2nd day of the year, and I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome. Unfortunately my company's sterling health plan doesn't cover it (however, they did let me take sick leave when I went for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis so they're not *that* bad). My forearm feels like cold needles are running down the inside of my blood vessels whenever I move my mouse, and half a bottle of medicated linoleum doesn't seem to make squat difference.

To take my mind off the discomfort, I shall answer some more of Gabriel's posts

(Someone was asking: "Why do all your posts seem to be snipes at Gabriel or debates with him? A third person watching would think he's having a dissociative personality disorder argument with himself." I replied: "My life is too surreally banal to make good writing, and Gabriel's the only person I know of who would let a co-blogger incessantly abuse him. It keeps him honest, anyway.")

Firstly, *you're* the one over-generalizing shamelessly with regards to lotteries and life. When I say a national lottery for NS won't work because of the ugliness of human nature, I mean it in the context of a Singaporean society with institutional inertia of an existing, and arguably functional (albeit not at Pareto efficiency) conscription. And studies have shown that people would accept a lower income if it was at an average level, as opposed to an higher income that was below average, everything else ceteris paribus.

That doesn't mean lotteries *can't* work in other societies with other factors at play, simply that this above factor, alongside all others, would be the primary reason why it's not politically viable in Singapore today.

Secondly, the Scouring of the Shire is a seminal part of Tolkien's book. I think it makes a great allegorical point (Tolkien's distaste for allegory granted) that not all the battles against evil involve grandiose epics and saga-level conflicts. Sometimes it can be evil in a small, mean way, in your backyard, corrupting the people around you. Of course, Lord of the Rings as a movie is meant to focus more on the bigger picture, so I can see why for theatrical release such a part would slow down the pacing and add an unncessary denouement in the conclusion - but that doesn't detract from the chapter's role and message in the original text.

The US dollar has been falling vis-a-vis the European/Japanese/Australian currencies, but the ASEAN pairs are being kept low by a combination of aggressive Treasury purchasing, hard currency buffering and mondo loose monetary policy. ASEAN is a primarily mercantilist mentality; they don't want to see their currencies over-appreciate esp with China's flood of cheapo exports around the corner. These factors make us a ready market for the US' deficit spending for a while to come.