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Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Some may recall that My Little Bird had written up lyrics to a little ditty about freethought / freethinking / secular humanism. On Monday, having finished the tune, he graced me a live demonstration (several, rather) and we did a demo recording.


Mirrors:

My Little Bird - Our Thoughts Are Free.mp3 (YouSendIt.com - valid for 7 days, 25 downloads or until someone sabotages it)

My Little Bird - Our Thoughts Are Free.mp3 (Filecloud)

My Little Bird - Our Thoughts Are Free.mp3 (MegaUpload)

My Little Bird - Our Thoughts Are Free.mp3 (Rapidshare.de)

I doubt this is going to be downloaded much, but additional hosting is always welcome.


Our Thoughts are Free

1. We've ventured on a long journey
Uncharted yet by most
To forge a brand new destiny
Without deities or ghosts

2. We'll stay the course right to the end
And light the path of truth
No need for intangible beings
To tell us what to do

Chorus:
So let's move into the future
Because our thoughts are free
So let's celebrate together
Because our thoughts are free

3. No more shall we tremble with cold
Amongst the lies of old
We'll grasp the future with our hands
To end the age of cant

4. Unbounded by blind fantasy
Yet filled with hopes and dreams
With every move we'll strive forward
Until truth stands supreme

Chorus:
So let's move into the future
Because our thoughts are free
So let's celebrate together
Because our thoughts are free
I saw someone in the toilet with a copy of "The media enthralled : Singapore revisited" by Francis T. Seow from the NUS library. Heh heh.

In Economics, we are pseudo-Science faculty people. We have a lot of maths, a lot of us look like science people, we have no readings outside the textbooks (at least so far), our gender ratio is atypical of Arts and we have a lot of foreign talent staff whom we have difficulty understanding. On the other hand, we have no lab and only 1 lecture a week (though we have more tutorials), so.

It says something when you learn more from 3 minutes reading the textbook than from 2 hours in a lecture.


Quotes:

[On the superego] If a person had sexual desire and wished to go out and have intercourse with another person, he wouldn't be able to do it. Depends on which country you're in, I suppose.

sample evident (evidence)

Bay sing school (Bayesian)

Y bar dah'byou (w)

[Professor: There's nothing new here.] 'There's nothing new here, there's nothing new here'. If there's nothing new here, why're you teaching us this?

I haven't tell you how to compute the Standard Error (told)

[On an erroneous formula] I still see some people using this formula, which I didn't teach. That's not good.

the task score (test)

[On asking questions in lecture] If you shake your head, I won't recognise you outside class, so it's okay.

It is a very standard assumption in macro[economics] to have a representative consumer. If you don't like it, just look at it a bit longer and you will like it.

So now we are going to go to the funky part of our model.

I have office hours from 10-12. I'm normally very bored, because students don't come. Or students come for only 10 minutes. And then I'm bored for 1 hour and 50 minutes.

If the garment has this ability to redistribute the endo'ment (government, endowment)

It seems very powerful but it is actually very simple (the two are not mutually exclusive)

leader time (leisure)

If you have a lot of engines / asians / indians (agents)

We'll have a breek here (break)

2 indians. Robinson and [Man] Friday. (agents)

their utility is dependang (dependent)

giving up the seem amount of coconuts (same)

in ardour to increase (order)

no one bet off (is better)

increase in the input of one goose (good)

two diminishal graph (dimensional)

[Said during week 4] See you next sem (time)

The reason why my skirts are so short is not for guys to see. It is because if a short girl wears a long skirt she will look even shorter.

We have 2 Sharons... I [will] call you Sharon 1. Is it okay?

Consumption cannot be 0 because if consumption is 0 then you will die.

Consumption is, in this case, indo'jair'ners (endogenous)

[On tutorial answers] If you want me to write it - you are giving me a blank look, so I will have to write it.

It's very easy to slip into the stereotype that women only want long term relationships and men only want sex.

