Net access has been sporadic at work thanks to latest virus. It's shocking how dependent I am on the Web, something that scarcely existed when I started college. I still remember, it must have been frosh year or earlier, but I was reading about the Internet and it mentioned something called the World Wide Web. If I recall correctly, it was grouped in with a discussion of WAIS and Gopher.

I was reading CT and they mentioned this bioethicist who now works with Chuck Colson in the Wilberforce Forum.

I know who Wilberforce is!

Fascinating speech on Islamic extremism.

Wow, John Piper's stuff is pretty good. Here's another good one, from One Day.

I guess the reason I like it is because I've still been thinking a lot about purpose and direction and stuff like that. Nothing's changed since college.

Anyway, Chris Rice's second album has been resonating with me a lot lately. In some ways he's like the new Rich Mullins. His lyrics aren't as good but they're similar in the sense that it talks about weakness and is a wholly different spin from your typical Yay God cheerleader CCM fecal lyrics. More thoughtful, if nothing else.

Anyway, here's one song that jives with me a lot. Just again a reminder that power is in the simple things.

The Power Of A Moment
Chris Rice

What am I gonna be when I grow up?
How am I gonna make my mark in history?
And what are they gonna write about me when I'm gone?
These are the questions that shape the way I think about what matters

Well I have no guarantee of my next heartbeat
My world's too big to make a name for myself
And what if no one wants to read about me when I'm gone?
It seems to me that
Right now's the only moment that matters

You know the number of my days
So come paint Your pictures on the canvas in my head
And come write Your wisdom on my heart
Teach me the power of a moment
The power of a moment
The power of a moment

In Your kingdom where the least is greatest
The weak are given strength and fools confound the wise
And forever brushes up against a moment's time
Leaving impressions and drawing me into what really matters

You know the number of my days
So come paint Your pictures on the canvas in my head
And come write Your wisdom on my heart
Teach me the power of a moment
The power of a moment
The power of a moment

I get so distracted by my bigger schemes
Show me the importance of the simple things
Like a word, a seed, a thorn, a nail, and a cup of cold water

You know the number of my days
So come paint Your pictures on the canvas in my head
And come write Your wisdom on my heart
Teach me the power of a moment
The power of a moment
The power of a moment

Read this, if you haven't already. It's more of John Piper's thoughts on the past couple weeks. In my view it's very bold. I dunno, Piper seems to be very very huge on the sovereignty of God.

New Survivors were announced. I was wrong about my name analysis - two of the contestants have the same name (Kim) and one has the same name as a past contestant (Kelly). Still no Asians.

I'm very proud of a spinach salad I made on Friday. It's basically my ideal salad. Baby spinach, with honey walnuts, mandarin oranges, and goat cheese in a balsamic vinaigrette.

I tried to make caramelized red onions but it turned out to take way longer than I anticipated so I didn't get to finish. I had no idea how to candy walnuts so I mixed it with a little honey and baked it for a bit. For the dressing, I learned from Eugenie that you just mix 3 parts oil to 1 part whatever, so I used 3 parts olive oil to 1 part balsamic vinegar, and it tasted pretty good.

If I had been able to finish the onions and make better walnuts, it would have been perfect. But yeah, I'm pretty proud. I'm not much of a cook.

Biore: wunder invention or marketing fraud? I'm undecided.

I'm trying to get over my need to have the last word in everything, but it's hard. That's why I was so happy when on two separate occasions, Salon slammed Mark and Thong for me. I took perverse pleasure in that.

Why is it that everyone praises Jieun's patience in dating me? It's been happening a lot recently. I don't get it.

Yikes. When thong, producer of some of the most vitriolic, defensive, confrontational prose this side of Berlin says you can be too harsh, there's something wrong. I must change.

Edwin McCain Band has one of Amazon's top Christian albums of 2000.

Went to the A's game on Saturday (a bad game - Mariners lost 11-2 but Ichiro got two hits). Anyway, during the singing of the national anthem, I almost wept. I wasn't the only one. It was very moving. God bless America.

There's a mosque about 2 blocks away from my work. It's pretty interesting to drive by it. I think they run a school as well - often there are kids playing in the yards while women in more traditional garb watch them. Each Friday there's some kind of service and it's packed with people - it's pretty crazy. And it's interesting to see the differences in appearance of the people that go.

Anyway, last Friday there were numerous policemen there to protect the people. And for some reason, that felt good to me. Yeah, there are a lot of problems with prejudice and intolerance, hence the need for police. But the fact that they were there says something to me, that this country does want to protect them. I dunno, I've been feeling kind of patriotic lately, not sure why. We have a ways to go, but there's pretty much no place on earth that is as inclusive and accepting as the U.S.

Interesting. Looks like I'm not the only one who thought the same way about the missile defense stuff in light of recent events. Here's an interesting Salon article on the topic. It's getting increasing levels of support in the Senate and other people have said why it's a good idea.

I rather enjoyed this article

I read somewhere, wish I remembered where, that Bush's approval ratings in handling everything are higher than FDR's were after Pearl Harbor. I really wish I remembered where that came from. Anyway, you wouldn't know it from some editorials out there.

So, some people have said how these attacks have shown how futile Bush's missile defense program would be, and therefore why that's a bad idea.

Idiots.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not settled on that issue, although right now leaning against it, mostly because we'd have to break long standing treaties and I think that's a bad idea. But that argument in my mind is idiotic.

What makes stuff like this so hard to prevent is that the people doing it don't care whether they die or not - in fact they intend to die. So a lot of our normal methods of deterrence don't apply. It's pretty scary.

My thinking is, is it that crazy to think that the same might be possible for a rogue state? That they might collectively be so obsessed about some supposed cause that they would be willing to give up their very existence as a nation? It's unlikely, but I don't think it's an impossible stretch. Not after seeing the unthinkable this week.

