"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." - G. K. Chesterton

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I don't know people in China, but if you do:


"All;
I'm trying to gather info on the extent of the typepad shutdown in China. If you have any friends or readers here, please ask them to check whether they can access Asiapundit.com, Glutter.org, bbb.typepad.com/billsdue and simonworld.mu.nu .

Reports on location and result of access attempts would be appreciated. Pls respond to asiapundit@gmail.com

best;
Chris"

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The NUS Political Association's appreciation dinner is going to be on the same day as Bloggers.SG (the Singaporean blogging convention). Pity.

"This year, the AD will be held at KENT RIDGE GUILD HOUSE, EVANS ROOM 1 & 2 (in NUS, next to business faculty), on 16 July 2005, Sat from 7 to 11 pm. The theme of the night will be Casino Royale, and thus all are encouraged to dressed to theme. There will be exciting programs put up for the night, including the crowning of MR and MISS
PA from the PA camp this year, interesting games and great lucky draw prizes to be won!"

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Someone: as a friend in the police force said... "once you fully understand and comprehend the women's charter... you won't want to get married"
maybe that's what's causing our marriage rates to drop? more educated males?

at the end of the day.. i feel that probably the most contentious issue is just NS.. esp in a singapore context
and women are more vocal about voicing out perceived discrimination

Me: huh

Someone: subservient males from NS... well.. haha.. we've been conditioned to accept shitty conditions right? so we don't complain... scared scared wait people think we ah guah man

women's charter.. hmmmm. its partly built on the assumption that girls mature slower than guys... but usually in practical society.. the reverse is true
the legal age of consent for both boys and girls under the penal code is 14 but the women charter ups this age to 16.. that's why you hear "I'm legal" shouted by girls on their 16 birthdays
and these men caught for having underaged sex.. they are not prosecuted under criminal procedure code.. more under woman's charter.. which has more severe penalties

Me: so the women's charter overrides the penal code?

Someone: yes.. it superseeds and overrides in certain provisions

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The ultimate postmodern spectacle

"Michael Jackson and his trial hold a mirror to modern western civilisation and its blurring of fact and fiction

Like Jackson's cosmetic surgeons, postmodernism believes in the infinite plasticity of the material world. Reality, like Jackson's over-chiselled nose, is just meaningless matter for you to carve as you choose. Just as Jackson has bleached his skin, so postmodernism bleaches the world of inherent meaning. This means that there is nothing to stop you creating whatever you fancy; but for the same reason your creations are bound to be drained of value. For what is the point of imposing your will on a meaningless reality? The individual is now a self-fashioning creature, whose supreme achievement is to treat himself as a work of art.

... If courtrooms are quintessentially postmodern, it is because they lay bare the relations between truth and power, which for postmodernism come to much the same thing. Truth for them, as for the ancient Sophists, is really a question of who can practise the most persuasive rhetoric. In front of a jury, he with the smoothest tongue is likely to triumph. On this view, all truth is partisan: the judge's summing up is simply an interpretation of interpretations. What determines what is true for you is your interests, which in turn are determined by gender, class, ethnicity and the like. The Simpson trial gave a new twist to the claim that truth is black and white: whether you thought the defendant guilty or innocent depended to a large extent on your skin colour. But the other interests in question are financial ones. Just as the scientist with the fattest research grant is most likely to produce results, so truth in the Simpson and Jackson trials is a commodity to be knocked down to whoever has the deepest pockets. In this sense, a good deal of postmodern theory can be illustrated by a single time-worn phrase: get yourself a good lawyer."

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User Friendly on estimating the amount of software on an average machine, multiplying it by the number of terminals and subtracting sales to get alleged losses from piracy (ie Ignoring the fact that some terminals may use freeware/open source software):

Industry representative: You shouldn't make light of this! Software piracy is a real problem. The cost to the industry is in the billions. If not trillions!

Industry representative: Any software on your machine that you didn't pay for, especially free software, hurts the industry and is IMMORAL if not illegal! EVERY TIME you download a piece of software that doesn't cost you anything, it costs US!

Guy: Isn't that kind of like saying if I don't give you everything in my wallet I'm costing you everything in my wallet?

Industry representative: See. Now you're getting it.

***

Why do women athletes tend to be flat-chested?

"A number of reasons for this have been suggested. According to a report by Dr. Christine Haycock, a trauma surgeon and associate professor of surgery at the New Jersey College of Medicine, "a trainer who has worked more than 10 years with track-and-field athletes noted that he has seen only one or two girls with large breasts in sports, and this tends to confirm that the discomfort of running without adequate breast support has kept many potential athletes from competing." As it happens, Cecil has a well-endowed woman friend who ran in a marathon, and pursuant thereto did training runs of as much as 14 miles a day. These often left her with a ghastly collection of abrasions where her bra rubbed. It seems safe to say, therefore, that the low incidence of big-breastedness among runners is to some extent a matter of self-selection.

We might further speculate that since the female breast, whatever may be said for it from an aesthetic standpoint, can do nothing for an athlete except slow her down, competitive pressures would tend to favor small-breasted women. Unfortunately, little research seems to have been done on this topic."