Hotashi - Jack’s Blog

In my earlier post, I brought up an anti-Asian “satire” piece that ran in University of Colorado’s school newspaper. I mentioned that the column did not read like a satire to me, but I didn’t fully extend on that. Truth be told, I’m no literary expert, so it’s hard to explain it in technical terms. However, I found a follow-up comment on another blog that goes into better detail on why Karson’s article is not satire.

Taken from Alas, a blog.

satire is a punch in the eye of Power. satire’s anger, its needle, is directed upward - never downward. if it is, then it ceases to be satire and it’s just another way for those in power to bully the powerless or to scream to the public that you’re just another tool of the status quo.

this is satire:

it is a precise literary term (which means you have to have some measure of intellectual weight to pull it off, which Karson doesn’t)
in satire, your target is held up to merciless ridicule that is often very angry, ideally in the hope of shaming your target into reform (what is Karson advocating for reform? asians themselves or the treatment of asians on campus?)

it has a strong vein of irony or sarcasm (parody, burlesque, exaggeration and double entendre are all devices frequently used in satirical speech and writing - again, pointing to intellectual rigor in the person who calls herself a satirist, and while Karson’s piece is certainly full of sarcasm the racial justice angle is completely submerged, thus undercutting any satirical purpose.)

who is the target of Karson’s ire or sarcasm?
certainly not the white power structure that marginalizes a community of color on campus, making them a racial Other.
certainly not asian stereotype - in fact, his piece replicates them and justifies them.

asian students are the target of his clumsy sarcasm and ’satire’ and to what end? there is none, except to vent some feelings of inadequacy. Karson, as part of the white majority, is bullying a racial minority on campus and joking about reeducation camps so that they can be more ‘white.’ how is this column supposed to criticize the marginalization of asians on campus, or the treatment of asians on campus, or anything about racial justice??

it doesn’t do any of those things so it just becomes, perhaps inadvertently, a racist fantasy of forced assimilation.

There’s been a recent incident at the University of Colorado where Karson, a writer for the school newspaper, wrote a racist commentary about hatred towards Asian students. In the “satire” the writer talks about kidnapping Asian students at the school and torturing them.

Even if it was meant to be a satire, it was written in poor taste, the should never have been published. What is the point of the article? It doesn’t really read as a satire to me. There was no wit in the article. Usually satires expose logical follies in the exact argument it supposedly tries to defend. The impression Karson’s article gave me is that it’s just an outlet for the author to spew racist comments under the veil of making a satirical commentary. But hey, maybe that’s just me, you can make up your own mind after reading the article.

If you work as a programmer then you know as well as anyone that you just can’t work so many hours in a row. For myself, I usually have to take a break after 2-3 hours of working max. Programming takes tremendous amounts of brain power, so have to take a breather every once in a while. I spent most of my free time reading blog posts, and I find it easier to use an RSS reader so you only have to go to one place to get all your blog-reading fix. I personally prefer using Bloglines, their interface is great — especially the new beta version. Another good choice is Google Reader, which you can actually incorporate into your iGoogle portal page. There are many others out there, so find one your like and use it. Now for the good part. :)

I’m gonna list the blogs I frequent the most, ordered by my visiting frequency.

1. Lifehacker: Hands down my favourite website to read. You get “tech tricks, tips and downloads for getting things done.” Some tips require a more technical-minded reader, but overall the instructions are pretty straightforward. This is IMO the #1 website to increase your productivity in life.
2. Racialicious: A blog dealing with racial issues in the US. Although the focus is mainly on American issues, most of it applies to Canada too. And it’s always good to know what’s going on in our neighbour south of the border.
3. Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters. This is purely a geek site, so if you’re not “into” the whole geek thing maybe you shouldn’t visit ;). It many topics, including gaming, new technologies, and politics. I find that I skip over most of the stories, but there are some great ones on there. Be sure to check out the comments too, I actually enjoy reading those over the actual articles themselves a lot of the times — RTFA!
4. Gizmodo: A website dedicated to gadgets. I think that pretty much says it all. It’s a place I go to, to see all the cool, shiny gadgets that I probably wouldn’t be buying. Did I mention they’re shiny?
5. Coding Horror: A must-read for an programmers. Jeff Atwood writes about coding horrors that programmers create, aka the “human factors.” He provides great insight into many problems, including ones that seem trivial at first glance, like writing an algorithm to shuffling a deck of cards.
6. Joel on Software: Joel is one of the most well-known programmers out there. He heads Fog Creek, the company that makes FogBugz. The must-read post is his talk on Computer Science and Software Engineering that he gave at Yale (parts 2 and 3 too!).
7. Ajaxian: Probably the best blog to read for any developers working with Javascript, and of course Ajax (as the name suggests).
8. RedFlagDeals: Deals on many different products for the Canadian buyers. They have have many deals added everyday, including deals on many electronic products.
9. The Daily WTF: Readers submit their WTF stories working in the tech industry. Mainly just for laughs.

All of the above sites provide RSS feeds, so you can subscribe to them using your favourite RSS reader.

I recently read an article about how the new generation of kids are replacing e-mails with facebook messages and text phone messages. Has it really come time for the e-mail to be retired in favour of the more “hip” alternatives? I think not.

Text messages and facebook (or any social network) are not replacement for e-mails. Yes, people use e-mails for a quick message here and there, but it offers a lot more than that. Have you ever tried to CC or BCC people on a facebook message? What about forwarding or including more people in future replies? What about sending a message with an attachment? You get the idea. IMO, what people use facebook and texting for now is more like what instant messengers (IM) does than what e-mails do. They’re fine for sending a quick message here and there. But if I’m starting a conversation that I might want to search for later on, I’ll stick to my Gmail with its awesome search engine. Even with my IMs I can archive chats on the filesystem, which I can use Google Desktop to search through later on.

I finally got around to installing Greasemonkey and Stylish for my Firefox. For those that don’t know, Greasemonkey is an extension that allows you to run custom Javascript scripts for pages that render in your browser. Stylish is basically the same thing, but for CSS not Javascript.

I haven’t gotten around to doing anything with Greasemonkey yet, but I’m pretty sure a week from now I’ll have a bunch of scripts running. :P The very first thing I did with Stylish is to hide all ads on the website. I think the social ads was a horrible idea for facebook. I’m so tired of seeing an ad in my newsfeed that tells me so and so is a fan of x and y. This little script below will eradicate all known ads on facebook!

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain(”facebook.com”) {

#ad_0, #ad_1, #ad_2, #ad_3, #ad_4,
#ad_5, #ad_6, #ad_7, #ad_8, #ad_9,
#ssponsor, .advert, .ad_body,
.ad_capsule, .ad_media,
.comments_ad_image, .sponsors,
.sponsor_absolute, .social_ad,
#new_stuff_content, .nextstep { display:none !important; }

}

Quick and dirty does it! Goodbye facebook ads!