The thing is, our entire policy in regards to nuclear weapons is that of mutually assured destruction. But if we're ever in a situation where a state doesn't care about it's survival, then this policy won't work at all and we're faced with the unthinkable. I don't know, the lesson to me seems to be there's more evil than we can imagine, and something like that might be unthinkable, but it's in no way impossible. So if anything, it shows why something like a missile defense shield is needed, not irrelevant.

But what do I know. Nothing. It's a scary world we live in though, that's for sure. I was reading something about parts of Asia (Pakistan, India, etc.) and it was saying how it's frightening because relations there are kind of like relations in the Middle East, except everyone has nuclear weapons.

Are you a biter or a licker?

When I was younger and went to Baskin-Robbins, I would lick the entire cone. No bites at all. My reasoning was, it maximizes the experience of eating the cone, lets you taste all of it and make it last. I couldn't understand why people would bite it. You taste less and it doesn't last.

Nowadays I do a combination of biting and licking. The main reason being, if you only lick, it starts melting and dripping out the bottom of your cone (if it's a sugar cone) and that's just messy and annoying.

I have a friend who frequently gets McDonald's cones. He licks, but in such a way as to push the soft serve into the cone with each lick. The reason being, according to him, one of the joys of life is eating the soft serve and cone together in the end.

While in Seattle we ate at a place called Ivar's. I was intrigued by it's advertisement of "Acres of Clams". What a random slogan. That's appetizing?

At any rate, I was at Valley Fair mall in Santa Clara last week and they have Ivar's at the Food Court! I dunno, I was a little surprised about it. Apparently they're branching out.

An interesting thing came up in conversation during the roadtrip. I think in certain analytical ways, me, Dave, and Henry think similarly. Not sure how to explain it, but whatever. Anyway, at one point, one of them said how they viewed me as like a "good" version of them.

That was perhaps the most stunning thing I'd ever heard. The reason being, I think exactly the opposite - I've always thought of them as being good versions of me. Just, I find myself full of hypocrisy and laziness (towards people), and that's something they're not.

What we realized I think is that we had different standards of what made a person more "good", and I think we focused on our weaknesses in that standard. I don't know if that says anything about human nature in general, but regardless, I thought it was interesting.

At any rate, they're wrong - I'm clearly the most evil. There's only one thing in which I'm better, I think. And that is, I genuinely like people. Not love, just like.

Did anyone watch Iron Chef this weekend? I only saw Saturday's show but it was incredible. Chairman Kaga's delivery on the ingredients Cod and Prawns was the most hilarious thing I'd ever seen. I nearly died.

Anyway, here's a hint to pharmaceutical companies: be careful what you advertise on the Food Network. During Iron Chef they had a commercial for some drug used to treat genital herpes. It was repulsive. Just, when you're watching a show involving mouth watering gourmet food, you don't want to be reminded of a venereal disease involving festering sores on your genitals. That's just my opinion.

I was at Target yesterday and saw these new things they have - electronic Taboo / Scattergories / Outburst. There are no cards anymore, just this electronic handheld thing you have, that displays new words and keeps time and the scores and all that stuff for you. Pretty interesting.

I've hesitated to say anything about last Tuesday, dunno why. I guess it's just I feel there's nothing I could say that hasn't already been said, and more than that, in some way words diminish the enormity of everything that happened. Sometimes the only response I can have is silence. I'm sure everyone's been scouring web sites, news, and editorials so there's not much I can say except that everything's different now. Unless something makes me really angry like Gus' post, I think I'll leave it at that. But life goes on.

This might come out the wrong way, but I thought it was amazing. So my dad's church, when he first got there in 1994, was around 200 people. This is all second hand so the numbers may be off, but it's generally correct. Anyway, nowadays, total attendance (including youth, children, EM, etc.) sometimes is around 1250. Is that not insane?

An interesting thing is, you know Korean parents are really big on education. It apparently applies to spiritual things also. Turns out a lot of familes end up coming to the church because it's one of the few (the only?) with a strong children's / youth program. I think I wrote before how some parents were dropping their kids off at our church before going to their own. Same type of thing.

Anyway, the thing is, the children's group is strong because we have a strong English Ministry, which provides all the teachers. And the EM is strong because of the support of the KM. Which gets stronger because the children's ministry is so good. It's all a very interesting synergy that makes everyone better. I dunno, it's making me think a lot about what makes a good church.

At any rate, my mom says there are 15,000 Koreans in greater Houston. Not sure where she got that number. But anyway, what that means is that almost 1 out of every 12 Koreans in Houston goes to our church. Think about that. That is insane.

I looked at the government census website and there it says there's only 5,000 Koreans in Houston, and 8,764 in Harris County. If that's true that's even more insane. I thought that was crazy.

I think Fear Factor was the highest rated program over the summer. Something like that. They're producing at least another season's worth of episodes.

Finally got the new Out of the Grey CD and the Live EP. Dude. First the Live EP. It's incredible. I know I'm a fan so I'm biased, but objectively, it's incredible. Incredibly musical. It's a little raw, being live, but that adds to it, I think. It's pretty amazing. I really hope you got this CD.

I just starting listening to their CD, 6.1, and it's fascinating. It's not boring like Gravity, which is a good thing. The thing that strikes me most is that it's very very interestingly produced. Very inventive.

My respect for this producer, Monroe James, is rapidly increasing. His first album was Chris Rice's first album, and at that time I thought he was a one trick acoustic pony, like Wayne Kirkpatrick. But dude, the stuff he's produced has gotten more and more interesting. Like, Chris Rice's last album and this Out of the Grey one - pretty amazing stuff.

Give it a listen.

Did you know Conan O'Brien and Denis Leary are cousins?

As are Mel Gibson and Charles Gibson (Good Morning America). Random.

I was looking for some Matt Redman lyrics and I came across this. What's funny about it is that they transcibe exactly what he says, not just the lyrics. And there's a part there where he says, "You, you, you!" I dunno, I thought that was funny.