[On the inherited proclivity for men to seek a variety of sexual partners] I don't think anybody seriously argues that you learn at your mother's knee, if you are a boy, that it is desirable to have a variety of sex partners.

People have conducted research, not in Singapore, sending attractive research assistants around campus asking members of the opposite sex if they'd like to have sex with them... 75% of men said yes. The rest were apologetic about it [their declining].

To explain is not to justify... Next week I'm going to be talking about the biological reasons for child abuse. Anybody who thinks I'm advocating child abuse...

[On women not being turned on visually] There were attempts in more enlightened economies than this one to push out a magazine. Pin-ups for women... I can't remmeber its name, since I wasn't interested in it.

[On romance novels vs pornography] Go away and read some of this stuff. it is very, very different.

Women tend to orgasm more and retain more sperm with short term partners... Biologically, the female orgasm is unnecessary.

It's bay'ter (better)

How to tasle the unbiased (tell the unbiasedness)

That is the po view we are going to use (program)

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

It is the time of the year when the various faculties and ECAs hold elections for committees for the new academic year. A good deal of such elections are uncompetitive or only marginally so (ie There're only 1-2 more candidates than posts) due to students' apathy and lack of engagement due to university (and in particular NUS) life being personally uninvolving. Furthermore, even if elections are held, turnout is appalling. I am told that last year the USP club (USC - I can't spell it out or I'll cringe) elections had a turnout of over 200 (of 800 - around 25%), and I think that this figure is already quite respectable. Luckily there're no clauses (IIRC at least) in the constitution annulling the results of elections if turnout is below 50%.

So it was pleasant to find out that we got to vote in this year's USC elections. The downside was that campaigning was going into full swing. The level that we saw last year was still tolerable, but this year there was an all-out assault over levels 3, 5, 6 and 7 of Block ADM. I was quite miffed by it all, and so decided to have my very own Shameless-o-Meter measuring the amount of advertising each candidate took out. In the process of drawing it up, I had to recognise all the candidates' faces, so I asked around for the identity of one unfamiliar one who had neglected to put her name on her material, and was asked if I was voting for people based on looks ( !@#$%^&*() ).

My weighting system was as such: Each quote put up by a candidate got him one ostrakon. A group photograph got each person in the team one ostrakon, and an individual photograph got the candidate two ostraka. Other publicity material got a pro-rated number of ostraka based on how shameless it was. I gave discounts for combos; for example 3 photographs and 1 quote got the candidate 5 ostraka instead of 7. There was publicity material in the toilets as well, but since I was unable to enter the female toilets and doubted that I would be able to find a willing accomplice of the appropriate gender, publicity material in the male toilets did not count towards the Shameless-o-Meter either.

Seeing my meticulous data gathering, one person asked if I was going to see if there was a correlation between the amount of publicity a candidate had and whether he got into the management committee. That was an excellent idea, a stroke of genius on his part. If I can I am going to run a regression of votes garnered on Shameless-o-Meter score.

In the end, of the 12 candidates, although I was eligible to vote for up to 8 of them, I ended up voting for the 4 who got a score of 8 or less on the Shameless-o-Meter. Oh well.


After the elections, internal elections are held - instead of being elected to a post, candidates are elected to the management committee. Jockeying for posts then results, and politicking, rather than the sovereignty of the electorate, determines the final power map. This does not sit well with me.
Cowboy Caleb has an impressive bevy of statistics about the failure of cohabitation:

  • The risk of divorce after living together is 40 to 85% higher than the risk of divorce after not living together. In other words, those who live together before marriage are almost twice as likely to divorce than those who did not live together (Bumpass & Sweet 1995; Hall & Zhao 1995; Bracher, Santow, Morgan & Russell 1993; DeMaris & Rao 1992 and Glen 1990).
  • If a couple abstains from sex before marriage, they are 29 to 47% more likely to enjoy sex afterward than those who cohabit . Sexual satisfaction rises considerably more after marriage (Hering 1994:4). More women cohabit than men, but men are more likely to cohabit serially (Bumpass & Sweet 1989; Teachman & Polanko 1990).
  • Cohabiting women have rates of depression 3 times higher than married women (National Institute for Mental Health).
  • Four out of every 10 cohabiting couples have children present and of children born to cohabiting couples, only 4 out of 10 will see their parents marry. Those who do marry experience a 50% higher divorce rate (Horn 1998).
  • Marriage is the social glue that bonds fathers to their offspring. When marriage and fatherhood come unglued, father involvement weakens, with many dads disconnecting completely from their children.


