Overpackaging In Seoul: Has Anything Changed?

A bit over a year ago I made this video to point out the extreme level of overpackaging many products have in Seoul: even Wifeoseyo's mom is shocked by the overpackaging when she comes in from Daegu.


The question is: has it gotten any better since then?

Opportunity to see the 4 Rivers Project in Person

Got this message earlier this week, than punted on posting it. Sorry. If it's not too late, here's a chance to go see the 4 Rivers Restoration Project - President Lee's hotly contested big project - in person.

To get an idea of what the 4 Rivers Project seems to be doing to the river ecosystems, look at this, from nanoomi.  (photo from link)



Here's the message I got from a contact:

Want to see what is happening to the rivers under the 4 River Restoration Project? Them come walk along the South Han River on May 15, 2010. This trip is brought to you by the Eco Horizon Institute of Korea. Don't miss the chance to get the tour in English!!!!!

Program: Walking along NamHanGang road, visiting Yeoju 4 river project construction sites, talking with SuGyeong Buddhist Monk

Who: Foreigners interested in learning about the 4 River Restoration Project

Cost: 20,000 won (have to wear comfortable shoes for a walk)

SCHEDULE:

9:30 Meeting at Gangbyun station exit 2, in front of Techno Mart

Get on a eco tour bus

11:30 Arrive at Yeoju

1130-130 Walking along 바위늪구비 BaweeNeupGubi

1:30-2:30 Lunch

2:30-4 Walking along DatDunRi - Sunrising mountain road

4-4:30 Gangcheobo(catch basin)-Construction site visit

4:30-5:30 생명평화여강마당 (신륵사) Visit Life Peace Garden at SinReuksa Temple

5:30-7 수경스님과의 대화 Discussion with SuGyeong Buddhist Monk

7-Departing for Seoul

RSVP: Vanessa Falco, mettaness@gmail.com 010-4694-4720

Jiyoung: happy_jiyoung_yun@yahoo.com

Arbor Day, March 27th

Arbor Day is an awesome day: what a great idea it is to make a holiday just for planting trees! Sure, Korea's not the only place that observes Arbor day, but here in Korea it's on April 5th. Now, Korea's accomplishment in reforesting pretty much their entire country, after it had been razed by the Korean war, is an environmental side of Korea's post-war history that rarely gets told, next to the oft-trumpeted economic "miracle," but it's part of the story, folks.

Arbor Day is no longer a national red-letter day, but people still remember it, and this year, there's a sweet event happening near downtown Seoul. On March 27, near Gwanghwamun Station (line 3) there's a tree planting event on Inwang Mountain (one of my favorites). This is the kind of community event that I think expats should be finding out about, and joining.

So readers, I'm planning to go there on the 27th, and plant some trees. If you want to join me, let me know! I'll be writing about it on the 2S2 Blog as well, and you can let me know if you want to come from the 2S2 Facebook Group. Click on the picture for the full-size version.

So, Avatar was OK, I guess.

So now that everybody's gone primate poo over Avatar, I've gotta say a few things, too.



I've seen it three times now... so I guess you'd have to say I'm strongly in the "liked it" camp.

First: here are the plain facts, sir. If you paid money to see Transformers 2 (I did - Craptacles are one of my guilty pleasures) then you're morally obligated to go see Avatar in the cinema as well. Morally obligated, sirs and madams.

See, if those money-grubbing filmmakers are willing to insult us with their complacent storytelling, their clumsy directing, their filling the screen with crappy actors who are basically good-looking set-pieces that lead the audience from one big explosion to the next... that's one thing. And you know, I'm not going to judge you for spending money to see junk like that in the theater... you better see it there, because anywhere else, and it's horrible, but at least in the cinema, with digital sound and everything, it'll clean out your ear wax.

