Cho Rising

According to the New York Times, Ross Alameddine*, a 20 year old Virginia Tech student, was most proud of his car - a Pontiac Grand Am. He'd won it in a raffle. Ross referred to the teal-colored car as the car "I got for a dollar."

Alameddine had taken pains in a recent class to support and encourage Seiung-hui Cho to participate and contribute. Alameddine sat near him, and he was Cho's first victim.
Meanwhile, it is easy to make sweeping generalisations about Cho, or about the students at Virginia Tech, even about South Korea (as I have).

We can blame Cho (as most are doing), and dismiss him as mad. We can blame the students, and say they were insensitive. We can find fault with the systems on campus. In the end it's a combination of these and other factors.

I think it is a mistake to look too singlemindedly at one thing. I have noticed for example, that Cho was not as nasty and evil as most would have us believe. He was, perhaps, a pretty unpleasant fellow in his final hours, but as a schoolboy he has been described as basically polite, doing well at school and quietly harmless.

Meanwhile, though some of the students at Virginia Tech were undoubtedly mean, others certainly reached out on numerous occasions. The question can be asked: did Cho experience more meanness or more reaching out? Of course, in fairness the same question could be posed to Cho about his own behaviour.

I have done extensive reading on various sites, including the accounts and interviews of other citizen reporters. One that impressed me was an interview between a South Korean citizen journalist and Jennifer Chapman, who went to school with Seiung-hui Cho.
Chapman also describes him as "so quiet, shy and awkward and didn't want to talk to others. But I think it wasn't a mean, hatred type of silence. I felt like he was hurting, not hating someone. This tragedy is a huge loss for the community. I feel very sorry that we didn't realise that he was so troubled."

Chapman goes on to sketch an entirely different picture of the schoolboy: "His silence reminds me of his school days, but other details such as violent writings and stalking women are inconsistent with the high school student I knew. He was quiet. He would never have stalked a girl or talked to a girl."

What's also interesting is Cho's victims included young and old, Western and Asian students - like Henry Lee, a 20-year-old ethnic Chinese studying Computer Engineeering.
It's possible that Cho's habit, of withdrawing into his shell, which may have paid off at school, did not work beyond school, but he found himself ill-equipped to deal with emotionally developed individuals around him.

The reservoir of pain that had been steadily filling up, even at school level, had probably rapidly filled to overflowing at university, where there were so many more issues at state, including the unspoken mission of each student at university: find yourself and find a definition for yourself.
Cho possibly found that either he couldn't, or that he was unable to verbalise it. This disability first manifested in a failure to engage the opposite sex, or in fact, engage with anyone, including, to an extent one supposes, his own family (an aunt describes him as "cold" and having "difficulty communicating", which worried his mother).

On the other hand, it's likely that Cho was the victim of his chosen course of action. He probably heard plenty of snide remarks behind his back.

It's logical then that as these pressures, and as his loneliness, built up, Cho struggled under the load of stress and started to think and act irrationally. He sought solace, it seems, in movies and on his computer, and it is now obvious, in violent entertainment.

This is a vital clue. That internally he was raging, and his rage was based on the intense frustration of not belonging, not being part, not fitting in. Exacerbating this condition was his own grandiose idea of himself, as a sort of a Christ-like martyr. In his rant he mentions John Lennon and Marilyn Monroe, and one supposes, he attempts to put himself in the same Hall of Fame.

In fact, his attempt to engage with NBC with a carefully constructed (if half-sensical) diatribe does prove that he had something to say, and meant to make himself visible.
I think the burden, the list of imagined transgressions he'd built up in his mind had become so ponderous, he didn't know how or where to start to begin to address it. Then his loneliness and fixations with people (who possibly interpreted his reaching out as creepy or "stalking") amplified the pain he was already feeling.

I am certain he felt betrayed by people he perhaps liked or wanted to engage with, who then turned him in to the police. Then again, in a community where everyone identifies an individual as "that creepy guy", there is very little opportunity for that stereotype to be corrected or altered, either by the individual himself, or by individuals in that community. And so the cycle of disconnection gets reinforced.
Meanwhile, Henry Lee, one of Cho's victims mentioned above, spoke at a formal rewards ceremony about the difficulties he had coming to America and sitting in a classroom, not knowing how to speak English.**

And Lee spoke about the reality of having immigrant parents and being one of many children.
Lee said: "Imagine sitting in class not knowing the language; now I am number two in my class."**

The best or worst is always possible from an individual around us. Family murders happen every day, where a grief-stricken parent takes the lives of a partner and children, people they once loved and cared for.

The responsibility rests on each person to take care of others, to notice and respect those around us, for in that, we take care of those we love, and also ourselves.
(*http://topics.nytimes.com**http://topics.nytimes.com)

And from:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/news/original/0407/1801_stalker_profile.html
Was Cho Seung-Hui a Stalker?

April 18, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Va. (Crime Library) —While there was talk earlier that the V-Tech rampage was sparked by a fight with a girlfriend, nineteen-year-old Emily Hilscher, those who knew the girl vehemently deny she had a relationship with Cho. Yet others say there was certainly an argument, which drew a dorm counselor, Ryan Clark, to come to settle the disturbance (perhaps after Emily had already been shot). Clark, 22, became one of the first two victims, along with Emily.

What's the truth behind these notions? Given what we've heard about Cho from roommates and students in class with him, he was a loner with no real friends. His expression rarely changed, no one ever visited him, and he tended to get ideas about girls — to the point where other boys viewed him as a stalker. In fact, during a rare night out with roommates, they reported, Cho revealed that he had an "invisible girlfriend" who was a "supermodel." He and she even had pet names for each other. So, clearly Cho thought about and desired a girlfriend.

[Yes, and so does just about every other heterosexual male on the planet - Nick]

He also had a vivid fantasy life. And he was controlling and moralistic — all signs of a seriously disturbed person who, under certain circumstances, could become a stalker.

While some people say that Emily, a popular and pretty girl with many friends, knew Cho but had a boyfriend, it doesn't take much to engage the unwanted attention of a stalker. A person can be married and a mother, yet still inspire a stalker. A glance, a smile to be friendly, a kind word — even just crossing his path without noticing him - have all been ingredients in other incidents for the roiling delusions of stalkers. Sometimes a stalker merely sees an image of the target person and soon absorbs that person into a fantasy of control. In his mind, that person is now a pawn in his game and must act as he dictates. But when reality crashes in and the person does not conform to the fantasy, anger can boil over.
Cho Seung-Hui (Virginia State Police)

So, Emily might have known Cho from a class or study group. They might have spoken. Then he could have developed his own ideas about what she meant to him, as well as how she ought to behave. In that case, he could have gone to her dorm on April 16 to confront her about behavior he disliked — especially if he considered it promiscuous (which he despised). The very same thing happened to Rebecca Schaeffer, 21, star of My Sister Sam, when a fan, Robert Bardo, decided she had taken a role in a film that he found morally repugnant. So, in 1989 he went to where she lived and shot her to death.

Cho shot Emily repeatedly before going off to write a rambling note of blame and disapproval, and then shooting 30 other students in another building. Whether or not she had a relationship with him, a friendship, or just a passing acquaintance, he seemed to have ideas about her that provoked rage.

In November and in December of 2005, two separate women complained to police that Cho had been sending them unwanted text messages. In the first instance, the woman declined to press charges and the matter was referred to the Virginia Tech disciplinary board. Results of the disciplinary board are protected by law.

The second instance in December of 2005 came about the same time as concern from a roomate that Cho seemed suicidal. The cumulative effect of the three contacts with the police and the school administration was that Cho on Dec. 15 sent to Access, an independent mental health facility for evaluation. Cho's mental health records were not shared with the police.

Neither of the women who complained about Cho's behavior were victims of the shooting rampage and there were no similar complaints filed about Cho since the incidents in late 2005.

Police still do not know why Cho went to the dormitory and murdered Emily and Ryan, nor do they know why he targeted the Norris building. Specialists are going through his computer and all of his writings looking for clues to why his rage was directed at Emily and Ryan and the individuals attending class in the Norris building.

Commitment

Iron Triangle 2004

Wouldn't mind being back in this sort of shape

(Cheorwon, demilitarised zone, South Korea)

Dog eared

But not dead tired. Ran 48 minutes, a hilly, lopsided figure of 8 route. Quite enjoyed it.

