Seoulscapade

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Christoper Hitchens

As someone who has always been an atheist, I knew I’d like this book before even picking it up. Sometimes the logic flow of the argument isn’t always clear, but perhaps that is because it is a personal polemic with many asides. Similarly, the chapter structure is a bit like a collection of loosely ordered short essays. But none of this detracts from making it a thoroughly enjoyable read. Hitchens puts things exactly how I would put it myself if I had the talent. He really nails it at times and pulls no punches. It’s also refreshing to read someone who’s not afraid to announce and denounce the lies and stupidities and Isalm and Muslims along with all the other cult movements based on illusions, delusions and peasant ignorance. Good on you, Hitchens! I’m probably going to read this again shortly–this time underlining and taking notes.

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins

This was great. Dawkins is a “man after my own heart,” to borrow that excellent phrase from the King James Bible. There needs to be more people like Dawkins in the world. I could not disagree with anything in this book. And what was new were some of the current flash points of the religion vs. science debate. The book gives a rundown of them. Dawkins takes the arguments that are invariably touted and lays out some standard responses to them. Actually, it wouldn’t be bad having something like that in handbook form!

One added dimension to this book is the mention of Paster Ted, who had not fallen from grace at the time of this books first publication. You can see Paster Ted in action in Dawkins’ Root of all Evil documentaries, and he also appears in the horrifying Jesus Camp documentary. He is in top form in both films. It’s hilarious to know that after these appearances and his mention in this book, he was busted for gay sex and a meth habit. I do hope Dawkins updates this book one day with mention of Paster Ted’s current spiritual progress.

The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition–with a new Introduction by the Author

Richard Dawkins

This another book I should have read many, many years ago. Science books aren’t often thought of as page-turners, but this one it, for me at least. I’ve developed a much better understanding of the beginnings of life from this. It all makes perfect sense, once spelled out so clearly and engagingly as it is in this classic. I’d recommend this to anyone, especially as it relates to the grand questions, such as the meaning (or rather meaninglessness) of life, and our existence as biological entities sharing the planet with other evolutionary beings that have all evolved from the same origins.

PETA were in Seoul for a couple of campaigns at the end of March, and one of them was to take the I’d-rather-go-naked campaign to Seoul Fashion Week. I was there helping them on behalf of KARA and my wife assisted by handing out leaflets. Here’s part of PETA’s media release:

PETA wants fashion week attendees to know that animals trapped for their fur suffer excruciating pain—often for days—before their chests are stomped on or their necks are broken by trappers. Beavers caught in underwater traps struggle frantically before they drown. On fur farms, animals spend their entire lives confined to tiny, filthy cages, where they suffer physical and psychological distress before they are poisoned, gassed, or anally or genitally electrocuted or have their necks broken. In China, which is the world’s leading fur exporter, millions of dogs and cats are killed for their fur, and animals on Chinese fur farms are frequently skinned alive. Because cat and dog fur is often deliberately mislabeled as fur from other species, it can wind up in stores anywhere in the world.

The “naked” ladies didn’t go into the Seoul Trade Exhibition Center (SETEC) where Fashion Week was being held. The terrain was too tricky and staff might have ousted them. Instead, press were alerted to wait at the intersection of Nambusunhwan-ro and Yeongdongdae-ro, or exit 1 of Hangnyeoul Station (Line 3).

The phalanx of photographers, who were the main audience for the demonstration, were waiting in force as the girls arrived.

Here they come. Not many Fashion Week patrons would have seen it except the few exiting the SETEC. I joined the photographers but tried my best not to get in their way.

They were totally surrounded at one stage:

The girl on the left, Ashley Fruno, is from PETA Asia while the others are local girls. They all made some anti-fur announcements and proclamations. Here is the blurb from the media release:

“I’ll gladly bare my skin if it will help save animals’ skins,” says PETA’s Ashley Fruno. “In the 21st century, with so many stylish, comfortable alternatives to fur available, there’s no excuse for supporting one of the most hideous industries on the planet.”

The girls next heading down the sidewalk for the last part of the demonstration while press scrambled madly to stay in front.

