"Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms." - Groucho Marx

***

Following on the heels of the critically acclaimed CrushCalculator, we now have the
Sex and Love Test, described as "The secret to sex and love and the universe....."

A description of the former for the uninitiated:

"Our program predicts your compabitility with your potential partner based on your input. The program will analyze your names using a patented set of complex mathematical and statistical calculations , taking into consideration factors like name origin and personality traits of certain surnames."

I can personally attest that the sequel is even more powerful and revealing in the insights it provides.

***

Under Communism, talk of race and religion was vigorously suppressed by the Party, giving an illusion of racial and religious harmony. After all, everyone was a comrade: equal in status and dignity.

However, when the Communist Parties collapsed, hitherto hidden racial and religious tensions burst to the fore, and some countries degenerated into civil war and inter-racial/religious strife.

Pretending that problems do not exist and denouncing those who try to discuss such problems does not solve said problems, just as capping a boiling kettle does not stop the buildup of pressure. It only ensures that when the release of pressure comes, it will be spectacular and disastrous.

Propaganda Lessons are fond of giving us "lessons that we can learn from history", though oddly the lessons I learn are different from those that they want me to learn. For example the lesson they want us to learn from the Fall of Singapore in World War II is that we can only trust in ourselves for our defence, but the one I've learnt is that even a dedicated force of professionals cannot defend Singapore, so how can the demoralised and incompetent SAF, mostly made up of slave soldiers succeed? [Ed: Yeah, I know this point isn't on ground as solid as the previous one, but I'm making a pedagogical point about the credulousness of Propaganda lessons.]

However, in this case perhaps this is one lesson that we can learn from the Collapse of Communism.

[Addendum: If pretending that nothing is wrong does not result in strife, that might mean that the dangers and possibilities of said strife are inflated in the first place.]


Panelist 1: you should noe that in communist countries they have racist policies
well i think pogroms, discriminatory policies and forced relocations in the FSU

Panelist 2: if you're referring to Singapore, I disagree; I think that the means of repression has so neutered the vast majority of individuals with regards to many issues that it's not relevant.

Panelist 3 (Johnny Malkavian): pressure is there, but people will just grumble, pretty much forever.
again, you have to look at how the supression is done.
if by suppressing, you break the people's will to revolt, then it will work
the idea is to break them, not try to ignore the problem
let us look at nazi concentration camps
i'm quite sure the last thing those people will do is to try to escape

i thnk the term is.. learned helplessness
i don't know enough about the commies to know if they broke their will or not
but you asked me if suppression works, and i told you you have to look at how it's being executed


Panelist 4: it doesn't even say anything about trusting ourselves
fall of sg was mistake by churchhill
why would our leaders be any more capable than him
lesson is, even the most 'qualified' leaders cannot be trusted

Panelist 5: is there going to be an article on what makes the SAF demoralized and incompetent in comparison to the armed forces of Switzerland, Taiwan, Sweden, Israel etc..

[Ed: Guest submissions on this are welcome; I don't have the necessary skill/expertise to tackle this topic]

***

I tried to upgrade to the latest Omega Radeon Catalyst v2.6.0.5a (5.1) drivers but they refused to install.

So much for: "They work with ANY RADEON VIDEO CARD built/powered by ATI, including all Mobility chipsets (M6 and up). The Omega Drivers are compatible with all ATI Radeon cards (it doesn't matter if they are DDR, SDR, PCI, PCI-E, AGP, Mobile, Retail, OEM or 3rd Party)"

Attempts to reinstall my old ATI drivers have failed - now I've to reinstall them every bootup or else scrolling is painfully slow and jerky. Ah well, until I get down to formatting my laptop I can always play games without 3D graphics engines, like Civilization III or Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Or study for my mid-terms and do my essays, since it's probably too much bother to dig up the CDs for the former.


I've found a fellow Singaporean Sentai fan! Yay.

***

A succinct summary of why foreign students are so loathed by many native Singaporean students studying locally (no, it is not due to xenophobia):

"Why does the MM need to go all out to protect SIA? Why does IDA need to regulate the telcos? Why not have a free for all? Better still, throw money at foreign companies to compete against Singtel and SIA in Singapore, the way we throw money at foreign students by raising the fees for Singapore students.

The FT policy in Singapore doesnt give equal treatment to foreigners -- it is biased in the favour of foreigners, in particular, those from PRC. There is no need for a pass in English, pass in L2, pass in humanities and what nots. Foreigners are not required to leap through and survive the same hoops Singapore students have to, at every stage of our education.

