Buena

4th

Happy Birthday America!  I’ll probably go catch a baseball game today or tomorrow to celebrate.  Then again, I’m pretty frazzled from teaching as of late, so maybe just some beers over in Sinchon.

Journalism Killed Itself

It’s been a long, slow death for my original home-town paper (The Washington Post) but with this latest scandal it’s time to stick a fork in her.  The last thing the world needs these days is yet another neocon rag.

Adventures in Gastrology

Via Fatmanseoul, links to the entirety of an episode of Bizarre Foods filmed here in Seoul.

His first visit is to Noryangjin, Seoul’s largest seafood market.  Hey, we’ve been there!

I’m surprised he didn’t try boshintang, i.e., dog soup.  Or for that matter, beondegi, which is almost impossible to miss walking down any street.

Blue House

We had a field trip to Cheongwadae, or “The Blue House” today, the Korean equivalent of The White House.  What you see here is only a small part of the sprawling presidential compound, along with an information bureau, various offices, and a reception hall.  The architecture definitely echoes what you’d see nearby in Gyeongbok Palace, lending a pleasant symmetry to the entire area.  This was one of the few spots from which cameras were allowed (North Korean infiltrators almost killed the president here back in 1968, and security remains very tight).

Really?

After blow-out losses to Brazil and Italy, I’m as shocked as anyone that the US soccer team could actually manage to beat the best team in the world, Spain.

Delicate Issues

I’ve got an afternoon student (Korean age ten, Western age nine) who I’m almost certain has a learning disability.  I’m not a doctor, but after teaching high school in America for two years and having dozens of meetings with parents and counselors for students who were going to be screened, a lot of the warning signs are there.  I told my supervisor and her assistant about my suspicions a while back, and I politely suggested that if this kid was in an American school he would have been screened by now.

I guess their response was just about what I expected — pretty much nothing.  My supervisor came to class one day and sat directly behind the student in question.  She physically restrained him from getting out of his seat, and gently pushed his head towards the front of the classroom when I asked for the students’ attention (something he doesn’t do normally or, in my opinion, isn’t capable of doing due to processing issues).

Peaceable Kingdom

Oh field trips to the zoo at Seoul Grand Park, how I love you so.

Cynicism

As Andrew Sullivan notes, only the warped and discredited minds of neocons could look at the recent events in Iran and think it’s a bad thing in the long run (i.e., agitation for more freedom and less theocracy).

Revolution?

I’m trying to get a handle on what’s going on in Iran in the wake of a disputed re-election: Mefi thread, Andrew Sullivan.  The former has some great links to various sources within Iran itself.

As many have noticed, traditional American news sources have had nothing to say about what could turn out to be very big news.  Old media is dying off because of nasty, uninformed bloggers?  Nope.  It’s dying (pretty much dead, actually) because they have chosen to make themselves irrelevant to the world at large.  But it’s no surprise that the BBC is doing a good job.

Here’s a slide-show from the unwashed bloggers at TPM.