"The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past." - Robertson Davies

Random Playlist Song: Trevor Pinnock - The English Concert and Choir: Handel - Messiah - Why Do The Nations So Furiously Rage (bass, air)

Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the lord, and against his anointed.


Random Trivia bit: The Schloss Neuschwanstein castle was built by Ludwig II of Bavaria after he was inspired by a performance of "Lohengrin" by Wagner, in 1861.

Ludwig was a mad-cap. He fantasised German legends and lived in a fool's world. He however did not live in his castle happily ever after. He was deposed just three months after its finish, considered unfit to rule. A large part of his fascination came from the Hohenschwangau where he spent his childhood.

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I am amused. There is another "Asia Blog Awards", and I have been graciously nominated by Mr Brown. Well, actually there seems to be more than one award going around this year, so it quite defeats the point.

Hopefully none of them will be as acrimonious as last year's.


I love the commentary on myrick:

Also of interest to the Singapore blogosphere is the potential catfight between XiaXue and the Sarong Party Girl - who are two of the three nominees for Best Journal/Diary . XiaXue has a rabid fan base that recently propelled her to the top of the Asia section of the 2004 Weblog Awards ? SPG has a delightfully raunchy personal blog that's mostly about sex. For that category, I'm favoring sex over photoshop.

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There is a tax on stupidity. It's called the lottery.

There is a tax on sex. It's called children.


Trying to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies through abstinence-only programs is like trying to stop arms races through unilateral disarmament.

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US Forced To 'Diet' Soft Drinks - Suicide On An Installment Plan

"Reality is in that twisted Diet coke can. It's poison. It's killing the unborn, raining tumours and seizures on the population, destroying children, incapacitating workers, mimicking MS, erasing memory and blinding.

Inexorably Diet Coke visits a plague of 92 symptoms listed by our FDA on a secret report they'll never show which names diet soda as the first source of aspartame disease. And yes, Death was one of the 92.

Diet Coke is poison. And it's addictive, some victims drink several litres a day and keep it on their nightstands. If Coke changes the formula to remove aspartame the world will heal and the surge of hatred and vengeance by the disabled and bereaved shall certainly destroy Coca Cola.

The poison in Diet Coke is aspartame. As a member of the National Soft Drink Association, Coke opposed FDA approval of aspartame for beverages. Their objections, running to several pages published in the Congressional Record of 5/7/85, said aspartame is uniquely and inherently unstable and breaks down in the can. It decomposes into formaldehyde, methyl alcohol, formic acid, diketopiperazine and other toxins. In a study on 7 monkeys 5 had grand mal seizures and one died, a casualty rate of 86%."

These articles are so wildly deluded, they're almost funny.

I am, of course, more inclined to trust Cecil Adams, the world's most intelligent human being: The Straight Dope: Did aspartame (NutraSweet) cause "gulf war syndrome"?

"For the most part researchers have been unable to replicate adverse aspartame reactions in the lab. In numerous studies investigators recruited individuals who said aspartame triggered headaches, epileptic seizures, or what have you. Typically they fed half the subjects aspartame and the other half a placebo. In most cases there was no observable difference."

Oh yes, I forgot. They're all in the conspiracy too and have been paid millions by the Evil Corporations (TM) to keep mum.

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Of all the unwanted mail in my NUS Email account, this takes the cake:

"Hi,

I am looking for a gal who went to Sentosa last Sunday (12/12/2004) because I need to pass something to her. She is with her bunch of NTU and NUS friends. One of her friends is called Zhenjing, NTU EE2 if I remember correctly. You were playing frisbee with a bunch of people and one of them is from NUS.. Kindly reply this mail if you are the one. Please ignore this mail if you are not the intended recipient.

Sorry for sending this email.

Thanks."

!@#$%^&*()

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Star Entertaintment Pte Ltd present(s) World Wrestling Superstars Challenge Live in Action

For one night only, Star Entertainment is proud to bring to Singapore and Malaysia the “WORLD WRESTLING SUPERSTARS CHALLENGE: CLASH OF THE TITANS”, with the grand finale held in Singapore. Coming all the way from USA, these Superstar Wrestlers include well-known celebrities like Power of Pain, Honky Tonk Man, Barbarian, Dionk the Clown, Gangrel, Bull Buchanan, One Man Gang and female wrestlers such as Lady Victoria and Venus. Featured for the very first time in Singapore, we present the Red Indian Thrilling Cage Match! Join us for a night of unforgettable experience and excitement!


The above event was cancelled. The Moral Majority must have protested that if offended their Asian Values and encouraged violence among youth.

lotise informs me that The wrestling even was cancelled because the wrestlers delivered were not of the fame of those touted. The local organizers got conned, they reported it on the daily rag. No MM involved i guess, or maybe the rag is at work again, haha.

