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I haven’t noticed much educational programming in the way of MacGyver, Knight Rider, or the A-Team… but their absence is more than fulfilled in the form of live action choreography that makes the WWE look realistic.

Yes, while most of the populace hides from the sun light (being tan is stigmatized here, more on that at a later time), we at least all receive the daily recommended allowance of Airwolf - the pinnacle in day-time televisions quest for consolidating crappy plotlines and recycling fight sequences (seriously).

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but the capabilities of the helicopter are beyond even today’s latest and greatest vehicles (military or otherwise).

For instance, the fastest helicopter ever made (ZB500) only achieves 250 mph, which is just a smidge slower than the supersonic velocities that Airwolf was capable of reaching in a fire fight.

Oh, and you know how every episode involves tackling some tin-pot dictator in a Third-World shanty town? Well, being the douche bag that I am, I’d like to point out that this bird-of-prey supposedly hides in Monument Valley, Utah.

Big deal, right? Well, again, the longest range any helicopter ever had was a prototype OH-6, which could cover 1,900 nautical miles.

So uhh, it is kind of hard to take the fight to Charlie and other boogey men at the ends of the earth. Unless of course, they all reside in the Northern regions of Mexico.

Then again, as John Candy discovered in Canadian Bacon, there are copious amounts of dastardly bastards holed up within 100 miles of the US border. Like Pamela Anderson and Geordie Rose…

Note to purists: it is true that the creators recognized the range limitation in the “design spec” but seriously now. In the enlightening episode I watched last night, Hawke & Co. ended up battling a local group of herdsmen in Afghanistan. I don’t think you need a protractor or abacus to calculate the disparate differences between Point A and B. And in-flight refueling would be an odd thing for a wanted fugitive to continually receive from their adversaries in the Air Force.

See the intro that includes the “innovative” motorcycle helmet.

Four years ago I wrote about a metasearch project called Grub. At the time, it was basically being hailed as an open-source way to index the interweb, in real-time.

And it pretty much went nowhere for a number of reasons, one of which was that the parent company was free-riding off of its install base.

Another reason is that end-users trying to search the results had a subpar experience when compared to the dominant search engines of the time, especially the bigger players like Yahoo, MSN, and Google.

And now it seems as if a bit of fresh air has been blown back into Grubs little, presumably, unsalted heart.

Last week, Jimmy Wales (co-creator of Wikipedia) purchased the spider/crawler from its beleaguered parent company and intends on “truly” open-sourcing it this time.

In Om Malik’s write-up of this event, he mentions that building a scalable infrastructure was perhaps the prime culprit in Grub’s original demise; I still think that is merely one piece of the overall service.

No matter how big your index is, providing relevant results and presenting them in a useful manner still seems like the most important attribute desired by consumers.

And while a number of factors have gone into success, arguably one of the reasons Google dominates the current industry is because the developers have figured out not just how to index the web in a timely manner, but also how to present it in a productive, meaningful way — this despite the fact that both Yahoo and MSN have indices of comparable sizes and scope.

Here’s to hoping that Wales & Co. will not fulfill Santayana’s maxim. Heck, if they really are on top of things this time, I might even utilize the fat pipe I have here to help with the project.

Note: be sure to check out the Daft Punk song, “Technologic“

While still get a kick out of the various markets that are entirely foreign to Westerners like myself (e.g., Replacement drivers), I am equally amused that individuals can make a living by writing about what they believe the future holds.

Inventor and award-winning author Ray Kurzweil is among many commentators of futurism and I accidentally bumped into another prediction of his that seems to be accurate.

While he would hardly claim to own a crystal ball, it seems as if a prediction he made 7.5 years ago is unfolding on time.

In “The Age of Spiritual Machines” he suggested that at some point in the early 2000s (and before 2010), “[s]peech-to-text machines translate speech into a visual display for the deaf.”

And according to a recent patent application, it looks like the gadget wizards of Cupterino California (Apple Computers) have been working on commercializing a product that does just that.

