Apparently my posts are too long, so I don't get comments. So I shall try making shorter posts. Yay.

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Nonsensical text of the day:

"Tighten up reality gangster
Stigma through idiot hearing
Keep frustration clear
Patience open head
Getting away with it lead
Some distant memory drove
Get the message
Indiscipline all remains
Wish double editorials cover"

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I'm trying to gather systematically known cases of people being misquoted in the Straits Times.

Exhibit A:

Still, knowing that her philosophy professor uses such a method has made NUS first-year student Lim Qingru, 19, more conscientious in her work.

'I wouldn't copy text wholesale to begin with, as my professor has read quite widely and would be able to spot it. But now I'm more careful about putting in quote marks when they are needed.'

The person quoted informed me that she definitely said something different, something about her using a quote from Oscar Wilde and not attributing it because it was a well-known quote, but being corrected by the lecturer.


Meanwhile a junior of mine, the top student in the 2002 O Level examinations, got words put into his mouth when he was interviewed on the release of the results last year.

I forget what he said and what he was reported as saying (with the ample use of quotation marks, no less), except that he wasn't just paraphrased or even misquoted - both the letter and the spirit of the quotes attributed to him were fictitious.

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Abortion, a philosophical approach

"Does a foetus become a human being when the heart starts beating? When there is a recognizable central nervous system? When it can react to external stimuli? When it can feel pain?... many other animals have a nervous system, a heartbeat, respond to external stimuli, and can feel pain, but most of us (vegetarians excluded -- but most abortion opponents included) don’t seem to have too many qualms about killing such animals.

...

If the problem is actual or potential personhood, not the developmental biology of our particular species of primates, then we have moved from biology to philosophy, a much more tricky terrain to navigate. Being a person is tightly linked to having the ability to lay down and recover memories (which make up our “identity” as a person), as well as to experience emotions (like love and suffering) and not just feelings (like sexual urge and pain). These characteristics are in turn dependent on being a member of a society, interacting with others, communicating one’s thoughts and receiving and understanding information about other people’s thoughts and emotions... personhood is most of all a question of psychology and sociology.

... So, while there is very little question that by performing an abortion we are in fact killing a biological being that belongs to the human species, it is an entirely different -- and much more difficult to defend -- proposition to say that we are killing a person.

Abortion opponents may shrug all of this philosophical quibbling as irrelevant on the ground that the procedure -- at whatever stage it is practiced -- kills a potential person. But this is a rather odd argument, with far reaching consequences that should be seriously considered by whoever proposes it. For example, the mass of cells in question will become a person only if many conditions other than biological development are fulfilled, including being raised in a proper physical, psychological and social environment. It is ironic, therefore, that we spend so much energy debating abortion while most of us are much less passionate about more apparently mundane issues such as, say, health care and education for all those non-aborted foetuses.

Even more radically, if a fertilized egg is a potential person, so is every single unfertilized one, and every sperm as well. After all, the egg or sperm only needs a gamete of the opposite type to begin the developmental process that will lead to the generation of another person. I suppose that is why the most rabid religious fundamentalists (including the current Pope) are against masturbation or sex that doesn’t have the goal of reproduction. But it is hard to see what these people could do to avoid the natural “waste” of unutilized human eggs. Should we explant them from every woman and fertilize them artificially? If your intuitive answer was “no,” and yet you are against all types of abortion, you may want to consider the consistency of your philosophy."

***

(NUS) Students on ‘Bad Teaching’ - Some things never change, and I doubt they will.

Buyer won't return city's pricey error - "On Saturday, the city of Wichita unwittingly auctioned off two pieces of a valuable Rosati sculpture for $45. The sale was intended to clear out junk -- old desks, unneeded office equipment, outdated Christmas decorations. The four pieces of the 1981 sculpture "Upright Form V," which assembled could be worth up to $30,000, mistakenly ended up among the junk, city officials said."
The trouble with modern art...

W-B man: 'Witches are trying to kill me' - "A tree stump in the center of his small front yard is adorned with wooden stakes: nine point skyward, and seven jut from its side along its circumference. "It's a map of the neighborhood," Jenkins said. "Each spike points to where a witch lives."

EGBG anti-telemarketing counterscript - " Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance."
Something to use the next time the NKF comes a-calling...

Maggots make medical comeback - "A medical device? They remove the dead tissue that impedes healing "mechanically," FDA determined. It's called chewing. But maggots do more than that, says Sherman, who raises the tiny, wormlike fly larvae in a laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. His research shows that in the mere two to three days they live in a wound, maggots also produce substances that kill bacteria and stimulate growth of healthy tissue."

Tesla coil at full power (33KV/20KVA)

Power Rangers: Time Force - "Because of the September 11th attacks, many episodes were re-edited after their first airing to remove potentially offensive material, such as buildings being blown up. In one case, an episode was not shown again after its first airing."
!@#$%^&*()

What the Bubble Got Right - "Dressing up is not so much bad in itself. The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as 'suits.'... A nerd, in other words, is someone who concentrates on substance. So what's the connection between nerds and technology? Roughly that you can't fool mother nature. In technical matters, you have to get the right answers. If your software miscalculates the path of a space probe, you can't finesse your way out of trouble by saying that your code is patriotic, or avant-garde, or any of the other dodges people use in nontechnical fields."

All Entertainment All the Time - "The university had merged almost seamlessly with the consumer culture that exists beyond its gates. Universities were running like businesses, and very effective businesses at that. Now I knew why my students were greeting great works of mind and heart as consumer goods. They came looking for what they’d had in the past, Total Entertainment All the Time, and the university at large did all it could to maintain the flow."