I might still be driving the Saturn, but the Army wouldn’t ship it to Korea. The standard tour here is only a year; they don’t figure it’s worth shipping cars for such a short time. I extended my tour almost immediately on arrival, and gained eligibility to have a car shipped, but it was sold by then.

I almost bought a cheap ancient hoopty, as is traditional for army folks in Korea. For $500, you can get a car good enough to last you your year or two–probably. One of my friends here literally had one of his wheels fall off as he was driving down the highway last week. He was fine. The car was totaled. I was lucky, though: before I went with the hoopty, I happened to see a nice-looking sports car with a For Sale sign in the window. The price was right, and I ended up owning a 1992 Dodge Stealth.

It’s been a good car for Korea, quick and agile enough to blow through traffic while being cheap enough that I wouldn’t be devastated if it got wrecked somehow. Still, when I PCS out of here, I’m going to sell it off and upgrade. I’ve never owned a new car, but I’ve got enough in the bank to plausibly buy one outright. (I’m not particularly interested in buying the biggest car I could afford the loan of; it’d be a bad value proposition and also far too easy to drive beyond my abilities and wreck it.) It’s become a question, now, of what I want to buy, and (after much research) there are three major contenders.

The first option is a Mazda Miata, in its highest trim level, with the convertible hardtop. After throwing in all the options, it’s both the cheapest car I’m looking at and the most luxurious. The issue is power: it only runs a 4-cylinder engine displacing 2 liters, and statistically it’s just not in the same class as the others. Still, every review talks about its wonderful handling and the pure exhilaration of driving it; it also gets many bonus points for being a hardtop convertible. It’s the current leader in my mind for what to buy.

Alternately, I could go for a Nissan 370Z. Its ancestor, the 350Z, was the first car I ever looked at and thought “I really wish I owned that thing.” It’s pure beauty, power, and good reviews. The convertible version is reviewed even better, but costs more than I want to spend. Even as a coupe, it’s a car that looks fast standing still. Of course, the speed isn’t just in its looks; it goes quite nicely. The only real issue is the price: it’s the most expensive of the three. If my budget were 25% higher, there’s no question: I’d get this car as a convertible. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

The last option is to go pure musclecar and buy a Ford Mustang GT. Here, the convertible version got markedly worse reviews than the coupe, so that’s not really an option. On the other hand, this is by a large margin the most powerful (and heaviest) of the cars I’m looking at. I honestly do not know how atavistic the thrill is of laying down twin rubber streaks on takeoff, and how it balances against the budget for tires; it’s one of the things I want to find out in a test drive. This car really has only two niggling and strange cons. The first is simple: I’d prefer a convertible. The second is that, of these three cars, this is the only one that actually makes me worry about driving within the car’s capabilities but not within mine and killing myself by accident.

If I worry about pushing too hard in the high end and dying, why bother with a sports car at all? It’s simple: they are fun. They are adrenaline in a shiny metal body; sexiness on wheels. They are enablers of joy: there is simply nothing like darting through medium-light traffic at twice its average speed, planning your movements three lane-changes ahead. There is much about driving in Korea that I’ll gladly forget the moment I leave, but I suspect that the sensation of freedom when the traffic finally opens up and the next obstacle is a speed camera 5 miles ahead is one I’ll treasure for a long time. I would never have experienced that in a hoopty; my ancient, base-model sports car is the only reason I have had that feeling. I can’t help but look forward to knowing what it will be like in a car that is modern and even more capable than what I have now.

Branch Managers are the people in charge of moving people around within the Army, to meet both the Army’s needs and the needs of the individuals which it is comprised of. The two in charge of all Warrant Officer Black Hawk pilots had come to Korea for the express purpose of educating us as to the exact process by which they decide where we go and which schools we attend.

