Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Burn Fertility Clinics, Too!

I originally wrote this back in April of this year, but didn't want to post, since the idea was to try to lighten up the blog a bit. (Ha!) But after watching Michael J Fox make this exact point – far more convincingly than I ever could – I thought it time to post this, since it was a pretty well-fleshed out post.

Here's the post:

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From The Boston Globe:

For all those interested in the moral implications of stem cell research and why equating a human with a multi-cell blastocyst not even the size of the period at the end of this sentence, you should take a read here.

Forget stem banning stem cell research, which could save countless actual human lives – if destroying a blastocyst is "murder," then why isn't the religious right shutting down fertility clinics, which destroy them (the unused fertilized eggs made for couples trying to conceive) every day, at the tune of 400,000 per year?

Basically, because people are too stupid and dogmatic to even be consistent in what they fight for. Basically, these things are flushed down the toilet (well, as biowaste, I'm sure they are not actually flushed down toilets, but...) every day, but there are people who think the Hammer of God will fall upon our nation if one actually uses these cells to help people.

Also, the article makes a really good analogy: all oak trees were acorns, but all acorns are not oak trees. One does not think the same about a squirrel with its mouth full of these little seeds as a fire that rips through a forest, or big corporation stripping a hill of good, strong trees.

Because they are totally different things. Yes, one can debate about the point at which point an embryo or a fetus becomes human being, when the cells differentiate and become organs and becomes undeniably a person; but a blastocyst is not much more than sperm and ovum meeting, and the fact that this happens all the time in a test tube and we keep them on ice as a rule and destroy most of the ones created as a rule means that they are essentially not people in reality.

And what God thinks? Well, I think I shouldn't have to remind anyone that for a human to profess to know the will of God is pretty damned arrogant (and I do mean "damned!") and is at least open for interpretation, because even that very idea itself is a human interpretation.

Does life begin at contraception? If it does, then there are hundreds of thousands of frozen souls on ice right now, thousand of which will be thrown away today. Now is someone going to start bombing fertility clinics now, places that are actually trying to make babies?

Lord have mercy – sometimes it's really obvious that America was indeed founded by political extremists; they were called "Puritans" (a derogatory term at the time, by the way, for those on the fringe of the Anglican Church who didn't think that the church had gone far enough Protestant, hence not being "pure" of Catholic corruption and evil) for a reason.

Well, it's been a long time since then. Even if one wants to deny the evolutionary model (I don't tend to use the term "theory of evolution" because that word is unfortunately misunderstood as "it's just a theory" and don't get that a "theory" is actually a complex hypothesis that has been proven through empirical observation, ahem – proof), I hope no one is actually out there arguing that cells don't exist, or that we don't come from, ahem, come and an egg.

I don't understand the need to take a strict interpretation of Genesis; even the Catholic Church doesn't. Do hardcore Scripturalists deny that cells exist? They weren't mentioned in the Bible. Nor were dinosaurs. Or the planet Pluto – wait, it's not a planet anymore.

Here's the problem – the lack of basic science education and the idiots who think that learning a scientific model actually means one has to accept it. Even if one were to accept the ridiculous assertion that Darwinian evolutionary theory is a "religion," its teachings do not have to be followed.

Funny thing was that I always thought that even the broadest interpretation of "religion" usually had involved some sort of deity. Well, I guess that would disqualify "intelligent design" from being science then, huh?

People don't have to agree, nor believe in each others' religions; but I wish that the Christian Right would at least be honest in admitting that they have no interest in respecting even the lines that separate science from religion, or infringing on the rights of others to either not believe in the Christian God, or to believe in others.

Hence, the Christian Right is as fanatic in using politics to proselytize and disrespect other religions and ways of life as any other groups we call "fanatic." These are people who have advocated violence to stop the "murder" in abortion clinics; well, if they applied the flawed logic of "blastocyst=embryo=fetus=human", then they would be murdering fertility doctors, who are busy helping create life.