The press guys all seemed choreographed, the way they knew the procedure and their part in it. The girls then stopped again outside a different entrance, as pictured in the shot at the very top.

After photo ops there, they walked further up the sidewalk. This was the last part of the demo, a photo op in which the press hung back as if by some prearranged agreement.

It was a good chance to capture the girls without people getting in the way.

The girls then made their exit in a taxi. I’d often wondered how activists get away from such demonstrations, while wrapped in a banner and still trying to maintain the illusion of nakedness. Well, they simply clambered into the taxi as a group with the banner on! Now you know.

Of course, they are not naked. Underneath they are wearing skin coloured shorts and and a strapless top. Anyone could see that, as the girls were not of the same height and the banner’s nipple to crotch dimensions had little play in it for error, so sometimes the shorter girl was showing pant. Even just a little bit really dispelled the illusion, and I found myself strangely distressed about that.

Here’s one of the reports on the campaign in the Korea Times.

-: PLEASE DON’T BUY PRODUCTS THAT USE ANIMAL FUR :-

A great deal was advertised on TV in Seoul recently where you could get a new LG Cyon mobile phone—the strangely named Viewty, model KH2100, for only 26,000 won. It included a charger in the deal and since we needed an extra one of those, we bought the phone.

It’s got all the stuff you’d expect of a latest hand phone, including a cool touch screen instead of any buttons (except for off and on). It came with a cable to hook the phone up to Cyon’s Mobile Sync software. Unfortunately, this software is all in Korean and some fonts just appear as questions marks on my English XP system. But after trial and error I could figure out how to import a CVS file of my numbers into the phone and sync pictures.

Separately from this software, it’s also possible to connect to the phone’s portable 450 MB disk to upload images, text files or music. Great, I thought, I’ll just copy over some MP3 files and away I go—wrong! Like many before me, I misread the signs. When it says MP3 in all advertising, on all of the phone’s music settings, and even on the name of the phone’s default music folder, it does not mean it plays MP3! How stupid of me to think so.

The Cyon can’t play MP3s. Instead, it plays KMPs, which I’ve never heard of. There’s not much info on the net, and I could only find a Mac program that would do conversions—don’t be fooled by something called a KMPlayer, it’s just like GOM Player and doesn’t do conversions—but then I stumbled onto a Korean blog with a small conversion program that thankfully works.

You can download it from here. You don’t need to install it, everything is ready to go in the folder.

Once again, like the Cyon software, this program is made for a Korean operating system so most fonts are question marks, as shown above. Through trial and error again, I figured out how to get it to work. Here are the steps following what I’ve illustrated in the image:

1. This is where you locate and load the MP3 file you want to convert.

2. Put your mobile number (or any number) in here. It won’t work without this.

3. Select the output directory.

4. Do the conversion, which takes about 2 seconds.

Just above the convert button is a button to clear the contents.

Lucky Jim (Penguin Classics)

Kingsley Amis

I’d heard this was a classic of “academic life” literature that had an influence on later writers of that genre. But there is quite a dated feel about this. Many passages, especially dialogue, play out like a 1950s movie, with snappy but unnatural conversations and retorts. The humor was not as evident to me as it might have been back in the day. It relied a lot on the antics of the main character, whom for me was just an immature prat.

Here is the vote taking place for the AMCO Constructions Company to take over the construction of the Sangdo Haemoro apartment complex from Hanjin and Daemyung. This is where our community got to tell those gangsters to go to hell.

Hanjin representatives had tried to call my wife several times during the week, no doubt to try and sway her away from a negative vote. They would have done the same to everyone else. My wife ignored their calls and perhaps others did, too. The vote against Hanjin was unanimous.

I’m pleased with the choice of AMCO, it’s brand name being AMCO Town. It is among the top 20 of construction companies in Korea and last year it won a kind of best apartment award. The company is up and coming and looking to make a mark. It was only established in 2002; however, it is part of Hyundai Motor Company. So that’s cool! It’s previous CEO is now the president of Korea, Lee Myung-bak. Hyundai built our car too, the KIA Carens, which we are very happy with.

For these reasons I’m glad they’re going to take over. My wife and I actually think now that things are going to turn out much better than they would have, even though we’ve been put through a long delay.

