"Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care." - William Safire

***

Someone I asked about Marshall's Curse (see below): aren't u supposed to be the purveyor of all obscure information?

...


Hate mail on the previous poem:

Xenophiyl: "ur critisizing ur ex schl? how loyal, bastard. as bastardy as the idiot hu wrote it"

Response: "Quite apart from your inability to write properly, not only do you not get the point of the poem, you seem to have fallen prey to the curious conflation popular in our country that criticism and attack are necessarily the same thing; loyalty, patriotism and slavish adherence to the propagated line are treated as one and the same thing.

Indeed, often it is through spirited criticism aimed at improving the general condition that we show our loyalty."

***

The Associate: i generally hate lawyers

the SACSAL quotient in SMU is considerably smaller. lots of bananas who either can't afford to really go overseas or are too fucking dysfunctional to leave.

nw.t: i realise that i have a lot of friends who have reached out and made their dreamsof what their lives to be into reality. one of my oldest and best friends is now a technology writer for PCMagazine. another is a teacher. still another is ajournalist.

but i've been conditioned by my parents and my family my whole life that i have to slog and suffer in order to achieve something. do the hard sciences or the economics; avoid the arts subjects. study hard. don't bother about girls. which is part of why i chose my current career path. my cousins and i sneer at people who do artsy stuff as wimpy liberals "following their path" as opposed to discharging their responsibilities

looking back i have a lot of anger at being forced to be what i am, and,e ven worse, being not quite there either

Me: well
you were the one seduced by tapas
blame them not
we are all pressurised by society

He Who Must Not Be Named: true
oh well

Me: I was expected to apply to law or even engin
yet I eschewed that

it's part of the sinister chinese culture about doing only 'productive' things
following your pre-ordained path, filling your pre-ordained place

which I suspect was one reason why the Chinese got left behind after the Ming

***

More lessons that we, in National Education, can learn from the Fall of Singapore to the Japanese:

"What I find bitterly ironic is that National Education draws a militaristic, nationalistic lesson from WWII and the Japanese occupation of S'pore. It is ULTRA-NATIONALISM and the idolatry of the nation-state over the individual that produced the aggressive foreign policy of Japan and led to countless atrocities. Nationalistic fanatism was the force behind the evils of WWII, at least in the Pacific theatre of the war. But what does the govt do when they recount the events of 41-45 to our school children? "We must ourselves defend Singapore, do you want this to happen to you, we must have NS, blah blah blah blah"."

Ed: This was from YR.

***

Another guestbook entry that makes me go "what the hell?!". If anyone can figure it out, please tell me:

Name: Another Azn
Email: No Matter...@Hotmail.com
Homepage: Let c u find it..!
Where are you from?: My mother

Comments: Wow man u say alot... shit is that all hand typed.?. J/ wanted to giv u PROS for the site... Needs more picture... Live it up for Asianzzzzz...We here 2 stay!!!! U Da Man

***

Amusing review of Eye of the Dragon, the first "new" Fighting Fantasy book released in a decade (actually a previously written adventure by Ian Livingstone):

"Fighting Fantasy 21 - Eye Of The Dragon.

He's willing to tell you all the details you need to find this dungeon, and the treasure within. The catch? All you need to do is drink this vial of slow acting poison (to which he has the antidote) so he knows you'll bring him back a share of the treasure by way of reward instead of just absconding with the lot. Now at this point, anyone with half a brain would have stopped and thought "hang on, he's expecting me to drink poison?" and promptly told Henry Delacor where to get off. Not so with the hero in Ian Livingstone's latest below par tale. Nope, you take the poison and gulp it down without a second thought. No wonder you're always so short of funds if you're this stupid.

... In fact, a good portion of the book involves nothing more inspiring than simply wandering along very mundane corridors and deciding whether or not you want to open a perfectly ordinary door. Ho hum. You can see just how Mr Livingstone writes so many books. He just uses the same ideas over and over again. And they're not even particularly good ideas.

Push open a door and you find a whole variety of unlikely people and places beyond. One room even has a merchant. A merchant? What, he decided to set up shop not in a city but in a dungeon inhabited by hordes of monsters underneath Darkwood Forest? Yeah, right… Actually it was nice meeting the merchant because at least it introduced me to someone dumber than an adventurer who willingly drinks poison.

Other rooms contain pretty standard adventuring fare: a throne which adds a nice little boost to your SKILL if you sit on it*, dozens of items which seem to serve no little purpose and the usual monsters to kill. There are a few NPCs from time to time but their dialogue is so poorly written that it often seems like they've been replaced with cardboard cut outs while you weren't looking.

* An amazing magical device which can actually boost the fighting abilities of someone who sits upon it just so happens to be found in a dungeon beneath Darkwood Forest? Apparently so.