But here's the other thing: if we're saps enough to give money to the cynical sputum-suckers who make movies like that, apparently out of sheer contempt for their audiences, then we owe it to ourselves, and to the film industry at large, to also give our money to people who are trying to make something that will actually chock us up full with wonder. So if movie spectacle doesn't do it for you anyway, if you didn't bother seeing Transformers 2 in the Cinema, don't bother seeing Avatar either... I guess. But if you did see Transformers 2, because you DO like movies that ought to be seen on the big screen, that are impressive and awesome and make you say "wow," then go see Avatar, too. It's the movie of the decade, and indeed an incredibly powerful expression of regret for humanity, and especially America's vainglory, and specifically the Bush administration.

It's also the movie of the decade: the last decade. And what I mean by that is that there are echoes in the imagery and content of this film that sum up a big part of the major headline news of the decade...

The first way this works is looking at the reason the humans are in Pandora: the indescribably precious and rather obviously named "unobtainium" - a macguffin, perhaps, and also a pretty good stand-in for oil. The language the soldiers use to go to war with the "Navi" (which sounds like Nabi, the Korean word for butterfly) echoes the Bush White House's: pre-emptive strike, shock and awe, fight terror with terror. There's even a scene ... I don't want to give any spoilers here, but there's a certain scene where something starts falling, and one of the shots is totally evocative of the cloud of dust that billowed out when the twin towers fell, and during htat same scene, something is fluttering down in a way that totally evoked all the looseleaf paper floating around the World Trade Center when the office buildings crashed.

It's also a movie that encapsulates the issue that has swollen from small potatoes to big cojones during the decade: the 2000s will be remembered as the decade that the world finally really became aware of the precarious state of the environment. One of the very first images in the film is of a disgusting strip-mine -- an even bigger blight when one sees the beauty of the forest that must have been cleared to make way for that mine. The Navi live in a world of ridiculously rich foliage, of every imaginable color and shape of life-form; the forest flares up with phosphorescence at night, to create one of the loveliest imaginary worlds ever seen on film. Show me a nicer one. The "Aiua" - the life force of the planet, is a direct echo of the Gaia myth - earth's environmental life force, and the idea that all living things are connected. The contrast between the grey, ugly industrial compound the humans built, and the breathtaking foliage of Pandora is startling.

So Avatar is the movie of the naughty oughties, in its political undertones as well as its environmental ones. Another is in its technological concepts. The name Avatar, as we internet people know, is what we call the character I create in an online game, and that character acts out my actions inside the computer game. The idea of acting through a created body is straight out of computer gaming... but then, the Navi people on the alien planet have their own technological correlative: all the Navi have long braids coming out of the back of their heads, which they can use to connect to a similar organ on some of the creatures on pandora, and even to communicate with certain trees. That organ looks a eerily like a fiber-optic cable, as do the strands of the trees which communicate with the Navi. That idea of connecting with a universally compatible port is remarkably similar to those USB ports that every computer has, which you can use to plug into just about anything. Not to mention the way the cords go into the base of your skull, not unlike the Matrix, which was actually 1999, but a series which found its cultural niche (and had a few sequels) in the 2000s. Think again about the difference between those two movies - Matrix, in 1999, introducing you to a world through virtual reality, a movie of violence, of grey, drab design, lots of guns, and a really bleak, dystopian future, and then think about Avatar, where you can plug an entire world into your brain, rather than interacting with a world that has been taken over by ruthless robots. Interesting change indeed. While I'm not one to go in depth into what this might reveal about changing attitudes toward technology and connectivity, it's an interesting idea to bat around, if you happen to get a few nerds in the same room.

See, this is why I love science fiction. The way a person conceptualizes his/her futuristic world reveals so clearly what a person sees in the world around them: that's WHY we use science fiction: as a mirror that is different enough from our world that we can recognize stuff, while still agreeing silently with each other to continue pretending it's a story. It's also interesting seeing James Cameron make connectivity, using fiber optic cables, no less, an integral part of his amazing alien race, especially given the unease with technology he earlier demonstrates in his Terminator movies.

