Matt Yglesias’ Run-of-The Mill Specieism

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Matt Yglesias scoffed at a commenter who pointed out that requiring companies to provide maternity leave constitutes a subsidy for having children, excess children is bad for the planet and therefore we should remove such subsidies:

The beginning of wisdom here is to note that pollution isn’t “bad for the planet.” The planet is a gigantic roughly spherical chunk of rocks that can easily survive whatever level of greenhouse gas emissions or whatever else we care to pump into the atmosphere. The big picture ecological threat is a threat to human beings [...] Radical population reduction would sharply reduce the quantity of anthropogenic ecological impacts, but to what end? The goal needs to be to reconfigure human activity in order to make it sustainable over a longer time horizon.

I won’t get into how I feel about the conservative notion that it’s the government’s job to encourage people to live the standard American lifestyle – suburbs, cars and kids – or, indeed, any lifestyle* beyond to say that I’m not exactly a fan and that he neglects that lower population is a saner alternative to lifestyle adjustments alone for ecological issues. I’ll just address the specieism his post espouses and the oversimplification of what exactly our planet is and does.

If you take a raccoon from the woods, take it into your home and then drown it, you will rightly face animal cruelty charges (among others)**. If you purchase property that is habitat to a hundred raccoons and flood it to provide a reservoir, somehow the mass cruelty flies under the radar. This of course makes no sense. If cruelty to one animal is indefensible, then cruelty to many is more so.

Biodiversity itself may only be of instrumental value. Just like there isn’t much of a difference morally between a mass murder of 1000 individuals and genocide consisting of 1000 individuals, there isn’t that much of a reason to get worked up about minor biodiversity loss itself so long as it is eventually recovered and there remains enough in the present time. However, habitat destruction and the reduction of numbers means that individual sentient organisms are starving to death or otherwise dying in a bad way or living a more impoverished existence. For this reason, any environmentalism that doesn’t make the welfare/rights of all beings, not just humans, central isn’t worth discussing. Matt Yglesias seems to be suggesting we all need to do our part to use less resources to make room for more people. This fails because as we can see it disregards the welfare of wildlife and it also fails because it takes a total view of happiness. Two people living okay existences aren’t really better than one person living a fabulous existence. In a true eco-utopia, everyone will have plenty of unharmed wilderness to explore and achieve oneness.

Another minor point is his assertion that the planet is just “a spherical chunk of rocks.” Clearly, when people say planet, they are not referring to its geology, though the bulk of the mass is, indeed, lifeless silica and minerals. They are referring, of course, to the ecosphere, which supports us and all the other life on the planet. It is perhaps of only instrumental value but very great value indeed. If we fix up Señor Yglesias’ comments accordingly, we still don’t see a powerful argument to reduce humanity to the stone age nor to view children as little packets of evil (however annoying they may be), but you also certainly don’t come to the conclusion that child rearing, something people gladly voluntarily do anyway, needs to be subsidized so as to encourage it anymore than our biology and existing social pressures already do.

* I don’t want zen fascists telling me to live in an apartment, ride the bus and not have kids either.
** Actually, this depends on the jurisdiction. If you at least feed the raccoon first, it will then be your [illegal] pet that you are being cruel to. If you at least agree that someone ought to get in trouble for kidnapping, then drowning a raccoon, then you should agree with my logic, even if the law isn’t quite like I make it sound.

Taxpayers are Assholes

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Watching people argue about how much teachers make makes me think that we are asking the wrong questions, and getting garbage answers. Below the fold is a vid from reason.tv showing one of their journalists heckling attendees of the “Save our Schools” rally in DC. Some of their responses were hilariously inane, like the girl who suggested that there’s no amount that’s too high to spend on schools. However, most of the people they interviewed seemed pretty sharp, including Matt Damon, who had a rather eloquent reply. One of the words he used to describe the idea that we need to eliminate tenure to give teachers incentive to do a good job was paternalistic. Now, he of course is arguing with people who ostensibly despise paternalism.