This held news both good and bad for me. Good news: coming to Korea immediately after flight school was a very good thing career-wise; my peers elsewhere are often not even RL1 at this point, let alone approaching their PC checkride. Bad news: unless I get my PC qualification quickly and spend the rest of my tour here awing people with my prowess, I’m unlikely to get the IP course enroute. Good news: I’ve got an excellent chance of being assigned to Germany immediately after leaving Korea. Bad news: I’m unlikely to ever be stationed in Japan unless I stay in the Army substantially longer than I want to stay. Good news: I’m fairly likely to be sent to WOAC enroute.

The day would have been substantially improved if we could have simply skipped the morning sessions, or at least split the day in two. This morning’s showtime was 0515, and we didn’t get back to K-16 until 1910. Still, I can’t say that it was entirely a waste; the talk by the Branch Managers was well worth attending. As for the morning, if nothing else, I took away a page full of notes about how not to give a speech.

I recommend Losing the War by Lee Sandlin to anyone who shares an interest in armed conflict.

I disagree with one aspect of his work: he believes that Japan would have surrendered within weeks even without the use of atomic bombing, despite going on elsewhere in the paper about the abundance of overoptimism on the part of every planner in World War II. All of them believed that their enemy was continually on the verge of surrender. He doesn’t see that his abhorrence at the US use of nuclear weapons might be the same sort of willful denial of reality.

Even so, it’s a good read.

Nevertheless, I didn’t go out and party. I haven’t made any resolutions. This holiday season I’ve avoided mistletoe and been unable to procure eggnog. The fact that tomorrow I’ve got a 24-hour shift starting at 0900 has something to do with it, but I suppose I’m also just naturally Grinch-like.

2010 has always seemed an unimaginably futuristic time. Now that it’s begun, I suppose I’ll have to recalibrate my expectations. Hopefully the year is wonderful for all of you.

Still, it always pays to do your research. I got a headstart here because Jeff Atwood, whose design sense and instincts I trust, already researched an excellent combination of the three major components: motherboard, processor, and memory.

I could do the same thing as him and simply upgrade my current machine. However, that means discarding several hundred dollars of hardware that, though four years old, still works just fine. That appalls my sense of economy. There’s always room in my house for a spare computer; most likely, this will end up as an Ubuntu box a few times more powerful than my laptop for use as a development platform.

Instead of upgrading, then, I’m going to construct a new machine entirely. What’s a computer made of? Well, in the order in which you choose the parts, it’s made of a case, motherboard, processor, memory, graphics card, hard drive(s), optical drive, and power supply. If you’re planning on overclocking, you’ll also want some coolers.

Given that I’m stealing the choices for items 2-4 and the cooler straight from Jeff, my first actual choice is as to the case. The first one I looked at was the Antec Skeleton. It’s got an interesting look, and the open air design promises both excellent heat dissipation and automatic dust removal. However, it had two strikes against it: all the reviews said the cables were just too short for anyone not experienced in their routing, and it was expensive.

Instead, I’m going with the Antec 300. It’s a plain black box, with plenty of ventilation and an unassuming face. That’s exactly what I want in a computer case: an unobtrusive design with no external moving parts, no fancy moulding to mess up the lines, no transparent panels or LEDs to show off the internals.

Before I start talking about the GCU, I need to talk about my monitor. It’s an entry-level LCD I bought on my return from Japan; it had turned out cheaper to sell the one I had there and then buy a new one in the US than to ship the old one. It was nice for the price, but it just doesn’t compare to the monitors that are available now. I’ve more than once had someone come in to my room, see my setup, and remark that they were startled that I didn’t have a fancier monitor. Finally, I decided to buy one. I’m going for a Samsung T260HD. It’s bigger, brighter, and has a much better contrast ratio than my old monitor. Also, its native resolution is 1920×1200.

Once you know what resolution you’re targeting, you can start looking at video cards. Those are the sort of beast where you can spend as much or as little as you want; either way, you get what you paid for in terms of quality at a given resolution. Luckily, there are sites and lists out there to help make the scale clear. I just scrolled down the list until I got to “Excellent performance at 1920×1200,” and had my choice: a Radeon HD 5850.

