TAI12 #228 Almost there...

THE ANSWER IS 12

#228  Almost there...

Welcome to the Show...

4/13/10
      Fifteen days stand between me and the end of my second-to-last semester of graduate school.  I don't have much time to write.  I'm far behind in everything I have been meaning to do.  I haven't booked tickets yet for this summer for Mom and I.  She booked her ticket to Seoul this morning.  Dad's doing much better this month.  I hear Cooter moved.  Other madness is in the works.  I'll have more time to explain the universe to you when I drop the next issue in early May.  It's snowing today. 

By the Numbers...

9,000  :  Number of buses in Seoul.
72,000  :  Number of taxis in Seoul.
2010  :  The target year Seoul's current mayor, Oh Se-hoon, aims to have all of the city's buses and taxis switched over to electric or hybrid vehicles.
178  :  Estimated cost (in KRW, or $156 million US dollars) to make Seoul's bus and taxi changes.
20  :  Percentage of the reduction of pollutants in Seoul's air since Oh took office in 2006.
20  :  Percentage of the size of the battery used run Seoul Grand Park's new electric tram cars compared to regular rechargeable batteries.  
2.2  :  Length (in kilometers) of Seoul Grand Park's new electric tram car path, the first in the world.
370  :  Number of meters of recharging strips installed along the four segments of Seoul Grand Park's new rechargeable tram's path.
400,000  :  Cost (in KRW, or $351 US dollars) per meter of the recharging strips for electric vehicles.  
20  :  Percentage of Seoul's roads that would require rechargeable strips in order to allow every car in the city to run off of electricity.
2  :  Number of additional nuclear power plants South Korea would need to power every vehicle in the country if the entire country went electric. 
5  :  Number of websites currently posting information about North Korea collected from cell phones smuggled into the closed-off nation. 
8,400  :  Number of South Korean agents sent to spy on North Korea from 1953-1994.
2,200  :  Number of those agents who returned to South Korea.  Some defected; most were reported or assumed to have been killed.
92  :  Number of clothing and accessory shops in Seoul caught selling fake luxury goods in a March 24 and 25 crackdown.  The government hit Dongdaemun, Express Bus Terminal and Sinchon Station. 
40  :  Sales (in billions of KRW) of erectile dysfunction drugs in Korea in 2002.
77.9  :  Sales (in billions of KRW) of erectile dysfunction drugs in Korea in 2008.
86.2  :  Sales (in billions of KRW) of erectile dysfunction drugs in Korea in 2009.
360  :  Sales (in billions of KRW) of oriental medicines in 2002.
170  :  Sales (in billions of KRW) of oriental medicines in 2007.
5,811  :  Number of hagwons located in two of Seoul's 25 districts, Gangnam and Seocho, 20 percent of the total in Seoul. 
9.2  :  Percentage of hagwons that have gone out of business in Seoul.
11.3  :  Percentage of hagwons that have out of business in Gangnam and Seocho.
94  :  Number of North Korean refugees admitted to the U.S. since it granted them refugee status in 2006.  One of the first six admitted to the U.S. in 2006 hung himself.
32.3  :  Percentage of Korean high school students who sleep in class according to a recent survey.
45.1  :  Percentage of Japanese high school students who sleep in class.
20.8  :  Percentage of American high school students who sleep in class.
4.7  :  Percentage of Chinese high school students who sleep in class. 
33,000  :  Number of miles of expressways in China. 
9  :  Number, in millions, of new cars to hit the road in China this year. 

More People Getting What They Deserve...

4/2/10 

     Scott Roeder is going to spend the remainder of his life in prison, unless he is paroled in 50 years.  Roeder assassinated Dr. George Tiller in a Kansas church last May.  Roeder felt that he was following God's law.  This whack-job murdered Dr. Tiller, because he operated a clinic in Wichita, KS that performed late-term abortions.  I love it when insane people go around murdering upstanding citizens who perform a necessary, if not unpleasant, duty.  I hope this madman never steps another foot outside of his prison.  If there were truly any justice in the world, the judge would've ordered an extremely late term abortion to be performed on Roeder.  Rot in peace, you animal. 

