ClassBravo

neighborhood field

2012-01-14T05:27:00.000-06:00

From the Fukuoka Tower, March 2010.

cold aviators

2012-01-07T16:26:00.002-06:00

Esplanade, February 2011.

signs and lines

2011-10-18T03:02:00.002-05:00

Near Riverside.

sitting in plaza | car and blur

2011-09-11T17:51:00.001-05:00

Friday at the Baltimore Grand Prix.

unloading scott dixon

2011-09-10T00:10:00.000-05:00

Friday morning at the Baltimore Grand Prix. The paddock and garage area was actually inside Baltimore's massive convention center—made it super fan-friendly, and all the teams loved having an air conditioned garage.

couple and harbor

2011-09-08T23:51:00.000-05:00

Baltimore's Inner Harbor, Thursday night before the grand prix.

100 and couple

2011-09-08T00:32:00.000-05:00

Thursday night, entry to turn 1 on Pratt St.

prototype and grass

2011-09-05T00:59:00.000-05:00

Saturday's American Le Man Series race.

bruno and seabass

2011-09-04T08:57:00.002-05:00

I was out walking the track on Thursday night when they were finishing laying down the asphalt for the kerbs for the chicane on the front straight. Drivers were dropping by throughout the night to check it out. From left to right, Bruno Junqueira, Claire Bourdais, Sebastien Bourdais, ?.

life is fair

2011-08-19T01:42:00.002-05:00

I rode the Spirit Mountain alpine coaster yesterday with a good friend of mine. His name is Junghoon. He’s Korean, 7 years old, and talks in English that he learned mostly from watching Spongebob. We rode down the coaster, screaming and yelling as we shot down through the forest. On the slow ride up, he leaned back and proclaimed:

“I think this is best day of my life!”

“Really?” I said.

“Yup! Best day of my life.” He threw his head back and let out a contented sigh. “Ooooahhhh!”

He closed his eyes. We drifted up the hillside through a tunnel of trees. I looked down at him, sitting in my lap, leaves’ shadows gliding across his face. I closed my eyes too.

“Life is fair!”

“Huh?” I said, craning my head to look at him. He met my gaze, saw my confusion, and explained.

“Sometime, life is not fair.”

He leaned back again and smiled. “Today, life is fair.”

When we reached the top of the hill, we rode it again.

snowplows on mass pike

2011-07-24T14:47:00.000-05:00

St. Mary's St., January 2011.
It's a bit cooler today—only in the 80s.

snow walker

2011-07-23T18:30:00.002-05:00

Coolidge Corner, January 2011.
This is what I wish the weather were like today.

raise the cup

2011-06-25T17:21:00.002-05:00

Processed in Filterstorm for iPhone. It's a pretty powerful little app that aspires to be the Lightroom for iOS. It has all of the basic edits: RBG curves (which not even Lr has), levels, saturation, etc., and...support for masking, so you can selective paint any edit onto the image.

Now, all the edits are (unfortunately) destructive, but that enforces a certain quick-and-dirty mindset that actually is pretty fun. It's always impressive what you can do with a couple of RGB curve edits painted on.

The biggest limitation on iPhone ends up being the form factor—it's hard to see on the little screen. I definitely wasn't intending for the vignette to be so strong on this one.

the maestro, part 2

2011-05-30T21:24:00.001-05:00

When Williams came out of the stage door 45 mins after the concert, he was greeted by his adoring fans—and a squad of resellers who were shoving LP covers in his face in an attempt to get them signed.

Anything they got signed would almost certainly end up on eBay, and Williams knew it, for he tried to avoid them. But when he'd cross over to the crowd on the other side, the horde of resellers would run around to the other side, pushing the concertgoers out of the way and yelling, "John! John!"

Apparently, this happened the night before as well; there's been a bit of discussion on the topic over at JWFan.com.

He was clearly not having any fun. After only a couple minutes he got into his private car (license plate: BSO 1) and was whisked away.

the maestro

2011-05-28T01:56:00.001-05:00

John Williams conducts the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall.

ice on rocks

2011-05-08T22:32:00.002-05:00

Gooseberry Falls State Park, Lake Superior, December 2010.

observances

2011-05-07T03:39:00.001-05:00

A few more (quite grainy) pics from the impromptu celebration down on the Common.

Was it right to celebrate? The crowd was mostly college students from BU; I'd wager the majority of them weren't yet teenagers on 9/11 (although we all grew up a bit on that day). All I can say is that I was there, and it felt less like a vengeful mob gloating over a death and more like a festival marking the end of an era. I saw Americans from all ethnic backgrounds. I heard no rejoicing in the blood spilled in the past 10 years. I smelled more pot than beer. And I walked away with a shared optimism that together, we had lived through a dark time, and would one day see the dawn of a better one.

Nearly a week later, the problems we face haven't gone away. Circumstances haven't yet changed, and may not. That day, just like election night 2008, and inauguration day 2009, might not bring about all the change many of us hoped for. But I am glad to have lived to see it.

flag and grin

2011-05-02T09:51:00.001-05:00

Early this morning, Boston Common.

don't tread on me

2011-05-02T04:07:00.000-05:00

Early Monday morning, Boston Common.

A group of people—mostly BU students—marched down to the Common to cheer, chant, and sing. Within a couple of hours, the chants of "U-S-A!" had devolved into "BC sucks!" but the spontaneous outpouring of joy was infectious.

police bike and marathon

2011-04-25T08:17:00.002-05:00

St. Mary's and Beacon.

mile 24.5

2011-04-25T01:35:00.002-05:00

St. Mary's and Beacon.

go ellen

2011-04-21T23:03:00.000-05:00

Boston Marathon, Coolidge Corner

picture break

2011-04-20T13:54:00.000-05:00

Boston Marathon, Coolidge Corner.

father and son

2011-04-19T00:32:00.000-05:00

Near Coolidge Corner during the Boston Marathon on Monday.

jiksu

2011-03-24T02:53:00.000-05:00

Hongdae, Seoul, August 2009.