AMCO’s Vice Chairman and CEO was at the meeting, reassuring everyone and laying out the strategy for going forward. If all goes well, construction will start again in 2 months. We heard the talk and saw a promotion video, as shown below. Various people were introduced. All in all, I got the impression AMCO is really out to please. What a contrast to Hanjin, the smug bully.

AMCO will change the apartments around. A company rep explained that the materials Hanjin was intending to use were of poor quality and the design was inadequate–the kitchen, for example, was poorly placed as far as it was concerned. This means we might as well forget everything we saw in Hanjin’s model house!

Nonetheless, I was please to hear all of this. It also gave me the impression that AMCO are going to do things right. Sangdo AMCO Town, as it will be called, is possibly be their biggest housing construction project to date, not just in Seoul but in Korea. It could well be a showcase opportunity for them.

There is one major problem. At the moment, on the gates down at the construction site, Hanjin has posted notices saying if anything is touched, the issue will go to court. That’s the worry. Hanjin are legally still there, although everyone wants them out. What happens next will decide how much more of a delay we can expect.

Will Hanjin go quietly, or will it live up to the reputation it has impressed on me, as a gangster company? They could make things difficult pulling out, in which case, as we were told today, we may see a 6 month delay. I’m secretly hoping that since Korea’s President has ties with Hyundai as its former CEO, Hanjin may back off and just piss off.

So, things are on the up and up, and I left that meeting today feeling pretty confident and enthusiastic about AMCO.

Gulliver’s Travels (Penguin Classics)

Jonathon Swift

As a fan of Swift, I should be ashamed of not having gotten around to this sooner. As a fan of Swift I already knew I’d like it. A funny and rewarding classic, not for the kiddies. I knew bits of the first two books as a kid, mainly from a movie, but this has so much more. The parts left out of the movie are what all readers must think about when pondering Gulliver’s predicaments, and what kids would love, such as Lilliputians bearing away Gulliver’s poo in wheel burrows. A number of sections, particularly those condemning human nature, had me laughing out loud. The books seem to be progressively acerbic. The last book on the Houyhnhnms is a sustained invective against human folly, so I enjoyed it immensely.

Well, here are they are, facing each other off over the front line, which was established between them as the threshold between the living room and the balcony.

We tried introducing Ricco, a younger and weaker male to Monty, the older and much more muscly male, whose territory was being imposed upon. Advise we’d read suggested putting them together in neutral territory, like a bathtub, which we did once. The results were much the same as you see in the shots below—taken over a series of days, first some dung dropping, some tentative jousts and probing maneuvers, then all out war!

It was generally an opportunistic charge, bite and flee tactic by Monty. The object of the battle appears to be to extract as many clumps of hair as possible from your opponent. You can see some, bottom left, in the shot above. But the end of the battle, there was hair from one end of the room to the other. I could tell who got in the most bites by the colours of the hair clumps.

Often Monty ran off with hair hanging out of his mouth. He’d then go and flop down on his side of the front line, sometimes doing a victory roll before lying there panting with exhaustion—hair still hanging out of his mouth.

See the spots on the window? A lot of that is urine! Rabbits, when marking territory, sometimes seem to have a spasm moment, when they flick their behinds in running off, either defecating or spraying urine in the process.

When the two weren’t fighting that’s what they were doing, spreading as much dung around as they could to mark out their territory. This and hair everywhere was collateral damage. There would have been more in the photos but I was cleaning it up intermittently.

But Ricco, though weaker, didn’t back down at anytime. You can see the female, Panda, in the background showing not least bit of interest, while boys will be boys in the foreground.

Most of these shots required a fast shutter speed. To the naked eye it’s almost impossible to see what’s going on, as it all happens so fast.

They both appear to be off the ground in this shot. You can see all the dung, or collateral damage, around that I didn’t sweep up. Oh, well, so much for the bonding sessions!

Getting Monty and Ricco to play nice wasn’t working, but we had to do something about Ricco taking up the living room. If he couldn’t live with the other rabbits, we’d have to rig up a proper home for him. After much consideration, we decided on another strategy, inspired by the vet who’d done Ricco’s neutering. He recommended keeping the males fenced off but side by side, where they could see each other constantly and hopefully get used to each other.

