"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties- no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein

Random Playlist Song: Walton - Crown Imperial (Coronation March) (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra)

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Someone's nick: Was innocently changing my minor from "urban studies" to "none". Then poof! I became a Chemistry major... What the fuck!

Yay CORS!

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Screwed Up Girl on the RJ recording of Dieu mentioned earlier: ........................wasn't that the batch that won syf?
they sound ...............

omg

Me: like tim described?

Screwed Up Girl: maybe even worse
or maybe it's a bad recording
like some dog's dying


Someone: u noe i'm starting to lose respect for the Arts Deans list?

Me: because I'm on it? ;)

Someone: so far I've spotted an ex-ahlian who never used to be very smart whom i knew in sec sch
and a few exclassmates who have seriously never displayed dean's list capabilities


My No 1 fan (blah blah) (on an old entry): U USED TO BLOG LIKE THE REST OF US lol

Me: last time lah

eh very different meh
more informal
just now I use more formal sentences
other than that about the same

oh yah and a bit more personal
because my life used to be more interesting
and not so many people used to read my blog
haha

My No 1 fan: yar lor the informality lor

Me: now it's very formal meh

My No 1 fan: more formal than before
there's an air of heaviness about it
lol
no longer lighthearted

Me: hmm
fewer anecdotes I think
I told you my life is boring now :P

My No 1 fan: yeah to both statements
=D

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RJC now has "lots" of deans. Sigh. Looks like Yishun Town Secondary School's Technical Stream is not the only place to have one.

It's like dictators in Banana Republics; even if their blazers collapse from the weight of the medals they keep awarding themselves, everyone knows that they are ultimately empty and meaningless.

How long before we have a real "Duli Yang Maha Mulia Seri Paduka Baginda Yang Di Pertuan Tun Tan Sri Datuk Utama Seri", and no one thinks that it's a "sarcastic amalgamation of Malay aristocratic titles"?

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Tim points me to 2 pieces of "Art" hanging in the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Yves Klein - Voir l'agrandissement, Monochrome IKB 3, 1960. Pigment pur et résine synthétique sur toile marouflée sur bois"

and

Ellsworth Kelly - Voir l'agrandissement, Dark blue Panel, 1985. Huile sur toile"

It seems I had underestimated the depths to which modern art had sunk. This is worse than paint being spilled. At least that has some variation.

I wonder how much the museum paid for this trash. Hopefully they were 'donated by the artist'.


Tim: from the guggenheim write-up:
He soon began to make paintings in separate panels that can be recombined to produce alternate compositions, as well as multipanel paintings in which each canvas is painted a single color.

pure forms supposed to evoke something
disgust, maybe

On a clear night in March at ten pm sharp a crowd of one hundred people, all dressed in black tie attire, came to the Galerie International d'Art Contemporain in Paris. The event was the first conceptual piece to be shown at this gallery by their new artist Mr. Yves Klein. The gallery was one of the finest in Paris.

Mr. Klein in a black dinner jacket proceeded to conduct a ten piece orchestra in his personal composition of The Monotone Symphony, which he had written in 1949. This symphony consisted of one note.

Three models appeared, all with very beautiful naked bodies. They were then conducted as was the full orchestra by Mr. Klein.

The music began. The models then rolled themselves in the blue paint that had been placed on giant pieces of artist paper - the paper had been carefully placed on one side of the galleries' wall and floor area - opposite the full orchestra. Everything was composed so breathtakingly beautifully. The spectacle was surely a metaphysical and spiritual event for all. This went on for twenty minutes.

When the symphony stopped it was followed by a strict twenty minutes of silence, in which everyone in the room willingly froze themselves in their own private meditation space.

At the end of Yves' piece everyone in the audience was fully aware they had been in the presence of a genius at work, the piece was a huge success! Mr. Klein triumphed. It would be his greatest moment in art history, a total success.
The spectacle had unquestionable poetic beauty, and Mr. Kleins' last words that night were, "THE MYTH IS IN ART".

shit man

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On a rare exploit in Greasemonkey code, the fixing of which causes many problems in existing scripts:

A: But it does not sound realistic that someone makes and uses an exploit for this bug that is allready well-known. The chance is thousands times higher that one drops dead putting on his socks while getting up.