So the good Christian soldiers who spit on women going into Planned Parenthood should be spitting on couples coming out of fertility clinics, no? I mean, the "abortion doctors" only take one human life per woman, whereas multiple human lives destroyed by even attempting to make one baby.

Doesn't this define the ultimate irony? A new form of Holocaust? And how do we save these children-to-be? Since we can't destroy them, that means we'd have to implant them all. So we mustn't we make a policy to somehow bring all these blastocysts to term? And for the couples who make them, shouldn't we pass a Blastocyst Responsibility Act, requiring couples to carry all their cell clusters to full term?

Perhaps the time has come, and to avoid all the messy questions and keep things a convenient black-and-white, let's just close our eyes and destroy all the fertility clinics now. It's for a good cause. Like the death camps in the Holocaust, we have a moral responsibility to destroy the factories of death while we have the chance, to stop the machinery of systematic slaughter!

Right?

That's if we're going to stick to that "logic." Come on. We have people supported by a government who say that using stem cells is "murder." Yet we throw blastocysts, where the stem cells come from, in the figurative trash bin every single day, to the tune of thousands at a time, all in the effort to CREATE babies – not destroy them. More "lives" are destroyed every year at fertility clinics than at one that perform abortions, according to this "life begins at conception" argument.

And we could be saving people from horrible disease by using cells that are far closer to the sperm that hundreds of millions of men jizz away daily than anything even closely resembling a human being, even if you define that in the embryonic stage.

I'm not trying to stomp on anyone's religious beliefs. I'm just saying that we live in a universe that involves separating between Augustine's City of God from the City of Man; Thomas Aquinas solved that problem at the end of the Middle frickin' Ages. Whether you believe in God or not, people living in Judeo-Christian societies separate the activities of Man and God according to an Augustinian/Aquinian logic; I'm just asking that the so-called "Religious Right" just apply that separation consistently. And regardless of belief/disbelief in God, we should at least be able to navigate that separation better than people who still believed in magic, or that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Haven't we progressed a little since then?

Even Thomas Aquinas argued that the realms of Man and God did not lie in apparent contradiction to one another. So what's with the sudden Know-Nothing attitude of a certain stripe of American Christians and other fringe people who simply want to reject the entire the actual existence of the entire city of Man because it superficially appears to contradict with the literal text of one of the books of the Bible? Even the Catholic Church dealt with these questions better in the Middle Ages – it at least tried to reconcile them. And even the Church gets a bad rep; it was never in fact hostile to "science" itself, but rather to overt and public challenges to Church authority (which is what got old Galileo in trouble, for example, not his theory itself).

Basic. Logic. Applied. 21st-century. Hello?

"Mike the Mad Biologist" has a use for all those blastocysts, one that is right up my alley:

Now, that's a blastocyst!

They Chose the Icky Boy

Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggh!!!!!!!!!!

Well, obviously, we can't say we weren't totally biased and partial to Soyeon getting to picked as the final candidate, but those who know her were also definitely pulling for her smarts, pluckiness, and personableness in front of the camera. And she even looks better than the boy in a suit.

Damn!

For those of you reading the news, you'll know that Soyeon didn't get picked as the final candidate, although she'll be completing the same full training as the backup in case something happens to the main man.

Now, this is a case where I can wish slight ill upon another seemingly very nice person, since I'm not wanting him to be hit by a meteorite or attacked by starved wildebeasts or anything. All he has to do is come down with a cold or something right before the mission.

That's not so bad, is it?

Anyways, I think Soyeon took it with aplomb.

[The Korean caption reported Soyeong said, "I'm OK!"]

Still, she's gotta be disappointed a bit, although I'm sure it'll be a relief now that all this waiting is over. She was saying that the last week of waiting was killing her. Now, I think at least the butterflies can be released from her stomach and she can get on with life.

