The Conversation
- Scapegoating our own (12)
- Frank Chow: @King He definitely said he opposed “same-sex marriage”, that didn’t change....
- King: @ Frank But Manny didn’t even say what he’s been accused of.
- Frank Chow: I think any athlete should be an athlete and accept the responsibility of their words in a public forum....
- Facebook co-founder renounces U.S. citizenship prior to IPO (13)
- Raguel: This is a storm in a tea cup, a new five minutes of hate. This is because despite the outrage, people will...
- Frank Chow: “The country is not over-taxed; in fact, tax rates are near 60 year lows.” -source,...
- bigWOWO: Linda, Mark Cuban is rich (richer than me anyway), and he’s just as horrified as I am. I don’t...
- The Perversity of Human Biodiversity, a.k.a. “Scientific” Racism (428)
- LadyBlack: Hello, you who believe that some races are inferior and that some are superior. As a Black (in particular...
- bigWOWO: Thanks, Grover!
- Grover Porquel: Excellent roundup. I have taken on these “biodiversity” types myself over the years and...
- Higher education: the next subprime bubble (5)
- bigWOWO: Let’s think hypothetically. Let’s say they had quotas, such as a company of X number of...
- kobukson: In the past, a high school diploma was sufficient for getting a job. Things changed and a HS diploma...
- bigWOWO: I do agree with you, Ei, to a certain point. I have heard that some lawyers and engineers are having...
- Americans Eat the World’s Cheapest Food (36)
- bigWOWO: A week in, and: I liked the mock chicken, but the family didn’t like it. I don’t know if...
- King: ^ But isn’t Anthony Bourdain the same guy who recently called Paula Deen the “Worst Unhealthy Cook” for...
- kobukson: I like Anthony Bourdain’s take on vegetarians and vegans: “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like...
- Why Do Asian People Have Bad Eyesight? (37)
- Suing the Bachelor for racial discrimination (34)
- George: The problem with the entertainment industry is that they have already stated that blacks are not on the show...
- George: “Oh and prediction, you know the first female non white bachelorette will be Asian, and it will be...
- Chen: i’ve been reading about BFOQ cases, and it seems as if the entertainment industry wins unless they do...
- Reasons to eliminate black studies (23)
- Asian Men, Black Men, and the Competition for White Women (569)
- Raguel: Actually, white people may laugh at him even more, and that may be why they like him so much.
- Raguel: How does this nihilistic dog so filled with ressentiment and love of the slave morality even dare to mention...
- ChineseMom: (continued) Criticism of contemporary Chinese literature and Marxism Q: After the publication of your...
- Immigration records of Asian immigrants to be made available to public (2)
- American woman becomes hero to abused women in China (39)
- Chen: thats it. This woman got beat up, and that is wrong. I’m sure some assholes are going to use that and run...
- Eurasian Sensation: Patriarchal practices are incredibly ingrained in some countries and are extremely hard to shift....
- Raguel: Wasn’t it reported in one of the major american magazines like life, time etc that travelling ulamas...
- San Diego student left alone in cell for five days (3)
- bigWOWO: Haha…I know, Zach! This is the absolute worse kind of invisibility that there is!
- Zach Katagiri: Man — talk about asian american males being invisible!!
- Linda: this will be the next episode of “I survived….” I am surprised they don’t have video...
- Adventures of the Karaoke King by Harold Taw (Review and Question) (4)
- bigWOWO: Alpha, Glad that you see the precious metals rather than the ranking! Although I guess I should consider...
- Raguel: Why not make contact with other blogs and Asian American websites to feature your reviews? This way,...
- Alpha Asian: B, I know what you mean. A lot of reviewers just give very bland reviews and they don’t really...
- Asian women fetch high prices for egg donation (5)
- Dman: I don’t get the article Asian women in demand for donating her eggs. I did not see anything mentioned...
- bigWOWO: I think that buying an egg is financially easier these days than adoption from China. I know people trying...
- Linda: Also regarding about adoption. I think a lot of Americanized Asians are open to adoption in the US. (unlike...
- Re-Programming Your Mind (74)
- Chr..: I’m not making this up! I saw this guy in front of a Trader Joe’s here in NYC not too long ago as...
- Asian Women and the Invisible Chain (187)
- Chr..: @ King Yes, and what can the general masses do to stop with what’s going on right now? Not much I would...
- King: @ Chr Because the money, more than anything else, is ‘the system’ that affects everything else.
- Chr..: “The whole thing looks like a very twisted version of musical chairs, doesn’t it?” Why does this...
- Creative Monopolists (3)
- Asian husband-wife team on Shark Tank (3)
- Artists Who Refuse to Work for Free (5)
- Courtney: I have been drawing for 22 years. I think it’s really inconsiderate to ask an artist to sit down for...
- More Asian Americans Marrying Within Their Race (106)
- Chr..: “Look at some of the fatcats on Wall Street–a guy who can drop $800 on a single night out isn’t...
- The Richer Sex by Liza Mundy (Review) (12)
- Chr..: “dystopian mating marketplace where, like income inequality, the rewards of female sexuality will go...
