Someone on Dr Chee Soon Juan:


"dr. chee is a cowardly, immature, attention seeker, he is a vile, malicious, seditious, vindictive person who lies and twists whatever/whoever/wherever/whenever to prevaricate the truth and covers up himself and is self delusional, he deceives himself and anyone who is willing to go along.

he is a national/international shame and an embarrassment to all singaporeans in this whole world, and a ungrateful person. i pity his family especially his wife. i applaud the extreme patience and humility in which our MM/SM and every minister who had to deal with him, in his taunts and other publicity stunts and disruptions.

i have the utmost contempt for such a person who wastes our precious time and money in our busy courts. and drums up international interference with our legal/political process. and feeds of such controversy and gets funding and support for all his trouble making.

he is an irritant, a panderer and a willing pawn to those who also seek to destroy the credibility and good name of our government and leaders. he is destructive towards the peace and progress of our nation. and is certainly backwards in thinking, going back to rioting, creating disturbance and civil unrest. a travesty and a sham, he should be locked up forever, to prevent anymore such persons from arising from our midst. a perverse, unrepentant, morally bankrupt and self seeking person."


The Associate:

Just an observation on the notion of "responsibility" and freedom of speech - it always strikes me as curious how "responsibility" in the exercise of one's airing of opinions is championed by those who have the most vested interest in suppressing said opinions, other than their own, that is.

It's the same as a "socially responsible press" and being "managed democracy" - always a wonderful thing for the managers and the ones in power who insist on defining just what "responsible" and "managed" is.

***

Singapore says reservations to Women's Convention are based on respect for freedom of minorities to observe own laws

"One of the reasons for the reservations cited by the country involved the need to maintain the Asian tradition of men as heads of households. That was an incorrect assumption that came from the patriarchal past, which was not appropriate under the Convention. Also, the country’s reports themselves referred to the growing number of women as heads of households. Several experts referred to the so-called 'Asian values' as a barrier to the advancement of women. It was pointed out that there were more than 50 countries with various religious and cultural traditions in Asia, and for that reason it was difficult to understand what exactly 'Asian values' meant.

Singapore was a transit country for trafficking of women and children, she added. The country’s officials often turned a blind eye to the problem in exchange for bribes. Did the Government have an integrated programme to address those issues?"


So much for our Asian Values...

Yes, if your religion/culture says that you can circumcise your women, beat them when they're disobedient, bind their feet or what not, we'll close one eye on the pretext of tolerance!

I'm not sure about the corruption bit though. Hmm.

***

Ask Jeeves: Does cutting hair make it grow faster?

Carolyn Pettibone, grad student, Genetics, Harvard Medical School

I went and did some research on the subject, and found a few papers that tried to test the idea. They were pretty funny to read. The scientists conducting them had to recruit their friends to do different shaving experiments, mostly on arms, legs, or heads. They would measure the weight of hair shaved after allowing it to grow for several days, and they tried to see if more frequent shaving made the hair grow faster. But in each experiment, the scientists found that the hair didn't grow any faster no matter how often it was shaved.

- So now I can keep my vernier calipers.


Related: The Trichology Knowledge Base - Hair Facts & Fairy Tales

Myth: Pulling out one grey hair will make two grow in its place.

Fact: Not at all. But if hair is starting to turn grey (it's actually white, there is no such thing as a grey hair - the greyness is the effect of white hair interspersed with normal coloured hair) and you pull one grey hair out, it may well be that the neighbouring hair is just about to start growing, therefore two hairs in close proximity will appear at about the same time.

- So much for my sister's empirical verification.

***

Someone on a tutorial debate: "shall we just concede defeat when the tut starts
den we dun need to do anithing"

Haha.


