He aquí los pensamientos aleatorios de un epistemólogo andante.
I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned.
피할수 없는 고통이라면 차라리 즐겨라
As of June, 2013, I have assumed a new identity: I am a cancer survivor. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
"A blog, in the end, is really not so different from an inscription on a bone: I was here, it declares to no one in particular. Don't forget that." - Justin E. H. Smith
재미없으면 보상해드립니다!
"All things are enchained with one another, bound together by love." - Nietzsche (really!)
Leviticus 19:33-34
Donc, si Dieu existait, il n’y aurait pour lui qu’un seul moyen de servir la liberté humaine, ce serait de cesser d’exister. - Mikhail Bakunin
Solvitur ambulando.
"Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to soliloquize. Where was I?" - the villain Heinz Doofenshmirtz, in the cartoon Phineas and Ferb.
My name is Jared Way. I was born in rural Far Northern California, and became an "adoptive" Minnesotan. I have lived in many other places: Mexico City, Philadelphia, Valdivia (Chile), Los Angeles. And for 11 years, I was an expatriate living in South Korea. In the summer of 2018, I made another huge change, and relocated to Southeast Alaska, which is my uncle's home.
For many years I was a database programmer, with a background in Linguistics and Spanish Literature. In Korea, worked as an EFL teacher.
In June, 2013, while I was in Ilsan in South Korea, I was diagnosed with cancer, and underwent successful treatment. That changed my life pretty radically.
Currently, you could say I'm "between jobs," somewhat caretaking my uncle (to the extent he tolerates that) and getting adapted to life in rural Alaska after so many years as an urban dweller.
I started this blog before I even had the idea of going to Korea (first entry: Caveat: And lo...). So this is not meant to be a blog about Korea, by any stretch of the imagination. But life in Korea, and Korean language and culture, inevitably have come to play a central role in this blog's current incarnation.
Basically, this blog is a newsletter for the voices in my head. It keeps everyone on the same page: it has become a sort of aide-mémoire.
For a more detailed reflection on why I'm blogging, you can look at this old post: What this blog is, and isn't.
If you're curious about me, there is a great deal of me here. I believe in what I call "opaque transparency" - you can learn almost everything about me if you want, but it's not immediately easy to find.
A distillation of my personal philosophy (at least on good days):
I have made the realization that happiness is not a mental state. It is not something that is given to you, or that you find, or that you can lose, or that can be taken from you. Happiness is something that you do. And like most things that you do, it is volitional. You can choose to do happiness, or not. You have complete freedom with respect to the matter.
"Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation." - Gilles Deleuze (writing about Spinoza).
Like most people, I spend a lot of time online, although I try to limit it somewhat. Here is a somewhat-annotated list of the "places" where I spend
time online.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Knowledge and News
I spend about half of all my time online reading Wikipedia. It's why I know stuff.
I get most of my world news from Minnesota Public Radio which includes NPR, BBC and CBC, depending on when I listen.
I don't really "do" social media. I have a membership at Facebookland but I never log in
there. I don't like it.
I have a membership at The Youtubes but I mostly use it for work. I also listen to music on youtube, frequently - I prefer it to typical streaming services, for example.
Humor and Cat Videos
Cat videos and other internet novelties: Laughing Squid.
Geofiction - this has evolved into a significant "hobby" for me. I like to draw imaginary maps, and there is a website that has enabled this vice.
I worked as a volunteer administrator for the site OpenGeofiction on and off for a few years. I created (but no longer maintain) the site's main wiki page: OGF Wiki. I am not currently working as administrator but I remain active on the site.
The above work has required my becoming an expert in the Openstreetmap system. Openstreetmap is an attempt do for online maps what wikipedia has done for encyclopedias. I have considered becoming an openstreetmap contributor, but I feel that my current location in Korea hinders that, since I don't have a good grasp Korean cartographic naming conventions.
Starting in April, 2018, I decided somewhat capriciously to build my own "OGF stack" on my own server. This was not because I intended to abandon the OGF site, but rather because I wanted to better understand the whole architecture and all its parts. I built a wiki on the Mediawiki platform (the same as wikipedia). This wiki has no content. I built a map tileserver and geospatial database, which contains a very low resolution upload of an imaginary planet called Rahet. And I built a wordpress blog, which is a separate, low-frequency blog intended to focus on my geofictional pursuits rather than this more personalized, general purpose blog. All of these things can be found integrated together on my rent-a-server, here: geofictician.net
TEFL - my "profession," such as it is.
