[BRIEF NOTE] The wrong kind of smart mobs

pompe's speculations on whether or not technology is enabling pack attacks reminds me, worryingly, of David Grossman's thesis in his On Killing that games technology and modern films are helping to desensitize people to violence.

[SHWI] Two Great Timelines

Johnny Pez, my erstwhile collaborator in the fan timeline For All Nails, has just copied his magisterial The Drowned Baby Timeline to a blogspot archive. Johnny's Maximum Massachusetts timeline is also up.

[B5] Season 5 will be upcoming

Thank you, Andrew!

[BRIEF NOTE] CFTAG After-Report

The overcrowding at the usual CFTAG haunt--the Starbucks on the northeast corner of Yonge and Wellesley--caused yesterday's pack--schizmatic, larkvi, and myself--to go up to the Second Cup on Yonge and St. Charles instead. A variety of topics were discussed, particularly American and Canadian politics and foreign-policy making. (Can anyone add anything?) Afterwards, we adjourned for lunch at the Sunny Dragon restaurant, specializing in Chinese-Korean dishes, on Bloor just west of the Bathurst TTC. It was good.

[BRIEF NOTE] Does pop culture translate well? How can it?

One interesting thing about the Sunny Dragon is that its walls house flatscreen televisions which show Korea Broadcasting System television shows. Last night, some sort of New Year's show was on, apparently a combination of reality television and a talent show. At 8 o'clock, it was followed by a show in sitcom format that combined light comedy, romance, and a murder mystery. The shows were interesting to watch, but I completely lacked any cultural reference points that would have made the popular culture--the music, the jokes, the clothing--intelligible. Hopefully my fellow diners had a better sense than me of what was going on; I just looked at the colourful pictures on the nice flatscreens

[LINK] Two African Migration Notes

• The widely distributed article "Africans risk all to breach fortress Europe" examines the phenomenon of West African immigration to western Europe, particularly from Senegal. Senegal's interior minister recently estimated that two or three million Senegalese live outside their country, itself home to ten million people. The funds acquired through immigration, by the workers themselves or via remittances, play a critical role in the domestic economy of Sengegal, and help advance the status of the migrants. The extreme dangers facing potential migrants, and the lack of welcome they receive on arrival, are the only things holding back the exodus.


• Ghana, in the meantime, is trying to attract African-Americans as tourists and even as immigrants, as Ghanaweb's "Ghana’s Uneasy Embrace of Slavery’s Diaspora" reports. The problem facing Ghanaians is that any sense of common identity uniting African-Americans and Ghanaians seems to be weak indeed.
  

[BRIEF NOTE] The Joys of Chun Byung

Apart from the wonderful walnut cake, another Korean pastry that you can buy at Hodo Kwaja (Walnut Cake) (656 Bloor Street West) is chun byung. At least that's what it's called on the box; a quick Google search reveals no such foodstuff by that name, only the names of a random assortment of South Korean pilots, scientists, and athletes. Chun byung is a thin hard pastry, made of"flour, egg, milk, sugar, butter, baking soda." Hodo Kwaja's chun byung is flavoured with either peanut butter or seaweed, chunks of peanut and green seaweed embedded in the brown pastry. The peanut butter's the more conventional flavour, but the seaweed is another order of saltiness altogether. If you've a peanut allergy, I mourn that you'll never have a chance to try this.

[BRIEF NOTE] Religion as an ideology

Richard R. considers the question over at Castrovalva, considers Dawkins' critique of religion as an ideology and finds it entirely satisfactory. Would that the distinction between religious and secular ideologies never been made.

The distinction between religion and other forms of ideology seems particularly untenable to me given that of the fourteen characteristics of an ur-fascism identified by Umberto Eco, ten apply quite straightforwardly to most of the major monotheisms (religion as a cult of tradition, rejection of modernity, a cult of action for action's sake, disagreement as treason (heresy, to use the correct euphemism), distrust of disagreement, stemming from individual or social frustration and the provision of a social identity, a cult of heroic martyrdom, and life as a form of struggle). By comparison, Stalin-era communism would qualify for about eight of Eco's characteristics. In such cases as the Middle East and Northern Ireland it seems clear conflict and violence are attributable to a complex mixture of causal factors. But there's no shortage of examples of religious groups persecuting one another without reference to other factors to suggest that religion is perfectly capable of being every bit as pernicious as nationalism, racism, fascism or communism.

Écrasez l'infâme.