"In heaven all the interesting people are missing." - Friedrich Nietzsche

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Another focus group! Too bad I'm not eligible again.


We're looking for working individuals aged 25-45 to take part in a 2-hour survey on Technology. Participants will be awarded S$50-S$80.

This focus group will take place on Mon, 18 April '05 and Tue, 19 April '05, at either 4pm or 6:30pm, and will last approximately two hours. Light meals will be provided.

If you're eligible, simply click on the respective link below to answer a pre-selection questionnaire, by Sun, 17 April '05, 10am. This questionnaire may close earlier once we have enough participants.

Only short-listed members will be contacted.

Requirements:

• YourSay member (signup)
• Working full time
• Own a mobile phone
• Singapore Citizen/Permanent Resident
• Proficient in English and articulate

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I've found someone who uses 3 M$N Messenger accounts. As well as one each from ICQ, AIM and Yahoo (on Adium, and not the official clients, of course). Fwah.


Someone was actually deluded enough to write this in my guestbook:

Email: dontwantyoutofindout@hotmail.com

Message: "I think that you, and your ideas and info are crap. MSN is so much better than icq. In fact icq normally destroys the registry on most comps, accordingly msn does not have any of the faults that you claim and your anti-msn is more of a pro icq and in fact quite a joke. Another anti microsoft idiot trying to twist a good program with "what if's" and "this happened to me" without any proof!!!"


Ah, a Wo-hen fan!

"Dear Gabriel,

I had to write to you...I can't remember laughing so hard...tears!
At first it was really creepy.. :P
then you 'get it'!
Then you get to laugh at everyone elses reactions!

It was great.
Priceless.

thanks for the laughs!"

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Someone: did I tell you about one of them [a PRC girl] who had a crush on me?
she tried to hug me, then cried because I hit her on the head and called her a 'fucking cunt'

That is so wrong, yet so funny.


A Malay friend on racism and "Canadian" Pizza:

"canadian pizza deliverymen keep gettin into traffic accidents.. the pay is low.. terrible hours.. most wd rather not work there, but they got no choice
that's what i feel aniwae, from the many pple i noe working in canadian

aniwae its a well-known fact lah, dat canadian staff are mostly malays.. tink i made the joke u made before too.. abt renaming it

in fact, the running joke in ntu abt MPE, mechanical & production engineering, is that it stands for Melayu Punya Engineering (malays' engineering), cos most malays end up der... and these are jokes by malay friends

i mean, if we can't laugh at ourselves, then someone else would aniwae right, so might as well be happy abt it

i used to know a singh in the army who'd crack singh jokes all the time

but it could be these [people who can laugh at their own race] are the exception rather than the norm

these are the very people eradicating rascim here man

for he [who] can laugh at himself, will never cease to be amused"

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Prayer of the Fear-Filled Fundamentalist

"A fundamentalist Christian once came to my house and I offered him some food. “I hope you don’t mind,” he declined, saying, “I’d like to go home and pray about it first.”

Huh?

I too, grew up a Christian. I too, pray and give thanks before my meals. But this man was talking about a different sort of prayer. He needed to pray for guidance and discernment before he decided whether it was okay to eat the food that I had prepared.

He was afraid. He was afraid my food might be “unclean” because I might have been an agent of the devil...

She related how, if her son were to buy a house, he had to make sure that his neighbours were not Buddhists, Taoists or Hindus. He also had to make sure that, along the way from his home to the office, he would not have to pass by any Chinese or Indian temples.

Well, what if his neighbour decides to sell the house to a Buddhist, Taoist or Hindu? What if his company relocates? What if some non-Christian group decides to build a temple midway between his home and office?"

This sounds more like Saudi Arabia than Singapore.

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Program Details for Singapore Rebel Teaser

"Teaser created to introduce Singaporeans to the hopefully forthcoming documentary looking at the Singapore Rebel. The Singapore Rebel was removed from the Singapore Film Festival after the director was informed that legal action my occur as a result of its screening...

