A Response to a Tiger Mother

There's been a lot of controversy about Amy Chua's memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother surrounding her harsh and very strict parenting methods. Even more controversy was created when excerpts from the book appeared as a condensed Wall Street Journal article.
Amy Chua has said in the book (and this part also appears in the WSJ article as well as, from which I am taking these points, Wikipedia's article on her and the book) that her daughters were not allowed sleepovers or playdates, parts in the school play (or complaining about that), grades lower than an A, TV or computer games, their own extracurricular activities, anything less than the top spot in every class, and instruments other than the piano and violin (or complaining about playing the piano or violin). This is also not an exhaustive list by any means.
However, there are a couple things that could potentially cool the flames slightly. First, Amy Chua has said that this is a memoir, not a manual/how-to guide. This is evident because later on in the book, she somewhat (but certainly not fully) backs off from her very strict methods and comes to terms with the fact that she does not have 100% control over her children and their activities. (Full disclosure: I have read neither the book nor the full article. The most I've read consists of a couple long passages from the book and article quoted in other writers' articles.) This ties in with the fact that the WSJ article solely focuses on her strict methods and totally leaves out the part about her "coming-of-age" as a parent. Through these qualifications, the book becomes a good deal more reasonable than it is initially made to be.
With all these things in mind, as a second-semester freshman undergraduate student, I would like to share my response to these things, so follow the jump to read on. I apologize if this doesn't sound like a formal article; it's more of a jumbled collection of thoughts that appear in my head as I see each point regarding her book.

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 January 9

There were a handful of comments on a few posts this week, so I'll repost them all.

Chinese Company Copying the Burj Khalifa

Reader T_Beermonster said, "I'm not aware that the Blackpool Tower has had any significant negative impact on Paris," then later added, " The Blackpool Tower isn't a copy of the Eiffel Tower as such, like the proposed hotel in Beijing it was "inspired by". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool_tower It is smaller, made with a cheaper construction method and was commercial in intent. There is also the Tokyo Tower which is much closer to being a (slightly) scaled up copy . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Tower"
Commenter da deepenator said, "ahem, great wall of china, ahem..."

Review: MultiSystem (a USB Multiboot Script)

Reader njmurarka asked, "Can you put a BART PE Windows ISO as one of the bootable OS's?" (It's actually already accessible in the GRUB4DOS menu entry available with every use of MultiSystem.)
Commenter Helton Moraes had this bit of praise for the script: " I use Multiboot for some six months now, and it is perfect. It is well written, complete, full of usefull options, adds persistence automagically, frequently updated, supports a lot of distros, and mostly WORK!!! It wont boot in some systems with weird BIOSes, but it is a minor problem. My main system (Mint 10) was installed from flash using multiboot, which is WAY faster than LiveCD."

Review: CrunchBang ("#!") Linux 10 "Statler" Openbox r20110105

An anonymous reader had this bit of support: "Nice review, thanks. I´ll use #! to resurrect my centrino laptop! My big problem with Leafpad is that it has no syntax highlighting."
Commenter Barista Uno also had this bit of support: "Thanks for the excellent review. I am tempted to renew my love affair with Crunchbang, which ended when I switched to Mandriva, thence to the Lubuntu varieties and now to PCLinuxOS."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I hope to have a couple more reviews up. Remember, if you enjoy reading what's written in this space, please subscribe (through RSS, email, or Google following, all of which are on the sidebar) and continue commenting!

