What exactly is the Associated Press doing in North Korea?
As far as international engagement with North Korea goes, it’s been plainly established that any such engagement only looks nice, and can not possibly be the cause of any substantial change within...
View ArticleBrutal murder in Suwon, police incompetence and online comments
Last Sunday, a woman was kidnapped, raped and murdered in Suwon, not far from my house. What made the crime especially tragic was that the woman was able to call the police and tell them of her...
View ArticleIs the problem with multiculturalism or is it with immigration policy?
People who comment on newspaper articles, to focus on them once again, seem to be universally opposed to multiculturalism. I don't know how you define the word, to be honest, and neither are the people...
View ArticlePark Geun-hye: Queen of Elections, Notebook Princess, Madame Teflon
North Korea has its dynasty of Kims, Il-sung, Jong-il and now Jong-un, who have ruled that country for almost seven decades now. America had the Bush family, who, along with the Clintons, came close to...
View ArticleThe NFL and The Hunger Games
Andrew Sullivan has been likening the NFL to Big Tobacco, an enterprise that millions enjoy but appears to be unhealthy, even lethal, to participants. The analogy is not a perfect one, but if you watch...
View ArticleDid Athletics Canada's tough standards help create Canada's marathoning...
When Rob Watson ran 2:13 at Rotterdam last weekend and missed the Canadian Olympic standard, it was obviously disappointing to him, but it put the exclamation point on Canada's marathoning resurgence....
View ArticleA tale of two universities
Over the years, I've put up with a lot from the University of Toronto, including requests from money. It's not exactly the friendliest campus on earth, and it deserves, more than the University of...
View ArticleJohn Searle and the Korean room
Without John Searle, I might have been a completely different person. Searle, as I've written before, appeared in a video in my high school philosophy class. At the time, I remember being amused by his...
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Suraksan, maybe the scariest hike in Seoul
When I think about the 27 km mountain race I did last weekend as a birthday present to myself, I can set the 20 km I covered in the first eight hours over three mountains on one side and the 5 or so...
View ArticleBook #3: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom
Like Mao's Great Famine that I read last winter, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom documents a period of Chinese history that is both relatively obscure and unprecedented in the world for its scale. The...
View ArticleAre novice climbers to blame for deaths on Mount Everest?
It's become a cliche to mock the cliche of novice, unprepared climbers beating a path up Mount Everest, almost as much as copy editors love to work the term 'death zone' into any article about tragedy...
View ArticleHiking the Baekdudaegan: Sobaeksan
This was my first time hiking on the Baekdudaegan in a while, but it was also one of the most enjoyable hikes I've ever had. Sobaeksan is located more or less right in the heart of South Korea, on the...
View ArticleKoreans are people too, middle school student edition
One of the most common charges levied against students from East Asia, both here and in North America, is that they excel at memorization, regurgitation and reproduction, lacking creativity or...
View ArticleCan Kenenisa Bekele win a third straight Olympic title?
It has been nine years since Kenenisa Bekele became the world's best distance runner on the track, beating the man who just might be the greatest runner ever to do it at the 2003 World Championships....
View ArticleAre marathons getting too soft? Yes, they are
The Canton Marathon this weekend was the latest race in America to either cancel or offer refunds to runners as a result of expected hot weather. Canton follows Boston, Madison, and Green Bay in doing...
View ArticleBook #4 and Book #5: The Circuit, Breaking Through
I haven't been reading or writing as much on account of having started a master's degree and these two books are short novels that were actually required reading for my courses, but I found them worthy...
View ArticleSeven: the number of runners at the men's Olympic Trials 10k and the number...
At the Canadian Olympic Trials 10k, seven men and four women ran in two separate 10,000-metre races. There were a total of 11 runners in both races, and if you count all the finishers in the 5,000 and...
View ArticleMovie review: 연가시 (Yeongasi)
I saw this movie at 11 am yesterday and since I didn't buy the tickets myself, I was surprised afterwards to learn that CGV offers no discounts for watching a movie at 11 am on a Saturday. The movie...
View ArticleAre American athletes at London competing in American-made shoes?
Or, for that matter, are American politicians wearing American-made suits when fulminating about causes that are as unrealistic as they are meaningless and difficult to oppose? Ralph Lauren caved...
View ArticleBook #6: Les Miserables
It wasn't until I finished my abridged version of Les Miserables last year that I realized it didn't mention many of the events I heard as being in the novel, and that therefore I actually hadn't...
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