He concludes: "If you are currently cohabiting with your partner, I urge you to get out of your comfort zone and signup for couple counseling or a marriage preparation course. You both deserve better then this."

Since my Han-inspired comment was so long, I decided to post it here:


"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Benjamin Disraeli

I suspect spurious correlation.

In any case, most of the people who are committed will get married in the first place, rather than cohabitate. Thus, if you do not control for initial levels of commitment, the statistic doesn't mean very much. It's just like a study that shows that blacks are paid less than whites - neglecting to mention that 90% of the blacks in the study are poor and lowly educated. In fact, controlling for education, blacks earn as much as or more than whites, so one cannot conclude that they are discriminated against/dumber/less able. Of course, commitment is a hard thing to measure, but this is an important thing to remember. Other things to control for are attitudes to divorce (those willing to cohabitate are more likely to be willing to consider divorce in the first place) and past marriages (some cohabiters have been divorced before, which is why they distrust marriage).

Furthermore, why is divorce a bad thing? Staying in a loveless marriage just because you are married does a great injustice to both parties. In fact, staying married for the sake of the children might be worse if the parents hate or abuse each other. Far better to grow up in a loving single-parent household.

Marriage is not an end in itself; it is a system meant to promote love, commitment and a conducive environment for child rearing (if you are so inclined). If cohabitation can provide that - why not? Furthermore, signing a piece of paper does not prove commitment; any idiot can sign a contract, but to live up to it - without any chains holding him down to boot - is a true sign of commitment.

"I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married." - Queen Elizabeth I


Incidentally, polygyny was practised and endorsed by many renowned Old Testament figures. It was polyandry (with everything else) that they denounced as vile and practised by beasts.
Model organisms: Caenorhabditis elegans

"Caenorhabditis elegans is a soil-dwelling nematode worm about 1 mm in length that feeds on bacteria...

The C. elegans genome is 97 million base pairs in length and contains about 20 000 genes. Many of these genes appear to have functional counterparts in humans [Ed: apparently up to 83% of the proteome is homologous], and whole pathways are often conserved. This makes C. elegans a useful model for human diseases. For example, the insulin signalling pathway is fully conserved between humans and nematodes so mutant worms impaired for insulin signalling are useful models of type II diabetes."

***

Nintendogs (Nintendo Dogs) - the next best thing to getting a real dog. Of course you need to get a Nintendo DS first...

***

The Coolidge Effect

"President Calvin Coolidge and his wife visited a government farm one day and were taken around on separate tours. Mrs. Coolidge, passing the chicken pens, inquired of a supervisor whether the roosters copulated more than once a day.

"Yes," the man said. "Dozens of times." "Tell that," Mrs. Coolidge replied, "to the president!"

Some time later the president, passing the same pens, was told about the roosters - and about his wife's remark. "Same hen every time?" he asked. "Oh, no, a different one each time," the supervisor replied. "Tell that," Coolidge said with a sly nod, "to Mrs. Coolidge."

[Thus the term "Coolidge effect" to describe the re-arousal of a male animal by the introduction of a new female.]"

***

Some time back...

Girl: Why do you want to keep your hair long?

Me: Everytime I tell people, they don't believe me. I want to tie my hair in a ponytail, jerk my head and hit the person beside me with my hair.

Girl: *laughs* So what's the real reason?

Me: See?!


I'm sick of the above happening. I've half a mind to just demonstrate to people when they ask by going up to them and jerking my head. Not quite what I'm aiming for, but the idea is there.
The latest version of Intel PROSet/Wireless (drivers and wireless connection client) that NUS provides is a nightmare.