Indeed, the main argument made by the reasonroids’ side of the debate isn’t that we need to set salaries or incentives for teachers differently. If we really are simply thinking in terms of incentive or the “MBA mentality,” we’d rightly conclude that Damon, however smart he is, is wrong to downplay the importance of salary and job security and raise salaries in order to attract more and better teachers. The argument is, or should be, that it is highly paternalistic to put teachers in a position that their job security, perks and even wages are at the mercy of taxpayers. The problem is taxpayers are stingy assholes.

People on reason.tv’s side of the debate trap themselves into a corner arguing for less cushy jobs for teachers when the free market very well could offer better working conditions for all we know. The fat seems not to be in teachers’ salaries and perks, but in supporting the various parasites that feed off the system*. If giving teachers rock star salaries brings more students to your school, then teachers will have rock star salaries. So let’s free teachers from the tyranny of the taxpayer**.

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“The Teriyaki Effect”

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From the jlist blog:

It’s an odd fact about Japan that teriyaki is not that common inside Japan, though the flavoring is used on certain foods like yakitori chicken on a stick without the teriyaki name. It’s similar to the way French demi-glace sauce is extremely famous in Japan as one of the basic flavorings of Western cooking, yet it’s not nearly as common in France proper. Perhaps we should label this strange phenomenon of foods becoming more famous outside their home countries, “the Teriyaki Effect.”

I concur. Let us use that word. I’ll also add that there’s a related phenomenon. People like things from X nation that are extremely, stereo-typically (based on their possibly incorrect stereotypes) X-like. My wife jokes with her other Asian friends about how Asians who are found to be attractive by Americans (欧米人にもてる）are the ones with extremely slanty eyes. Americans like hot dogs and they like pizza, but you really have to go to Japan to find pizza with hot dogs in the crust. Sushi, thought of as very Japanese, is rather popular in America, but dishes that would be closer to the expectations of the American palate such as omelet rice (オムライス) and Hayashi rice aren’t. Let’s call this the Lucy Liu effect.

What Good is “No Gas Day” Supposed to do?

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It would be so entertaining to see well-meaning people engage in some sort of symbolic act that does nothing material other than “sending a message” were the joke not so tired. Seriously. What the hell good is going to the gas station on Wednesday or Friday instead going to do? (incidentally, I won’t run out of gas until this weekend and even that’s only because I’m going way out to the desert) It is exactly like meatless Mondays. How about meatless every day of the week except for Mondays? How about no gas week instead of no gas day? If there is any value to be had in these symbolic demonstrations (and that’s a pretty big if), it is this – it could be a chance to genuinely try out a habit or lifestyle or to think about something one generally avoids thinking about. Maybe.

What most bothers me about the whole concept isn’t the empty symbolism; I’m used to that and expect such from facebookistan. It is that it is yet another example of this cognitive dissonance I too often see in our movement – conflating the very different concerns of the health of the planet on one hand with very separate egalitarian goals, however laudable, on the other. The protest is about gas prices. If the prices are high, great. Maybe alternatives will finally be viable in the market. Don’t get me wrong; there is reason for environmentalists to protest gas prices – for being too low. It’s time to end the gas subsidies, end our oil diplomacy (and “diplomacy”) and end the socialization of costs where otherwise Americans’ stinginess (a force that knows no parallel) might otherwise prevent unwise use of scarce resources.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=158856697501684

The Truth if a Shifty Bitch

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The truth is a shifty bitch
The one who will build you up
The one who will cry your name
And just as soon, your ass ditch

The truth is a crafty witch
She will make the path easy
She will render the path not
She will make poor you feel rich

Beware the cheap seduction
Don’t feel you needn’t cover
Your each and every base
Though she found you paths verdant
It will just as soon deface
And you find you have nothing

Soil Pill

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My wife tells me I’m 天の邪鬼, meaning I go out of my way to be strange or not conform. Perhaps from a Japanese perspective I am. Maybe she’s right. All I know is I’ve resisted every temptation to blog about the spill. What can be said about it that hasn’t been said? Well, I have come to realize that it’s time to conform and give my two cents, though it may take wading through everyone and their dog’s opinion to find the gem that is mine. The real injustice I’m seeing, the reason I must write, is that, by the very nature of environmental catastrophes and our system, it’s impossible for all those affected to be duly compromised for damages done to them as well as for damages done to non-humans (turtles, manatees) to be duly punished, but I’ll defer the issue about critters for now.

