"A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five." - Groucho Marx

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If anyone knows a one-eyed, one-armed, four-foot [tall] hermaphrodite from Africa, pleae introduce her (or him) to me.

If we hook up, Andrew and He Who Must Not Be Named will buy us a one-week, all-expense paid trip to anywhere in the world.

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Wannabe Lawyer makes the excellent observation that intellectual property is both non-rivalrous and non-excludable.

As such, it fits the defintion of a public good, and should be paid for by the government and financed with taxes :)


Jiekai: "The conventional Chinese point of view about history and the world at large seems to have combined a zealous self righteousness about being "Chinese" with a major inferiority complex that continually harps on China's victim-hood status for most of the past 200 years. I would regard the one, huge, singular failure of Chinese political culture is an inability to come to political compromises- the ability to
"agree to disagree", so to speak. I wonder if these "intellectual" PRCs have come to realise that much of Chinese history has been scarred, not by the lack of "benevolent" or "righteous" men coming to the fore, but by their insistence on wiping out their opponents first- preferably through violence. An intellectual climate that seems to favour non- dissent is not particularly valuable..."

(Young Republic Yahoo Group)

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The Straight Dope: A list of what appears to be every Monopoly rule variation ever devised by the mind of man, ranging from the mundane to the criminally deranged

"Herewith a sampling:

- If you land directly on Go, you collect $400 instead of the usual $200. There's also the "subway" variation--if you land directly on Go, on your next turn you can choose not to roll the dice and move instead directly to any other space on the board.

- If you go bankrupt, you can file for reorganization under Chapter 11, meaning you distribute all your cash on hand to your creditors but continue to play.

- Players can establish "investment funds" by paying any sum of money into the bank. Subsequently they draw 10 percent interest on their investments (plus $200) every time they pass Go.

- If you own all four railroads, you can build "stations" on them. (These stations look suspiciously like houses, thereby demonstrating the monotonous uniformity that is characteristic of modern architecture.) Rent progresses upward until you get to "Grand Central Station," the equivalent of a hotel, which permits you to extort $1700 from the unlucky sap who lands on it.

- For the ultimate in sybaritic living, we have the concept of "building beyond hotels": an Estate with Gardener's Cottage (a hotel plus a house), an Estate with Gardener's Cottage & Rolls Royce Garage (a hotel plus two houses), and a Palace (a hotel with three houses). These permit rents to be raised to truly astronomical levels--a Boardwalk palace will net its owner a whopping $7500, resulting in instant ruin for the lessee/victim.

- Then there's the WAHOO card, which you get one of every time you land on Free Parking. Among other things there is the Three Mile Island Contamination card, in which "the color group of properties of your choice is contaminated by leaked nuclear wastes and no owner of a property on that group can collect rent until they have twice passed Go and paid a $500 clean-up charge to the bank." Guaranteed to bring a touch of realistic contemporary angst to the game.

Finally, for those who are truly interested in making Monopoly a spiritually significant experience, hustling Straight Dope managing editor Pat C. suggests a splendid variation called Cosmonopoly. Here, instead of chasing after tawdry commodities like Baltic and St. Charles Place, we aspire to the Platonic virtues, Truth and Beauty. We replace Community Chest and Chance with Free Will and Predetermination, one of the cards from which may sternly admonish you to "GO DIRECTLY TO THE METAPHYSICAL VOID. Do not pass Being or Essence. Do not collect $200." To get out of the Metaphysical Void, you either have to grasp the meaning of the universe or roll doubles twice.

On the Catholic side of the board, instead of collecting all the properties in a color group, your aim is to acquire Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, and Fear of the Lord. Playing pieces to select from include the Jean-Paul Sartre piece (comes with blank dice and it's up to you to to decide how far you want to go) and the Nostradamus piece (you just sit around and guess who's going to win). Entrepreneurs interested in making a killing on this outstanding concept may write care of this column for a complete prospectus."

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It seems my Evil Plot regarding angels has not succeeded. I have 2 theories about why this is so. Either the administration sensed that something was wrong when they saw my name on the letter, and so chose not to do anything about it, or they came here to see what I was up to.

Moral of the Story: In future, do not blog about evil plots and devious schemes before they come to fruition, no matter how tempting it might be.


My brother in law keeps expropriating my things, and then resolutely claiming that they are his. This, of course, is because he already has so many things, he doesn't know which ones are his and which ones aren't.

First it was my teddy bear (which he has been somehow sodomising and so has had, for more than a year, a huge, gaping vagina where its perineum used to be. Next it was a cyan-coloured linen shirt of mine which somehow appeared in his cupboard and which he'd worn a few times, claiming it was his.

