The Fighting 44s

This is the best interview with a political leader I’ve ever read. He makes some insightful observations on world politics and strategy, and says something very interesting about how democracy can be undermined in multiracial societies by ethnocentric voting. (This mirrors my “integral theory” or “developmental” position that democracy is not universally functional or desirable but is dependent on a population’s moral/cognitive mode.) READ THIS interview! (Special thanks to Maogirl for pointing it out.)

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH SINGAPORE’S LEE KUAN YEW
“It’s Stupid to be Afraid”

Singapore’s first-ever prime minister, long-time government head and current political mentor Lee Kuan Yew talks about Asia’s rise to economic power, China’s ambitions and the West’s chances of staying competitive.

The elder statesman Lee: “We run a meritocracy.”

SPIEGEL: The political and economic center of gravity is moving from the West towards the East. Is Asia becoming the dominant political and economic force in this century?

Mr. Lee: I wouldn’t say it’s the dominant force. What is gradually happening is the restoration of the world balance to what it was in the early 19th century or late 18th century when China and India together were responsible for more than 40 percent of world GDP. With those two countries becoming part of the globalized trading world, they are going to go back to approximately the level of world GDP that they previously occupied. But that doesn’t make them the superpowers of the world.

Posted in Newsworthy, Politics | | Permalink

I’m going to be proactive and call it: I think the race is over for Hillary Clinton. She lost North Carolina by a huge margin, and she won Indiana by only a razor thin margin, enabling Obama to increase his lead in the pledged delegate count. George McGovern called for her to quit yesterday, and Al Sharpton called for the same today. I heard on the radio that superdelegates are refusing to meet with her and Bill, while they are eagerly meeting with Obama. Obama picks up new superdelegates every day. Hillary loaned her own campaign another $6 million for a lump sum loan total of $11 million out of her own pocket. She’s seriously strapped for cash.

It’s done. Over. Jaehwan is calling it right now–Obama is the Democratic nominee of 2008. There is no way the math works out; she’s going down. The negative campaigning was exactly what the country did not want, and we are letting her know through our votes and our declining contributions to her campaign. Obama is starting to act like the new nominee by challenging McCain, and I think it’s a good move on his part.

Posted in Blog, Politics | | Permalink

Interesting article by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.

He writes about politicians being straight with the people.  It’s tangentially related to my last post.  For a long time now, Friedman has been talking about raising the gas tax in order to encourage more investment in green energy technologies, and his theory is that the current energy crisis is a result of our failure to act when we should have.  He must be absolutely fuming at Hillary’s suggestion of a gas tax “holiday.”  All of us should be fuming.

One interesting quote I found was here:

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”

“Asian values?”  I know he meant it as a compliment, but in his parents’ generation, Inouye was denied the Medal of Honor because he wasn’t white enough.  Anyway…I know what he’s trying to say.

Posted in Newsworthy | | Permalink

Spotted in today’s New York Times: “An Auction of New Chinese Art Leaves Disjointed Noses In Its Wake by David Barboza.”

SHANGHAI — Sotheby’s auction house called it the “most important collection of contemporary Chinese art to ever come to market” — some 200 works by some of China’s hottest names.

And when the first half of the trove, called the Estella Collection, went on the block in April in Hong Kong, it brought in $18 million and set some record prices for artists, like $6 million for a canvas by the Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang.

But the sale of the works has stirred indignation among many of the artists and their dealers and some curators.

Those artists and curators say that as the collection was being formed, they were duped into thinking that a rich Westerner was putting together a permanent collection and would eventually donate some of the works to leading museums. (Read rest of Times article.)

I read the article and came to the conclusion that the real headline should be: “The Colonial Raping and Pillaging Never Ends.”

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I saw this interesting article in the Washington Post about how presidential candidates since the days of William Henry Harrison have tried to make themselves seem like the common man. It’s especially interesting for me since I’m reading a book on Abraham Lincoln, our original “log cabin” president.

The article says:

Identifying with the common man has been a requisite in presidential elections for almost two centuries. But the stakes are especially high in a race largely defined by an economic crisis, and campaign experts say the candidates have gone especially far in their appeals.

In the past six weeks, Clinton hammered down a shot of Crown Royal whiskey — not necessarily the first choice of the workingman — and chased it with a beer. Obama visited a Pennsylvania sports bar and sampled a Yuengling after making sure it wasn’t “some designer beer.” Clinton told stories about learning to shoot behind the cottage her grandfather built. Obama went bowling.

