Quote of the Post: "Good taste is the worst vice ever invented." - Edith Sitwell

Random Playlist Song: Cats - The Journey to the Heaviside Layer

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Something I got in the mail:

After months of preparation, Zhengxi and I are finally ready to announce the launch of Vox Iuvenium, which is a non-profit online knowledge base, blog, and monthly newsletter on politics, public policy, and international affairs.

This project aims to enhance youth awareness of critical political and social issues through informed discussion and debate, and to make policy analysis and political commentary accessible and relevant to a youth audience, by highlighting and commenting on articles and research papers from universities and academic journals. Participating organizations include the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University, MIT Political Science OpenCourseWare, the Yale Politic, Harvard Political Review, Columbia Political Review, the Wilson Quarterly, and you can expect even more source organizations in the near future.

I would really appreciate it if you would take a few minutes to visit the site at http://www.voxiuvenium.org and browse through the articles. Please do consider subscribing to the newsletter and leaving comments on the blog, and if you're interested in getting involved with the project, do let me know at quitacet@voxiuvenium.org. The project is still far from complete, and we are developing even more functionality in the coming months, so just drop me a line if you have any suggestions or feedback.

Please help me forward this to your friends and anyone you'd think might be interested in the site. I'd really appreciate your help in making this project a success.


Cheers,

Ng Pin Quan



www.voxiuvenium.org

quitacet@voxiuvenium.org

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You learn something new everyday:


Someone (thereafter referred to as "her"): thats how i found your site. When i typed in google, "SAF uniform"

kimberly: hahahahahah really? :0
so what did you want to know about the uniform?
now I know where some of my weird search referrals come from. haha

Her: i just wanted to see more pics of hunks in the SAF uniform!!! thats why i typed that hahah

kimberly: hahaha really. I'm not a hunk
so did you find any?

Her: not really.. :(
i also found some forums that discuss army affairs and topics extensively
like how to get into OCS, how to 'chao geng', OCS or SISPEC, army phrases, etc
but no army uniforms. oh well

kimberly: why do they turn you on?

Her: no i found some topics on army uniforms
thats how i learnt the various nos.
i guess its the authoritarian air it has

kimberly: haha
so you like to be dominated

Her: yes. isn't that common among girls?

kimberly: haha. indeed, I guess
my ex likes to be dominated

Her: really? how did you make sure she was satisfied?

kimberly: err. I didn't. that's why I got dumped. haha

Her: anyway i'm quite dismayed that i cannot sate my military obssession
i mean, i'm already at my age and there's no way i can date a guy still in NS

kimberly: go for regulars
or since almost all guys were in the army, ask them to play dress up
guys ask their gfs to wear their old uniforms

Her: yah i know but its not the real thing

kimberly: hahahah ok
that's why guys go after jailbait

Her: most of the guys around my age look like teletubbies when naked. they don't fit into the hunky macho and buff soldier

typecase anymore when they wear the uniform

kimberly: ahh. there's that too
at least you won't have to risk going after jailbait :P

Her: Her: anyway i told my bf to wear his old no.4 for me but he refused
i am very distressed

[Later on]

Her: St Nicks really gets a bad deal cos all the convents are slutty and academic failures and St Nicks is the polar opposite of the two traits
in fact people more often think we're nerds, super studious, etc etc.. so this convent slut thing is really weird and goes down weirdly on us.. like sorta identity crisis>?

[Even later]

Her: btw why do u hate army life so much?
after my research, it sounds very fun!

kimberly: *choke*

Her: in fact i felt a tinge of regret that i never had the chance to go through it

kimberly: you can sign on for a short term plan
3 years I think

Her: what?? i dun want to sign on as a regular lah!! i cannot go through the physical rigors

kimberly: 3 years is only a bit longer than the 2 1/2 I did

Her: how can I have access to hordes of cuties in army uniform without having to sign on??

kimberly: err. volunteer to go for their balls and social nights?
girlfriendless guys need dates

Her: do they wear their uniforms to the balls?

***

I finally watched Bowling for Columbine. Overall, I think it's more balanced, fairer and takes longer to get draggy than Fahrenheit 9/11.

I notice that the logic given by many gun advocates can be applied to Weapons of Mass Destruction. Michael Moore noticed that too: he asked the brother of one of the Oklahoma City Bombing conspirators something along those lines, and his reply was: "they should be restricted... there are wackos out there". But somehow, this doesn't apply to guns. How odd.

He also bashes both left and right ("our President was bombing another country whose name we couldn't pronounce... it turned out to be an Aspirin factory"), so you can't accuse him of being partisan.

