An Ezra Pound or Two

Extra Pound

Pound gazed upon his body one fine day,
And found himself in a soon-famed family way,
Truly a strange, odd, weird peculiar thing,
With male ding hung, not woman's absent unding,
And he never-the-less gave birth the natural way.


Post-Script: I think this one doesn't work because it doesn't press the reader to submit to the limerick rhythm. Maybe I'll work on it. Anyway, this is obviously the 'fictive' Pound.

M.D. Repellant?

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away."

Gone, and Fast Forgotten

I left my throne totally unoccupied these past four days and . . . nobody noticed:

Oh, wrong throne. That's the throne of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. I must have mislaid my own.

I left under duress. I was suddenly stricken by a flu virus that hit me with the force of something like the walking pneumonia, boogie-woogie flu. The doctor immediately (Tuesday) put me in the hospital, where I stayed until today (Friday).

This pneumonia could flare up again if I don't get more sleep, so I'll to bed, to bed . . .

Attitude is Everything!

Google Images

Don't mix business with pleasure; make that extra effort to hate your work.

Adverse Obesity

Obesity?

Obesity makes strained-bed fellows.

Ancient Postmodern Proverb

Cure

An ouch of prevention is worth a pounce of cure.

Evil Genius?

Bad Genius, Bad Boy

Google Images

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent body odor.

But only for EVIL geniuses. And bad ones, too. But not for good geniuses. The perspiration of non-evil geniuses doesn't stink.

But also . . .

Old Ads

. . . Newport! For that extra-cool menthol taste, such that filling your lungs with smoke is just like taking a breath of fresh air!

By the way, does that fellow in the ad above have a demonic nose, or is its demonic appearance just an optical illusion?

And how could I have forgotten . . .

Old Ads

. . . Kent? Which I associated with Clark Kent, the mild-mannered secret identity of Superman, though I don't recall that either Superman or Clark Kent smoked. Did they?

And what's this obsession with taste in old cigarette ads? Does one really taste cigarette smoke? If so, need one actually inhale? Maybe all this talk about taste is simply misdirection intended to draw attention away from the fact that what the smoker really craves is that nicotine rush to the brain, which comes only through inhaling the smoke deeply into the lungs.

As for taste, de gustibus non disputandum est . . .

But look how young and healthy people were . . .

Old Ads

. . . when they smoked cigarettes way back in the 1930s!

Interesting fact: F. Scott Fitzgerald's favorite cigarette was a Chesterfield.

And don't forget the Marlborro men . . .

Google Images

. . . were once little Marlboro babies!

They don't look quite so rugged, independent, and taciturn at this young age . . . but they likely needed a few years' smoking for that sort of transformation to take effect.

They owe it all to their Marlboro moms . . .

And the 'honesty' of Lucky Strikes . . .

Google Images

. . . Luckies are less irritating.

In other words, Lucky Strikes are irritating . . . but they're less irritating, less annoying, less harmful!

Mr. Scott's health report . . .

Stenosis
Wikipedia

I heard on the grapevine that my favorite high school teacher, Mr. Scott, is down in his back, so I sent an email to his daughter Jeanie for details, and here they are:

[D]ad has stenosis of the spine near the bottom where the nerve bundles gather to form the spinal cord . . . . The neurosurgeon is going to scrape bone away to clear up the pressure on the spine causing the pain . . . . No doubt the these problems, over the years, were exacerbated by his active lifestyle . . . . He hurt himself . . . on riding on a trail ride at my sister's ranch at Thanksgiving . . . . He's . . . worse [from] . . . going up and down the stairs and lifting wood into the furnace. He . . . will be on his stomach for several days in the hospital. He also . . . is convinced that he will walk out of the hospital and like magic do everything he wants. I will keep you posted. Surgery is at 7:00 am this morning (Friday).

Well, it doesn't sound life-threatening, so the news is not entirely bad. Let's keep him in our thoughts, that his recovery be quick!

Protestant Missions and Democracy?

