AK

This website (akarlin.com) contains all the blog/website archives I have been able to get my hands on, everything that is too minor to go to my Substack but too big to just Tweet out, life observations and events, and most of my book reviews and travel writing.

The Caveman Test

This about Life, tagged , , was written by for on September 2, 2013 .9 Comments

First you couldn’t have more than 10% fat in your diet, then carbohydrates became the source of all evil*. Slow-Carb waged war on the various Schools of Paleo. But the Food Pyramid continues to loom over them all like some kind of Eldritch abomination.  Weight machines were once all the rage, but then free weights became […]

From Office Slave to Paperless Ninja

This about Life, tagged , was written by for on August 30, 2013 .2 Comments

I have already written on the joys of cleaning house and how less is more when it comes to possessions. But possessions aren’t limited to the physical realm. Your digital files – documents, emails, music libraries, photos, etc. – share many features with property, especially as regards the need to keep them well organized and […]

Timeline of the Runup to an Illegal War

This about Geopolitics, tagged , , , was written by for on August 27, 2013 .1 Comment

Repost of Alexander Mercouris’ comments at Mark Chapman’s blog and The Russia Debate forum. The original compilation is posted at Mercouris’ blog. PS. Originally, this space hosted just one of Mercouris’ comments. Now that he has taken the trouble to gather up his output, the least I could do is update it and try to ensure […]

Only 15% of Scandinavian Pupils can do Basic Fractions

This about HBD, tagged , , was written by for on July 22, 2013 .55 Comments

Further to my post on the remarkable failure of Scandinavian education systems to develop their students to anywhere near the levels indicated by their IQ potentials, a professor of mathematics at a Wisconsin university sent me data on the percentage of respondents in the TIMSS who gave the correct answer to the following question: Which […]

Preliminary Thoughts on TIMSS/PIRLS 2012

This about HBD, tagged , , was written by for on July 15, 2013 .11 Comments

I had been meaning to post about this for a long time. Better late than never, I suppose. The TIMSS and PIRLS are international assessments of academic ability in math, science and literacy that are conducted once every four years. They are similar to the PISA tests, although the latter are less purely academically focused […]

The Social Thaw: Change in Facebook Policy

This about Blogging, tagged , , was written by for on July 14, 2013 .No Comments

My response to Snowdengate, the new Graph Search, its inevitable integration with Google Glass? I will be minimizing my privacy settings and for all intents and purposes making my Facebook public. So good ahead, look up my profile. Friend me. Whatever. I don’t mind. Sounds counter-intuitive, huh? There’s a logic behind the madness. It’s now a […]

Corruption, The American Way

This about Society, tagged , , , was written by for on July 13, 2013 .6 Comments

So apparently an Ambassadorship costs $1.8 million per post in the US. In virtually any other country, even where the situation with corruption is quite dismal, such arrangements would be seen as unquestionably corrupt. And yet the US scores an entirely respectable 73/100 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), leagues above say Italy which gets […]

GCB2013 Released

This about Society, tagged , was written by for on July 10, 2013 .5 Comments

Here it is. Or just skip the graphics and download the data in Excel here. I can’t say I care much about most of it. Of course most people everything think corruption is “increasing,” because they are a grumpy lot. What does matter is the number of people who report paying a bribe in the […]

Lessons From The Snowden Affair

This , about Politics, tagged , , , , , , was written by for on July 7, 2013 .21 Comments

(1) Just as with Manning, it is beyond dispute that Snowden broke US law. As such, the US government is perfectly entitled to try to apprehend him (on its own soil), request his extradition, and prosecute him. This is quite perpendicular to whether Snowden’s leaks were morally “justified” or not. In some sense, they were. […]

Of Rats and Men

This about Culture, tagged , , was written by for , on April 25, 2013 .5 Comments

This is a (very preliminary) prologue to a sci-fi novel I’ve been thinking of writing for some time. It’s called 100 YEARS TO VICTORY, but obviously liable to change. My sole question is: Would you continue reading the rest of this book? It’s been nearly a decade since I built my first cage. It was […]

Mapping The Dark Enlightenment

This about Philosophy, tagged , , was written by for on April 24, 2013 .5 Comments

I’m a sucker for classification graphs, so I was delighted to see that “Another Reactionary Blog” had compiled a “map” of the neo-reactionary / “Dark Enlightenment” thinkers. It’s reproduced below: I’m not disappointed not to see myself there, as I blog about a lot of different things making classification quite hard. If I had to […]

Birth Defects, FBD Marriages

This about HBD, tagged , , was written by for on April 22, 2013 .40 Comments

While researching a different topic I stumbled upon the following 2006 report on the Internet. It contains comprehensive estimates for the prevalence of birth defects all around the world. The relevant graph is reprinted below (you can click on it to get a bigger picture). What leaps out at first sight is the sheer extent […]