With that, we have created two areas on the balcony, divided by the meat-grill wire mesh fencing. It was a great relief after doing that to get space back in our apartment. We then went off to clean the apartment, but a little later noticed that Monty had broken through the barrier! He was on Ricco’s side and there were tufts of hair and alfalfa spread everywhere. This indicated a mighty battle had taken place. By the time we arrived, both parties were exhausted, and Monty was basically trying to get the hell out.

I secured the barrier and made a better makeshift mesh “door.” But that doesn’t stop Monty attacking the fencing now and then. The first night on the balcony constant noise came from Monty’s restless running around and hitting at the mesh. Our bedroom is right near the balcony and, as I was woken regularly, I presume he remained vigilant and active the whole night.

The rabbit war has been the major pain in adopting Ricco, not to mention double the cleaning (half an hour’s worth every morning for me), but with any luck peace will prevail eventually. And if they can all live in harmony, that might even halve the cleaning!

Ricco settling in on his side of the balcony.

Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money

Erik Marcus

The beginning of this is a good no nonsense summary of what goes on in the meat industry. It is followed by the author’s call for a kind of dismantlement movement, which I found a little lame–full of pronouncements and, well, platitudes. The last part of the book is a collection of small essays by activists. Then there is an Appendix section that could well have made up a decent chapter. So, this was not what I expected and on that count was disappointing. But there’s some reliable and direct information here that is useful.

The Lives of Animals (The University Center for Human Values Series)

J. M. Coetzee

I found it a bit stilted and artificial. Inserting a lecture into a fictional story is a difficult concept to pull off. It covers some interesting topics, however–some of the major ones in animal welfare debates. I might dip into this one again, keeping more in mind that it was delivered as a lecture and that is what it was first and foremost.

Oh, not another one! Yes, we’ve got another orphan rabbit to add to our collection. It’s Ricco!

How did we end up with him? Well, a member of KARA (the animal rights group I made a website for) belongs to a church that has a kindergarten out the back with a kind of romper room and playground. In the romper room, which seemed to me more like a greenhouse, they had Ricco in a tiny cage. I was told no one looked after him, except the KARA member. When I heard about this, I went around to have a look and immediately suggested building an enclosure with more space. The KARA member had joined two cages together but this was still inadequate.

I felt really sorry for the little guy, and not a little angered at the behavior of the Christians in charge. Instead of being responsible, it seemed like he was regarded as some kind of kindergarten toy. And a companion rabbit that had been in the room with him had died from heat stroke last summer. As I said, the room was almost like a kind of greenhouse. This gives an idea of the level of irresponsibility practiced by the teachers.

As soon as I saw him, I could see his intelligence and brightness. He was clearly smart, with an intense curiosity and a zest in his movements. Quite unlike Monty, when we first met him. I thought it was criminal for Ricco to be locked up as he was.

I decided we would adopt him. The KARA member said no one would care. So, one Saturday afternoon, my wife and I went around to the kindergarten and basically kidnapped Ricco! The kindergarten teachers were on holidays, so they’ll find out when they get back.

We already knew introducing a new rabbit to the rabbit world of our apartment would be fraught with problems. So I constructed a pen from barbecue grill mesh pieces, bought from the local supermarket, and plastic twine.

Ricco was going to be named Coco, but then we found out he was a boy, and so it’s Ricco. Finding out he was a boy was also when all the problems started. How did we find out? Well, Ricco was let loose one day with Panda and immediately chased her around. Then, when we picked him up to stop him bothering her, we got a full frontal of our first rabbit erection. Between you and me, it’s an alarming sight.

Within days, we got him neutered, otherwise life would be hell for everyone, including him. Besides, it’s the right thing to do with any companion animal.

The temporary enclosure is very effective and gives a rabbit room to roam. Rabbits, by the way, need the space of at least 4 hops in length. The only problem was that Ricco is quite adventurous and is a good jumper. The height of these is just not quite enough. I should have put them long side vertical. But the solution was a covering for when we are not around, which is not hard to do.