Missionary Men
Alice Seeley Harris / Panos Archives
Christianity Today

Andrea Palpant Dilley, writing "The Surprising Discovery About Those Colonialist, Proselytizing Missionaries" (Christianity Today, January 8, 2014), has something of genuine significance to report on the unexpected findings of one contemporary scholar, a sociologist named Robert Woodberry:

One afternoon . . . [in graduate school, Woodberry] attended a required lecture . . . . by Kenneth A. Bollen, a UNC–Chapel Hill professor and one of the leading experts on measuring and tracking the spread of global democracy. Bollen remarked that he kept finding a significant statistical link between democracy and Protestantism. Someone needed to study the reason for the link, he said.

Woodberry knew that he'd found his vocation:

Soon he found himself descending into the UNC–Chapel Hill archives in search of old data on religion. "I found an atlas [from 1925] of every missionary station in the world, with tons of data," says Woodberry with glee. He found data on the "number of schools, teachers, printing presses, hospitals, and doctors, and it referred in turn to earlier atlases. I thought, Wow, this is so huge. This is amazing" . . . . Woodberry set out to track down the evidence for Bollen's conjecture that Protestant religion and democracy were somehow related. He studied yellowed maps, spending months charting the longitude and latitude of former missionary stations. He traveled to Thailand and India to consult with local scholars, dug through archives in London, Edinburgh, and Serampore, India, and talked with church historians all over Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa.

Not just a vocation, but a vacation, too -- albeit a working one -- and an important trip:

In essence, Woodberry was digging into one of the great enigmas of modern history: why some nations develop stable representative democracies -- in which citizens enjoy the rights to vote, speak, and assemble freely -- while neighboring countries suffer authoritarian rulers and internal conflict. Public health and economic growth can also differ dramatically from one country to another, even among countries that share similar geography, cultural background, and natural resources.

In 2001, he noticed something significant in pursuing these differences:

In search of answers, Woodberry traveled to West Africa in 2001. Setting out one morning on a dusty road in Lomé, the capital of Togo, Woodberry headed for the University of Togo's campus library. He found it sequestered in a 1960s-era building. The shelves held about half as many books as his personal collection. The most recent encyclopedia dated from 1977. Down the road, the campus bookstore sold primarily pens and paper, not books.

"Where do you buy your books?" Woodberry stopped to ask a student.

"Oh, we don't buy books," he replied. "The professors read the texts out loud to us, and we transcribe."

Across the border, at the University of Ghana's bookstore, Woodberry had seen floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with hundreds of books, including locally printed texts by local scholars. Why the stark contrast?

The reason was clear: During the colonial era, British missionaries in Ghana had established a whole system of schools and printing presses. But France, the colonial power in Togo, severely restricted missionaries. The French authorities took interest in educating only a small intellectual elite. More than 100 years later, education was still limited in Togo. In Ghana, it was flourishing.

His advisor, Christian Smith, cautioned him:

What began to emerge was a consistent and controversial pattern -- one that might damage Woodberry's career, warned Smith. "I thought it was a great, daring project, but I advised [him] that lots of people wouldn't like it if the story panned out," Smith says. "For [him] to suggest that the missionary movement had this strong, positive influence on liberal democratization -- you couldn't think of a more unbelievable and offensive story to tell a lot of secular academics."

His faith was strong, but he needed proof:

Woodberry was equipped to do something no one else had done: to look at the long-term effect of missionaries using the wide-angle lens of statistical analysis . . . . [He] created a statistical model that could test the connection between missionary work and the health of nations. He and a few research assistants spent two years coding data and refining their methods. They hoped to compute the lasting effect of missionaries, on average, worldwide . . . . One morning, in a windowless, dusty computer lab lit by florescent bulbs, Woodberry ran the first big test. After he finished prepping the statistical program on his computer, he clicked "Enter" and then leaned forward to read the results.

"I was shocked," says Woodberry . . . . "The impact of missions on global democracy was huge. I kept adding variables to the model -- factors that people had been studying and writing about for the past 40 years -- and they all got wiped out. It was amazing. I knew, then, I was on to something really important."

But he wanted to be sure:

Determined to be his own greatest skeptic, Woodberry started measuring alternative theories using a technique called two-stage least-squares instrumental variable analysis . . . . "[The theory] kept on holding up" . . . . Woodberry's results essentially suggested that 50 years' worth of research on the rise of democracy had overlooked the most important factor.

