Muninn

I have started a new project called “A Fool’s House of Cards” as both an online repository of flashcards (similar to the several “flashcard exchanges” one can find online, of which my “Set Library” was a feeble and failed attempt) and the first step in getting my old Flashcard Wizard software online with its Interval Study features.
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I have successfully reversed the nocturnal existence I have been leading ever since I recovered from jetlag in October and have been an early riser for almost a week now. Zheesh, it was like kicking cocaine or something. Of course, I don’t know why I bothered given that I’m leaving for New York on Sunday.

The Taiwan conference was postponed until October. I lost my ticket but hopefully can afford another one by October. Also, let us all hope that SARS has been successfully contained by that time. It would be sad indeed if China steaming economy were truly derailed by the fear of the disease.
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I just finished watching “Hero”. I was fascinated by it, but found it to be a deeply disturbing movie. In fact, it is a very difficult movie to review. The movie’s basic story surrounds the attempts of a group of assasins to kill the ruler of the kingdom of Qin. The movie alternates between Jet Li’s conversation with the king of Qin and the various battles and stories of the assasins themselves.

On the one hand, it is a very simple movie. It is possible to describe the movie as one with a simple story, very simple images, simple characters, and a very simple message. You could either criticize the movie for its simplicity, or pour praise on it for its beauty and sincerity. It has and doubtlessly will continue to receive awards and admiration for its perfection of a kind of purity of style we are used to seeing in the best of Chinese cinema.

On the other hand, the movie, or specifically, its message, is disturbing. I think Chinese and non-Chinese alike who are familiar with the history of Qin, or at least understand the basic ideas of the movie will, after seeing this movie, feel at least torn and at most horrified. I would like to think (and I have yet to read any reviews or web sites discussing the director’s own thoughts about the movie) that we are meant to feel deeply torn and disgusted by the movie, but the final images and captions of the movie suggest otherwise.
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I have been working on various projects recently. One is Jii-chan’s Kanji Flaschards for studying Chinese characters used in Japanese language. I also got a full server for chinajapan.org and will hopefully get working on the software for this site soon. Sayaka has a personal homepage up now over at Securitygirl.net and her pages on Clausewitz got linked over at the Web’s center of Clausewitz research.

Finally, my work on OWLS has paid off and it looks like I will be able to give a presentation about it at the International Conference for Internet Chinese Education this June in Taipei, Taiwan.

SARS is about to get in my way. Yesterday, the WHO has changed Taiwan’s status from “limited local transmission” area to “affected area”. Following up, the US center for disease control and prevention put Taiwan on its travel advisory list.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, I was due to present at a conference on “Internet Chinese Education” in early June but I now am beginning to seriously doubt whether it will take place. I can’t get through to the conference web page and have gotten no reply to an inquiry to their staff.
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I wasn’t interested in some journalist getting fired. The news buzzed by me as quickly as it did when that talk-show host got thrown out of Iraq. I didn’t recognize the name and I certainly didn’t recognize his somewhat ugly face even though I’m assured by every article I have read since that this Arnett guy is someone I should know about. What can I say, I don’t watch that much TV?

Then I stumbled upon Walter Cronkite’s editorial at the New York Times. That sparked my interest. I recognized Cronkite’s name because I think I have seen him, or rather recordings and impersonations of him, in various historically set Hollywood productions.

Without knowing any details of the Arnett affair, in which the journalist gave an interview to Iraqi TV and said some disheartening things about the US military effort, the Cronkite editorial was enough to get me really interested. Here was a fascinating little piece to work with.

It began with Walter basically calling Peter a traitor…and I am always interested in traitors.
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