Watched Little Miss Sunshine on DVD. Have since felt a resurgence of energy, and enthusiasm and happiness.

Meanwhile the 27th is Freedom Day. I have no plans but feel I should go hiking, or do some sort of communing with nature. Perhaps go fishing at the farm. Spiderman 3 is also showing. If I hadn't been to the Berg recently I probably would be going now. Sally is going to J-Bay.

Meanwhile these are my new cycling goals, am still coming up with the running ones (like the Knysna marathon):


1) Jock Cycle race:24 July - 150km with some serious climbing (Nelspruit)
2) Cycle to Sun City on the Fri (150km), race Cansa on Sat (103km) and do easy 60km on Sun, staying at Sun City (Usually get preferential rates for this weekend) - First weekend in Aug.
3) 21-24 Oct - Cycle down to Durban with Cycle 4 Kids Thurs to Sat and then do the Amashova on the Sun (you could join us)
4) OFM
5) 94.7

Then, I spoke to the dude at Lindsay Saker. He serves on the board of a local sports club. He says that he has been asked: to not accept my application to join their club. It's commendable that he said to me he felt that was unreasonable (I call that a spiteful request) and wasn't going to send someone away that wanted to join his club. He also said he felt the same as I did: that many officials locally put their interests ahead of the actual sportsmen. What that means is that cycling is less important, and cyclists are less important, than these people, and them having their say, and them demonstrating just how powerful (control freaky) and effective (paranoid) they are, is more important than people actually being able to get on bicycles and riding them.

It's also interesting in the first place that people contacted him, or spoke to him. I wonder how they knew it was my intention to join Lindsay Saker? Of course I mentioned it on my blog, and on that day my blog had nearly 100 hits (the average is around 20-30). So I seem to have some blog stalkers (The OFS English Department Part 2). If it's true it is ridiculous. Instead of talking to me, they're fishing, and sneaking.

It baffles me that there are people whose world is so small and filled with fear that they dedicate themselves to the control and surveillance of other individuals. You can't control other people, or, if you do, all you achieve is losing the focus you need to live your own life in a balanced way. That's a miserable state of affairs. If I'm correct in these assumptions, this particular post ought to circulate and there will be an attempt to get me into trouble. So let's conduct an experiment to prove the theory:

I just want to reiterate here, that I called up a woman, Mrs Tortius (see below)



who had been really rude to me at the road championships, and her response to everything/anything I said was a robotic: 'You must take that up through your local club.'
More than once I said, "I am a human being, talking to another human being, and that's your response? Can't you speak to me like a human being?"
'You must take that up with your local club.'
"Yes but I am talking to you."
'You must take that up with your local club.'

I'm sure this same woman, who had nothing to say other than her programmed code, had a lot to say in The Halls of Power, surrounded by learned colleagues, who nodded and scribbled notes. I call that hypocrisy. I call that cowardly. I also call it a failure to face someone who is holding you accountable for something, and fails to do so because of basically feeling so superior to them that it is lowering oneself even to respond to them. That's a disgusting attitude.

What really bothers me is that I can guarantee you that Mrs Tortius goes to church, and so do some of the other characters in this sad state of affairs. The contempt she displayed I think fits in with a basic sense of 'Being Right.' But being right in a sense that separates you from those you deem to be 'wrong'. 'Being right' is exactly how people rationalise being rude and eventually monstrous to others.

We're supposed to all be people, on the same page, and God is meant to decide who is right - or good. People who think they have God's blessing to do that (on his behalf) deserve a taai klap so they can wake up a bit. And these people who vip and stubbornly resist other people, ought to be stopped at the door of the churches they visit, because for all their good intentions, and all their self-love, they don't operate as conventional (aka kind, compassionate, intelligent) human beings when called upon to do so. That's my take on what a conventional person ought to be. Obviously it is not a view unanimously subscribed to. Which is a shame

How to sleep at night

From an Op Ed in the New York Times by A. Roger Ekirch:

“Until the modern age…people would retire between 9 and 10 o'clock only to stir past midnight to smoke a pipe, brew a tub of ale or even converse with a neighbor...Others remained in bed to pray or make love…

“Often, people might simply have lain in bed ruminating on the meaning of a fresh dream, thereby permitting the conscious mind a window onto the human psyche that remains shuttered for those in the modern day too quick to awake and arise.

“The principal explanation for this enigmatic pattern of slumber probably lies in the nocturnal darkness that enveloped pre-industrial households — in short, the absence of artificial lighting.”

Comment: In cold blood: Korean society scrutinised

By Lana Lemmer

Stereotypes and generalisations are dangerous

Nick, Nick, Nick... Why on earth would you republish those stereotypes about Koreans and those many generalisations you happen to have on hand?
I myself am an English major and an international student in Canada... Should people reading your article be wary of me because I share two things in common with the guy who shot a bunch of his school mates?

I know this is a little removed but a friend of a friend happens to be Korean and was beat up by some narrow minded imbecile because he was Korean just like the murderer. How can anyone justify this? It is absolutely ridiculous to punish other Koreans or put them down because this guy happened to be from there.
It is important to note that this killer was in fact mentally ill. He had been diagnosed by a psychologist as being an immediate danger to others and yet nothing was done. The fact that he killed a bunch of people was not because he was an English Major or a Korean.

Seriously this kind of stuff can be really dangerous.
It is called discrimination and as far as I was aware it really isn’t something that should be encouraged in any form.

But I guess that is just my opinion and you are free to yours.

Evil in our neighbors

For an excellent article on Seung-hui Co, click on the title of this post.

We are a generation without manners

‘These fish have manners’ – Tom Cruise as Jerry, in Jerry Maguire

People like Tony Robbins will tell you that if you do not anticipate, if you do not move forward fast enough, the world will leave you in its wake, eating dust, perhaps even ash. The message is clear: keep moving with the stream. Don’t get left behind. And move fast, there’s no time to think.
In a recent movie, Meet the Robinsons, similar worldly wisdom is dispensed: ‘Keep moving forward’. The point of opening with these dual epithets of what may be termed ‘conventional wisdom’, is that in a world without manners, in fact in a world that doesn’t make sense, the underlying framework, however sensible and apparently intelligent, will tend to fall apart.

I believe it was Noam Chomsky, the linguist (and the world’s foremost intellectual) who said the point of advertising is to have people (us) max out our credit cards, and not pay attention (to what’s important) in the world. The reason the middle class need to be controlled by the elites is that they need to do their thing (which is become more wealthy, and more powerful) without interference. So if you read cautionary articles such as this one, or the writings of Peak Oil alarmists like Jim Kunstler, and you wonder: ‘How come these are the only guys worrying/arguing?’ Well, the thought is a normal one, given the intention by the media in general (and advertisers – brand merchants – in particular) that people not think, but be herded into a system where they can be controlled as greedy, addicted consumers.

The best illustration for this ‘evil’ has to be firsthand, otherwise you could accuse me (just as I accuse advertisers) of spreading malicious code into the hearts and minds of entire populations. So here’s a firsthand scenario. In South Africa, it’s fair to say that the telecoms giant Telkom (also a state-run monopoly) is the most hated company in the nation. This is due to the strangehold the company has on all communication infrastructure, which is why South Africans pay more than just about any other country to make telephone calls, and to use the internet (which is slow). This strangehold continues into the cellular market, where Telkom is also a major stakeholder in Vodacom. Yes, even our cell fees are amongst the most expensive in the world. Thus, in South Africa, unlike elsewhere in the world, consumers – instead of calling teach other – prod at their keypads to send SMS’s.

Meanwhile, someone I know works for Telkom. Now it’s true that most people may dislike a company for what it represents, but do we dislike it enough to not work for this company, or to hold those accountable who do (and not just those in the upper echelons). This person I know is paid a huge salary. I’ve been told that employees found with pornography on their computers are dismissed, and their computer’s seized for formatting. The interesting thing is this person I know, and others high up in the company, first make copies of the pornography and distribute it amongst themselves, before formatting the computer. The evil part of this story is not that pornography is involved (well, it’s a much lesser evil at any rate), but that the management of this company are so duplicitous. And for as long as everyone consents to what is happening, it may not appear to be such a bad thing. Except, for the person who has lost his or her job, and the eagerness of those to expel more people (for their own pleasure) – these in combination contrive to become a society without manners, or conscience. This contract is what I describe as evil.