And what do other scholars think of Woodberry's work:

In spite of Smith's concerns, Woodberry's historical and statistical work has finally captured glowing attention. A summation of his 14 years of research -- published in 2012 in the American Political Science Review, the discipline's top journal -- has won four major awards, including the prestigious Luebbert Article Award for best article in comparative politics. Its startling title: "The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy."

Similar to Max Weber's thesis on Protestantism and capitalism, but much better grounded! My question is: "Why did Protestantism have this effect?"

Anyway, fascinating . . . to learn that Annie Lennox was wrong!

Professor Adam Lankford: Parallels Between Suicide Terrorists and Rampage Shooters

Adam Lankford
Criminal Justice Professor
The University of Alabama

I read an interesting IHT opinion piece a couple of days ago by Adam Lankford, "What Drives Suicidal Mass Killers" (New York Times, December 17, 2012), an article in which he reports finding surprising parallels between suicidal mass killers and Muslim jihad 'martyrs':

Over the last three years, I have examined interviews, case studies, suicide notes, martyrdom videos and witness statements and found that suicide terrorists are indeed suicidal in the clinical sense . . . . Although suicide terrorists may share the same beliefs as the organizations whose propaganda they spout, they are primarily motivated by the desire to kill and be killed -- just like most rampage shooters . . . . [W]e should think of many rampage shooters as nonideological suicide terrorists. In some cases, they claim to be fighting for a cause . . . but, as with suicide terrorists, their actions usually stem from . . . [a] deeper and more personal . . . . triad of factors that sets these killers apart. The first is that they are generally struggling with mental health problems that have produced their desire to die . . . . The second factor is a deep sense of victimization and belief that the killer's life has been ruined by someone else, who has bullied, oppressed or persecuted him . . . . The key is that the aggrieved individual feels that he has been terribly mistreated and that violent vengeance is justified. In many cases, the target for revenge becomes broader and more symbolic than a single person, so . . . . the urge to commit suicide becomes a desire for murder-suicide . . . . The third factor is the desire to acquire fame and glory through killing . . . . Attackers who commit murder-suicide in public are . . . brazen and unusual. Most suicide terrorists believe they will be honored and celebrated as "martyrs" after their deaths and, sure enough, terrorist organizations produce martyrdom videos and memorabilia so that other desperate souls will volunteer to blow themselves up . . . . [R]ampage shooters have often been captivated by the idea that they will become posthumously famous.

This is interesting, and not insignificant, for it undercuts the Islamist position that 'martyrdom operations' are not suicide missions and thereby entails that these are forbidden by sharia . . . not that I expect Islamists to accept the findings of an 'infidel' scientist.

One question, however, remains for me: Are the causes of the 'mental illness' also parallel, or does Islamist ideology perhaps drive some individuals insane? Islamism is a grievance ideology, forever blaming external foes for Islam's problems. Anyone who's taken the trouble to look into the matter will attest that Islamists typically blame the Jews, primarily, for all the evils in the world, and they invariably cite the forged documents known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as if these fakes were proof of Jewish aims to dominate the world. Islamists certainly encourage "a deep sense of victimization" among their followers, and I happen to think that Islamism gives rise to extremely frustrated, unhappy individuals "struggling with mental health problems." Moreover, Islamist ideology not only promises that suicide bombers will be "honored and celebrated as 'martyrs' after their deaths," it also promises an eternal afterlife of endless sensual pleasure of drinking and whoring. In effect, these 'suicide' killers get to keep on living, even living it up!

I therefore think that Professor Lankford needs to take his investigation at least one step further and determine if Islamism produces the clinical state of mind that he describes . . . or perhaps he has already, in his book.

Gypsy Scholar: Fraudulent 'Genocidal' Blogger

Scholar and his Books

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621-1674)

Wikipedia

I received a sharp if misguided reprimand yesterday from a conveniently anonymous critic who came riding up on his high horse and dispensing 'just' judgment against me on a blog post dedicated to my recently deceased Uncle Bill Hodges:

I came to your page trying to find scholarly articles on 'Gypsies', turns out you are just a fraud. For all your education you're surprisingly ignorant.

Thanks for the cultural genocide.

Taken aback, initially, at the accusation that I pose an existential threat to the Romani people, I collected myself and replied:

Nice comment to leave on a blog entry commemorating a good man's death.