Finally, one must also note that, right down to the bow-and-arrows and long braids, the Navi most resemble some band of First Nations North Americans, crossed with a blue cat - the long ponytale and bald sides to the male warriors heads, a race of people living close to nature: say whatever else you want, but yeah, this is also the noble savage myth retold... but then again, James Cameron's films have always been that way: his Terminator films were straightforward action films - down to the formula, but excellently done. Terminator 2 was the most nuanced film he ever made, thematically, and that had a kid shouting "You can't kill people!" and a narrator saying, "if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too" - way to go for subtle. Titanic was also a pretty typical love vs. money, poor kid vs. rich jerk love story - thematic nuance isn't something James Cameron does... but then, when he can create a world as beautiful as Pandora, who cares if he doesn't?

So go see it. Take off your irony glasses, take a "gee-whiz" pill, and let him blow you away with a real treat for the eyes. Plus, if you paid money for Transformers 2, you'll be thrilled by this one: the action sequences make visual sense, the story is coherent, the characters are likeable, and there actually ARE themes, rather than just running gags and racist stereotypes!

Blog Action Day: Green Korea?

Blog action day is a day when bloggers all around the world write about a certain topic of interest and import to the world... and the blogosphere, I suppose, though the blogosphere is less important that, you know, THE WORLD.

anyway, bloggers this year voted to write about climate change (that's twice in three blog action days.. if not three times) -- but I just wrote about that. My friend Matt thinks this will be the most compelling issue of our generation... and I don't think he's wrong.

Anyway, this being a Korea blog, I took a look around google news and other searches, to find out about Korea's green status. Here are some interesting articles about Korea's green record.

First of all, Korea's a bit of an environmental puzzle: they develop wetlands, but LG Chem also invented one of the best batteries out there, which GM will be using in their electric car development, and which might lead to a Korean mass-produced electric car. Of the world's 20 largest economies, Korea and China used the highest percentage of their economic stimulus investments to support environmental work, and young Koreans overwhelmingly think protecting the environment is very important. These are good signs, duh.

There's the ironic trumpeting of the DMZ as a wildlife preserve, in which the Kimcheerleeders casually gloss over the fact it's undeveloped because it's a minefield... but it's also the one place in the world where you can observe the Three-Legged Asian Bear, and the Three-Legged Wild Deer, in its natural habitat.

But if you're going to read only one of these links, go for:

Asia Chronicle has an awesome article about "Korea's Green Nationalism" which does a great job describing the importance of nationalism in Korea, and how just as (polluting) industrial development was an imperative to repair Korea's damaged national pride after Japanese colonialism, reforestation was equally important to make up for the way the Japanese exploited Korean forests. In fact, Korea's reforestation project has been a remarkable success, increasing Korea's forestry resources by 900% since 1973. And trees grow slow. Arbor Day is a (kind of a) big deal here.

In my own observation, a short trip to Japan showed a much higher visible commitment to environmental protection in buildings and infrastructure: buildings had "energy efficient" stickers and signs on windows, appliances, and all over; almost every road had bike lanes, (whereas in Korea, the bike lane in front of Gyungbok Palace seems to have been taken as a "Buses, Taxis, Scooters and one Frazzled Biker Fearing For His Life Lane"). Bikes in Korea are a toy for kids, not a valid transportation option: hell if you'd find a bike garage like this (any old place in Kyoto) somewhere in Seoul. Maybe the situation's better in other cities, or outside the city, but it's bleak in Smoggy Seoul.

Yay Japan!
So there's a ways to go, both in public policy and conservation efforts, in green technology and infrastructure, and, more than anywhere else, in my opinion, also in the culture of the people on the street. It has to become cool to ride a bike in Korea, but for now, a car is still too much of a status symbol for all those old guys to take the subway (how can I browbeat my subordinates into staying late if I can't point to the parking lot and scream, "I drive a dodge stratus!" at them?) -- bikes have to become cool. The new subway lines in development have to be used. Bike lane laws must be enforced. And, before even starting the "don't litter you disgusting foob" awareness campaign, instilling respect for the streets in your average Korean, rather than just love for Dokdo, public trash receptacles need, need, NEED to return to Korea's public spaces so that people have no excuse for littering.