Oh, and by the way – she's done with her doctoral preparation, so it's Dr. Lee to us all now!

So, there be some congratulations to be given here, in addition to our consolations. In the end, she's made it to where 35,000 others did not, and is helping make her country make really positive history.

But that doesn't mean I'll won't be hoping the other guy gets the sniffles just before launch day.

Keep your head up, Soyeon!

"Spot the Terrorist"

Wow - someone's finally doing good work on this, while I was too lazy. An undergraduate had once taken the bait of my suggestion for someone to do a final seminar paper on Stephens (whose name had slipped my mind in my slew of recent posting), since the "terrorist" acts of Korean nationalists during more radical times seem to have received real little treatment. But, alas, he chose to go for an easier topic; so I still think it worthy of a good seminar paper.

I'm glad Gusts of Popular Feeling has picked up the ball and done some thorough Internet sleuthing, as well as connecting of some cool historical dots.

Still, I think the visual connection implied by the picture of Cho-you-know at the end of their post is akin to lobbing a Molotov cocktail with a nitro twist into the dragon's lair of extreme Korean netizenry.

So, as they said on that old In Living Color skit, "I ain't goin' touch it."

But I'll link to it.

Hehe.

The Yangpa Expounds on Human Accessorizing

"Hyori is known for keeping up with all the must-have Hollywood accessories."

Ouch. That's all you needed to say, Yangpa. A picture speaks a thousand words. But our words be funny, too:

On her recent trip to Africa, Korean pop singer Lee Hyori was shocked to discover how many Africans were living without Angelina Jolie or even basic Mia Farrow. “It’s appalling,” said the 28 year old star. “How could anybody live in such a place without Angelina Jolie?” Her tour included some of the most exclusive impoverished villages on the African continent, often frequented by the likes of Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, and George Clooney. But she was dismayed to find that not all villages were fortunate enough to receive the nourishing, live-giving celebrity visits they so desperately need. Many villages are plagued by sub-standard celebrity conditions, receiving only visits from people like Ian Ziering and Star Jones while they slowly wait to die.

Lee said, “I would do it myself, but I just don’t have that kind of international fame, despite being really huge on both Dokdo Islets. These people need real Hollywood stars. It breaks my heart, you know? Most of these kids don’t have a lot of photo opportunities.” In addition to the lack of Angelina Jolie, Lee hopes to address some other issues that impoverished Africans face. “I want to improve education. I want to teach them so that one day they can read the covers of the celebrity magazines they grace.” Lee admits, however, that it will be a difficult task for her. “I resolved to help conquer third world poverty the same way I conquered the Korean music industry. But the people at the aid organization said that poverty and hunger cannot be solved by wearing hotpants and singing old Britney Spears hooks.” She appeared to be overcome with emotion, adding gravely, “no matter how small those hotpants are.”

Post more, please!

A Certain Lack of Gravity

You know I gotta say something, right?

I've been sitting on this one, trying to organize my thoughts carefully before writing something down and putting it up for the world to see. But I think I've figured out what I want to say, and I hope to do so with an economy of words, rather than through my usual explosion of prose.

To make it short, I have very little sympathy for these people. I hate to say it, but that's the way I honestly feel.

No one deserves to die this way, and the Taliban are assholes. But those are constants in this equation – this, we already know. In the end, the only people directly responsible for the hostages' present predicament are the hostages themselves.

Dude – posing in front of the "Please stay the fuck out of Afghanistan unless you really, really have to go" sign and effectively giving fate the middle finger...even non-Christian folks surely would have too much of a healthy fear of God to go that far.

But that's the point, now in'nit? They have an over-developed sense of matyrdom; or the belief that the rules of the City of Man don't apply to them, given that they think the Hand of God will keep and protect them, even if they walk in front of a moving train.