As for your intemperate remarks, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the expression "gypsy scholar," which is a well-known label for a scholar without tenure who moves from university to university in search of jobs. There are a lot of us.

When you're no longer ignorant of the expression and its meaning, you'll not further embarrass yourself in future encounters with gypsy scholars, nor will you continue to make ridiculous accusations of "fraud" and of "cultural genocide."

On the implausible possibility that my anonymous critic is lurking, willing to listen, and open to learning something new, a professional explanation of the expression is hereby provided:

Gypsy scholar: is an informal term given to some academics who either move several times between institutions and/or work at two or more institutions at a time. There are several possible reasons explaining the existence of gypsy scholars, among these are the fact that many teaching jobs are now either part-time or terminal (1-3 years), with tenure-track positions harder to secure, and also a high cost of housing and living. The latter appears to have become a fairly common situation in California, where the price of housing has skyrocketed (as of 2005).

We see, then, that I am the one facing an existential threat! The outraged fellow, for his part, did not respond to my reply to his comment, nor do I expect a reply to this post. No anonymous commentator need ever apologize for rudeness or false accusations -- that's the beauty of anonymity.

This particular anonymous, frustrated commentator, angered -- in his ignorance of a well-known English expression -- at failing to find what he had wrongly expected, finds himself instead aggrieved at my putative, inadvertent 'slight' against his profound misunderstanding of English and rouses himself in righteous anger to a peak fit for a fit of pique, all the wilder for its unmeasured animosity, so exaggerated as to accuse me -- despite my obvious scholarly isolation, my lonely academic wanderings -- of "cultural genocide"!

Thus have I single-handedly disposed of Romani culture, something not even the National Socialists managed to do. In the mind of my anonymous critic with a grievance, I'm obviously not a gypsy scholar, but rather a fascistic activist . . .

Medical Checkup: Alien Invasion!

SahmYook Medical Center
Seoul, South Korea

I should note up front that my visit to this Seventh Day Adventist hospital was as delightful as a hospital visit can be when one is being investigated from stem to stern. I in fact had no medical complaint necessary to have looked into; rather, I needed to undergo my annual checkup required by Ewha Womans University as one duty of my professorial position. The visit was -- as ever -- an educational experience that I'm glad I need not share with my students!

Not on video, anyway. They're welcome to read about it here. As follows . . .

First, I met a young doctor who checked to see if I might perhaps be trembling excessively -- and I was nervous about that -- but he diagnosed me as trembling just about exactly enough for me age. I reckon I wasn't excessively frightened by his medical authority.

I then had my eyes checked by a kind young nurse. She found a slight inflammation in my left eye, but my vision was not especially bad for my age -- I'm not yet seeing angels and demons battling over my soul! Not that I admitted to, anyway . . .

Afterwards, I had my chest x-rayed while I basked in the adulation of lovely young nurses enthralled at the sight of my powerful pectorals. Or maybe those 'feminines' were just envisioned angels debating whether my pectorals were strong enough yet to power a set of wings, for when I stepped away from the machine, I saw only the x-ray technician, a heavy-set guy in his forties . . .

I next was weighed in the balances, measured for my height, and taken of my pulse and its pressure. All okay. Maybe better than okay, for my pulse was 55 -- exactly my age! Serendipitous? I think not! Unsure what this Jungian synchronicity might mean, though . . . Incidentally, my vision was checked again -- maybe the elderly nurse who investigated this second time was suspicious that I might have seen angels or demons after all -- but I performed even better on the eye chart, happening to recall from memory several of the letters on the previous, identical chart.

Somewhere in this procession of Foucauldian panoptical experiences, I was forced to produce an intimate substance that I'd rather leave unspecified.

Finally, however, came the alien invasion, a tube pressed down my throat so that a middle-aged male doctor could see what's there below (as if science doesn't already know!). I felt like John Hurt in the first Alien film, for the procedure did hurt! The nurse assisting the doctor later reported that I had a throat inflammation and should avoid irritating it. Well, that's a fine thing to advise me to avoid after the two of them had spent five minutes plunging the Transatlantic Cable down my esophagus! Next time they want to do that, I'll have to remind them of their own medical advice!

But to be utterly serious, the staff was wonderful and the checkup as painless as a checkup can be, so I recommend this hospital to everyone, including other invading aliens like myself . . .