To use yet another contemporary example, it may be pointless to pontificate endlessly about Seung-hui Cho when no one really knew who he was. How could his roommate not know what Cho was studying, even after sharing space for 9 months? Obviously the roommate decided to just ‘keep moving forward’ (why get stuck talking to a difficult kid, and be associated with a loser and a dysfunctional). In that scenario, such a person (the roommate), given the diabolical result of the roommates months long preparations, loses the right to offer any comments or provide any insights, because not only do they know nothing, but worse, obviously made no attempt and basically did not follow up as any rational human being ought to have done. And because how could such a person have any insight, beyond wanting to justify themselves and offer excuses?
“So what are you studying?” I would have made that my first question, in the first 5 minutes, and if I had difficulty finding an answer, I probably would have noticed at some point textbooks or a schedule. Cho and many other people besides live an entirely disconnected life while they are right beside us.

A cartoon in yesterday’s newspaper said it best: It showed a reporter beginning with an introduction to ‘America’s worst killing spree’ by a ‘madman’, but behind her was an endless strip mall filled with gun merchants. They had names like ‘Gun’s Galore’, and ‘Gun Ark’and so on and so forth. Children were sitting on sidewalks with toy guns pretending to shoot each other, guns were flooding the streets. The details are less important than the basic premise: our words, our reactions to what happens in the world are entirely disconnected from the reality, which is a culture of violence, and the scenario of unintended reality that begins to be created around us as a result. And when the world and the world in people’s heads do not fit together, do not in fact overlap, you find yourself with a populace that has simply gone mad.

It is not an exaggeration to use the word ‘evil’ to describe the way people treat each other, when this treatment is disguised (made to look like) fraternity, and described as ‘right’. What we are not doing enough of is focusing on where we are. Instead, we keep moving forward, and in the spirit of moving forward, there is not much time, so we lay blame quickly and conveniently at what appears the quickest and easiest conclusion to draw. But reality is not fast food. It is not quick. And it is not convenient. And until we can own up to our own bad manners towards those around us, we’ll have evil served to us for breakfast. This is our daily bread until we learn how to treat each other, and ourselves, with more respect.

The Next French President

Itchy and Scratchy

Went into solitary confinement this weekend. Not entirely sure why. Probably because of how the weekend started (went to watch the movie Sunshine instead of joining colleagues for drinks. Also turned down a braai and a beauty pageant photo shoot, but then no one really called to ask where I was).

I thought I would focus on training this weekend, but instead, I just focussed on staying exactly where I was.

On the good side, I caught up on all the sleep I've ever missed in my entire life.
On the downside, my car has some gashes in the silver paintwork where some idiot tried to turn, and obviously underestimated his driving skill. Nice of him to drive away and leave me to figure out the damage. The irony is that one of the main reasons I moved was for the protection of my car!

This week I'd like to re-direct. Start getting into the routine of doing a hundred situps a day, and running, and basically prepping for the Jock, in July.

Meanwhile one of my cycling friends says this:

We have been disqualified in a race before for going over the white line and you know how difficult it is for a big bunch to stay on one side of the road and then on top of that they wanted to fine all of us $100 in accordance with the ICU laws for disobeying orders. It was a joke - also people that didn't even cycle themselves.

Watched a couple of DVD's this weekend. Was actually quite enjoyable. Saw Coen at Friendly with his pregnant soon-to-be-wife yesterday. Was invited to church but was actually glad I missed both - especially when I heard what had been discussed. Sometimes I think church can be quite interesting. Other times, most times, I think it is a bit of a bore.

Here's an article I wrote on the Roland Schoeman affair. Quite disgusting really.

Fraudsters on the Field
Why do we tolerate them?

Why do we tolerate those officious people who misrepresent sport? Let’s face it, when we say sport we think of: a sporting chance, being a good sport (a fair person, a gentleman), a healthy game meant to benefit one and all)

Why do we allow people who govern and officiate (I hate that word) to dictate unfair terms to exactly those people meant to be supported and assisted? There is the world of difference between being dictated to and being assisted, being told what to do and being asked: ‘how can we help?’. There is a world of difference between officiating and coaching. The Australians seem to me entirely passionate about sport, and their sportsmen; why aren’t other countries, especially ours, more like them?

It’s interesting that a country like Australia sees so much success in sport – and they’ve already held a superb Olympics – and yet South Africa, which likes to consider itself on par with Australia, isn’t nearly as successful; in fact we don’t come close. In all our sporting ventures, we struggle to produce a consistent champion. This is true in almost every area of sport:
- athletics, swimming, rugby, cricket, golf, football, tennis, cycling, triathlon

Readers are welcome to go and do the math. How often has South Africa produced a world champion (or just a champion) in any of the above sports, and then, importantly, been able to keep them there? Been able to kindle that talent, keep it alive, and support it? What we see happening instead is that champions emerge – like Zola and Elana, like Penny and Roland, like our rugby and cricket squads, like our Ernie Els’s and Wayne Ferreira’s, like Robert Hunter, David George and Raynard Tissink – but then the onus is entirely on them to survive and succeed. It’s impossible to compete for as long, and as well, as other teams with all their backup, when you have none of it. The stress dimension is just too much. Our athletes are given very little support or encouragement, principally because virtually no infrastructure (including sponsorship) is in place. Then, when the Olympics arrive (and South Africa have fancied themselves as Olympic hosts, what a joke!) South Africans are ready to see ‘their’ champions succeed.

The infrastructure here is in fact so decrepit, so under par, and the officials so officious and disconnected (when they exist at all), it’s little wonder that our best athletes spend large amounts of time attempting to train abroad. It’s not easy. And of course it’s up to the athlete to motivate him or herself. Remarkably, many of our athletes do. What is inexcusable then, are the attitudes these athletes have to deal with once the training has been done.
So, for example, when SA excludes its number one swimmer (and world number one, in fact the world’s fastest ever swimmer) from the SA Olympic Team, it makes sense to speak to the genius in whose wisdom this brilliant decision was contrived. This specimen happens to be the president of Swimming SA. It’s an auspicious title, a title one suspects leads to a crumb imagining it’s a slice of bread (and not what it really is).
A small, chubby cheeked and spectacled man, Jace Naidoo, is the president of Swimming South Africa. He is an interesting choice, I have to add, because in the 13 years that I swam at club level I don’t remember seeing that many Indians swimming competitively. It’s just an observation. I’m not taking a swipe. It just seems peculiar that the man who represents swimmers in South Africa appears not to be representative of the swimmers I swam with, and the swimmers I see today. Perhaps it is a good initial criticism, merely to suggest that the president of Swimming SA ought to have at least swum a little – no, make that a lot – once upon a time, in order to appreciate that training and other things he might not know about, are actually involved. So yes, I think the president of a body ought to be elected out of a community of swimmers, perhaps even better, by a community of swimmers. This cannot possibly be the case in our example because I don’t ever remember training beside a Naidoo or a Patel. It’s a name that we might associate with cricket, certainly. But this is swimming, and so I wonder what Mr. Naidoo’s personal interest, in fact his passion, might be, for a sport that he apparently has no history with. Why choose swimming Mr Naidoo? To have a job? Perhaps this is the moral of the story. Perhaps once upon a time he found himself wanting to swim in a swimming pool and things didn’t really work out according to his plan and now he wants to exact revenge on all swimmers, including (and perhaps especially) the world champion. This is not really in keeping with the above-mentioned ‘sporting protocols’.

In yesterday’s Sunday Times, Chris Barron fittingly asked questions about the decision.
CB: Do you sympathize with his (Roland Schoeman’s) explanation that he couldn’t afford to attend (National Swimming trials)?
JN: For swimmers based out of the country to come to South Africa blah blab blah…
(To summarize: No, Mr Naidoo does not sympathize – at all).
CB: By refusing to help with travel costs to attend the national events you make it very difficult for someone like Schoeman who is based in the US, don’t you?
JN: We’d like to be able to support him more but the moment we start paying for him there are a number of other swimmers who meet this criterion…
(A number of other world champions? Here it is obvious that the president is being pigheaded and tricky. Can intelligent people not think intelligently, creatively, without being bound by ‘what other people may say of us’? In any event, if SSA was concerned about popular opinion/criticism, they would be assisting Schoeman. His case is making national news. So no, you don’t care about public opinion, unless it is to get enough attention so that eventually you might be offered a bribe. But yes, you are making it very difficult. Why are you making it difficult? Because you can. To prove how important you are. To prove you are doing your job in a way that gets you attention and everyone notices you. And probably, to enrich yourself with a big fat bribe. Oh, have I mentioned that once already?).
JN: (Absolving his guilt): We haven’t excluded them. They chose not to participate (they could not, because they could not afford to, and they could not afford to because SSA did not support them).
CB: Schoeman says the first he heard about being suspended was in the newspapers. (A way of asking, are you at least communicating, clearly, with the world champion – Roland Schoeman – so he knows what is going on?)
JN: Criteria were sent to all the athletes blah blah blah… (Translates to: No.)

