Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Using Fuel from Uranus

Sometimes I wish my mind had been able to wrap itself around math; pursuing pure and applied science in the name of advancing humanity's horizons just seems more noble than mucking around in the dirt of human folly and frailty. But it's a job most of us have to do.

But sometimes it would be cool to just be able to work on methane engines and fire up one's work and see the fruits of one's intellectual labor.

These people are taking some important steps to getting humanity in and around the solar system, and then perhaps outside of it. This little test is seriously like one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Go to NASA's page for more about this new engine.

Frickin' methane engine, man. I mean, they are talking about launching a probe, letting it explore and collect samples, and refilling itself with the abundant liquid methane on these outer planets' moons, and coming back home to mama!

Who knew they could send a probe into the deepest depths of space, and actually get it back to Earth, powered only by the ample and abundant gases from the moons of Uranus?

Uranus.

You know I couldn't leave that one alone.

I am just imagining some circa 2150 astronauts getting to one of the outer rim planetary moons and cracking their helmuts in their temporary shelter, causing one to blurt out, while wrinkling his nose and waving her hand, "Whoo-whee! Somebody light a match! Jeez, you guys!"

Instantly realizing the stupidity of that suggestion, he stutters, "No, wait! Don't...!"

BOOM.

Hehehe. Cool.

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.

Why Wrestling With Blog Trolls Is Like Conversing With Eliza

Who's this Eliza? Go speak with her now.

I know, I shouldn't do it. But Typepad doesn't have a nice subscriber system like Wordpress, so these trolls keep showing up. And they're so stoopid that I can't resist. Like chocolates. I keep banning them, but if they're right there, I just...wanna...doh!

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!

Get on the Ball!

Think you're "on the ball"? Or your students? Check this out:

Several elementary school classrooms across the country [the US] have replaced their hard plastic chairs with bouncy ball seating. In my opinion, the idea is absolutely genius. I wish I got to sit on a ball in school…

Mrs. Raabe’s fifth-grade class in Charlotte, North Carolina recently embraced ergonomic innovation in an attempt to increase attention spans and facilitate good posture. The classroom is now a sea of motion in which children bob and weave, sway and bounce their way through lessons perched atop brightly colored fitness balls. The old metal-and-plastic chairs stand in lonely stacks at the front and back of the classroom.

In a letter the students sent to school administrators, the children outlined six compelling reasons they should sit on balls instead of chairs.

“We will be able to wiggle in our seats so we will not feel the need to get up and move around as much and miss parts of lessons,” they wrote. “The balls will help our posture. The balls will help our handwriting because our feet will be on the floor, and we will be sitting up straight.”

That's awesome. From "Ten Reasons to Use an Exercise Ball as Your Chair":

1. Forces proper spine alignment. Because an exercise ball is not stable, your body needs to try to balance itself on it. The perfect spinal posture is coincidently the easiest to balance with. Thus, your body will automatically try to align itself into the proper posture. This helps improve your spinal health, and decrease back pains.

2. Causes you to frequently change positions. An exercise ball causes to you to change your position often to balance. For example, if you turn 45 degrees to face the phone, your body will assume a new position. This helps reduce damage caused by prolonged sitting in the same position.

3. Fitness is at your fingertips. Another great thing about using this alternative to a chair, is that you can do stretches or mini-workouts whenever you want, without getting up. If you’ve ever stuck waiting for a minute or two, you can make productive use of that time with a quick workout or stretch. Because it’s much more convenient, you will probably do it more, thus resulting in better health.

4. Improve your balance. This one is very understandable. Sitting on an unstable surface all day will improve your sense of balance, as well as the reactions of your muscles. The result? An overall better balance, that can be observed out of the office.

5. Get that 6-pack you’ve been wanting. Your body primarily uses your core (abdominal) muscles to help compensate for changes in balance. Thus, your essentially getting a low-key abdominal workout. This may not sound like a lot, but consider the amount of time you spend on your computer at the office, or at home. Those hours can build up, and result in a strengthening of ab muscles.

6. Improves your circulation. Using an exercise ball will keep the blood flowing to all parts of your body, throughout the day. A desk chair on the other hand, reduces circulation to some parts of the body after prolonged use.

7. You’ll feel more energetic. It has been proven that staying in one position, will make you more tired, while moving around and being active with give you more energy. With an exercise ball as a chair, you will feel much more energized after you finish your work.

8. Burn up to 350 calories per day. More movement during the day = more calories burnt. Burning 350 calories per day = losing one pound of fat every 10 days. You may not burn quite 350, but nonetheless, it will help you stay fit.

9. Really cheap. Specialized exercise balls designed for sitting usage can range from $15 to $80. Much cheaper than buying an ergonomic chair, which can range anywhere from $100 to $400 and up.

10. C’mon, its fun! Who doesn’t like the idea of bouncing around on an exercise ball all day. Exercise balls are an exciting alternative to chairs, and may just give that spark of fun to your day.

Don't believe? Read some other articles here and here to see what some experts are saying, and generally the results are quite positive.

I'm really raring to try it and report back the results. Now, the next question is where I can find exercise balls in Korea to buy. Anyone care to join in this experiment, and if it proves useful, go "balls to the walls" with me?

And clearly, this may give new meaning and purpose to commenter "iheartblueballs" over at the Marmot. It may very well turn out that soon, we may all be hearting blue balls, too.

Pink Pajama Girl Redux

With a title like that, I better get some major linkage, right?

OK – so I still Korean "UCC" is still pretty lame, in that it is so commercialized so fast that there are barely any real content producers out there who aren't trying to either win a cash prize or simply get on TV. And that's assuming that they aren't actually shills for big media companies, or straight-up commercials. I've already blogged about this, though, so please review if you'd like.

