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Monday, August 24, 2009

New Contest: What The Double Hockey-Sticks is this guy saying?

What the h-e-double hockey sticks is this guy trying to say, other than, "I memorized 20000 TOEIC Vocabulary Words"? If you can explain the article satisfactorily in 40 words or less in the comments, you win a cookie.

I ain't no dummy: I studied Chaucer and John Milton in University, and I can wrangle my way through a technical manual or an academic article with the best of'em, even in fields I don't know too well, but holy cow, is the writing getting bad at The Times. "I don't understand any of this. It must be good. Greenlight it."


Convergence vs. Divergence

By Lee Sun-ho
from the Korea Times

Have you ever paralleled convergence and divergence in your day-to-day life? As a matter of fact, I wasn't quite interested in the concept of how and when a function converges and diverges until I became familiarized with using some electronic devices in this digital era of the 21st century.

Convergence is defined as the approach toward a definite value, as time goes on, or toward a fixed equilibrium state.

A trend toward conversion of digital media led to exciting competition over how many functions can be integrated into a single device.

A typical convergence product is an electronic dictionary for Korean-English, English-Korean and English-English.

The chief drawbacks of convergence products are that they are expensive and few consumers actually use all the functions together.

The operation without partition among banking, securities and insurance companies has been a good example of convergence in non-electronic fields.

Corporate recognition of convergence as a business tool will give the transportation and logistics professionals the status necessary for meaningful participation in the planning and decision-making processes.

In contrast, divergence represents the volume density of the outward influx of a vector field from an infinitesimal volume around a given region of space.

The competing goals of divergent groups must be channeled for a new social order in which constituents strive for harmony and diversity in best-in-class devices.

That's where divergence products, dedicated to fewer functions, which get rid of needless functions and focus on the core features, come in.

What matters more is the quality of the mobile phone function comes in less than a multi-function gadget. A mobile handset without a digital camera is a divergent example of a runaway success struggling to compete with cheaper and quicker online new sources for consumers these days.

Likewise, a tendency toward ``the-simpler-the-better" option is applied to the daily living for the convenience of the aging generation.

Highly value-added endeavors based on an integrated combination of the two methods are able to be realized for the benefit of tangible and intangible worldwide selectors through the appropriate choice of each individual.

If you feel that you never made a mistake in your life, then it means you never tried anything new. I've learned that not all branches are alike.

Some branches converge, some diverge, and purposeful merging is designed to support both. I happened to find an amusing allegory of bloggers on Jesus vs. Darwin. The comparison shows a traditional Christian convergence vs. an evolutionary Darwinian divergence in marketer blogging on social media.

An auction manager's recent report suggests that the sales ratio between convergence and divergence products is almost the same in Korea since the end of last year.

You can examine your paths and select what you think is an adequate mix of the two, entirely depending on your own personal taste or interest by generation, by genre, by hobby and by value system for the purpose of taking the role of a conductor (as in a music orchestra) to coordinate your inside workings as well as to communicate to your outside contacts, coping with emerging global norms and standards of this blogging world.

The writer is an outside director of Kunwha Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. in Seoul. He can be reached at kexim2@unitel.co.kr.

9 comments:

John said...

I read it. I understand it. I don't see what his point is. Why did he write it?

"Some things get more complicated. Others become less so. I see this in my life in a variety of ways."

That sounds like I can make a haiku from it.

"Complicated life
breaks into simplier systems
based on consumer"

C.J. Koster said...

What in the name of serious fuckity-fuck-fuck is he talking about? It's seriously a series of definitions of bull shit piled upon bullshit and then piled on more bullshit as if the cow climbed up the pile of shit and shit some more. Is that less than 40 words?

Roboseyo said...

With all respect, easy on the F-bombs, C.J.. Not that I disagree with you, but my grandmother reads this blog.

Thanks.

To me, reading between the lines of this article, I heard a distinct fapping sound.

Alex said...

All of you may be confused because he left out the required power source of 1.21 gigawatts needed to power the DeLorean DMC-12 so that its convergence and divergence of paralleled function familiarize you into the future.

Actually, he's talking about functionality being diverse versus specific, like mobile phones are products of convergence (phone, alarm, calculator, camera, games, soap on a rope) while a kimchi refrigerator is one of divergence (it's like a refrigerator, but with the specific task of holding kimchi). What editor let that article go to print, though? That's the tragedy of this whole piece.

Chris in South Korea said...

@John: simplier? I know you're going for the five-seven-five format, so how about 'less complex'?

@Alex for the win. It's some of the oddest Konglish I've seen make it to print in the last little while, but it's not incomprehensible.

This Is Me Posting said...

ONE POINT TWENTY ONE GIGAWATTS?!?

In all seriousness, this article reminds me of the time Darth Vader came down from the planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn't ask Lorraine to the dance he would melt my brain.

The Korean said...

This is what happens when a guy writes something in Korean and makes a 19 year old intern who "studied" in America/Canada to translate.

John said...

Ugh.. how'd I let "simplier" get through : /

What would my students say...

'Less Complex' is much better.

์กฐ์•ˆ๋‚˜ said...

sounds like my college math class... I'm gona guess this guy is someone who spent too much time learning math vocabulary and then tried to apply it to real life. I understand it... but what is the point, and why does it deserve a place in a newspaper?

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