The country needs to get serious about what the Olympic spirit is, and in particular, the officious bunch of people everywhere, who do nothing but officiate without care or consideration. Where is a sense of common humanity? Of encouraging the pursuit of excellence? I am thoroughly sickened by the backstabbing and the politics of punishment in my own province (by the local cycling authorities), but it’s far more widespread than that. Athletes who are being stung by these people must root them out and put people in who can actually do their job in the service and spirit of sport.

One Life

One life, one chance to live
It is possible to die

Whatever may happen, whether human beings believe that there is an afterlife or not, everyone knows that there is just one life, the one we’re living (as we read these words, as I write them). I have an unsettled feeling a lot of the time – don’t you – that most, if not all of us, do not live as though we have just one life, this one chance, to live on Earth. We live as though life were filled with second chances, we live as though what we do had some meaningful long term significance, when, it’s obvious, our shopping and driving does not.

Not our relationships, not our possessions, not even ourselves, can bridge the divide of death. If you have ever had a loved one die, you will have realized the cruel reality of it. Nothing you say, or do, or think, will bring them back. There is nothing to comfort you. That person you knew is gone. Perhaps not forever, but certainly for the rest of your life. When someone dies there is a sudden ending, eclipsing, of all that that person was. All that remains, immediately after the end of their lives, is a place to put their body (in a coffin), or somewhere to leave their ashes. A stone or metal plague then bears testimony to a life. And of course when you stare at the stone, there are only letters that spell a name, words with some mantra, and dates, to account for a life. But none of this can account for the spirit of a person. It’s up to you to do that.

They will leave behind a room, a bed, clothes and shoes, photographs and other personal possessions. They will leave behind all those things they used to do and say, the people that knew them, and they, for all their kindness or harshness – just like dead pets, or squashed insects - will never communicate or be seen again.
So in the husky words of Virginia Woolf (whose own sophisticated contemplations led to madness, and finally, suicide): “It is possible to die.”
Let’s try that again slowly, and for emphasis, let’s suspend it between paragraphs.

It is possible to die.

While 80% of South Africans profess to be Christians, probably most of that percentile takes comfort in the idea, from the belief, that when they die, they will go somewhere.
I remember as a very young child, my brother and I shared a room, and at night we contemplated concepts that fascinated us. Like the universe. And gravity. How can a person standing at the bottom of the world (as South Africa is invariably depicted on the average plastic globe) not fall off? How can we, knowing we are standing on a round, spinning object, and flying through space, not spin off, or at any second, disappear in a puff of smoke, or an erratic burst from the sun (or a belch from our own planet’s core). But what really got us going, as 6 and 8 year olds, was the idea, correction, the absolute certainty of death. Because how it works is if you are alive, you will one day, most certainly, die. And after that, no one really knows what happens to you, except that you start off by dying all by yourself. In short: despite the hype, it doesn’t look good.
And let’s face it, death is basically an extreme version of falling asleep. Death means that one no longer exists. Usually, I think it is fair to say, dying is associated with a large degree of discomfort, which is to say, dying is not pleasant – at least, not initially. It is probably also accurate to say that, depending on how lucky you are, death may in fact be the most unpleasant moment of your entire life. That’s saying a great deal. Perhaps read it again if it hasn’t sunken in. Not much is said about death though, because people tend not to be around to do justice to just how unpleasant it is (to drown, to die in a car wreck, to die of a heart attack). Survivors (say on the same doomed aeroplane) tend to have head injuries and cannot accurately report what their companions must have suffered, and when they can, they often choose not to.

I have been in a serious car accident, and it’s certainly not a series of events I like to visit every day, because it’s an unpleasant, spine shaking awareness. But, if you will indulge me, I remember the moment before the car collided as being so inevitably horrible, that my entire body went limp. I also remember the swarm of fire, very slowly, burning through me, as I realized in the aftermath – at the end of the brief skidding, that I was still alive. That fire was the fire of pain, and it was just insufficient to overwhelm me, so I remained conscious throughout.
Surviving a car accident is a useful lesson. It is just one situation where we may come to think of a simple machine, a car, as a deadly instrument. For about 1 month I was not comfortable being in one. Because, after all, being in one had nearly killed me. But I got over it, and now I can drive around in a car without dwelling on the fact that driving presents a daily opportunity to quickly and easily be killed, or to kill other people or animals close to the road.
Religion seems to make death into a metaphor. When we think of death we imagine angels, and heaven, and some or other benign city with paved roads. I remember after my mother died, I had a hard time imagining her in some sky city, because I knew for a fact where her body was. I also had a hard time imagining that one hour, five days, a year after her death, she was somewhere else, singing songs. At least in terms of those who temporarily survive – those left behind after those around us die – death is permanent. People will scoff and excavate fragments out of a newspaper, talking about a tunnel of light, but I have to say, when my knee was gutted to resemble a volcano in my car accident, I also felt a fire. It’s not an experience I would choose to repeat. I’d rather choose life.
Meanwhile, I wonder. If more human beings did not believe in the afterlife, would we not value our lives a great deal more, and live in a way that demonstrated an effort to savour each moment, to protect, celebrate and respect and love each other? I believe that the collective view of a ‘second life’ (supposedly better than this one, where we are rewarded by a King for all our sacrifices) means we waste our first life, and we rationalize not facing the issues we need to face, we rationalize our fears for not participating in something, based on the idea that we will be rewarded.

In High School some of the kids came up with this mantra: what if you die before you’ve had sex? The thinking went on that surely as soon as you’re capable of it; you should make the most of it, because soon you might be dead. It’s a simple statement, worth considering. What if you die before you’ve ________? Fill in the blank yourself.
In that question, a great deal of truth and meaning resides. We should not choose, as is the craze with suicide bombers, to die for something. We should live for something. And it is perhaps intelligent to be aware that maybe, just maybe, when we die, we sleep, never to awaken from our sleep. We are, just as we were before we were born: No more in the existence of things. The world continues without us, remembering us for a time, and then, we are no more, not even a memory. With these thoughts, be mindful of your beliefs and the doctrine they’re based on, and be mindful of each precious day that dawns for you.

Hannibal = Eurotrash

By Dana Stevens

Posted Friday, Feb. 9, 2007, at 6:36 PM ET
Hannibal Rising

Watching Hannibal Rising (MGM), the why-he-did-it prequel to the Hannibal Lecter mass-murder entertainment franchise, I experienced a surprising reaction. Not nausea, boredom, or uncontrollable eye-rolling; those happened, too, but they were predictable enough. No, what this nasty, brutish (but unfortunately not short) movie left me feeling was ashamed to be American. First of all: As a folk archetype, a supervillain for our times, this is the best we can come up with? A vaguely Eurotrash schoolboy who eats people's cheeks? And secondly, where do we get off using the trauma of the Second World War as an excuse for Hannibal's (that is, our) insatiable appetite for murder? If pop-culture fantasies really do serve as a psychological X-ray of our collective fears and desires, this is one sorry-ass session on the couch.

Hannibal Rising argues that young Lecter would have grown into a perfectly wholesome and, indeed, unusually filial Lithuanian aristocrat, if it hadn't been for that nasty war. When the Nazis marched into his previously idyllic existence—just Mama, Papa, Hannibal, and his sister Mischa in a lovely medieval castle—8-year-old Hannibal fell victim to T.T.S., or Televisual Trauma Syndrome, a condition in which one's repressed memories become accessible only via choppy, poorly lit flashbacks. But this much is clear: After the children's parents are killed in a bombing raid, they're taken prisoner by a wannabe Nazi, Grutas (Rhys Ifans), and his starving cohort. Whatever unspeakable thing takes place after that, it involves soup cauldrons … and Mischa's sudden disappearance … and close-ups of Grutas and company with bloody chins. If his first name hadn't already decided his destiny, this sister-chomping incident settles it: The seeds for Hannibal's adult food preferences have been planted.

