Just for fun, let’s say there was an alien being who’s been observing our small planet. Would what we do really be considered so differently from what other animals and plants are doing? Are we just a part of the environment that plays its role however much it seems to us that we are not a part of it?

I think that’s where the concept of “artificiality” comes from. That is, we think we are not a part of (or separate from) our environments. Sure, the mankind has a pretty unique gift (or a curse? :p) of self-reflection and detachment, but we are still a part of the whole equation. Yes, we have a greater (relatively speaking) ability to change our surroundings, but still we are not separated from it because we do get affected by things we do.

Sure, one can then argue that the global warming and other harms we are doing as a whole is “natural” and that we don’t have to do anything about it. But one of our “natural” attributes is to recognize a problem and to try to solve it.

I believe we can affect the direction of changes in us and our environments (well, I should not even put them separately), and I think that is “natural” as well. If we did not do well and wiped ourselves off the world, it would have been unfortunate, but it still would have been a natural part of the history of the universe. And if we were to do well and learned to exist along, it would also have been a natural part of the history.

It was fun and all that, but it somehow reminded me of what Microsoft used to do in the beginning to recruit a certain type of young freshly out-of-college kids to build up their “culture”. In this respect, this “GLAT” is more like a personality test than anything else.

I think Google is doing the right thing for the long term (although “Google Labs” is more like a semi-research arm of the company). This kind of recruiting method is specially effective, I think, to a technology-oriented company like Google and Microsoft (well, it used to be, at least, for Microsoft).

It was an interesting diversion for me to go through the questionnaires (I couldn’t solve most of them frankly), but it also got me thinking how a certain type of recruiting method is not right for most, but for a few.

Some random dialogs from my daydreams…

Microsoft: You have only begun to discover your power. Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the Web.
Google: I’ll never join you!
…
Microsoft: I am your father.
Google: No! That’s not true! That’s impossible!
Microsoft: Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
Google: Nooooo! Nooooo!

Well, only in my daydreams… :p

There is something I’ve been noticing recently about how some Koreans write their names in Roman alphabets. Some of them started writing Korean names with their family name first without a comma. This seems to be more common for the names of Koreans in Korea (as opposed to those in the U.S.A.).

The norm for most Western cultures is that you write your family name last (John S. Smith). However, in most East Asian Cultures, the family name comes first.

It used to be that when the Korean name needed to be written in Roman alphabets, the western rule would be followed and write the family name last (Younghong Cho). At least, in Korean names there is no such thing as a middle name, but sometimes people would put spaces between each syllable to make each sound clearer (Young Hong Cho [I hate it when someone calls me "Young"]).

Another western rule is that if you want to put the family name first (for sorting and indexing, I guess), you would put a comma after the family name (Cho, Younghong) to note which is which.

But these days, I’ve noticed that when a Korean in Korea writes names of Koreans, they just write as one would say in Korea (Cho Younghong [my family name is "Cho"]). I do see this in BusinessWeek articles by Moon Ilhwan [his family name is "Moon"] for example. He writes the name of the Korean president as Roh Moo Hyun ["Roh" is the family name].

Actually, I’ve been doing the same when I write quick reviews about the Korean music CDs I bought for a while.

I was leaning toward the idea that it’s better to write people’s names as they want them to be. But when I don’t know what they want, I was inclined to represent the names as they are most commonly used. So, for most musicians in Korean, I started to put the family name first with a comma following it (Cho, Younghong). However, it started to get too cumbersome and confusing (Cho, Younghong, Hong, GilDong, and Kim, Chul Soo [how many names are there?]).

So, I started dropping the commas. But without them, it’s difficult to know which is which (well, for most Koreans, it’s fairly easy to recognize the family name). So, I did something in the middle by capitalizing the family name (CHO Younghong). It looks a bit awkward sometimes, but at least you know which is which.

I think some Chinese also have been doing this as well. When I was reading about Leslie Cheung‘s death, I noticed that some of the news articles were writing his name as “Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing” ["Kwok-wing" is his Cantonese name]. To me, this was interesting because it kept the “right” order for the both systems.

Some may argue that this is pointless and ask why even bother. That might be true (there are much more grave and important issues in the world) and it might have been fine to do what was done before. But these days, a lot of people, in the world, are questioning the idea of the proverb, “When in Rome, do as Romans do” since increasingly many different cultures seem to get integrated even for “Romans”. I think being familiar with different cultures and respecting them might be a good idea for everyone.

