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From what I read, there is a concerted campaign to spread FUD about homosexuals and AIDS in Singapore.
No doubt, this is to acquire political capital to ram the casino through.
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The administration of The Premier Institution of Social Engineering starts screwing people even before matriculation:
"OMG! NUS are such bloody pricks.
i received a letter from them yesterday night [Ed: Saturday night], opened it just now- they want a scholarship app by tues, complete with a principal's report!
HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT?
when this is all over i am going to make a voodoo doll and label it 'NUS' and stick millions of pins in it.
seriously. if they screw over someone who hasn't even started freshman year, you've got something coming."
My suggestion: Go to SMU, and send NUS a letter telling them that
Reply: [A letter] like, "SCREW YOU!"
Perhaps this is so, so that in the future we won't complain so much about governmental inefficiency and indeed may appreciate its efficiency compared to NUS.
Then again my favourite year 4 Law Girl says that compared to Bristol, NUS is relatively efficient: "the sunday before sch term opened, exchange supervisor told me tat i cldnt take 4 outta the 5 moduels i had pre-selected
so which ones COULD i take? she also dunno
hv to wait and see... attend ALL the lessons i were interested in, see if they'll take me...
no such thing as add/drop some more
they dive right into syllabus so i had to miss lessons basically
in the end nothing was relaly "my choice"
did a mix of modules tat were left with available slots/ kind convenors"
And Maid Marian in Nottingham concurs: "if u think the nus admin sux, u hafta see notts. then u'll realise what a dream the nus ppl are
they lost my £2k cheque for hall fees then called me a university debtor"
Must be a UK University affliction.
Meanwhile my NTU friend says they blackmail you: if you owe NTU money, they won't tell you but they'll threaten you when exam results are out, refusing to give you your results unless you pay up.
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Essay grumbling from someone else: "if only people could be graded according to blog content and style of writing"
If only
And on close reading: "i gotta admit, it does over-complicate matters sometimes, life would be easier without all these, but the whole point abt writing modules is to get you to write well about something even if u dont like it"
Good point. If you can write well about uninteresting rubbish you can write well about anything: "the true test of ability and fortitude is to do something u dont like professionally and well". But then this module is not actually about writing and critical thinking, but rather about close reading
Someone on my description of close reading: "it sounds like practical crit on crack"
Someone should go and close read Rorschach inkblots. Would be very interesting to see the results.
I think if there were genuinely something interesting, useful or significant to write about, I wouldn't mind it so much (if at all if there was a genuine problem or complication to analyse), but the thing is that we have nothing real to write about, and so have to come up with what 'problems' which are, at least to normal people, contrived and nonsensical, to dissect and analyse. Jerry Seinfeld might have come up with an excellent sitcom on "nothing", but writing an essay on nothing is much harder.
Perhaps "homework assignments" (ie essays written on specific, often trite questions) are usually uninteresting (especially when they are the umpteenth esaay you've read on the dangers of Science and Technology, all of which sound the same since the writers just mug the points and vomit them out come essay time), but almost all close reading essays are even worse, since they are about nothing (nothing that normal readers care about anyway).
"it's always in FASS or USP classes that i hear so many fako accents!
dun really get them in bizad much
esp Lit/Eng/Philo/Pol Sci haha"
Hmm. I don't notice that.
Module tips: "To those who cannot afford to do another exposure and have not done any SS module, you can do the SSA module Singapore Society. Sociology of Singapore, cynic's style. Very enjoyable, might I say."
SSA1201
"Module Title: SINGAPORE SOCIETY
Module Description: This module introduces students to critical developments in the development of Singapore as a society and nation-state. It enables students to develop skills in understanding and making sense of Singapore society. It also encourages them to develop alternative interpretations of the development of Singapore society. The topics include: the origins of Singapore, ideology and identity, ethnic relations, industrialization, family, gender, religion, the state and civil society. This is a Singapore Studies module and open to students from all faculties."
Sounds interesting indeed. Then again:
"EXPECTATIONS
3. Preparatory Work
a. For each lecture (readings on average 4 hours per week)
b. For each discussion group (additional 2 hours per week over and above the readings)
4. Assignment (1 major term essay assignment - 6 weeks to complete)"
Hmm.
I'm doing my compulsory propaganda module right now (it is probably the best of the 4 available this semester), but I might do this as an unrestricted elective one day. Unfortunately I only have 5 of them (UEs) to play around with. Ah well.
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Saw this M$N nick:
"The most amazing healing service ever! Muslims converted, aids patients healed, and my hamster is healed!. Glory to GOD!"