Meeting at the Coffee Bean outside Hongdae-yeok was a habit of ours. On that day we were going to Club Ta for an acoustic show that was part of the Seoul Fringe Festival.

one year ago

2011-03-13T03:59:00.001-05:00

The timestamp on this photo is 2:46 pm, March 11, 2010—exactly one year before the moment that the Sendai earthquake struck Japan.

The timestamp on this photo is 3:55 pm, March 11, 2010—exactly one year before the moment that the ensuing 30 foot tall tsunami struck Sendai and inundated its airport.

It's strange to look through old street shots and realize that you've captured a fleeting moment of another person's reality. Looking through them, I can't help but wonder, where are these people now? What have they been through since then? What joys have they seen, what pains have they suffered? Are they ok?

through foreigners' eyes

2011-03-13T03:37:00.001-05:00

Harajuku, March 11, 2010.

I was in Tokyo one year ago.

As I walked out into the square outside the Harajuku stop on the Yamanote line, I saw a TV crew talking to some Westerners. I went for a walk down the path into the adjacent forest, and when I came back a little bit later, they seemed to be looking around for someone to talk to. I wandered up to them under the pretense of asking them where I was. When they heard me speaking English, they smiled; the one on the right introduced them as producers for Fuji TV. They were working on a segment about what visitors found unique about Japan. "You see your own country fresh through foreigners' eyes," he said. He asked if I had taken any pictures, so I pulled out my Nikon and started going through my shots.

He was particularly interested in a picture of a pay phone I had taken. Why was that interesting? he asked enthusiastically, as if I were about to reveal a stunning insight into the cultural divide between our countries. "Well," I stammered, "the phones here are green... Back home, they're blue."

"Ahhhh!" If he was disappointed in my answer, he did a good job of hiding it.

That night, I emailed him the photo of the phone, as well as a time lapse I had taken at Shibuya the day before. I also sent him this picture of him and his partner. I had read that trading pictures is a polite thing to do in Japan after meeting someone for the first time.

In the aftermath of the Sendai earthquake and tsunami, my thoughts have been with all of the people that I met. I wonder what they're up to, and I hope that they're ok.

6N21

2011-01-19T01:11:00.000-06:00

New York, December 2010.

green line in winter

2011-01-15T01:32:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, at Coolidge Corner.

slushy s

2011-01-14T02:58:00.002-06:00

Wednesday, near Coolidge Corner.

do not enter

2011-01-14T02:58:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, near Coolidge Corner.

biker and truck

2011-01-13T00:45:00.002-06:00

Wednesday, at Harvard and Stearns.

man and brownstone

2011-01-13T00:45:00.000-06:00

Wednesday, at Harvard and Stearns.

january nor'easter

2011-01-13T00:40:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, at Stearns and Harvard, near Coolidge Corner.

ice on rocks

2011-01-09T00:33:00.001-06:00

Split Rock State Park, Lake Superior, December 2010

While I was back home in Duluth/Superior, a lovely afternoon drive with Aaron, Joe, and Christine up the North Shore ended here at Split Rock at sundown.

steam and snow

2011-01-07T01:41:00.002-06:00

Aaron at the Boston Holocaust Memorial, December 2010.

My friend Aaron was last seen on this blog a year ago with the most adorable cat in the world, when I was visiting his hometown of Daejeon. This year, he's studying abroad at UC-Davis and came to visit me over winter break. For his vacation, he started by spending a week in New York City, where I met up with him for an afternoon. We rode the Chinatown bus back to Boston (and lived to tell the tale), hung out around town for a couple days, and then flew back to Minnesota for Christmas and New Years. There was much skiing (of both cross-country and downhill varieties), snowshoeing, coffee drinking with friends, movies with Jeff Bridgeses, taking pictures with freezing hands in the freezing cold, and discussion about hipsters. Suhweeeet!

greenline

2010-12-25T02:45:00.002-06:00

Coolidge Corner, August 2010

Hi there! It's been a great few months—new surroundings, new professors, new friends. And having successfully survived my first semester of grad school, I feel like I'm allowed to indulge myself by firing up Lightroom again and processing some old photos.

On a non-photo related note: In my quest to become an effective communicator of science and sciencey things, I've started a new blog for my attempts in this arena. It is called Airless Saharas, a reference to a quotation from Winwood Reade's The Martyrdom of Man. I have only one post there, but my goal for next semester is to turn this blog into my go-to method of procrastination, so hopefully posts will appear regularly. If you do stop by and read anything I post there, my thanks and appreciation! Feel free to leave me any feedback, if you are so inclined.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

biker

2010-09-04T00:45:00.003-05:00

The Massachusetts Turnpike from Boston University. Thursday, the first day of classes.

Updates will be less frequent now, I suppose. Good luck this fall, everyone!

signing cooking for geeks

2010-08-17T00:53:00.005-05:00

Jeff Potter, author of Cooking For Geeks, this afternoon at Toscannini's Ice Cream, Cambridge. I bought a copy, got free ice cream, an autograph, and even some advice on science writing! What a nice guy!

And, seriously, his book is way cool. Take this delightful passage from a section entitled "310F/154C: Maillard Reactions Become Noticeable":

The Maillard reaction turns foods brown and generates mostly pleasant volatile aromatic compounds. You can thank Maillard reactions for the nice golden-brown color and rich aromas of a Thanksgiving turkey, Fourth of July hamburger, and Sunday brunch bacon. If you're still not able to conjure up the tastes brought about by Maillard reactions, take two slices of white bread and toast them—one until just before it turns brown, the second until it has a golden-brown color—and taste the difference.

The nutty, toasted, complex flavors generated by the Maillard reaction are created by the hundreds of compounds formed when amino acids and certain types of sugars combine and then break down. Named after the French chemist Louis Camille Maillard, who first described it in the 1910s, the Maillard reaction is specifically a reaction between amino acids (from proteins) and reducing sugars, which are sugars that form aldehydes or ketone-based organic compounds in an alkaline solution (which allows them to react with the amines). Glucose, the primary sugar in muscle tissue, is a reducing sugar; sucrose (common table sugar) is not.

