"A man can but wish for a Swiss house, a German car, and a Japanese wife, who is well-versed in Chinese cooking, and a cellar of French wine." - Mizusaki (attr. Xephyris)

***

2 people on my M$N list have the presumed acronym "THMC" in their nicknames. I asked both of them; one didn't reply and the other said it was for him to know and me to find out (bah).

Earlier, one person changed his to "THSC", and when I asked him what it stood for he said it was "Temasek Hall Singles Club". Therefore "THMC" must stand for "Temasek Hall Something Something".

One person suggested that it was "Temasek Hall Morons Committee". Mmm, good guess. After all, they need to form lots of committees to get lots of ECA points to compete with each other to get rooms in halls. They're all suffering from money illusion. Bah.


Someone: nus.. sigh. but i really like the way you refer to it as
"The Premier Institution of Social Engineering". reminds me of all those cheesy NUSSU ads on double decker [Ed: The one of the swimming pool in which 2 graduates (with the stupid graduation hats) prance]


Someone on previous post: "and there i was, the computing student who had to make sure the rest of them were not handing up their rubbish for marking"

ZOMG!
This is exactly what happened for my Japanese Studies project!
I almost thought I was reading my own thoughts there!

***

Sheares Revisited

What I've learnt from FYP and Sheares Hall

2. Got various invitations/hints to sleep overnight in a guy's room, on his bed. I'm shy, so I ended up not getting any sleep at all as long as I was in Sheares. Even guys try to play matchmakers. Albeit very indiscreet, quite vulgar, and quite brainless ones.

4. Got an offer to be made 'a real woman'. Interestingly, this offer was the second one from the same and only fellow who has ever expressed carnal interest in me. YES! Hope for the troll! Sadly, I think he doesn't remember the first time anyway, and I think he's probably not very discriminating, nor was he very serious (both times). (This isn't the same fellow as point 2.)

7. Learnt about the extensive Porn library and its librarian in Sheares.

I went for project one day, and after having been there for a few hours was informed that the stack of CDs in front of me was porn. Want to watch? Apparently there were 2 different types of porn in that stack. The ones with plot, and the ones without. Was informed that the ones without plot all looked the same in the end and hence, the ones with plot were slightly better.

The stack of CDs I saw was an insignificant portion of the porn collector's library. No, Porn-librarian was not my group mate, and I don't think I know him.

I think it was mostly Taiwanese porn. Not sure.

12. Learnt that hall people, or Sheares hall guys really do nothing except gossip about their Sheares hall mates. Gossip usually involved - girls, girls and girls. Learnt that a guy and girl walking alone anywhere together would usually result in gossip. Guilty without trial.

15. My life long ambition is to be one of those narrow-minded old ladies who dress up in samfoos and stake out our national parks to spy on and throw bricks at amorous young couples. After that I hope to progress to the old cranky coot in your void decks who does nothing but terrorise the little kids who walk past making too much noise disturbing me while I spy on the rest of the inhabitants in the block of flats.

In conclusion, I will never ever step back in Sheares again. Might miss the guys, and think of those times fondly when I'm drunk, or losing my mind, but otherwise you'll have to kidnap and drag me screaming and kicking back.


Some people get all the fun / action. *pout*

Computing / Sheares Hall guys must be very despo *runs away*

***

Someone on SMU: im only taking 4 modules. no exams for the other 2. all projects and reports.

i rather have exams...
the grading system is silly.

financial accounting for instance. we have 1 presentation, 2 reports, hmwk, quiz, participation, mid term n final term exam. so hard to score!

"leadership and teambuilding" is even more cock. we had to plan and do a community service project and submit a report. then according to the report, the prof will IMAGINE how our implementation of the proj went and mark accordingly. and its 35%!

participation is very wayang.
some people juz talk for the sake of talking..