Foreigners can enjoy generous scholarships if they do well in one subject, whilst Singaporeans with straight As but flunk their L2 are dumped in Arts faculty.

Singaporeans who break their scholarship bonds are shamed publicly. Foreigners can break their bonds and nothing is said.

When talented foreigners form 1% of the cohort, it is called a challenge. When the same single focus foreigners form 25% of the cohort, it is called crowding out.

Nobody wants to study a subject that they can only do second best in. You are going to see less and less Singaporeans doing science and engineering because of this. And since the ace foreigners leave singapore after they get their top honours, Singapore will be very short of good scientists and engineers. In turn, companies will complain, and more foreigners will come in, and the cycle repeats until the companies leave, and Singapore hollows out.

Aussie unis make BIG money from Singaporeans because we pay more fees. Singapore unis LOSE BIG money from PRC students because all of them are here on generous scholarships, and quotas are set in university hostels to accomodate them, so they dont have to suffer from the local public transport system."

***

Tym too attains Straits Times-free Nirvana:

"How's it do on local coverage? That runs the gamut from ribbon-cutting events by some bigshot to nonsense news, e.g. some joker cavilling about taupok in JCs or Zoe Tay's new baby (who gives a fuck?). Not much of it is hard news, even though they try to present it like it is. And as mr brown's implied in his Today column, local blogs can fill that void quite easily. So what's ST left to do?

... I've actually been ST-free for several weeks now. On the one hand, I kinda don't really know what's going on. On the other hand, my life doesn't seem to be adversely affected by it, so maybe I didn't need to know what was going on in the first place."

Attain Straits Times-free Nirvana, and you need not read about who got killed, raped, molested, knocked down by a van or conned into buying a Magic Stone.

Or read about the latest subjects that obsessive and anally-retentive idiots rant shrilly about; if you wanted to read that, there's always the Chinese Newspapers that we were (or at least I was) forced to read during Chinese lessons to find out the latest issues bothering the Chinese Community: such subjects of earth-shaking importance as the phenomenon of 避年 (Bi4 Nian2), where people who know better go overseas during Chinese New Year (evidently it did not strike the letter writers that it was the attitudes and behaviors of those such as they which pissed the people who left during Chinese New Year off). Or blogs, for that matter.

To say nothing of error-filled and illogical op-eds and naively positive spins on government policies.

***

New piece of Hate Mail (Not-so-calmone must be so jealous!):

"Senders email: xxx_xxx@xxx.xxx

Message:
you are the lousiest writer i have ever seen. your list is full of typos, hasty generalizations, ad hominems - every possible fallacy i can think of! it's the longest list of bullshit i have ever read!!!"

Har? I assume (s)he was referring to 'How Girls Waste Time'. (S)he had the courtesy of leaving a return email address, but my reply bounced, so maybe it was fake.

***

A reliable source informs me that printing at the Science Library costs 4 cents a page. Which actually makes it cheaper than printing at home, if one buys one's own paper and doesn't make double-sided printouts.

But no one wants to go down to godforsaken Science anyway, so.


Quotes:

Too early in the morning is 8 o'clock. I had a 8 o'clock lecture yesterday. They should make that illegal.

[On fur colour in humans] Ang Moh.

[Here we have] A monkey in alcohol looking very depressed because it was the last of its kind, and it was attacked by a dog.

Do we have a Life Science student here? Too bad. I like to torture Life Science students.

buy'lair'tear'ial symmetry (bilateral)

[On Sharks' method of shedding teeth] If I had been designed by an intelligent designer I would have had one of those.

[On a shark's jaw whose bottle was labelled saying that human remains were found in its gut] Where're the human remains?

[On a crab display] This display is mostly here because the director of the museum loves crabs. He not only studies them, he also eats them.

[On the crabby/craggy (?) rock crab] It looks like a black pepper crab.

cocoa's trees (coconut)

What other primates do we have [in Singapore]? They're annoying. People feed them. [Me: Children]

[On preserving birds] Arsenic is not there not for people to steal them (so people don't)

The British Museum used to have a Dodo... The curator cut off a head, cut off a wing: he burnt the rest... He went mad... You know museum people: *looks around shiftily*

[On Ernst Mayr] When he was 96, people were referring to him as 'the late Ernst Mayr'. They thought he was already dead, but he was still alive.

[On the perils of museum life] No dead animals coming out: *adopts zombie bunny pose* 'I'm gonna stuff you!'

There is an error in your book. I put a correction of it on the web but that correction is still not correct.