the decision – with the credit card help of my Super Friend – we went to Myeongdong and walked out the door with it. It's not many times that you get to walk into the Apple Store and say "Wrap up one Mac Pro, please," so I savored the moment. We were big pimping.

I am one happy camper, let me tell you. I have accepted my troubles of the recent week, and am getting back to work, with a redoubled effort to get ahead with my new projects while keeping myself financially afloat. At least those efforts won't be hampered by a lack of computing power.

And I will be installing Windoze next week. Oh, the horror! But, like poking a bruise or picking a scab – who can resist? And this way, I'll be able to my Korean Internet banking from home and finally sign up for the NateOn chatting service (if foregners can do such a thing). It's going to be like sleeping with the enemy for REALS, but – hey – Mac and Windoze are friends, now, right?

I'm still a true believer, though – an old-school Mac freedom fighter. I still remember the days of the Power Computing sticker and the brief experiment in Mac clones – people actually thought Microsoft could be on the attack. Unrealistic, yes – but a pirate's dream.

But when Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, he started by nixing the clones, restarting the entire Mac line with the candy-colored new "iBook" and "iMac" lines, armed with the powerful and pretty OS X, and then came iPods, Pixar's move to Disney and Jobs' move to the board of directors, and now, Apple's move to Intel chips.

Now, you can combine the strengths of both platforms – the ubiquitous-yet notoriously hack and virus-vulnerable Windoze OS will be best viewed (from next year's release of Leopard) inside the Mac OS's elegant, virus-free, and truly secure system. It's the best of both worlds – you gotta have Windoze in this world, but you don't have to worry about security if you run it in a window inside Mac OS X.

Or you can boot in either, which is the state it's in only for the next few months. In any case, why would you buy some generic Windows-compatible machine when you could get the equivalent of TWO computers for pretty much the same money?

Does anyone really think Apple won't double its market share next year? I mean now, you could choose to buy an Apple PURELY for the looks and just run Windoze, if you were a truly unenlightened philistine. You could get a Macbook for the pretty design and just run Mac when you hooked up your iPod.

A disgusting thought, but hey – they'd still have bought a Mac. This may be one of the best – out of many – ideas that Steve Jobs has ever had. And the industry's already talking about why smaller computer manufacturers like Dell should be shaking in their boots. Microsoft should be happy – for now – because it will still be selling copies of Windoze. But what happens over the next several years when people who have been slowly getting weaned on the elegantly superior OS X start asking the questions, "Do I really need to set up my network in Windows and pull my hair out every week? Why not just do it in an afternoon and not worry about it after that?"

Jobs has done the opposite of Bill Gates' brilliiant move in doing the unnthinkable – licensing software to go with the machines that everyone thought would be where the real profits were. Now, Jobs has remade the machine to run the two major softwares, and just might be able to start making in debt in the luddite conventional wisdom that the world's operating system is Windoze, no matter what you think about it.

To me, the true test and sign of change is Korea, which has always been Mac-unfriendly and infected with this false notion that the Mac system is actually "harder" than Windoze and only "specialists" and "media people" can even touch it. There's still this idea that Macs are inordinately expensive (they used to generally be twice to three times as expensive as equivalent computers in Korea, since Apple's proprietary hardware and software were always imported and there was no official Apple representation/distribution in Korea) and a sign of being a computer literati.

I still like that last assumption, since it's true. Hehe. Anyway, now the iPod has become an item of want here in Korea, and I think that once the word gets out that Macs run Windoze, Koreans could – in theory – get them.

Advice to Apple – knowing how things are marketed and sold here – if Apple had a commercial campaign here along the same lines as their casual, yet witty campaigns have been going, they'd hit a home run in Korea. Here's the pitch:

A pretty, perky agassi using an iPod, which everyone wants. A business dude trying to look cool by using his white Mac on a subway. She sits down next to him, because they're the Mac tribe, part of the same Apple family. You think she's just another "doenjang girl", with silly, superficial sensibilities. We get into her POV, and we find out she's listening to a ESL podcast. We get in his POV, and we see he's running Windoze. End with the line, "Abandon old assumptions. Get a Mac."

Or whatever gets the point across that 1) cool-looking Mac laptops are now as cheap as any Korean computer, 2) that same computer will run Windows, so yes, you can do your Internet banking and go to Daum cafes, 3) Mac actually handles multiple languages better than Windoze (and has since forever, actually, but that's another conversation), 4) Macs are more secure and no OS X viruses exist to date, 5) iPods gain so much more functionality (ICal, iPhoto, and other stuff works with them) than just iTunes when used with a Mac), and that "Macs and Windoze" just "go better together."

A campaign that gets those points across, combined with Macs' already-existent COOL POWER and BRAND-NAME POWER (as objects thought to be really expensive and inaccessible), would be unleashed if you just told the Korean consumer that Macs were two-computers-in-one, cool, and cheap.

All the time, when pulling out my white iBook, when people would get me talking about Mac, they would always say "I could never afford one." When I say that my old iBook was 1,700,000 won, or NOW, that the new Macbook that runs Windoze is around 1,200,000 won – they are always floored.

Or they say, "It's too hard" (which always started my eyes rolling) and "I'd have to learn the computer all over again." Then I swivel my Mac around and let them fiddle with it, noting that the only major difference is with the collapse, minimize, and expand buttons being cute red, yellow, and green (traffic light – hello!? – what's hard?!) and on the left side of the window instead of the right. Then I show them little neat finger tricks like Exposé or the powerful search tool Spotlight – and people always "ooh" and "aah."

Windoze Vista will be introducing features that are pretty much copies of the previous two things, much as the cute and fuzzy Window XP was a straight copy of the Mac OS X's cartoony and cute "Cocoa" style. But when Leopard comes out in early 2007, VIsta will be waaay too little, too late, much like the Playstation 3 is going to be a stillborn horror story. But – they're both coming anyway, although I think the PS3's demise will be much more sudden, apparent, and embarrassing.

I think Apple's rise – and Windows not "demise", but...hmm..."fade from the spotlight" – will be more gradual and not as obvious. But one day, perhaps 3 to 5 years from now, people will be sitting around and realize – "Whoa – when did Apple become the new rising sun around here?" in terms of not just mindshare, but marketshare as well.

The day is coming – that holy day – when I will be able to do my Korean Internet banking in OS X.

I feel a tear welling up.