Right.
The one with (the) crab(s) suggests
"why not start a [NUS] community for Wo-Hen? I bet you'll have all the girls and the gay men clamouring to join it!"
That would be the *possibly* gay men, not the gay men per se. But maybe I could find someone like Gavin or Carrot Top.
"apropos" sends along this "humorous article I read which reminds me of you":
You may be a fundamentalist atheist if...
I found parts of it humorous too (for one thing, by definition an atheist cannot be a fundamentalist), but I'm not sure if it was for the same reasons that he did.
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OB markers for Singapore film-makers
Follow the tale of Martyn See Tong Ming who, on submitting a 26 minute documentary on Chee Soon Juan to the Singapore Film Festival, was told that it was a political film and thus illegal. He was then threatened with legal action unless he withdrew the film from the festival.
Various articles on 'political' films in Singapore and related topics (eg Royston Tan's being interrogated by police) are attached.
You break the rules, we break your heads, says MM Lee
"I can assure you that in Singapore, when we decide that they are breaking the rules of the game, the unspoken rules as to how we survive, how we have prospered, then either their head is broken or our bones are broken."
- Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew issuing warning to SIA pilots at the World Brand Forum, CNA, Dec 2, 2003
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Anal Sex According to the Word of God, Oral Sex According to the Word of God
"The Benefits of Swallowing - Drink of the Living Water
Aside from swallowing semen as a measure to prevent the waste and spillage of seed, ingesting ejaculate can have spiritual benefits, as we will see. Although the Old Testament makes reference to the bitterness of semen (And he shall cause the woman to drink the bitter water. [Numbers 5:24]), the New Testament casts the act of consuming ejaculate in a much more affirming light, as in the following passage, where Jesus speaks to the woman of Samaria about the gift of “living water”:
Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, "Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." 11 The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?...15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water." 16 Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." (John 4:10-16)
“Living water” in this context refers to semen, which literally is the liquid of life. As Christ indicates, drinking of the “living water” provides a spiritual replenishment for the soul. When the woman asks Jesus where she can get this “water”, he tells her to fetch her husband, clearly with the intention of instructing her on how to fellate him and swallow his semen."
This is both hilarious and instructive, since anyone looking at the text with an open mind would see that their interpretations are at least as correct as commonly accepted ones (if not more so, in some places).
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Stupid Vending Machine Flash - KPMG interns are too free...
I have found the NUS Temasek Hall Online Social Club - Lut's Haloscan comments thread!
TimeCopy 1.4 - "Timecopy will copy the time, date, timezone, and daylight saving information from your desktop PC to you PalmOS device at each hotsync. Palm clocks are known to drift a little (about 1 second per day), and this way, you don't need to worry about that anymore."
Better than SyncTime, and free too!
Ban Steven Lim from appearing on Singapore Television Petition - "This petition is to be send to Mediacorp to ban Steven Lim from appearing on tv. In case you do not know who he is, check out his site at stevenlim.net . (but warned: just make a brief short visit) What is the intention of banning him? Simple. He is a shame of all Singaporean, and an attention whore."
tower of babel in singapore - "city harvest church, the giant mother of a building in jurong, cost a whopping 47.6 MILLION DOLLARS to build. as they proudly proclaim on their website, the money took the church 4 years to raise, with only 45% of their congregation working. the rest are basically housewives, retirees and kids. WHAT THE FUCK?!!! to add insult to injury, they're bragging about the type of titanium cladding that frames the outside of the building, as its being the first and only in southeast asia. the other building with this sort of titanium facade in the world, is the Guggenheim. yes. the fucking Guggenheim museum. they're also going on about their having the first Broquard fountain in SEA as well. of course Jaques Broquard is the best fountainmaker in the world. and you'll see this fountain, in their impressive opening flash intro at their website, fondly termed 'The Gates of Heaven'. right. so we should go drown ourselves there after having donated all our money to them so they can pay off their Phillip Starck bathrooms huh? yup. you heard me. a church having toilets by phillip starck."
Ah well. If people want to buy Magic Stones, they should be allowed to do so (if there is freedom of information, of course).
Rape as a Capital Crime - "But, if rape was punishable as a capital crime, then you have the unique situation where a rapist realizes that is in his best interest to murder the victim. What are the benefits of leaving the victim alive? Nothing that I can think of, except for whatever utility the rapist gets from withholding murder (which since he just raped the victim, I'm assuming that the rapist is not altruistic, and therefore this won't apply). But the costs of not murdering are high - there is a witness to his crime. So murdering actually becomes the better strategy if rape is punished as a capital crime, since in so doing, it increases the rapist's chances of survival."