No Justice...

4/8/10
     There is a "Newseum" in Washington, D.C.  It has recently made an acquisition of ricetarded proportions.  It will soon display the suit, shirt and tie that O.J. Simpson wore the day he got away with murder as part of a display called "trial of the century."  Simpson's former manager, Mike Gilbert, and Fred Goldman have spent the last 13 years fighting for possession of the Armani suit and the rest of O.J.'s "I got away with murder in style" ensemble.  Gilbert had offered it to the Smithsonian Institution, which rightly turned the embarrassment of the American judicial system down. 

Lowering Your Chances...

4/8/10
     A January survey of 544 single males and 494 single females who had visited the Banobagi Beauty Clinic by the Wedian matchmaking agency revealed the stupidity of the majority of the people surveyed.  Of the women, 53.4 percent said they would undergo or at least think about undergoing plastic surgery to meet a husband.  Minor procedures (double eyelid surgery or botox) were okay with 58.5 percent of the males.  However, they did say that they objected to "serious augmentation of facial bones or other features."  Only 11.1 percent of the women said they were okay with their future husbands having plastic surgery.  100 percent of me would have nothing to do with any woman with enough mental problems to go under the knife for no logical reason. 

A Complete Lack of Priorities...

4/8/10
     A survey from another matchmaking service, Gayeon, revealed even more disturbing trends among single Koreans.  Eighty percent of the men surveyed said that a woman's looks were the most important feature when choosing someone to date.  Personality, academic background and finances came next in order of importance.  One guy who makes 40 million KRW annually ($34,000) said he broke up with his "really pretty and attractive" girlfriend of two years because she was only a temporary bank worker.  He said many of his friends are also looking for women with full-time employment, going against exactly what the figures of this survey reported.  Almost 50 percent of the women surveyed said a man's monetary value was the top quality they sought.  Personality, academic background and family background followed. 

Making Way for the Ignorant Masses...

4/8/10
     The ricetards at Mattel have dumbed down the classic game, Scrabble.  A new version will allow semi-literate players to use the proper names of people, places, companies, and brands.  Now people who limit their input to those god-awful "entertainment news" programs stand a chance at winning a round of Scrabble. 

Changes Coming...

4/9/10
     Korean universities will soon stop looking at the TOEIC, TOEFL and other English test scores of applicants.  The Korean Council for University Education (KCUE) also says that universities will no longer use English interviews or look at applicants' extracurricular awards.  They will no longer be allowed to discriminate against students who didn't graduate from the country's more prestigious foreign language and science high schools or give preference to students who studied overseas.  The idea is to reduce the exuberant amount of money spent by Korean families on private education.  They want to level the playing field.  While this is a good idea, it will probably open the door to more bribery for university admissions officers.  It has the potential to hurt the hagwon market, especially English hagwons, although I doubt we'll see much of an effect from this anytime soon.  Despite the minimal impact the English hagwons have on the majority of students, the emphasis on pretending to learn English isn't likely to dissipate.  Of course this means that English professors could very well see a drop in the already low quality of English in the majority of their students.   

People Not Making a Difference...

4/9/10
     The Korean American Leaders Association (KALA) and BYON International are both Korean-American organizations in the U.S. and are both not making a difference.  They are handing out blue bracelets in New York and New Jersey, eventually going national.  The bracelets say "Dokdo is Korean Territory" and "East Sea is Korea".  This is partly a response to Japan recently approving a history textbook that says Korea "illegally occupies" Takeshima (the Japanese name given to Dokdo).  Dokdo is a group of almost uninhabitable islands (there is one old married Korean couple living there) between Korea and Japan in the Sea of Japan (we'll get to that one later).  Korea and Japan have both produced historical documents laying claim to the rocky outcroppings from centuries ago.  Japan controlled all of Korea when it occupied it from 1910-1945.  An agreement it signed after the war forced it to return all of the territories it had picked up during the war. They both claim it now.  Besides pride, the other reasons for desiring Dokdo is the potential the area has for being fertile fishing grounds and the possibility of oil beneath them.  The other issue at hand is just as simple, but not in Korea's favor.  Korea's call the Sea of Japan the East Sea.  I'm with them in that I know Dokdo is theirs, but everyone knows that the Sea of Japan is the Sea of Japan.  These bracelets aren't the first time Koreans have tried to get Americans to care about these issues.  A full-page ad in The New York Times and a 30-second video on a Times Square billboard preceded this attempt.  The problem is that I doubt they are ever going to get any Americans to care about either of these issues.  If it isn't on a "reality" television, "entertainment news" or from the insane rant of a whack-job like Glenn Beck, then most Americans aren't likely to give two farts about it these days. 