I love Blind Date. I wrote about it before, not that anyone cares. I think me and Dave had a similar reaction. I think Henry and John thought it was evil.

I thought wind, spirit and breath were all from the same word: ruach. But I might be making this up. Anyway, maybe those verses I cite are confusing, but I mean, they're there in the Bible. In the end though, I'm really not sure about anything.

Anyway, I do think we will have some sort of body in heaven, because I believe the New Testament speaks repeatedly about having new, transformed, heavenly bodies. Dunno if that's physical or not. But it's something called a "body". My dad has some theories about this. That it's different from earthly bodies to the point of being unrecognizable. He bases this on when Jesus appears after his death. Everyone has trouble recognizing him. There's one passage where they eat breakfast with him and it says they don't dare ask who his is - they know it's Jesus. That doesn't make sense unless it's not obvious based on his physical appearance.

Also, the teleportation problem is much discussed in philosophy. I could go on and on about that and other implications of that as it related to the mind/body and personal identity. It's pretty interesting. But to me it's just a game. I don't know, maybe I'm naive, but I have doubts about a lot of things like this. A lot of philosophical problems are like, if this were to happen, then it would be a problem. But I don't know if the ifs can ever occur, so it's not really a problem. This is obvious, I guess. But yeah, it's really interesting to think about.

Henry you fool, no one made fun of you. All I did was ask if "recreate" was a word. And at that time you responded, "probably not."

I don't know, I kind of liked figuring out Dave's web page. It was like a little game. "Page Not Found." Oh, I see, the link is wrong. I'll fix that. Then nothing shows up. View source. Ah, it's all in the title tag so nothing shows up. And then after that, figuring out what he's talking about. It was kind of fun if you ask me.

Sweet November was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Absolutely terrible. It takes a lot for me to say that. This is a person who watched Master With Cracked Fingers.

That's a Jackie Chan movie from 1971. I think they released it after he got big. What they did is took a bunch of old unused footage (some of it actually was used in other movies, like Drunken Master, so it makes no sense) and padded it with additional scenes. Like, they worked in a whole subplot involving Jackie's kung-fu teacher. So there are no scenes in which Jackie and his "teacher" appear in the same frame. So you can imagine how disjointed and random and poor quality this film is.

It's pretty hilarious, actually. You'll see Jackie fighting, then cut to the teacher who inexplicably is hiding in the trees away from the action, yelling, "Jackie, fight!" then back to Jackie. Or the scenes with the teacher and "Jackie", who for some reason never shows his face in these scenes.

And the quality of the DVD was worse than EP VHS. Terrible picture quality, terrible dubbing: bad bad movie.

And Sweet November was worse.

Interesting Zakaria article a couple weeks ago about the whole Japan thing. You know how the prime minister went to the memorial for Japanese war heroes. He was saying how Japan in a sense is still in a state of denial about the war. The impetus is on them to apologize for their past actions.

The interesting thing he said was how China and Korea haven't made it easy for Japan to do so by constantly spouting all this anti-Japanese sentiment all the time. His question is whether Germany would have been able to apologize to France if France had been spouting all this vitriolic speech. It's Japan's responsibility to apologize. But China and Korea could certainly make it easier.

George Will had an interesting article also, on the surplus issue. A lot of commentators, and certainly most Democrats, are going on and on about how the surplus will be less than they thought and how we need to go into the Social Security surplus and how terrible that is and by extension how terrible Bush is.

He points out something very simple and very true. First of all, that even with lowered estimates, this surplus will be the second biggest ever. But more fundamentally, a government surplus is not good, and definitely not something that should be preserved. Excuse my limited economic understanding, but the idea is, if there's a surplus, that means the government is taking money out of the economy that isn't being pumped back into the economy, and that is bad for the economy. It's taking out more than it needs and that hinders growth (I think).

The government shouldn't want a surplus. What should be argued is how to get rid of the surplus, not whether to preserve it. And there are different ideas about what to do, like paying down the national debt or other things. Bush's idea is to return it to taxpayers. And you might disagree with that. But you shouldn't bemoan the fact that the surplus is being reduced - that's exactly what the government should do.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something, but it made sense to me. So I'm confused why all these people think a reduced surplus is bad. Explain that to me.

I don't know, you might disagree with me, but to me it indicates how some liberal members of the media just take things for granted without thinking them through. I'm not a staunch conservative, and I get bothered by things like Will and Horowitz say also. It's just, I think the media tends to be more liberal so their thoughtlessness is more often apparent.

Another thing is greenhouse gases. Henry brought my attention to this. I'm not sure where I stand on this; don't think I feel as strongly as Henry does. But it is interesting - whenever you read articles on this, it's taken as a given that these gases cause global warming. But it's not. The world is warming, but it's not clear whether it's these gases that are causing it. It might be part of the natural fluctuations that the earth has gone through in the past, for example from the ice age to now. It's not clear.

The thing is, it's always assumed, and that's fascinating. These studies look at the effects of global warming, which is (I think) real, and show all these bad things that are happening, and then say, as a given, that it's caused by greenhouse gases. They use these bad effects as proof that we need to limit greenhouse gases, but I've never read an article (of the ones I've seen since Henry brought it to my attention) that establishes the link. It's fascinating.

But anyway.

It's amazing what you can learn by watching late night TV.

The other night I discovered this whole new oven technology. It was an informercial for a Flavorwave Oven. It supposedly cooks frozen foods (frozen chicken breasts, steaks, salmon, etc.) super quickly and perfectly. The way it does it is using 3 things - conduction (like a normal oven), convection (like a convection oven), and, this is the breakthrough, infrared waves, which apparently penetrate the food so it cooks evenly.

So, I wondered if this worked and decided to check it out on the web. It turns out there are a bunch of new ovens that do similar stuff like this, like hybrid microwave-convection ovens, different stuff like that. But what fascinated me most was this oven that GE has, the GE Advantium. There are similar ovens, I think, like something called the Flavorbake oven, stuff like that.