Am I on crazy pills? Everyone I know misses that he's obviously a sea sponge made out to look like a household sponge. It's called artistic license!

Many people say that the best salve for environmental issues is strict enforcement of property rights with activists legally assisting those affected by pollution, etc. It’s worth a try as state environmentalism causes people who otherwise would want to do their part to protect the planet to instead resent the whole movement and feel as if it were forced upon them*. If our system was just, it should be possible for everyone along the gulf coast (and not just in America, but even in other islands sufficiently close to be affected) to do a class-action lawsuit against BP and actually get compensated for the damages. If BP truly believed this was possible, they would have made sure no one cut any corners in meeting safety regulations or, in the absence of safety regulations, would probably have paid to develop their own. Experience tells us that instead of this happening, the rabid pragmatists in our legal system won’t allow for a company that’s an important part of the economy to be utterly destroyed by mere tort. Exxon managed to delay and delay having to pay and managed to get only a slap on the wrist in the end, despite decimating an entire community and doing untold damages to wildlife. Even the ship is alive and well, living on as the the Dong Fang Ocean. This, however isn’t the bigger problem since it’s “simply” a matter of not having a state that claims to act in the interests of the people, but instead acts in the interests of the bureaucrats’ friends. No, the bigger problem is that cases like this amount to such a tiny fraction of the depreciation of natural resources. Wetlands, for example, that make up the invisible bedrock to our economy by performing services we’d pay as much as necessary to get if it wasn’t free, are being nickel and dimed to oblivion by numerous polluters and it’s affects are divided equally by everyone in the vicinity.

You may own a piece of property and essentially do with it as you wish, but on what grounds can you be said to own the air above it or the water below it? These things are passing through and as you use and abuse these things, you automatically damage everyone else’s property. Everyone’s part of the burden is sufficiently small that it’s not worth it for them to seek damages. If that alone were the problem, I think we would have a problem that everyone can live with. Of course the market is going to have negative externalities and if it’s sufficiently minor, there’s no need to bother addressing it. However, not just what I do on my property to the air, but what every single manufacturer contributes to the air adds up to something that harms peoples’ health and destroys the beauty of un”improved” land. Though I said I’ll defer the issue, let’s not forget what we do to creatures who no doubt can suffer, but lack the ability to legally defend themselves. To such situations, I propose an alternative.

Earlier, I blogged about my idea of EcoTax, which turns out to be very similar to Henry George’s idea, though with important differences. I’ll post later with an updated version of my idea, but to summarize, I propose as a practical alternative to numerous mini-torts the government** having an alternate plan for companies (or individuals – a company is just a bunch of individuals) that must pollute as part of their operations. For such companies, they can opt to, instead of being subject to numerous torts, which they will then be forced to actually pay up on, they can simply pay in proportion to how much they pollute, and the funds shared with everyone. This will make it cost to pollute and it will make products that carry a heavier eco-burden to reflect more accurately their ecological costs. The market, which is to say, the creativity of everyone working together, will then work towards solving ecological problems in a bottom-up way, instead of us hoping that the commands from a distant bureaucracy, funded and controlled by elites is the right one, as it would be the one we’ll all be stuck with. Furthermore, it will let people have their freedom to live as they choose rather than a specific brand of green living forced on them.

* There are other problems with state environmentalism too, like the fact that the government bureaucrats and their private supporters don’t have the spotted owl’s best interests at heart.

** The government or whatever legal order(s) there may be. My basic idea is perfectly compatible with a libertarian society. It doesn’t need an army to prop it up!

Livable Hamlets

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Lately, I’m scouring statistics to find places to move to and really just feed my curiosity. Going through city-data’s top 101 lists and was curious which places have the most people walking to work (once I saw the list existed). Naturally, a great many of them are military bases, but I also see that most of them tend to be small towns, not the dense metropolises that make up the wet dreams of the new urbanists.

http://www.city-data.com/top2/h39.html

On International Pressure on Japan’s Child Pornography Laws and Thought Crime

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http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201005250419.html

Here’s a post I expect to be quartered or crucified for writing. So be it.