Online English Grammar reference Grammarist. Useful for settling disputes over grammar.
My students in my youngest EB1-M cohort drew this picture. It started out during the break time, when I often let them play with markers on the whiteboard, but I was so impressed with their idea, we turned it into an impromptu class project. Emma and Michelle did most of the actual drawing, but the other students made comments, and there were repeated "edits" until each student was satisfied with their portrait.
I just stood there like a blockhead. Go figure.
I really like it. But I wonder about the all-seeing alligator above. What's that about?
I used to live about a block from Lake Calhoun, in Minneapolis. I associate my time living there with my huge (or anti-huge?) weight-loss project, in 2006-2007. I lost almost 60 pounds that year - and mostly, I kept it off, losing another bit after coming to Korea, and then a lot when I had cancer, and then gaining some of that last bit back. I've been pretty stable at 80 kilos since the bounceback from the cancer.
Part of that process was my daily jogging. I would go out and run around the lake. I made a fixed habit of it. So you could say that I lost my pounds to the lake. And anyway, I have strong associative memories of the lake, my time living there, those daily runs, and the feeling of taking control back of my life.
I recently learned that there has been a movement to rename the lake. I think that's maybe a good idea - it's named for that famous, pre-Civil War justifier of slavery. This has now started the approval process.
The new name is Bde Maka Ska ("White Earth Lake"). I think this is a wonderful new name. Having studied the Dakota language (if only a little bit), I was pleased to recognize two of the three words in this name. It's especially nice in the city of Bdeota (which is, afterall, Minneapolis' Dakota name, and means simply "Place of Lakes").
Most countries in the world frequently rename things, and I think it's generally interesting, if sometimes overly trendy to whatever is currently going on politically in a place. But this change I can support unequivocally.
Here is a picture I took in 2009, during a brief visit to the old neighborhood, retracing my jogging route around the lake.
I don't know what it is about me and water problems when I first wake up. There was the event, last year, when I flooded my apartment by making the mistake of trying to do my dishes while not yet fully awake. And this morning, well, I made a much smaller but rather odd flood.
I got up, and the first thing I do, with my perpetually dry mouth (lacking the salivary capacity that normal mouths have), is get some water to drink. I pulled down a clean glass tumbler from my cabinet, put some water in it, and went over to my desk. And I didn't notice, the glass was leaking. A lot.
It emptied itself like an incontinent automaton at my desk, and I didn't notice until it had finished its task. I was puzzled how the water had escaped my glass and appeared on my desk and was now waterfalling into my lap.
It took me another run, after wiping up the flood with a towel and refilling my glass, to figure out what was going on. My glass had a remarkable hole in the bottom. I have no idea how that happened. Possibly the last time I washed it, and I just didn't notice until now.
A poem is like a conversation where you hurl your words out slow and there's no end.
This is my new poem-numbering scheme. I decided I wanted the numbers to reflect the total number since I started this poem-a-day effort. So it is the sum of Nonnets + Englynion + Quatrains + Random Poems - [poems written before I started the daily challenge but got included in the earlier counts]. There may be some inaccuracy because some of the quatrains got counted as multiple quatrains despite being single "poems." Not that all this really matters. I just... decided I wanted to do it like this, moving forward.
Last night in my PM1-M cohort CC class (cloze listening of pop songs), I felt like I was living in some kind of Lord of the Flies rendition of hagwon life.
You see, this one boy, Eric, was opening a packet of snack ramen. The kids eat the dried ramen noodles dry, sort like potato chips, with the flavor packets opened and sprinkled over the broken up noodles. What they do is they open the packet enough to get out the flavor packet, which they extract and add into the noodle package. Then they hold the noodle package closed and mash up the noodles inside, so they're all tiny fragments and the flavor granules are distributed. It's like do-it-yourself Doritos, maybe.
So Eric had done this work. And then he tore open his now mashed up and flavored pack of dried noodles eagerly, with a plan to eat his snack. Normally I'm pretty tolerant of kids eating snacks in my class, despite an official rule against it, because I know the whole business of attending night class for elementary age students means sometimes they are hungry and haven't eaten since an after-school snack or something.