Hey, that's fine – if you're not dragging your country and the rest of the world into a diplomatic and ethical mess because you've been swigging at the Kool-Aid too long. The way I see it, one's journey into heaven isn't going to be barred by not walking into the Valley of Death in the middle of a war zone, in a country that already has many religions – that, oops, mostly aren't Christian, and have expressly forbidden the teaching of said religion there. At the threat of your life, by gunpoint, written out in expressed warnings, again and again.

In the unfortunate event that they are killed, I frankly don't think anyone who approved of them going in the first place – friends or family – has much moral ground to stand on in demanding the early withdrawal of Korean troops. You know, lots of journalists and other workers were over there doing whatever they felt they had to do, but took what they did and their situations with a certain gravity, a knowledge that they knew the risks, which they accepted and tried to minimize by keeping a low profile, respecting the culture (or at least doing the required do-diligence to reduce risk for themselves and all in their party); these people were not much of a step above arrogant, ethnocentric, ludicrously self-deluded tourists-as-missionaries who justified their stupidity and arrogance with spreading God's word.

Don't get me wrong – I respect anyone who chooses to do so. But ignoring all reasonable warnings from both the host and even your own governments, running around in a bus all together without the security arrangements that are considered basic to anyone operating there, and blatantly engaging in missionary work while treating the whole thing like a trip to Disneyland – arrgh!

That's beyond stupid, beyond irresponsible, and eminently selfish.

If and when anyone loses their lives in that group over there, I unfortunately have to say that I have little sympathy in my heart for them, because my soul has been wrenched enough when I saw the look of horror on the face of one of the men beheaded by insurgents a few years ago; there are few things in my life I regret seeing – that video is one of them.

What sticks out in my mind, as this emotionally exhausting war has dragged on and on, claiming victims on all sides, is the fact that the people who go before them in death at the end of a sword wanted to live and showed it by taking precautions and accepting the challenges and risks inherent to what they were doing.

This is the very definition of courage, and I reserve a special respect for people such as Daniel Pearl, who have risked (and sometimes lost) their lives to get the story out, or Jean Chung, the Korean photojournalist who just won a prestigious award for her work in Afghanistan, who is smart, knows her environment, and has the fundamental respect for where she is such that she stays as safe as possible while doing what is inherently dangerous work.

What these deluded missionaries are engaged in is an exercise in profound stupidity and arrogance, which unfortunately just might get them killed. No one wants them to die; but I'm sorry to say that I'll reserve my grief and emotion – what little there is left at this point in this gruesome war – for people who actually give a shit about their lives and don't treat what they're doing like a game.

And for anyone who wants the Korean government to withdraw troops on behalf of these nincompoops who literally up and walked right into the middle of the line of fire and basically handed the Taliban a kiloton of leverage – tell it to Daniel Pearl's wife, or the other people who lost their lives and behaved like they gave enough of a crap about what they were doing to treat their own lives, as well as the work they were engaged in, with enough respect to go about doing it properly, meaning, in a way far less likely to get them killed, or at least used as hostages. I'd like to hear what people like Daniel Pearl's wife thinks of these people, who seem to take their lives – or, at least, the situation they're walking into – for a joke.

"Impressive. Most Impressive."

"But you are not a girl yet."

Or something like that.

So have you heard about the new transgender sensation, Lee Chae-weon [Yahoo, in Korean]? Since my Windoze XP has been running in "coherence" mode on my Mac (meaning the Windoze windows just seamlessly appear in the Mac environment without the Windoze environment), I have been keeping up with the latest fads going around the Internet – er, rather – they have been keeping up with me, since I can now have Explorer mercilessly attack me with popups and ads for the latest, greatest "UCC."

And this one, of a guy who was the "fake" transsexual on the popular "Truth or Lie Game" three years ago turned up now as a real, post-op girl; the point of all this is DAMN – Korean plastic surgery has got skills to pay the bills. I am critical of this industry and social influence, but one has to admit these surgeons are pretty talented.