This is what happens when you don't read the nation-building press.

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Seattle Weekly: News: Is Bush the Antichrist?

"Yet the more love-thy-neighbor-advocating mainstream church is not dead. In The American Prospect magazine, Baptist Sunday school teacher Jimmy Carter charges the fundamentalists with "the abandonment of some of the basic principles of Christianity." And in his brilliant 1997 book, Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, author Bruce Bawer accuses fundamentalism of replacing Christ's Church of Love with a Church of Law, lamenting "the horrible monster that 20th-century legalistic Christians have made out of their God and Savior and the hateful institution that they have made out of his church." He notes acidly that the movement got its biggest boost in reaction not to the Supreme Court's 1963 school-prayer ban but to the Carter-era IRS crackdown on segregated Christian schools. "The Religious Right didn't grow out of a love of God and one's neighbor—it grew out of racism, pure and simple."

"Kids growing up in Church of Law families nowadays think that the only two sins, or at least the only two really, really important ones, are having an abortion and having gay sex," Bawer told Seattle Weekly. "The notion that love, tolerance, and inclusiveness are moral values has been dropped down the memory hole."

A soldier in the U.S. Army e-mailed Seattle Weekly, "I'm just a citizen who was raised in a Christian community and is tired of having my values hijacked by a conservative movement that only applies them selectively at home and hardly at all overseas." The soldier asks to remain anonymous."


"God Is With Us": Hitler's Rhetoric and the Lure of "Moral Values"

"Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Holocaust was able to flourish in Germany because of Europe's secular ways... One might expect regular citizens to be ignorant of history, but a Supreme Court Justice? Does he imagine that the phrase "Gott mit Uns" was a German clothier's interpretation of "Got Milk"?

'Strauss loved America enough to try to save her from the errors and terrors of Europe. He was convinced that the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic led to the rise of the Nazis. That is a debatable matter. But Strauss did not openly debate this issue or provide arguments for his position in his writings. I am inclined to think that it is Strauss's ideas, and not liberal ideas, that invite the kinds of abuses he wished to avoid. It behooves us to remember that Hitler had the utmost contempt for parliamentary democracy. He was impatient with debate and dispute, on the grounds that they were a waste of time for the great genius who knew instinctively the right choices and policies that the people need. Hitler had a profound contempt for the masses - the same contempt that is readily observed in Strauss and his cohorts. But when force of circumstances made it necessary to appeal to the masses, Hitler advocated lies, myths, and illusions as necessary pabulum to placate the people and make them comply with the will of the Fuhrer. Strauss's political philosophy advocates the same solution to the problem of the recalcitrant masses.'

Substituting "America" for "Germany," many of Hitler's religious assertions could have been uttered by Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson -- with Hitler even asserting that God punished Germany for turning away from Him -- before promising that renewed piety would protect the Fatherland and make it prosperous and successful once more. "Once the mercy of God shown upon us, but we were not worthy of His mercy. Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell, fell as scarcely any other people heretofore. In this deep misery we again learned to pray," Hitler said in 1936, sixty-five years before Falwell and Robertson blamed abortionists and feminists for the tragedies of Sept. 11."

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budak:

To put it another way, why stop at a casino? There’s countless threats to our cherished values out there: prostitution (which is legal), private mahjong sessions, prolonged overseas assignments (which open the door to infidelity), latchkey kids (let’s force these parents to work less hard and stay at home more often!), wilfully childless or gay couples (we can’t have such bad examples for our children, can we?). Aren’t all those “necessary evils” that should be rejected by upright, family-first societies? And sorry, I almost forgot to mention those two vices that daily assault our senses with seductive allure: the pint and the pipeweed. Now who can doubt that these twin evils do nothing but lasting harm to our offspring, and thus deserve the deepest censure. Shall we not call for their utter banishment from this land, rather than tolerate their sanction by a system that issues healthy words of warning while earning a pretty sum from sales?... Isn’t it really all about wanting to shield families and kids from the big bad world out there, and demanding that the nanny state exercise its paternal instincts over individual sensibilities. Whither might the guardians of propriety turn their eyes next?

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Does Singapore Have a Bona Fide Labour Union?

"In Singapore, the lack of bona fide union representation is all the more glaring given that this is not a welfare state and the state does not provide any relief for the unemployed. The government's clear message to the retrenched worker is not to look for free "hand-outs" (quoting the words of Straits Times writer Ms Chua Lee Hoong).

Does asking for a descent job qualify as a "hand-out". I think that the average
Singaporean only wishes to be given the opportunity to earn his keep, and it is not his fault that he has fallen victim to an imperfect system."


Instead of taking the well-trodden path of complaining about how ministers are paid highly to urge workers to accept lower wages, I shall offer a few thoughts from another angle.

