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.

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.

{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

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.

Take a nice, reasonably fatty piece of pork. I like skin-on pork hock for this, though the recipes I found online specify pork belly. Season the meat with salt and pepper.

I did not pre-boil the meat as it was already cubed, and I gather this is the main reason for doing so.

Caramelize some sugar till fairly brown in a Dutch oven. You can add 2 tbsp of oil right at the start. Keep an eye on it, it can go from brown to burnt pretty fast.

Sear the pork right in the caramel on all sides.

Braise it in water to nearly cover (or some chicken broth, apple juice, and then water), a splash of Chinese cooking wine, some spices and herbs and aromatics: ginger, star anise, chilies, and cinnamon. (I forgot the first three, but added minced shallots and whole garlic cloves and raisins.)

The braising time is specified for about an hour, but I found 3+ hours in a slow cooker was fine.

That's obviously important for a wide range of issues on which the liberal position would trouble not just conservatives, but also libertarians and moderates: the individual right to keep and bear arms, the right of Asians and whites to equal treatment under the Constitution's racial equality provisions and federal equal rights statutes,

I am so sick of people using Asians to drive wedges and otherwise cover up their real agendas.

Sidebar: Volokh is obliquely referring to the claim, mostly made by anti-affirmative-action types, that Asian-Americans are harmed by affirmative action policies, mostly by focusing on university admissions. See the Nation for a good rundown on why Asian-Americans consistently reject an end to affirmative action policies.

As A.R. Sakaeda wrote:

Members of the model minority often are used to shame other people of color. They can do it, why can't you? If you would only have those same close-knit families. If you only valued education more. If you only worked harder. Racism is a thing of the past.

Holding up Asian Americans as a model divides communities of color, making it difficult for us to see our commonalities.

"Model" too often means you don't have to ride in the back of the bus. You can ride near the front of the bus, but you have to be very, very careful never to say anything about the people forced to ride in back, as writer David Mura notes.

Honestly, I remember the 80s, specifically for me growing up in Vancouver as Chinese immigration surged. I think the reasons American conservatives try to lump Asians with whites (essentially against other minorities) is (1) because it sounds better than just saying "the right of whites to equal treatment under the Constitution" and (2) because there are relatively few Asian-Americans in the US. If the numbers of AsAms in the US was a lot higher, I don't think that 'solidarity' of the kind Volokh espouses would have a whole lot of staying power.

It was surprisingly annoying having to come up with new and strange updates every day. I missed a few - one for laziness, one or two for sickness - and ripped off the Simpsons and other favourite joke sources here and there as well, though as far as I can tell a fair number of these are original. As well, it's pretty clear I ran out of gas near the end.

Some of the comments I got were encouraging. Some people just appreciated the random jokes, but my favourite comment by far was "I get a sense of how it must be to live in North Korea".

Mar 29: Andrew Chang says birth month celebrations commence next week. Please clear your calendars.

Mar 30: Andrew Chang says birth month celebrations commence this Wednesday. Counting down: 2 more days...

Mar 31: Andrew Chang says birth month celebrations commence this Wednesday. Counting down: 1 more day. This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill.

continue reading...

Anyways, all that is a prelude to my real point. Why do the AIG bonuses matter? Aren't they absolutely dwarfed by the scale of the overall bailout to the company? Yes, but. The bailouts of the company have been frantic efforts to keep the entire world's financial system from collapsing in a chain reaction. The bonuses, however, are completely indefensible. $450 million is going to AIGFP! There's only 370 people in that division, and more importantly, it is the division that sank the company.

continue reading...

About a week ago, I was feeling happy for no particular reason and so I put "Andrew is happy as a clam" on my Facebook status. Then, a couple of days after that, I got sick, so I thought I would write "Andrew is sick as a dog", but at the last moment I decided to write "Andrew is sick as a clam" instead. Then, later in the week I felt a bit better, and thus "Andrew is as happy as a somewhat sick clam". (Followed, for the record, by "Andrew is as happy as a somewhat sick clam who's full of barbeque", "Andrew is trying not to be shellfish", and then "Andrew feels as healthy as a clam!".)

The point is that the phrase "sick as a clam" just amuses me no end, and I can't even quite figure out why. I know this can't amuse anyone else as much as it does me, but I still want to twist a few other common animal phrases ("clever as a fox", "strong as an ox", "proud as a peacock", and so on).

Co-worker 2: Well, stop breaking the online build!