- Whiteness and American TV (9)
- Linda: @hadoken – I don’t know why korean dramas are like crack. I go thru phases. since it’s a...
- Scapegoating our own (12)
Monthly Archives: April 2009
Raising IQs
I’m too tired to say much right now, but I didn’t want let Kristof’s Op-Ed go by without mentioning it. In his Op-Ed, he talks about Richard Nisbett’s new book “Intelligence and How to Get It,” which addresses how intelligence is formed and what people and nations can do to improve theirs. Nisbett’s view is that intelligence is highly malleable, especially at young ages. I’ve read Nisbett’s “Geography of Thought” which compares the thought processes of Westerners vs. Easterners. Geography of Thought was excellent, and according to Kristof, this new book is excellent too.
The Environmental Impact of Stoves
I posted about solar cooking just a week ago, with an anecdote about a high school teacher. Today, the NY Times talks about the environmental impact of stoves that are not ec0-friendly. According to the times, the emission that comes from these stoves, “black soot,” is the number two contributor to global warming. It is responsible for 18% of global warming and possibly half of Arctic warming.
Check out the photos.
It seems like it should be a relatively easy solution–just give people solar stoves. However, as the article indicates, it may be hard to get people to change cultural habits. And it sounds like the food doesn’t come out as good. Hopefully someone will come up with a way to fix this.
Goodbye, Privacy
Maureen Dowd has the best job in the world. Sit there, make fun of people or institutions, and then call it a day. I’m not downplaying her–she’s extremely good at what she does, especially when making fun of Hillary Clinton. But what a job!
She wrote this NY Times Op-Ed yesterday about Google and how they’re taking over the world. As is often the case, she’s right. Google has become so effective at collecting data and info that Big Brother is lurking just right around the corner. Ever since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, privacy has been a major concern among public figures, but possibly not anymore–public figures simply won’t be able to hide anything in the future.
Learn learn learn
I once read an article by Eddie Van Halen about how he learned guitar. He would listen to the guitar greats like Chuck Berry on his dad’s phonograph. Because the solos were so fast, he’d play the records at a slower pace, and then he’d finger them on his guitar. He would painstakingly sound out the music and work it until he could reproduce it. This was back in the day before they sold sheet music with guitar tablature, the diagrams which shows the exact finger positions on a guitar fretboard. When tab came out, it made the budding guitarist’s job a lot easier.
The Disney Machine
Kelly Pena, the "Kid Whisperer"
Everyone probably already knew this, but Disney has a research department aimed at finding out how to best ensnare young children’s minds. One of their researchers is Kelly “the Kid Whisperer” Pena. The article says:
Her undercover mission: to unearth what makes him tick and use the findings to help the Walt Disney Company reassert itself as a cultural force among boys.
Sugar Daddies and Sugar Babies
“Lend me some sugar. I am your neighbor.”
–Outkast
This was a very funny, very interesting article from this week’s NY Times Magazine. It’s about a website called SeekingArrangement.com that tries to set up rich “sugar daddies” with young women who want to date them. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like–guys are expected to fork over cash and gifts, while women are expected to provide companionship, sex, and whatever sugar babies do. Check out this video on the phenomenon by Good Morning America.
Tagged romance
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Backwards
Sanjay Mavinkurve
Piece about immigration and H1B visas here: Tech Recruiting Clashes with Immigration Rules. The story focuses on Sanjay Mavinkurve, who, you may remember, used to be in a fight with Zuckerberg over who really invented Facebook. It looks like Mavinkurve is now working at Google, and the Times piece is about the immigration issues that he has been facing. Currently he lives in Canada because his wife is not allowed to work in the U.S.
Respect and Love
Article on Seth Godin’s blog about what makes a good presenter. He says it’s just two things: love to the audience, and respect from the audience.
I think this is true, not just for presenters, but also for bloggers and writers. You can’t be a good blogger if you hate the people who come to your site and are not trying to help them. You can’t write for people if you don’t care about them. I’ve seen some people try their hand at blogging who were so self-absorbed that they couldn’t type a sentence without the condescenscion coming out. Needless to say, they failed.
Shooting Under Fire
After the rampage in Binghamton last week, 80/20 had a segment on guns. I’d recommend watching the whole thing. You can see it here.
My favorite part was the experiment where they tested people’s ability to react under fire. They put people into a classroom environment with a real gun loaded with paint pellets, and then they re-enacted a mass shooting. As the study showed, even with training, it’s hard for armed civilians to defend themselves–some of them got the guns caught in their shirts, some got shot in the head, and some just froze. People think they could avoid the violence if only they were armed, but it’s not as simple as it seems.
"There is a black man in my house."
I saw this amazing story on CNN this morning. A woman’s home had been burglarized before, so she set up an internet webcam to monitor her home. When she pulled up the live feed from work one morning, she saw two guys robbing her house. She dialed 911 and said, “I’m watching my home on live monitor, and there is a black man in my house, and he is robbing it.”