Next up are the hard drives. I have to admit that SSDs are appealing to me for their raw speed, even if they’re still way too expensive to use as the only internal drive. I currently have a two-disc RAID-0 setup, which is nice, but it can be improved upon. Again, I’m taking my cue from Jeff’s recommendation for one. However, that’s both barely sized to keep the essentials I want to blaze, and an absurd price per gigabyte. I’m adding in a Western Digital Caviar Blue 640 GB drive for internal storage, which has the best review score per price per gigabyte that I’ve seen. Added together, I’ve got three quarters of a terabyte internal at an overall cost of $0.65 per gigabyte.

Optical drives, unless you choose BluRay, are a mature technology. I just wanted something cheap, fast, and well-reviewed. Right now that’s a MSI DVD-RW drive so generic it doesn’t even have its own name.

Now that all the internals are chosen, it’s time to buy a power supply. I used to do this the hard way: tracking down the expected consumptions of the various parts I’d chosen, adding them up, adding a fudge factor, and going from there. These days, there’s an app for that. It told me I needed 472 watts. I had a few other considerations: I wanted something modular, so I wouldn’t have excess cabling inside the case, and I wanted something with an 80+ stamp so that I wouldn’t be paying through the nose for electricity. When you put those requirements together, what you get is the OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W.

There’s one more thing a computer needs: an OS. I suppose I could just throw in my customized XP image, but it doesn’t support all that RAM. Beside, it’d be a shame to put a 32 bit OS into all that 64 bit hardware. I’m just going to bite the bullet and get Windows 7 Professional. The main reason for the Pro upgrade is to get XP mode, because that’s too cool a feature to miss. Full, automatic virtualization of XPSP3 ensures that there is no such thing as compatibility issues.

Now that the parts are chosen, it’s time for some sanity checks. Does the CPU cooler fit in the case? Do the CPU and MB agree on their interface (FCLGA1366)? Do the drives and MB agree on interface (SATA II)? Do the GPU and MB agree on interface (PCIe)? Does the PSU have at least 500W and two PCIe 6-pin connectors per the GPU requirement? Do the GPU and monitor share an output format? Do all the components including the OS agree on architecture (64 bit)?

As it turns out, the answer to all these questions is “yes.” Now, it’s just time to order. The full parts list follows:
Monitor: SAMSUNG T260HD
Case: antec 300
PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W
MB: ASRock X58 Extreme
CPU: Intel Core i7-960 3.2 GHz CPU (to be overclocked to 4.0 GHz)
Cooler: XIGMATEK HDT-S1283
GCU: sapphire radeon hd 5850
Memory: Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 2000 x3
Boot Drive: crucial 128gb ssd
Storage Drive: wd caviar blue 640gb
Optical Drive: msi black sata dvd
OS: windows 7 professional 64 bit oem

$ 2800 later, my new computer is on its way. More to follow as I get it going, then review my impressions. As for now, I’m just trying to ward off sticker shock. It’s the most I’ve ever spent at one time for a computer. It’s by far the most powerful one I’ve ever owned, and I’m going to overclock it to the point of being ridiculous, but still. This computer is more expensive than my car, more expensive than my motorcycle, more expensive than my camera and xbox and rock band put together.

It should be worth it.

It makes me smile when my hobbies turn out to be useful.

Seoul Incheon: not actually very remarkable. It’s a big modern airport very much like many other big modern airports. It’s not ideally designed: it requires walking maybe 1500 meters from one end to the other, for military arrivals at least. Still, its linear design means it is at least simple. Also, free internet and occasional power ports make things nice.

Beijing: ridiculously, monumentally enormous. The extra open architecture is very pretty and enhances the impression of spaciousness. It’s got a modest selection of duty free shops and restaurants. For all its size, it’s strangely empty: the restroom has queueing lines and handy symbols built in to speed traffic through its 20 stalls and 40 urinals, but I had it to myself. Perhaps the decision not to heat it had something to do with that. There are occasional power ports, but they are of the wrong shape and voltage. Internet is available if you pay cash yuan at the business center. There is no easy way to get cash yuan. Important: do not attempt to connect there using military id and orders in lieu of passport; you’ll be turned back by Customs.