Fighting Darwin...

4/8/10
     PC game developers are beginning to include "fatigue" systems.  These limit the amount of time people can play a game or reward them for taking time away from their PCs.  This is to prevent ricetards from spending a week straight in an office chair in front of a computer consuming only ramyeon, instant coffee and cancer sticks and eventually, and thankfully, dying and thus exiting the gene pool.  It's also to prevent players from neglecting other responsibilities.  Just last month, a Korean couple (who had met online) let their three-month-old daughter starve to death, because they were too busy playing online games at a PC cafe.  I hope those two never step foot outside of a prison cell again.  I also hope they are never allowed to touch another computer or to reproduce again.  Stray dogs and cats aren't the only animals that should be spayed and neutered. 

Adultery Pays in Korea...

4/8/10
     South Korea is one of the few countries left where adultery is punishable by law.  While the number of adultery cases are rising, the number of jail sentences are going down.  Korea sent 47 adulterers to prison in 2007 of the 1,138 cases its courts tried.  Last year only saw 24 go to prison out of 1,157 cases.  A recent trend has emerged.  Spouses are suing their cheating partner and even the person their partner cheated with for damages.  Lawsuits against the partner so far have been more successful.  I'm all for this.  If I had promised to devote the rest of my life to a woman, and then she broke that promise and destroyed our life we had spent years building together, I'd want to turn that heartless bitch out into the street. 

The South Shouldn't Rise Again...

4/9/10
     Virginia's Governor, Bob McDonnell, has declared April "Confederate History Month."  Why would any state want to celebrate having been a part of the Confederacy?  They were terrorists who fought to own slaves.  There is no honor in what they did.  They fought the United States of America.  If we are going to honor them, then we should pull our hypocritical butts out of Afghanistan right now.  Nationality is the main difference between Osama bin Laden and the Confederacy.  Germany doesn't have a holiday for the Nazis.  They even went so far as banning the swastika.  Imagine if the U.S. had banned the rebel flag, the current symbol for all things inbred and otherwise backwards. McDonnell is not alone, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley declared April "Confederate History and Heritage Month." 

Too Little, Too Late, 
and Too Unimportant...

4/13/10
     The Vatican has issued another in a long line of ridiculous messages to the masses.  The Vatican's newspaper, "L'Osservatore Romano", said in its latest issue that the Vatican has forgiven the Beatles.  What exactly did the Beatles do to require forgiveness from the Vatican?  The Vatican once called the Beatles' messages "satanic" and now have forgiven the Beatles for letting them be called satanic.  What the hell?  The Beatles were once one of the greatest bands of all time until that succubus, Yoko Ono, raped the creativity out of them before breaking them up.  Of course none of that matters here.  We're talking about this giant douche-bag move from the Vatican.  What the hell were they thinking?  What could possibly have been the rationale behind this?  I can't wait for the people who used to beat me up in middle school and high school to forgive me for getting beat up by them.  I'm glad the Vatican settled this matter, because it doesn't have anything else on its plate right now.  It's amazing that the Vatican was thinking about this and not the 200 boys we learned were molested at a Wisconsin school for the deaf by one of its perverts in a collar.  I feel reassured to know that the religious equivalent of an evil organization hellbent on world domination from a 1960s or 70s James Bond movie is more focused on forgiving other people of what it has accused them of in the past than on trying to find ways to beg forgiveness for the thousands of childhoods callously stolen by its collared minions.