After stopping off at a Stalinist orphanage just long enough to grow into the body of a 22-year-old actor with the convincingly evil-sounding name of Gaspard Ulliel, Hannibal treks off to France, where Gong Li is waiting for him in a gloomy château filled with samurai armor. Why? It seems she's Lady Murasaki, his only surviving relative, a widowed aunt by marriage who greets him with quasi-erotic reverence. There follows a Karate Kid samurai-training montage, with Gong Li as Pat Morita to Hannibal's Ralph Macchio. Lady M. is a bit of an enabler, as we discover when Hannibal makes his first kill—a French butcher who vulgarly insulted his aunt in the marketplace. When presented with the victim's head on her ancestral altar, she demurs with the mildest of reprisals: "You didn't need to do this for me." It's as if her nephew were presenting her with an inordinately nice tennis bracelet.

Then the doorbell rings and Detective McNulty from The Wire walks in. No, it's Dominic West, the guy who plays McNulty, but given that he's cast as a cop—Inspecteur Popil—it's impossible to see him as anything but the hard-drinking Baltimore detective avec un French accent. McNulty knows Hannibal killed the butcher but can't seem to pin the crime on the diabolically slippery lad. He can only watch as Hannibal tracks down his sister's killers one by one and dispatches them horribly. Occasionally the two of them meet up for an unsuccessful interrogation:

McNulty: His face had been eaten.
Hannibal: I would suspect the ravens.
McNulty: Ravens who make shishkabobs?

These excerpts of dialogue are making Hannibal Rising sound like campy fun, but believe me, it's not. The movie is trudgingly tedious—if you're in it for the violence, be advised that each action scene is separated from the next by at least 20 minutes of macabre vamping. Above all, the movie is shameless. It doesn't hesitate to avail itself of whatever historical boogeyman it needs to advance the plot, whether it's Klaus Barbie's exportation of French children to Auschwitz or the loss of one's entire family in Hiroshima (the back story that's tossed out in a vain bid to deepen Gong Li's character). For screenwriter Thomas Harris, who invented the Lecter character in his 1981 novel Red Dragon, and director Peter Webber (Girl With a Pearl Earring), WWII serves as a convenient clearinghouse, a Wal-Mart of trauma. Getcher vast reserves of human suffering here! I ask you, who's cannibalizing whom?

Though there are things I admire about Demme's Silence of the Lambs (Anthony Hopkins' performance and the delicately scripted interplay between him and Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling), I've always detested its ending: that cute phone call Lecter makes to Starling from an undisclosed location in the tropics, where he's "having an old friend for dinner." The cheap pun, and the notion of Lecter as a charming rogue on the lam, seemed to undercut the horror of everything that came before, all in the name of setting up a sequel. Two movies later, Hannibal Rising ends on a similarly jokey note, raising the specter of an even greater horror: Slacker Hannibal: The Post-College Years.

Can South Africa Find Consistency?

Can the Proteas keep up their good form against Australia?

After eclipsing England earlier in the week, South Africa travel to St Lucia to face their old foe, Australia, who are looking infallible.

The wicket in St Lucia will not suit the South Africans. It is similar to the wicket that led to their loss to New Zealand - low and slow.

If South Africa win though (and yes, it is a big 'if), they will face Sri Lanka or New Zealand on a pitch that will suit them a lot better.

Meanwhile, the South African bowling star, Gary Hall, has revealed his 'secret'. He says that reverse-swing is possible as long as a ball is not replaced, and so the South Africans have worked hard to keep the ball clean and in good condition. A new ball, Hall claims, may take as long as 10 overs to find that tricky but effective result: reverse-swing

Looking back, the Proteas have had a topsy turvy tournament. I good match against the West Indies, a terrible performance against Bangladesh, and two acceptable but not brilliant turns of play against the Netherlands and Scotland. Their match aginst Australia proved that South Africa may lack an essential self belief in themselves.

They fared better against New Zealand, although were guilty of numerous dropped catches: failures that are just unthinkable at this level of cricket, and from the erstwhile top ranked team.

But then, the last performance was South Africas' game against England. Naturally, this would have boosted the team's confidence enormously. One imagines the squad is now regrouping, and carefully planning how to face Australia again.

What they will aim for is something similar to their result against England, which was, in a word: Devastation. This happens when one team plays terribly (in this case England - who lost their last seven wickets for a meagre 43 runs) while their opponents not only rise to the occasion, but post excellent totals and some produce personal bests.

In the wake of England's defeat, English Coach Duncan Fletcher, has decided to quit.

England's Andrew Strauss (46), Paul Collingwood (30) and Ravi Bopara (27 not out) put in spirited performances, but in the end, it just wasn't nearly enough.

When all was said and done, England had managed a mediocre total of 154/10 (from 48.0 overs) at a run rate of just 3.21. South Africa responded by posting 157 runs in just 19.2 overs, at a run rate of 8.12. South Africa sailed to an easy 9 wicket victory.

But the match was won more likely than not by an excellent display of bowling by the South Africans, and lost by a dismal performance, for example by the English Captain. Vaughan made just 17 before being trapped leg before wicket by a fiery Nel.

Andre Nel (3-35) was the first to upset the apple cart. After Vaughan Nel struck against the possible nemisis of the South Africans, ex South African and in-form batsman Kevin Pietersen.

Pietersen went into the game ranked as one of the best batsmen of the tournament, and certainly England's top batsman. He'd already put 341 runs on the board before the crucial outing against South Africa. Ironically, after a lacklustre and somewhat subdued performance, Pietersen was caught by his arch rival, the South African captain, Graeme Smith.

South Africa's victory not only meant England had to pack their bags, but ended the West Indies slim chance of making the semi-final (in terms of run rate).

South Africans back home were baying for blood, having heard that some members of the squad had been out drinking (and apparently quite sozzled) until the wee hours of the morning, having lost their match to New Zealand. Knowing their hides were on the line, the South Africans played as though their lives depended on it.

Gary Hall put in a career best performance (5-18 off 10 overs), and the SA captain came good with a brisk 13 fours in his 58-ball innings (to post a total of 89 not out).

The top four teams are now:

Australia
New Zealand
Sri Lanka
South Africa

South Africa face Australia on Wednesday the 25th in St Lucia, while New Zealand face Sri Lanka one day earlier, in Jamaica.

If South Africa manage to beat Australia (who have not lost a single match so far), they stand a good chance to win the World Cup. Their loss against New Zealand can arguably attributed to the toss, but then, some will say, 'that's cricket'.

The final is on Saturday, 28th of April.

For more information visit www.cricketworldcup.com

Jincha Pabo* + Interview

Stanton vowed to try to appear on as many news shows as possible.

"My focus now is getting on TV and taking time away from [Cho]," he said. "Every minute I can get on is one less minute he'll be on." (Read more about Herbstritt)

*Jincha = really
Pabo = stupid/dumb (in Korean)

From www.ohmynews.com:

Seung-Hui Cho Was My Classmate
Jennifer Chapman shares her memories of the quiet boy who became the Virginia Tech shooter

Jennifer Chapman (22) is a senior who attends James Madison University (JMU) in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She is an alumnus of Ormond Stone Middle and Westfield High School where Seung-hui Cho, the shooter of the Virginia Tech massacre, graduated. I met her in the Carrier Library at JMU.


What do you think of the massacre at Virginia Tech?

Right away the idea of a shooter silently killing 33 people was scary to think about. I wondered how anyone could shoot so many people without saying a single word to his victims. But that strange detail made sense when I saw the pictures of Seung Cho on the television news. Seung went to the same high school as me.

How long have you known Cho?

We went to the same middle and high school. I had some classes with Cho in middle school. And in ninth grade we went to different high schools, but were in the same class again when Westfield High School opened in Chantilly the next year. He was shy and quiet. We knew him as Seung Cho.

What type of person was Cho?

He was very quiet and shy. He didn't say anything. He never had a friend that I knew about. I sometimes saw him riding a bike alone in my neighborhood in Centreville.

How was Cho in school?

