"To the southeast, multi-armed Zanzibanian short women and their exploding wigs of death!" - The Great Gonzo, Muppet Treasure Island

Random Playlist Song: Trevor Pinnock - The English Concert and Choir: Handel - Messiah - Ev'ry Valley Shall Be Exalted (tenor, air)

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.


Random Trivia bit: Most professional scientists are atheists.

Several studies have been done that show that about 70-90% of professional scientists are atheists. A study published in "Scientific American" in 1999, which surveyed scientists from several cultures, found that only 10% followed a traditional religious belief. A 1998 survey of the members of the US National Academy of Science, probably the most preeminent scientific body in the US, found that 72% of members were atheists and 21% agnostics. Only 7% considered themselves religious.

***

Most important reason why NUS is "The Premier Institution of Social Engineering": The syllabus, system and cohort sizes are adjusted in accordance with societal (or rather governmental) needs and desires, rather than academic ones. ie University graduates are being turned out to suit the needs of society and the economy.

[Ed: This point was the reason why I originally called NUS "The Premier Institution of Social Engineering", but for a while I was debating whether to include it under "Economic Engineering" because this aspect doesn't engineer students socially but for society. At NUS, students don't learn what they are interested in, or to further the cause of knowledge, but are moulded according to dictates from the Powers That Be.

But if we take a broad view of the term 'social engineering', this definitely counts.]

***

How 'Dungeons' changed the world

"To put it simply, Dungeons and Dragons reinvented the use of the imagination as a kid's best toy. The cliche of parents waxing nostalgic for their wooden toys and things "they had to make themselves" has now become my own. Looking around at my toddler's room full of trucks, trains, and Transformers, I want to cry out, "I created worlds with nothing more than a twenty-sided die!"

Dungeons and Dragons was a not a way out of the mainstream, as some parents feared and other kids suspected, but a way back into the realm of story-telling. This was what my friends and I were doing: creating narratives to make sense of feeling socially marginal. We were writing stories, grand in scope, with heroes, villains, and the entire zoology of mythical creatures. Even sports, the arch-nemesis of role-playing games, is a splendid tale of adventure and glory. Though my friends and I were not always athletically inclined, we found agility in the characters we created. We fought, flew through the air, shot arrows out of the park, and scored points by slaying the dragon and disabling the trap.

Our influence is now everywhere. My generation of gamers -- whose youths were spent holed up in paneled wood basements crafting identities, mythologies, and geographies with a few lead figurines -- are the filmmakers, computer programmers, writers, DJs, and musicians of today. I think, for the producers, the movie version of "The Lord of the Rings" was less about getting the trilogy off the page and onto the screen than it was a vicarious thrill, a gift to the millions of us who wished we could have dressed up as orcs and ventured into catacombs and castle keeps ourselves. Only a generation of imaginations roused by role playing could have made those movies possible."


I wonder what the fundies have to say about this.

***

Something Borrowed: Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life?

"He played another CD. It was Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” a huge hit from the nineteen-seventies. The chorus has a distinctive, catchy hook—the kind of tune that millions of Americans probably hummed in the shower the year it came out. Then he put on “Taj Mahal,” by the Brazilian artist Jorge Ben Jor, which was recorded several years before the Rod Stewart song. In his twenties, my friend was a d.j. at various downtown clubs, and at some point he’d become interested in world music. “I caught it back then,” he said. A small, sly smile spread across his face. The opening bars of “Taj Mahal” were very South American, a world away from what we had just listened to. And then I heard it. It was so obvious and unambiguous that I laughed out loud; virtually note for note, it was the hook from “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” It was possible that Rod Stewart had independently come up with that riff, because resemblance is not proof of influence. It was also possible that he’d been in Brazil, listened to some local music, and liked what he heard.

My friend had hundreds of these examples. We could have sat in his living room playing at musical genealogy for hours. Did the examples upset him? Of course not, because he knew enough about music to know that these patterns of influence—cribbing, tweaking, transforming—were at the very heart of the creative process. True, copying could go too far. There were times when one artist was simply replicating the work of another, and to let that pass inhibited true creativity. But it was equally dangerous to be overly vigilant in policing creative expression, because if Led Zeppelin hadn’t been free to mine the blues for inspiration we wouldn’t have got “Whole Lotta Love,” and if Kurt Cobain couldn’t listen to “More Than a Feeling” and pick out and transform the part he really liked we wouldn’t have “Smells Like Teen Spirit”—and, in the evolution of rock, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a real step forward from “More Than a Feeling.” A successful music executive has to understand the distinction between borrowing that is transformative and borrowing that is merely derivative.

[...]

This is the second problem with plagiarism. It is not merely extremist. It has also become disconnected from the broader question of what does and does not inhibit creativity. We accept the right of one writer to engage in a full-scale knockoff of another—think how many serial-killer novels have been cloned from “The Silence of the Lambs.” Yet, when Kathy Acker incorporated parts of a Harold Robbins sex scene verbatim in a satiric novel, she was denounced as a plagiarist (and threatened with a lawsuit). When I worked at a newspaper, we were routinely dispatched to “match” a story from the Times: to do a new version of someone else’s idea. But had we “matched” any of the Times’ words—even the most banal of phrases—it could have been a firing offense. The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence."