The other boys (the cohort is currently all boys, just by luck of the draw) were eyeing his snack jealously and hungrily. Unfortunately, Eric opened his packet too aggressively. The noodle fragments, stained orange by the spicy flavor granules, flew all over the room, landing on desks, chairs, floor, and even in Eric's hair. The boy sat with a stunned and despondant look on his face.
But the worst was when the other boys, seeing their chance, swooped in and began grabbing up all the scattered noodle fragments. They didn't seem to care that the bits were on the floor, chairs and desks. They ate them. In less than a minute, most of the bits were gone. Even the ones in Eric's hair. While Eric still just sat, looking stunned.
I said, "Really? Really? You guys are eating off the floor? It's like a pack of dogs!"
In fact, I wasn't that scandalized - I could barely contain my laughing. But given my in loco parentis role (more loco than parentis, perhaps), I felt obligated to be upset by the performance.
Anyway, we got it cleaned up. It took up about half the class time, though. I guess the boys were not annoyed by this.
Quite unrelatedly, what I'm listening to right now.
Sticks & Big2, "Waar Wacht Je Op?!" Don't ask me why. I just listen to weird things, sometimes. Why not a little bit of Dutch hiphop?
Lyrics.
[Intro: Sticks] Waar wacht je op? Waar wacht je op? Waar wacht je op? Sticky Steez!
[Intro: Big2] Hé Sticks, go get 'em!
[Verse 1: Sticks] Je krijgt deez nuts, Dries van Noten Breek het open, pistachenoten Een piece of mind en een piece van mij Voor de fun en fuck de police d'r bij Nou als ik niet beweeg, breng ik niets te weeg En wat zijn mijn woorden waard als ik ze niet meer weeg? Ik deel mijn lief en leed, en het gaat fucking flex Maar men ziet liever leed en beef-dvd's Ik ga next-level, van rap battles naar HMH Ga aan de kant Jett Rebel en Chef's Special En Kensington en Go Back To The Zoo En hoe lauwer de beat, hoe gekker je doet Ambitie maakt dat ik move met m'n shit Ambitie maakt dat jij grooved op die shit 'T is hard werken om je vrijheid te behouden Maar de up-side: het kan allemaal van jou zijn Nou waar wacht je op?
[Chorus: Sticks & Big2] Get loose met je poes, als ik dit niet doe zijn we helemaal floes (Waar wacht je op?) En iedereen doet mee, met de Sticky Steez en de Biggie 2 (Waar wacht je op?) Geen plan, gewoon gaan, de leeuw laat je echt niet in zijn hempie staan (Waar wacht je op?) En de beat goes on (Lachen toch?) En de beat goes, on (Waar wacht je op?) Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt, het is aan jou... Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt, het is aan jou... Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt
[Verse 2: Sticks] Nou als het moet, bos ik op bam bam ritmes Chaka Demus & en de Pliers in een 5-0-1 levi's Met een witte Air Max, met een pipi' achter mijn oor Geeft niks, het is the latest greatest Nadenken is de vijand van vrijheid Check deze Twan, volgens mij zijn we highlights Daar moest je bij zijn, anderen willen dat me zijn maar zijn te klein als Royce da 5'9 Voor de clubs ben ik te nuchter, lever de track af, breek de tent af Zoek rust midden in de drukte Heel het leven is een trip beter stap je in (Waar wacht je op?) Record wat, breng het uit de dag erop Deel de hele taart uit, zet er slagroom op Er is genoeg voor ieder, er is genoeg voor ieder Waar wacht je op?
[Chorus: Sticks & Big2] Get loose met je poes, als ik dit niet doe zijn we helemaal floes (Waar wacht je op?) En iedereen doet mee, met de Sticky Steez en de Biggie 2 (Waar wacht je op?) Geen plan, gewoon gaan, de leeuw laat je echt niet in zijn hempie staan (Waar wacht je op?) En de beat goes on (Lachen toch?) En de beat goes, on (Waar wacht je op?) Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt, het is aan jou... Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt, het is aan jou...
and now i have become dissatisfied with how i number all these little poems. perhaps a change could be created soon to leave it all confused, disjoint, and new.
My second grade student Michelle, who seems to be some kind of cartoonist prodigy, drew this character on my whiteboard the other day. She told me it was the Alligary. Now we have another student, who's English name is Gary. And frankly, in its minimalistic way, this drawing is an excellent caricature: the bowl-shaped haircut, the disgruntaled half-frown. I certainly would have recognized it as being him, if she'd only hinted that it was a student in our class.
light reveals what's hidden among atoms and up in the trees tracing fractal motions distorted undulations aimless disquisitions of form leaves, for example, caught in the wind.
