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Hakodate June 2014 Ramen - The Hype I had cha-shu ramen at Marutama downtown. I paid $15 including tip (by the way, I'm not a big fan of paying tip and usually the only reason I pay tip is to avoid cold stares by my friends), and while I was eating I kinda kept feeling I could've eaten much-tastier sushi at Sushi Garden at a much lower cost ($9). I don't dislike ramen, and the staff there was nice (in the "they didn't throw me a hot bowl of ramen" sense), but the cost-performance of ramen doesn't seem to be that great. Not that I expect mere flour to perform that well. Worthy Nonfiction Bryan Caplan's Seven Guidelines for Writing Worthy Works of Non-Fiction. "If someone asks you, "What are the five most important areas to think about?," and you're writing about something that isn't on your own list, you should be disturbed." I definitely shouldn't write books about the cost-performance of ramen. Reading on Phone I'm increasingly liking reading ebooks on my phone. For manga it's probably better to use a tablet or an e-ink reader like Kindle, but for books with mostly text I think the phone is a clear winner. Being able to use the volume button to turn pages is pretty nice, and I can easily read books on the train with one hand. You can't do that with dead-tree books. The downside is I have to charge my phone constantly. Econ, EvoBio, Stats Steven Pinker on the goal of education: "The goal of education should be to provide students with new cognitive tools for grasping the world. [...] The obvious solution is instruction at all levels in relatively new fields like economics, evolutionary biology and statistics." Important Money Decisions If people made a reasonably good financial decision on education, housing, marriage, and perhaps a few other things like not buying fancy Starbucks coffee every 10 seconds, are all those "money saving tips" really important? Misanthropy Hurts You When you can't stand other people, learn to be tolerant and be constructive all day, every day. Wealth Not Money As Sal Kahn explains, money and wealth are two different things. Wealth are things people need or want -- food, shelter, entertainment, tools that enable you to make those things more efficiently, and so on. Money -- whether it's fiat/paper currencies or hard currencies like gold -- is a means to move wealth around. So while it's true that gold has some wealth aspect -- it can be used in making some electronics or jewelleries -- it's fundamentally a medium of exchange. Gold is a pretty rock, but you can't eat gold. Gold is a pretty rock, but it cannot keep you warm in the winter. Gold for the most part isn't wealth itself, and this is one of the reasons -- aside from the fact that I can't purchase a meaningful amount of gold -- why I personally don't care much about the "fiat currency vs gold" debate. I hope people focus more on WiFi and Nando's, however shallow they might sound. Also, I won't start paying attention to Bitcoin until I can use it at Superstore and Sushi Garden. Take that Satoshi Nakamoto! Dating a Supermodel Since I have a huge risk of dating lots of supermodels, I was watching The Dangers of Dating a Supermodel. Canadian Immigration Reform Moving to the open borders direction might be desirable, but maybe we need incremental change at first. The idea is to allow anyone who's reasonably smart, reasonably hard-working, reasonably healthy, and reasonably law-abiding to come to this country. The current Skilled Worker class for example has too many complicated and often unnecessary requirements, such as giving points to those who have relatives in Canada. It can be dramatically simplified. Applying for Permanent Residency through Skilled Worker class can require only:
That's it. Anyone who's passed all of these 4 requirements should be able to immigrate to Canada. This way the immigration process won't take 2+ years. It'll probably take less than 2 months. Kidney Donation Ad on Skytrain We really need free market for kidneys. People who desperately need kidneys should be able to buy them from those who are willing to sell one of their kidneys for money that they need or want. That will reduce a lot of people's sufferings. This doesn't mean donation is bad. What's bad is the fact that we only have the donation option. We need to have the free market option in addition to the donation option. Making all options other than donation illegal isn't the right thing to do. It's harmful and inhumane. If people want to sell one of their kidneys, let them do so. Why Selling Kidneys Should Be Legal Metro News