Anyway, the way this thng works is, it uses halogen lights to cook the food. Sounds bizarre, but it apparently penetrates the food so it cooks fast, like 8 times as fast as a normal oven, but unlike a microwave, it tastes like it's baked. And you can press a switch so it works like a microwave also.

Have you ever even heard of this? I hadn't, but it sounds pretty amazing, and the bulletin boards are pretty positive about it. I want to try it out.

Anyway, Henry mentioned Street Smarts. I hate this game show. First of all, and this is slightly mean, but whatever, the host just has a really funny body shape. Like, his limbs are just way too small for his body. It looks like someone ripped off the limbs of a Barbie doll and stuck them on the body of a Cabbage Patch.

But what I hate most is that it just makes no sense. One thing that makes me angry more than anything else are illogical game shows. The first time I was outraged was with Fun House with JD Roth. You remember this? This was one of those kids game shows that started getting big with Double Dare.

Anyway, the show built up to the final race, which was basically all that mattered. Anyway, this race was completely illogical. How it worked was, there were things along the way that had this puck-like things that gave you a certain amount of points each. You also got some points for winning the race.

What didn't make sense was, the point breakdown made zero sense. Like, each puck was worth like 25, 10, or 5 points or something like that. But winning the race was only worth like 10 points. But the kids were all idiots. Instead of trying to get as many pucks as they could on the track, they'd just grab whatever they could on the way, as if winning the race were the most important thing.

That makes no sense! Idiots! I seriously wanted my sister and I to be on the show. First of all, we'd get all the stupid questions right. But we'd also use the optimal stategy, just take our time, getting all the pucks we could, and screw winning, it makes no difference. I have no idea what those idiot kids were thinking. Argh!

I'm convinced they had some kind of screening process where they didn't let any intelligent kids on the show. I'm serious. It's like, if a smart kid tried to be one the show, they'd be, "Sorry, can't let you go on and show how utterly illogical the basic premise of our show is and make a fool of us and British Knights." That's why you never saw any Asian kids on the show. Yikes, pretty racist.

So yeah, it made me pretty angry as I watched it every single day. Anyway, Street Smarts is like this - it's utterly illogical. What they basically do is ask random questions to three people on the street, and the contestants are supposed to guess which one gave the right answer.

This makes zero sense. Like, you know that since they chose those three, that each got some right and some wrong. But they're random people, and you have absolutely no basis for selecting between them. So, it's completely random. And this is a game show? Why not just show people rolling dice and award the highest roll? Anger.

Don't forget Sara Lee Pound Cake. The KCPC way.

I think I'm more sensitive to high frequencies than other people. That's not really something to brag about - I'm saying I'm closer to a dog than others. But yeah, like, both John and Eric have a problem remembering to turn the TV off. But for me, as soon as I enter the room, I can immediately tell if it's on - there's this high pitch that just drives me crazy. I don't know how they can even stand it.

And in the original recording of Let Everything That Has Breath, there's this high pitch, dunno what it is, but it also drvies me crazy and no one else seems to understand. Anyway. Woof woof.

PDI is popular among some members of KCPC because apparently their songs are very Reformed. That's what I hear, at least.

Did I ever say your grad thoughts were boring? If I did, I was wrong. I spent some time on Friday grabbing Dave's grad thoughts off Google just in case he didn't have it, and I was reading through some while doing it. My first impression was, it's not surprising he got carpal tunnel. He wrote all the time, and long entries every time. And second, like Dave said, it is kind of encouraging. I can't exactly explain why, but it was.

What I shold have said, if I didn't, is that my grad school thoughts are boring. I haven't had the guts to re-read those yet.

Don't buy Glad Cling Wrap. It doesn't cling! It's so frustrating! Argh!

But it does wrap.

The other day I received a letter addressed to "Danny Chai and Keith Lee." For some reason that was disturbing to me.

Eric, what did you do with that bird's nest at your apartment? I found out that it's illegal to disturb a bird's nest. No joke. There's a mention of the relevant law here. So be careful.

An interesting article on the Simpsons and religion. Some of the examples they have are pretty funny. "America's Most Judgmental Religious Theme Park." Hilarious.

An interview with Out of the Grey

Here's another article.

One more

And another

Dave, I managed to find your latest short thoughts page and thoughts entry in my IE cache. Also, as you may or may not know, Google caches a bunch of pages. And as you may or may not know, Stanford affiliated pages tend to be covered well by Google.

Short story: I managed to salvage all of your Korea thoughts, Dave. You can find it here. I edited the main index pages and the only thing that works is the Korea relevant stuff, but it's there. Also, almost all of the pages have that Google cache header but I figure you can get rid of that yourself. And you can get the rest of your pages through Google (better hurry though) if you need them. It's pretty easy because everything's listed in your directory.

I just want to point out that this was made easier because Dave had an index page and also on that page a description of old pages plus the dates they were written. I believe I pushed at least doing that second one strongly. So all I had to do was query on those terms and out popped the right page. I was right again.

A side benefit of being covered so well in Google. I dunno, Henry, maybe you want to reconsider delisting yourself.

This weekend we were at Jieun's school and we saw roaming around a deer and an ostrich. You don't see that every day.

As you all know, I'm a big fan of Newsweek. I think the past year has solidified my respect for the magazine. They have just been on the leading edge of issues. Like, they did a big cover story on the Stem Cell debate a month before it became a headline grabbing issue. They did a big feature on medical breakthroughs, featuring the Abio-Cor, a new artificial heart, and a bit afterwards, this heart was transplanted into a patient for the first time. He found out about it through Newsweek. They did a big story on the child porn problem and some months later (last week) there was a big international bust. I don't know, it's impressive to me.

I know I sound like I'm working for them, but I dunno, I just like the magazine.