And then a few days ago, when I wanted to wear a pair of old and dirty shoes that I'd not worn for a while for my field trip to Sungei Buloh, I found the shoes much dirtier than I remembered them, and with a pair of dirty and smelly gray socks in them.

I voiced my shock and disapproval, and he claimed that the shoes were his, even though I was (and am) positive that that was the pair that I'd gotten in Melbourne in 2002, no least since I'd been wearing it to camp for more than a year, and had trudged through the mud of Hastings in it. He again persisted in his claim, and in the end I didn't wear that pair of shoes.

I wonder what he'll expropriate next. Maybe my Power Rangers VCD collection.


I wonder what the strings of little letters printed on cubes (or other shapes) that some girls are fond of making and then attaching to some appendage or protrusion (on themselves or their possessions) where dangly accessories are usually placed are called.

I was at a shop holding a closing-down sale once and wanted to buy enough letters to spell out something which would be characteristically "恶心" (e3 xin1 - nausea inducing). Then I realised why the letters were so cheap - there were no vowels.

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Dinosaurs: Science Or Science Fiction - "When children go to a dinosaur museum, are the displays they see displays of science or displays of art and science fiction? Are we being deceived and brainwashed at an early age into believing a dinosaur myth? Deep probing questions need to be asked of the entire "dinosaur industry". This article will discuss the possibility that there may have been an ongoing effort since the earliest dinosaur "discoveries" to plant, mix and match bones of various animals, such as crocodiles, alligators, iguanas, giraffes, elephants, cattle, kangaroos, ostriches, emus, dolphins, whales, rhinoceroses, etc. to construct and create a new man-made concept prehistoric animal called "dinosaurs". Where bones from existing animals are not satisfactory for deception purposes, plaster substitutes may be manufactured and used. Some material similar or superior to plasticine clay or plaster of Paris would be suitable. Molds may also be employed. A 144-page book titled "Make Your Own Dinosaur Out of Chicken Bones" provides step-by-step instructions complete with detailed drawings and diagrams."
Don't you just love conspiracy theories?

All Look Same - Think you can tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese and Koreans? I got 7/18. Bah. They look very similar anyway.

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NUS Mission:

"Advance knowledge and foster innovation,
educate students and nurture talent,
in service of country and society" [Ed: Emphasis mine]

There! Now no one can fault me when I call NUS the Premier Institution of Social Engineering. Well, maybe about the Premier part.


I think that there are even more SACSALs [Ed: For those who can't tell, Shrill, Anorexic, Chinese-Speaking Ah Lians] in Business than in Arts. Which is probably why the girls you see in offices are all of a certain type.

I saw an ad for a second-hand textbook pasted on the door of a vestibule of a lecture theatre. I must give that person bonus points for bold marketing.


Quotes:

[On City Harvest] My friend told me it's a very arousing experience. It's even better than Zouk.

Unfortunately my taste does not extend to caucasian men, who are hairy, smelly and unattractive.

Deconstruction for deconstruction's sake doesn't get us anywhere. Deconstruction itself can be deconstructed... Claims he can see 'Power Relations'... Free play, any symbol can mean anything.

There's nothing textal about them (textual)

[On claims purportedly substantiated by evidence but not actually so] Bamboozled again by science. They think you're illiterate... Not to be antagonistic to Churchland. 'Aha! [You're wrong so you suck]' You outgrow that after high school.

You have to write it down. No sighing! It's a writing class.

Discuss (Descartes)

He said the readings were too hard: the reading for that day was 10 pages of Descartes. He took the landscapes class: their reading for that day was 40 pages of Foucault, who makes Descartes look like child's play.

[Me] Intelligent Design is that bastard stepson of Creation Science

Should Intelligent Design be taught in a Science class? [Student: You're teaching us Intelligent Design in a Science class] Then I'm a bad teacher.

There's a huge debate about whether Intelligent Design should be taught in schools. Mainly in the mid-Western states. If you go to the coasts, where the developed people live...

[On not teaching Creationism in schools] The courts don't heed the Constitution very much, but this time they took a quick look

[On misspelling 'irreducible' twice] That's why it's good to have English Language majors in this class

[To me] It feels really weird not sharing classes with you this semester... No weekly dose of sarcasm.

[Lecturer] Some of you may be unlucky enough to get me as your tutor.

The pigs are at the side (peaks)

One day you will wake up in the morning and scream: Eugh'ray'kah! You realise what the mean is. (Eureka)