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FCINUS (Freethought Community in NUS)
"Event Title: Is a relationship with God ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY??
Organizer: NUS Campus Crusade for Christ (NUSCCC)
Description: Nowadays, it seems to be fashionable to be "God-less". Why do I need God? After all, isn't God just something NICE TO HAVE?? Life is fine without one for all these years anyway....But is "Free-thinking" really a logically acceptable way to live? Come and find out for yourself, and decide after the meeting - IS IT ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY FOR MANKIND TO KNOW GOD??"
The time is now, the day is here!
To no one's surprise, this event is organised by the CCC. I notice that they used the words "logically acceptable". Well, the last time the had the temerity to claim that they would show "scientifically why god exists and why jesus loves you", and it turned out to be a bait-and-switch (what's new?).
(Those interested in finding out more or in aiding the war effort should contact me on ICQ/M$N, drop me a mail or leave a comment below)
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Mathematics - Counting
Question: If one rolls a 10 sided die twice and multiplies the results of the rolls, how many unique results can one potentially get?
Apparently the answer is 42 - one person coded a program to get this result; 2 others used brute force method (listing everything out).
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Overheard
"The trick is not in blindly following every management fad that surfaces whenever some enterprising guru invents a new set of principles to enrich himself - yet another variation of some seven pillars of wisdom."
"Retirement is being able to say what your former colleagues would love to utter themselves but are too shy to."
- Former Singapore Airlines CEO Cheong Choong Kong
"The discovery that tendencies to altruism are shaped by benefits to genes is one of the most disturbing in the history of science. When I first grasped it, I slept badly for many nights, trying to find some alternative that did not so roughly challenge my sense of good and evil. Understanding this discovery can undermine commitment to morality - it seems silly to restrain oneself if moral behavior is just another strategy for advancing the interests of one's genes. Some students, I am embarrassed to say, have left my courses with a naïve notion of the selfish-gene theory that seemed to them to justify selfish behavior, despite my best efforts to explain the naturalistic fallacy." - Professor Randolph Nesse
On home 'ownership' in Singapore:
"It is not ownership. It is a 99-year lease with a myriad of conditions." - Singapore Serf in LiveJournal
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Conversations
Friend: hey the [writing] conference timetable has a "kimberly" on it
that's not u right
why is your msn nick 'kimberly'?
isn't ur name gabriel
Me: haha you don't know?
look at my msn pic
Friend: who is that guy
power rangers
Me: it's a girl lah
Friend: oh i see... u know after seeing your favourite long haired prince and descartes pictures, as well as ur own long hair, no wonder i thought this power rangers girl is a guy too :P
so her name is kimberly... ok
so that kimberly in our timetable is a girl?
hahaha... i thought she's a guy too
Someone else on reading that: amy jo johnson does NOT look like descartes or wohen nankan
Me quoting a review of NUS modules to a Chemical Engineering student: This module is really very 'free'. Basically you can skip all the lectures and still won't be at a disadvantage.
can skip USP mods meh
Someone: yah i skip all the *** [lectures and tutorials]
free topic mah
Me: do they notice you skipping?
Someone: yes of course. the prof knows
Me: he doesn't mind ah
Someone: i don't know! i haven't seen him in 2 months.
he hasn't sent me any threatening mails
Me: no wonder you're always so free
Maybe I should set up a page reviewing the NUS modules I've done. Then again I already have enough incriminating things online, heh.
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Frilly skirts
I asked Screwed Up Girl why so many girls wore frilly skirts. Her answer: "They make girls feel like princesses".
Now, even if I didn't know her to be the Purveyor of Inaccurate Information, I would be suspicious at this kind of cock - there is no other adjective in English, Hokkien or all the other tongues of men for this - answer, especially since I think it makes them look more like curtains. And so I took this question before a distinguished panel:
Critic 1 did not know and thought it made them look like "cupcake dolls". Now, for all that I call her "my No. 1 fan: She with dyed past-shoulder length hair that used to be rebonded, a serious attitude problem, curses freely and loves to wear dominatrix-style pumps, but who disavows the title of "ah lian" (tamade to you too)", at least she doesn't wear frilly skirts, so there's a point in her favour.
Critic 2 said she and her friend were discussing this, and said they didn't know. She also said frilly skirts were "stupid and unflattering"; "those skirts are damn ugly".
Critic 3 postulated that "celebrities wear and look good and they hope by wearing it they'll look, especially good or something".
Then again maybe I asked the wrong crowd. Critics 1-3 would never wear frilly skirts. Maybe I need to talk to some SACSALs (Shrill, Anorexic, Chinese-Speaking Ah Lians) (purely for research purposes, of course).
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The Muslim Exception
heathcliff24 gets acquainted with the Muslim Exception:
"The father: YOUR DOGS ARE DISTURBING US. WE ARE MUSLIMS, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, YOU STUPID? WHY DON'T YOU GO INSIDE?
I: The dogs ARE ON THEIR LEASH! Besides, we came here first, there are so many empty seats elsewhere. Why did you choose the one beside us?
The father: So what?"