However, I did take to task the UCC star-of-the-minute, whom I'll call the "Pink Pajama Girl" from now on. I saw the video that got her all known, and it was pretty lame. So I took it as a sign of how lame the state of Korean UCC must be to have her video be national news.

Well, I must say that the one I saw was pretty, ahem...tame. I must also admit that this kid has hella balls (figuratively, that is) to get up and do the dance moves she did in her pink pajamas in a scandal-hungry culture that values public propriety and has been known to use young ladies who publicly violate traditional gender, sex, and other social roles in public as whipping boys (ahem, girls) for reinforcing social norms.

And I also have to give the kid kudos for choosing Janet Jackson's "I Miss You Much." I'm getting so old that anything 80's sounds good to me.

"Dog poop girl" (and here and here) and that girl in the Hongdae club (included in my post "The Politics of Pictures and Privacy" and you should read my post "Korean Photo Paranoia, 초상권, and Legal Inexactitude" if you're really into photo law) who dared dance with a wet t-shirt with two white boys, who were both cyberstalked and whose names, home addresses, citizens numbers, school names and majors, as well as other personal information, were scrounged up by enraged (male) netizens as scapegoats for national pride and propriety.

I won't even get into the politics of underaged girls dancing in pink pajamas for the camera, why that's obviously problematic, and my whole schtick on the extreme sexual commodification of the female body in South Korea that extends way too far into everyday culture. (Well, I just did, a little, but hey.)

I'll just stop and say that in terms of social role transgression – or you could just say, having the courage to do the dance that she did – that girl deserves some kudos, and gets some respect from this Metropolitician. Yeah, this is old and annoying news on YouTube, and high school kids awkwardly shaking ass on the small tube isn't anything to write in national newspapers about, but remember that Korea is a public culture in which stars are banned from the airwaves for having been caught having pre-marital sex, even as the universities and many naughty sections of town are veritably brimming over with love motels for which you have to make reservations on the weekend.

Now, that's a whole lotta contradiction.

Yet, the penalty for asserting one's sexuality, especially as a young (underage?) girl, is harsh, often to the point of being misogynistic, at the very least chock full of double-standard thinking.

So I say that now, watching that second saucy selection, that I kind of get why it's national news. Kiiinda. Unfortunately, and if the patterns I see in people's attempts to recreate fame and fortune here hold true, prepare yourselves for a whole slew of "sexy dancing" girls putting their posts up on Pandora TV or whatnot to try to become the next national sensation, perhaps by upping the ante (and lowering inhibitions and flesh coverage) in order to compete.

And before anyone calls me a perv for looking, I'll just tell you that when I flipped on my computer, my Windoze window started flashing me that video as a "hot issue" video, blinking for me to watch. So I didn't have to go very far to see the saucy one.

And it's not like you're NOT gonna look, either. Or are you really gonna close this post without pushing that play button below? As if.

Gotcha. Now, we're all pervs. And that kinda annoys me.

P.S. What also annoys me is how irritatingly hard it is to get the embed code for these videos if you're not part of a Korean blogging service. Do these companies care that they're so hard to use, and impossible for anyone who doesn't speak Korean? I guess while the rest of the world's Internet companies are global in reach, the aims of Korean ones are far lower.

For anyone using Pandora, choose the embed code for Naver/Daum/Buddy Buddy flash embeds. That seems to work like YouTube's. If this video is centered and playing OK, then it's all good.

P.P.S. Typical - it doesn't work on my Mac browsers, but it does on Windoze, probably with some voodoo-causing Active X enabling it. Flash is not platform-specific...hellllloooooo? Argh! For you fellow beleagured Mac or other users, I can only offer you a direct link (which probably won't do you much better, since you can't watch Pandora TV without installing an Active-X thingie).

"Korean waves" are hard to propagate if you keep damming your own gates.

Cognitive Conundrum

Shock and amaze your office mates! Here's the trick – look at the images at a normal distance from your monitor. Which one looks like the mean face and which one the nice one?

OK. Now walk back at least several feet, waaaay back, and look again.

MUHAHAHAHAHA.

The trick's apparently in the way your brain processes fine and coarse information. Click here for more explanation, which won't sound like I'm pulling stuff from out of a dark place.

Now go have fun freaking out your office mates.

Why Korean All-Nighters Are Better Than in America

3 AM. The hunger won't end. Another bowl of cereal won't do.

$20. Twenty minutes. Pound o' pork and raw garlic.

Any questions?

Apple Supports the Troops

Well, I don't know about Apple's political leanings, but apparently iPods help stop bullets:

My wife’s uncle works in a military hospital and told me about this. Its pretty amazing. Kevin Garrad (3rd Infantry Division) was on a street patrol in Iraq (Tikrit I believe) and as he rounded the corner of a building an armed (AK-47) insurgent came from the other side.

The two of them were within just a few feet of each other when they opened fire. The insurgent was killed and Kevin was hit in the left chest where his IPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor. Fortunately, Kevin suffered no wound.

I guess that wouldn't fall under the warranty, eh?

Land of the Lost - Is This Tripping You Out Yet?

Kathy Coleman from TV's Land of the Lost – if this little video doesn't trip you out and time warp you back to the 70's, I don't know what will.

Man, I had a crush on Holly. Haven't thought about that for years. Such a nice, wholesome girl. And pretty tough, too! How many girls with pigtails do YOU know who fought dinosaurs? Huh? HUH?

And I think she was just about the smartest, too.