Me, walking by: We don't negotiate with terrorists!

Instead, in the glorious and supposedly near future, we'll download everything. Admittedly, we do this for music by now... But movies are different. It's purely a matter of degree, but in this case a quantitative difference becomes a qualitative difference just because of sheer difference in scale.

In small words: no one minds waiting a minute or two to download a song, or ten-ish minutes to download an album. Movies or even TV shows take a lot longer to download.

Digital distribution might be the future, but even with BitTorrent, Steam, etc (where "Steam, etc" are basically proprietary spins on the BitTorrent P2P concept)... the future won't be arriving anytime soon.
Current compression schemes can't stream or download an HD movie in a reasonable amount of time with a reasonable level of quality, at least not at the speed of broadband in North America.

Videogames vary wildly in size, but as a rule of thumb, the big AAA titles take way, way more than an album in MP3 form. On the other hand, I think videogames marketed to the hardcore niche can be quite successful as download-only products. Steam doesn't just leverage P2P, but also pre-ordering and as a consequence of the pre-orders, pre-loading. Valve's big games get downloaded over the course of several days across the internet before the official release date; they're locked until the actual release date, of course.

But I think that pre-loading model doesn't work for the mass market (for games) much more than it would for movies. Only a few titles are the sort that see heavy pre-orders.

By the way, full disclosure: I'm enough of a traditionalist that I usually prefer physical media when given the choice. So maybe this is just my biases at work here.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper claims he wants to build bridges with his political opponents in Parliament.

"Obviously we have to do some trust building on both sides," Harper said at an impromptu news conference after the Governor General approved his request to prorogue Parliament until January 26.

"Trust-building"??? This from the man who broke his own law that elections would come at a fixed date? Who, having won his early election -- the sort he used to rail against -- then proceeded to call for an end to partisanship right before trying to kneecap his enemies by cutting off their funding?

Just how stupid does he think Canada is?

Is it just me, or is the current freak-out about the coalition taking power from Harper's minority government like 15x worse than when Stronach or Emerson crossed the aisle?

For example:

"This deal that the leader of the Liberal Party has made with the separatists is a betrayal of the voters of this country, a betrayal of the best interests of our economy, a betrayal of the best interests of our country, and we will fight it with every means that we have," Harper said.

An angry Dion accused Harper of "lies" and said the coalition is good for national unity. "My fellow Quebecers who believe in separation are more likely to be reconciled with Canada if we work with them than if we marginalize them," he said.

One of the most raucous sessions in recent memory ended with a Tory chorus of O Canada in the government lobby.

BTW, the Cons' high dudgeon would be a little easier to take if they hadn't been on the other side of this situation just four years ago:

However, Duceppe was quick to point out that the Conservatives had no reservations about striking deals with the Bloc when Harper tried in 2004 -- a month before the throne speech was to be tabled, and without even knowing what the throne speech would contain -- to mount a coalition to defeat Liberal prime minister Paul Martin's government.

• Oops I Did It Again "by" Louis Armstrong.
• Hit Me Baby One More Time by Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa. Sorry I couldn't find a better link.
• Toxic by French funk/brass band Ouiches Lorenes.

And here are two brass/funk covers of Salt-n-Pepa's "Push It":

• The Hungry March Band's version
• Rude Mechanical Orchestra's version

As we all know, the original starred Ralph Macchio as the new kid in town who gets his ass beat every day by a gang of bullies, until he strikes up a friendship with quirky old dude who teaches him karate. Somewhere along the way, the kid hooks up with Elisabeth Shue. And then later, Tamlyn Tomita.

This new movie will reportedly be filmed in Beijing. Does that mean that the Cobra Kai-like bullies will be Chinese? Greaaaaat.

But I can't get too mad. Of course the new Karate Kid wouldn't actually be Japanese... As everyone knows, all Asians already know martial arts.

Check out this architectural blog's interview with famous film editor and sound designer Walter Murch.

Murch and I spoke for roughly an hour, and we continued our conversation through email; we managed to discuss the Pantheon, Copernicus, the Mithraic religion of the ancient Mediterranean, urban acoustics, the music of the spheres, Brian Eno, Single Speed Design, the architecture of film, and whether CCTV surveillance of city streets should be considered a new cinematic avant-garde.

Then, read this transcript of Michelangelo Antonioni's sound diary of 1970s Manhattan, with a foreword by Murch, then listen to this radio interview with Murch from NPR.

Then, read the books In the Blink of an Eye and The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film.