Quote

> Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you man understand the crises of our age," Ignatius said solemnly. "Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now, that I think about of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians, too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books."
>
> "You're fantastic."
>
> "I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he's found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman."

-- **A confederacy of Dunces**, _John Kennedy Toole_

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=551

[Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity] Comment: "Generalissimo Sariel"

New comment on your post #535 "Generalissimo Sariel"
Author : mrc (IP: 74.136.206.4 , 74-136-206-4.dhcp.insightbb.com)
Comment:
this is what happens when sariel emails me the morning after i've seen The Last King of Scotland -- which i highly recommend. the fine dictator-wear is courtesy of Idi Amin, in the mid-seventies (google-image-search the nice man, it's on the first page of results).

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Comment on Korea 13 - Only a pawn in their game by Sariel Har-Peled

It might be a lie, but it is also seems to be a generally accepted fact that North Korea helped the communists in China during the civil war. See for example the wikipedia [entry][1]:
_North Korea also played an important role, with 30-40 thousand Korean troops from Soviet-occupied North Korea were provided[6] in addition to allowing the CCP to use North Korea as a sanctuary in general,[7] and repairing Manchurian railroads and bridges which were used by Mao.[8]
_

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=532#comment-27807

[Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity] Comment: "Korea 4 - My name it is nothing"

New comment on your post #504 "Korea 4 - My name it is nothing"
Author : Sariel Har-Peled (IP: 143.248.226.189 , dor226189.kaist.ac.kr)
Comment:
Well, hopefully you are not Korean...

But really, every "letter" is made out of (up to) three characters, so the alphabet is in fact reasonably easy to learn.

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The decisive Hamlet

Hamlet (of the to be or not to be fame) is usually criticized for his indecisiveness. He is the ultimate flip-flopper that can not make up his mind, and end up killing everybody (including himself).

But let us consider the alternative **decisive Hamlet** - he sees the vision of his father telling him that his mother conspired with the current king to kill him, and he immediately goes and kill them both.

One advantage of the decisive Hamlet is that the play would have been much shorter, a thing that generations of students would have been thankful for. But if you consider the moral ground that the Decisive Hamlet stands on, one would realize that it is a swamp. Indeed, motivated by a delusion he goes and kill his mother and the current king. One might consider such a person to be delusional, murderer and insane. Definitely not a moral person.

And this is where the original Hamlet wins - he dies a moral person. It is not clear that the Decisive Hamlet would have survived in the long run, living under the cloud of his own morality, as judged by himself and the world around him.

That does not imply that the Original Hamlet is to be admired. Certainly, there are infinite alternative Hamlets in between the Original and the Decisive Hamlets, and maybe one of them could have done much better. But the original Hamlet get trusted into a terrible situation, gets the original criminals punished, and dies with his morality intact. Maybe still a loser, but a respectable loser at that.

The real tragedy might be the failure to accept that there is no winning strategy to the situation that Hamlet is in. No victory is possible. A problem without an acceptable solution.

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=494

[Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity] Comment: "Korea 2 - ask not what your lemon can do for you - ask what you can do for your lemon "

New comment on your post #491 "Korea 2 - ask not what your lemon can do for you - ask what you can do for your lemon "
Author : Sariel Har-Peled (IP: 143.248.226.189 , dor226189.kaist.ac.kr)
Comment:
Me English small - impeccable my foot.

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Korea 1 - Arrival

Made it to KAIST, Korea. After uneventful flights from Delhi through Hong Kong to Seoul, I was picked up by Otfried from the new airport. Stayed the night over in Seoul and then continued by fast train to Daejeon (150km in about 50 minutes). My apartment in the guest house is quite nice. Except for the Korean alphabet (which is BTW very interesting), the place feels like a western country.

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=486