Anyway, recently I've really enjoyed this one columnist, Fareed Zakaria. He writed excellent columns. Well thought out, well written, and with intelligent things to say.

Did you know the very first Round Table Pizza was in Menlo Park? And the very first Togo's was in San Jose.

The reason I don't think I've really experienced the "brilliant" thing is this. I didn't get it growing up because with those people, I grew up with. Does that make sense? The way we learned to interact with people in general was in large way formed by how we interacted with each other, so it's not like this barrier could form.

In Houston, I don't know why it is, but there are a lot of brilliant people there. Just thinking of my friends, you ahve your Harvard grads, your PhD students, your M.D.s, your M.B.A.s, etc. I have no idea why but there are just a lot of brilliant people my age in Houston.

Actually, I do think I know why it is. My theory is, as a Korean you don't end up in Houston unless you have a reason to be there. So like at my church, there are a lot of doctors (Texas Medical Center) and engineers, many of them for like oil related companies. So yeah, these types of people tend to push their children more, hence the skew. It's changing a lot though.

Anyway, yeah, since there are so many of them there, people in general aren't as awe-struck or intimidated by whatever. So it doesn't happen as much in Houston.

I'm totally with Dave. I dunno, sometimes it's just nice to be able to speak the way you speak without having to worry about coming across as snooty or something. That's the worst.

Dave Park mentioned this to me the other day and I agree. It's weird, but there's no good Mexican food in California. In Houston, if you want Mexican food, you have your Ninfa's, your Tortuga Cantina, your Pappasito, your random hole-in-the-wall places that are good and whatever. And if you want less formal open all night type places, you have your Taco Cabana, which as Marshall can attest, is really good.

What is there in California? What's a good Mexican restaurant and how does it compare? I dunno, it's hard. Especially on the low end. Una Mas? Baja Fresh? I eat there but it really doesn't compare to Taco Cabana. Not even close.

So yeah, it's strange but there isn't really good Mexican food in California.

Another thing. There's no good barbecue in California. I haven't been to Austin's - maybe it's good, I don't know. Tona Roma's is pretty good for ribs. But like, the best around here is Armadillo Willy's. Maybe I'm being a BBQ snob, but I don't really like Willy's that much. It's OK, but not really good. Just serviceable.

This makes no sense to me because barbecue doesn't need to be expensive to be good. Willy's is more than Goode Co. but Goode is way better. It's pretty cheap. And great.

One more thing: Where the heck can I get a good Vietnamese sandwich in the Bay Area? I don't want to have to drive down to South San Jose. Where are they?

As mentioned on Clara's page, Google is celebrating Korean liberation day on their front page today.

John left 420 James Rd. this morning with all his belongings. Henry is leaving on Thursday night. It's the end of an era. Sad.

Slim sent me this link. Pretty hilarious.

As you may or may not know, I'm a big fan of Out of the Grey. Anyway, they're coming out with a new album, and they're also coming out with a limited edition Live EP to be packaged with the album. But not every place will have it. In particular, general market stores (i.e. not Christian bookstores). Not sure if all Christian bookstores will have it.

Why take a chance. Christianbook.com has it and is taking preorders. Do a search for "Out Of The Grey" and you'll find the new CD with live EP for preorder. Make sure you get this special one. And it's only $9.99. I highly recommend. You can buy the live CD by itself if you want also for $2.99.

I recently spoke on the phone with Scott Kim. He handed the phone to Marshall. If I'm not mistaken, they were at Chris Min's place. At a party for Tina Park. Seeing how I was in Seattle at the time it felt a bit surreal to me. James Han also recently sent out an e-mail asking for Marshall's contact info.

I'm telling you, Marshall is rapidly becoming the social center of the Asian American Christians everywhere. In three years, I'm going to have to let people know I'm his cousin to get anywhere in life.

How do you pronounce "gigabyte"? And ".gif"?

I always use a hard 'g' sound, "ghigabyte", but a very intelligent co-worker consistently uses a 'j' sound, "jigabyte". It turns out most dictionaries list the pronunciation of "gigabyte" like "jigabyte", some of them listing both as acceptable. So what's the answer?

I've always thought it unfortunate when people name things after things that are problematic like this. Like Gigabeat. It's not clear how to "correctly" pronounce the name of the company.

And there's this musical group from Stanford calling themselves "Occam's Razor". Prof. Koller strongly insists that the "correct" spelling is "Ockham". Strongly. But yeah, the group's name might be a misspelling. How unfortunate.

When I form my band, I'm sticking to simple letters and numbers. Like U2. Or V8.

New Order played this week at the Shoreline. Their touring guitarist? Billy Corgan. Of Smashing Pumpkins. Utterly random.

I'm wearing boxer briefs right now.

A while ago Dave was saying how it's good to try different things. If I remember correctly his examples were sitting to pee and wiping from back to front. I've tried the first, not the second, because, to be frank, it's disgusting. But yeah, I thought it would be good to try boxer briefs.

I don't like it. Some friends of mine wear them to avoid chafing, but for me, it seems to chafe more. Just, with briefs, the side seams are up snug, but with boxer briefs, the seams are kind of suspended down a bit, putting them in prime chafing position. So yeah, I don't know if I like. I'm still trying to evaluate.

The cool thing is, I dunno, I feel like I have this secret that no one knows except me, and now all of you. It's kind of cool. I've heard girls say that's how they feel with colored underwear.

That's the next step for me, by the way. Colored briefs. We'll see how that goes.

I don't get the way my memory works.

I have the hardest time remembering certain things. Like, when I've told people something. I'm constantly repeating stories and conversations with people because I never remember that I've told them already. I dunno why that is.

But then I have an amazing memory with certain things. Like, I don't know if you remember this, but there was once a Blondie cartoon, based on the comic strip. I doubt you'll remember - it aired once, a long time ago. It was just a special or something.