Anyway, I am somewhat intrigued to see that some Korean reporters find it okay to assume that people will recognize a Korean name and know where the family name is.

[2004-02-09] Those interested might want to take a look at the Hangul romanization page that I created.

[2005-02-24] BTW, I normally do not put my replies in the comments below. When a valid email address is given (it is never posted on the site), I do try my best to reply to the comments and/or the questions, though.

Also, I do review the comments posted before allowing them to go on the site. So, don’t even try to channel some of your misguided ethnic anger either.

[2005-09-01] I just created a crude page to convert romanized korean pronunciation into Korean characters. Try it.

[2007-06-12] The site had some issues and all the comments are lost and the comments are disabled for now. If you have a question, please send it to “hangul at sori dot org” (without the quotation marks).

[2007-10-25] I’ve created a page to collect Korean spellings of non-Korean names. Take a look.

The jury selection was over even before they had a chance to ask me questions (yeah, and that took three days!), but from the questions asked by both the judge and the counsels from both sides, it was clear what they were looking for in a juror. The most important question seems to be if a potential juror can be fair to both parties and just rely on the evidence and witnesses presented during the trial.

For example, there were some ailments involved with the case and the court wanted the prospective jurors to disregard whatever research they have done or knowledge they acquired before this trial and only rely on the material and testimonial evidence presented during the trial.

That made me wonder what this court system is trying to do. The system is, without a doubt, based on a very idealistic perspective. However, I don’t think it is that naive to think that a person can completely disregard whatever they had for the trial. That’s just not possible. What the system seems to be doing is to be reasonable and asking that one try to be one’s very best and to be fair as much as one can (this reminds me of the Army motto). It seems this system recognizes the imperfection of being a human, but realizes that there probably isn’t any better way and have trust in its people.

Frankly, at first when I was summoned for the jury duty, the first thing I thought of was how I can get out of it. I postponed it once, partly due to my house purchase and the move and partly due to the schedule at work. I’ve asked around for “advices” on how to get dismissed.

But after the whole jury selection process started, a part of me actually began to hope to be selected as a juror (although a possible 6-week trial seemed a bit too long)… That I wanted to see if I can be the best that I can be. :p I mean, this wasn’t really due to any patriotism that I have for the U.S. of A. This was more about being a part of a system that puts its trust on people and making a contribution.

Yeah… It’s not perfect, and I do have a bit of a problem deciding the reward amount for the punitive damages, but still the system is trusting its members to decide what the facts are from the evidence with the guidance of the judge with the knowledge of the law. It’s asking, basically, for each member to be the best person (in part, at least, on the subject of “fairness”) and be active (that is, make a decision). Even the mostly sarcastic person like me can be a sucker for human idealism.

One might argue this jury duty or the ballot participation of individual doesn’t make much impact. Maybe not an immediate one. But I do believe that by participating one changes oneself, at least. And this will determine more firmly who we are, and will eventually influence those around us. However passive some of these processes may look, we are making a change (or a seed of changes) by participating.

Anyway, this experience made me think a bit. I sincerely hope that one day I would get selected and serve as a juror, and do my best.

Quite a few of my friends, by now, are married and most of them have children. One thing I noticed was that a lot of those children were girls. One would think that the ratio of the sexes should be about equal in nature, but what I saw among my friends weren’t even close to being equal statistically. And since the sex of a baby is genetically determined by the father, I wanted to figure out what made this group of men deviate from the “norm”.

They all work in computer-related businesses or at least in an environment where they have to spend the better part of their day in front of a computer. So, I tried a wild hypothesis that the radiation from the CRT monitors might be the cause (probably it’s from something I read long time ago from an advertisement for screen protectors). It seemed to me (not very scientifically provable, though) like those who “work harder” or rather seem to spend more time in front of computers were likely to have girls than boys.

Then, it was combined with the (seemingly unrelated) fact that men’s life expectancy is shorter than women on average. From just the life expectancy data, it seems to me that men are built “weaker” than women (for whatever the reasons). So, what’s “inherently” (or biologically) different about men and women? It must be the “XY” and “XX” chromosome combinations.

It seems the XY is “weaker” or less “stable”. Maybe, the radiation is killing or making the sperms with the XY less competitive even if the exposure is within the regulated “safe” limits. That can explain why those men working long hours in front of CRT monitors tend to have more girls. (I later began to think that this may also be from deteriorated health conditions from work or other reasons.)