A Caffeinated Life

Not Some Celestial Teapot

Yvetta Fedorova

New York Times

According to Jane E. Brody, "Having Your Coffee and Enjoying It Too" (New York Times, June 25, 2012), my cup of addiction is good for me. For 32 years now, I've caffeinated myself daily, and a good thing, too, or I might not have lived this long:

Coffee drinkers who were relatively healthy when the study began were less likely than nondrinkers to die of heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, infections, injuries and accidents.

Imagine that! Coffee not only purifies, it sanctifies! Else how but by a higher power could a mere drink avert accidents! Many times, I might have died beneath the wheels of a large automobile, or been crushed to death by a falling, oxymoronically named "safe," or even struck dead by a thundering bolt of lightning directed my way by the devil know what malicious hand, had there been no caffeine coursing through my veins to fortify my good luck and thereby ward off misfortune. I can thus thank coffee for its bountiful gift of life, which has enabled me to reach the ripe old age of 55! This deserves a chorus of "Java Jive," that nineteen-four-aught hit by the Ink Spots, which is available on You Tube, naturally:

I love coffee, I love tea
I love the Java Jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the java and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup (Boy!)

I love java, sweet and hot
Whoops Mr. Moto, I'm a coffee pot
Shoot me the pot and I'll pour me a shot
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup

Oh, slip me a slug from the wonderful mug
I'll cut a rug just stuck in a jug
A slice of onion and a raw one
Draw one -
Waiter, waiter, percolator

I love coffee, I love tea
I love the Java Jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the java and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup

Oh, Boston beans (soy beans (Yeah!))
Green bean (cabbage and greens (home cookin'))
I'm not keen about a bean
Unless it is a chili chili bean (Boy!)

I love coffee, I love tea
I love the Java Jive and it loves me
Coffee and the tea and the java and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup (Yeah!)

I love java sweet and hot
Whoops Mr. Moto I'm a coffee pot
Shoot me the pot and I'll pour me a shot
A cup, a cup, a cup (Yeah!)

Oh, throw me that slug from the wonderful mug
An' I'll cut a rug till I'm snug in a jug
Drop a nickel in the pot Joe
Take 'em up slow -
Waiter, waiter, percolator

I love coffee, I love tea
I love the Java Jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the java and me (Yeah!)
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, boy!

I don't know what tea is doing in this paean to coffee, other than filling out the meter and providing a rhyme, of course, but I'd rather it were just as there as Russell's infamous celestial teapot ain't there, or to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, that there were no there there. Anyway, the real point is that coffee truly deserves praise for preserving life:

The risk of death gradually dropped as the number of cups the participants drank increased to four or five.

Moreover, it actually rehydrates the body:

Contrary to previous belief, at usual levels of consumption, coffee is not any more of a diuretic than the equivalent amount of water. Up to six cups a day can be counted toward one's recommended liquid intake.

Water of life, boy! Therefore, drink up!

No Theory of Mind?

Austistic (Yellow) and Non-Autistic (Blue) Brain Activity

Image from Wikipedia

I receive unsolicited emails from all sorts of newspapers and journals allowing me to read their articles for free, perhaps because of my daily blogging, but I'm merely guessing about that. Anyway, an email arrives at least once a week from the Catholic magazine Commonweal, and just this morning -- conveniently for me -- came a copy with an article by Edward T. Wheeler on "Moths and Eyes" (May 14, 2012), dealing with Tolstoy, sort of, but which included a brief passage on autism that caught my attention:

I happened to see an episode of Charlie Rose's show that focused on the brain, in particular the psychology, neurophysiology and the genetics of autism. In the course of the discussions, the researchers gathered around Rose's table agreed that the chief manifestation of autism is the inability of one so affected to create a mental map, a theory of mind, for those with whom they have relationships. Quite simply those with autism do not look in the eyes of another person and cannot anticipate the path or greater map along which a conversation might go. Hence they remain disconnected, isolated, not able to enter properly into dialogue.

Does one need a "theory of mind" to interact with other persons? I can't even say that I have a theory of mind, in the sense of any rationally coherent understanding of what the mind is and how it relates to the brain, but I don't think those researchers meant a theory of mind in that sense. They must have meant that those with autism lack the understanding that others have minds. Autistics thus have no 'theory' that others have minds. A better word than theory is "recognition." The non-autistic of us, at some point in our development, come to recognize that others have minds. And we look into each other's eyes, unlike the autistic among us.