And now you know! (Or at least been pleasantly reminded, I'm sure.)

Other items of geeky goodness include doing sous vide in a dishwasher, nuking a hot dog via electrocution, and cooking with liquid nitrogen; and of course, the requisite text on the three forms of heat transfer (particularly helpful is the contour plots showing the temperature gradients in cross-sections of steak in an oven vs. steak on a grill). I know nothing about cooking, but if there were ever a book that could teach me, this is the one.

sun and moon on water

2010-08-13T01:14:00.000-05:00

The Sun and Moon Pagodas, Guilin, June 2009.

You can read more about them at this list of the "7 Most Impressive Pagodas in China". Just scroll down and...hey...doesn't that picture look familiar? ㅋㅋ

moon, sun, and moon

2010-08-12T02:25:00.002-05:00

The Sun and Moon Pagodas, Guilin, June 2009.

girl and chalk

2010-08-11T01:14:00.002-05:00

Guilin, China, June 2009.

xkcd in stock

2010-08-10T02:21:00.000-05:00

I went over to a friend's place in Cambridge last weekend for a Korean food get-together—some delicious 파전 and 만두국. Took quite a while to get there, though, as I failed to realize the Red Line was down. I ended up having to detour on a shuttle bus from the Commons to the Kendall/MIT stop, which is where my heart took a little skip of joy on seeing this. Oh, xkcd...

raft and mountain

2010-08-08T23:17:00.000-05:00

Guilin, June 2009.

green on hat

2010-08-08T00:45:00.001-05:00

Guilin, June 2009.

fields and karst

2010-08-07T00:14:00.001-05:00

Guilin, June 2009.

View original size.

rafters

2010-08-06T03:44:00.001-05:00

Guilin, June 2009.

reaching

2010-08-05T00:13:00.001-05:00

Guilin, June 2009.

karst and blue fields

2010-08-04T02:01:00.000-05:00

Guilin, June 2009.

After the peak in the middle of the city, the driver took us to the outskirts of town, where we could hike up into the peaks and trek across fields.

tired labor

2010-08-04T01:45:00.006-05:00

Guilin, June 2009.

Everywhere we went, we saw tons of workers—more than it seemed economical to employ. Attendants and cashiers had nothing to do. It seemed to be a feature of China's economy (have to keep everyone employed somehow), although perhaps compounded by swine flu fears resulting in a slow domestic tourist season.

guilin

2010-08-01T21:24:00.002-05:00

Guilin, June 2009.
For our first full day in Guilin, we had arranged with our hostel for a driver for the morning. This was the view at our first stop—a karst peak situated in the middle of the city.

See original size.

mint and escalator

2010-08-01T04:36:00.005-05:00

Daeheung Station, Seoul, February 2010

Speaking as an American, banking in Korea is somewhat of an alien experience. I'm used to online banking where I can log in anywhere at anytime, check my balance, and make a transfer or bill pay, even from my iPod.

But not in Korea. Oh, no. The Korean Internet runs on those nasty little buggers known as ActiveX controls. You know, those little creatures of the online netherworld that make their presence known through little pop-down bars that appear in Internet Explorer, asking you to allow them to install themselves like a little man dressed in Arial font with horns on his head and hooves for feet ringing your doorbell and inviting himself in for sweet tea. (Note: If you see this man, do not let him in your house. I read a short story in high school where the girl lets him in, bad things happen, and then at the end, it's all a dream. You wouldn't want to let him in and then find out your entire life was a dream, would you? Unless you have a really miserable life, or the real world you wake into is, like, super cool.) Remember them? That's ok—you probably haven't seen one in years.

In fact, it's better that way. Thats because ActiveX controls are bad things. They take forever to install, they slow everything down, they crap all over the registry; and as my old hogwon boss, Hanson, (who majored in computer science in Maryland) put it, it's lazy programming. Also, they're just plain annoying, and who likes annoying things? Not me, that's for sure, and neither should you. They're bad for your health.

Not to mention, we have (web) standards to adhere to. ActiveX, as a Microsoft-proprietary feature of Windows, is decidedly not standard, and doesn't play well with others. Besides, who even uses IE anymore, anyway? Sheesh.

Well, sadly, Korea does. And everything runs on ActiveX. And ActiveX only runs on Internet Explorer. In Windows.

Firefox? Too bad. Chrome? Haha, that's funny. And if you happen to have in your possession a specimen of that rare species of computer known as a Macintosh (once reportedly sighted in the wild at a coffee shop in Hongdae), you truly are up the the Han River without a paddle (and why would you bother getting one in the first place, since they're all Samsung and LG components inside, anyway).

The bottom line is that Korea became the world's most wired country with massive government backing. But while this intervention kickstarted the fiber optic infrastructure and moved hardware, the heavy-handed requirements for software to prevent against identity theft led programmers to embrace the easiest, most invasive method and predominant platform—ActiveX and Microsoft. (Also, as Hanson says, programmers are just lazy.) Keep in mind, this is from a nation that revered Bill Gates so much at the height of his powers that they took fashion cues from him. The result is that the long arms of the Evil Empire are still flopping around in the rim worlds, even though the head has already been cut off at the galactic core.

In this cartoon from the left-wing newspaper The Hankyoreh, the board reads "Electronic transactions / internet banking" and the ball says "ActiveX", or in Korean, "Aektibeu Aekseu".

Want to check your bank balance? You'll have to install an ActiveX control. Want to make a bank transfer? You'll have to to install another one, plus a standalone program that runs in your system tray, and pay to download a digital certificate file to your computer (which can only exist on one computer at a time, unless you download their software to transfer it to a USB drive which you will need to take with you if you want to make transfers from another computer), and type in a secret 4-digit code that the site directs you to construct from a table of random digits on a security token card issued to you by your bank.

Ok, does that sound like fun? I admit it, it is fun. It turns bank transfers into a labyrinthine exercise somewhat akin to decoding a secret Ovaltine message. But, you have to admit, it is a bit inconvenient.