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Handsome Boy Steven Lim
Steven Lim updates:
It seems he now offers 5 services (up from 3). The new ones:
- Express Courier/ Delivery Services
- Webpage Conceptualization, Design and Creation Services (Seeing his site, err... No thanks)
New products:
- Steven Lim's autographed http://www.stevenlim.net T-shirts!!!! (One has a picture of him in a 'snow hat')
- Couple T-shirts - T-shirts with the couple's picture on them ($60 a pair?! Wth. I can get them much cheaper elsewhere. And the samples look like they have him and his 16 year old girlfriend on them)
The prize for the "Find Steven Lim" Digital Photo Contest is $500. Wah, maybe I should try to take part.
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Technology
I was observing my brother in law browsing through his collection of 459 mostly blur ('artistic') pictures in iShit (or whatever it's called), and noticed that, more than the lack of a scroll whell, more so than that of a right mouse button, was greatly hindering his progress.
How many Mac users are acquainted with the joys of scroll wheels, I wonder.
LangaList Std Edition 2005-03-07: Cheap Shot?
"
In the story about using an install program to uninstall you remarked "Using a 'setup' program to *UN*install software might seem strange, Roy, but it makes perfect sense when you remember that Office is from Microsoft, the company that makes you use the 'Start' menu to stop your PC.
Raymond Chen (a Microsoft engineer) has a Microsoft blog ( http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/07/22/54559.aspx ) where he talks about many things and this is one he has mentioned in the past. This action is not by chance or perversion, but the result of a lot of user testing. Users would go to the Start button when they want to shut down. It is like a home base.
Microsoft is not perfect, but when it comes to responding to customers and users, I believe they have no peer.
When I was back in the world of corporate publishing, and tracking the minutia of PC companies, Microsoft was spending more on user testing than any other software company--- bar none. I have no reason to believe that that's changed.
Small example: A decade ago, Microsoft found that users were intimidated by long streams of startup messages from the PC as different components woke up and came on line; and so Microsoft hid them behind a startup graphic. (You really only need to see the startup messages when something's going wrong.) For many years, the Windows startup screen was derided by the Linux community as a sign of Windows' wimpishness. Most distros of Linux continued to proudly flash a text message from every tiny subsystem or software component as they woke up or shut down. ("Probing SCSI..." "Found CPU..." "Init: entering runlevel 5"... etc.) But now--- surprise!--- more and more Linuxes are hiding this complexity from the end user; finally recognizing that most of the time, for most of the users, those messages are just so much screen clutter. In short: Microsoft was right.
Microsoft also was right about the location and function of the Start button; in fact, it's been copied on almost all the non-Windows graphical interfaces, too, including most Linux GUIs."
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String theory
Escape from the universe
"The universe is destined to end. Before it does, could an advanced civilisation escape via a "wormhole" into a parallel universe? The idea seems like science fiction, but it is consistent with the laws of physics and biology. Here's how to do it:
Create a baby universe
According to inflation, just a few ounces of matter might suffice to create a baby universe. This is because the positive energy of matter cancels out the negative energy of gravity. If the universe is closed, then they cancel out exactly. In some sense, the universe may be a free lunch, as Guth has emphasised. Strange as it may seem, it requires no net energy to create an entire universe. Baby universes are in principle created naturally when a certain region of space-time becomes unstable and enters a state called the "false vacuum," which destabilises the fabric of space-time. An advanced civilisation might do this deliberately by concentrating energy in a single region. This would require either compressing matter to a density of 1080g/cm3, or heating it to 1029 degrees kelvin.
Send a nanobot to recreate civilisation
An advanced civilisation might want to send enough information through the wormhole to create a "nanobot," a self-replicating atomic-sized machine, built with nanotechnology. It would be able to travel at near the speed of light because it would be only the size of a molecule. It would land on a barren moon, and then use the raw materials to create a chemical factory which could create millions of copies of itself.... these robot probes would create huge biotechnology laboratories. The DNA sequences of the probes' creators would have been carefully recorded, and the robots would have been designed to inject this information into incubators, which would then clone the entire species. An advanced civilisation may also code the personalities and memories of its inhabitants and inject this into the clones, enabling the entire race to be reincarnated."
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Links
Sleeping Beauty - "In 19th-century England, Victorian publishers further sanitized fairy tales, toning down the violence yet again and simplifying the narratives. Victorian readers wanted these stories to be charming, to reflect the gender roles of the time, and above all to instruct proper upper- and middle-class children in appropriate morality. Innuendo replaced the overt and troubling activity of carnal sex and violence . . . but as modern writers from Angela Carter to Marina Warner have pointed out, these underlying themes are tenacious. Looking at the original German language version of the Grimms' "Little Briar Rose," Heinz pulled out a staccato list of suggestive language: the hedge is "penetrated," Briar Rose is "pricked," and she sleeps not in a shrine or a wooded cottage but enclosed within a phallic tower."
The USB Auditor - "With the USB Auditor you can immediately begin capturing critical data that gives you instant answers to the who and what regarding all USB ports in your organization
The USB Auditor is a non-intrusive clientless software solution that captures the critical data that you need from each USB port. The USB Auditor creates a report displaying the USB devices currently connected to your network and those that were recently connected. For even more convenience, the USB Auditor can export this report to an MS Excel file pre configured with the most commonly used queries."