Competitive wages are indeed necessary to compete in the global economy. However, we cannot compete with third world countries solely on the basis of comparable wages, not least because the cost of living here is higher than in said countries. We need to move up the value chain, and indeed this is being done, and encouraged.

We are bombarded with talk about maintaining competitiveness to maintain full employment, but by intervening in the labour market, the government brings wages below their equilibrium level. This seems to depress unemployment, but that caused in part by people withdrawing from the labour force, since wages are too low to make work worth their while (mmm, bumming is good). Meanwhile, all the wage slaves who cannot afford to quit the labour force will be stuck with lower salaries.

Of course, the typical bureaucrat would probably make a face and talk menacingly about recession, the End of the World, the ruling party's fall from power and what not, but why interfere with the aggregated preferences of Singaporeans?


Of course, the wage level theory is fraught with problems, not least that of the problem of aggregation, but if/when I explore them it shall be after I have grown in wisdom and lore (ie after a semester or two) and am able to utter words of greater profundity.

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Some recent additions to How Girls Waste Time

40. Flirting with each other and generally acting completely lesbian when exclusively in the company of girls.

109. Making expansive hand gestures repeatedly

110. Imputing undue importance to certain essentially meaningless dates (eg First pet's death anniversary, conjunction of certain designated heavenly bodies, day and time of first hickey given by boyfriend), then kicking up a big fuss if they are not adequately commemorated

110. a) Imputing undue importance to certain essentially meaningless facts about themselves (eg Volume of flow, crests of biorhythms, favourite texture of parquet), then kicking up a big fuss if they are not remembered

111. Analysing and cross-analysing in excruciating detail the words and actions of others, often reading into them implicit meanings that don't actually exist, and seeing daggers where there are none (which explains why girls like to do Literature)

112. Using PMS and their gender as excuses to get things/get away with things.

113. Talking in great detail about menstrual cycles and the like, just to gross guys out

114. The adoration of boys who look like girls. See F4, 5566, Orlando Bloom as Legolas, etc.

114. a) A subset of this is reading Japanese manga where the males are distinguishable only by their slightly narrower eyes and wider jaws. And inevitably, these manga will feature falling flower petals and sparkling eyes at some point or the other.

115. Being fag hags. If a girl is a fag hag, she will start up on every single straight-identifying man in the vicinity by asking loaded questions like, "Come on. Would you sleep with a guy if you really had to?" and then proclaiming they are either gay and/or in denial. Then she'll start matchmaking even straight guys together. See: Yaoi/slash fangirl.

116. Being passive-aggressive. "I'm not mad at you. Really. ...WTF YOU ARE SO ANNOYING OMG."

117. Making fun of guys who indulge in anything from the above list. And using metrosexual as an insult.

119. Entering Pavlovian fits of ecstasy when they see a food they like (eg Brownies), then, after gorging on them, complaining about weight gain and the need to exercise.


"Not interested in starting up a list [on males] because it probably won't go beyond 20 or something (porn, video games, ogling girls, watching soccer...)"

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Sexxx or Something else? - "Are these people engaged in sex or doing something else? You decide!"
I got 9/16. Damn.

MasaManiA=???? - "He is Ki master. He is now in training of Ki, He try to get power from tree. He is fucking serious. He believe that he can get power from Ki power from tree by training. What's the fuck, Ki ??"
Don't look at me. It's a Jap thing.

Japanese men lap up new comfort - "Japanese men without a shoulder to cry on this Christmas are being offered a woman's lap - made out of foam - to rest on instead."
Men get the equivalent of the Boyfriend Arm Pillow. Though I think most men would rather have a torso with swellings that they can grasp.

Cat crosses Siberia to find its home - "Two-year-old male cat named as Kuzya has made an unprecedented journey across the Yakutia republic in Russia's Siberia. The cat walked 2,150 kilometers in three months to find its home"

The Ketchup Conundrum - "Mustard now comes in dozens of varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same?"

The Moronosphere: Paying For It - "I know people who work in the sex industry, quite a few of them. I know adult web masters, erotic artists, writers. I know escorts. I know strippers. I know phone sex operators. Some of these people are on a short list of my very good friends. I have nothing, absolutely nothing, but respect for these people. They do something far, far more important than I do, far more necessary, far more useful. I sit in an office making sure people who use software tools can use the tools correctly. Basically, I help other people make computers. My friends in the sex industry deal in pleasure and satisfaction. They meet a real, basic human need, as basic, as essential, as shelter and companionship and physical safety. Some of them are part therapist. Some of them do work that's actually dangerous. The strippers, the escorts, they are in real physical danger at times, and they risk disease on the job every day. These people work hard. They don't, for the most part, get rich. So why do they do it?"