Nevertheless, there are other upsides to banking in Korea. Paying bills online may be a pain, but it's super fun to do in person, thanks to the bill pay machines that make you feel like you're living in the future. For the uninitiated, it works something like this: You get your bill in the mail, printed on yellowed printer paper circa 1991, complete with the perforated strips of feeder holes on the edges. Printed in the corner will be a box with the letters "OCR". As you may have guessed, this probably stands for Optical Character Recognition, but who knows for sure; in practical terms, what it means is that your bill is magical.

You take this to the bank, to a magic machine next to the ATM. You wait in line; then, when it's your turn, hold up the rest of the line while you have lots of fun tearing off the the feeder hole strips. You try to remember the right sequence of buttons to push to enter bill-pay mode; they are all in Korean, and your Korean friend tried to translate them for you once, but you gave up and decided to just memorize the order. After failing to remember said order, you wave frantically at the attendant for help, who presses the buttons for you. You insert the bill into the machine. Then, magic occurs. When the magic is over, the machine displays the name of the bill sender and the amount of money they want from you. It asks you to confirm it, but since you don't read Korean very quickly, you decide not to hold up the line and trust the magical machine.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is to say how surprised I was when, over the winter, the largest bank in Korea, Shinhan Bank, rolled out a huge marketing campaign touting its support for Mint.com, the online budgeting and financial planning site. I remembered it was a darling of tech blogs and Silicon Valley a couple years back, before it got bought out by Intuit, the makers of Quicken—but never did I see a shred of advertising for it in the real world. It does basically what Quicken does—allow you to track your expenses and budget your spending—but easier, more elegantly, and online, by automatically downloading your transaction history from your own bank's online banking service. No wonder Intuit bought them—Mint would have destroyed them.

And no wonder Shinhan Bank partnered with them—integration with an online banking service as intuitive and powerful as Mint is a—ahem—breath of fresh air.

EDIT: Since posting this, I've realized that Korea recently passed legislation undoing the ActiveX requirements for online banking! Huzzah!

buses and hills

2010-07-29T01:21:00.003-05:00

Guilin, China, June 2009.

Guilin was our first planned destination on the mainland. Flying in China is cheap—Europe, RyanAir cheap. A ticket for the two hour flight from Shenzhen to Guilin was $30.

The Guilin area is known for its scenery (an ancient Chinese proverb is "East or west, Guilin scenery is the best", as we were constantly reminded by tourist promotions), especially the karst peaks that line the Yi River and, here, punctuate the cityscape. It's really quite surreal to see these craggy green pillars towering over their surroundings in the middle of the city. I pictured them being pulled up out of the ground by some sort of transmutation or black magic. Sadly, Wikipedia dashed my alchemic fantasies by informing me otherwise. Luckily, the truth is almost as cool—the peaks are formed by particularly hard veins of limestone that remain standing while the rest of the ground erodes away around them.

lights over heads

2010-07-27T00:15:00.007-05:00

Mong Kok, Hong Kong, June 2009

I finally decided to commit to centralizing all my email accounts in one Gmail account to manage them from. This meant setting up my new account to import all the email from the account that I've used as my primary account for the past 6 years. When I started this process, I quickly realized that the new account, which I've been using sporadically, was still set up to auto-forward all the mail it was receiving back to my old account, which I'm still using as my primary account until the import finishes. I tried to change the settings so that all imported mail would skip the inbox, but for some reason, this isn't working for messages sent to one of my old accounts—the one I used for my family and friends.

That was 3 days ago. The import process is still ongoing. The result is that all of my old correspondence is showing up in my mailbox as new mail at the rate of about 2 weeks per hour. It's like living the past 6 years of my life in a meta-epistolary time lapse, or being inside a film written by Charlie Kauffman. I've been conditioned over my lifetime to respond in Pavlovian fashion to the ping of a new email. Now, the messages are from old friends, close friends, lost friends—reappearing in my life with a forgotten immediacy from contexts gone by.

Apologies for all the old pictures, but it's just been that kind of week. This is Hong Kong's Mong Kok shopping district—as Joe put it, the stereotypical Hong Kong image.

escalator

2010-07-26T00:56:00.002-05:00

Ocean Park, Hong Kong, June 2009.
The aquatic-themed amusement park Ocean Park on Hong Kong Island contains the world's second-longest outdoor escalator. *The more you know*

dhl

2010-07-25T01:52:00.000-05:00

Seoul, July 2009.
While I was living in Seoul, I walked past this building every afternoon to go to work and every night to go back home.

hkust hdr

2010-07-23T01:44:00.000-05:00

When we got back from Diamond Hill that night, we took a walk down by the waterfront, where I took this HDR looking back up at the campus. Hampus and I were talking about HDR and how the technique is often unfairly maligned when you get a bit overzealous in the processing. But he also made the very astute observation that the process of shooting HDR is just plain fun—in that, in a sense, the post-processing that it requires makes the process a bit like shooting film. There's an element of mystery and surprise. You don't get to instantly preview the result; you have to take the files back home with you, and you never know quite what you're going to get until you start the processing.

ddr at diamond hill

2010-07-21T23:00:00.003-05:00

Hampus, a friend of Joe's that I met in Hong Kong, gets his DDR on at the Diamond Hill Mall—an example of what he poetically called Hong Kong's "copy-paste" malls that seem to greet you at every MTR stop.

little tony

2010-07-21T00:42:00.003-05:00

Avenue of Stars, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, May 2009.

Tony Leung, of Hero, Infernal Affairs, and Wong Kar Wai fame. Last week, I finished watching Red Cliff—John Woo's recent 5-hour costume war epic that he starred in.

I started watching it almost a year ago, sometime while I was in Seoul, 20 minutes at a time every night. A typical one was grabbing dinner for takeout at a kimbap shop around 8 or 9pm when I was finished with classes and prepping for the next day. I'd walk back home in darkness, maybe pick up some ice cream from a 7-Eleven or Family Mart, and take the elevator up to my tiny 5th floor studio, turn on either the AC or the ondol floor heat, and settle down with my bi bim bap, kimchi jigae, or donkatsu in front of my computer monitor to watch either 20 minutes of a movie, or an episode of John Stewart or Colbert; Comedy Central's streams was the only network I could find that didn't region block its streaming sites in Korea.

