Serenepia


Monday, 31 May 2010

Customized cutlery

I bought a Forschner chef's knife because it's $30 and favourably reviewed by Cook's Illustrated, because I wanted to customize it and thought starting from an affordable knife with good performance would be better than an atrocious knife. The steel is the one thing I really can't fix, after all.

My intended changes:

1) File down the spine of the knife right near the handle, to facilitate more comfortable handling with the 'pinch' grip, as described here.

2) File the edge down from its standard 20 degree edge angle to a sharper 15 degree angle, probably with the 'mousepad trick' system of fine-grit sandpaper and a mousepad that produces a naturally convex edge. (another description here.)

3) (less likely) hand-hammer out the half of the blade nearer the spine to produce a "tsuchime" finish, partly just to see how it'd look and partly to produce a less sticky surface on the knife.

posted at: 00:07 Mon 31/May/2010 | /journal | permalink | 0 comments | trackback

Monday, 01 March 2010

Think twice (or why pop ev-psych might not be on the most solid foundation)

The evolutionary psychologist Dr Satoshi Kanazawa is (in)famous for his provocative claims: atheist liberals are smarter than religious right-wingers, black people are cognitively inferior to whites, beautiful people have more daughters than sons, feminism is evil, and so on.

There are, as you might expect, some criticisms of his work's technical quality. For example, Echidne here (pts 2, 3, 4), here, and here (pts 2, 3). Or Andrew Gelman here (PDF) and with David Weakliem here (PDF again). Or Culture Evolves (see the many links in the third paragraph). Or Crooked Timber here.

Then too, there are signs that his facade of political neutrality is either idiocy or lies (see also Cosma Shalizi).

Looooong story short, whether his provocative claims reinforce or challenge your biases, you might just want to find a more credible source than an evolutionary psychologist who proudly notes he hasn't studied biology since high school and gets statistics wrong to boot.

Which is why I'll just wrap up with Daniel Davies:

We can see the modern descendant of this primeval behaviour in the struggle in our comments section over the evolutionary psychologist, academic racist, genocidal fantastist and general-purpose embarrassment[1], Satoshi Kanazawa, on the general subject of everyone with a perceived national, institutional, disciplinary or academic connection to him desperately trying to backpedal and claim that he's one of you lot, not one of us lot.

The Americans are pointing out that he works at LSE; the Brits that he did all of his studies in America. The sociologists want to make it very clear that he's a psychologist - the psychologists that his PhD is in sociology. I have noticed that he actually works in the Managerial Economics and Strategy Group (ie he's a business school type) and am staying bloody quiet about it in the hope that nobody else will twig.

There might be something to this evolutionary psychology lark after all.

posted at: 04:20 Mon 01/Mar/2010 | /politics | permalink | 0 comments | trackback

Friday, 05 February 2010

Repeat the HST

OK, so, let me start this off by saying I've been reasonably persuaded that the HST is a good thing for BC in the long run. And I think Bill Vander Zalm is an ass, and Bill Tieleman I'm pretty mixed on.

But that said, the way the HST was implemented is absolutely inimical to democracy and should be defeated for that reason alone.

It is unacceptable for a party to deceive the province into "what's best". Make your case to the people and then govern with an actual mandate. Don't say you're not going to bring in an HST and then do it.

posted at: 18:39 Fri 05/Feb/2010 | /politics/canada | permalink | 1 comment | trackback

Thursday, 08 October 2009

another joke

{discussing how X should set up a reunion website.}

{X}: I only have contact info for like 2 or 3 of the people though

{X}: but I suppose one can start somewhere

me: Yeah, friends of friends of friends.

me: Only problem is that you're guaranteed to find jerks within 4 degrees.

me: Maybe you could make it a FB app or something. Or just a FB group.

{X}: well, jerks are people too

me: You're so tolerant.

[...]

me: ah, here's where I last said something like [what we were just talking about.]

me: Wow, I sound like a jerk.

{X}: no kidding

{X}: and only 0 degrees of seperation

posted at: 08:46 Thu 08/Oct/2009 | /journal | permalink | 0 comments | trackback

a joke

in IM. (Context: "X" is Asian.)

me: how are your parents?

{X}: they are fine

{X}: I find them very difficult

me: Well, study hard, I'm sure you'll do fine.

{X}: haha

{X}: funny

{X}: or would be if it weren't so ironic

me: Yes, it has layers.

posted at: 03:23 Thu 08/Oct/2009 | /journal | permalink | 0 comments | trackback



Photos, videogames, politics, art, architecture, and other geekery.

Andrew Chang
andrewc-blogatofb.net
aka ArC

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