Random Playlist Song: Westminster Cathedral Choir - Schubert - The Lord is my Shepherd D706
Yay. Another of the songs that I've been looking for for the longest time is now within my grasp. Though I'm not fond of organ accompaniments, since the organ notes, already slightly muffled by their nature, tend to merge into indistinct clumps when you layer voices on top of them.
***
Two men met at a bus stop and struck up a conversation. One of them kept complaining of family problems. Finally, the other man said : "You think you have family problems? Listen to my situation."
A few years ago, I met a young widow with a grown up daughter. We got married and I got myself a stepdaughter. Later, my father married my stepdaughter.
That made my stepdaughter, my stepmother. And my father became my stepson. Also, my wife became mother in-law of her father in-law.
Much later, the daughter of my wife, my stepmother had a son. This boy was my half brother because he was my father's son. But he was also the son of my wife's daughter which made him my wife's grandson. That made me the grand father of my half brother.
This was nothing until my wife and I had a son. Now the half sister of my son, my stepmother is also the grandmother. This makes my father, the brother in-law of my child whose stepsister is my father's wife. I am my stepmother's brother in-law, my wife is her own child's aunt [Ed: step-daughter-in-law actually], my son is my father's nephew [Ed: step-cousin-in-law actually] and I am my own GRANDFATHER [Ed: step-grandfather actually] !!!!!!!!!!!!!
And you think you have FAMILY PROBLEMS.............................
Did I correct the familial relations properly?
This story is actually based on a song: I'm My Own Grandpa
***
A Rulebook for Arguments
(4) Use definite, specific, concrete language
Write concretely: avoid abstract vague, general terms. "We hiked for hours in the sun" is a hundred times better than "It was an extended period of laborious exertion."
NO:
For those whose roles primarily involved the performance of services, as distinguished from assumption of leadership responsibilities, the main pattern seems to have been a response to the leadership’s invoking obligations that were concomitants of the status of membership in the societal community and various of its segmental units. The closest modern analogy is the military service performed by an ordinary citizen, except that the leader of the Egyptian bureaucracy did not need a special emergency to invoke legitimate obligations. [This passage is from Talcott Parsons, Societies: Evolutionary an Comparative Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966), p. 56. I owe the quotation and the rewritten version which follows to Stanislas Andreski, Social Science as Sorcery (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972), Chapter 6.]
Yes:
In ancient Egypt the common people were liable to be conscripted for work.
LOL. So much for academic writing - I doubt anyone who writes like in the latter style would be hired, really. It's just the conspiracy of using jargon to exclude others from your inner circle, really.
***
When she was in Egypt for her travel show, Zoe Tay went not only to the Great Pyramid of Khufu, but also the Step Pyramid of Zoser at Saqqara and the Bent Pyramid of Snefru at Dhashur. I'm impressed.
The PVC coated card that I ordered from Kah Keng and Kah Seng at the Science Foyer about 3 weeks ago has arrived! Now I can terrorise everyone with it!
Front
Back
Someone on Wo-hen Nankan:
I totally understand how you feel dude. And I know your secret. It's your mullet combine with your stache. And the shoulder pads... and the obscene vans... and the offensive shirt... and the kensas size ego... somehow, all these elements that are traditionally known to be nothing but bad taste all rolled together with the obscene ego suddenly becomes a new form of retro-chic, making you the sexiest man to the opposite sex, as well as some of the same sex.
it's kinda like a circle. when you go further back enough, you loop around go to the front. Yes, I'm totally jealous, screw you.
An observation about choristers: Many of them are nonchalent about non-modern music. A few of them start to like choral music, though usually only the pieces/genres that they're used to.
Some of them find that they have an affinity for modern acapella, which really is mostly a way of singing pop music without needing guitars and drums, so that's not really counted.
However, it seems that only those who have prior musical background like classical music. Ah well.
Got my ink from a company called "S-Trans". So far it's been ok, only occasionally not flowing properly, in which case I've to reprint the page. At least they delivered the goods, unlike sginkjets!