I remember it. And I remember Loni Anderson was the voice of Blondie. And here's the crazy thing: I remember the theme song. How is that possible? To remember it all these years after a single viewing?

I don't get myself.

Roger Ebert did something recently that impressed me. As I've mentioned before, I like him as a critic but hate how he's so partisan to the point of blindness. He loses all sense of objectivity.

Recently he wrote a column, typical of his partisanship, that attacked a Bush daughter for wearing jeans to lunch with the Queen of England. It bothered me a lot because it descended into personal attacks both on the Bush daughter and on Bush, going way further than political disagreement. It struck me as improper and immature.

Anyway, as it turns out, she didn't actually wear jeans to lunch - it was a false report. But what impressed me was Ebert apologized about it in print. Not just about writing about a false report. But about descending into personal attacks on the Bush daughter. The fact that he recognized that he was wrong in print, I dunno, I think that's impressive, even if he was wrong to begin with.

Did you know Thursday was named after Norse God of Thunder Thor?

I actually did watch Police Academy 1-3. If you had said Tackleberry, I would have completely understood. But Lassard - too obscure.

I dunno if anyone noticed my early references, but they were mostly to amuse myself. Like for a while I used famous gay and/or transvestite men. I'm pretty sure no one understood, but it amused me, and that's the bottom line.

I've been really encouraged by the Raiders recently. I wrote about this before, but Napolean Kaufman, one of their running backs, retired to go into ministry. Everyone said how his heart clearly wasn't into football, it was into different things, so he gave up the millions he could have taken to do what he felt called to. That's encouraging to me.

Anyway, recently one of their linemen Steve Wisniewski (sp?) was very seriously contemplating retirement for similar reasons. I may be mistaken about this but I think he might even have enrolled in seminary. But he was so important to the team that a bunch of people lobbied him to postpone his ministry training and so he's back for the season.

One thing that really struck me was something Greg Papa said. A bunch of people had said what a great guy he was, sincere, stuff like that. And Papa said how outside of David Robinson, Wis was just the nicest, quality person he knew in sports. Not just a good player, a quality person. And, if you didn't know, Robinson is also Christian.

I don't know. In their little and not so little ways, Christians are making their mark in the world of sports in good ways, and that's encouraging to me.

Whoa. Dunno how I missed this, but the application for Survivor IV is already out. And it's due in 5 days.

I came across an interesting sermon on Proverbs 13:12. Too lazy to read in detail but the gist seems to be, your hope needs to be in something solid, or you'll have problems. And something solid is God.

This was more interesting to me. Just, emphasizing how it says tree of life. So it kinda makes sense, a little. Just warning you not to put hope in wrong things. Put your hope in the Lord, and you'll receive the tree of life.

Whoa, I just read this sermon and I thought it was great. Really good. It doesn't really elucidate the passage, but it's a great sermon. John, read it.

This guy interprets "hope deferred" as meaning losing hope. That kind of makes sense.

Check this out. It was some Congressman addressing President Clinton.

I love the web.

The first reference I didn't get: Commandant Eric Lassard. That's obscure.

I was at the Christian bookstore and got some sweet deals, which I was happy about, but what got my attention was a CD I saw: Tae-Bo praise. I kid you not.

Isn't that one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

Here's a link.

Whoa. Jet Li and Jackie Chan together? Dunno if it will pan out but I hope it's true.

Jhin's favorite tofu place is Tofu House (as is mine). He says that it's better than in Korea, the reason being, in Korea, tofu is cheap. So it's treated as cheap, and no place really specializes in tofu or prepares it really nicely. It's just cheap and quick. I thought that was interesting.

Someone explain to me Keith's use of "haha". In the U.S., and possibly Canada, "haha" is meant to indicate something funny. But Keith's use of it seems to be completely independent of humor. He'll write stuff like, "Haha. My pet gerbil of 10 years died yesterday. It drowned in Drano. Twice." So yeah, I have no idea what "haha" means.

There's this weird thing in this area on El Camino in Santa Clara/Sunnyvale. I wrote before how this restaurant opened called Gil-mok, or Corner Place. This is Jieun's (and many others') favorite Korean restaurant in L.A. So of course we were excited about it and we went.

It was terrible. Apparently it's not connected to the L.A. ones at all. And when we asked the waitress if they were related, she looked at us as if we were insane for asking it.

Anyway, right next to that restaurant there recently opened a tofu place called BCD Tofu. The thing is, according to Dave Park, BCD Tofu is the name of the supposedly consensus best tofu chain in L.A. So we tried it, and again, asked if they were connected to the L.A. chain. This time the waitress acted as if she'd heard the question before and explained that they're connected only in that they share a name - there's no relation.

I don't know, it struck me as being strange and a little dishonest. But whatever, that's Koreans for you. So if you're wondering, BCD Tofu and Corner Place on El Camino are not at all like the places in L.A.

Amazing statistic: In the past three months, China has executed almost 1,800 prisoners (Amnesty International). That's more than the people executed in the entire rest of the world in the past three years.

I'm coming to be more and more okay with infant baptism. I dunno, the Baptist stance on baptism makes sense to me also. But, something Perspectives pointed out was how there are a few instances in the New Testament where an entire household is baptized. And those examples don't totally jive with how I've interpreted baptism in the past. So I dunno, right now I think infant baptism is OK.

Pastor Eugene gave a great sermon on Sunday. Maybe the best sermon I've heard this year.

It was the second in his series on Jonah. He had a lot of insights, but the one that struck me in particular was this. He notes that when Jonah runs from God and hides in the ship, and the captain comes to talk to him, Jonah says all the right things, saying "I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land." But at the very time he's saying this, he's running away from God.

The poing being, we also can be outwardly saying all the right things, but in fact be running away from God. I don't know if insightful is the right word, but it hit me.

He had other insights as well, maybe not insights in themselves, but insightful in showing how Jonah demonstrates these things. Like, the wages of sin is death. As he runs from God he progressively goes down, first "down to" Joppa, down into the boat, then down into the sea, which represents death, according to Jonah's prayer in 2:2.