Combined with other Korean arts and technologies – namely, "selca" camera styles and wide-angle lenses – the results are astounding.

But make no mistake – gender lines aren't blurring; in fact, they are as solid as they have ever been. It's just that people are much more able, enabled by technology, to cross them convincingly.

What I'm looking for is a liberalization and shift in gender roles to really equalize things up a good deal more between men and women. Some say that such figures are signs that gender lines are shifting in Korea, or that people are becoming more open-minded; perhaps the latter is indeed true.

But in a society in which sexualized femininity is so highly commodified – to the point that one might be able to argue that even heterosexual maleness has been subject to a "commodified feminization", which explains the extremely girly turn that male stars seem to have taken, even while they swear up and down that they are not "gay," as they might be coded in the West – it's no surprise to see it being advantageous to become a beautiful woman, especially in terms of being a rising star in the entertainment business.

Hmm. So maybe gender codes are shifting, even if the lines are not? Or is that the same thing?

Discuss, but be civil. Or I delete you.

Happy Teachers' Day!

And in celebration of that, we have a video made by "Notorious Joe" McPherson and his super group of special kids, whom he teaches in his school full of children with special powers.

The X-Men, you say?

Nay!

It's the "Clash of the Superkids" and the fight is ON, baby!

I think the budget and special effects in this podcast looks about like what they spent in X-Men 3. Ouch for them, good for Joe and the kids!

Now, that's entertainment!

A Photo of Korea That Some Might Find Acceptable

Was searching the web for news I could use, when I came across this on the NASA Earth Observatory web site:

Kwangju (or Gwangju) Metropolitan City is the fifth largest urban area in South Korea. With a population of 1.4 million people, it is a major economic and cultural center for the southern portion of the country. The city is located in a geographic basin with high mountains to the east—the mountain of Mudeungsan has a peak elevation of 1,140 meters (3,740 feet)—and more open plains to the west.

The most notable feature in this astronaut photograph is an interesting blue cast to the urbanized regions. Digital astronaut photographs capture the same red, green, and blue wavelengths of reflected light that human eyes are sensitive to (known as a “true-color” image), and urban areas typically appear in tones of grey in such images. The distinctive blue-grey color of the Kwangju metropolitan area is the result of numerous blue rooftops, present on both small residential buildings (not visible at the image resolution) and large industrial buildings such as those located at image center and image right. High-resolution imagery of the rooftops (not shown) suggests that the blue color is the result of painting rather than an intrinsic characteristic of the building material.

Very interesting kind of "street photography" going on, showing some distinctive features of Korea, even from space. Perhaps that will be the only place one can safely take pictures in Korea outside of a studio without a written model release and contract, if certain people had their way with things.

Because after all, it's professional photographers – not hot-headed netizens posting images to the Internet with the expressed intent of causing harm – that have been on the minds of everyday Koreans, right?

Anyway, it's interesting that the blue-paint pattern of Korean rooftops can be seen all the way from space. Who knew? Fascinating stuff.

On Respect for Photographic Subjects

This comes from a real question posed by David, related to photos and recordings' relation to laws and ethics. I'm glad to see a real conversation come from my indulgence of the urge to get in the mud. The original comment:

Hi...

Question: In which of these cases is it ok to record another's voice, without them knowing?
-in a conversation with them?
-when they're conversing with someone else?
-when they're giving a lecture in a school?
-when they're giving a public performance?

I ask because I think this has some relevance to this debate on street photography/personal rights.

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Again, keeping it real...

It depends on the content and the purpose for recording it. As with anything, there are no absolutes. Even in the law, such things are often tricky, and the judgements and rationales difficult to navigate. That's why the law requires people to interpret it according to circumstances.

But for the creator of such content, the guidelines of content and purpose, whether it be photography or my podcasting.