Japan has always had more lax child pornography laws than much of the Western world. Mere possession is not a crime; only creation is. Also, unlike America, but like some Western countries (including Australia, I believe), virtual child pornography is perfectly legal. Here we have a case where two very important goals, the safety of children and the freedoms of expression, come into direct conflict. The problem, however, is since it’s just viewed as the right of some scoundrels, I fear that Japan will follow the unfortunate model of the West and give no weight to the latter. In the wise words of H.L. Menken:

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

We’ll, if we value liberty, here is a class of scoundrels we must defend – pedophiles. No, there’s no need to defend monsters who prey on children; to call them pedophiles is to trivialize what they are. No, we need to defend people who, due to whatever developmental or other abnormality, are attracted to prepubescence and only want visual materials to go along with their abnormal fantasies. For that matter, also normal males who are attracted to 16-year olds and want visuals to go with their perfectly normal fantasies*.

I don’t know the details yet because the diet hasn’t come to an agreement yet, but I hope that they don’t make virtual child pornography illegal. This is important. We cannot allow “don’t even think about it” laws to exist and crush them where they already do. As Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” I would also say being human means you can have a thought and not act on it. People believe it is okay to make exceptions to fundamental freedoms if it is only creeps who misuse it, but they are making two big, fatal mistakes.

Firstly, there is the belief that the only consequences of a law are from the enacting of the law itself. In fact, a law begets other, similar laws – precedence – and once nations are allowed to make thoughts crimes (like religions do), it is a slippery slope to tyranny. You can’t neatly divide “bad” from “good”. If you think it’s possible to only stop “bad” uses of free speech, etc., then I challenge you to find a weed killer that doesn’t kill pretty weeds. Note the quagmire Europeans have gotten themselves into by thinking its appropriate to regulate speech just because it’s anti-Semitic. Now the Islamofascists have them morally by the balls when they demand censorship against speech they find offensive (e.g., depictions of Mohamed). We must attack this mentality and expose it for what it is.

Secondly, there is the mistaken belief that curtailing freedoms does make us safer in the long run. I won’t trivially reject this, but humor the notion for a second. It may well be in some cases that we are less safe because of freedoms people have. If people can move freely without harassment, ostensibly it will be more difficult to track down and preemptively arrest terrorist. A super-intelligent, benevolent robot controlling the money supply could make us safer financially than if people are free to use their moneys as they please (in extremely hypothetical theory). And yes, it certainly could be that some children are being harmed who wouldn’t be if we could just break into mere users’ computers to track down the peddlers. Think about it for a second. Isn’t this the line of reasoning that oppressive regimes use? People sponsor their own captors because they genuinely believe they are being protected from foreign barbarians. It is naïve to think that the ability to criminalize behavior seen as a some sort of precursor to real crime is going to be used for good ends most of the time. Once we’re allowed to arrest people because “he was shady” or “he was thinking about it” we will have successfully retreated hundreds of years worth of advancement in civil liberties.

For the specific case of child pornography, I still wonder what the real reason is we absolutely have to criminalize possession? I think this is cultural imperialism on our part towards Japan. It’s absolutely not necessary. The law could provide for law enforcement to be able to search suspected customers’ computers for the express purpose of finding the peddlers. As it so turns out, criminalizing kiddie porn doesn’t help gather evidence. It actually makes users (and non-users who have a healthy distrust of both the internet and the authorities) paranoid and practice continual deletion of history, cache, etc. The last thing you want to do is create an incentive to destroy evidence! Let people be relaxed, but if they’re suspected of possessing real child porn**, their punishment should be having to endure a search through their personal property as the real criminal is hunted down.

One last note, a diversion into counter-economics – here is also an opportunity for a peaceful black market. Boycott our corporatist economy by making your own 3d child porn and selling it. Please pedophiles without hurting a single hair on a child. Not into kiddie porn? Me neither. Draw a picture of a hot naked chick (or dude, whatever you’re into) and say she’s 17.