And the upshot, that God is the God of second chances. And third chances. And so on. I dunno, it was a good sermon for me.

There was a great interview yesterday on the Greg Papa show with this guy Mike Davis. He was on base in that World Series when Kirk Gibson hit a homer off of Dennis Eckersley, which is definitely the most amazing sports moment I've ever witnessed.

Anyway, it was a great interview. He was saying how it was ironic that the Dodgers won that year because it was a terrible year for him. He spent most of the year playing tailback. As he explained it, after batting practice, when they'd go to take the field, he'd go with them, and then Tommy Lasorda would say, "Get your tail back on the bench."

At the end of the interview, Papa asked him about this group he's involved with, the Christian Golfers Association, or something like that. And he explained it. What they do is they have scholarships for kids and spend 8 weeks teaching them how to play golf while sharing with them the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's exactly how he said it.

I dunno, I was really encouraged by that. I think it's because the interview went so well. You know, a lot of vocal Christians, non-Christians wouldn't want to associate with at all. But Davis came across as being a really nice, friendly, easy to talk to guy, and when he talked about what he was involved with, it didn't come across as weird. Papa didn't get weirded out when he said "Gospel of Jesus Christ" but even inquired more about what they did, and again, it all came across as sounding good, not weird.

I found that encouraging.

Dave, when you have time, you have to write about the differences between the Korean and the Korean-American church. Like, everyone knows that Korean-American churches split all the time. But does that happen in Korea? Why or why not? What's the difference? I dunno, you hint at it, but I think that would be a really interesting topic.

Sales.

I have to tell this story.

So the other night, John asks me what brand of underwear I wear. Kind of a strange question. The reason he asks is, the underwear he's wearing at that moment doesn't feel like his normal underwear. Just, different.

So we check and sure enough, he's wearing my underwear. Here's the strange part: it's inside out.

What I want to know is, what the heck does John do in the morning when he's putting on his underwear? Not only does he not realize it's not his own, but he puts it on inside out? In a way, it's fortunate that it was inside out. But still, when I saw that, it's like, how the heck did that happen?

Incidentally. I once wore my underwear backwards. In elementary school. I still remember because Eddie Marshall asked me, "Why do you keep picking your butt?" And what could I say? I kept picking my butt because my underwear kept creeping up my crack. It was very uncomfortable. I don't recommend it.

Anyway, I let John keep that particular pair of briefs.

Mark, you're wrong again. I was going to make this a long entry, go point by point, but I'll just highlight some points.

First of all, that you shouldn't tie politics or whatever to the games, that it doesn't matter. Hogwash. Of course it matters. You're not going to see the games in, say, Iraq, anytime soon, regardless of how prepared it can be. Why? Political reasons. And these reasons matter.

It can certainly be argued that the Games represent a certain type of spirit, of sporstmanship and respect, and that a country that has egregious human rights violations contradicts the very spirit of the Games.

But whatever. The thing is, the Games are very much political. In a sense, the country that gets the games is seen as being rewarded in a symbolic way by the international community. As you say, pride and prestige. So whether you agree with it or not, it makes sense why people would make an issue of China's human rights record. Because how is it right to reward such a country?

Anyway, to say the Games aren't (or even that it's possible that they not be) linked to politics is completely and utterly naive and unrealistic, in my opinion.

In regards to teaching China a lesson and make it better. I don't know if that's the issue. The issue is again, whether it's right to reward the country with "pride and prestige" in light of its record. It may or may not change. That's not the issue. What is the issue is whether it's justified to reward the country.

In regards to Berlin '36 and Moscow '80. First of all, I have no idea what your point is because your sentence makes no sense. But yeah, these were both significant events. 1936 was a huge aberration, in which Hitler pretty much forced the Games into Germany. And, if you don't remember, it was significant because Jesse Owens almost singlehandedly made a mockery of Hitler's absurd Aryan superiority claims. And it put the international community's focus on the absurdity of those claims. It's seen as being pretty significant.

Moscow '80 is also significant because it showed how very linked to politics the Olympics really are. As did the next Games in L.A. The lesson here is that the Games are political, and you can't ignore that.

In regards to Congress trying to interfere with the IOC. Argh, of course people want this, what else should they do? The IOC controls this thing that is in some way an international community. No single country has "sovereignty" over it. And that's to say that no country should say anything to it? That it should just do whatever it wants? There was a big scandal in regards to the Salt Lake Games, with IOC members getting tons of gifts and whatever. And you're saying no country should try to interfere with the IOC because they have no "sovereignty"?

It's an international thing; if something is wrong, of course countries should try to interfere. It's nonsensical not to. The alternative is to be a slave to its decisions without having any say. Sounds like China. Anyway, I'm not saying the IOC should be a slave to Congress, but it's equally wrong to say the U.S. shouldn't say anything at all in regards to an issue it things is wrong.

"China has never been under democratic rule ONCE in its millenia-long history -- it's not just a Communist thing -- so why are all the advocates pushing to change now?" Argh. First of all, the ones who don't want the Games there care more about the humans rights issues than China being a democracy. Are there any people really saying the Games shouldn't be there until it's a democracy? It's human rights issues they care about.

But regardless, what the heck are you talking about? The U.S. has only been under democratic rule once in its history. A lot of democracies have. That's because democracy is a relatively new form of government. So how can you talk abouut China never being a democracy? How is that relevant? Democracy is new. "Why are all the advocates pushing to change now?" As opposed to years ago? Because democracy exists now. Because many countries in the world are democracies now. How could have happened years ago when democracies didn't exist, or when it wasn't so well established in the world?

"Witness countries like China, North Korea, Iraq, etc participating in the games as competitors -- no one is calling for a boycott of them, right?" Argh, this makes no sense. It's not about participating, it's about hosting. And that's without question political. If the IOC proposed giving the Games to North Korea or Iraq, you bet that people would call for a boycott of them. Isn't this obvious?

