why did you change your name to 꽃기린 (kkot girin)?

When I became a Korean citizen in 2023, I wanted to change my name to something less cumbersome than 마이어데이빗샘웰 (which is a mouthful). My wife called me Girin/Giraffe since we first started dating, so it had been a familiar name to me for many years. When I was brainstorming options for a new Hangul name, she joked that I should go with 꽃기린, and I just fell in love with the idea of 꽃 as a surname. In fact, I fell in love with the whole idea of the name. It is very distinctly Korean, but also not at all a typical or conventional Korean name. In a way it symbolizes my experience and identity here as an immigrant—neither this nor that. Not to mention that the original “girin,” the mythological girin, is a chimera made from the parts of many different creatures. Nothing could describe my reality better. To be is to be many things.

what does 꽃기린 (kkot girin) mean?

꽃 (Kkot), my surname, means flower, and 기린 (Girin) means giraffe. Girin is also the name of a mythological chimera in East Asian folklore. 꽃기린 is also the name of a plant from Madagascar known in English as crown-of-thorns.

what does the title of this blog mean?

Many mountains, many roads (多山多路) is a phrase that has stuck with me throughout my academic career. The late Dr. James Horton of Shasta College used it in his classic course History of World Religions as a metaphor for plurality. In contrast with fundamentalist or absolutist worldviews that suppose of reality as one mountain with one or many roads leading to the peak, this pluralistic alternative suggests that not only are there many mountains and many roads, but mountains are roads are mountains. In other words: it’s a matter of perspective. In all of my wandering, I have found that perspective is the best we can do. More than certainty or goodness or other fantasies, it is much more serviceable in the course of actually living a life.

Entitling this blog many mountains, many roads is a form of propaganda you might say. It serves as a reminder or an invitation to wonder broadly and keep and open mind.

what does this site’s logo mean?

The logo for this site is my attempt at visually interpreting the concept of many mountains, many roads. It depicts two intertwined “two double and operators” (⩕) that appear mirrored horizontally. The lower “mirrored” portion is skewed toward a central vanishing point, giving the image depth and perspective (wink wink, nudge nudge).

I chose to use the “two double and operator” symbol for two reasons. First, it looks like an M, so it gives some visual continuity to the title of this blog. They also look like mountains, and their being outlined (and intertwined) gives the impression of roads simultaneously. Second, this operator makes the symbol conceptually intriguing. A double and operator is more-or-less functionally equivalent to the familiar if and only if (iff, ≡, ↔, etc.). In a statement with a double and operator, all conditions must be true otherwise the statement is false. Visually and conceptually, this image seems to suggest that mountains are roads are mountains. You may notice that the image appears symmetrical at first, but it is not, in fact! Pondering what that may suggest is left for the reader to enjoy.

how did you make your logo?

With Inkscape and lots of experimentation!

can i use your logo?

Sure, the source is embedded into this html file. Have fun.

what is namu.blue?

namu.blue is a domain I purchased some years ago to provide myself and my family with control over our email accounts. I use this domain to host various services for friends, family, and colleagues—including this blog.

The word namu (나무) in Korean means tree. I wanted a domain name that was short, cute, and memorable.

what is giraffleur.org?

giraffleur.org is the home of my online identity. Giraffleur is a portmanteau of giraffe and fleur, which is what my name (Girin Kkot) liteally means (giraffe flower/flower giraffe).

why are you sometimes called dr. goat?

Because that is my name. My surname in Korea, 꽃 (Kkot), is pronounced similarly to the English word goat. Therefore, I am Dr. Goat, which is how people sometimes refer to me in Korean (꽃박사, 꽃선생, etc.)

why don’t you use a yonsei email address?

I have email addresses from both Yonsei University and the University of Hawai’i, and while I still receive email through both, I no longer actively use either of them. There are two reasons for this.

1. Using my own domain gives me freedom and control over my email and my online identity. It allows me to keep the same email address and not be locked-in to any one provider, and it allows me to identify myself with the domain where I host this blog (giraffleur.org).

2. Both Yonsei’s and UH’s email services are provided by Google—whom I actively avoid like the plague (for reasons I may detail in a blog post someday). Typically, someone like me would use their institution’s email address because it allows them to identify with that organization and advertize their membership. However, these associations are precarious and transient. I no longer attend UH, and one day I may no longer work at Yonsei. If there is any sense in attaching your identity to an email address at all, then it makes sense to prefer stability and control over your identity itself.

3. Related to #2, in the summer of 2024, Google’s contract terms with Yonsei University changed, and somehow in that process, my Yonsei email account was deleted. What is worse, I was able to recreate the account afterward using the ordinary signup form, which is a major security flaw in Google and Yonsei’s infrastructure. So, yeah… hard pass.

how do you publish this blog?

I use a static site generator called Hugo to manage the content of this site. The site itself is hosted on a very modest server I operate in my free time.

is the source of this site available?

It sure is. And it’s public domain too!

what fonts does this site use?

Currently, I am using Cooper Hewitt for Latin, Greek & Cryllic text, Source Han Sans for CJK text, and Source Code Pro for monospaced text.

I use these fonts for a number of reasons. First, I like the way they look and they way they look together. They are also relatively lightweight. Korean fonts are typically quite heavy being that they include substantially more characters that Latin fonts, but Source Han Sans is pretty decent: only about 14MB. This is still much larger than I would like, but I think the compromise is worth it to have nicely typeset multilingual documents. These fonts are cached after the first time someone visits a page here, so it isn’t too big of a deal, but if I could find a decent, ultra-light Korean font I would switch in a heartbeat!

which hugo theme do you use?

Everything on this blog is from scratch, more-or-less. The stylesheet is a hodge podge of ideas I borrowed from various other sites over the years. All of the hugo-specific stuff is the result of lots of trial and error. I am not too motivated to refactor all of that as a standalone theme, but I would not be bothered by anyone else giving it a go.

how do you typeset your eprints?

In short, I use typst to do the typesetting. The eprints are all generated on the fly from the same source files as those used to generate their posts on this blog. I convert them to typst code using pandoc and a very messy but functional template I enjoy tweaking from time to time. I sometimes use an app like MacOS’ Pages to make a prototype before wrangling with typst to get the layout I want.

is all the content on this blog really public domain?

Unless otherwise noted, yes, all of my original content shared here is public domain. Why?

1. Free cultural works make the world a better place.

2. Copyright is exhausting and soul-crushing.

3. Sharing is more fun.

aren’t you worried about plagiarism?

Not terribly. Just because something is in the public domain doesn’t mean republishing it as your own original work is okay. In the context of academic publishing, there would be no legal consequence for doing so, but it would be an absurd way to commit career suicide.

Copyright and licensing is a complex topic, but my two cents is that, especially when it comes to scholarly publications, the freer the better. Removing the barrier of copyright makes materials more accessible. I have personal reservations about how my creations are used—for example, I abhor the idea of my music being used in advertisements—but to me the bigger battle to be fought is not one that can be won playing the copyright game. Idealistic as it may be, I would prefer to err on the side of copyfree equanimity.

should i credit you if i use your materials?

You are not obligated to do so, but if it makes sense to credit me, then go for it.