For one, the profile for connecting to the NUS network comes pre-installed. This would be a good thing, except that without the administrator password, the profile is immune to modification, deletion or moving (ie Other profiles cannot be prioritised over it, even if one uses one's home wireless network 90% of the time and the school's only 10%. This results in a longer time taken to connect to non-NUS networks.)

Even more irritating is how Single Sign-On is enabled (and can't be disabled). What Single Sign-On does is to connect to the wireless network when one logs into Windows. This theoretically saves the user some time/effort but in practise it is a horrible idea which just makes startup incredibly slow (which is why I suspect most people just click "cancel"). Best of all - you guessed it - this "feature" cannot be disabled without the administrator password.

Finally, the Intel client cannot be disabled and the default Windows client used. A minor point, yes, but an annoying modification made by NUS all the same.

In the end, I just downloaded the generic version of Intel PROSet/Wireless available on the Intel site and all was well once more.
"Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well. Think about it." - Elias Schwartz

Random Playlist Song: Cambridge Singers - Poulenc - Chansons francaises - 1. Margoton va t'a l'iau

Margoton va t’a l’iau avecque son cruchon.
La fontaine était creuse, elle est tombée au fond,
Aïe, Aïe, Aïe, Aïe,
Se dit Margoton.

Par là passèrent trois jeunes garçons
Que don’rez vous la belle qu’on vous tir’ du fond
Tirez d’abord dit elle après ça nous verrons
Quand la belle fut tirée commence une chanson
Ce n’est pas ça la bell’ que nous vous demandons
C’est votre petit coeur savoir si nous l’aurons
Mon petit coeur messir’s n’est point pour greluchons

Aïe, Aïe, Aïe, Aïe,
Se dit Margoton

No, I don't have any idea what that means either. But using French is a great way to project an appearance of sophistication.

***

This beats the recent puerile insults that have been flying:

A: At a recent poetry reading I had the opportunity to meet up with someone who recently joined a state agency, or as I like to put it, the dark side. When I said something like 'you're so selling out like in that DC talk song from five years ago' I was told that they were changing the system from within. I'm sure they honestly believe it too. And a few years down the road your interests align with the system, like any bureaucrat you don't want to make your job obsolete, you internalize the propaganda you manufacture, the doublespeak becomes truth and you live a comfortable stable banality-of-evil lifestyle, until the revolution comes (haha) and you are tried for complicity, and your excuse will be something like I'm sorry I was part of something that made it harder for people like me to do the right thing, or I was waiting for the right time and it never came, and neither will fly, so why not just keep backpacking from place to place until you find paradise? Anyway I hope they get that cryo thing figured out so I can wake up when everything's been figured out. SENS and all.

B: As they said about Mussolini:

'He was out of touch with the reality on the ground, despite -- or more probably as a result of -- reading the newspapers everyday.' - random A level history book.

Me:
>I'm sure they honestly believe it too. And a few years down the road
>your interests align with the system, like any bureaucrat you don't
>want to make your job obsolete, you internalize the propaganda you
>manufacture, the doublespeak becomes truth and you live a comfortable
>stable banality-of-evil lifestyle,

Actually it's amazing how they justify it to themselves and other people. They tend to use one or more of the following arguments:

1) You are horribly naive and don't know how the world works.
2) You are cossetted and spoilt and have no right to make such remarks.
3) Faux moral/political equivalence
4) The Argument from Bravado

For example, I was recently told mockingly that the US Supreme Court is not independent since the 9 posts are political appointments. No matter that they are not beholden to the current political system, being in the post for life: they are still beholden to the apparatus that appointed them.

I was also told that, since US congressional districts are gerry-mandered, their elections are as undemocratic as in places where candidates are prohibited or impeded from standing by other means.

With this sort of moral/political equivalence, what does it matter if I smuggle in 0.0001 gram of pot or 10 kg? I deserve to hang anyway.

