Awesome

Catherine Chalmers is my hero. She raises animals and feeds them to each other while photographing the entire process. This is a concept with many facets ranging from intriguing to gross to natural to contrived, and any of her photos can bring out any of these things at any time, sometimes all at once. These pictures are intended to bring about consideration of the food chain, and it works. She also has a series of photographs starring American cockroaches and houseflies, among other creatures.

You can check out her photographs at her CatherineChalmers.com. You can listen to a great interview with Catherine on This American Life from 2005, which you can listen to for free here.

Rachel Papo Photography

Rachel Papo, an fellow Ohioan and Israeli, has created a fascinating photo documentary of life for Israeli girls in the military. The photos document a stark contrast between femininity, adolescence, and militarism. I don't really know that much about being in the military-and I don't want to-but these pictures are eye-opening and yet sad. I can't imagine being ripped away from home during the most free years of my life and forced to run around in the desert with a gun preparing for the inevitable conflict resulting from a centuries-old fight for land. (Oh, and the women are beautiful in a heavily armed way.)

Link: Rachel Papo: Serial No. 3817131

(chuckle) E-Sports

Perhaps you don't know how popular online gaming is in Korea. Perhaps you've been locked up in a third-world prison for the last ten years or have the sensory capabilities of Helen Keller.

From smoky, 24-hour Internet cafes to stadium-style competitions, almost one-quarter of Korea's population, and it's not just for kids anymore, participates in online gaming. There are many magazines, Websites, and other media dedicated to online gaming, and there is one full-time gaming channel, Ongamenet, that has amazing production value and is extremely popular. And they all play StarCraft.

I don't really want to debate the nature of the word "E-Sports" due to the fact that I'd end up throwing things and punching a Korean person, but I'll say this: Two of the most loathsome linguistic trends (sticking an "e" before other words and calling games "sports") have come together to create the semantic Hellspawn that is Korean entertainment.

Monocle (Oh, why must a subscription cost so much?!) produced a great video primer on this aspect of modern Korean culture. Watch the video. Then, cry for Korea.

Welcome to the Suck

So Namdemun, the Republic of Korea's super-best-#1 symbol of national pride and the oldest wooden structure on the peninsula burned down.

Reasons:
1. Arson (this has pretty much been confirmed and someone has been arrested)
2. Electrical fire (possible, but unlikely)
3. "Mystical Forces": Apparently, Namdemun was built, in part, to protect the once-walled city of Seoul from the fire-causing forces of Mt. Gwanaksan. Geomancy was once quite popular and is much like Fung Shui on a much grander scale.

This is Asia and someone is going to get skewered for this. Possible culprits include KT Security and some members of the Interior Ministry. Basically, it's a 600-year-old wooden building and the only form of fire protection was three or four fire extinguishers around the premises. A sprinkler system would have been a great help, but nobody wanted to damage the building to put it in. I guess it's after the fact, but isn't a slightly modernized building better than no building at all?

But wait, there's more! The building was monitored by a closed-circuit television system. DURING THE DAY ONLY!

Sorry, Korea. This was completely preventable and is basically your fault. I feel really sorry for whomever they pin this on.

Some users of Flickr in Seoul were on the scene and have taken some excellent and extremely powerful pictures of the tragedy in progress and after the fact. Check them out here, but please respect their copyrights.
Picture at top courtesy of "sean in japan" under a cc-by-sa license.