I've noticed that dogs look into our eyes and seem to understand us. Perhaps they also recognize that we have minds. This implies that dogs have minds, but I've never noticed whether dogs look into each other's eyes or not. They seem more focused on humans than on each other, and they not only look at what we point to when we point, they even know to look at what we look at when we look without pointing.

Cats sometimes look into our eyes, but they don't understand pointing or know to look where we look. At least, I've never noticed that they do, but perhaps a reader has experienced this? If so, this would likely be with highly unusual, individual cats, not with cats as a species.

What of other animals? My children have a pet hamster that lives all alone in its cage. I sometimes take it out and let it enjoy the mammalian comfort of being held, but it never stops to gaze into my eyes, nor would it ever look where I point or where I look, other than randomly.

See what I'm pointing at in today's random entry?

Speaking of beef, I mean beer...

Lee Hyo-bok, Seoul WaBar

JoongAng Daily, May 14, 2008

(Image by Kwon Hyuck-jae)

The JoongAng Daily for Wednesday, May 14 -- my birthday, if you recall -- had a couple of useful articles on finding good beer in Korea.

The articles don't talk much about Korean beers. I wonder why.

Anyway, the first article, "Booze news for beer hunters," by Lee Young-hee and Kim Do-eun, describes the Koreans changing tastes in beers:

In Korea, American beverages like Miller and Budweiser, and Mexico's Corona, used to be considered cool, but today European beers, with their stronger personalities and richer tastes are becoming more prominent.

Interest in European drinks has been fueled in part by the tourism boom. As more Koreans travel overseas, they encounter a diverse range of brews. Events like Oktoberfest in Germany have introduced more locals here to that nation's wealth of beer talent. Subsequently, the beer market here is moving away from lagers and is embracing dark, wheat and light beers.

That's a change all for the better here in Korea even if I do choose readily available Budweiser over the cheaper Korean beers, but if my Arkansas beer-buddy John Wells is right about the best, most-creative beers in the world now being brewed in America, then we can hope for a New World reorientation sometime and a Korean return to American beers, albeit of more creative brews . . . unless Koreans worry about getting some of those mind-wasting prions from American-brewed, beef-flavored beer.

(Advice: Don't drink beef-flavored beer -- it's for the dogs!)

But worried Koreans can flush their brains of these concerns and unlikely prions by turning to beers with higher alcohol, described in a section of the article with this heading:

For drinkers who want to get drunk

Lee and Kim obviously know their Korean readership -- and perhaps their foreign readers as well -- for they get directly to the point:

A beer's alcohol content is usually about 4 to 5 percent. But if you want to get really plastered, try a barley-rich Bock, a lager with 7 to 9 percent alcohol. Erdinger Bock is 7.3 percent on the alcohol Richter scale while Paulaner Salvator at 7.5 percent will get you tipsy quickly.

But that's not why I drink beer, and I feel no urge to flush my brain of any putative prion build-up from my many years eating American beef. Moreover, too much alcohol, not American beef, is the real mind-wasting stuff.

My advice to Korean youth with their irrational fears of getting bovine spongiform encephalopathy from American beef and their candlelight protests against importing mad-cow disease from the United States:

Kids, don't follow the example of your elders, drinking to get quickly drunk, but drink in moderation, and your brains will stay healthier no matter how much American beef you eat.

That's my expert medical advice, speaking as a doctor of philosophy.

The second article, "Abide by this guide when you imbibe," written solely by Lee Young-hee, tells of Lee Hyo-bok's WaBar chain of bars offering a selection of international beers.

WaBar doesn't seem to have a website, despite having 100 bars (including one in L.A.'s Koreatown) though a website appears to be in the works.

Anyway, the bar owner, Lee Hyo-bok, offers some advice for would-be beer drinkers, including this final piece on how to drink a beer:

It tastes best with good friends close to you. Beer just doesn't taste as good when you drink alone.

I agree, and precisely for that reason, when I'm hot and sweating after my daily exercise, I like to have an ice-cold beer with a friendly book.