He took honors classes, and did his work well. He didn't say anything to teachers or other students. To say he was quiet is an understatement. He didn't talk at all. If we had an oral presentation in Spanish class, he didn't have to do it. We never expected him to present in the class.

Do you think Cho was just being awkward?

We thought it was awkward, but it seemed like his choice. I don't think he was excluded, made fun of or taunted or anything like that. People tried to include him, but after a while they accepted that he didn't want to talk, so they gave up.

How about teachers? Did they take good care of him? Did they know he needed some mental, psychological or medical care?

They also tried to include him in class. However, he was quiet and shy, and they seemed to give up. They didn't understand that he needed psychological help. Everyone assumed his silence was sadness, not anger.

Did Cho show any signs of anger or resentment toward other students?

Never. He was very quiet. I still can't believe that he killed all those people. It sounds like a completely different person to the Cho I knew about. I don't know whether his personality changed.

Were there two Westfield High School graduates among the victims in the Virginia rampage?

Yes, but I don't think Cho would have known them.

There are media reports of Cho's silence, violent writings and stalking of women. He is described as having some psychological problems. What do you think of that?

His silence reminds me of his school days, but other details such as violent writings and stalking women are inconsistent with the high school student I knew. He was quiet. He would never have stalked a girl or talked to a girl.

Cho is said to have signed into a class at Tech using a question mark in place of his name.

I was very surprised to read the news. I also received an anonymous e-mail from someone who signed with a question mark. I now suspect it was Cho. The anonymous e-mail is the only sign that Cho ever tried to communicate with others.

Were you close enough to communicate with each other by email after graduation?

It was a message on facebook and I think it was sent to quite a few people from our high school. He never said it was him. It was just a riddle type message saying something like, "you don't know me but I know you."

Do you have anything more to say about Cho? What do you think of this tragedy?

He was so quiet, shy and awkward and didn't want to talk to others. But I think it wasn't a mean, hatred type of silence. I felt like he was hurting, not hating someone. This tragedy is a huge loss for the community. I feel very sorry that we didn't realize that he was so troubled.

Sparta

Cho Seung-hui

Yes, he said some bizarre things in his rant (about his children, how can you have children if you're dead?) but I think the temptation is there by people who want to talk and think about this to write it off as: bizarre, nuts, psycho.

On Sky and CNN this morning I saw some of the other students getting their 15 seconds of fame to make their comments. I don't think, even though they are there, they know what to say about Cho. Because obviously no one registered that he was there, unless it was for their amusement. The word loneliness comes up a helluva lot in descriptions of him. And loneliness is a mutual contract between the lonely and those who choose to exclude.

It's interesting how people will respond to this sort of thing. They'll say he (Cho) was mad, suffering mental disorders, they'll speculate about all those flaws that can be thrown together to say: 'he was bad'.
While I am not condoning his actions, I don't think it is fair to disconnect him from his environment and pretend that those around him had nothing to do with happened. If it took his roommate 9 months to figure out what he was studying, maybe it is fair to say:
how can a society live with itself when it is so disconnected?

When a community (in this case students) sees the suffering, unhappiness, disconnectedness of someone on a daily basis and reinforces it, ignores it etc. I think some responsibility rests on the good people (at V Tech and elsewhere) who did (and tend to do) nothing. People try to find somewhere to click, and are so busy fitting in and looking cool, they have no consciousness left for those left out. Even if someone is perpetually rude to you, and weird, if they have no friends and you do, you're always in the stronger position, and a smile and a few kind words can make all the difference. I know it sounds flowery, but to someone on the other side, in hell, it's a reprieve.

I also think one enormous positive that is emerging out of this is that people, including Westerners (Americans, Canadians etc) are taking a more serious look at Asians in the position of trying to hack it abroad. Not easy. And of course, Asians, especially South Koreans, will be taking a long overdue look at the enormous pressures they put on their children. I went out with a lawyer in Singapore who basically posponed her life (relationships, fun etc) just to get her degree and a job. An intelligent, attractive girl, by the time she was 27, she had still not been in a single relationship, and was still living with her folks (whom she owed for their sacrifice to put her through university).

I think the East-West relationship will be scrutinised more closely now, especially by Westerners in the East, and Asians working in the US and elsewhere.

The pressure on kids in Asia to study and perform at school and university (school more so) is staggering, even obscene. I often saw kids coming home at 10pm or midnight, having been attending extra classes all afternoon and evening. I have even taught kids in their apartments on Saturday's and Sundays.

Meanwhile, mention has been made that Cho was acting out his version of OLDBOY, a Korean blockbuster flick that shows a man who is locked up for 15 years who then goes on a rampage.
Our movies provide an interesting outlet for those individuals who can't cope. Movies become not just a place for escapsim, but obsession.


Home

Unlike my previous abode, this one has a garden and space. I don't mean to fill it up with books and magazines I have already read. Going to have a more spartan living space. Probably need to buy a bunch of huge pillows (just not poofs, please) for the lounge. Should be moved in and settled in by tomorrow.

Diary Card

Today I am heading to Dewetsdorp to shoot a beauty pageant. Mixed feelings. Feel I have so much other stuff to do. Wanted to go running this morning but way too tired. Maybe when I get back (what's the chance?).

Had lunch with Rone yesterday (who I met in Clocolan ages ago). Was a bit creepy for me saying grace in Cubana (a restaurant). When you sign your gratuity, I feel, is when you determine how grateful you are for your food.

Candice also called last night to say that Ane is pregnant. And Allan's Louise is pregnant too.

And Andre sms-ed me this morning to encourage me to do tomorrow's timetrial. He says: JY KAN WEN (You can win). Will go out and probably ride the Glen Route instead.

Guns, Bullets, Blood & Multimedia

from: the australian.news.com.au

Silent kid's sick tirade
A key to understanding the newest mass murderer in the US may lie partly in cultural alienation, writes Robert Lusetich
April 20, 2007

THE strange and tragic irony of Cho Seung-hui is that in life he barely uttered a word to anyone. In death you can't shut him up. Perhaps it is because Cho, who spent countless hours sitting with his only known friend, his laptop, is a child of the impersonal YouTube generation, part of a tribe whose members find it easier to talk into a camera than to converse with another human being.

BLUEPRINT OF A KILLER

Warning signs include obsession with violence, resentment, an urge to blame others, arrogance, contempt and isolation.
In three out of four school shootings in the US, the killer made no threats, but most engaged in behaviour that caused others concern.
Cho Seung-hui was a typical loner. He rarely took off his sunglasses and cap, presenting a barrier to contact with others.

He never spoke in class. His English teacher said he "exuded loneliness".
Cho was apparently infatuated with a beautiful student but his feelings were not returned, triggering feelings of rejection, loss and affront. She was among the first two people to be killed by Cho.
Most people suffer rejection during their lives but do not become killers. Psychologists say that certain people are predisposed to extreme behaviour if pushed.

People with a vulnerability to psychosis are at risk of developing mental illness as their stress levels increase. A strong, secure family can prevent a predisposed person from reaching a crisis.
Some psychologists say a contributing factor is social acceptance of macho violence in computer games and movies. This can desensitise vulnerable young men.

Mass killers and those reacting to rejection don't worry about being caught, unlike serial killers who try to avoid capture. But the 23-year-old South Korean native's desire to justify his diabolical deeds to the world at large is hardly unique.

Theodore Kaczynski, who spent 15 years sending bombs to universities and airlines - hence his FBI nom de guerre, Unabomber - as he retreated from a society he loathed, living like a hermit in the forest, produced a long and rambling manifesto, which he demanded The New York Times publish, and which led to his capture in 1996.

Cho's manifesto is suitably multimedia and his outlet of choice was the American network NBC, although considering the time and care he took in producing it - the video portion is broken up into 27 separate files - it wouldn't have been entirely surprising had he uploaded it on to a MySpace home page before going on to carry out the worst mass killing in modern American history.

Reports from South Korea - where Cho lived in relative poverty with his parents until he was eight, when the family immigrated to the US - suggest Cho had trouble communicating even at a young age.
His 81-year-old grandmother, who identified herself to journalists in Seoul only as Kim, says Cho "troubled his parents a lot when he was young because he couldn't speak well".
"But (he) was well-behaved," she says.

Well-behaved in the Korean culture means he was subservient; he didn't rock the boat, which is of great importance in a strict society where order and obedience, particularly to elders, are expected. For a young boy with communication problems and antisocial tendencies, arriving in the US without knowing a word of English could only have made the situation worse.