Do Democratic Transitions Produce Bad Economic Outcomes?
"Several influential commentators have suggested recently that democratization in developing countries produces political instability, ethnic conflict, and poor economic outcomes... These authors buttress their claims with examples of democratic reforms that led to economic chaos and eventually a collapse back into autocracy. Such anecdotal evidence can be problematic from two perspectives. First, it is not clear how universal the pattern is. Perhaps the vast majority of other countries have had more successful transitions. For example, we rarely hear in these accounts about Mauritius and Botswana, two long term African success stories that also happen to be democratic countries. Second, these anecdotal accounts leave the counterfactual unspecified. Perhaps countries would have been even worse off in the absence of democratic transitions.
Does social science back up the pundits’ claims? We show in this paper that the data do not support the view that democratization is bad for economic performance. Our analysis reveals that major democratic transitions have, if anything, a positive effect on economic growth in the short run. Contrary to the claims of Kaplan, Zakaria, and Chau, this is especially true for the poorest countries of the world and those that are marked by sharp ethnic divisions. Democratization tends to follow periods of low growth rather than precede them. Moreover, democratic transitions are associated with a decline in growth volatility. Systematic analysis therefore uncovers a picture that is considerably more favorable to democratization."
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Quotes:
The level 200 [modules] noticeboard (2000)
I majored in Philosophy in my undergraduate days. Philosophy and Economics. They offered me honours in Philosophy and Economics. I chose Economics, which I think is a mistake, in retrospect (or)
[On picking random people from the phonebook not being a random sample of the population of Singapore] Some people don't have phones, you know. Either because they are too poor or because they have 10 handphones already. Can you imagine, 10 phones ringing at the same time?
This is where we move from Philosophy to Statistics. Philosophy is about how to move from the specific to the general... [Philosophy is] Very fun at night with the beer and such, but this is 2 o'clock.
The Moe'zart of mathematics (Mozart)
X bar will converse to μ (converge)
[On talking about convergence in probability] Textbooks don't put this in because then no one would want to buy them. But you must take this course as a pre-requisite, so I can afford to put this in.
[On the chi-square distribution] I have a Greek friend who did a PhD in mathematics. He said it's supposed to be pronounced as 'kee'. But I can't get used to it, so I'm pronouncing it as 'kai'. Most people, even in the US, pronounce it as 'kai'.
[From the person setting the exam] I don't know how much of what I teach you will come out in the exam.
We all wonder why NTUC got the 42,000 square foot compound in Marine Parade, which we all know is a PAP heartground. (stronghold)
[On provision shop owners being crowded out by NTUC] Another option you might not agree with is to turn their outlet into a Cheers. (outlets, Cheers)
[On Sheng Shiong surviving] Mr No Frills... he lives in a warehouse in Marsling. He stays upstairs. He says it saves money because at night he can watch over his stocks... he still drives his lorry.
[On NTUC] If they get out, who will get in? Cold Storage is owned by a Hong Kong group. They have a social mission. *laughs of derision from audience*
The Japanese never let you earn their money. They arrive - Nippon Airways, ANA. A Japanese bus will take them to the hotel - ANA or Daichi. They eat at Japanese restaurants, shop at Japanese outlets. They shop at duty free, then they go home... the Japanese are very insular.
NTUC... they are into everything. Even funerals.
We can talk until the cow comes home (cows come)
Have you been to a hypermarket? Err, I refuse to go in. I'm lost inside. Don't know what to buy.
[Student: I heard there are families that hangs out in Carrefour.] Singapore - we are so pathetic. We have no place to go... Go and shop, let your children frolic. Then you go home - tuition for the next day.
Statistics are like bikinis, what they reveal is interesting, but what they conceal is even more fascinating (written)
Tool park (toolpak)
Data anna'lie'sis (analysis)
The standard deviation should be calculated for the means of means. Just watch out for my grammar. (mean of the)
[On dragging in Excel] Ok. A little more... Ok, you made it.
I used the ver'rai'ance (variance)
[On the computer] Hopefully it is not hanged (has, hung)
[On dexterity in Excel] I do that a lot, but you can do it at home, to practise.
Let me just briefly summarise what we have did (done)
Lighter'rary digest (Literary)
The variance will shrunk (shrink)
[To me] Maybe I should do a photojournal. The pleasures of your body.