B: The chance that someone cracks your computer because you have voluntairily installed an attractive program that contained a trojan is even many millions times higher, but people tend to forget that.

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Russia launches patriotism drive

"There are plans to organise patriotic song contests and competitions for Patriot of the Year.

Soviet-style military training will be reintroduced into schools.

And to improve the moral standing of the young generation, there will be lessons in "correct reproductive behaviour".

The plan aims to make patriotism the "spiritual backbone" of Russia and is designed to "counter attempts in the media at discrediting patriotic ideas".

The Kremlin sees the measures as vital for preserving national unity and state security.

It is unclear, though, whether this particular programme will achieve that - after all, money alone can't buy love for the motherland."

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Found while doing a reverse search referral for "emma watson pedophilia" (sans quotes); the correct term apparently is Ephebephilia:

Rage of Consent - How Our Love/Hate Relationship with Youth Sexuality and Our Abuse Hysteria Is Endangering Our Culture

"The fact that we even call a post-pubescent a “child” in some circles is somewhat outrageous, considering that for most of history, these “children” were economically able, had marriages and families they maintained and supported, and some of them led armies, began cultural revolutions, or wrote incredible works of literature and art. Even in our time, most nations would allow, if not encourage, them to fight in wars. We treat them as adults in criminal trials as young as age twelve, and the pro-life movement encourages teen mothers to have their babies (though often offering them no continued support to mother them)...

“There’s just as much sexual abuse as there ever was, and to that now we’ve added grotesque nationwide sexual panic, hysteria, insane judicial policies, and a host of other woes. In my view, as a society, we’re not at all interested in helping children in the area of sexuality, but rather, our interest is in punishing adults who respond sexually to children. Children suffer from the hysteria just as much, or more, than everyone else,” adds Okami.

The irony here is that our culture may well have created a potent Catch-22. By disempowering our youth and hampering them from economic and emotional independence, by classifying young adults as children at older and older ages, and by rearing them to view adults as superior beings, we may doom many of these relationships from the start when they might otherwise be beneficial, and create trauma and negativity in them that would not otherwise be there.

... If we were to rear our children in environments which empowered and supported their sexuality and self-esteem, and were supported as parents and mentors in doing so ... if we made sure they received lifelong and comprehensive sex education, and we treated them like young adults, placing the responsibility and accountability for their actions on them ... that old rug, the “moral protection of the feeble innocents,” would be pulled right out from under us. A young adult can say yes or no, and when they have the pertinent information, support, and a healthy self-image, they can make informed choices capably.

We hear again and again that we ought to tell children that “no means no.” But if we tell them that their “no” has weight and meaning, we cannot tell them that their “yes” has none. And if we give their consent no value or worth, than their non-consent becomes worthless as well, and it should be unsurprising when it then gets ignored."

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CL2280

Module Title : BASIC TRANSLATION

Module Description : This module introduces students to basics issues in the practice of translation and interpretation (both Chinese-English and English-Chinese). Students are exposed to different forms of writing and are trained to do written translation and consecutive interpretation. The course is conducted in an interactive manner and students are expected to actively participate in class discussion, language games and translation exercises during both lecture and tutorial. The course is practice-oriented and is intended for students who are bilingual (Chinese and English) and have an interest in the practice of translation and interpretation.

Ho ho.

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Democratization and Growth by Elias Papaioannou, Gregorios Siourounis

"The relationship between the type of polity and economic performance is probably the oldest and one of the most controversial issues in the social sciences. Although there has been a burgeoning theoretical and empirical research on the relation between political liberalism and economic performance, both the economics and the political science literature lack a comprehensive analysis of the effects of democratization on growth. After identifying recent episodes of permanent democratic transitions, we analyze the dynamic evolution of growth before and after democratization. Our methodology addresses issues arising from time-invariant omitted variables, unobserved country heterogeneity, reverse causality and measurement error, and primarily explores the within country growth variation. Our before-after event study clearly challenges the recently documented insignificant correlation between political freedom and economic growth."