"An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

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I think I shall post occasional LJ friends-only entries in future; past LJ friends-only posts are in the memories folder.


I don't know why some people are so fond of "how to blog" lists or directions. If it's a personal blog (ie Not an official blog), the only rule should be that there are no rules. Be as with the wind.

[Addendum: Even if the lists are of 'tips' rather than rules, I'm not so sure not only of their efficacy, but of their point. Popularity is nice, but when your style gets cramped that's a different matter.]

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YES!!! I've finally found new stuff on Asian Prince aka Wo-hen Nankan aka Tuan Anh, thanks to Yahoo (Google somehow doesn't pick these up).

- RangDong Entertainment - Tuan Anh Gold - Xiet Anh Trong Vong Tay

Label / Production: Tuan Anh Productions
Sale Price: $11.99

(Samples available, registration required)

- Vietnamese biography (anyone care to translate?)

- More incomprehensible Vietnamese

- CD covers with pictures that plausibly could be of him (You've heard of 'Where's Waldo'. Now let's play 'Where's Wo-hen?'!)

- An analysis of his songs (key, style)

- A poster of a past performance he took part in: "Trump Plaza Night, Atlantic City
11:30 PM Saturday, July 24 2004 Duration: 3:00"

- Comments on "Lam Truong's wife" - "Seriously, I thought all the male viet singers were gay too and "Tuan Anh" or something is their homosexual daddy."


Alert readers will notice that I've joined a fanlisting (see sidebar). Maybe I should set up an Asian Prince fanlisting.

And maybe I should ask the Vietnamese professor in USP whether he's heard of Asian Prince...

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Stop The Ribbon Campaign!!!

"Pick up yr anti-ribbon here, put it on yr page, & protest the self-righteousness of webmasters who go out of their way to put together a cause on their page so that everyone who links to that cause links to the page of the webmaster who initially thought of the cause and decided to use the trigger mechanism of 'feel-good' and of ribbons to promote that cause.

the reason is simple.

when a person thinks that by doing something like putting a ribbon on his or her web page, he or she is suddenly helping to make the world a brighter place, they are absolving themselves of actually doing anything of import in the future, it is much the same as people who give money to their church and then ignore the starving and the homeless because they have already given to charity.

the very act of using ribbons whores the cause the ribbon is supposed to be representing.

so capture yrself a ribbon from up top, & link back to this page by capturing the URL off yr browser, & let the world wide web know you aren't taken in by their ribbonshit."

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'Freakonomics': Musings of a 'Rogue Economist' - "A professor at the University of Chicago, Mr. Levitt uses statistics to examine matters of everyday life: His subjects range from abortion and crime to game shows. Some of the chapter titles from Freakonomics illustrate Levitt's wide-ranging curiosity: "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?" and "How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?" are two."

MIW [Ed: Mindef Internet World, not the Men In White] has set up a blog. They've got to be joking. Anyhow, as I expected, comments on the blog are moderated. I highly doubt my comments will be approved, since they likely will want to white wash the blog, as they do in all their PR efforts. [Addendum: They actually approved the comments that me and Mr Miyagi left. I still don't agree with comment moderation, but at least there's something to be said for this PR effort now.]

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Someone on why it seems everyone in NUS (or at least in Arts) is attached: "the sacsals are all attached to the bengs
you have hormonal 20 smthgs who are startin to break free of mommy and daddy roaming wild. and skimpily dressed arts girls. i think it makes sense"


Someone else on the same: well, i guess its what u call "the fallout"
its just a term
its when everyone 'finds somebody' at the end of their freshman year
that'd be just about now lah

so yep, i'm not surprised

Me: science is different right haha

Someone else: hahahh... nolah, its a very common observation
in fact, songs have been written on it
"Are you ready for the fallout?" by Fastball for example

i spent some time pondering over why there's this fallout phase
i think its mostly to do wif insecurity.. like u noe, ure not really in the school unless ure attached to someone else in the school kinda thang

Me: but no one wants to be "in" NUS

Someone else: hahahh.. they may not say that, but everyone wants to "belong" somewhere and since they're in nus..

Me: ahh
your wisdom is an inspiration to light all ages


Screwed Up Girl on more ways that NUS is the Premier Institution of Social Engineering:

"Gabriel always said that NUS was THE school of social engineering, and in more ways than one. No, it's not JUST because there are lots of couples walking around NUS, and they think people will get attached there, with all their bashes and societies.No, it's not JUST a place where people of different races can get together and racial harmony. No, it's much more.... subtle.

Because all the guys are two years older than the girls, somehow there is more of an invisible "I'm senior, thus I know more than you, thus I'm smarter, thus you should shut up, and my grades matter more than yours because I need more job opportunities yadayadayada" Most of the time the guys I interact with don't even realize that that's what they're doing. But they are. It's like, when a guy speaks up in class, nobody interrupts him. But when a girl speaks up, somehow she will get interrupted by a GUY and then the guy just completely takes over the point. I mean like wth?!

Maybe it's just that there are lots of rude guys around but no rude girls because girls are all brought up to be sweet and nice and POLITE? (not that all my girl friends are like that. But most are.) Maybe NS made guys impolite."

[more]


Someone else commented that NUS pays well, since all the NUS professors have bloated from the pictures used in the module feedback exercise.

Ever since the censoring of the NUS Webcast incident, the webcasts have been reformatted so the real URL of the feed is unavailable, at least using IE (Those using Gecko-based browsers, at least, are not similarly affected!). Grr.

For pedagogical reasons, they should let us S/U (Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory - the module doesn't count towards our Vital Statistic, our cumulative grade) all modules taken in excess of graduation requirements.

Apparently the lab reports of USP and non-USP Science students are very different. Supposedly this is due to all the essay writing we do, but perhaps it's because those in USP are already better at such before entering the program.

Just over a quarter of the people taking the 'Foundations for Econometrics' module are from Science or Engineering. No doubt they're taking advantage of a loophole and using it as a breadth module (one outside their faculty). Which is quite sneaky really, since Statistics is hardly something foreign to their faculties, especially the Science students.