Meramec Caverns

Or, you know, move beyond capitalism entirely.

I'm suddenly reminded my my high school chemistry lab partner. Thanks for putting up with me, Christine, wherever you are.

0. Yes, but I work in a field with really stange gender and racial dynamics (Teaching English as a Foreign Language).

1. Yes, as teaching is usually considered a more female-oriented profession, and communication/social skills also seem to be thought of as coming more naturally to women. Also, I like to observe how gender influences student participation and skill-building.

2. No, I avoid leaderhip responsibilities.

3. No. I look at who's the best-suited individual, regardless of gender.

4. Yes. I frequently think about cultural differences, multiple intelligences and (potentially undiagnosed) developmental issues.

5. Not exactly, no. I think a lot about being a polite guest in my host country, and how to be a person of integrity and how to a good role model for children. But I don't tend to think about personal skills vis-a-vis those kinds of roles/relationships.

edit: I'm actually between jobs now. I've been going through the hiring process for a new position. The two female admins I've been in contact with have been great about follow-up and communication in general. The male admin is so bad about responding to emails that I've stopped even CCing him.

I agree. It's way to jargon-y for many people. I tend to lead in particular aspects that sound technical, and not too "out there" such as agroforestry or integrated pest management or ecosystem mimicry or even just sustainable agriculture.

While I share the overall skeptical attitude, I have to say translation software is already a part of my daily life. I am a bit of an outlier, being a foreign language instructor, but much of these uses are for my personal life in countries where I have a minimal grasp of the language. I frequently have conversations on an app called WeChat which has a built-in translation function. However, the quality of translation software output hasn't noticibly progressed in the last decade or so since Altavista's Babel Fish was replaced by Google Translate. Asian languages are still as likely as not to be rendered into English wordpasta.

I'd like to see Kurzweil's past predictions. I always hear techno-utropian say that his predictions have been highly accurate so far (this infographic calims 89%), but I have yet to see the substance. And I'm not about to do the research myself.

I don't allow myself to use the word anymore

I'm about to that point myself. I can tell I'm starting to sound like a broken record to the people around me.

As ever, this stuff is way over my head.

I got hit with the Firefox block recently. You know, they're been prophesying the death of Flash for 4 or 5 years now. I wish it would just hurry up. I know know a handful of sites that still implement it. I'm looking at you Spotify.

Really it's Japan. Compared to them, we're angels in the Korean consciousness. Japan colonized Korea from 1910-1945. During that time the Japanese destroyed/confiscated cultural artifacts and buildings, instituted forced labor (including forced prostitution), and eventually began a policy of cultural assimilation. By contrast the American influence on the peninsula is realtively hands-off or indirect. In my experience there definitely are a lot of people who are discontent with the prescence of US troops in Korea, but there's not the visceral prejudice that many have against Japan. What was surprising to me was that far right-wing nationalists are also typically very pro-American. Which is awkward as I have much more sympathy toward

we supported the oppressive regime in the South

This unfortunately appears to be our country's MO in foreign countries. We have a much lengthier track record of setting up despotisms than democracies.

It wasn't just the North that America fucked over. The US military set-up the hard-line anti-Communist Rhee Syngman as the first president (dictator, really) of the Republic of Korea. Before and during the war he ordered mass killings of political dissidents. The Jeju Massacre was one such event. One incident where Americans directly killed civilians was the Nogeun-ri Massacre. Tens to hundreds of thousands of lives lost due to American influence.

I searched for it, but no old posts came up. Odd.

The EXIF metadata on those pics would also be some handy evidence.