Incidentally, I was amused to find that Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Show are some of the most popular, most-pirated US TV shows in Korea. They have online groups that fansub TV rips of new episodes in the days after they're broadcast in the States—just like we do to anime over here.

fire and camera

2010-07-20T00:43:00.003-05:00

Ocean Park, an amusement park in Hong Kong, June 2009.

I have to admit—showing off and sharing gadgets is one of my favorite things to do.

The camera is an F5—one of the last professional film models that Nikon made. It belongs to the kid on the left, who had gotten it two days before this picture was taken. His English name is Fire. How cool is that?

trio at sunrise

2010-07-19T01:15:00.002-05:00

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, May 2009.

My first morning in Hong Kong.

green trash

2010-07-17T23:27:00.001-05:00

798 Art Zone, Beijing, June 2009.

There were tons of artists whose work I loved and whose names I wrote down. They included the artists Xue Zheng (for his digital paintings) and Liu Rendao, and the photographers Yang Yankang, Wang Wenlan, and Lou Jiaxiang. Sadly, had a hard time finding anything about them on Google without knowing the Chinese characters.

But the landscape photographer Chen Fuli is particularly amazing, as well as the others exhibited at at the 798 Photo Gallery. The featured exhibit was Chen's work combining painted figures on his landscapes, and they are awesome.

Interestingly, we saw a lot of artists selling t-shirts and bags with Communist Party logos and symbols on it that, given the setting and the vibe, were clearly meant ironically. As much of a tourist attraction as the 798 Art Zone has come to be in recent years, you can feel the subversive undercurrent, with real stakes attached.

huhnholt

2010-07-17T02:47:00.000-05:00

Original East German machinery at the 798 Space, Beijing, June 2009.

red letters

2010-07-16T00:48:00.001-05:00

798 Space, Beijing, June 2009.

nasa, science, and the muslim world

2010-07-15T00:43:00.002-05:00

Shuttle Discovery, STS-131 launch, April 5, 2010.

There is more fallout today from the Charles Bolden interview with Al Jazeera.

Yesterday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs seemed to deny that President Obama had NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had wanted him to reach out to the Muslim world.

Q    I wanted to ask you, there are some comments that the NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden, made a couple weeks back that drew some interest, specifically from conservatives who are wondering why we he said that one of the charges that the President gave him when he got the job was that he had to focus on outreach to the Muslim world. Why is the NASA Administrator doing that?

MR. GIBBS: That's an excellent question, and I don't think—that was not his task, and that's not the task of NASA.

Q    So did he just misspeak?

MR. GIBBS: I think so.

Q    Has the President spoken to him about that clear it up?

MR. GIBBS: No.

Q    Anybody here at the White House?

MR. GIBBS: I’m sure people -- people at the White House here talk to NASA all the time.

This was, in my opinion, essentially throwing Bolden under the bus, and it is a very, very bad move. Instead of sticking to its guns, the administration backed away from being linked publicly to very good principles, principles that were part of its very platform—outreach to Muslims, international collaboration, and a commitment to science—all in an attempt to avoid political damage. Now, their attempt to push these policies under the rug is coming back to bite them politically as their opponents are seizing on reports from others in the know who can confirm that these initiatives did exist:

Call it a failure to launch.

The White House is disavowing a plan to have NASA conduct outreach to Muslim countries, but a congressman who talked to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden about that plan last month said the initiative was very real until somebody slammed the brakes on it.

Rep. Pete Olson, ranking Republican on the Space and Aeronautics House Subcommittee, told FoxNews.com that Bolden described the outreach program as part of the administration's space plan during a conversation they had in June.

"He confirmed it to me," Olson said. The Texas Republican said he thinks the program existed until the "uproar" compelled the administration to rethink it.

I think this is more important than I originally thought, because it's now starting to turn on the fundamental debate of what NASA's role should be, and exposing the disconnect between what some people think NASA should do and what NASA actually does.

Policymakers tend to think of NASA primarily in terms of it being a projection of American exceptionalism and a symbol of national prestige. The rationale for supporting NASA, and the politics of it securing funding, revolves around a mentality that dates back to the Cold War—that as the world's leading power, we ought to be leaders in space exploration. It's also a powerful symbolic link to our national historic self-image as frontiersmen and explorers.

But of course, that's not the whole picture. NASA isn't just a space agency; it's also a science agency—like NOAA, like the National Institute of Health, like the US Geological Survey. Like these agencies, it employs scientists and supports thousands more, funding them and providing resources for their experiments and observations.

Just how much? Well, in the 2010 fiscal year, NASA's budget contains just under $4.5 billion in funding in the category of "science". That's pure, unadulterated science—money that goes to funding researchers, to building telescopes, to paying the stipends of graduate students vying to become our nation's next generation of astrophysicists, astronomers, and space scientists (like me). That's as much as got spent on the space shuttle, and almost half as much again ($3.1 billion). It's way more than got spent on the International Space Station ($2.3 billion). And keep in mind, this is before the shuttle program winds down its operations. Next year, when the shuttle is retired, science funding for NASA will surpass its entire space operations budget. Commentators who snark that NASA will then have nothing to do don't understand just how much NASA already does to perform and support pure science.

And so when Charles Bolden talks about collaborating with Muslim nations, it isn't just about sharing engineering expertise—it's also about scientific expertise. It's about nurturing a generation of scientists so that not only are they able to share the fruits of their research with the rest of the scientific community, but also establish themselves as public intellectuals in their own nations, thereby elevating the status of science in their societies.

How exactly does NASA do this? By sharing data. Here's an article from last December:

[NASA assistant administrator of external affairs Michael O'Brien] said Nasa would sign a deal with Oman’s ministry of education that would allow it to take part in Globe, the agency’s environment-monitoring education programme.