I lived in Jongno for sixteen months, and every morning at 6:40am when I walked to work, I had to walk by this. Frankly, it just looks like Seoulites don't respect their own city, when you see this: it's just shameful: (final picture in the series: puke warning)

Really, I should be posting this video once a year.

After yesterday's post, I might have trouble convincing you this lives up to its name, "The most terrifying video you'll ever see"... but it's also an important video to see and think about, explained really clearly and simply.

Yeah, I posted it at Roboseyo before... back when nobody read me.

In other "save the world" news, I've gotten involved with the KIVA loan thingy, and it's awesome. You can sponsor micro-loans that help people improve their lives in clear, tangible ways, for as little as $25.00USD.

Probably the defining issue of my generation:

Yes, it's a rehashing of Pascal's wager. . . but it's worth watching, folks. (and he has some follow-up videos that answer that argument and any of your other objections -- look up wonderingmind42 on youtube to see the others) he has some valuable things to say, and he's a high school teacher, so he's good at taking scientific stuff and making it understandable to the lay-person.

Roboseyo's global warming idea, and seventh generation sustainability

These will never happen, but. . .

1. L.A. should be shamed into getting a better public transit system, by all the countries and cities in the world.

2. Bill Gates should offer a 1 000 000 000 dollar reward to the scientist/engineer who invents a solar panel that is cheap and efficient enough to make oil obselete.

3. The downtown core of EVERY CITY larger than one million people in the world should have cars permanently banned, and improve public transit enough that the downtown cores can be traversed efficiently by bus and subway. Those buses and subways should be hydrogen cell or electric or hybrid-run.

4. The big-ass car tax. No excuse. Just no excuse for those big-ass cars, unless it's full of carpoolers. (The big-ass car tax has a subclause called the carpooler tax break, along with the hybrid driver tax break, which makes it economically more viable to buy a hybrid, considering the gas AND tax savings.)

5. The big-ass gas tax (Vancouver does this: 9cents a liter of gas goes toward improving public transit). Along with this one goes the public transit tax break. Your primary ID card has a microchip in it and doubles as your magnetic subway/bus access charge card; a record is kept of how frequently you use public transit, and you can claim tax breaks for reaching certain levels.

6. Within a certain distance of the city center (because public transit has improved so much), private car ownership is illegal, or practically illegal because of ownership taxes. Instead, cars are owned only by companies that require travel by car for their business, and company cars are distributed as needed. For weekend trips, etc., hybrid and fuel efficient cars are readily and reasonably available for rental.

7. (This will never happen, more than any of the others, but while I'm playing around in my fantasy world . . . ) -- Any company that deals in oil must put 15% of its gross oil income into alternative energy and conservation technology. Oil companies, accustomed to being energy suppliers, ought to be looking for the next solution: THEIR product is largely responsible for this mess.


Read the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. It's preachy, but important.

Also, from the last chapter of "Consilience" by Edward O Wilson -- a book I tried to read after having it recommended to me by Maggie, back in third year university (anybody remember her?). I got bored of it (and I no longer finish books that fail to grip my attention: I've even ceased to feel guilty about this), and skipped to the last chapter, which was much more interesting than the chapters trying to explain the biological/genetic bases that necessitated the development of language and art.

He writes:
To summarize the future of resources and climate, the wall toward which humanity is evidently rushing is a shortage not of minerals and energy, but of food and water. The time of arrival at the wall is being shortened by a a physical climate growing less congenial [through global warming]. Humankind is like a household living giddily off vanishing capital. Exemptionalists are risking a lot when they advise us, in effect, that "Life is good and getting better, because look around you, we are still expanding and spending faster. Don't worry about next year. We're such a smart bunch something will turn up It always has."
They, and most of the rest of us, have yet to learn the arithmetical riddle of the lily pond. A lily pad is placed in a pond. Each day thereafter the pad and then all of its descendants double. On the thirtieth day the pond is covered completely by lily pads, which can grow no more. On which day was the pond half full and half empty? The twenty-ninth day.