So while it is hardly an earth-shattering Apocalypse-causing innovation, it does give ol’ Ray a little more room to flex at cocktail parties. See more on his track record here.

And I predict that in 7.5 years Apple will release Duke Nukem Forever packaged with a Bitchin’fast!3D 2000.

Back in the late ’90s and even up through parts of the ’00s there were people that got tattoos of Asian hieroglyphic characters, just because they looked cool.

The user had no idea what they meant and in the few weeks that I have been here, I have noticed a similar trend in xenophilia.

While I haven’t seen a whole lot of Romanic characters stenciled on the locals, many young people wear shirts even if they don’t know what it may say.

Exhibit A:

I snapped this photo during a scavenger hunt through one of the many jam-packed markets on Korea’s Constitution Day.

There are a million more where this one comes from, most of which are not family friendly…

Oops:

- All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash… including all your Flickr photos, because you were watching too many videos

- Planet’s and Star’s comparison scales

…and it doesn’t work on my TI-82 calculator.

This is one of the best techy telemarketing calls ever:

Via Bad Astronomy

I recently bumped into a couple of stories that are about a year old now, detailing one of those grandiose 5-Year Plans that are reminiscent to Soviet-era master planning.

This time the guilty party is the Ministry of Education in South Korea.

They plan on spending $51 billion of taxpayers ducats to invest in English education programs — a kind of ‘chicken in every pot‘ scheme or ‘robot in every home‘ kind of deal.

So, instead of allowing the residents to keep their money and finance education as they see fit, the technocrats (”Great Deciders”) have decided to throw money at an artificially created quagmire.

Also, in continuing the story from the other day, according to my co-workers it is illegal for someone like myself to teach pro bono, even at an orphanage. Because it is not part of the E-2 visa.

Draconian labor laws? Free-market in labor? Maybe this is why foreign businesses have been shunning the peninsula…

The contemporary debate over occupational licensing typically involves the fields of medicine and law.

In fact, you would be hard pressed to find anyone being arrested for or accused of practicing history without a license.

While many individuals would consider that sort of licensing scheme borderline retarded under the reductio ad absurdum fallacy (after all, why not license all commercial activity?), in South Korea, and just about every other country, this ridiculous policy actually exists.

For instance, a Canadian was just arrested and sentenced to six months in prison for fabricating his academic record to receive an E-2 Visa, the kind you need if you want to teach English here.

Now, while I certainly do not condone falsifying documents and committing fraud in any kind of business transaction, another overlooked criminal act is the artificial barrier to entry that South Korea has placed on the market for tutoring services.

Aside from needing a bachelors degree from an accredited institution, applicants must originate from an approved list of countries. And foreigners are only allowed to work at licensed/registered hagwons or public schools due to the fact that private one-on-one tutoring sessions are illegal.

Thus, the larger issue is that the Korean government is in effect insulating teachers here from outside competition: it is modern-day protectionism.

In addition, a lively debate is taking place on a popular ESL/EFL forum surrounding this issue and whether or not you should snitch/tattle-tale on someone teaching illegally.

Scratch and sniff

Two pillars of a free-market involve the freedom of association and freedom of contract, and in this instance the government is meddling in the affairs of businesses at the detriment of both the business and client.

In short, because schools are not at liberty to hire whomever they feel qualified for the job, an artificial shortage is created by government regulation. In addition, the negative distortions are no different than in any other market that the government regulates (such as the housing market in NYC).

And as a result, a black market for education exists and thrives because effective instructors will still be approached to fill the market demand.

And this protectionist attitude is no better illustrated by one of the forum posters who suggests that the market price for an English teacher would drastically decline if the current requirements were dropped — they are scared of competition and are willing to use force to prevent a change in the business model.

The end result of this market regulation and government intervention is that customers cannot get the cheapest education, nor can they be offered the best, because some of the most creative and innovative teachers will never attend college.