Saudi Arabia will also sign a deal allowing it to participate in the Nasa Lunar Institute, an exchange programme for lunar research and scientists, this week.

Nasa will also be collaborating with the Arab Youth Venture Foundation, a Ras al Khaimah-based non-profit organisation, to coach Emirati students at the Ames Research Centre in California.

Do the people who are currently blasting Obama understand that this is what NASA outreach to the Muslim world looks like? Do they really think that this is such a waste of time? Because this is simply NASA upholding its motto: "For the benefit of all."

standing waves

2010-07-15T00:35:00.001-05:00

798 Space, Beijing, June 2009.

798 space

2010-07-13T23:26:00.002-05:00

798 Space, Beijing, June 2009

When Joe and I were in Beijing, we spent an afternoon in the Factory 798 district. Originally an old, East German-designed weapons factory complex, the buildings are now all occupied by artists and their galleries and is the epicenter of the Beijing art scene. This particular building is the 798 Space gallery and is probably the most iconic gallery there, and for good reason—it's an awesome space.

exit in green

2010-07-13T01:50:00.001-05:00

Tate Lab of Physics, University of Minnesota, February 2009.

sun on bridge

2010-07-12T01:32:00.001-05:00

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, June 2009.

Thank you, World Cup.

Thank you, ESPN3.com. Thank you, Martin Tyler; thank you, Ian Darke; thank you, John Harkes and your sometime-Scottish accent. Thank you Diego Maradona, for living your self-caricature. Thank you, USMNT, especially Rob Greene. 감사합니다, Taeguk Warriors. Dankie, South Africa. Good luck, Brazil; see you in 2014.

To Paul the Octopus: Why are you guys so chewy? You should work on your texture, make it less like rubber.

alley and water

2010-07-11T02:14:00.003-05:00

Today we had a horrendous downpour that lasted 10 minutes and completely flooded the alley just outside our windows. It was so bad that my roommate's room ceiling started to leak—torrentially. It was raining inside his room just as hard as outside. It was very surreal, like the monsoon scene in Jumanji. We think the apartment above us must have left their windows open, and their floor became flooded and leaked through. Luckily, my roomie was around to salvage all of his belongings before they became soaked.

please close gate

2010-07-10T01:34:00.001-05:00

Allston-Brighton, yesterday.

Jesus, the door's open!

window and beads

2010-07-08T01:15:00.000-05:00

The view from my window on January 4, 2010, in the midst of Seoul's largest snowfall on record in 70 years of keeping them. It was a snow day for us and the kids. The city shut down, completely unable to cope. I watched rear-wheel drive luxury cars sitting helplessly at stoplights, having unwisely stopped for red lights and unable to extricate themselves from the completely unplowed intersections in the middle of downtown. People would have spent the day shoveling, if they owned any shovels. (The sidewalks were covered in that uneven, packed-snow/ice crust for weeks.) It was glorious.

I would trade most things for weather like that today. It was 100 degrees in Boston yesterday, and the air conditioning on our floor in the astronomy department was out. We're doing some contingency planning in case the AC goes out in the basement—that's where the lab is with the vacuum chamber where we're assembling the payload for our sounding rocket with all sorts of sensitive (and very expensive) equipment that won't play too well in any humidity.

charlie bolden meets the press (al jazeera)

2010-07-06T22:00:00.004-05:00

Sunrise over Cape Canaveral, the Kennedy Space Center (the structure below and just to the right of the sun is Pad 39A, and the square block in the center of the horizon is the Vehicle Assembly Building), and the remnants of Shuttle Discovery's contrail from the launch of STS-131, April 5, 2010

In the past couple of days, NASA administrator Charles Bolden has been hit with a wave of criticism from conservative bloggers and commentators after reports emerged that he said in an interview with Al Jazeera,

When I became the NASA Administrator—before I became the NASA Administrator—[President Obama] charged me with three things: One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.

Here's the video (the question in question begins at 40 seconds):

John Derbyshire said it shows that NASA now serves "the great Obamanian cause of infantilizing and feminizing us." Charles Krauthammer called it "a new height in fatuousness":

And conservative bloggers everywhere are up in arms over it.

This angers me on many levels.

1) It's a continuation of the destructive strategy of political attacks by stripping away context. Some are trying to pretend that Bolden is laying out a grand policy realignment that deemphasizes space exploration when he's clearly talking about outreach initiatives and answering the interviewer's question, "Why are you here [in the Middle East]?"

Now, is outreach to Muslim countries really the "foremost" of the three? Well, maybe, maybe not. And is "help them feel good" really the most artful phrasing he could have used? Ok, definitely not. But perhaps Bolden, given the fact that he was on an outreach mission to the Middle East and speaking to Al Jazeera, was just a bit eager to please; I think we can cut him a little slack here.

2) This is obscuring the fact that NASA does carry soft power—it is surely the program that's generated the most goodwill and support for America since the Marshall Plan—and it can (ought to, even) be wielded through international collaboration. Furthermore, with respect to troubled nations in the Middle East, scientific thinking and research and development is crucial groundwork for a modern economy and society, and NASA can serve as one of our strongest projections of those values. Nurturing science in hostile societies is not easy—we're having quite a time of it even here—but it is one of the most noble things we can do. This is what Bolden means when he says that NASA is "not only a space exploration agency, but also an earth improvement agency."

3) This should never have been a story in the first place—NASA should have been aggressively pushing back on this the minute that conservative bloggers picked this up. The interview was aired last Wednesday, June 30. I first came across the story on Memeorandum two days ago, on the night of July 4, when the lone citation was Powerline Blog. Over the past two days, I've watched in agony as this story has been picked up by the rest of the conservative blogosphere and risen all the way to Fox News. It wasn't until today that NASA offered an official defense:

"Bob Jacobs, NASA's assistant administrator for public affairs, told Fox News on Tuesday that Bolden was speaking of priorities when it came to "outreach" and not about NASA's primary missions of "science, aeronautics and space exploration." Still, he said, "international cooperation and collaboration is important to the future of space exploration." Jacobs said he will let the administrator's comments "speak for themselves," but said it was unfortunate those comments are now being viewed through a "partisan prism."

