Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Today, TK Learned:

... Mount Vernon gets ridiculously crowded on Thanksgiving.
  • There are four types of criticism against American higher education. All of them are flawed. [Los Angeles Review of Books]
  • Should law school pay students to quit? The Korean says yes. [Slate]
  • Effort is important, but talent still matters. [New York Times]
  • Seoul as a model of urbanized growth. Very insightful. [National Geographic]
  • What a Chinese scholar thinks about Korea's unification. [The Interpreter]
  • Big international stories that did not receive enough attention this year. [Foreign Policy]
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

7 comments:

  1. TK, this is something I learned a long time ago. I'm just glad that the major Network media is finally getting the word out about just how dangerous it is along the Southern U.S. border thanks to the booming Mexican drug export business and lax U.S. immigration policies. The truly scary part is the amount of school children on the roads with these brazen killers.

    Just imagine your young relatives riding on those same school buses in this type of danger every day. How would it make you feel? Personally, I don't have to imagine it because my nieces, nephews, and cousins are on them every school day.

    I just wish that more big city Americans away from the border could live a few days down in South Texas to see just how scary life down there really is.

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  2. I've added a bit a documentation that points out that most Americans (thanks in part to the President) don't know about this war next door that's now actually in our own homes and backyards here in the U.S.

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  3. While I agree with most of the points and the conclusion of the NY Times "Sorry, Strivers: Talent Matters" article, one thing stuck out at me.

    The article states:

    '(Scores on the SAT correlate so
    highly with I.Q. that the psychologist Howard Gardner described it as a “thinly
    disguised” intelligence test.)'

    Post-1994 SAT scores do not correlate to to IQ scores. At least according to Mensa. http://www.mensafoundation.org/Content/AML/NavigationMenu/Join/SubmitTestScores/QualifyingTestScores/QualifyingScores.htm

    (Why not? Because of the use of renormalization to hide what would otherwise be an obvious trend of steadily declining SAT scores. This occurs concurrently with the trend of steadily rising IQ scores, aka The Flynn Effect.)

    Now, if you look at the original study at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/SpatialAbility.pdf then you'll realize that scores from the late 1970s were used. The study itself is sound.

    As for the NY article? Eh...

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  4. TK, I was wondering how you come across these articles. Do you read a lot on current events for work? for fun? Do you google search news on Korea?

    Very insightful

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  5. I am a big time law nerd, so I am subscribed to a huge number of law-related blogs. Those blogs usually discuss a range of topics, and I end up reading the articles that they discuss.

    And of course, I read NYT, WSJ and the Economist regularly just to keep up with things.

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  6. From the Interpreter:

    "From Jon: Would China support a united Korean peninsula under democratic rule?

    Of course. A democratic North Korea may sound a little bit difficult for China, but the democratisation of North Korea will ultimately lay out the way for Pyongyang to become more included in and locked into the international system. It will also show great promise for North Korea's reintegration into the world community, following the Chinese way of reform and opening. I totally believe that only reforming and opening up North Korea will persuade it to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for international recognition, energy aid, and the lifting of sanctions. So the democratisation of North Korea is almost the equivalent of reform and opening and is welcome on the Chinese side."

    I find it very interesting that he doesn't answer the question. He focuses on the democratization of North Korea but does not mention a united democratic Korea (probably under the South Korean regime)...I guess you could read between the lines and say he supports the latter as well, but why bother sidestepping the question then??

    ReplyDelete
  7. The last question is similar yet asked in a more specific manner.
    Zhu Feng thinks that China would accept a unified, democratic Korea (presumably under ROK rule), depending on whether or not American armed forces are still deployed in the country and for what reasons.

    ReplyDelete

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