Note: residents of India and many other former British colonies are not in the pool of acceptable E-2 applicants… because they aren’t honkies.

In short, it is nothing like Baby Boy Da Prince’s song.

Every lunch I try to eat some local native food here.

While the noodley (sic) look and feel will not be entirely foreign to anyone that eats a lot soup and pasta, the spice factor is out of this world.

Visitors really have no need to buy any kind of decongestant as your nasal cavity is probably unaccustomed to the intense levels of heat that enters your mouth.

Kimchi is pretty much the primary staple in a diet here — it automatically comes with most meals whether you want it or not.

It basically looks and tastes like white lettuce that is inebriated with tabasco sauce. It’s actually fermented cabbage that has been aged and is dosed in a healthy helping of chili peppers.

The other staple is actually a beverage that tastes like a blend between Russian vodka and Japanese Saki called Soju.

It is watered down sugarized Ethanol that really needs to be drunken with a mixer (Sprite, OJ, Coke, etc.) and is consumed at many meals (especially dinner).

And on that note, apparently you’ll never be arrested for vagrancy or PI here.

So I was buying some salted peanuts at one of the million convenience stores around here and this guy dressed as a buddhist monk — robe and all — strolled in.

He must have smelled Westerner or something because he started banging his little pot and chanting alien incantations — and then asked me for some money.

And he’s not the only guy with an unconventional approach to raising funds around here.

Like a rock

There is that one lady, a middle-aged mom who rides the subway line through the Bundang area.

I see her everyday at the same time and like the vibrant colors of a peacocks feathers, every muscle in her face tells the peanut gallery that she means business.

So while other patrons of the subway are content to sit in their chairs, watching TV on their itty bitty phones, she wastes no time in hawking a slew of wares.

Toting two plastic crates strapped to a stroller she makes her way up and down the aisles. Like an auctioner at a flea market or an orator in an ampitheter, she tries to command the attention of everyone.

And as far as I have seen, she has failed every time.

If the Bud Light announcer guy lived here, he would certainly salute her tenacity and energy towards selling corn on the cob, yellow panchos, and a sundry of other unwanted goods.

So crack open a cold one amigo, because rain or shine she’ll be at it again tomorrow, and you’ll still act like you’re deaf and dumb.

An old college friend sent me a recent article from the NY Times discussing a nascent industry in Korea called replacement drivers.

The gist of it is, if you are too inebriated to drive home you can pay someone else to drive you home by using your own vehicle — kind of like a personalized taxi service or not-so-classy chauffer-mobile.

The story goes on to describe the average night of these replacement drivers, how they have to be very resourceful in getting back to other buzzed patrons after dropping off clientele throughout the city.

While I have never knowingly met one of these guys, somehow I doubt that Seoul is the only city that has ever had use for the service.

Also, one of the objectives of this service is to beat impromptu road blocks set up by the police force which is “cracking down” on driving under the influence. Incidentally, while walking back from the subway last night I saw this take place.

Officers maneuvered precariously along the dashed lines and directed traffic with those glowsticks used on aircraft runways. They would approach the driver and have them blow near an electronic breathalyzer.

It was a surprisingly speedy process and I only saw one guy pulled over who was promptly given a bottle of water to flush the purported substance(s) out of his system.

Of course, being the libertarian curmudgeon that I am, I’m not a huge fan of prosecuting these blokes because no crime has actually been committed (a la pre-crime in Minority Report). Kind of like arresting someone for carrying a gun because they have the potential to harm someone.

Some opposing food for thought:
Legalize Drunk Driving
The Non-Crime of Drunk Driving
Drunk Driving Laws Cause Drunk Driving Accidents

I’m going to admit it: I caused the failure in the Orbo experiment the other day.

I just didn’t think the world was ready for a perpetual motion machine.

Seriously now, I think the shenanigans surrounding Steorn & Co. can serve as a constructive exercise in mental gymnastics.