In this way the other rabbits can get used to the new visitor. We let them in from the balcony occasionally, as opposed to all of the time. Panda is no problem but Monty has turned into a psycho!

It was fine when they first met, the moment captured below.

Then it kind of deteriorated from there. Nature took over Monty’s brain and he began exhibiting typical male rabbit behavior when territory is threatened. He began harassing Ricco back and forth constantly: running up along the mesh, charging the mesh, dropping dung around the perimeter of the mesh, and sometimes urinating by the mesh. I couldn’t put up with it. He was obsessed, or rather possessed. He’s now out on the balcony almost permanently.

Once Ricco’s hormone’s have settled down a little more, we’ll try introducing him to Monty and get them to bond, if we can. I don’t like our chances, though. Monty is a complete moron at this point. Despite being neutered, he’s begun trying to mount Panda, and he bothers her all of the time–presumably to keep her as a wife. Nature has taken over and is dictating, “Pass on your genes, lad, don’t delay!” I guess his world and its order has fallen apart, but really, they all are going to have to get along.

Apparently, it is possible to have two males together, but it all comes down to their individual personalities. And we are delighted with Ricco’s personality. He’s a real charmer. Nothing like the nervy Monty. Ricco is very much a people rabbit, allowing himself to be picked up and behaving almost like a dog when you get home. His eyes kind of smile at you, too.

I’ll keep things updated on how things turn out.

The Great Lights Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-Il. They’re standing on the rim of Paektu Mountain. What few people know is that, as well as a cameraman, a sound recorder was on the spot to record pronouncements from the Great Orators. Although it was supposed to be later edited and dubbed, at the behest of the Great Fakers, some of what was really said was smuggled out of the country. Now, for the first time a translation has been made available, and here it is:

Dad: Look, Son, see all that. It’ll all be yours one day.
Son: That’s wicked, Papa. Thanks a lot.
Dad: See those work camps over there–all yours. You can work those bastards till they drop. Those camps are self renewing. We’ve got people who are born and die in there. It’s like a perpetual motion machine, only with humans. A constantly replenishing slave force.
Son: It’s like a factory farm, Papa.
Dad: Haha. Good one, Son. You’ve always caught on quick.
Son: Hey, I like that outfit. The Godfather, right?
Dad: You got it in one. Yeah, Brando, he nailed that part.
Son: Looks good on you. Kind of suits your, er, our business.
Dad: I thought so, too. But what the hell is that you’ve got on.
Son: This guy, a designer in Pyongyang, he said it’d impress the ladies.
Dad: Well, yes, it is time you found a wife.
Son: I know, but I’m worried about, you know, home life.
Dad: Oh, have all the affairs you want.
Son: You mean dancing girls are OK. They really spice my kimchi.
Dad: Haha. That’s my boy. Don’t be shy. They usually have the best asses.
Son: They’ll call me the Great Impregnator, won’t they Papa?
Dad: Hahahaha. A sense of humor just like your old man. Hahaha. Haha. Ha.
Son: Oh, yeah, I was at show the other night, you know, up on stage, and I told the one about getting free money and food by threatening nuclear war. Oh man, they loved it.
Dad: An oldie but a goodie. Sucks ‘em in every time.
Son: And I was up there doing the stirring the air with hands thing, you know, and swingin’ my hips like this, and everyone’s going “go Jongy, go Jongy, go Jongy.” Oh, man, I rocked the Kazbar that night.
Dad: That’s my boy.

As we knew all along, they were just Great Regularly Guys back in the day. But for the life of me, something about that photo fills me with loathing. Perhaps its the sense of pompous self-assurance and arrogance of people presiding over an Orwellian world controlled by fear, poverty, corruption and work camps.

Part of the crowd at the resident’s meeting.

A community meeting was held last week to discuss the matter of the gangster building company, Hanjin, and its continuing attempts to rob future residents like us involved in the Haemoro apartment complex. The manoeuvrings involve Hanjin’s trademark dirty tactics and coercion techniques.

A decision was made at that meeting to have another meeting today, Saturday, January 17, ‘09, to vote on proposals to fight back. In the picture above the very welcome results are being announced.