So, if an undergraduate recorded their biochemistry lecture, who cares? It's not sensitive material. If they recorded it on a site that resold the content and charged for access, then suddenly, it becomes sensitive, because the professor's purpose for giving the lecture was not to have it sold, without their permission, for commercial purposes.

Same with photography – you can't take a picture of someone eating ice cream and sell it to Baskin-Robbins; if the people in the picture sue, unless they have signed contracts and model releases, BR's goose is cooked.

Taking a recording without someone's permission is technically illegal (I believe), but who cares if I record the people at the next table's conversation and keep it in my personal archives? If I use it on a radio show and somehow the people in the recording find out, I can get in real trouble.

That's why Linda Tripp's recordings were so morally screwed up and legally problematic – it's sensitive material (i.e. "I blew the President") and how the material was gathered (being recorded without permission) is at issue.

If you are a photojournalist (or anyone else, but most everyday people don't walk around taking pictures of sensitive things), if you take pictures, you have to know that you might be subpoenaed for the materials, even if you don't want to hand them over. Or if you're working in a poor country run by a repressive regime, it doesn't matter what your intent is if you can't secure your own person; that's something to think about.

And people complain about street photography here (apparently), but I think the issues aren't much different from audio (or video) recordings: it's about the content and the intended use. And I think that my podcast #16 ("December in Myeongdong") is actually quite similar to my street photography in that it's random snippets of real Seoul (one in pictures, one in snippets of conversation and sound as I walk down the street), with no coherent theme or story.

And I think the liklihood of someone getting hurt from the pictures about the same as the audio – sure, I might be recording the passersby saying ("...and yeah, when Mary Ann Kim slept with John Doe Lee after the Samsung office party in Dogok-dong..."), but it's probably not going to happen.

Same with the pictures – yes, a person might be momemtarily surprised to find that – out of 10 million people living in Seoul, their picture of them carrying flowers was in a photo book or some photographer's site, but in the end, it's not content that's going to affect them materially in any way.

I think a lot of this paranoia comes from an overreaction to the early days of the Korean internet, mostly. Yeah, we needed a few horrible examples from which to learn, but in the age of "UCC" and people literally taking off their clothes and dancing in pink pajamas for a shot at the big time, while the nation "ho-hums" and moves on to the next distraction of the week, there's not going to be much that will gather the interest of the nation. Even the couple near-naked dancing on the car in the 2006 World Cup (a Korean girl with a white guy – oh, the horror!) was kind of like, "Well, umm...they're kinda lame. She's stupid, but oh, well...") She wasn't leaving school and changing her home address because of it.

Anyway, it's about the content and the purpose of it being recorded. I've gotten email asking "What if I recorded you in a compromising position and put it on the Internet?! Huh, huh?!" Well, you'd be a) recording me in a compromising position on PURPOSE, so the content itself is questionable, and b) you'd be doing it to hurt me. Pretty much the opposite of what I do.

If I were to publish a picture of say, a drunk salaryman vomiting, my goal wouldn't be to destroy his life to prove a point, nor does his individual identity matter to me. In fact, I'd probably choose a shot in which he was blurry, to protect his anonymity, but the fact that it was a salaryman in a suit vomiting would be clear.

A good and similar example is above, where I chose one of the artistically worst out of several shots, since the faces were clearly visible in others, but I chose to publish the one in which the least faces were shown (a friend is shown there, but it's small, blurry, and you're likely not going to lose your job or wife over having been there to help an unidentified drunk friend), especially the one of the person in question. And I lucked out because you got some depth to the picture with the alley, which also helped contextualize it. But there were other shots that showed more – I still erred on the side of politeness and caution, since I think about the possible harm that might come to subjects, although I think that highly unlikely.

So I conveyed the point – such scenes are as much a part of night life in Korea as any kids playing in the park wearing hanboks on Chusok, stuff that I am completely unconcerned with – without compromising a subject. And frankly, such scenes are so common, and/or something that is such a part of anyone's individual experience, that having been drunk like this is still not going to get anyone fired. Frankly, such an eventuality ("public drunkenness", which is an actual crime in the US, but not in Korea) would likely be much more problematic in America than in Korea.