Me: so you regretting SMU?
so-called seminars are rubbish I hear
basically it's a combined lecture + tutorial
and a lot of presentations

Someone: i wouldn't say i regret.. perhaps not yet. haha.
yeah, alot of presentations n projects. especially the past 2 weeks..

then grp presentation was evaluated in this way: 4 groups present on each of the 2 presentation days. 5 students will be assigned as judges on each day. at the end of the presentation, they will rank the 4 groups. the prof has a vote too. adding up, the grps will have an overall ranking 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th. marks are awarded according to the ranking. so the grp that get 3rd can never have a mark

the grp that get 3rd can never have a mark higher than the 2nd grp. though they might have the same grade. so even if a grp is very good, but the student judges think otherwise, or they wanna help their own friends, the better grp also LL.

and becoz everyone knows we are being rank, there is competition. during QnA, there were these few people who juz kept bombarding other grps.. they want to screw up people's presentation, make themselves seem better.

my grp did the *** one lor.. heng i had training under u before that. haha.. i compiled a list of anticipated questions and sent them to my grp. but only 1 of the gals read thru. then when people bomb, we block, bomb again, we block again.. the prof said we handled the Q n A well even though questions werent easy. haha

Me: haha training under me?
hahahahaha
you're welcome ;)


An alternate view:

hahahaha please lah it's HOW easy to do well in smu
largely for two reasons

1) singaporeans are morons
2) singaporeans are morons

i should compile a list of why i love smu
except i can't get past the first reason of 1) the girls are hot.

***

The Concept of Liberty

In Two Concepts of Liberty Berlin sought to explain the difference between two (not, he acknowledged, the only two) different ways of thinking about political liberty which had run through modern thought, and which, he believed, were central to the ideological struggles of his day. Berlin called these two conceptions of liberty negative and positive. Berlin's treatment of these concepts was less than fully even-handed from the start: while he defined negative liberty fairly clearly and simply, he gave positive liberty two different basic definitions, from which still more distinct conceptions would branch out. Negative liberty Berlin initially defined as freedom from, that is, the absence of constraints on the agent imposed by other people. Positive liberty he defined both as freedom to, that is, the ability (not just the opportunity) to pursue and achieve willed goals; and also as autonomy or self-rule, as opposed to dependence on others.

Berlin's account was further complicated by combining conceptual analysis with history. He associated negative liberty with the classical liberal tradition as it had emerged and developed in Britain and France from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Berlin later regretted that he had not made more of the evils that negative liberty had been used to justify, such as exploitation under laissez-faire capitalism; in Two Concepts itself, however, negative liberty is portrayed favourably, and briefly. It is on positive liberty that Berlin focuses, since it is, he claims, both a more ambiguous concept, and one which has been subject to greater and more sinister transformation, and ultimately perversion.

Berlin traces positive liberty back to theories that focus on the autonomy, or capacity for self-rule, of the agent. Of these, Berlin found Rousseau's theory of liberty particularly dangerous. For, in Berlin's account, Rousseau had equated freedom with self-rule, and self-rule with obedience to the ‘general will’. By this, Berlin alleged, Rousseau meant, essentially, the common or public interest—that is, what was best for all citizens qua citizens. The general will was quite independent of, and would often be at odds with, the selfish wills of individuals, who, Rousseau charged, were often deluded as to their own interests.

This view went against Berlin's political and moral outlook in two ways. First, it posited the existence of a single ‘true’ public interest, a single set of arrangements that was best for all citizens, and was thus opposed to the main thrust of pluralism. Second, it rested on a bogus transformation of the concept of the self. In his doctrine of the general will Rousseau moved from the conventional and, Berlin insisted, correct view of the self as individual to the self as citizen—which for Rousseau meant the individual as member of a larger community. Rousseau transformed the concept of the self's will from what the empirical individual actually desires to what the individual as citizen ought to desire, that is, what is in the individual's real best interest, whether he or she realises it or not.