The article also says:

Posted in Activism, Newsworthy, Politics | | Permalink

Just saw this article on BBC. He too has darker hair than Jim Sturgess.

Also see Xian’s post.

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The Washington Post today has yet another article about how the population of Japan is declining.  They cover this ongoing story well.  A few years ago, they had another article about how schools in rural Japan were closing because there weren’t enough kids to fill them. 

The numbers are frightening:

Japan, now the world’s second-largest economy, will lose 70 percent of its workforce by 2050 and economic growth will slow to zero, according to a report this year by the nonprofit Japan Center for Economic Research.

Population shrinkage began three years ago and is gathering pace. Within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third, the government projects. Within a century, two-thirds of the population will be gone.

The Japanese population is actually shrinking.  Without a new crop of young people, not only will there not be enough hands to get the work done on a large scale, but there will also be less innovation.  There will also be fewer new ideas moving around.  The country will also be held back by the need for workers to care for the elderly. 

It’s also sad for the elderly:

Posted in Blog, Newsworthy | | Permalink

These days, a good number of academics are treating social issues with a biological eye. From Richard Dawkins’s identification of ideas as memes to Malcolm Gladwell’s categorization of instrumental people into Connectors, Mavens, and Salespeople, it seems that the biological analogy is quite popular.

The New York Times this weekend had an article in the Sunday magazine about using the biological approach to stop inner city violence. For Asian American activists, maybe there are lessons to be taken from Slutkin’s efforts and how ideas and habits spread.

As CeaseFire evolved, Slutkin says he started to realize how much it was drawing on his experiences fighting TB and AIDS. “Early intervention in TB is actually treatment of the most infectious people,” Slutkin told me recently. “They’re the ones who are infecting others. So treatment of the most infectious spreaders is the most effective strategy known and now accepted in the world.” And, he continued, you want to go after them with individuals who themselves were once either infectious spreaders or at high risk for the illness. In the case of violence, you use those who were once hard-core, once the most belligerent, once the most uncontrollable, once the angriest. They are the most convincing messengers. It’s why, for instance, Slutkin and his colleagues asked sex workers in Uganda and other nations to spread the word to other sex workers about safer sexual behavior. Then, Slutkin said, you train them, as you would paraprofessionals, as he and Gove did when they trained birth attendants to spot cholera in Somalia.

Posted in Activism, Advocacy, Blog | | Permalink

Yeah I know it’s a stupid title. Just acknowledge it, then move on.

I have to say, one of my most favorite things about my family is that we do not fear food. Especially my mom’s side. My maternal grandfather used to be a diplomat. Meaning that they had to move around a lot because of my gpa’s job and were exposed to lots of different cultures. Imagine my little grandma being tossed into a new environment where she doesn’t speak the language, with a bunch of kids and having to figure out where to buy food and feed her family. You can’t be a wimp when it comes to those situations. When my mom first got married, she only cooked Korean food for my dad, because that’s all he really liked at the time. But once they started having kids, my mom was able to take us out to non-Korean restaurants and cook non-Korean things and experiment.

Which brings us to August of 2007. My brother and I at Morimoto, being the pigs that we are. For the life of me I can’t remember most of what we ate but I know it was pretty good. I think we both got the $80 omakase menu for lunch.

Posted in Blog, Ellen's Cooking | | Permalink

So way back in February I sort of became obsessed with making chewy bar type desserts. Two of my favorite chewy bars are brownies and blondies. Both are made from similar ingredients and give you an end product with similar textures so I figured they’d probably be fine if you combined them together into one very high on the glycemic index treat.

It’s probably obvious why they’re called dirty gooks. They are yellow and brown and swirly. I suppose you could also call them poo-pees, or blasians, but I just wanted an excuse to name a dessert after a racial expletive. It’s a three-part recipe. You’ll need to make two different batters and then combine them in one pan. The dirty part of the recipe is slightly more finicky than the gook part of the recipe. You see how the bar is sort of shiny? That has to do with the temperature of your sugar and butter together in the brownie batter. You don’t want to walk away from the stove once you’ve combined the sugar and the butter together.

This is what you’ll need:

First for the dirty part of the recipe:

• 3/4 stick of butter or 3 oz

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