Newark Liberty: relentlessly commercial. Like many US airports, there is pretty obviously more security in place than the architecture was designed for. My overriding impression of the airport comes from one flight where I connected there from Japan: my bag took 90 minutes to emerge from the baggage claim, and then the line to re-check it ate another 150. Needless to say, I missed my connection from all of this. It wasn’t nearly so bad this time, at least. Internet and power are available at business kiosks.

Manchester Boston: a small feeder airport with aspirations to eventually grow into a hub. Its current compact size and low traffic makes it feel very comfortable. Power and wireless internet are both easy to find and free.

Tokyo Narita: efficient, artistic, elegant. Probably the most comfortable airport for its size I’ve ever been in. It’s also one of the more complex, but there is plenty of clear signage to help find the way around. Power and wireless internet are ubiquitous, but the “you’ve successfully joined our wireless page” is actually a multilingual set of links to various ways to pay for the connection to get it to stop redirecting all traffic to the links page.

Military:

RKSM (Seoul Airbase): as my home airbase, it’s the place I’m most familiar with. It’s unique in my experience of military airfields in not having a greasy spoon type diner attached to the flight ops building somewhere. The airbase is actually run by the Koreans, with K-16 being a plot leased to the US military.

RKSO (Osan Airbase): this place is run by the Air Force, so I don’t often go there. Still, if you want to see an F-16, an A-10, or a U-2 on the ramp, this is the place to (occasionally) find them.

RKSG (Camp Humphreys): this is where we actually do most training, as it’s the nearest airbase actually run by the US Army. Here’s where the rest of 2CAB, meaning the Apaches, Chinooks, and another battalion of Black Hawks, are based.

RKSY (Yongsan Garrison): a tiny heliport barely large enough to fit two Black Hawks simultaneously, it’s still a common destination because Yongsan is where a lot of the command structure for Korea is located.

RKJK (Kunsan Airbase): another Air Force base, this one only gets mentioned because it has the nicest Flight Ops building and pilot lounge I’ve ever been in. I believe it homes F-16s.

RKTG (Camp Walker): this place apparently used to have a fairly large air contingent; you can still see the remains of a runway suitable for fixed wings, and there’s plenty of parking and refuel space. However, at some point buildings were constructed over both ends of the runway, leaving only a single helicopter pad. It does have an exceptionally nice USO building.

I knew all of the above, but little else, before starting the film. The biggest surprise for me was that in many respects, this movie works best when taken as a comedy. It’s a goofy, self-referential piece which doesn’t mind abandoning its dignity for a laugh. It happens to be a blood-drenched tale of a chest of gold which turns a peaceful mining village into a battlefield as well, but that’s the setting, not the genre.

This isn’t to say that the Western aspects aren’t done well. It turns out that six-shooters and samurai mix surprisingly well; the cultural traditions which both stem from have a lot in common. The wandering warrior, the feuding clans trapped in a small town, the tragic lovers who try to overcome the enemty of their people; all of these elements have their place. If there is a problem with the way these themes are used, it is that the director tried to use as many as he could think of without much regard for whether they were really necessary. However, in this case at least, it’s just a case of prioritizing the humor over the plot.

Comparisons to Kill Bill are inevitable given Tarantino’s name in the credits. There are similarities; neither film hesitates to make ultraviolence and horrible murder into a laughing matter. However, that movie took itself seriously; this one does not. Whereas that movie took the trouble to stick to a plot, this one is happy to repeat a simple pattern from beginning to end: funny scene, cool violent scene, touching scene. It is a credit to the director and cast that it succeeds at all of these.

This is not a movie for kids. It is not a movie for those who demand that a film have a reasonable setting or plot. It is not a movie to see for people who require clarity of speech. If you don’t fall into any of those categories, though, there is a good chance you will enjoy this movie.