I mean, the guy at least built and tried to showcase his device whereas various proponents of things like “Intelligent Design” have yet to publicly do the same.

In fact, as the Templeton Foundation has noted, the nascent movement has yet to present any scientifically testable model for peer-review.

So for all the negative press Orbo gets, consistently speaking, the same media outlets should also lambaste the lack of empirical data for “alternative theories” that have added nothing to the corpus of science.

And this standard goes for any other dogma and sacred cow that does not pass the repeatability litmus test enshrined in the scientific method, including string theory, which according to Lee Smolin and Peter Woit is Not Even Wrong.

But then again, Stringists and Steorn are at least trying to try to verify their rhetoric experimentally…

Several decades ago, famed scifi author Orson Scott Card penned perhaps his best known series of books starting with the award-winning Ender’s Game.

Without giving away too much of the plot, in the not-so-distant future, the human-based military discovers a young, but very gifted video gamer who is extremely effective at micromanaging small-scale tactics in conjunction with the larger, macro battle theater.

He along with several others are kind of commandeered by the military high-command in an effort to combat an alien menace.

These students, and Ender in particular, continually train within a virtual video game, rehearsing battles over and over again, with the end goal of utilizing their abilities on the battlefield.

I’ll stop there, but the story is definitely worth reading if you enjoy computer games and/or science fiction.

What you may not know about South Korea, and what I have alluded to before, is that there is an almost fanatical following to several computer games, most notably Starcraft (which officially sold over 3.5 million copies in that country alone).

So much so, that there are two TV stations dedicated to showcasing tournaments 24/7, ongamenet and MBC Game.

In fact, there is an entire profession surrounding e-games here in Seoul, whose popularity rivals and even surpasses many of the traditional sports that make you sweat, like Baseball and Basketball.

During some of the downtime I have throughout the day, I find myself watching these games for a couple reasons: it exposes me to Korean pop-culture and no matter what is being said, I can tell who is getting their ass whooped.

And I’m pretty certain at this point in time, while the guys behind the keyboard might not be the suavest with the ladies or the most muscular, they put the “I” back into intensity, dedication, and discipline.

For instance, Starcraft is a real-time strategy game based in a science-fiction universe not too dissimilar to that of Ender’s Game. And a term called “Actions Per Minute” is used to describe the overall ability of a individual player; the more actions you can execute, the better you are able to maneuver troops on the battlefield.

Typical gamers may click the keyboard and mouse 40-50 times each minute, whereas professional players will sustain ten times that level. In fact, Koreans have such a reputation for intense calculation at this game, many internationally-based online servers ban players from this region.

And it is insane to watch this synchronized swiftness occur on live TV.

With that said it is nigh impossible to figure out which player wins after a game is over. No fist pumps, jumping or yelling. No emotions whatsoever.

And neither did Ender at first.

And to top that off, now that State-funded militaries of the world are beginning to invest and develop in automated, self-contained vehicles and robots (e.g., UCAVs), the future of warfare may one day be in the hands of keyboard commanders and their mongoose-like reflexes.

If nothing else, it makes for a better movie plot than Wargames.

And by the way, these game professionals are in fact quite the Don Juan’s. Not only do they have ginormous fan groups filled with enthralled young women, but the live audience is usually comprised of the same type of girls you would find fawning over band members at a rock concert.

Triumph of the nerds indeed.

[Note: the players are part of corporate sponsored team's and practice 8+ hours everyday, they even wear NASCAR-like jackets covered with patches and company logos when in public. And truth be told, one of my favorite parts of the show is listening to the pitch of the commentators voices. Much like Spanish announcers are stereotypically known for their exasperated yelling during dramatic shots on the goal (Exhibit A), so too are their Korean counterparts throughout key portions of a match.]

So one of the more ironic moments in business practices throughout Seoul is that while many bars and clubs literally stay open all night, all banks are closed on the weekends.