RATING: 1 out of 10"

Someone else: "EotD is a damn sight better than Crypt of the Random Trivia and Armies Of Pie-Eating. Let alone SkyLord. And it makes a change from yet another Chaotic threat that will destroy the world unless you make a LUCK roll."

***

食虫少女２
(Translation: The young girl who eats cockroaches - 2)

OMG WTH. Just when I thought the Japs couldn't get any wackier... This means that there was a part 1...

Someone: what is mars spirit...some sort of Jap fear factor, I guess...

japanese and koreans are alike...they try to attain the ideal for "Oriental Land of Manners" on one hand, and entertain more perverse entertainment than any other nations on Earth...

The most perverse film I saw last year was South Korean...they're good man...
Korean movies have very sadistic tendencies...the movie was OLDBOY, it featured incest, hammer-assisted teeth pulling, sliced off tongues, live squid eating and drug-induced hallucinations involving ants...

***

http://penisland.net/ - "Welcome to Pen Island, the best place to get custom made pens on the internet! "

eBay item 5566217149 (Ends 26-Mar-05 23:53:38 GMT) - Haunted Possessed Disney Stitch Teddy Dangerous? - It went for US$11,100.00.
Courtesy of phelan

14-Year-Old Learned How to Burgle Watching CSI - "A 14-Year-Old in Florida admitted to breaking into houses and breaking into over 100 cars - most of them in this week. When asked how the youth had learned his art he replied he watched CSI: Crime Scene Investigations to study up on it."

A little less cheer in those cheerleading routines, please - "Representative Al Edwards of Houston proposed last week to bar "sexually oriented" performances during sporting events at Texas schools. "The way they're moving their bodies, it's not twirling or doing the splits. Those majorettes are doing things that are sexual," said Edwards."
Associate Flesh Parade isn't popular in some quarters, it seems.

How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else) - Unfortunately, safe blogging tends to vary inversely with honest blogging.

Singapore Model United Nations [Conference] - I notice they do not have the support of the United Nations Association of Singapore (UNAS). Why, I do not know.

***

One of the ways the Economics Society raises money is by selling suggested solutions to past exams. Each set of answers is 2-4 pages long, costing them 5-10 cents to produce (assuming they are charged the normal photocopying rate), and is sold for $1 each - a fantastic level of profit, ignoring labour costs (zilch, since helpers are paid in ECA points). At least one entrepreneurial businessman (there might be more) saw a chance to erode the supernormal profit of this monopoly, and pirated the solutions - instead of 3 sets of solutions for 3 dollars, he sold 3 sets for a dollar, still making a profit. In the end sales were about half last semester's. A pity they didn't apply to real life the lessons they learnt in class :)

I think I'm becoming used to SACSALs. I don't even notice dyed hair anymore, and I doubt that's because the trend has ended, or that the sun has faded the dyes. "They speak with the damn China/Beijing accent. Nonstop... now I have to deal with a cacophony of fugly ah-lians, with voices like banshees in heat." - Azrael on SACSALs.


Quotes:

[On peer review] Don't let me give you your essays back. That's a classic Dr *** move.

[To me] Your hair looks different everyday

[On someone illegally zapping exorbitantly priced exam solutions for sale at a lower price] He's the pirated VCD seller... [charge a] two-part tariff.

The same as firm's one (firm one's)

[On Galton discovering that tall fathers have shorter sons, and vice versa] This is something that I can verify [personally] *laughs* You are making your own hypothesis already.

[On error terms in regression analysis] Why am I telling you these stories about the History of Science? Because that is my hobby...

I think everyone should know who Alfred Marshall is. If you don't know you should leave the room, you shouldn't be doing economics. *someone stands up* Just kidding, just kidding.

[On something about putting Price on the Y axis instead of the X axis, as it should be, since it's the independent variable] This leads to all sorts of misery for students today, and we call that Marshall's Curse. [Ed: Anyone who can clarify what Marshall's Curse is is invited to contact me.]

This word here is homo'scare'dare'city. If you find that hard to pronounce, blame Karl Pearson. (homoscedasticity)

Remember our ep'sai'lorn? (epsilon)

[Me on Screwed Up Girl] Girls making fun of a girl liking pink - what does that tell you?

As China assess to the, join the WTO. (accedes)

The pencil-sized battery in India. It was seven bucks. [Professor: Seven bucks?] Seven Indian rupees.

The government simply bills you out (bails)

[On the US and the Middle East] Either they try to be on good terms with those countries, or they attack them, for the oil.

You are supposedly to grant every nation 'Most Favoured Nation' [status] (supposed)

They could be buying hwheat (wheat)

If all the developing countries are in this shoe, this framework (situation)