On the one hand, I am forced to agree with this guy on some points: not all worldviews have equal merit, and some are simply better than others. On the other hand, I believe that one trait which increases a culture’s merit is exactly the xenophilia that this guy decries.

Why is it important to celebrate diversity? Because people have a hard time with subtlety, and so any culture which does not intentionally take joy in difference will inevitably find itself drifting toward prejudice, and toward injustice. If people believe subconsciously that the barbarians elsewhere aren’t really human, they’ll never be able to treat them consciously as equals.

The questionable premise is that traditions, beliefs, and practices in all their ethnic and historical profusion self-authenticate their claims to truth, beauty, and goodness. Not only must all the ‘voices’ be heard, whatever they come up with must be treated with respect … Open-ended diversity is thrust upon us as a positive object of obligatory good feeling.

Here is the problem: accepting, and even taking joy in learning about foreign cultures and lifestyles does not imply that one approves of them or would want to include every feature in one’s own daily life. Look at the atrocities against women that the Taliban committed in Afghanistan: it is important to learn about what went on there, even if only as a cautionary example of the problems associated with a fundamentalist government. Respecting that culture boils down to taking individuals from that culture on their own merits and refraining from intervention*.

It is important to remember that the case of the Taliban approaches the worst case possible. For most other cultures and civilizations, there are plenty of lessons to be learned. Look at Europe to discover the benefits and penalties associated with a more socialistic stance. Look at Japan to see what happens in a liberal democracy when society still places huge pressure on people to value their duty to others above themselves. Look at most places in the world, and one can see both benefits and penalties associated with the choices that society made in contrast with our own. However, one can only objectively look at those cultures if one first accepts that they have an inherent right to exist, and that acceptance can only come if one’s own culture celebrates diversity.

Should an ethnic attachment to astrology be included as a legitimate discipline in college curricula because politicians and bureaucrats in India submit decisions bearing on public issues to readings of the stars? Should tribal shamans be licensed to practice “alternative” medicine? In postmodern jargon, is not one scientific or medical “narrative” as good as another?

There is absolutely no reason why An Introduction to Indian Astrology could not be a perfectly legitimate college course. For a student of Indian culture and folklore, such a course might be essential. Accepting other cultures does not at all imply that we must attempt to import every feature of every culture that we come in contact with; such an approach would obviously be both chaotic and futile. However, it is perfectly feasible to take other cultures seriously on their own merits.

As for alternative medicine, one must first realize what a license to practice medicine is: it is official certification that the doctor in question uses techniques and tools which have been proven, statistically and rigorously, to work. Any “alternative” technique which can offer proof–the double-blind, statistical kind–that it works, is inherently an acceptable tool for a licensed doctor. Alternative medicine is comprised of remedies which cannot offer that proof; as such, there is no reason to license its practitioners. Neither is there any reason to prevent them from setting up alternative clinics, so long as they do not masquerade as a licensed doctor. Either one believes in the practitioner as well as the remedy, or one does not.

An uninformed, unsuspecting student body, awash in diversity rhetoric and pedagogy, maneuvered by solemn, earnest action plans shaped by diversity ideologues, might be led to think that ethnic violence and hatred, alive and readily visible around the world, has nothing to do with ethnicity and its inherent premise of exclusiveness.

The author of the article in question has taken great pains to utterly demolish a straw man. There is no great pressure to accept other cultures in a completely valueless, utterly morally relativistic setting. That would be nearly impossible, if it is possible at all. Every person has some deeply ingrained set of criteria for judging other cultures, in whole or in part. Mine is simple: cultures are ranked in order of their ability to maximize liberty per capita. Other people might value personal safety as more important, or conformity to some religious text. Regardless of which criteria one uses, they can only be applied objectively if one first accepts that other cultures have an intrinsic right to exist. This is the celebration of diversity that needs to be, and generally is, applied in the educational system of our culture.