On crashing hostel rooms:

Friend: my whole group stays in sheares, but they are all guys so i bunk with my friend in temasek

Me: eh it's the 21st century. what's wrong with staying with someone of the opposite gender? *g*

Friend: they are horny and i dont like staying with them. personal preference

Me: but they're not horny for you I assume :)
haha so you would stay with non-horny guys? but most guys (and most girls, most guys would argue) are horny

Friend: thats troubling. while the fact that they are not horny for me is a tad insulting but i would rather they be not horny for me than horny. the problem is i suspect most guys dont really care in the end

Me: see? with women, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't
if you appreciate them, they feel objectified and demeaned
if you don't, they feel insulted
bah

***

Antony Flew and The Falsification Debate

Two explorers come upon a clearing in a jungle. There are flowers growing in this clearing, but there are also just as many weeds. One of the explorers, thinking that this is a garden, states that "some gardener must tend this plot." The other explorer, however, believes that "there is no gardener." They decide that they will set up their camp in this clearing, to solve their dispute.

After passing some time in the clearing, the two explorers have yet to see a gardener. The first explorer still adamantly believes that there is a gardener who tends the plot, but for some reason, they are unable to see him. They set upon building an electrified, barbed-wire fence. They also bring in bloodhounds, assuming that even if the gardener could get over the fence, he could not mask his scent.

More time passes with no proof of the existence of a gardener. The dogs have not barked, and the fence has remained inactivate. The first explorer still believes, however, that there is a gardener: "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." The other explorer, though, remains skeptical, and questions his partner's assertion: "Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all."

This is Flew's first argument; the first explorer's original assertion has changed in order to circumvent the inconsistencies observed by the second explorer, without actually addressing them.

Flew's next point is that while the debate between the two explorers appeared to be over an assertion, namely that there is a gardener, as the debate progress it changed into something else. He argues that when the first explorer adds these new qualifications - he is invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks - then he is also changing, bit by bit, the original inadequate assertion. Therefore, "a fine brash hypothesis may thus be killed by inches, the death by a thousand qualifications."

***

Downloading music and movies, according to my sister and the ads they like to show in theatres, is stealing.

In the common understanding, theft occurs when you take something from someone, thereby depriving them of its usage. Intellectual theft occurs when you steal someone's work and claim it as your own, without crediting the author of the work. Piracy of intellectual property is neither.

The music and movie industry argues that piracy is 'theft' because it deprives artists and creators of content of their incomes. Ridiculously long terms of copyright aside (How can Walt Disney still be living off the profits of 'Steamboat Willy' when he died in 1966? And who will be benefiting from the royalties from it till 2023?), and ignoring the fact that most artists (at least in the music industry) see but a minute fraction of the revenues from their work, this assumes that all those who consume pirated goods would pay for the equivalent amount of original goods. Which is why we should be leery of the figures given for profits "lost" to piracy - the college student living on a shoe string budget is not going to buy 60 CDs' worth of music if he's unable to download them.

But anyhow, if one subscribes to the logic that consuming pirated goods is theft, as my sister seems to do, then justifying your own consumption of pirated goods with the excuse that the original versions are unavailable is suspect. If taking someone else's car is considered theft, the act cannot be justified by the excuse that said car is unavailable in your locality. Ditto for intellectual property.

***

Ho no! Salt Lake code may ban Claus - "For years now Salt Lake City has been very accommodating of the jolly old elf and his flying team. The city's general aviation ordinance makes it clear that Santa's sleigh has free rein to fly about the city at low altitudes on Christmas Eve despite restrictions on low-flying aircraft other days of the year. Now, however, some airport leaders want to rewrite the city's general aviation rules - a revision that includes eliminating the city's long-standing exemption on low-flying Christmas Eve reindeer. Such a prohibition could spoil Santa's chance of delivering presents to boys and girls in Salt Lake City, others say."

Vibrating sex toy shuts Australian airport - "A vibrating sex toy tossed in a garbage can shut down operations at an Australian airport for about an hour on Monday... They were just about to call in bomb experts when a passenger came forward and identified the package as a vibrating 'adult novelty device.'"

24 hour candy machine - This seems to be an ad for some intellectual property protection system called "Idea Protector" but it seems more like an allegory about intellectual property, whose effect is to give people a bad impression of the product. Incidentally my sister claims I'm "too young" to be looking at such stuff, but I'm quite sure she was doing worse when she was younger than me, so.

This section of a 1999 Thinkquest entry on How solar cells work is suspiciously similar to Howstuffworks.com's article on How Solar Cells Work. Hmm.