[My words in brackets: Are these environmental warnings alarmist? It is better, down the line, to assume the worst, and prepare for it, than to hope for the best, and continue living beyond our ecological means, assuming 'we'll find our way out of the woods'] In ecology, as in medicine, a false positive diagnosis is an inconvenience, but a false negative diagnosis can be catastrophic. This is why ecologists and doctors don't like to gamble at all, and if they must, it is always on the side of caution. It is a mistake to dismiss a worried ecologist or a worried doctor as an alarmist."
(Page 313-314)

Later

The single greatest intellectual obstacle to environmental realism, as opposed to practical difficulty, is the myopia of most professional economists. . .
. . . the weakness of economics is most worrisome, however, in its general failure to incorporate the environment. After the Earth Summit, and after veritable encyclopedias of data compiled . . . have shown clearly the dangerous trends of population size and planetary health, the most influential economists still make recommendations as though there is no environment.
(Page 318)


And that's the problem -- people follow their pocketbooks to the voting booth, so until there's a financial incentive (taxwise) to conserve, people won't think about their kids and grandkids; they'll only think about next quarter's raise and the cost of living, right until humanity careens into that huge wall called "Earth's Carrying Capacity"

(Carrying Capacity means the maximum number of life forms any ecosystem can sustain.)

My friend Tamie and a group of her friends formed an integration pact, where they try to live in relationship with the earth, rather than just living ON the earth : environmental responsibility is part of their pact to live with more awareness and responsibility.

It's human nature to think about money first -- I remember one day, when I was in high school, saying to a member of the baby-boomer generation how recycling was important, and he answered, "Well, you know, the recycling program costs the government a lot of money -- I don't know if it's worth it." If you're thinking about the next quarter, maybe; there's an old Iroquois law that every decision must be considered for its impact on the seventh generation to follow, and a movement is beginning in environmental circles to pressure corporations and leaders to implement seventh generation sustainability principles in their decision making, rather than just thinking of next quarter's profits, or next year's re-election push.

It's frustrating how, in the face of the overwhelming evidence Al Gore presented in "An Inconvenient Truth", corporations and their media lackeys have gone ad hominem on him, and attacked first Al Gore for using a private jet, and then the nine scientific errors/conjectures in his documentary, enabling them to ignore the hundred other facts that are true and verifiable, and try to discredit him. It's frustrating how I can see this stuff happen, yet I still like my hot shower in the morning.

But something's gotta be done. Sooner rather than later. Population growth, overfishing, conservation, alternative energies. Humans are a pretty complex creature, and it's hard to say how much our biology could bend before poisoned air and water are the end of us, before food shortages cause regional tensions to blow up into full-scale war. Remember what happened to the Jews after they were blamed for the great depression? A lot of countries were happy to hand their Jews over to the Nazis because they thought they were responsible for the depression. Who will be the scapegoat next time?

It's good to see people are finally talking about the environment as a legitimate concern -- in the early '90s environment was still some scary thing far in the future, while now people are taking it seriously. I just hope we're ready to make the changes necessary, in time, or it will be too little, too late.

And global warming is just the beginning -- overpopulation will occur long before coastal cities get flooded with water from the molten ice caps. This article argues that the tragedy in Darfur was caused first by an overtaxed environment, that the displaced people started fighting because they had no food or water, and needed to co-opt arable land. This kind of catastrophe will become more commonplace as water supplies dry up, species go extinct, land loses its arability, and entire populations must move to areas where there is no space for them. Just wait till the water table in the American midwest is finally tapped out, and see what happens then.