"Within the Korean culture, we are known as the 1.5s (one and a half generations)," says Andy Chong, who came to the US with his family when he was five and now lives in Los Angeles. "We're not Korean like the first generation, which is more strict, speaks Korean and has more traditional Korean values, and we're not like the second generation, which the first generation looks at as better because they speak English without an accent, they're more integrated, more advanced. We're sort of stuck in between: we don't speak Korean that well and a lot of us speak English with accents; we're sort of this lost generation, caught in between.

"Obviously, I don't know this guy but if I was going to guess about him, I'd think he was like some guys I've known, some 1.5s. Their parents work long hours, work really hard to make a good life for their kids, and he's the only son, so that's a lot of pressure just there.

"A lot is expected of you if you're the only son in a Korean family and this guy, it looks like he just couldn't handle it. To Koreans, it's a big deal about which colleges their kids go to. I see (Cho's) sister (who works for the US State Department, directing aid to Iraq) went to Princeton: that's Ivy League, that's very prestigious with Koreans. Everyone's impressed when they hear something like that.

"But he's going to Virginia Tech; not bad, but it's not Princeton. And then he's majoring in English, not business or accounting or law or medicine. If you look at the background and the pressure a guy like that is under to do well in life and to repay his parents for everything they've done for him, to carry on the family name, to be successful, to have everyone believe you're successful: if you're not a guy who can handle all of this, which it doesn't sound like he is, then, yeah, I can see him going postal."

Certainly, a portion of Cho's diatribe seems to indicate a hatred of the successful and wealthy: "You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats? Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs? Your trust fund wasn't enough?"

BIZARRE RANT
Selections of Cho Seung-hui's messages posted to NBC:

"You have vandalised my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenceless people."

"Do you know what it feels to be spit on your face and to have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave?"
"Do you know what it feels like to have throat slashed from ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive?"

"Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon on a cross? And left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life. Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can just because you can?"
"You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac weren't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfil your hedonistic needs. You had everything."Source: NBC News

Perhaps surprisingly, not many saw Cho "going postal", a popular shorthand expression for mass killings among Americans that was coined when post office workers began killing co-workers in the mid-'80s.

"Honestly, I never thought he was dangerous," one of Cho's university roommates, Karan Grewal, said in a television interview yesterday. "He didn't seem aggressive. He didn't seem like a guy with a death wish.
"He just seemed very lonely. I just thought he was really, really shy. At first I thought he just got (to the US) last year and didn't know English very well, so that's why he didn't talk. I mean it was pretty weird that he didn't talk. I never heard him talking to anyone: not on the phone, not even to his parents."

After nine months of living in close proximity to one another, Grewal said he did not even know what Cho was studying at the university.

All he could say about the country's newest mass murderer was that he spent hours typing on his laptop. Others say he liked to watch wrestling on TV and had recently started going to the gym to lift weights. "I just assume he was trying to get buff," Grewal says. "He was pretty skinny." He says he was shocked when he saw the video clips of Cho yesterday, principally because he looked up at the camera, whereas in real life always looked down when he was around other people, never looking anyone in the eyes.

The character sketch of the archetypal friendless loner is the same as far back as anyone has gone. Neighbours who remember him growing up in the suburbs of Washington, DC, say he was always by himself and if they approached, even if just to say hello, he would ignore them or leave. "He was just a very antisocial sort who was very quiet and never talked at all," says Joe Aust, who shared a bedroom with Cho at Virginia Tech.
"I tried to make conversation with him but he would give one-word answers. Other times he would just ignore me."

One of Cho's professors, Lucinda Roy, says Cho wore sunglasses even when he was indoors, pulled a baseball cap tight down on his forehead and rarely looked up during a class. He never said anything. She describes him as "the loneliest person I have ever met in my life".
But being lonely isn't a crime. Events took a darker turn for Cho in 2005, when he was caught photographing female students in a class from under his desk. He was also reported by two female students for stalking, which nearly led to him being committed to a mental institution.
Cho, who Aust confirms took anti-depressants - which can trigger homicidal or suicidal behaviour - began expressing a creepy rage and anger in his writing projects.
One of them, a short, quite unimpressive play titled Richard McBeef, is laden with violence and foul language, as well as occasional attempts at something vaguely resembling humour. "You committed a conspiracy, just like what the government has done to John Lennon and Marilyn Monroe," Cho has one of his characters say.

Cho's behaviour became so disturbing that many students in one of his writing classes would not attend if he was there.
Cho spent weeks, if not months, planning this week's massacre. He purchased the handguns - the first on February 9, the other on March 16 - and carefully filed away their serial numbers, began making his videos and taking photographs of himself in various Rambo-like poses, and prepared chains and padlocks to ensure no one could escape Norris Hall once he opened fire.

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," Cho says on the tape, "but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

Beware, ye mockers

Va. Tech shooter was laughed at
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 35 minutes ago
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Long before he snapped, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness and the strange way he talked when he was a schoolboy in the Washington suburbs, former classmates say.

Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation.
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.
"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.
The high school classmates' accounts add to the psychological portrait that is beginning to take shape, and could shed light on Cho's state of mind in the video rant he mailed to NBC in the middle of his rampage Monday at Virginia Tech.
He shot 32 people to death and committed suicide in the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
In the often-incoherent video, the 23-year-old Cho portrays himself as persecuted and rants about rich kids.
"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," says Cho, who came to the U.S. in 1992 and whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything."
Among the victims of the massacre were two other Westfield High graduates: Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson. Both young women graduated from the high school last year. Police said it is not clear whether Cho singled them out.
Stephanie Roberts, 22, a fellow member of Cho's graduating class at Westfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in high school.
"I just remember he was a shy kid who didn't really want to talk to anybody," she said. "I guess a lot of people felt like maybe there was a language barrier."
But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with Cho told her they recalled him getting picked on there.
"There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him," Roberts said Wednesday. "He didn't speak English really well and they would really make fun of him."

Virginia Tech student Alison Heck said a suitemate of hers on campus — Christina Lilick — found a mysterious question mark scrawled on the dry erase board on her door. Lilick went to the same high school as Cho, according to Lilick's Facebook page. Cho once scrawled a question mark on the sign-in sheet on the first day of a literature class, and other students came to know him as "the question mark kid."
"I don't know if she knew that it was him for sure," Heck said. "I do remember that that fall that she was being stalked and she had mentioned the question mark. And there was a question mark on her door."
Heck added: "She just let us know about it just in case there was a strange person walking around our suite."

Lilick could not immediately be located for comment, via e-mail or telephone.
On Wednesday, NBC received a package containing a rambling and often incoherent 23-page written statement from Cho, 28 video clips and 43 photos — many of them showing Cho brandishing handguns. A Postal Service time stamp reads 9:01 a.m. — between the two attacks on campus.
The package helped explain one mystery: where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, and the second attack, at a classroom building.

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," a snarling Cho says on video. "But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."
Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said Thursday that the material contained little they did not already know. Flaherty said he was disappointed that NBC decided to broadcast parts of it.

"I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it," he said.
On NBC's "Today" show Thursday, host Meredith Vieira said the decision to air the information "was not taken lightly." Some victims' relatives canceled their plans to speak with NBC because they were upset over the airing of the images, she said.
"I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills," said Kristy Venning, a junior from Franklin County, Va. "There's really no words. It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it's sick."

Some of the pictures in the video package show him smiling; others show him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest, fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a backward, black baseball cap. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted. Another shows an angry-looking Cho holding a gun to his temple.

There has been some speculation, especially among online forums, that Cho may have been inspired by the South Korean movie "Oldboy." One of the killer's mailed photos shows him brandishing a hammer — the signature weapon of the protagonist — and in a pose similar to one from the film.
The film won the Gran Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. It is about a man unjustly imprisoned for 15 years. After escaping, he goes on a rampage against his captor.
Authorities on Thursday disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho had been accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment.
The disclosure added to the rapidly growing list of warning signs that appeared well before the student opened fire. Among other things, Cho's twisted, violence-filled writings and sullen, vacant-eyed demeanor had disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.
___
Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed, Vicki Smith, Sue Lindsey and Justin Pope in Blacksburg, Va., Matt Barakat in Richmond, Va., Colleen Long and Tom Hays in New York, and Lara Jakes Jordan and Sarah Karush in Washington contributed to this report.


from http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=356853&rel_no=1:


South Korea's Reaction to the Virginia Tech Massacre

[Opinion] Koreans view American feelings through the lens of their own culture
Kim Sae-jung (sm830311)
Email Article Print Article
Published 2007-04-19 11:37 (KST)
In its guilt-laden reaction to the Virginia Tech massacre South Korea may be muddling America's healing process. The American reaction is that the crime was committed by a single isolated individual who happened to be South Korean, and that it's not South Korea that committed the crime.