In an earlier post, I detailed the latest scheme Hanjin had to ensure hefty profits and lump all risk and liability on the residents. The company is still pursuing this scheme. To recap it goes like this:

1. As the larger apartments are more expensive, the are harder to sell. They’re over a million dollars. So, Hanjin will reduce their price by 20%. However, the cost for doing that is to be borne by residents. That amounts to around $50,000 extra per person.

2. In the event that an apartment is not sold, then residents have to cover 100% of the cost of the apartment. That cost would be on top of the costs for the 20% apartments. As I said, the large apartments will be expensive. Hanjin might even discount the apartments further to sell them, in which residents would have to cover more of the shortfall.

3. Residents are not allowed to upgrade into or purchase the discounted larger apartments themselves.

4. Hanjin wants to manage all of the money matters for the complex.

Now, none of the residents are in favor of any of these. Who would be!? What they all want is to get rid of Hanjin altogether, and of course Daemyung will go as well. (The issue of Hanjin building half of the complex and Daemyung building the other is now irrelevant.)

All work as stopped at the site.

The community managers are currently liaising with reliable building companies to see who is interested in taking over. Everyone would love Ramion (pronounced “Lamion”; a part of Samsung) to take over. That’d boost the value. But even Daelim would be good, and as Ramion is unlikely we’re rooting for Daelim.

What Hanjin did this week, however, was set up a call center to contact residents and persuade them to its side. It is using scare tactics to convince people not to reject its scams, saying they will lose out with another building. It has even prepared a video about how they will lose by not sticking with Hanjin. My wife got a call from them this week and she gave them the Korean version of “thanks but no thanks.”

Word has it that Hanjin is also calling companies that may be solicited and warning them they will lose money if they take over the project.

So, today we got to the meeting late. That didn’t matter, though. We got there in time for the announcement of the vote kick Hanjin out! Hanjin had put on it’s video and presumably no one was impressed. We were sorry we had missed. It would have been a good laugh.

As we were late, my wife couldn’t vote but she had already allowed the committee to vote on her behalf. And the result, well, around 96% of residents wanted to take out Hanjin. Everyone cheered when that was announced.

The Haemoro gates with a big clock, top left, that says time has run out for Korean gangsters, Hanjin.

The question now, however, is, What will Hanjin do about it, apply more gangster tactics? If they ask for money from the incoming builder, no doubt they’ll jack up the price and try to make a profit. If they decided to go to court, it will be a protracted affair, and I guess the site will remain dormant.

We heard from future residents at the end of the meeting who got up to voice opinions and ask questions. One guy pointed out that if the committee had voted for LG right at the beginning instead of Hanjin, everything would have been built by now. Apparently, when the committee voted on that some years ago, Hanjin won by just 1 vote.

Another guy got up and announced that he’d bought his apartment in 2002. He’s been waiting for 7 years! It makes our little kind of insignificant. His anger about it all must be four times ours.

Well, let’s see what Hanjin does next…

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 Abridged: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (P.S.) Alexander Solzenitzen

This is one amazing book. There is perhaps no other document and analysis of human evil quite like this. It’s like reading Kafka, only all of this was for real. With what I have encountered in the working world and at public universities, I cannot help but think that the motivations and forces behind the whole gargantuan insanity of Stalin’s Russia can also be found in minute forms in any human organization, especial the government ones. This book also shows that evil cannot be blamed on one individual at the top. It’s systemic and ubiquitous and self-reinforcing at every level. And I’m also of the opinion that if factory farmed or exploited animals could speak, what they would say might resembling the contents of this book.

A famous animal rights activist named Henry Spira used to look upon his actions and successes as “pushing the peanut forward.” In an effort to contribute to the same, I have been working on this website for the Korea Animal Rights Advocates group, or KARA.

I suggested I build them a new English version of their site after seeing the dilapidated state of their old one. They said go for it and basically gave me free reign.

The site was put together using Joomla and bits and pieces of graphics from Joomla templates and other sites on the web. It took me about 2 months to come up with a design and put it all together. Most of the content is mine, although some of it came from one or two other people, including materal from the old English site, which I revamped.

I’m not expecting huge traffic, but at least the site is in place as one of my contributions as an animal rights activist and as yet another means of getting the word out for a more civilized world.