Category Archives: Praxis

What is confirmed by practice

When Your Fan Base is Full of Crazy People

Thanks, American Girl, for sending the video above. It’s a pro-Ron Paul video that attacks Jon Huntsman’s supposed pro-China tendencies, and it takes a swipe at Huntsman in part by taking aim at his adopted Chinese daughter. But it’s not made by Ron Paul. Instead, it’s (probably) made by a Ron Paul supporter. Ron Paul’s campaign says that it is “disgusted” by whoever created the video. I love this quote:

“Whoever did it should take it down immediately,” the campaign’s spokesman Gary Howard says. “Unfortunately, every candidate has supporters who do stupid things.”

Posted in Asian American, Politics | Tagged | 24 Comments

Philipp Rosler, Vice-Chancellor of Germany

Philipp Rossler

Thanks to Ben Efsaneyim, who wrote this story: One of Europe’s Most Powerful Men is Vietnamese. Philipp Rösler, according to Ben’s article and Wikipedia, is the Vice-Chancellor of Germany, and is originally from Vietnam. The Wikipedia entry says that he was adopted by German parents at nine months, joined the German army as a medic, and completed a medical degree. He’s every Asian parent’s dream! And now he’s in politics, where he’s moved up and up. Vice-Chancellor of Germany, the most economically powerful country in all of Europe. Wow. And not only is he a doctor, but he married a doctor too:

Posted in News, Politics | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Literary Young People

Interesting article here: The Literary Cubs. It’s about a group of young, recent grads who, disillusioned with or unable to make livable wages in the traditional publishing industry, took it upon themselves to form a literary group and web publication. They meet in person for regular meetings, and they publish. Their web publication has grown big, and it’s going into print very soon. You can see them at thenewinquiry.com.

I have no idea what the future of publishing is. I don’t think radical minorities would fit in with this club. But it’s great that there are people passionate enough to throw themselves into the mix like this. It should give people hope that no matter what the economy does, literature and criticism will still survive.

Posted in Knowledge, media, Strategy | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Lawyers, Law School, and Law Salaries

Lawyer training takes place at the firm, not the university

Two interesting articles about law and lawyering in the NY Times.

The first was an article about how law schools focus on theory rather than how to be a lawyer. Lots of law schools hire professors who have never practiced law, and often law clients wind up paying for a new lawyer’s on-the-job training. It has always been like this, but it’s more of an issue in recent days because: a) clients don’t want to spend the money anymore, and b) many law students are having trouble finding work these days and paying off those big student loans.

Posted in Asian American, Education, Strategy | Tagged | 38 Comments

Stages of Love and Marriage

Going off of the discussion on what to do on a first date in the other thread, let me just say that I personally think it’s good to wait as long as possible before discussing religion and politics (and this is just me :) ) . I think it’s best to show your best self early in the relationship, and by “your best self,” I mean it’s good to do what you can to have a good time. There will be lots of time to argue political and religious points later.

Posted in parenting | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Reverse Racebending

I heard about Quentin Lee’s Today Has Been Weird from AngryAsianMan. It’s a short film, and it’s good: see the entire short movie above. It is based on a real life incident where a young 19 year Asian American boy named Simon Sek Man Ng blogged about his sister’s ex-boyfriend knocking on his door. The boyfriend ended up killing both Simon and his sister. The police used to information from his blog to find his killer.

Posted in Activism, Asian American, media | Tagged , , , | 13 Comments

“Hypochondriacs Buy More Books Than Sick People.”

I’ve been attending online “webinars” this week, learning about the publishing industry and social media. I’ve learned tons of interesting things about e-publishing, traditional publishing, Twitter, Facebook, and everything. Man, online learning really is the way of the future. I got to learn all this without even flying to New York.

Posted in Asian American, media, Strategy | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A Female Take on Invisible Asian American Heterosexual Men

"Evil. Not hot and horny."

Akrypti from 8Asians wrote a piece in response to my International Examiner article called The Perfect Villain: Straight Asian Men. In her piece, she talks about her perspective as an Asian American woman. It’s a great piece. She argues that Asian women often don’t see Asian men as invisible, but instead often see us as evil or take us less seriously than other groups.

There were a few points that I really appreciated.

1. Akrypti mentions Frank Chin and Minority Militant, and how people didn’t take their points seriously. She also mentions that the same thing takes place with the IR issues.

Posted in Activism, Asian American, Knowledge | Tagged , | 309 Comments

Invisible Heterosexual Asian Men

Check out my piece in the current issue of the Seattle-based International Examiner: Heterosexual Asian Men and the Invisibility Problem. I even managed to quote Russell Simmons at the end.

My favorite line: “We Asian men are de-facto exiles within our own culture.”

The piece begins:

Posted in Asian American, media, Writing | Tagged , | 33 Comments

Everyone Wants To Live Like Americans

This is my 1,000th bigWOWO post.

Of all the afterthoughts following the death of Steve Jobs and the legacy of Apple, the most interesting one I read was AskAKorean’s Can Korea Be Truly Creative? In the post, he writes about how Steve Jobs inspired Koreans to ask each other if their country could be as creative as Apple.

It’s long for a blog post, but give it a read if you have time. The conclusion “The Korean” reaches is that Korea is already creative. The reason Apple was able to do what it did, the Korean speculates, is due in large part to the fact that Apple is an American company. He writes:

Posted in Activism, Asian American, media | Tagged | 11 Comments