I'm sure the SAF's MSD would like to get its hands on this software to stop the bothersome dongles (ie Thumbdrives) (heh heh)
'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits' - "A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year."
Angelina's Lesbian Sex Confessions - "Hollywood beauty Angelina Jolie has boasted that she is an expert in lesbian sex. Tomb Raider star Angelina, who is bisexual, says she knows what women like."
For some reason I was amused by this
It’s Not Dangerous - "Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career"
Calvin and Hobbes archive from Nov 1985 to Dec 1995
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NUS stuff
"Event Title: Social Services Sector: The Next Pillar of Growth- An NKF Perspective
Description: There are myths and there are myths about the social services sector.
These are perennially poor organisations that survive on the vagaries of human compassion. There are no structures or business models in the sector.
No good salaries, no career growth, and no scope for specialists. In fact, philanthropy and career just does not go together. It is the place to be if you are an industry reject, or if you are benevolent and compassionate, but not interested in success.
In his talk, NKF Chief Executive Officer Mr TT Durai will shred all these myths and discuss a lot more – on the business of charity, about career prospects in the sector, volunteerism, and regarding the importance of growth of the sector. He will discuss how you can earn a good living and, at the same time, do your bit in supporting humanity." [Ed: Emphases mine]
All is made clear.
I have a classmate who, every half a minute or so, makes a half-humming sort of sound in his throat, or seems to half-mutter a syllable. Quite disturbing.
Quotes:
Morning class. [The] mid-term is over. Some of you don't want to come to class. It's alright.
They ban smoking on the campus. It is very costly to you. You go all over the campus looking for secluded places to smoke.
You want a break? Ok, come back in 2 minutes.
[On a level 2000 module] I'm doing a lot of things in this lecture that cover things in level 3000.
[On monogamy (?)] Gibbons. They have these really interesting songs to tell each other about what happened last night.
This is an instable situation (unstable)
[Student: There's almost no cost to siring a child] At the age of 80? You just drop dead... get a heart attack [while in the act of congress]... Risk of death during childbirth or conception is low... unless it's a very timid male. He dies from the horror [of witnessing childbirth]. 2 chances to get a heart attack.
Pushing off all the little deers (deer)
One male can usually fertilise many males (females)
Males are more likely [than females] to die. [Student: Why?] There's a whole lot of arguments about that. Because they act like idiots, mostly. [Someone: {They} work harder... women: relax at home the whole day]
I have lots of stupid things to do. Careers 2005 fair: People asking me what's the difference between chemistry and applied chemistry. At the back of my head [I'm thinking]: I have absolutely no idea. Fortunately I had a book there.
[On a journal article] Unfortunately I'm not allowed to send it to you due to copyright reasons. You can download it yourself for private use, which I'm sure you're all dying to do.
You cannot mist it (miss)
It is envy'saged that in the future everything will be competitive (envisaged)
[On naked molerats at the Singapore Zoo] You can use the queen molerat lying on the poor, oppressed males.
A cheating male... can lay his own eggs [Professor: Males don't lay eggs.] Oh.
The female isn't the oppressed one. It's the males. They all want to be queens. [Student 2: Huh?] Oops. [Student 3: Freud's heart would've been broken] (???)
[On the naked mole rats] They're the world's most beautiful animals. Ugly in video and ugly in reality too.
[Video narrator: The Queen prevents female workers from reproducing by producing a hormone in her urine, which the females get exposed to when they use the colony latrine.] So be wary of public bathrooms.
[On worker ants being female] You can astonish your family by saying: 'That's a female ant.' When they ask how you know: 'I look at the private parts.'
[On the fallaciousness of the common naive moralistic tales of hardworking and subservient ants living in harmony and working for the common good, and the implication of this being a laudable model for human societies] So it's a war out there. You think they're all working for the common good, but it's a war.
[On the secret war in ant colonies between workers and the Queen to skew the sex ratio either way] I always have to put this in. From an Evolutionary point of view it makes perfect sense. Intelligent design cannot explain this. This is what good science can do [- explain and predict]... Yes, natural selection rules. *Throws a punch into the air*
They might be es'strange'd brothers (estranged)
If your mother comes up to you and wants to borrow a hundred dollars, you will lend it to her quite easily. If a stranger in the street comes up, you won't borrow him a hundred dollars. [Student: That's because you can track down {your mother}... [Students from] business administration... (lend)
[Me on genetic altruism in the Great Apes: How do you know it's genetically based?] Because they don't have 'Our Shared Values' on the back of their notebooks.
[On R. Nesse being disturbed that altruism was shaped by Evolution] I don't believe he slept badly. When I first found out about it I thought it was very interesting... knowing the future of altruism is assured, I sleep better at night.
Snapper / Snaypearl (Snapple)
You can read as many modules as you want to, to make your fees worth... to make your money's worth (get)
There was a year when the President of the Economics Society was not an Economics major. He was a Political Science major.