Ooh, look. China sells the unclaimed bodies of executed prisoners to Gunther von Hagens. Therefore we are justified in doing the same thing.

For that matter, since wage costs are rising worldwide, it doesn't matter if ours rise too, so there's no point trying to keep them down to maintain our national competitiveness. Why strive to have the best airport in the world? In the end it's all the same anyway, especially since being in the top 50% is the same as being the top. Subjective perceptions, it only matters if we're among the best and all that jazz.

Ah, what is truth?


Addendum: B:
For example, I was recently told mockingly that the US Supreme Court is not independent since the 9 posts are political appointments. No matter that they are not beholden to the current political system, being in the post for life: they are still beholden to the apparatus that appointed them.


Er this point is particularly risible: the system was intentionally designed in this way so that all three branches will check each other. So, the Supreme Court can check the legislature by declaring laws unconstitutional, while the executive can check the Supreme Court by appointing its members (who remain independent because they have security of tenure and because politicians are not allowed to comment on cases which are being heard) and so on.

I was also told that, since US congressional districts are gerry-mandered, their elections are as undemocratic as in places where candidates are prohibited or impeded from standing by other means.


And in any case, the gerrymandering which occurs in the US (which is actually quite serious I think it makes a significant proportion of House of Rep seats uncompetitive) is a reason to believe that more, not less, checks on the govt should be established to ensure that this does not occur. To say 'oh it happens in the US too' is just childish. It's like how in primary school we used to say 'It wasn't me; and anyway, he did it too!'

Monday, September 05, 2005

Johnny Malkavian on double posting: get a mac lar. you're being stubborn

Me: what does this have to do with getting a mac?!

Johnny Malkavian: it's karma.
macs give good karma
windows ? bad karma

Me: .................
my philo prof had both macs in his house implode within hours
all data gone

Johnny Malkavian: that's what you get for teaching philosophy

Me: I see that getting a mac makes you irrational too

***

The advantage of my choosing the picture of Wo-hen to pin on my badge that I did is that it looks like he's looking at you. Like the Mona Lisa. Heh heh.

***

Quotes:

Cobber-Dar'gah'las (Cobb-Douglas)

i don't know what exactly walrus law is? (Walras') (MSN message)

[On uncertainty about paternity] Do any of you know Dave Allen? He had a joke about this which I will tell you to lighten the atmosphere here.

[On a parallel between our evolutionary proclivity for sweet things and long and short term mating strategies] Vultures find carrion delicious. I'm confident that they aren't gagging... It's pungent and it tastes great.

[On unconscious mating strategies] Men don't sit there thinking: "She's got many years of reproductive potential... those who got really turned on - jelly at the knees - by post-menopausal women have left no descendents."

[On finding males who are good parents and interested in babies] There's no point finding a man who is incredibly powerful if he drops the baby on its head.

My father used to say that babies were systems of uncontrollable orifices... luckily my father didn't reveal this aspect of his character until he got married.

You don't want a man who will beat you up every Friday night... It's Friday... Bang bang.

[On men finding loose women for short term mating] Where are the women? They don't go around with signs. Some of them do nowadays. never believe what you read on T-shirts... Someone who is wearing a Madagascar T-shirt might never have been to Madagascar. He might've seen the film. You can't be sure.

[On short term mating strategies - infidelity - in women] Various people have proposed other reasons. Finding out more about life.

[On some off-topic thing] I differ, I beg to differ. This is much more interesting than Evolutionary Psychology.

I will not ask the ladies present whether they are ovulating or not, but you may make informal inquiries among your friends... [see] whether you can reall tell or not.

[Student on a religious argument against cloning - that you need struggle to shape human nature: They say that struggle is what gives humans their nature... like for you the struggle is in your genes.] By that argument, we should not be sitting in an air-conditioned room. Most of civilization would be attacked... That's not a very good argument.

[On the insidiousness and fallaciousness of the slippery slope argument] The first person who liberated slaves: [the] slippery slope [argument was invoked]. The first person to give women the vote: slippery slope. A hundred years ago, you couldn't wear a bikini in public. You would be stoned. So, yes, the slippery slope is a bad thing.