Blogger action day

*** This is important.***
Tomorrow (the 15th) is blog action day. A group is trying to get every blogger around the world to write, on the 15th, about the environment, one of the most pressing issues for my generation. If you have a blog, click the link and join in! I'm kind of jumping the gun talking about it here, but this is important, and as time goes by, I feel more and more strongly about this.

http://www.blogactionday.com/


Radiohead has a new album out online.

So far, after listening to it about five times, I'm quite disappointed -- it's the first Radiohead album where I really feel like they're not covering any territory they haven't covered better before. The reduces the list to Pixar as the only creative team that I know a lot about, and still haven't repeated themselves/released anything below top-notch. (I haven't seen enough Miyazaki to say for sure about his work.)

The list:
Let-downs:
what movie/album did you expect to love the most, only to be disappointed?
Personal nominees: Radiohead: In Rainbows; Shaft (with Samuel L. Jackson); X-Men 3 (should have seen that coming), The Constant Gardener, Braveheart, Harry Potter 6 and 7,


next:
Pleasant Surprises:
What movie/album did you have full intention to hate, only to discover it was actually much more enjoyable than it needed to be?
Personal Nominees: Legally Blonde, High School Musical, Nelly Furtado (Whoa Nelly), Green Day (American Idiot), Sahara (action movie with Matthew McConaughey), Transformers, the Movie


Next:

Anyone here read The Alchemist?
One of you -- one of the people in my circle -- recommended it to me, but I can't remember which of you did.

Well, I read it. I've discovered the formula to sell a million copies of a book.

1. Short -- should be readable in a single afternoon, maximum two sittings.
2. Male hero -- young, idealistic, big dreams
3. Maximum 6th grade reading level (if it has a lower level than that, it will appeal to second language learners, which is also a plus: you'd be amazed how many times I've seen a Korean reading "Tuesdays With Morrie" on the subway)
4. A thinly veiled moral/didactic lesson/inspiration about how to live your life and realize your dreams.
5. A tone like a fable -- story moves quickly, and does not dig too deeply into the concrete details of setting and place and character description -- characters and settings are portrayed in broad strokes, so as not to distract from The Message.

I've read at least a half dozen of these books now, ranging from sublime (The Little Prince) to abysmal (Tuesdays With Morrie -- sorry if any of you liked it, but I didn't.) I've heard I REALLY, MUST read The Secret next. I'm kind of dreading it.

In order of awesomeness, here is the Roboseyo (sometimes)overbearingly-inspirational reading list.
1. The Little Prince: I think I'd trade 20 years of my life to write a book as simple and wise as this one. Die young + write The Little Prince: I could deal with that. The least didactic of the books on this list. It almost doesn't qualify for the genre, because it's too good.
2. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse -- engaging story. Not too didactic, though it IS about a young idealist's spiritual journey.
3. The first half of Jonathan Livingston Seagull -- chase down excellence and perfection with passion, even if it isolates you. Nice.
4. The Alchemist -- I liked it. It's true. It dropped in some biblical references that were a bit cloying, but not too bad. I wasn't quite bowled over, but I liked it.
5. The Greatest Salesman In The World -- (the least known of the ones I've read) by Og Mandino-- the most didactic, but enjoyable reading, for a bald self-motivation tract with a tacked-on story and an overbearing religious subtext that didn't quite fit the story, and even detracted from it. The meditations were good, though.
6. The last half of Jonathan Livingston Seagull -- it got a little weird, and too mystical/symbolic to me, and didn't live up to the simple excellence of the first half. Starts going downhill when JLS meets The Great Seagull.
7. Tuesdays With Morrie -- instead of evoking our feelings through excellent writing, Mr. Albom tells us how we ought to feel, and made ME feel manipulated. A meditation on death and moving on that left me totally unmoved.

Didn't qualify, despite being very talky/preachy:
Ishmael - Daniel Quinn (not inspirational)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (too long, actually had a story for the first 2/3)


Which other inspiration-disguised-as-story bestsellers did I miss?

In a later post:
the books I should read once a year until I die --everybody should have a handful of books that basically function like lifelong friends.