This transformation became more sinister still in the hands of Kant's German disciples. Fichte began as a radically individualist liberal. But he came to reject his earlier political outlook, and ultimately became an ardent, even hysterical, nationalist—an intellectual forefather of Fascism and even Nazism. Once again, this involved a move from the individual to a collective—in Fichte's case, the nation, or Volk. In this view, the individual achieves freedom only through renunciation of his or her desires and beliefs as an individual and submersion in a larger group. Freedom becomes a matter of overcoming the poor, flawed, false, empirical self—what one appears to be and want—in order to realise one's ‘true’, ‘real’, ‘noumenal’ self. This ‘true’ self may be identified with one's best or true interests, either as an individual or as a member of a larger group or institution; or with a cause, an idea or the dictates of rationality (as in the case, Berlin argued, of Hegel's definition of liberty, which equated it with recognition of, and obedience to, the laws of history as revealed by reason). Berlin traced this sinister transformation of the idea of freedom to the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century, both Communist and Fascist-Nazi, which claimed to liberate people by subjecting—and often sacrificing—them to larger groups or principles. As we have seen, to do this was for Berlin the greatest of political evils; and to do so in the name of freedom, a political principle that Berlin, as a genuine liberal, especially cherished, struck him as a particularly monstrous deception. Against this, Berlin championed, as ‘truer and more humane’, negative liberty and an empirical view of the self.

In addition to the debates concerning the conceptual validity and historical accuracy of Berlin's account (extensively documented in Harris 2002), there is considerable misunderstanding of Berlin's own attitudes to the concepts he discussed, and of the goals of his lecture. Berlin has often been interpreted, not unreasonably, as a staunch enemy of the concept of positive liberty. But this was never wholly the case. Berlin regarded both concepts of liberty as centring on valid claims about what is necessary and good for human beings; both negative and positive liberty were for him genuine values, which might in some cases clash, but in other cases could be combined and might even be mutually interdependent. Indeed, Berlin's own earlier articulations of his political values included a notable component of positive liberty alongside negative liberty (see e.g., 2002, 336–44). What Berlin attacked was the many ways in which positive liberty had been used to justify the denial, betrayal or abandonment of both negative liberty and the truest forms of positive liberty itself. Berlin's main targets were not positive liberty as such, but the metaphysical or psychological assumptions which, combined with the concept of positive liberty, had led to its perversion: monism, and a metaphysical or collective conception of the self. Two Concepts of Liberty, and Berlin's liberalism, are therefore not based on championing negative liberty against positive liberty, but on advocating individualism, empiricism and pluralism against collectivism, holism, rationalistic metaphysics and monism.

(Emphasis in bold mine)


I do not think I am the only one who sees parallels between Fichte's concept of Volk and one core aspect of so-called 'Asian Values', ie Putting the community above the self.

The logical conclusion of this is, as the author notes, a form of Communist/Fascist-Nazi ideology.

***

"According to the truly frightening Spirit and Destiny, colourpuncture was devised by a German scientist, a claim which is typical of the New-Agers' desire to have it both ways: it's an alternative to mainstream medicine, so not subject to the same principles and tests; but devised by a scientist, with the implication that it has some credibility with the mainstream... Theirs is a "voyage of discovery", implying at the outset that what is being "tested" is a wonderful world of wisdom and knowledge, not a dubious sea of sloppy-minded rubbish." (Bad Moves: Loading the dice)

Ooh. Touche. I love this guy.

***

The longest, most amusing and most detailed Gamebook reviews I've read:

"Niggle #14, Trial of Idiot Savants: Occasionally a writer will get confused enough to jot down something like this: "Bob grinned and shook his head at himself, musing on the finer points of Cartesian dualism in the middle of a great jewellery heist." It's a good bet that if you find yourself apologizing for what you just wrote, you have a problem to fix, even if it's just the existence of the apology itself. For this book Waterfield has come up with a completely irrelevant, arbitrary and unexciting puzzle, and to be on the safe side he declares as much. Well, in this case there _was_ a problem to be fixed: the exercise in section 309 is flawed in multiple ways and will accomplish only that the player dies and never returns for another attempt."

"Niggle #17, Attack of the Stunt Doubles: There's a system for dream combat which basically amounts to this: you are screwed."

(on FF28: Phantoms of Fear)