In a sense, NASA got caught out by the fact that the story hit the mainstream media on July 4th, a Sunday, and then the following Monday was also a federal holiday. But in an age where NASA has over 50 Twitter accounts, could not one person who writes just one of those have put out a 140-character pushback defending Bolden, NASA's soft power, and international collaboration?

4) The target in all of this is not NASA. The target is President Obama's vision for NASA (which is shared by Bolden), which advocates a leaner, more nimble agency by stripping out some of its large development programs in favor of cutting-edge research. The hope is that private space corporations will take up the slack in low earth orbit and even out to the moon, while NASA focuses on a heavy-lift rocket that will take astronauts to the asteroids, Mars, and beyond.

However, this future isn't very appealing to the Congressmen and Senators whose districts and states stand to lose jobs and economic activity when these NASA programs are cut. This, along with what I consider to be a misplaced nostalgia for NASA's golden age as a massive Manhattan Project-type government effort, is serving to prop up the bureaucratic behemoth that NASA has become—a space-industrial complex—and Bolden's comments are giving fuel to the critics that are trying to prevent the very transformation that he is trying to effect.

sailor and red bag

2010-07-05T22:57:00.004-05:00

Government Center, Boston, July 4, 2010.

boston drain

2010-07-05T01:17:00.003-05:00

North End, Boston, July 4, 2010.

daytona in glasses

2010-07-04T01:59:00.000-05:00

If it's the Fourth of July weekend, it must be...NASCAR racing! Yes, the annual Firecracker 400, held under the lights at Daytona International Speedway! I even passed on going to the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular rehearsal tonight to watch the race.

It was the first race at Daytona that I'd watched since visiting the track in April.

thank you.

2010-07-03T10:53:00.000-05:00

A veteran at a rally for Korean War vet rights, Hongdae, June 2009.

One week ago, June 25, was the 60th anniversary of the invasion of South Korea by North Korea which marked the start of the Korean War.

Yesterday, July 2, was my arrival day, very special for my family and me. I just want to say, especially after the last year, that being a Korean-American has never been anything other than pure awesome, and I just want to thank everyone who contributed to me being here. You guys are the best.

대~한민국!

2010-07-01T00:17:00.002-05:00

Korea Republic vs. Australia friendly, Seoul World Cup Stadium, September, 2010.

The doors opened. We staggered out of the subway train into the station—a newly-arrived tour group of adoptees and our families, our eyes assaulted by the bright fluorescent lights, our brains still reeling from end-of-the-first-day jet lag. I could feel the rumble in my chest as the train sped off into the tunnel at the end of the station. But when it subsided, I became aware of a roar, punctuated by a rhythmic pounding like a distant war beat. My jet-lagged mind snapped into awareness as we stepped onto the escalator. Lifting our heads towards the noise from above, we saw lights cutting through the patch of night sky above us, growing larger and larger until...

We broke ground level and emerged upon the greatest scene I’ve ever witnessed. In front of us, a forest of thundersticks in a broad canyon of skyscrapers, stretching off into space, dancing in unison to the pounding beat. Underneath them, a vast sea of people sitting knee-to-knee, completely filling a street wider than any I had ever imagined; chanting at the top of their lungs in a language I felt a primeval bond with despite not understanding a word. “What are they saying?” I asked the girl next to me. “Hail Do-min-go?” She couldn’t hear me. On the enormous screen that stood off in the distance, across the vast multitude of people below: live, the third place game of the World Cup. Men in red and blue jerseys flitted across the green field, casting a glowing, dynamic, Technicolor blanket on the crowd—a nation living its dream, willing itself on. I stood stunned while I soaked the scene up. And then I began to wade into the crowd, screaming along with them.

How many people were there around me? Seven hundred thousand, I read in an English-language paper the next day. It might as well have been the entire nation. Where were we? City Hall? It didn’t really matter. At that moment, it felt like the center of the universe.

I was 15, and I was back in Seoul for the first time.

clouds over brookline

2010-06-29T23:01:00.000-05:00

After a rain shower last week, across the street from my apartment in Allston.

korea fighting! part 2

2010-06-28T19:50:00.000-05:00

Some more pics from the Korea-Uruguay game at Myung Dong in Allston.

korea fighting!

2010-06-28T00:52:00.002-05:00

I love my neighborhood. I signed the summer lease for my bedroom in the Allston neighborhood of Boston sight unseen. As it just so happens, I live in a bit of a Korean district.

Hangeul is everywhere--there's half a dozen Korean restaurants, two Korean hair salons, a Korean grocery, and a Korean clinic and acupuncturist all on my block. Oh, and the neighborhood liquor store has soju. On the advice of my friend Eunjoo, I watched the Korea-Uruguay World Cup match last Saturday at Myung Dong 1st Ave down the block. It opened at 9 for the game and quickly filled up with Korea supporters--the Red Devils, as we call ourselves--with even more looking in from outside on the street.

Inside, the place is a great evocation of the Korean drinking scene--the grungy decor of your typical hof, complete with Christmas lights, serving up OB, Hite, anju, and street food fare. The 떡볶이 and 퇴김 that we ordered along with our 맥주 was perfect for the game, when my chopsticks weren't rendered useless by my hands shaking from the intensity of it all. It was a fantastic atmosphere, and a good substitute for being on the streets of Seoul.

field and houses

2010-06-25T02:08:00.000-05:00

Ian Darke: That's a good ball, he's found there, to Guedioura, who plays it deep--Saifi! With a header.

Howard gratefully claims it--distribution, brilliant. Landon Donovan. There are things on here for the USA. Can they do it here? Cross--and Dempsey is denied again!--and Donovan has scored! Oh, can you believe this? Go, go, USA! Certainly through! Oh, it's incredible! You could not write a script like this!