Anyway, then came a weird logic… XX >= XY, so it must be that X >= Y. (Yeah, yeah, I am not considering the possible mutual interactions. :p)

Interesting… Then a logical leap… Two Xs seem to make the species more “stable”. But if one gets too stable, it will become stale and eventually lose its adaptability and perish. So, I am guessing that the Y is an agent that injects “mutation” (or dynamics) into the system. Of course, these changes cannot be all beneficial, but it should throw off the system a bit so that it can re-adjust itself to the changing/new environment. And this seems to fit an observation that for most “living” systems there seem to be cycles of changes/growth and stability.

So my current theory is that the X chromosome is what makes us stable and helps us survive through the minor external changes and that the Y chromosome is what throws off the balance a bit so that the species won’t become stale.

Absurd, you think? I don’t blame you. :p

It’s a feeling that you get when you have nothing to occupy your mind and realized that there is no one, physically or emotionally, next to you to share the moment with.

So, there are several ways to resolve this. I don’t think any one would be enough or complete. One is to occupy oneself, which definitely works and a lot of contemporaries seem to follow it (I think Internet contributed significantly to this), but one has to rest eventually.

Another is to have a support group of friends and families. This also works, and most people would see it as the best and “right” way. However, they may not be there all the time, physically and emotionally.

This brings to another (but always in an assisting role) way… One can also learn to have confidence in and be content with oneself. I don’t think this will never work by itself, but I think this is generally a good idea as an individual and will help with relationships with others.

On the book, A Beautiful Mind… I shouldn’t have been really surprised, but again, I find the difference between the Hollywood version and the biographical accounts, having a significant different feeling. A lot of the detailed episodes in the movie to depict the various situations aren’t even mentioned in the book (e.g., the insight at the bar, the nightly delivery, etc.). Maybe those stories were from a private exchange between the movie makers and the Nashes, but still, I found it interesting. Also, the movie does not mention that Alicia and John Forbes are divorced (I think they still are) and didn’t see each other for more than a decade, although she eventually took care of him. Nor does the movie mention that John Forbes had a son outside the marriage (before the marriage to Alicia).

I am not saying what Alicia and John Forbes has gone through is anything less just because of those missing facts from the movie. Actually, I can admire them as human beings because of them. I think it’s almost always more interesting to have your own interpretation of the events than to be fed with someone else’s interpretation.

This is a concept that I’ve been bouncing around in my head for a while. As with any other ideas I have here, it must have been influenced by ideas of others and is utterly incomplete at this stage. However, I think I have a concrete enough picture of it to attempt to write about it.

I think ever since my teen years, I have been a relativist: I believed (and still do in a way) that “everything” is relative. I came to this “conclusion” because I noticed that everyone was interpreting what he/she experienced, relative to their situation at the moment and that these interpretations, or “filters”, are something we cannot remove from the whole equation because of what we, humans or any sentient beings, are.

The obvious problem with advocating “absolute” relativism (you will easily notice an obvious oxymoron) is that this credo, “everything is relative,” itself has to be relative and becomes self-conflicting. It is logically flawed and it will never be more than a incomplete belief.

Not only that, as much as I could not ignore the seemingly pervasive relativity caused by the interpretation filters, I felt uneasy about completely dismissing the idea of the absolute truth (or a god as some would say). Even a relativistic (or cyclic) belief such as Buddhism has an absolute concept such as Nirvana. So for a while, what I’ve often told was that if there was an absolute being, it must be the universe itself…

But recently, I’ve come up with a better explanation (it’s just a rhetoric anyway…): the relative truths/gods as projections of the infinite dimensional absolute truth/god. I really don’t care whether it’s called the truth or a god. I will just say “truth” to refer both from now on.

If you had taken some geometry classes at school, you might remember hearing about dimensions and projections to a lower dimensional space. For example, if you have a cube in a 3-dimensional space and project it onto a 2-dimensional space, you can get a square, a rectangle, or a distorted hexagon, of varying sizes depending on the positions of the object and the projection plane, and the projection methods. Another example… If you have a triangle in a 2-dimensional space and projected onto a 1-dimensional space, you will get lines with various lengths depending on the condition.

The thing I want to stress from the above examples is that although the original objects in their native dimensional spaces might have well-defined, fixed shapes, their projections onto lower dimensional spaces can take various, sometimes drastically different shapes. From the perspectives of the lower dimensional spaces, those objects look that way (nothing wrong with this), but they have no way to know for sure what the higher-dimensional original objects may look like.