담벽하고 말하는 셈이다 dam.byeok.ha.go mal.ha.neun sem.i.da brick-wall-WITH talk-PPART guess-BE [One could] guess it's [like] talking to a brick wall.
This is exactly the same as the English expression, "like talking to a brick wall." It's not so often I find exactly matching aphorisms. Perhaps dealing with dense individuals is a human universal.
That's how I was feeling last night. It's Thanksgiving in the US, but it's just a regular day of work, here. And it was a particularly awful day at work.
I was feeling incompetent as a teacher, and yet also frustrated with idiotic parents who complain about what I like to hope are good, research-supported teaching methods.
It was one of those fortunately rare days when I walk home daydreaming about quitting my job. I used to suffer that a lot. When I worked in those computer jobs, I literally spent every day daydreaming such things. In general, I stick with this teaching thing because I don't suffer those kinds of days so often.
So last night, I was thinking, "No thanks..."
This morning, there was a dusting of snow in my neighborhood. You can kind of see it on Jeongbal Hill, in the background, and on the trees in front of the maternity hospital in the foreground.
and she was sitting there, like happy, and, like, not a care in the world, and she goes, like, "whatever," and she holds her hand out, and she's smiling, too, and I agree, and, well, see, and then, and...
A Capella Science, "Evo-Devo (Despacito Biology Parody)." This song is truly awesome. It's evolutionary biology. It's poetry. It's music. It's all in a package, like the miracle of life, itself. For the prototype of which this song is a "parody," see here.
Lyrics.
EVO-DEVO Huxley B. Mac. Oh Carroll, Carroll Gould, Stephen Jay yeah D-D-D-D-Davidson and Peter
See One cell divide and decide on a thousand fates Did you ever figure how they know? B. Mac. We Are built of modules combined in a planned out way Each new piece must be told where to go Oh
Now there's a science helping us to understand How our cells encode this architectural plan Signalling each other with genetic tools oh Oh yeah
Wow Phenotype the interface for mouse and man Genotype the files and the subprograms What then are the switches, circuit boards and boot code?
Evo-Devo Looking at the logic in the ways that we grow Every gene directed by a signal key code Proteins that can activate, enhance or veto Evo-Devo Signals are controlled by other genes that signal Calculating in a network labyrinthal Where the heart and liver and the hands and feet go
Signal mapping tells each region what it ought to be yo With circuits so deeply built upon They're older than the Paleo The Paleozoic Era baby In a crucial pathway changes tend to get torpedoed Where they go calamity goes As this cyclopic sheep knows..
See down they cascade like a domino Like you and I drosophila The path that makes us optical Was laid a long long time ago Back before we blew up the cambrian like a bomb bomb Now my eye protein can make you see out of your bom bom And Hedgehog and its relatives like Indian and Sonic Set up set up in a gradient on segments embryonic Split forebrains and asymmetric parts depend upon it Flipping on genetic switches and logic From devo to evo Adult and embryo Mostly don't evolve in the genes of the genome Safer the mutation aimed at regulation Keep the building blocks and swap their activation From devo to evo Parts have alter egos Homologs evolved from repeats in the schema Switch a couple bases in the proper places You'll be watching flies grow legs out of their faces oh yeah
Evo-Devo Stick around for Modern Synthesis the sequel Only by combining can a new theory grow Evolution and development amigos Evo-Devo Signals trigger patterns of complexity so Switching up the switches of a signalling node Gives a modular and simple way to evolve
Look at how our spinal segments generate a neat row Built on a molecular clock One cycle, one vertebra One vertebra one vertebra baby Speeding up its rate is snakes' developmental cheat code That and where a lizard's feet grow They turn off distal aminos
Evo-Devo This is how we go from single cells to people Every generation and in life primeval Life in variations endless and beautiful
Badaboom
From devo to evo Larva to mosquito Patterns are resolved as the signals proceed yo Map out a gene with a glow tag Kill it with a morpholino Short oligo morpholino baby
From devo to evo Voyage of the Beagle Body plans evolve when proteins steer the genome In this manner life's beauty grows Aesthetica in vivo
Words spill out like cars on a highway. They spin swirls, like oil on water. Rising up, they take on birds. They mumble to themselves. And problems emerge. Difficult words. Confusing. Gentle. Stop.