And what anyone thinks about what this says about "Korea" – I don't work for the Korean National Tourism Organization, nor some imagined Society to Give Korea a Bad Name in the International Community (SGKBNIC); I'm just a street photographer and I shoot what I see, the rhythms of everyday life. And if you actually walk around any Korean city on any given night of the week, you will see drunk men in suits staggering about, women consoling their suddenly sad (and very drunk) friend, and vomit on the sidewalk in the morning anywhere in Chongno is probably about as common as doggy doo on the sidewalk back in the US.

Is it "good?" Is it "bad?" Well, if you're the kind of person who thinks that shooting a man carrying flowers is "anti-Korean" – well, you're already pretty paranoid, and a lost cause for me, anyway.

It's like my favorite prostitution picture, in which it having been shot on 1600-speed, extremely grainy color film prevents any real detail from being shown, combined with the fact that the subject's face is too small to make out any distinct features, what with the obvious wig/hair salon special she's wearing, or the standard outfitting of false eyelashes and a pancake of makeup. I dare even her best friend to try and recognize her in person, let alone through the wide-angle lens of a photographer driving his car with one hand, nervously pointing his camera through a tinted-glass window.

You can make out enough detail to see her expression, but not actively identify her; she could be anyone. Even if the woman in question recognized herself, she'd have a tough time even proving it was here, beyond a shadow of a doubt, in a court of law to even sue me in the first place. That's why this is the perfect picture.

For all those who disagree, and think my intentions somehow evil, let me just say that if I could show you the one picture I can never show in my defense, this particular argument would be over. Done. It's a high-resolution digital shot of a woman in a similar position, but it's razor-clear, and chock full of detail and character.

Personally, I think mine to be technically much better and more honest than the one below that was published in the SF Chronicle (with no concern being given to Korean law, in terms of the subject, whose face is clearly shown – the only reason I republish it here is because it's been linked to and passed around the 'net to no end, with even progressive American NGO's linking to it, who never don't consider this a problem because hey, it's not my society, right? – at least I can make a good point with it, since the cat's out of the bag); you'll never know, because you'll never see that picture. I'll never publish it.

Just for the record, my picture shows what is more typical in these areas after anti-prostitution law – girls sitting around between customers, typically knitting (a fad these days), chatting, or taking a smoke; my shot was of a woman singing along to a pop tune on the radio, and was full of rich details, such as a "protect youth from violence" poster from a government campaign, beauty supplies, clothes in the back, stuffed animals, etc. And that was gained by getting my ass out of the car, walking by and breathing the same air as my subjects, risking getting caught by the thugs in the area, and not pulling the sneaky move of shooting out of a car window, catching them as they noticed the camera and then driving away.

What I don't like about the picture is that the apparent look of disdain and sneer on the face of the women in the picture comes from realizing that they're being photographed more than from the apparent plight in which the Chronicle obviously has a vested interest in proving these women are in.

And before you good feminists get all up in arms because you think I am saying that these women aren't in some plight, I'll just say that no matter what I think about the institution, when I'm photographing, I take the mission of capturing what I find dead serious. When I was nervously walking through Yongsan when I got the pictures I was describing earlier, I wasn't looking for a particular booth, or a kind of girl, or look; I was just walking, snapping, walking, snapping, with my remote plunger in my pocket going off at every stall (if I actually had the camera to my eye, or even my hand on the shutter, I would have been surely stopped by the watchers in the area, who are there to protect the girls, their business, and their interests – and that doesn't include media people taking pictures); when I came back to my monitor at home is when I found gold.

