"Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. But what shall we substitute in it's place? you say. What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place?" - François-Marie Arouet

***

My essay - titularly on 2 essays but actually on nothing (as befits the spirit of close reading) is done, after much angsting and hand-wringing.

To think that the next one will be assigned on Tuesday *swoon*

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Dropload Frequently Asked Questions

"Dropload supports itself with the single ad on each page and some donations. We have nearly 100,000 registered users today, and grow at a pace of almost 15,000 users a month. As long as our users keep checking out our sponsers and donate if they can, dropload will continue to exist. We provide dropload for free because there was a market for it, and we're nice people who want to make the internet more usable for everyone (or something heh)."

On the other hand, even if visitors don't check out my sponsors, this site will continue to exist. Joy, joy. Though I wonder how I might upgrade this site if I had more support.

***

Jiekai happened to take me and someone to see what people were doing at Jitterbugs Swingapore.

The dancing couples looked quite comfortable with each other; so now we know why he's so enthusiastic about dance.

***

It was the turn of the windows of my house to have their rivets changed, in one of the strange minor, petty and often municipal issues whose power to excite people seems out of proportion to their significance, perhaps because such are the only issues that said people are allowed to channel their energies towards (other examples include the Casino and the role of the Chinese Lanuage in Singapore and the case in China of the national outrage regarding the humiliation caused by 300 Japanese businessmen having an orgy with prostitutes in Zhuhai 2 days before the anniversary of the Manchurian Incident).

And so my mother is spending $10k refurnishing the toilets, kitchen stove and repainting the house. Why, when the old furnishings were perfectly usable and serviceable, I do not know. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Anticipating the resulting difficulties and complications, especially when she boasted of how the fixtures in my toilet were to be more expensive than those in hers, I asked her not to renovate my toilet, but was told that "this is my house".

So now everything looks nicer, but is more fragile, since there is a lot more glass; the cupboards are not waterproof, which means it will be very hard for my father to wash the toilets. There is also less space to store all our toiletries and bath equipment, which besides having been dispersed throughout the whole house, are also now less accessible, kept inside cupboards and behind panels as they are: I was asked to throw away a lot of other things. What space there is, I'm told not to use - a perfectly good glass platform should be left unladen with toiletries, I am told, since otherwise it would have to be cleaned. To boot, we get nagged more about not dirtying the place and taking care not to spoil the furnishings.

This is just like when she throws away clothes of mine that are perfectly useable (and not meant for wearing out) on the grounds that they look old and are 'disgraceful', leaving me with little to wear, and much of it undersized; a lose-lose situation for almost all concerned.


My sister's going to go bonkers when she returns from the UK - they haven't started painting yet, and I don't think they'll be done by the time she comes back, so she'll be awoken in the middle of the morning everyday. Aww.

***

Winning at Wheel of Fortune:

"Frequency distribution of letters in English text
Source: H. Beker and F. Piper, Cipher Systems, Wiley-Interscience, 1982.

A 8.167
B 1.492
C 2.782
D 4.253
E 12.702
F 2.228
G 2.015
H 6.094
I 6.996
J 0.153
K 0.772
L 4.025
M 2.406
N 6.749
O 7.507
P 1.929
Q 0.095
R 5.987
S 6.327
T 9.056
U 2.758
V 0.978
W 2.360
X 0.150
Y 1.974
Z 0.074

Based on the analysis by Beker and Piper, the most commonly occuring letters in the English language are:

E - 12.7%
T - 9.1%
A - 8.2%
O - 7.5%
I - 7.0%
N - 6.7%
S - 6.3%
H - 6.1%
R - 6.0%
D - 4.3%
C - 2.8%

So the 3 consonants you should choose are: H, D and C. And for the vowel, A.

From what I remember, people like to choose the letters C and D, but rarely H. Ah well.

***

Someone on the 'Li Jiawei' type of hair clip: "please dun use it
no matter how long your hair is
i will be scarred for life
if i see u i will forever change my mind about girls with hair clips"

***

Christian science - "A whole new side of Jesus is cropping up in the field of decision science. A new generation of scholars is taking Jesus to their collective theoretic, strategic bosom. Two recent studies stand out... In a mere 32 pages, Hassner uses game theory to "clarify aspects of the gospel narrative that have puzzled readers for the past 2,000 years". He reminds us that game theory can "explain the rationality of characters' choices. [It can] offer a coherent strategic interpretation of the work examined or compare the relative plausibility of existing interpretations.""