But South Korea doesn't seem to make a distinction in this sense. President Roo Moo-hyun ran a press conference solely on the issue, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement and a Korean college held a prayer session for the victims. It was as if all Koreans expressed collective apology to the victims across the Pacific. Is this something telling about Korean culture? Failure or achievement by a family member doesn't merely remain within the individual who made it, rather it becomes the shame or pride of the whole family. When told of the rumor that the gunman's parents tried to kill themselves, one of the two Americans who were talking with me said, "it's something with Korea's pride."

Koreans are in shock and concerned that this incident will have a negative impact on South Korea's well-built reputation and the future treatment of all Koreans in America. But it's solely Korea's perspective, and it's an overreaction. Of course, there are some hate-crime-like incidents recorded by Koreans today, two days after the shooting. Yet, it is absolutely obvious to most people that the gunman suffered from mental health problems.

American society, composed of diverse races and ethnicities, has a lot of tolerance of different kinds of people and can embrace them all as Americans. Korean society, however, is composed of a single ethnicity. It is more intolerant to people of different ethnicity and skin colors. Koreans have a strong bond to people of Korean ethnic origin even when, as in the case of the gunman, a large proportion of their upbringing took place in a different culture.That's why there is widespread mourning and collective guilt over the gunman's behavior and its consequences. It's doubtful whether the South Korean reaction will really help anyone.
2007-04-19 11:37 (KST)

©2007 OhmyNews

Schizm

Take a careful look at this picture. It shows a soldier using a lever to pry open a crack. Not sure what the sign in the background says, but I'd guess it's Iran.

I was one of the few writers/bloggers/commentators, who decried the war in Iraq before it even started. I didn't support it from beginning, to middle, to now.

So let me be one of the first to say, I don't support the war in Iran. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: but there isn't a war in Iran.

We'll see. Russia has already pulled out its technicians. The drum beat has already started. I guess it's hard to understand or believe or imagine the inevitability of it if you don't understand the Vonnegut Imperative. That the future will be one where only some countries have petroleum.

I think only a handful of people know this. Meanwhile in South Africa oil has recently risen by the highest margin ever, and is set to rise again, by 30 cents.

When I mentioned this to my father, he mentioned the exchange rate. Ah, but it's not R7.70 to the $, it's R7.07. It's actually strengthened a little.

I've given my father books and articles to read, but he prefers not to read them. It's a common reaction. Because once we know where we stand, we realise there really is very little we can do, except expect things to get a lot worse in our lifetimes. Not a nice thought.

But perhaps, I hope, we can look forward to a world, at the very least, with more bicycles in it.

For more information on the War On Iran, click on the title of this Post.

Or follow this link: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20070405.htm

Occam's razor

from http://en.wikipedia.org

Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off," those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"):

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,

which translates to:

entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

Killer Profile

...a sullen loner, and authorities said he left a rambling note raging against women and rich kids.

It's fascinating for me that this killer (worst in US history) was:

- Korean
- majoring in English
- had a bone to pick with women
- had a bone to pick with 'rich kids'

It's interesting because I've spoken to Koreans who have returned from time abroad and, particularly in the case of Asian men, they usually have pretty nasty experiences. One reason is the foreign women, who they are no doubt attracted to, are not, in most cases, attracted to them.

It is also very difficult to adapt, as a foreigner to a foreign country, and even more so (even worse so) if you can't maintain a conversation.

Korea though has, as far as I'm concerned, a schizophrenic approach to reality. They are a polite, decent and wonderful people, yet can be (exceptionally I admit) rude, emotionally irate and irrational. The sheer number of massage parlours and love hotels that exist side by side apartment buildings with families ostensibly inhabited by 'decent' Koreans is bizarre.
Just the North-South Korea schizm is evidence enough of a people and a country who are not fully integrated with reality (or how to deal directly with it).

Their obsession with plastic surgery, and appearances (cutting the face to look less eastern, aborting female children) makes their confucian moral codes somehow irrelevant.

The above are stereotypes, but the point remains that the world's worst shooting spree was perpetrated by a Korean policeman as an emotional response to an argument with a girlfriend.

I've seen people tearing each other's clothing off on a few occasions in the streets of Korea, been vehemently scolded on buses and trains for how I was sitting (or speaking), and watched a shoe store owner hurling shoes at the door after a client returned them. And so on.

It's a society where boys and young men are treated like princes, and women are expected to serve and adore. Naturally, in the wider world, this isn't always the case. Which our young killer no doubt discovered, to his chagrin, and now, ours.

My question is: was this kid playing computer games all the time? My guess is yes. Was it Counterstrike?

from msnbc.com:

Roommates said Cho Seung-Hui rarely spoke or made eye contact with them and that his bizarre behavior became even less predictable in recent weeks.
Cho started waking up as early as 5:30 a.m. instead of his usual 7 a.m., his roommate, Joseph Aust, told ABC's "Good Morning America."



"I tried to make conversation with him earlier in the year when he moved in," Aust said. "He would just give one-word answers and stay quiet. He pretty much never looked me in the eye."





News reports said that Cho, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English, may have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic.
Writings for his English degree were reportedly dominated by disillusioned, violent characters.
“I felt he was a very lonely, isolated kind of person the whole time,” Lucinda Roy, an English professor who taught Cho, told CNN on Tuesday. “He would always wear sunglasses even inside, and a cap.”



Cho, who immigrated to the United States 15 years ago and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., was found with the words “Ismael Ax” written in red ink on one of his arms, the Post reported law enforcement sources as saying. It was unclear what the words meant.
Cho used two handguns, which police confirmed he had purchased legally, and stopped only to reload. Police have stopped short of saying he was responsible for the shooting deaths of two other people two hours earlier at a dormitory but said tests showed the same gun was used in both incidents.

D

Above image: Jean Marie Neethling, one of the prints on display at 'Magic of Color and Light', a Photo Exhibition on May 4.

Apparently that's the vitamin more vital to health (well, holding off the flu in particular) than Vitamin C. It's efficacy has been proved in clinicial trials. So try to get 20 minutes of face-time with the sun each day.

Meanwhile, my legs feel like they have a marathon in them, rather than yesterday's easy 4km run and 40km cycle. The 9km run though is probably still sitting in them, but still.

Heart rate was high on yesterday's cycle, which makes me think it was for the best that I didn't ride Saturday. Just think how sick I'd be feeling today.

Went to the unit at Waverley and I am really in awe of what my Dad did there. He said he could have squashed in 5 more units if he had built them in the conventional assembly line style you see at most townhouse developments. You know, each one a carbon copy of the next. So sacrificing money for style/beauty/environmental concerns (eg sparing large trees), all the units are different. Different angles, different tiles. Such is the work (and the sacrifice, and the pain) of the perfectionist. Driving through there feels like entering a little Island Paradise beyond Bloemfontein. In itself that's a pleasure.

Since I'll be living near Jean, think we'll be doing a few training rides together. Should be good.

South Africa eclipsed England's cricket aspirations last night. Brilliant. Was an interesting night. Watched Smallville, had a serious conversation at Marco's. Then had another night of strange dreams.

The Worst One Man Killing Spree in Recorded History

Roy Rogers, 2007/04/17 14:52
The worst spree killing took place in 1982 in Korea. When police officer Woo Bum-Kom had a fight with his girlfriend, he got drunk, went to his headquarters, raided the armoury and began knocking at houses.When those who answered saw a cop on their stoop, they opened the door. That was their final mistake. The killer would shoot anyone he saw or detonate a grenade to take out an entire family. He'd then move on to the next house, working his way through five separate villages in an eight-hour spree. He eventually grabbed three people and blew them and himself up, as the terrible siege finally ended. In all, an incredible 57 people lost their lives in the rampage, the worst spree killing in recorded history.

http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_9859.aspx