[27 seconds of silence]

[The replay is shown]
John Harkes: Well, here is the ball here-- [chokes up]

Ian Darke: --played in, and it comes out here to Landon Donovan, who strikes again. What a golden goal for the USA! If you're just joining us, there it is--the moment, deep, deep into the match to give the USA, surely, a place in the last 16! It is breathtakingly exciting!
--USA v. Algeria, Group C, World Cup, June 23, 2010

It's been a day since the goal that changed everything for US soccer, and Ian Darke's brilliant call still gives me chills. I watched it projected in a lecture hall with a bunch of other folks in the astro department here at BU. It was a moment that, as Donovan said, makes me believe in the good in the world.

One thing though--I got a bit carried away there. This isn't the turning point for soccer in the US--this is its coming out party. So many reporters and pundits are wondering if this is the breakthrough, if this is truly the moment that elevates soccer to big-time status in America, if it's finally made it. What they don't seem to realize is that America is already a soccer nation--you just have to look at the population under 20 to see that it's true.

Glenn Beck recently ranted:

It doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn’t matter how many bars open early, it doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run, we don’t want the World Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.”

Now, Glenn Beck is right--by and large, people don't get converted to sports. Oh, sure, the US men's national team is going to have a lot of support over the next few days, and possibly weeks, should they push deeper into the tournament. But the vast majority of these people are not going to wind up as soccer fans. They're not going to actively seek out MLS, or follow the European leagues. When the World Cup is over, and when Donovan's Wheaties box is taken off the shelves, people will forget about the Messis and Altidores, the Maradonnas and Bradleys...until four years from now, when they'll wonder what happened to them, shrug their shoulders, and get swept back up into the spirit of the World Cup. And that's great! That's what the World Cup is about, transcending sport and uniting nations. But these are not the fans that make soccer a great American sport.

What Glenn Beck doesn't realize is that for America to become a soccer nation, the US men's team doesn't have to convert a single fan. All they have to do is wait out the inexorable, inevitable demographic turnover that will take place when Glenn Beck grows old, and the kids of today are running the world (and writing out his social security checks). Because thanks to the internet and cable TV, they are the first generation of Americans to grow up in a world where they can surround themselves with professional soccer, following the sport at its highest levels (i.e., the European ones). My generation (and those before me) had no domestic league or any media coverage of the international game; without heroes to worship, we were doomed to see soccer as a youth sport, something to grow out of. But these kids, they never had to be converted to watching soccer--they speak it natively. For on the internet, it's just as easy to follow Arsenal as it is to check the score of the Twins game, it's just as easy to YouTube David Beckham's free kicks as it is Brett Favre's touchdown passes, and they've been doing it their entire childhoods.

So don't be crushed if we get knocked out by Ghana on Saturday--the battle has already been won. The sleeping giant is not just awakened, but checking its email and eating its Pop Tarts. There's an army of true soccer fans hiding underground, in their parents' basements, communicating through channels hidden to the masses, coming ever closer to that inevitable, glorious day when they will rise up and soccer will assume its rightful place as an American sport.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

walrus

2010-06-22T23:21:00.000-05:00

Loring Park, May 2010. The fried egg sandwich at Nick and Eddie is $6 and probably the best thing fried eggs have ever been a part of.

sunrise on i-35

2010-06-21T21:28:00.001-05:00

Cruising up I-35 after an all-nighter with friends in the Cities. June, 2010.

I recently read about a new Lee Friedlander book out called America By Car on one of my favorite photography blogs, The Online Photographer, who noted it was "Sure to be quirky, real, and funky. Who else would take landscapes the way we mostly actually see them, with the car in the way?"

park and recreation

2010-06-20T22:51:00.001-05:00

St. Anthony Main, May 2010.

book and doors

2010-06-19T00:58:00.001-05:00

Newbury St., Boston, June 2010

There are so many things you can learn about, but
You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.
The more that you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

If you read with your eyes shut, you’re likely to find
That the place where you’re going is far, far behind.
So that’s why I tell you to keep your eyes wide,
Keep them wide open...at least on one side!

--Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

flower and city

2010-06-18T01:08:00.000-05:00

Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong, June 2009.
This was our last morning in Hong Kong. We stayed in a guesthouse in the Chungking Mansions (a surprisingly clean and modern one, kept by a charming old man who didn't speak a word of English). This flower perched on a window sill above my bed, just sheltered from the buzzing metropolis outside, reminded me of the game Flower.

grain belt beer

2010-06-10T02:44:00.002-05:00

Went on a fantastic little photo walk around the Warehouse District a couple weeks ago with my friends Eric, Steph, and Jules; awesome folks all.

upper falls (gooseberry)

2010-06-09T00:56:00.001-05:00

A lovely hike through Gooseberry with Allison a couple weeks ago.

red 19, standing by

2010-06-07T23:52:00.000-05:00

My brother, at the NSC Cup in Blaine, MN, May 2010. Happy graduation; congrats!

tree in inlet

2010-06-06T04:42:00.000-05:00

Billings Park at sunset last week with Allison.

trash on beach

2010-06-05T00:57:00.001-05:00

Ft Meyers, April 2010.

girl on rocks

2010-06-04T00:03:00.001-05:00

Cheonggyecheon, July 2009.

clothes on blocks

2010-06-03T04:01:00.000-05:00

Daytona Beach, April 2010.

balconies on blue

2010-06-02T04:47:00.002-05:00

Daytona Beach, April 2010.

two towers

2010-05-29T01:41:00.000-05:00

The Lotte City Hotel Mapo towers over Gongdeok Station at sunset. From the window of my old studio in Seoul, July 2009.

boat and gulls

2010-05-28T03:18:00.001-05:00

On the ferry from Incheon to Ganghwado, July 2009.

HY

2010-05-27T04:47:00.002-05:00

Ganghwado, July 2009.

wall at suwon

2010-05-26T03:34:00.003-05:00

Suwon, June 2009. A great day trip from Seoul--just hop the no. 1 metro line and take it all the way to the Suwon stop.

Tribune Tower, Chicago, March 2008

colobus at the zoo

2010-05-24T03:50:00.000-05:00

Went to the zoo with Allison on a warm Duluth day last week--hadn't been in quite a long time.