Sheep dash reaction test - I scored an average of 0.2882, a "bobbing bobcat" (middle category of 5)

New Zealand Fungus Gnat - Arachnocampa luminosa - "New Zealand fungus gnat larvae are ingenious hunters. Suspended from their tubes are several dozen "fishing lines" made of silk and covered with globules of sticky mucous. When night comes and the larva begins to glow, various insects that are attracted to the light and fly near get caught in the sticky mucous of the fishing lines. Vibrations are sent up the line and sensed by the larva, which then begins to reel in its catch by swallowing the line. At the same time, certain chemicals within the mucous begins to paralyse the prey so that it doesn't try to break free, or get ensnared in other lines or damage the one its on. When the prey has been reeled up, the larva bites it, kills it, and then either sucks out its juices or eats the entire thing."

***


Quotes:

I see that everyone is falling asleep. You shouldn't be, otherwise you'll be falling asleep for 2 more years, in econometrics.

The mean is BLUE [Ed: Best Linear Unbiased Estimator]. This is very consoling, very reassuring. You can sleep soundly tonight.

99.9 percent of the population in Singapore, maybe less in other countries, is statistically illiterate. All of you are better than them. By the end of this course you will all be statistically literate, and I'll be so proud of you.

If your census left out someone living undergroun, or living in the jungles of Bukit Timah...

I just mentioned 'after the break' and suddenly everyone got so excited. I haven't finished!

If someone puts a confidence interval on the front page of the Straits Times, you'll get a whole lot of letters asking: What is this guy talking about?... You will see them in the Economist, but that's no surprise because it is the very best magazine in the world, at least according to me. If you read only one magazine, read the Economist. It has the best political analysis, it has the best economics analysis, even the level of English is the best.

[On the 'Confidence Trick' for Confidence Intervals] Whether or not it's trickery, you'll have to do it for exams.

[On the 'Confidence Trick' for Confidence Intervals] Make sure you don't think too much about it. These things - you can go insane. Or you can go to the philosophy department, which is a better alternative.

Shore dinger's cat (Schrodinger's)

The veil might burst or the veil might not burst (vial)

That's why you never see confidence intervals in the newspapers. I tried it once personally, in the Business Times, and it backfired very badly on me... At the presentation, I explained like I am explaining to you now. All the journalists sat at the back. The next day, it came out in the newspapers. They completely misinterpreted what I said. The next day, all the letters came in. 'What is this guy talking about?'... That's why I don't talk to anyone about confidence intervals. I only talk to you about confidence intervals.

I'm going to tell you a story about the t distribution... Why are you moaning? People complain it's too boring, so I try to liven it up with stories, but you all don't like it... for module feedback you can complain about it. Then next semester I'll change strategy again. No more 'Lady Tasting Tea', no more stories, no more pictures of Fisher. I'll put in a lot of mathematical formulas. So you will kill your juniors.

[On Student's t distribution and yeast in Guiness Stout] The Guiness Stout you are drinking is so good because of Gosset and Poisson *laughs from audience*

[On punchcard computing] Every 25 years the alumni office will have a dinner... For my year they sent us a punchcard as the invitation card, to remind us of those days.

It was a really nice, real written article. You should read it before you go to bed. (real?)

[On Windows] I don't know if it's a superior product, but it works for me. [Professor: Because you're locked into it.]

[On computer upgrades] They will send in a team to migrate my computer from here to there, and everytime they migrate something will get lost.

My kids went on my computer in my office and they changed everything. They changed it to Mozilla... It fouled up everything... these kids of mine, they fouled up everything... She changed the configuration.

We shall talk about Paul Krugman next time in our lecture because he has not very flattering things to say about Singapore.

It might be worst (worse)

Have you re'wound your tape? (rewound)

mer'new'pew'lated (manipulated)

[On half hearted experiments on competitive markets in Singapore] Just a bit and they cry to the government. Because they are a government-linked company they cannot lose money... 'Ok, we've tried already, it's failed'

[On reading week] We're not revising, we're learning new things.

What's reading week like for you guys? We don't have reading week in the States... Do you sit under a tree and read a novel?

[On a reading] I thought it was very hard when I first read this book. I sat down with 4 University Professors and took a year to finish the book, and we still weren't sure what *** was saying. I wrote to *** *** and he came down from San Francisco and spent 2 nights going through the book with us. So of course I'm going to assign it to you in your first year of college.

The hats of birds and mammals (heads)

Here we have a grammatical error. The next sentence is not a sentence. Why is it not a sentence? Come on, this is elementary grammar school stuff.

'I often hear' is not the kind of sentence I want you to use in your essays. *** *** can do that because he has 55 pages of references... you can't do that.

[He talks about] 'truncated and degenerate' [languages], and he gives an example of a truncated and degenerate sentence. I don't think he did that on purpose. If he did, he's brilliant, but I'm not willing to concede him that.

[On a video clip] There's no sound in this clip because the narration was really goofy and the music was [annoying, so I removed it]

Graph is very powerful. I don't know why you hate to use that. (Graphs are, them)

[On a student answering another student's question] Ok thanks. You saved my life.