Humor / NorthKorea

North Korean models

I just found this video one of my group-mates took that illustrates one of North Korea's benign oddities -- they make amazing scale models of things. Their museums are full of them. This video shows a model train. I'm not sure the value of showing these models. What do they convey besides model-making skills? I don't quite get it. You also hear at the beginning one of our funniest running jokes of the trip. "Leader Kim Jong Il" sounds like "little Kim Jong Il." We kept hearing "little Kim Jong Il did this ... little Kim Jong Il did that," which made it sound like they were describing his achievements as a baby. Then when our guide described what we heard as "Inside this train…

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April 6, 2012
Blog / Fitness / Freedom

Two representations of problems with America

EDIT: the site I linked to changed their post so I removed the link on "America's Fat Future." Sorry for any inconvenience. Americans eat too much and keep getting fatter. Here's a graphic a reader sent on "America's Fat Future." Our government can't stop itself from spying on us. Here's a graphic on the unchecked growth of one part of the government spying on us. I post these images not to put anyone down but to motivate changing the trends.

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April 5, 2012
Humor / NorthKorea

Podcast from my August North Korea trip

Here's the first of two podcasts of four of my travel-mates made on our August 2011 visit to North Korea. The original is here. Jordan, who produced the podcast, runs a dating school, which is why you'll hear ads for it in the podcast. Neil runs a dating school too, among other things. Gabriel is a writer, among other things. Joseph took the most amazing pictures of North Korea I've seen. They also blog on North Korea at An American in North Korea and The North Korea Blog. [audio:https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/NorthKoreaBlogPodcast+part+1.mp3]

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April 5, 2012
Blog / Freedom / Nature / NorthKorea

Finding home by traveling far

My interactions with North Korea have taught me more about myself and my values than anything else in recent memory. I was going to say it taught me more about being an American, but being an American means something different to me today than it used to, and means something different to everyone. I'm thinking about America in the context of North Korea today because I'm in the middle of reading what appears a great work of American writing, or at least a companion to one. Anyone who knows me well knows my ranking of the top such works include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, and King's "I Have a Dream" speech. I haven't yet read Moby Dick and have…

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April 4, 2012
Freedom / NorthKorea

A story of a North Korean prison camp

Today I'm just linking to a radio interview on a man born and raised in the North Korea prison camp system. Prepare yourself before listening since it gets serious. It speaks for itself. I understand the North Korean government generally states it has no prison camps. Visiting North Korea through the government tour, you would see no evidence of this story. Reading Nothing to Envy, you find out more about it too.

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April 3, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Fitness

Physical and emotional tension are similar and you can use either to help the other

We use the same word to describe emotional and physical tension for a reason. They go together. I tend to think of them almost as the same thing. I haven't done any scientific studies, but I've found any time someone has emotional tension, it will manifest itself physically. Any time you have physical tension, it will constrain you physically. When I see someone who walks and moves stiffly, I find them less free emotionally too, and vice versa. If something stresses you out, you hunch your shoulders, tighten your back, or however you manifest things. To me this seems obvious, but recently I found a few people who never noticed it. Then I realized I once noticed it for the first time too. Or maybe…

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April 3, 2012
Nature / NorthKorea

North Korea, the environment, and trees

This NY TImes article on North Korea and its environment, Q. and A.: North Korea’s Choked Environment, reminded me of other routes to create bonds and understanding with North Korea -- nature and science. The article describes the current environmental situation there, some history, and how a conference on it went. Since the Korean War North Korea has lost trees, exacerbated by famine, mismanagement, flooding, and so on. Everybody gains from helping make an environment sustainable. Nearly everybody gains from free exchange of scientific information (people whose power depends on faith and dogma might not see how they do). Anyway, this article points out the usual problems with how North Korea communicates with the rest of the world -- spending resources showing off its leaders…

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April 2, 2012
Blog / Freedom

Your online tools spy on you. There is a way out.

I saw a snippet of a talk pointing out that Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and others design software from the ground up to spy on you. Sometimes a blatant statement of a problem reminds you of it. People are learning about the problems with large corporations and governments having so much information on you, though they don't know what to do about it because they have no alternatives. Gmail benefits them more in the moment than the cost of possible problems in the future. Geeks recognized these problems decades ago and started creating tools to protect privacy. Tools are emerging to give people more alternatives. Just like Linux on servers kept Microsoft from monopolizing all servers -- can you imagine what would happen with one…

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April 2, 2012
Blog

Is there no comprehensive list of emotions?

I searched on "list of emotions" and clicked on the first five links. One was dead. Two were Wikipedia articles, one of which was about categorizing emotions, which I don't think would work. The other one listed only a few dozen, which they also categorized. The next page also showed only a few dozen emotions, also categorizing them. The page after that entitled its table "List of Emotions and it's definition." I'm no stickler for grammar or spelling, but I didn't look much more at that page. I found a page on "Aristotle's list of emotions." While not comprehensive, it shows that people valued listing and understanding emotions for thousands of years at least. A few links down I found one just plain list of…

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April 1, 2012

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