Well there goes the promotion of Singapore as a centre of Asian arts. And all despite the recent call for a Singaporean Michael Moore by youth and media conference.

"In attendance was Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam some speakers referred 'to how wacky political websites and show business figures such as film-maker Michael Moore led the way in encouraging turnout among young voters during last year's US presidential elections.'""

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Shamath's Riddle
by Jonathan Blake

In the course of the adventure in The Legacy of Vashna, a demoness named Shamath poses a riddle that is truly mind-altering if you stare at the details too closely and too long. In this article we are looking for a way to arrive at the correct solution.

If you have yet to encounter this infernal being with a penchant for puzzles and don't want to spoil any of the fun, please read no further. You have been warned.

"In addition to the loyal servants, there are two Dwellers of the Abyss."

We're about to get algebraic: if we say that n is the number of loyal servants, then for the total number of diabolic beings we have:

n + 2 (1)

"When the loyal servants and the Dwellers of the Abyss were counted together, their total number was doubled when my Lieutenants of Night arrived."

We're basically doubling the number of bodies:

2(n + 2) (2)

"But when my Lieutenants of Night arrived, the Dwellers of the Abyss had to leave."

>From that number, two are removed leaving a mixture of loyal servants and Lieutenants of Night:

2(n + 2) - 2 (3)

"Exactly half of the remaining number also departed, for they were beholden to the Dwellers."

We may astutely ask who among the loyal servants and the Lieutenants of Night leave. For reasons that we'll see at the end, we are almost forced to assume that it was purely Lieutenants of Night who were "beholden to the Dwellers". Dividing in half:

[2(n + 2) - 2] / 2 (4)

"From the remainder I picked the loyal servants to guard my throne of power. I chose them all, except for one who was known to me as a traitor. I executed the traitor before I set my loyal servants to guard my throne."

Remove the traitor:

[[2(n + 2) - 2] / 2] - 1 (5)

"While I am here to do Naar's bidding, how many loyal servants guard my throne of power?"

With that, Shamath leaves us puny mortals to answer her challenge.

Now for some algebraic reduction:

[(2n + 2) / 2] - 1 (6)

(n + 1) - 1 (7)

n (8)

So all that our algebraic skills reveal to us is that the number of loyal servants is n, the number we started with.

There aren't even any helpful contradictions when dividing the number of servants in half in step 4 because the number in the numerator is guaranteed to be even (although I don't imagine Shamath would really have any qualms about dividing one of her servants in half . . .).

Also, if we reduce the expression in step 4, we are left with n + 1. It must have been one lone Lieutenant of Night who remained behind and was executed as the traitor in step 5.

One hope would be to know how many Lieutenants of Night there were. This would reduce the problem down to a simple algebraic equation where l is the number of Lieutenants:

n + 2 = l

Alas, to date we have found no plausible clues to the number of Lieutenants of Night.

So perhaps the algebraic route was intended to be a one of those infamous red herrings. Is there something in the language of the riddle that is the real clue? If there is, I cannot see it.

Perhaps there's been an omission. It's impossible to tell what it may be.

So to summarize, although I know the correct answer to Shamath's riddle, I don't know how to correctly arrive at that answer. I don't know anyone who does. If you were looking for that solution, I am sorry but you've come to the wrong person.

If you were looking for the section number of the answer to Shamath's riddle, I'm not telling. Better luck next time.

However, if you know how to arrive at the correct solution, please contact the Project Aon volunteers. You'll be helping us sleep better at night.

http://www.projectaon.org/contact.htm

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Woman finds freedom laws mean no free man - "When the government introduced its new freedom of information laws, Angela Wright seized on them as a chance to find an unattached man in uniform. Wright sent an email to her local police force asking about "eligible bachelors within Hampshire constabulary between the ages of 35 and 49 and details of their email addresses, salary details and pension values", the Guardian reported on Saturday."