or, if you prefer:
"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." - Mark Twain
Random Playlist Song: Asian Prince - Give It Up
"Like many of my other concerts, this one was sold out. Check out the audio recording of it below. The title of the song I sang roughly translates to Give It Up. It's a chart topper in Asia. It's a rap song that I wrote. I was inspired to write it after dating a black women." (Official site)
This is another rap by Asian Prince, recorded live at one of his concerts. I like the scratching of the DJ turntable. Sometimes I find it hard to hear what he's saying about the screaming of his adulating fans.
***
The April 2002 archives have been restored. Read about life in the old School of Military Medicine, when it was still at Ulu Pandan Camp!
People are holding the new Pope's
Some parts of Sin City 2 look like a live action version of Happy Tree Friends cartoons.
***
My sources inform me that I was quoted during Evil Cult's debriefing on Sunday's concert. A dubious honour indeed. My standards may have gone up somewhat over the years, but their standard definitely has dropped, as a comparison of an MP3 of the same song done by them in the late 90s and 2003 reveals. And it seems the Evil One still remembers me! Joy.
Someone: I suspect that the difference in raw material makes a difference too....
i mean, look at RGS choir.... it's far from the 1997 one....
heck, it's far from our time.... and we were already not as good as our seniors
Someone: race blind.
bullshit. it's just keeping silent when you're the majority because you can enjoy your status quo position
and bearing the consequence of being minority in silence if you're not
pretending to be race blind, that's what it really is
i hate this whole idea of racial blindness
it's a lie. and one that continually perpetuates true racism in singapore. because underlying it all is distrust
Me: they bash people who don't subscribe to the fiction
why do you think this is so?
Someone: maybe they dont even realise this is fiction
and as they say in sociology - question the hegemonic ideals, our social constructs, you'll definitely meet angry ppl along the way
Me: that's why sociologists are so feared by the Powers That Be :)
Someone: yeah cos you're bursting their pretty little bubble worlds that they have took so long and hard to construct
where their citizens live under a haze of propaganda induced happiness
***
Conversation with a gay fundamentalist Catholic opposed to contraception:
Me: I think most catholics are not opposed to contraception
far better to prevent sperm and eggs from uniting than to have people die of AIDS
Him: of course, it's much easier to keep one's trousers on.
Me: ah, but humans are fallen
they can't resist temptation :)
Him: then live with the consequences.
Me: so in pursuit of some idealistic vision we create hell on earth
Him: no. but one lives with the consequences of one's actions.
Me: right.
Him: it's quite simple really.
This is the same sort of logic that causes people to crash planes into the World Trade Centre.
In any case the Church will have to live with the consequences too: the consequences of its having been responsible for the wholly avoidable deaths of untold numbers of people.
Oh well. Eppur si muove.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Someone, viewing the once-again accessible (probably thanks to complaints by fundamentalists) Chick Publications site, thought it was a spoof and asked what it was about.
Me: "What is the site about? Err. Basically it's a hate site.
They hate Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Catholic-Christians, the Pope, non-King James Bibles, Science, Evolution, the TV show Bewitched, homosexuals, the United Nations, D&D, Rock music, non-fundamentalists, supporters of a lasting and equitable peace in the Middle East, people who don't spank their children, common sense, reality and basically the essential teachings of the founder of their professed faith.
So much for love."
***
'The Ultimate Popup Blocker Test' as dubbed by Azrael (Warning: Very NSFW)
Cogito Ergo Bite Me - "For the love of wisdom, they spend nights tirelessly rereading one page of elderly connoisseurs long gone. For the love of wisdom, they lose the ability to speak with friends in “normal” language. And by God, for the love of wisdom, they wear trench coats. At UC Berkeley, philosophy is the thug gangsta of all majors—cuz you just don’t mess with that shit. It’s stereotypical but true that one out of every two philizzle mizzles is the person you hope won’t sit next to you on the BART train. Two out of three people whose fashion statements make you go “hrmph?” are among the ranks of philosophers. Eighteen of the zombies cast for “Dawn of the Dead” were just philosophy undergrads who got lost after their Phil 12A final (including the one who looks like Jay Leno)."
Breasts a treasure chest worth $2.2bn - "Mothers of Australia stand proud, your breasts are worth $2.2 billion a year. A study of breastfeeding by NSW Health says mothers should be counted as food producers and recommends breast pumps be GST-free, putting women in the same category as farmers... Julie Smith, an economist at Australian National University, calculated for the study that the 34 million litres of breast milk produced by Australian mothers a year was worth $2.2 billion. This was based on the milk's value in European milk banks, where breast milk is stored and sold."
GeographyIQ - World Atlas - Rankings - Net migration rate (All Descending) - It seems Singapore has the fifth highest net migration rate in the world. Afghanistan has the dubious honour of being in first place (must be all the refugees going back), while Qatar and Kuwait are 3rd and 4th respectively (must be all the Filipinos). Says a lot about the place, it does. Now we know why Singapore feels like a battery chicken farm. (Alternate source of statistics)
The Politics of Gender - ""It is terribly self-destructive," Steven Goldberg tells us, "to refuse to accept one's own nature, and the joys and powers it invests." In this scholarly and meticulous essay, Dr. Goldberg, Chairman of the Sociology Department at City University of New York, analyzes the distortions of gender studies, which have become a "sacred cow" of academia."