* That it’s normal doesn’t make it morally okay to act on them. In our complex, modern world, people remain emotionally children even after physically adult for a while and it’s always wrong to prey on a child even if the person is only a child in the emotional sense. For that matter, it doesn’t make something wrong just because it’s “unnatural” but I digress.

** Don’t get me wrong about people who enjoy kiddie porn. If you enjoy something that someone had to get hurt to make, you’re still a monster. If you are attracted to children, the right thing to do is of course boycott any real kiddie porn and only download virtual (e.g., computer-generated or cartoons). However, even if you are such a monster, I don’t think you should be put in the same category as someone who actually rapes children or creates this grotesque pornography.

My Voting Guide

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As with all my election guides, this assumes you’ve at least read the summary. I don’t want to summarize it for you but just provide a short summary of my arguments.

Prop 13 – Yes. This is one of those “closing the donut hole” laws. They exempt certain types of earthquake repairs from triggering property value reassessments but not others and this law fixes it so that all earthquake repairs are exempt.

Prop 14 – No. It’s great that you can vote for any party’s primary. It’s great that candidates are not required to list their party, but this prop has a glaring flaw – only two candidates can be selected between and there will be no write-ins. I double-checked to see if this wasn’t just hype by the opposition, but the text clearly states that it eliminates the write-ins. What we need is clean elections and a better system, like approval/disapproval or instant runoff. Why do no propositions to this effect end up on our ballots?

Prop 15 – Yes… This proposition isn’t perfect either. It should have only lifted the ban on public funds provided the funds come from the pool generated from lobbyist fees. Given that omission, I can only offer a timid support of this law on the theory that we’re never going to get true election reform on the ballot and this is the closest we’ll get anytime soon. Corporations and unions run politics and it shouldn’t be so. Ideally, public funds shouldn’t be part of it either.

Prop 16 – No. Whether or not you think local governments should get into the electricity business, voters should have a say. That’s why I oppose this law. I don’t think a 2/3rds vote is reasonable. Also keep in mind that “private” utility providers benefit just as much as state-run from regional monopolies (government granted and “natural”) so I regard the investor owned concerns to be a type of government-sponsored utility that voters have less control over. As the technology improves, we can evolve away from natural energy monopolies and have real competition – it happened with telephone service. Also note that wind, solar is exempted only if it’s 100% of the source. That’s unrealistic and stupid. We need to tax environmental degradation and, beyond that, allow real free-market competition on energy. We don’t need this corporatist neo-mercantilist prop. Pass!

Prop 17 – Yes. There are flaws, however. I read the text of the law (what will be added/deleted) and I definitely support insurance companies being able to take into account things that are going to cost them money so there’s incentive to drop prices. There should be an incentive to continuously have auto insurance as long as you have a car (read on for why I italicized this part of the sentence). For me, I wasn’t able to put me and my wife on the same insurance because it would be more expensive. Yes, that’s right. The lady at AAA couldn’t figure out why their estimate was higher than I pay, but it’s obvious – State Farm is giving me a long-time customer discount.

For this law to be more attractive, it should require a grace period of at least 30 days (in practice, auto insurance companies usually do anyway, but just to make sure) before insurance is to be considered lapsed and allow for lapses if it’s where the person simply didn’t own a car. Choosing to break the law and drive uninsured is irresponsible, but people who chose to not have cars for a while (or have no choice but to do so) shouldn’t be additionally penalized.

What to do About North Korea?

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/world/asia/25korea.html
Friends – I’m racking my brain. What to do about N. Korea? Every day, its citizens are subject to a bleak existence in the world’s only fringe cult to also be a state. Any attack on the country and they crack down on their own people harder and retaliate, destroying the increasingly peaceful and prosperous S. Korea (as they revert to tyrrany as all nations do in response to threats). Any sanctions don’t affect the ruling classes but just make the unfortunate rank and file starve. I generally oppose sanctions anyway, though engaging them has only increased the flow of money to their out of control military.