[On blaming Marilyn Manson and rock music in general for Columbine] "Don't they listen to Marilyn Manson in Germany - the home of sinister Goth music? Don't they watch the same violent movies in France? Most of the violent video games are from Japan"
Actually Japan has its own issues with violence

He was damn boliao to go around opening people's doors in Toronto, though.

"if more guns made people safer, than America would be one of the safest countries in the world"

The only part that irked me was when he stretched the bounds of logic to blame welfare reform and the Welfare to Work program for the case in which a 6 year old shot another 6 year old in Flint, Michigan: His mother was not around to watch him because she had to work - "making fudge for rich people" at Dick Clark's "All American Grill" - to continue to receive welfafre payments, so he managed to acquire a gun from his Uncle's bedroom The logic was so tortured and fatuous, I'd have thought that a sensible person would offer it only as a joke.

***

My mail to the guy who created Asian Prince bounced again. So I did what I should've done from the start - use the UMass Amherst People Finder. Now I've sent my mail to nnguyen@student.umass.edu. Hopefully it will get through this time. I'm very pleased with myself *beams*

My brother in law (and not a few others, I suspect) are intensely dismissive of "Dude, Where's My Car?". However, the former (and a sizeable number of the latter, I suspect) seem to be great fans of Monty Python. Since both of these seem to follow the same principles (lots of random nonsense, people acting like idiots), one wonders why they have so much contempt for the former while remaining fond of the latter. "It just sounds more intelligent with a British accent" - Brother In Law. So we can put it down to *ahem* Cultural Imperialism and Snobbery.

Fake goods tempting young adults - "There is very little distinction between piracy and the actions of a burglar who steals property from a house" - Bryan Lewin, lead officer for counterfeiting at the Trading Standards Institute in the UK. Little distinction legally, maybe, but in reality the difference is that when a pirate pirates something, he does not take something away from the owner of the Intellectual Property. Especially considering that many people who use pirated goods would never be both willing and/or able to buy the original goods.

"might as well commit a murder a rape and then vandalise a street dustbin" - On California's mandatory sentencing in California

"If the saf can win the iso 9002 certification, then that certification is pretty much worthless"

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I was at the NUSSU (NUS Students Union) Welfare Bazaar, looking at all the dubious merchandise on offer, when I heard a familiar voice greeting it. Well, if it wasn't good old Kah Keng and Kah Seng! Apparently Whisk Technologies is into more than Phlogging - they were offering the next logical step up from neoprints: customising plastic cards by printing photos on them. So to support them, I ordered a 2-sided card from them (no prizes for guessing who will feature on it!) for $10 (no discount, bah).

[Toilet Sign in Yusof Ishak House] Our social habits reflect our progress towards a gracious society (emphasis in original). I think this is damn sad.


For our philosophy module, "Reason and Persuasion", we have to make 3 comments on the typepad blog which will make up 10% of our final grade. Heh heh. Amusing observation by someone: "As for me, there’s no point in trying to make Euthyphro go merry go round in this thoughts and get more and more confuse about what he’s saying and doing. Maybe that’s why I am not Socrates."

I think of all my modules, I have the most to read for South Asia. Not only is the Resource Pack super thick, about half the topics we need to cover aren't included in it :0

More things you learn: an experiment ">where they got kids to cycle to keep their TV sets on. Of course, they ended up watching less TV.

Factors contributing to how soporific a lecture is:

- whether you know the lecturer is covering
- whether you have someone to talk to
- how later (or early) the lecture is
- how boring the lecturer is
- amount of bad english/funny quotes


People had been telling me that in University, it is hard to make bosom friends, due to the nature of modules and classes (except for Engineering, as Ban Xiong tells me that they have fixed classes for all 4 years - kinda boring, I would think). I suppose this is why you have things like Rag, ECAs and hall activities.


Quotes:

[1 week after Orientation Weel] All my friends from O Week are getting hitched all over the place

I will give you a lot of in'tyou'tion (intuition)

The lecture notes is not complete. I deliberately leave out some stuff so you have to come to class to learn something (are)

ack'kins diet (Atkins)

Instead of eating bread for breakfast you should be eating eggs and bacons (bacon)

You have a good grarps on the economic tools (grasp of)

[On a textbook] That's why I like O'Sullivan. The companion website is very good... Don't forget that your best companion is still: me.

What is your respond?

National Day is not over yet, so the one in red can get the chance [to respond]

There are people who are crazy, they spend all their time doing MSN sing, so they have no time to do their assignments (MSN-ing)

Keynes' idea (Keynes's)

You can make, impoverise your fellow players (impoverish)