But in the end, I don't really care. But the Games are political. There's no question about that.

Does anyone remember that quote when Jiang Zemin visited Cuba? He was saying how he liked Cuba because they have a similar human rights record. I thought that was absolutely hilarious.

The twilight show at AMC Mercado is just $4.50. That's a pretty good price.

It would have been funny if, during Yo Yo's divine solo, Henry yelled, "Chi-Hua!"

Well I think it would have been funny.

Here's a list of people I love: Peter. Maggie. That's all.

The cover story of this week's Newsweek is on Christian music. Maybe worth a read.

This is for those of you that heard Pastor Eugene's sermon on Sunday.

There actually is a James Bond movie where he apparently dies in the opening sequence. You Only Live Twice. I can't remember what happens in the rest of the movie though. I remember this because, if memory serves me correctly, the movie starts out with him on a bed with some Asian girl asking her why Chinese girls taste different from other girls. Then the girl traps him in one of those beds that fold up into the wall and then some people come and shoot the bed. Then the opening credits start.

Random. The screenwriter of this particular Bond movie was Roald Dahl.

I saw some high school friends over the weekend. I had forgotten how many non-Oriental friends I used to have. Like, in the room, there were Orientals there, but I gravitated towards my old high school friends, none of whom were Oriental. It's been a long time since I did something like that.

I saw Donna Lee today at church. That was good.

From Dave Barry's column this week:

"From time to time, Miss Streisand graciously takes time out from her busy schedule of being a wealthy Malibu resident to advise the nation on what to think and do. She puts her views on her official website, barbrastreisand.com, which is hands down the most entertaining thing on the Internet. Recently, Miss Streisand informed Californians that they could ease the energy crisis by -- prepare for an insight -- conserving energy. Wow! It makes so much sense, you wonder how come nobody ever thought of it before Miss Streisand did!

Miss Streisand's website offers some specific energy-saving tips, including (I am not making these up): 'Turn off appliances and lights when they are not in use' and 'Use warm or cold water to wash clothes.'

I know I speak for all Californians when I say: 'Thank you, Miss Streisand! It's always helpful to be lectured on conservation by somebody whose personal residence consumes the same amount of energy as Brazil!'"

So, I've posted 6 mymind entries in the past 2 weeks. What it is is that I've had a bunch of unfinished entries lying around and I just wanted to get them out.

Not that anyone was wondering.

Not to toot my own horn (a bald-faced lie), but I've read 11 of Dave's 14. Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Mill, Kant, Descartes, Plato, Rousseau, Shaeffer, Hawkings, and Augustine. Although, Mill, Kant, and Rousseau doesn't really count because that was from CIV. But I did read it. And I never finished A Brief History so that doesn't really count either.

Anyway, you should add to your list Kierkegaard, because he really was influential in existentialism. I dunno, I think Adrian should generate a list of required philosophical reading.

Newsweek had an article this week on the Founding Fathers, and it's pretty interesting to think about. The U.S. was the very first modern Democratic Republic. That's kind of impressive. There was nothing else like it in 1776. So what the Founding Fathers (by the way, the P.C. term now is Founders) based everything upon was not some immediate example but philosophical ideals.

Including the philosophical idea that all men are created equal, which as the article points out was far from self-evident at the time. Can you imagine a world without a single democracy? That's how it was back then. It's pretty bold what they did.

So I visited Jieun's K/1st grade summer school class today.

I once heard landing a plane on an aircraft carrier described as being a controlled crash. I think it was from a Tom Clancy book. Anyway, this class was like that. It's controlled chaos. Except for the controlled part.

I don't know how Jieun does it. But like, these kids have limitless energy and about 2 minute attention spans. Deadly combination. Seriously, it's just chaos. I was just observing and that exhausted me after an hour and a half. I don't know, Jieun impressed me, that she could hold any of their attention at all and that she has the endurance to last each day.

A direct quote of Jieun today: "Don't put your head in your leg." Words to live by.

Anyway, the cool thing I noticed is that the kids are completely unaware of class and race. There's a pretty good mix because you get some EPA kids. But everyone plays with everyone. There are groups, but it's not divided by ethnicity or anything like that. I dunno, I found that really cool. Because it doesn't stay like that for very long.

If you're really interested in America and religion, you should read this book by this guy named Bellah from Berkeley, The Broken Covenant. We read it for Religion in America, I'm pretty sure Henry took this class also but chances are 15% that he read the book. I did. Anyway, some of the stuff he talks about is how religion and American society used to be linked, but as society gets more and more secular, we're losing some of that flavor, to the detriment of the country. So he's kind of weird and makes this proposal to nurture like a secular religion. I don't remember the details, but it's relevant to what you're talking about Dave, I think.

Random. It looks like I'm not the only one who thought of this guy when you mentioned de Tocqueville. I found a sermon by John Piper that mentions both people!

From Mr. Showbiz' review of the new Jet Li movie, Kiss of the Dragon:

"The script, by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, who previously wrote The Fifth Element together, makes Kamen's Karate Kid III seem the very pinnacle of original thought and philosophic observation."

More Memento.

Here are some responses to the Salon.com article on Memento I had a while back.

And here's the short story the movie was based on.

Peter Choi seriously watches a lot of movies. He watches everything as soon as it comes out. I don't know how he finds the time.

If you ask me, they should move to a socio-economic based affirmative action. It's still not perfect, but it seems to make a lot more sense.

This was sent out a while ago but I just read it. It's pretty funny.

Is it worth spending $375 for a home made hard DDR platform? I'm considering...

I read Rob Neyer's baseball column on ESPN.com every day now. I really like it. I think it's because a lot of the time he spends looking at things other people have said and then showing how it is wrong, backed up by a load of statistics. But besides that, the man knows his baseball. It's insane.