Chinese Company Copying the Burj Khalifa

There's a relatively new article (Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News) reporting on how Chinese land developers are looking to build a skyscraper that rips off of the design of Dubai's Burj Khalifa (formerly Burj Dubai). I've seen Chinese manufacturers use (without much modification) foreign competitors' designs before, but this takes it to a level I haven't seen before.
There are two questions I have upon seeing this: how much harm will such blatant copying really do, and what's the best way to prevent it from happening in the future?
Skyscrapers have become icons of cities and their countries. The Eiffel Tower stands for Paris and all of France, as does the Empire State Building for New York City and the US as well as (now) the Burj Khalifa for Dubai and the UAE. As far as I know, China has yet to build such an iconic skyscraper (though it has built plenty of skyscrapers in general in the recent past); maybe it's just me, but I can't associate any particular tall structure with China. So it seems to me a little questionable that the new (presumably) tallest structure in Beijing should be a copycat of another existing structure.
But how much economic harm does Chinese copying really do? Let's look at movies: though China has become [in]famous for rampant DVD piracy, the US movie industry's revenues and profits have increased year after year; even the MPAA admits as much. So clearly, that can't be an issue. Next, let's look at cars: at one point, Chinese automaker Chery sold a car called the QQ that was identical (without a manufacturing license) to GM's Chevrolet Matiz; not only did they look extraordinarily similar, but even large parts like doors were interchangeable. (GM threatened to sue Chery for patent infringement, and Chery responded by changing the design significantly a couple years later.) Yet, through it all, the Chevrolet Matiz continued to sell well in China regardless of Chery's actions. (This is also because, as far as I know, in China, domestic automakers only cater to the lower end of the market, while Chinese consumers prefer foreign cars higher up the spectrum. Thus, the Chevrolet Matiz had a higher perception of quality among consumers than the Chery QQ. Then again, I don't know how the two cars were priced relative to one another when this fiasco went on.) So here as well it's safe to say that copying didn't really negatively affect other companies (except for the money lost through the accompanying lawsuit(s)) or the Chinese car market on the whole. Now let's look at skyscrapers themselves: the article says that the Burj Khalifa suffered from construction issues (which negatively affected perceptions of visitors/tourists and potential lessees) and "by the autumn, a mere 8 percent of the Burj Khalifa's apartments were occupied, [while rents] had fallen by almost half." This all happened before Chinese developers planned to erect a copycat of that tower in Beijing. This of course remains to be seen, but I don't believe the Beijing tower will actually gain business at the expense of the Burj Khalifa, simply because there are other factors in play, chiefly factors relating to the surrounding city (e.g. business environment, laws, other businesses/attractions present, et cetera). They aren't just going to compete over the design and facilities over the towers themselves.
But given that this will likely become an icon of Beijing, it would be nicer if the tower was an original design. So what's going to stop such copying in the future? Well, recent articles in places like Slashdot and TechDirt show that Chinese companies and government entities are sourcing (and sometimes copying without licenses) foreign technologies to build their infrastructure and patenting the products along the way. This is to go along with the US's repeated demands to comply with IP laws. Yet, with these patents in place, the US can't compete, and China will continue such practices to their own benefit. It's clear that Chinese businesses only comply with international IP laws when it suits them (and flagrantly tramples over them otherwise). Unfortunately (or fortunately), I don't think anything is going to stop them now.

Obama: Nobel Peace Laureate?

Yes folks, the Nobel Peace Prize committee has awarded President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize (Karl Ritter and Matt Moore, AP).
It's a strange choice, if you ask me.
I like President Obama, and while there are certainly a lot of things he could be doing better, I think he's going in the right general direction.
That said, what has Obama done to deserve this? The nomination was sent in less than a month into his presidency!
Though Obama has taken a lot of steps to try to make the world a better place, such as reductions in nuclear weapons and calls for settlement freezes and peace treaties between Israel and the Palestinian territories, the people he has called on around the world to work with him have not reciprocated. Russia has put pressure on the US on the nuclear issue, Israel refuses to freeze settlements, and China is threatening the US with economic harm if it meets with one of the most recognizable messengers of peace in the world - the Dalaï Lama.
Some of the people who have supported the prize, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have done so in the hopes that it would encourage further peace-building.
What?
Shouldn't the Peace Prize be given to people who have already done a plethora of work towards global peace rather than be an encouragement for such actions?
Furthermore, there's a lot of domestic opposition to his attempts to further the cause of peace, arguing that he is an appeaser (he is to the Israelis on the issues of settlement freezes (versus his own previous tough stance) and to the Chinese on meeting with the Dalaï Lama, but otherwise, he is only an appeaser when compared to the super-hard-line Bush).
So why did he get the prize again? I'm sure that there were plenty more people who have already done a lot of work to further the cause of global peace.