The possibility of revolt seems slim to me. The right psychological soup was engineered out. It’s not sufficient to be poor, unfortunate. You must also feel a tad emboldened and see possibility. It’s when there is great wealth alongside great poverty that revolts can happen. Outside of the military and the party leadership, there simply isn’t wealth in North Korea. What there is isn’t the capitalistic kind where, when you see it, you get the crazy idea that you might be able to do it, too. Where people are powerful and motivated to find a better world, they don’t stay and oppose a police state that can destroy their whole family without blinking an eye, they leave to South Korea. Could the well-meaning (or half-well-meaning, the milder cult they belong to promising celestial reward) rescuers be defusing any hope of uprising?

Part of the problem is their dear leader isn’t the one in charge, or at least, he’s just one axis in the balance of power. Unless we talk directly to their military, we can be guaranteed that no concession is really meant. They know that we prosperous nations have so much to lose. I’m not afraid of Iran, Pakistan or China. These nations would suffer from a war with us and have bright futures ahead of them, even if the path there is rocky. I wouldn’t support a war with any of these nations either. No regime change. Something must be done, however, about North Korea. The countries don’t even have to unite but some basic civil liberties must be held sacrosanct. How to defuse this bomb? How to minimize misery and wrongful death in a peninsula where one leader thinks he is God and the other thinks he’s ordained by God?

Response to Steve Jobs’ Open Letter to

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http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/29/steve-jobs-publishes-some-thoughts-on-flash-many-many-thou/

I mostly agree with most of the technical issues he raises and I think the lesson here is that it does, in fact, pay to use open standards. However, there are some things he says that I take issue with as a developer:

Replacing flash with H.264 is not an option right now for several reasons. Firstly, flash isn’t simply a way to view video. At present there is no way to have interactive elements in a web page that work on desktop and iP* other than javascript, which has its interoperability problems (though the jQuery and prototype folks usually do a good job at sorting that out for you). Second is the notion that H.264 already is the default format for HTML5. No, it is not. That has not been decided yet. Hopefully H.264 doesn’t win since it, too is proprietary, the very thing Jobs takes issue with for Flash! I even notice that at Apple stores, the employees are basically told to tell this tale to customers who are web developers that they should just replace everything with HTML5 and H.264. I hope that Google does open-source VP8 and that it becomes the format that wins, or VP8 and Ogg and that Apple doesn’t kick and scream in protest when they win the HTML5 video format wars. We don’t want .gif part 2!

Jobs also has a disdain for 3rd party development tools. Here I see the motivation as business, not technical. We developers have only so much time-money and Jobs knows that making it difficult to support multiple platforms with the same source tree more or less will make a lot of developers chose to develop only for Apple’s products. Jobs knows this very well and I believe it was behind the decision not only to not allow Flash but also to not allow Java. Jobs even boldly chided Java as something no one uses anymore. No one? Well, except for their mobile devices’ biggest upcoming competitor, the Android platform. That’s all.

When developing C++ desktop applications, I don’t want to waste my investment. I use Qt. It doesn’t block me from using the latest innovations in Windows, Mac OS X or Linux’ desktops (KDE and Gnome), but it gets me most of the way easily. 90% of the time for 90% of the people making business apps (not games), OS specific GUI code shouldn’t be necessary. I believe the same is true for mobile devices. Without writing with the iphone in mind, I believe you can have your tool translate your menus, form items, etc. into the appropriate code for different platforms. Apple won’t allow this. My understanding is they won’t even allow this if such a tool (including the tool Adobe made earlier to translate Flash into Obj-C) even if you hand-edit the code after generation or make your own regexp to modify after generation (so at least minor edits won’t require a rewrite to remove wasteful routines, etc.) This is a shame. It’s bad for developers and consumers, but good for Apple. It also directly affects me as I was planning on making an XUL to iphone gui converter.

So again, I absolutely agree with Jobs’ assessment of Flash’s shortcomings. If he is serious about them, though, I trust that he will allow Flash once they are addressed? If Adobe fails to correct these issues and it may be impossible without breaking backwards compatibility, their prize platform may go the way of the Dodo, with or without Apple’s sabotage. At the very least, I believe something that creates obj-c from an AS3/Flex project should technically address the issues.