***
As a service towards the world at large, I am hosting the lyrics and mp3 of the unofficial song of the NUS USP: "That's what I call an education", by Don Shiau.
All I will say about this song is to quote someone else: "It's about everything it says it isn't about"
MP3
Don Shiau - That's What I Call an Education! (128kbps, 44khz, 1724kb)
Lyrics:
That's What I Call an Education!
Don Shiau
It's not about money
It's not about grades
It's not about mugging
It's not about brains
It's not about glamour
It's not about elites
It's not about power
Or how hard to compete
Chorus:
It's about diversity
Growing opportunities
Bounded only by imagination
Being in the USP
Building a community
Now that's what I call an education
It's not about money
It's not about bonds
It's not about how much
It's not about how long
It's not about ranking
It's not about power
It's not about living
In an ivory tower
(repeat chorus)
***
What Happened to the Political Sim? - "Read the reviews of countless recent strategy titles, and you’ll find a recurrent criticism: Their diplomatic systems lack depth. The very model of a modern AI general might be supremely challenging in other respects, but when it comes to negotiation, he’s monolithic and stupid. However, this is merely a symptom: The approach of developers to strategy gaming has become so focused on play dynamics that political simulations have all but vanished. Look at the latest batch of strategy releases, and one might think consumers want nothing but relentless action even in so-called brainy releases, and couldn’t give two hoots whether, say, Pope Julius II is depicted with his devious strategic imagination historically intact."
After watching nw.t play Hidden Agenda, I wanted to play it too so I emailed the author of Hidden Agenda, who said he'd send the game to anyone who asked, but I haven't gotten a response after many days.
Alice Law - "Learn Special Relativity and General Relativity with this program. The program shows in an extraordinary way, how and why occur these magical physics laws"
Mothers Against Maddox (mirror - original site here) - This is hilarious. As Maddox comments: "For years, I was under the impression that the only mother who wanted my site shut down was my own. I stand corrected"
Big Burger - "A 6 lb. Burger. Where's the beef? It's at a Pennsylvania pub that serves the world's biggest burger — weighing in at NINE lip-smacking pounds! That's no whopper — you can actually get this meat monster for $23.95, loaded with all the fixings: Two whole tomatoes, a half-head of lettuce, 12 slices of American cheese, a full cup of peppers, two entire onions, plus, a river of mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard."
2nd reason found to check woman's ring finger - "Women whose index fingers are shorter than their ring fingers are more likely to engage in casual sex, a McMaster University psychologist claims... The strongest indicator of high sexual activity, of the seven Clark studied, was the amount of money spent on alcohol."
And I wonder why I'm a teetotaller.
Research Randomizer - "Research Randomizer is a free service offered to students and researchers interested in conducting random assignment and random sampling."
I thought it was faking results for your assignments! *g*
Da Vinci mystery tour piques Paris - "Officials at St Sulpice are annoyed by the onslaught of visitors brandishing the novel and are angered by the book's distortion of history. Staff are so exhausted by demands for information about the Priory of Sion, which Brown links to the church, that they have hung a terse printed notice on a side wall: 'Contrary to the fanciful allegations in a recent best-selling novel, this is not the vestige of a pagan temple.'"
Singapore Political Dissidents (from Carl Parkes, Singapore Handbook, 1st edition, which I doubt is on sale here) - This excerpt has the stories of Chia Thye Poh ("near-holder of world’s record for political detention"), J.B. Jeyaretnam ("Singapore’s most defiant opposition figure"), Vincent Cheng and the Marxist Conspiracy ("few observers thought it possible that this loose collection of lawyers, Christian activists, and theatrical performers comprised some sort of Marxist conspiracy against the Singapore government"), Francis Seow and Chee Soon Juan ("fired by the university on charges that he had spent US$138 of university research funds to ship his wife's doctoral thesis to Pennsylvania State University"), and ends with 2 famous quotes on democracy and freedom, and a sycophantic mass media from MM which, for some reason, you never read in the Straits Times.