I’m not sure if this has to do with any particular law (like Blue Laws in the South) but it doesn’t seem like a very efficient way at reaching customers who may be unable to visit bank locations during normal business hours.

Other interesting things:

- I haven’t seen anyone with a smartphone, PDA, or Blackberry which is also an observation noted in a recent NY Times piece; I also haven’t seen either the Ultra Smart F700 or SCH-B450 mentioned in the piece

- PC Bangs are all over the place, probably even moreso considering I can’t understand 99% of the signs; most of them have game posters hanging from doors (e.g., World of Warcraft)

- Gyms exist, but they are nestled away in seemingly hard to find areas. The one that I visited last night requires men to wear blue shirts and women to wear red. Just like these guys found out. And it is relatively pricey compared to the health clubs in the West (e.g., $60/month here versus $30 at either Gold’s Gym or 24 Hour Fitness)

- Konglish is prevalent everywhere, it is basically bastarized English used in haphazard ways (e.g., “Rice Burger”)

- Smoking is apparently über cool as everyone does it, especially young adults

- The drivers are perhaps the most aggressive ones I have ever met. Red light does not mean stop, it is perfectly normal to park on sidewalks, and honking on the horn is used liberally. Oh and double parking is very much en vogue.

- I haven’t seen a fat person and sunlight is persona non grata

So I took that advice literally two days ago and moved to Seoul, South Korea.

Seriously.

I’m actually typing this message in one of their notorious PC bang (internet cafe) where all the guys play Starcraft and Counterstrike while their girlfriends sit next to them and use Cyworld (it’s like MySpace).

Anyways, I’ll be here for a year or so, teaching conversational English. I’ll discuss the motivations for moving in the next few days, after I finish eating lots of dog, which they really do eat as a cuisine.

Tangental tangents

Oh, and one of the odd parts about the flight was due how the earth turns, it is actually faster to fly through Canada, Alaska, and Russian airspace.

While I knew we would go through the first two, my brain raised a red flag regarding the Russian aspect due to remembering a not-so-awesome incidence during the ’80s in which a commercial jumbo jet, KAL 007, was “accidentally” destroyed by Soviet fighters.

And then our flight plan from Japan called for a northern approach to Incheon airport, which reminded me of the other fateful Sino-missle disaster 30 years ago: KAL 902.

The only disappointment so far is no one uses flying cars. What a let down.

Yea, so I saw an early screening of Transformers tonight. I’d give it a C- or so.

The special effects were fantastic as they spared no expense in filling the various action sequences with eye-candy. And the trademark “transforming” sound reminded me of the older cartoon series from my childhood. Crystal clear, vibrant even.

However, would someone let Michael Bay know that his script and plot sucked.

They shouldn’t have used high school-aged kids as “super smart” NSA agents, let alone the main character.

The chemical romance was not believable and its contrived inclusion suggests that the producers were simply trying to cater to young women or rather, the producers didn’t want to alienate them.

Tabular rasa

If I had the task of creating the movie, I would have removed just about any human actor (including the invincible special forces unit), added hundreds of robots (instead of the paltry dozen showcased) and spent the two hours blowing up most of human civilization. Mix in the obligatory large-scale tank battles and maybe one or two sparring sessions on the high-seas and call it a day.

There were certainly better ways to hint at the upcoming spin-offs in development, such as attrition-based continental warfare that could last for hundreds of sequels in the years to come. But that would be too cool, right?

Besides, there is only so many times you can blow up the streets of NYC-lookalikes. Give it a rest. [Note: the Hoover Dam is nowhere near a "big city" as depicted in the final battle sequence; it certainly wasn't Las Vegas]

One thing can be said, this flashback ’80s remake was a helluva lot better than the recent “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” animated movie… which does not even deserve to be copied from BitTorrent.

If you want non-stop white-knuckle action, go watch Die Hard 4 or rent 300… both are riddled with tons of testosterone and heart-pounding adrenaline.

See also the original cartoon intro and the old school song mixed to the new movie.