It is hosted on the NARTH site, yes, but otherwise the article makes sense.
Passing and the managed achievement of sex status in an "intersexed" person - "From Garfinkel, P. (1984) Studies in Ethnomethodology, Cambridge: Polity Press (Originally published 1967)... Agnes appeared at the Department of Psychiatry at U.C.L.A. in October, 1958 where she had been referred to Dr. Robert J. Stoller by a private physician in Los Angeles to whom Agnes had in turn been referred by her physician in her home town, Northwestem City... Agnes was born a boy with normal-appearing male genitals. A birth certificate was issued for a male and she was appropriately named. Until the age of seventeen she was recognised by everyone to be a boy. In the biography furnished to us over many hours of conversations, the male role was both consistently and insistently described as a difficult one and poorly managed. Her accounts exaggerated the evidences of her natural femininity and suppressed evidences of masculinity. Secondary feminine sex characteristics developed at puberty."
Once more unto the breach.
Institute for Backup Trauma - "The trauma of data backup can be a lifelong debilitating condition. Its victims come from all walks of life but all have one thing in common: each of them relied upon tape-based backup, which today Science has proven to fail nearly 50% of the time... ... Hello. I'm Dr. Harold Tawin Weck, the director of the Institute for Backup Trauma. It may be too late for people like Bob, Marcia and Phil, but it didn't have to be this way."
I do believe that's John Cleese.
Japan's virgin wives turn to sex volunteers - "Lustless matches put country on brink of demographic disaster... "The women who come to see me love their husbands and aren't looking for a divorce," he told the Guardian. "The problem is that their husbands lose interest in sex or don't want sex from the start. Many men think of their wives as substitute mothers, not as women with emotional and sexual needs.""
Archaeologist finds 'oldest porn statue' - "Stone-age figurines depicting what could be the oldest pornographic scene in the world have been unearthed in Germany."
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Photo Gallery (Safety First) - "On 9 April 2004, a DEA agent (who has not been identified by name in press accounts) delivered a presentation on gun safety to about 50 adults and students at an event sponsored by the Orlando Minority Youth Golf Association. Partway through his lecture, the agent picked up his .40-caliber duty weapon and held it up for the audience to see as he announced: "This is a Glock 40. Fifty Cent, Too Short, all of them talk about a Glock 40, OK? I'm the only one in this room professional enough that I know of to carry this Glock 40." Seconds later the gun discharged, wounding the agent in the thigh (or the foot, or the leg, according to various press accounts)."
***
So all 3 of my first drafts for the writing essays have been tossed. Ah well. This will probably be the last close reading essay I'll ever have to write.
The Psychology statistics module has nary a non-Arts student in sight. Must be a badly kept secret among the Science and Engineering students!
Quotes:
Just because the topic is not coming out for the exam doesn't mean that you shouldn't pay attention. I wish we could all leave.
You can think of multiple regression as a sneak preview of what is about to come. Not as exciting as Episode 3 of the Star Wars tri'lor'gy, perhaps. (trilogy)
Calculators, of course, are indispensable, unless you can perform calculations in your heads, in which case you shouldn't be taking this statistical course.
Please bring scientific calculators, not the kind you use to calculate the price of fish or chickens in the market.
I will be open to consultation at all times. Which means during office hours. For me, office hours is 11 am to 4 pm. Don't ask me why.
You can see me, but not in May. Because I will be away for a while. To prepare me for the torment of marking exam papers.
Ignore the shit of glass (sheet)
It's no problem for the human species, because we live in 3 dimensions. Cats and dogs see the world in black and white, and in 2 dimensions. I wouldn't try to lecture multiple regression to cats and dogs, but to you it's no problem.
Sum of squared residals (residuals)
[On multiple regression] Who can see more than 3 dimensions, please put up your hands. Maybe we can teach it to the aliens. The aliens can see in more than 3 dimensions. Euclidean N space.
[On seeing in more than 3 dimensions] Try very hard over the weekend. If you can, let me know. If you can't, never mind.
It is out there in mathematical space. Just like the truth is out there. *comparative silence* Not everyone got my last joke. 'The truth is out there' is a line from the X-files - my favourite TV show.
mare'trix (matrix)
For some reason Singapore maths teachers at the Primary and Secondary level are very fond of saying that anything divided by 0 is infinity. That is nonsense. I also learnt that [and thought that] - until I learnt that it was nonsense.
Quite dreyd'ful (dreadful)
*Phone rings* The F statistic is too interesting for me to be distracted.
This is the sort of multiple regression that you're going to do in your Econometrics lecture. You're going to go beyond this, and I hope you have a lot of fun...
They don't learn chem in chem engin. They only know how to operate the machines. They know squat about what happens in the machines. [Me: So they're just technicians] We don't know how to operate the machines.
[On the difference between Chemistry and Applied Chemistry] Instead of washing test tubes, we wash machines.
You wait till 9 or 10om, then you go up to the 7th floor, you see an Indian construction worker and his girlfriend. [Someone: What if it's the Dean of Engineering?]
[On one of the Miss Singapore Universe contestants] That looks like one of my friends. Who's a guy.