In the 1950's South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world - now they boast one of the fastest internet in the world, 4 to 10 times the speed of the internet in the USA, where it actually started /  by mirena

In the 1950's South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world with an annual income of 67 dollars per person. Now Korea is one of the leading nations for innovation and technology .... I do not usually discuss economics as it is in my mind one unworthy of debate, at least until we have discussed the humanistic ideas that should govern our society instead. But I love the stories of Korea and Japan, and I also have a Korean last name. It is very personal to me, and I am interested in how these two nations came together to build technologically advanced societies and keep their traditions and values intact. I remember seeing Japanese teenagers talking on the phone and bowing to the person on the other end of the line. It really is a striking way of relating to others. It has always fascinated me to see a working harmony between a highly developed technological society and traditional social order.

Anyway, here we go, a snippet from a PBS/BBC documentary series produced in the 90's :

 

Mimsy, chortle, and galumph: Alice in Wonderland and the portmanteau /  by mirena

Mimsy, chortle, and galumph: Alice in Wonderland and the portmanteau  

I read a New York Times review of Jurassic World where they called the movie "galumphing franchise reboot" and decided to look up the word, as I didn't remember it from Lewis Carroll’s book.  Lewis Carroll  invented many fun words, including "chortle".

Here is a great Oxford Dictionary article on this and other fun words. An excerpt about the portmanteaus of today:

The portmanteau today

Today there are numerous portmanteaus in the English language and the act of portmanteau-ing (yes, it’s a verb too) has become fairly linguistically productive. Some common and well-known portmanteaus include:

smog: smoke+fog Obamacare: Obama+healthcare infomercial: information+commercial jeggings: jeans+leggings breathalyzer: breath+analyzer Oxbridge: Oxford+Cambridge bromance: ‘bro’+romance

Roadside Attraction /  by mirena

Roadside Attraction is an installation I thought of several years ago as an all American, amusement park type of work, a freak show on the side of the road or a wagon that could be part of a fair. Could be even setup on a remote country road, doesn't matter. Without and far removed from formal art experiences but using the materials and methods that belong in an artist's studio, and, of course , the provocation. Roadside Attraction was conceived as a circus at a truck stop. I have always been fascinated by American truckers, hauling large trailers on American highways. Last year I drove solo 3000 miles from Florida's Space Coast to the Silicon Valley in California where I spent a large portion of my life in a not so distant past. While on the road I had plenty of time to think, especially driving through West Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. I am convinced that at that moment I had the tiniest car in all of Texas, In one small dusty town I  suddenly feared that cowboys, who were prowling the nearby hills hunting boar, may actually decide to shoot my tires for fun.

So Roadside Attraction has probably lingered on the back of my head ever since I started moving across the Untied States - I once crossed the States along highway 80 ( Kansas, Colorado, etc) and once along 10 ( Mississippi, Texas, etc ), of course not counting flying. Mississippi had absolutely the worst roads I had ever come across as far as Federal Highways go. I thought I had broken an axel - my little Hundai was shaking so bad and I was in the middle of nowhere in the deep south with a tiny car full of luggage.

Recently I thought of changing the continent for Roadside Attraction which will change its spirit, which is okay. We can always make it a multi-continent adventure. More soon.

 

 

Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics /  by mirena

I am interested in how scientists and philosophers interpret the world we live in today, as I interpret the world as an artist. One of The Interpretation Of Quantum Mechanics is the Many Worlds one - this is one of the most beautiful and favorite things of mine to read  about since I absolutely understand none of it. Like Narnia for adults. I love the idea of a schizophrenic universe. To quote something I read at random on the internet: "When a universe "splits" (it doesn't really - it just looks like it has, but that's a long story), and assuming you accept consciousness as an emergent phenomena of the physical brain, then your consciousness splits too. And as events in the two universes drift apart, so do the copies of the consciousness."

Here is a paper that talks about the rise of the Many Worlds interpretation as the main challenger to the status quo interpretation:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9709032v1.pdf

So what is the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?

Here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/#2.1

A Life in Japan - Documentary (English with English subtitles) /  by mirena

it is a mystery why I became obsessed with Japan, after all I was born 9016.92 kilometers, 5602.86 miles miles and 4868.75 nautical miles from it. What portion of the neural paths in my brain decided to connect with the image of Japan, made me think and read about it? Where I grew up there was very little information and attachment to Japanese things and my first visual contact with Japan was through a Taschen book on Japanese Gardens. When I moved to the States - it was in Northern California and the Bay Area was very connected to Japanese culture. One of my landlords used to tell me a story about Japanese businessman coming to the Silicon Valley before it was the Silicon Valley and waving 100 bills in bars, while supposedly looking for investment opportunities in the daytime. I went to Japan on two occasions and especially the second time - on a solo trip with my camera - I felt a deep pull towards every single train, temple, crowded intersection, pond, sand pattern, high tech shop and piece of sushi. I am still mystified as to why.

I never considered living in Japan as I don't believe I will be happy with the day to day subduedness of life. But there are so many threads still connecting me, emotionally and artistically, to Japan, that I technically don't need to.

IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? /  by mirena

O CT OB ER, 1 8 9 5. IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? Read more here.

WHEN Mr. Mallock's book with this title appeared some fifteen years ago, the jocose answer that " it depends on the liver" had great currency in the newspapers. The answer that I propose to give today cannot be jocose. In the words of one of Shakespeare's prologues, " I come no more to make you laugh; things now that bear a weighty and a serious brow, sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,"