Think of the girl of your dreams, or the guy of your dreams, if you're in the 5% [who are so inclined]... Think of how it would be different if the girl of your dreams was a female orang-utan. Unless you're in the 0.001% who thinks that'd be an improvement.

Bald ladies are not, like, somehow, very attractive. [Student: Personal preference.] No, human nature.

[On clothing] Have you ever seen a Papua New Guinea warrior wearing a penis sheath?

There are some people who say that women get hornier after they have sex with the first time, and they are more willing to bang another guy if he's watching... [Professor: Post the link {in the forum}]

Breasts get in the way. You can't run as well... They get in the way when you play snooker.

[On unconscious mating strategies in men] He does not write to her: 'You have fantastic child-bearing hips' or 'Your fertility is so...'

[On data on age differentials in Seattle marriages in 1986] It seems analogous here. It seems there was a 10 year old husband with an 11 year old wife.

[On a story on bartop dancing and jealousy] 'Mr Fabian Chiu'. The Straits Times makes up names, but I'm not sure if they can invent a name like 'Fabian Chiu'.

Who's that guy?... [Me: Wo-hen Nankan, the Asian Prince... You were looking at him during the whole tutorial?] More like he was looking at me.

That's what you realise when you go to University. They don't give you the answers. They only give you more questions, make life more confusing. They seem to think that's the point.

My mom always tells me not to bite your fingernails if you don't want your parents to die. [Tutor: *looks at nails* My parents are still pretty much alive.]

If we have one person in this class who believes in magic, voodoo, we wouldn't want to offend him. Especially if he has dolls. (had)

[Student on a Powerpoint slide about Freud: He died before he was born.] Goodness... I was just checking if you were awake. [Audience: Riiiiight...]

Professor *** was very kind to Freud. He spoke for 4 minutes without making a single sexual remark.

A friend of mine was saying... that Freud was just a sex-obsessed maniac. I said, funny thing: he said the same thing about you.

[On toys with no sexual content] Look at Barbie, for example, who has no nipples. Or at GI Joe, who has no Joe.

[On the breast's lack of aesthetic appeal] The nose might even be more aesthetic, because of the curvature.

[On Oedipus and Tiresias] There was no need for forensic pathology or CSI. If you want to know who the murderer is, you just ask your friendly neighbourhood prophet.

If in a sexual encounter, the girl points at the guy and starts laughing, he will lose his erection. (is going to)

uneluctable force (ineluctable)
"But most cognitive psychologists carried over one unfortunate assumption from the behaviorist paradigm: the equipotentiality assumption of domain-generality (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). The domain-general learning process proposed by behaviorists were simply replaced by domain-general cognitive mechanisms. Missing was the idea that there might be privileged classes of information that the cognitive mechanisms were specifically designed to process." - Buss, 2003

Huh?! The perils of reading cross-listed CBMs...


Addendum:

Tosser: Evolutionary Psychology people believe that the mind is adapted to better process some types of information as opposed to others
e.g. cheater-detection

All is made clear.


Gene Expression: My lucky number is pi

"This problem set, which is nearly always answered correctly, is logically identical to the earlier set, the one that causes considerable head scratching, not to mention incorrect answers.

Why is the second problem set so easy, and the first so difficult? This question has been intensively studied by the evolutionary psychologist Leda Cosmides. Her answer is that the key isn't logic itself -- after all, the two problems are logically equivalent -- but how they are positioned in a world of social and biological reality. Thus, whereas the first is a matter of pure reason, disconnected from reality, the second plays into issues of truth telling and the detection of social cheaters. The human mind, Cosmides points out, is not adapted to solve rarified problems of logic, but is quite refined and powerful when it comes to dealing with matters of cheating and deception. In short, our rationality is bounded by what our brains were constructed -- that is, evolved -- to do."
"A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion." - Robert Chapman

***

I can't get enough of this version of Jay Althouse's Slow Rockin Christmas by a group from Swanson Middle School. It simply has to be heard to be believed.