So, applying this analogy, I am going to say that there is (probably) an absolute truth, but it’s in a higher dimensional space (actually, in an “infinite” dimensional space as discussed later). The “truths” we understand (or written down, talked about, etc.) are only its projections (or “filters” as I called above) into our lower dimensional spaces. Since our “positions” in these lower dimensional spaces are different from that of each other (and even from one’s own from different time), the projected shapes of the truth may and will differ.

For some groups of people, their positions maybe close enough that the projected shapes are similar. But the point is that these projected truths are relative to the projection planes, i.e., individuals, and that for us the actual shape of the truth in the higher original dimensional space is beyond our understanding.

One thing to note is that when I say a n-dimensional space, I am not just referring to the “popular” dimensional space of x-, y-, and z-axes. I don’t know exactly what each axis measures (it could even be a concept as vague as “love”, “happiness”, etc.) but it is something that will define each individual within its own understanding.

On a similar line, if you actually think of this dimensional spaces as the popular time-space continuum and its extension, we can think about “superhumans” and “gods.” To us, a being that’s bound by a higher dimensional space would be considered as a superhuman or a god since it can overcome the restriction of our time-space continuum. But to them, another being in an even higher dimensional space would be considered as a god. And if you keep following this, you will reach at a concept of a being in an infinite dimensional space, which one can say is the absolute god. And the truth there would be the absolute one.

Anyway, in one respect, the absolute truth may exist (in the infinite dimensional space). However, as far as our understanding goes, everything is still relative (as its projections onto lower dimensional spaces). So, this is how I “resolved” my relativistic beliefs with a concept of the absolute, and felt a bit better. :p

The element of violence in human society (actually, any biological system) is inevitable. It is intrinsic to us, and the only difference is the varying degrees.

The real questions come up when it is of an extreme degree, i.e., killing another. How can one kill another human? The only explanation that I can think of, is that it’s because the perpetrator does not think of the victim as a “human”. Here, this generic term takes a more specific meaning of “who is of one’s own”. For an individual murder case, one can often attribute this to insanity (on an extreme sense, “anger” is an insane state respective to rationality). And it is an insanity to think that the other is not a “human.”

So, in a war, how can one get such a determination to annihilate your enemy who happens to be “humans”? This is especially more perplexing when it involves huge group of people who are mostly sane. But if you look at the governments and the media at such times, their efforts internally consist of such campaigns that are designed to convince its people that the perceived enemy is no “human.” That’s all it’s doing and in that way, you can go out and kill another “human” with minimal guilts.

I’ve come to an unrealistic conclusion that if we had the capacity to know every other people on this world, we would have no lethal violence at all (well, realistically, it can’t be zero, but…). The thing is our mental capacity is such that we can only remember those who are immediate to us. Our memories can only contain those with our immediate associates, and we are rarely capable of thinking about those outside our circles.

In the past, I’d been occasionally complimented (?) by some people that I didn’t impose my own tastes onto others (meaning, not having strong preferences, which kind of prompted me to to write this). But in reality, I do have opinions on a lot of stuff (maybe not as much as some). It’s just that I feel that arguing over it isn’t important and useful most of the times.

I don’t consider having an opinion a “bad” thing. Actually, I consider having an opinion an inevitable human (or somewhat like a biological) thing. Of course, one can argue that it matters whether it is of one’s own or just plained borrowed (meaning, without “verification” with one’s own judgment). If you don’t have your own reasons for stating a particular opinion, I don’t think you can consider it as your own, and I don’t think you have any grounds for stating and supporting it.

The bigger issue is figuring out when having an opinion becomes dogmatic. I meant by “dogmatic”, roughly, being unwilling to listen to different views from one’s own. Often, this results in illogical, emotional and personal attacks on the other parties during a debate or a discussion. I believe this is one of the most destructive state for a society (however, I am not saying that it’s unnecessary at all. Emotion brings out action, and that would be a different subject).

But on the other hand, you can’t just be quiet either sometimes! You’ll have to decided how far you are willing to push your opinion (partly depending on what you think of the other (conflicting) opinions).

What makes it more difficult is that deciding when it went too far is also very subjective. Within a homogeneous group or a society, it might be easier, but still each individual of the group has slightly different ideas about the same thing (emotionally, intellectually, ethically, etc.).

Again, this mumbling seems to go anywhere specific… Anyway, all this reminds me that the communication is the most important thing. It’s not like one’s opinions never change…