Seoulscapade » INTERESTS

Science Wins Over Faith Dead End

Stephen — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:14:52 +0000

I couldn’t resist posting these flow charts, especially after finishing a course on astronomy, where the scientific method is absolutely everything. This charts speak for themselves. I would point out that the first has been instrumental in establish humanity’s place in the universe as insignificant, but incredibly able to discover, for example, the age and vastness [...]

Eyes of the Tailless Animals

Stephen — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:22:26 +0000

After having read The Aquariums of Pyongyang, I knew what to expect with this book, the tale of Soon Ok Lee’s 6 years in a North Korean labor camp. First of all, it’s all the same to call it a labor camp, a concentration camp, a death camp, a prison, when speaking of prison camps in [...]

McEwan’s Drilled Down Saturday

Stephen — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 11:26:03 +0000

Saturday is the second McEwan novel I’ve read and for me it suffered from the same thing the first did: the drilling down into minuscule detail of mental processes, beyond which for me is realistic. Perhaps I lead a dull inner life. But that would surprise me to learn. It was also the tangential excursions, not [...]

Levi in Auschwitz

Stephen — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:23:40 +0000

Survival In Auschwitz Primo Levi This book is an undeniable classic. Written with authority and control, with a kind of restrained disgust, it has so many well phrased passages. Its unconventional structure makes it seem more modern than it is: Levi plunges in and out of episodes and time periods. Some things you would expect to be [...]

The Repercusions of What You Eat

Stephen — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:40:49 +0000

The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter Peter Singer & Jim Mason This study covers a lot of ground, tracing back and examining the implications of where our food comes from. Basically it is divided into three sections and each revolves around a family and their eating habits. It goes from a standard [...]

Link a Category to an External URL in Wordpress

Stephen — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 02:18:07 +0000

What I wanted was have a category link on my site open up an external site in a new tab. A simple task in something like Joomla. But you can’t configure this in Wordpress! It baffles me why such a basic feature is not standard. However, here’s my solution. First, I tried a lot of redirection [...]

Candide Turned Out for the Best

Stephen — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:27:40 +0000

Candide Voltaire This was a fun read and, as I find with a lot of earlier literature, quite modern in its execution. Or, did the translation make it seem that way? Partly, perhaps. Maybe it’s the eighteenth century writing, which for me has a timeless quality. Many of my favorite authors come from that period—it really [...]

The Justified Contempt for Adults Who Worship Fairytales

Stephen — Mon, 25 May 2009 13:08:51 +0000

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 [...]

An Explanation So Fitting

Stephen — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:04:54 +0000

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 [...]

PETA Does Seoul Fashion Week

Stephen — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 03:55:50 +0000

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 [...]

Convert MP3 to KMP

Stephen — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:20:03 +0000

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 [...]

Humour that Faded

Stephen — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 11:01:36 +0000

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 [...]

Swift Enjoyably Cutting

Stephen — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:07:53 +0000

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 [...]

Sad Facts on the Meat Market

Stephen — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:10:26 +0000

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 Lecture as Fiction

Stephen — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:11:53 +0000

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, [...]

The Great Clowns

Stephen — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:16:44 +0000

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 [...]

A Book Never to be Forgotten

Stephen — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:12:59 +0000

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, [...]

New Animal Rights Website Launched!

Stephen — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:11:14 +0000

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 [...]

A Journey Within and Back to Pacific Battlefields

Stephen — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:14:21 +0000

Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War William Manchester

I was really looking forward to this after reading some of the hype around it and knowing of the reputation of its author. However, ultimately I was disappointed. I was anticipating something like With the Old Breed, but it was far from that. This is about [...]

An Activist’s Handbook

Stephen — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 11:16:04 +0000

Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism Mark Hawthorne This proved to be a very straight forward and useful compendium. A lot of stuff is common sense, of course, but it’s nice to have everything in one place and set out nicely. It is also nice to read the brief anecdotes on numerous activists [...]