***

Amazingly, the staff member who responded to my email gave me the password needed to uninstall Trend Micro. And they replied to my mail within an hour on a Sunday Afternoon too.

The staff at NUS Computer Centre's IT Care are fantastic!

[Addendum: cherub says the password's installed by the vendor, and not NUS.]

Sunday, September 04, 2005

After 4 scans and some finger work in Paint Sho Pro...



Benjy: you always send me stuff that makes my ears bleed
"Let us now take up the thread of our enquiry. What, then, is the psychological significance of religious ideas [and teachings] and under what heading are we to classify them?...

There are, of course, many such teachings about the most various things in the world. Every school lesson is full of them. Let us take geography. We are told that the town of Constance lies on the Bodensee. A student song adds: ‘if you don’t believe it, go and see.’ I happen to have been there and can confirm the fact that that lovely town lies on the shore of a wide stretch of water which all those who live round it call the Bodensee; and I am now completely convinced of the correctness of this geographical assertion. In this connection I am reminded of another, very remarkable, experience. I was already a man of mature years when I stood for the first time on the hill of the Acropolis in Athens, between the temple ruins, looking out over the blue sea. A feeling of astonishment mingled with my joy. It seemed to say: ‘So it really is true, just as we learnt at school!’ How shallow and weak must have been the belief I then acquired in the real truth of what I heard, if I could be so astonished now! But I will not lay too much stress on the significance of this experience; for my astonishment could have had another explanation, which did not occur to me at the time and which is of a wholly subjective nature and has to do with the special character of the place.

All teachings like these, then, demand belief in their contents, but not without producing grounds for their claim. They are put forward as the epitomized result of a longer process of thought based on observation and certainly also on inferences. If anyone wants to go through this process himself instead of accepting its result, they show him how to set about it. Moreover, we are always in addition given the source of the knowledge conveyed by them, where that source is not self-evident, as it is in the case of geographical assertions. For instance, the earth is shaped like a sphere; the proofs adduced for this are Foucault’s pendulum experiment, the behaviour of the horizon and the possibility of circumnavigating the earth. Since it is impracticable, as everyone concerned realizes, to send every schoolchild on a voyage round the world, we are satisfied with letting what is taught at school be taken on trust; but we know that the path to acquiring a personal conviction remains open.

Let us try to apply the same test to the teachings of religion. When we ask on what their claim to be believed is founded, we are met with three answers, which harmonize remarkably badly with one another. Firstly, these teachings deserve to be believed because they were already believed by our primal ancestors; secondly, we possess proofs which have been handed down to us from those same primaeval times; and thirdly, it is forbidden to raise the question of their authentication at all. In former days anything so presumptuous was visited with the severest penalties, and even to-day society looks askance at any attempt to raise the question again.

This third point is bound to rouse our strongest suspicions. After all, a prohibition like this can only be for one reason -- that society is very well aware of the insecurity of the claim it makes on behalf of its religious doctrines. Otherwise it would certainly be very ready to put the necessary data at the disposal of anyone who wanted to arrive at conviction. This being so, it is with a feeling of mistrust which it is hard to allay that we pass on to an examination of the other two grounds of proof. We ought to believe because our forefathers believed. But these ancestors of ours were far more ignorant than we are. They believed in things we could not possibly accept to-day; and the possibility occurs to us that the doctrines of religion may belong to that class too. The proofs they have left us are set down in writings which themselves bear every mark of untrustworthiness. They are full of contradictions, revisions and falsifications, and where they speak of factual confirmations they are themselves unconfirmed. It does not help much to have it asserted that their wording, or even their content only, originates from divine revelation; for this assertion is itself one of the doctrines whose authenticity is under examination, and no proposition can be a proof of itself.