***

This is one of the most preposterous things I've heard of:

Questions answered for 7D

This is a project to attempt to earn enough money through answering questions through the Internet to make up the difference for a Digital Camera, the Dynax 7D that I need for the upcomming year. [Ed: Emphasis mine]

Hi Everyone,

I'm from Singapore, and the purpose of this webpage is to raise a small sum of money for the purchase of my Dynax 7D.

I've been an avid photographer since Junior College (age 17-18) and won a few prizes in photography competitions for my age group. I'd like to fund my passion for photography, however, I'm a few dollars short for a digital camera, and I need it for the Christmas Season (and all the wonderful photographic opportunities that it would bring.)

Why do I need this particular digital camera?

That would be an article in itself. Basically I saved up enough for a digital camera, because film is expensive, and I plan to work hard this festive season. However when I finally got to hold it, I found that it did not really suit my needs, and the camera I need is a price bracket above what I can afford. That's the Minolta 7D, and it really underwent an intensive battery of evaluations.

So here's the purpose of the webpage. I need only a small sum of money. 600-700 USD to be exact. I've saved about 50% of the cost of the camera around here. That's about S$1500 dollars. However, I need a little more.

[...]

I believe that I have skills to live on. By answering questions, I hope to provide a service worthy of your dollars, and hence, fund my passion for photography. I'll be answering your questions. Any question that you feel that you can put to me. I'll answer them to the best of my ability. To provide objective analysis and accurate figures. I'll save your time, and you can help donate to my cause with the profit you make from more leisure time.

I'll be running this webpage for the next 5 days, because there's an important camera fair coming up, and I hope to get enough by then.


Even if he left the page up for 5 years, he wouldn't get a tenth of what he's asking for.

***

Firefox Extensions and politics - Amazing how furious some will become over a simple "US Department of Homeland Insecurity Idiocy Level" extension (which is obviously a joke)

Profanity Adventures - "I typed in swear words into as many games on the Spectrum 48k as i could find, and below are the ones which understood - which a pleasing amount did... as, let's face it, the authors knew that most people would try it at some point when they'd gotten frustrated with the distinct lack of fun on offer."

BSOD database - Gotta love it. And the BSODs are displayed on a Mac too!

Trivia Asylum - Dilbert Characters - "Queen Bee of Marketing - Dilbert tries to capture her. [8/12+/99]"

Jason Chan - Biography - "For the Google'rs out there, Jason Chan is NOT: A teenage chess whiz living in Sydney, A radio controlled airplane enthusiast, A martial arts master with his own series of fitness videos, A gang member currently serving time for the tragic murder of Haing Ngor (actor and activist), A guitar player in a rock band, A certified massage therapist, Head chef at a Malaysian satay bar in Melbourne, The Executive Producer for "MalaysiaFest 2003", although it does look to be a pretty interesting event, Company Manager of Zen Zen Zo"

'Music Is Not a Loaf of Bread' - "After being dropped from Reprise Records in 2001 over creative conflicts surrounding Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the Chicago-based band committed what some thought would be suicide -- they streamed it online for free. The album's subsequent release on Nonesuch debuted higher on the charts than any of their prior releases... The band's 2004 release, A Ghost Is Born, hit No. 8 on the Billboard charts -- their highest position to date... What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them. Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts."

Lard crisis: mince pies threatened as supplies dwindle - "You can't beat lard for roast potatoes with a Sunday roast," he added. "It gives a really meaty taste and can be mixed with a little bit of oil to help keep the temperature right."

Virgin Mary In Grilled Cheese NOT A HOAX ! LOOK & SEE ! - Looks more like the Anti-Christ as a child to me. A friend suggests that it's actually Sadako, and that the winner should send it for carbon testing to find its age and use a spectrometer to find if any chemicals were added, to find out if it's a hoax.

LJ Community: Survey Whore - Perfect for screwed up girls.

Yahoo! News - Offbeat Photos - AFP - "A British hooligan in the streets of Belgium. The typical Briton is polite, witty and phlegmatic, but lacks a certain style and has a dental hygiene issue while having an occasional drinking problem"

Singapore Cosplay cannot make it. This is what I call REAL COSPLAY.

The Faith-Based Encyclopedia - "The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him."

How To Understand Statistics - "A technology firm discovered that 40% of all sick days were taken on a Friday or a Monday. They immediately clamped down on sick leave before they realised their mistake. Forty per cent represents two days out of a five day working week and therefore is a normal spread, rather than a reflection of swathes of feckless opportunists trying to extend their weekends."

The Religious Views of Adolf Hitler - "Was Hitler an atheist as some Christians say he was? Hitler's own words make this claim rather dubious. Scholars are still unsure whether or not Adolf Hitler was a believing Christian or just a politically cunning theist, but what is certain however is there is no evidence he was an atheist."