I don't have much to say. Recently we started our Christmas-themed role-play with my youngest, lowest-level cohort. It might seem early, but with only one 45 minute practice period per week, it's really not too early.
So we are learning some Christmas songs. And I drew this on the whiteboard. We were drawing reindeer characters from the story. I added my own.
Snow: drifting through the air but not sticking to anything, just making big promises and icy atmospherics which no one can appreciate because they don't like feeling so cold.
In trackless woods, it puzzled me to find Four great rock maples seemingly aligned, As if they had been set out in a row Before some house a century ago, To edge the property and lend some shade. I looked to see if ancient wheels had made Old ruts to which the trees ran parallel, But there were none, so far as I could tell – There’d been no roadway. Nor could I find the square Depression of a cellar anywhere, And so I tramped on further, to survey Amazing patterns in a hornbeam spray Or spirals in a pine-cone, under trees Not subject to our stiff geometries.
Sometimes, it can be interesting to try to look at the world from a truly different perspective. For example, how does ice cream see the world? How about ice cream that's dropped a few hits of acid and suffers some kind of mental disorder?
Warning: Do not watch this video if you are easily annoyed.
Esta manía de saberme ángel, sin edad, sin muerte en qué vivirme, sin piedad por mi nombre ni por mis huesos que lloran vagando.
¿Y quién no tiene un amor? ¿Y quién no goza entre amapolas? ¿Y quién no posee un fuego, una muerte, un miedo, algo horrible, aunque fuere con plumas aunque fuere con sonrisas?
Siniestro delirio amar una sombra. La sombra no muere. Y mi amor sólo abraza a lo que fluye como lava del infierno: una logia callada, fantasmas en dulce erección, sacerdotes de espuma, y sobre todo ángeles, ámgeles bellos como cuchillos que se elevan en la noche y devastan la esperanza.
The one-room apartment where I live has become somewhat cluttered, I guess.
My attention was drawn to this because recently the apartment's owner (not my boss Curt - he merely holds a long-term lease, which in turn is sublet to me as part of my work compensation) decided to sell the apartment. Curt's long-term lease remains binding, as I understand it - it's not that I would lose my apartment. It's just some new "investor" (presumably) is planning on owning this particular one-room condo. Most apartments in Korea, I think, exist in this kind of situation. There's a condo owner who is most likely not the resident. Who any particular "owner" is, is not clear: investors or speculators or real-estate agencies of various sorts, I expect. It's not like these investors end up with a lot of responsibilities: the maintenance of the apartment is either the lease-holder's or the building management's. Anyway, it's complicated, but typical.
So having someone "selling" my apartment means I have to be prepared for occasional unexpected visitors, who would be prospective buyers. And that made me self-conscious of how cluttered I've allowed it to become.
I suspect I have some "pack-rat" tendencies, which my frequent moves during my life have perhaps served to keep under control. This one-room in the Urim Bobo Building in Ilsan is the longest I've lived in a single place since, I think, childhood.
I've been trying to de-clutter, a bit. But I don't enjoy doing that. It annoys me to have to make decisions about whether I really need something. It feels stressful.
Curt said, "What do you think of the new lights in the hall?"
I answered, "Those? Actually, I think they're a little bit weird." They had these odd LED blue stripes for some reason, giving a slightly eerie feel. I wasn't sure what the point of that was. Just an effort to make for a unique lighting effect?
A bit huffily, as if I had impugned his interior-decorating skills, Curt replied, "What do you mean, 'weird'?"
In that very instant, a third grade student, Gloria, emerged from the hall in question. I'm certain she hadn't been overhearing the exchange between Curt and me, nor could she have necessarily even understood it, since she is not a high-level student.
Gloria said, in her typically assertive manner, "선생님, 거기 이상해요. [Teacher. It's weird over there.]"
Needless to say, in that moment, I felt profoundly vindicated.
You. You talked. You explained. You challenged me. You gave me presents. You said, "Don't ever change." You lived, laughed, traveled, and cried. You said, "You've changed." I had to leave. You then made clear the world was not yours.
I needed to get out of my house. I walked around my neighborhood. I saw a lot of buildings. I saw a lot of cars. I looked at the trees. I stepped on leaves. I saw birds. I thought. I.