Japanese “Tomato Bruschetta” or Riso Fritto Pomodoro

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For lunch, I decided to try to make some fusion cuisine. My main inspiration was noticing earlier that shiso and basil are a good combination, sharing some flavor notes (and common ancestry, both being in the mint family). At a restaurant in Japan, the salad had shiso seeds on it, but they were rather soft, so I tried boiling some shiso seeds. It didn’t seem as flavorful when I tried it at home, but it could have been the variety I used. Googling has yet to show any recipes where shiso is boiled. Only toasted and those seeds were not merely toasted. Hmmm…

(Pictures coming soon…)

The first step is to chop some tomatoes. I got baby romas, sliced them into small rings, and mixed in sliced basil and salt. Since this is going to sit atop fried (and therefore oily) rice, I don’t add olive oil like I usually would for bruschetta to the tomatoes. Do add pepper and salt to taste. Mix in the shiso seeds (maybe toast instead of boil like I did). For this step, I set aside pine nuts to be toasted just in time to be added freshly to the top.

The next step is to make yaki-onigiri. I made it into a flat round shape rather than the more common triangle, in order to be more like fried polenta. If you aren’t familiar with onigiri (also known as musubi, Japanese rice balls), you basically get sticky rice and clump it together. Onigiri often have fillings, but for yaki-onigiri, plain rice is good enough. You can put the rice balls you formed into plastic in the fridge to let them dry out for frying but I skipped this step without getting sticking (though I did use a non-stick fry pan). Sprinkle olive oil on one side of the rice balls and place that side on the pan after preheating it.

After a minute or so, start toasting the pine nuts and watch both them and the rice balls to make sure nothing burns. When the first side of the rice balls gets browned, oil the other side and flip. When done, bring onto plate and shovel the tomatoes on top. Throw the freshly toasted pine nuts on top. Drizzle with ponzu sauce, then put a little bit of balsamic glaze on top. Eat immediately. Cold tomatoes and hot rice make for a nice interplay on the tongue.

This dish isn’t as strange or, rather, isn’t as fusion as it seems at first (other than the ponzu sauce and the shiso). Rice pies are present in a lot of homestyle Italian cooking, not too much unlike Tah Dig in Persian and Turkmen cuisines.

People Like to Know in Advance What’s Wrong…

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I think advertisers are increasingly realizing that it pays to let people know what they catch of something is or give a reason why they have an incentive to act in your interest. I just saw some cash advance commercial (don’t want to name company to help them advertise) and the guy says “it’s a little expensive, but there’s no credit check and it’s cheaper than XXX.” This is somewhat related to the comment I made in my blog about Avatar – without seeing any major negative aspects of the Navi’s culture, I’m not left thinking “oh, how Idyllic” but rather “oh, there’s something evil lurking.”

Newscientist: Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.500-horizontal-and-vertical-the-evolution-of-evolution.html?full=true&print=true

Lately, I’m increasingly thinking, especially after reading this article, that evolutionary computing would benefit greatly from using a more bacterial type of evolution, where genes are shared between often unrelated organisms, rather than brute inheritance. Another way of looking at it, is it might be good to deal with the complexities of subroutine sharing (which functional programming would make easier) than the complexities of sexual reproduction which make my eyes glaze over to read the solutions offered for. Maybe I’m just not clever enough (my earlier post on genetic programming had a little ruby script and it only uses asexual reproduction).

I am skeptical of the article’s claim that the shared genetic code of all organisms must mean that genes were shared between organisms like bacterium do today. Firstly, bacterium don’t all share some common genes due to the passing of genes between species as it is. Secondly, clade evolution – where clades that are just better at evolving edge out others over time could be sufficient explanation. Surely DNA-based life had immense advantages over life with less fault-tolerant code. Just the same, the article makes a good point that biologists are, being human macro-centric – they focus on multi-cellular organisms even though most of the biomass, even more of the variety, along with the vast, vast majority of the history of life on this planet, is prokaryotic.