Cost of Irrational Beliefs Bryan Caplan on people's insistence on even bets: "Someone proclaims to know the future with virtual certainty, but when you challenge him to bet on his professed belief, he spurns your offer unless you give him even odds. Of course, if he really believed he was right, 100:1 would still be easy money. What's the explanation for the prevalence of this reluctance?" Akron, Ohio Tucker Max: "One of my boys decided to buck the trend and get hitched in Akron, Ohio. Really. If marriage is hell, I guess he figured it was fitting to have the ceremony at its gates." Patents vs Ambition Elon Musk: "Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology." End of Buyer's Remorse The sites like The Wirecutter and The Verge Gadget Reviews mean these days you can't easily make mistakes in buying consumer electronics, which is probably a good thing (Who likes buying bad-quality products?). This may sound harsh, but if you bought a bad cellphone or bad earphones it's probably your fault because you didn't do even the most basic research. People should ignore TV ads or salespeople's pitch and go to reviews sites like the ones I mentioned above, and we can collectively reduce buyer's remorse. Choosing Japanese Learners Even if you get paid, if your students are so unmotivated that they are not even willing to learn hiragana, then it's better to tell them to find a better teacher. Life is mind-numbingly long, but even then it's better not to spend time on certain things. Daily Newspapers I don't understand daily newspapers. There doesn't seem to be anything that I have to know on a daily basis. I prefer publications like The Economist, which is weekly (even this may be too much), and covers the entire globe, and doesn't cover sports or celebrity gossips. Maybe in some rare cases I want to know the news immediately. Natural disasters in the region where I live, for example. But then again, there's probably smartphone apps (maybe even an SMS messaging service by the regional government) that notify you if such events occur, so we really don't need daily newspapers. I'd rather read books or sleep an extra hour than waste time reading daily newspapers. Environmentalist Kids Steven Landsburg on Why I Am Not An Environmentalist: "I am frankly a lot more worried about my daughter's becoming an environmentalist than about her becoming a Christian." Maybe I should work on a children's book on why they don't have to worry about the environment. Stuff of Modern Life Have You Hugged a Concrete Pillar Today? by Bill Gates: "This isn’t just idle curiosity. It might seem mundane, but the issue of materials—how much we use and how much we need—is key to helping the world’s poorest people improve their lives. Think of the amazing increase in quality of life that we saw in the United States and other rich countries in the past 100 years. We want most of that miracle to take place for all of humanity over the next 50 years. As more people join the global middle class, they will need affordable clean energy. They will want to eat more meat. And they will need more materials: steel to make cars and refrigerators; concrete for roads and runways; copper wiring for telecommunications." In Search of Part Time The distinction between "part time" and "full time" as in work hours doesn't make sense. What does "part time" mean exactly? Is 30 hours a week part time? 35 hours? It's like categorizing people into "tall" and "short" groups. I work ~26 hours a week by the way. That's probably gonna make me a borderline workaholic. Power to the People Power Consumption per Capita vs GDP per Capita. Canadians like to blame Americans for being wasteful, but the energy consumption of Canadians on average is higher than Americans. But you are not supposed to tell this to Canadians because they are so polite and insecure. Sweatshops Paul Krugman's In Praise of Cheap Labor: "The lofty moral tone of the opponents of globalization is possible only because they have chosen not to think their position through. While fat-cat capitalists might benefit from globalization, the biggest beneficiaries are, yes, Third World workers." Brazilians Against Gun Ban Glenn Greenwald's 2005 article on how many Brazilians thought rationally and changed their mind about the gun ban proposal. Canada's Lack of Food Culture Calling poutines Canadian food is like calling furikake gohan Japanese food. Public Broadcasting The Economist (2012): "The radical solution would be to get rid of a lot of the BBC. Public broadcasting should focus on areas where the market does not provide—expensive things such as investigative journalism and foreign reporting, serious radio, some areas of arts and science broadcasting—and forget about the prime-time entertainment shows and sports where the BBC spends taxpayers’ money bidding up stars’ wages. A smaller, more focused organisation would find it easier to take risks and innovate." The same argument applies to CBC.
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