Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Me: "humans’ motivational and cognitive bias for novelty can lead the modern man/woman to favor the perception of slimness."

Uhh, but in places like Singapore and Hong Kong where so many girls are anorexic, shouldn't there be a countervailing trend then in favour of a healthy weight?

A: Maybe not. Girls might be competing as to who is more anorexic than another - you are thin but I can be thinner than you :P .

During my JC days most girls weren't eating much anyways. One girl starts to skip lunch and eats like a bird all the time, and very soon the whole class of girls start eating less and then skipping lunches.

It's amazing. I was weighing 39 kg for a 1.63 m girl. That was down 13 kg from my heaviest in less than half a year. Same went for my classmates.

Eating like birds and waiting for the day we're skinny enough to take flight.

The worst thing is, the skinnier we get, the skinnier we strive to be. It's always relative. You need fat girls to reassure you of your skinniness. Slippery slope it is, the whole class of girls get skinnier.

There are those who maintained that healthy eating is good. But they fell for it all the same in the end. When everyone thinks skinny is good, you can get confused too.

Ed: The above was from an IVLE forum.

***

Someone: btw i watched 40 y/o virgin today
think a poster of ur Asian Prince appeared in it


Someone else: presumably religion for some people cannot be intellectualised.

Me: I don't mind that so much. admit your religion is irrational. I don't mind.
but when they claim it's logical then commit intellectual suicide - that's what I simply cannot stand
tell me 1+1 = 3 and I flip.


Someone (2): haha we should have a series like that
Blitz Science
or somethign like tht

we need it to be like 'on the go, spontaneous, out of the world kinda shit'
a 'will do anything with any thing available'
how about science-at-home, diy science,
or MACGUYVER SCIENCE!

we should do a study
correlation btwn weather and daisy dukes
daisy dukes = ultra short pants
denim pants

find out which fac has the most amt of daisy dukes too
hehehhe
we seriously need to have a series

***

Someone: so out of curiosity, what is the standard of students like at NUS? do you find classes challenging? stimulating?

Me: classes are challenging
stimulating *slightly* less so
the students are less inspiring

then again it's not just NUS
*** was from Brown. she complained people always talked rubbish or trivial things in tutorials
her tutors always said she needed to speak more
once she finally said something very profound, everyone was stunned.

Someone: heh Brown leh!

Me: haha JH [Ed: Johns Hopkins] how

Someone: well that's the impression i get here too, that the very lauded "US Model" that SMU is using isn't really that great

encouraging classroom participation is one thing, they do a lot of that here
but most of the time it's just gibberish and people trying to make themselves heard
not really that they have anything insightful to add

on the other hand encouraging discussion is not always bad, out of 10,000 crappy ideas you might get one good idea, better than everyone shuts up and get 0 good ideas

anyhoo... yar, JH undergrads are an impossible breed... classes aren't challenging because they just wear down the instructor to the bone until everything becomes somethign you can mug up

[Addendum: So why do we work harder for a degree worth less? Boo hoo.]