And there's gold there, in the sense of a couple pictures that shed much more life, even in single shots, and give the women in the windows much more complexity than the pictures that appeared in the Chronicle. And I wonder why, if the Chronicle respected their subject enough to blur the picture and omit the face of one of their main informants, they were OK with plastering the faces of these Korean prostitutes in Korea all over the Internet?

In American terms anyway, what they did was legal. The girls were in a public place. And realistically, they're not going to be sued internationally according to Korean laws for shooting a hooker. Photographically, though, I thought the Chronicle's moves pretty disrespectful of the subjects in Korea, highlighted by how extra-sensitive they were being to the main subjects – who also had vested interests in proving they were being trafficked and getting on the fast track to a green card.

Say what you want about me poking the sacred cow of the trafficking issue in the ass, but that's something that bothered me about the whole "exposé for the sake of these poor women" that was worked by the Chronicle. Why is it that they seem to show more care to the women in the US than to the women they came to photograph in Korea? Aren't the future prospect of the passionately-described "Youmi" of the feature as important as the unnamed Korean hookers whose faces are shown without a moment's hesitation across the Internet?

That's why I get so steamed about people calling me or my photography or this site "anti-Korean" or that I disrespect my subjects; if you knew the pictures I have held back on (and continue to), even when foreign photographers are showing up to cover and shoot topical issues about which I've got better material and access on hand down – and could simply push the "publish" button on my blog to easily prove it...I don't.

And that's out of respect for my subjects, respect for Korean law, and for wanting to continue to function here as a photographer in Korea. As a no-name photographer, it was tempting to pull out all my best stuff and jump on the bandwagon – how easy would that have been? To make a mega-post about prostitution and populate it with those money pictures I'd never shown before? Let me tell you – fucking easy.

I'm not trying to make myself out to be some saint – I'm just trying to tell the haters: if only you knew the choices I make when editing, you'd know that if this photographer/blogger/podcaster actually "hated" Korea – wow.

But I make virtual promises with my subjects to basically not fuck them, nor step over ethical lines. Hence, no matter how much I rant and rage about the education system here, I keep my camera off when it comes to the kids I teach. Even when I come to hate certain of the institutions who quite literally fucked me. Because one thing (my having been screwed) has nothing to do with the other (my kids and the implied assumption that, as a teacher, my kids' privacy comes first, my being a photographer is secondary).

Anyway – what I have described above is just one example of how content and intent, as well as affective commitment to the place you're at, where you call home right now, affects the artistic and ethical choices you make.

And for those who think this results in being "anti-Korean" or "unethical" or whatnot – I just have to say that you are definitely either overly paranoid and nationalist, or you have no direct experience with having produced and published anything yourself. And if you combine the two, without asking the intelligent kind of questions that David did, which allowed me to formulate a clear answer – that you have to think about content and intent, along with a respect for the subjects while balancing the desire to express something in general, and that there are no black-and-white – then it's difficult to say anything particularly useful.

Tell 'Em To Kiss Your Ass, Mr. Ebert

Roger Ebert is sick, fighting cancer. But I can't believe that people are telling him to stay inside, because it might attract gossip, or somehow be harmful to him. So? He's gonna be at his next film festival, anyway.

And more power to him. From his own column in The Chicago Sun-Times:

My Ninth Annual Overlooked Film Festival opens Wednesday night at the University of Illinois at Urbana, and Chaz and I will be in attendance.

This year I won’t be speaking, however, as I await another surgery.

I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the festival. I’m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc.

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out.

He wryly jokes that:

I ain’t a pretty boy no more. (Not that I ever was. The original appeal of “Siskel & Ebert” was that we didn’t look like we belonged on TV.)

I've often disagreed with his reviews, often whole-heartedly agreed, but I've always respected his sticking to his guns, letting loose as he sees fit, not giving in to popular opinion. That's the Ebert I remember going at it with Siskel when I was a kid.

And I'm glad he continues to stick to his guns, while keeping that biting sense of humor. Roger Ebert, 화이팅!