Aside

The Left’s New Machine How the netroots became the most important mass movement in U.S. politics. by Jonathan Chait The New Republic Post date: 05.01.07 Issue date: 05.07.07 Reporter recalls the layers of truth told in Iraq After 4 1/2 years ‘in country,’ The Times’ Borzou Daragahi looks back on what it took each day to get to the story and get out alive. By Borzou Daragahi Times Staff Writer April 10, 2007 The Conciliator Where is Barack Obama coming…

My longtime friend Nick Freilich, aka Epicte, has just come out with his first full-length electronica CD. At $10, (shipping including), it’s a bargain. I’ve just ordered mine — and so you should too. You may recall that one of the tracks, “Celtic Glass Glitch,” I remixed with Dan Skeels’ auctioneering talents last year.

So I made it back to the good ol’ US of A, and I was greeted with these two events: First, an Oakland freeway connector collapses. I take this stretch pretty much every time I drive home from San Francisco. Now I’ll have to take a different route via surface streets, which will make my drive home take an extra 10-15 minutes or so. But I’m glad that I don’t have to drive over this area every day. Second, today…

Well, my three weeks in South Korea has come to an end. I tried (seriously) to make it up to North Korea, but it was going to cost me too much money and there was a 50/50 shot that the paperwork wouldn’t come through anyway. Too bad. I did get to go to the DMZ and eat Pyongyang-style noodles, so that’ll have to be good enough. I can’t thank everyone enough, who’s made my time here such a success. In…

Aaron‘s wife, Soo Jin, first showed me this commercial in Busan last weekend. IHT, February 9 2006: SAN FRANCISCO – The Bush administration is drawing up plans to further tighten the noose around North Korea by barring financial firms investing in Pyongyang from conducting business in the United States. Washington is moving fast to capitalize on Pyongyang’s alleged counterfeit dealings, but so fast that it is omitting a major factor: Korea is reunifying. At Incheon International Airport in South Korea,…

After having visited the DMZ, I’ve been reading up on some of the weirder aspects and effects of a divided Korea. Here’s one (Korean-speaking) American’s account of visiting North Korea as a tourist in 2002. Here’s his writings on visiting the same spot on the DMZ that I visited, only from the northern side. Also these are a few films about North Korea, all of which have now been added to my Netflix queue. Joint Security Area (2000, South Korea):…

I’m not really sure what to make of my trip to the Korean DMZ (De-militarized Zone), and actually standing a few feet inside of North Korea for a few minutes. The best analogy that I can come up with is being taken to a zoo, and watching the lion cage. You’re impressed at seeing these hulking fierce beasts that you’re led to believe are vicious killers who will stop at nothing to tear you limb from limb. They feed you…

Remember those octopus tentacles I mentioned earlier? I wasn’t kidding.