Thus we arrive at the singular conclusion that of all the information provided by our cultural assets it is precisely the elements which might be of the greatest importance to us and which have the task of solving the riddles of the universe and of reconciling us to the sufferings of life -- it is precisely those elements that are the least well authenticated of any. We should not be able to bring ourselves to accept anything of so little concern to us as the fact that whales bear young instead of laying eggs, if it were not capable of better proof than this.

This state of affairs is in itself a very remarkable psychological problem. And let no one suppose that what I have said about the impossibility of proving the truth of religious doctrines contains anything new. It has been felt at all times -- undoubtedly, too, by the ancestors who bequeathed us this legacy. Many of them probably nourished the same doubts as ours, but the pressure imposed on them was too strong for them to have dared to utter them. And since then countless people have been tormented by similar doubts, and have striven to suppress them, because they thought it was their duty to believe; many brilliant intellects have broken down over this conflict, and many characters have been impaired by the compromises with which they have tried to find a way out of it.

If all the evidence put forward for the authenticity of religious teachings originates in the past, it is natural to look round and see whether the present, about which it is easier to form judgements, may not also be able to furnish evidence of the sort. If by this means we could succeed in clearing even a single portion of the religious system from doubt, the whole of it would gain enormously in credibility. The proceedings of the spiritualists meet us at this point; they are convinced of the survival of the individual soul and they seek to demonstrate to us beyond doubt the truth of this one religious doctrine. Unfortunately they cannot succeed in refuting the fact that the appearance and utterances of their spirits are merely the products of their own mental activity. They have called up the spirits of the greatest men and of the most eminent thinkers, but all the pronouncements and information which they have received from them have been so foolish and so wretchedly meaningless that one can find nothing credible in them but the capacity of the spirits to adapt themselves to the circle of people who have conjured them up.

I must now mention two attempts that have been made -- both of which convey the impression of being desperate efforts -- to evade the problem. One, of a violent nature, is ancient; the other is subtle and modern. The first is the ‘Credo quia absurdum’ of the early Father of the Church.[‘I believe because it is absurd.’ This is attributed to Tertullian.] It maintains that religious doctrines are outside the jurisdiction of reason -- are above reason. Their truth must be felt inwardly, and they need not be comprehended. But this Credo is only of interest as a self-confession. As an authoritative statement it has no binding force. Am I to be obliged to believe every absurdity? And if not, why this one in particular? There is no appeal to a court above that of reason. If the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience which bears witness to that truth, what is one to do about the many people who do not have this rare experience? One may require every man to use the gift of reason which he possesses, but one cannot erect, on the basis of a motive that exists only for a very few, an obligation that shall apply to everyone. If one man has gained an unshakable conviction of the true reality of religious doctrines from a state of ecstasy which has deeply moved him, of what significance is that to others?

The second attempt is the one made by the philosophy of ‘As if’. This asserts that our thought-activity includes a great number of hypotheses whose groundlessness and even absurdity we fully realize. They are called ‘fictions’, but for a variety of practical reasons we have to behave ‘as if’ we believed in these fictions. This is the case with religious doctrines because of their incomparable importance for the maintenance of human society. This line of argument is not far removed from the ‘Credo quia absurdum’. But I think the demand made by the ‘As if’ argument is one that only a philosopher could put forward. A man whose thinking is not influenced by the artifices of philosophy will never be able to accept it; in such a man’s view, the admission that something is absurd or contrary to reason leaves no more to be said. It cannot be expected of him that precisely in treating his most important interests he shall forgo the guarantees he requires for all his ordinary activities. I am reminded of one of my children who was distinguished at an early age by a peculiarly marked matter-of-factness. When the children were being told a fairy story and were listening to it with rapt attention, he would come up and ask: ‘Is that a true story?’ When he was told it was not, he would turn away with a look of disdain. We may expect that people will soon behave in the same way towards the fairy tales of religion, in spite of the advocacy of ‘As if’.

... At this point one must expect to meet with an objection. ‘Well then, if even obdurate sceptics admit that the assertions of religion cannot be refuted by reason, why should I not believe in them, since they have so much on their side -- tradition, the agreement of mankind, and all the consolations they offer?’ Why not, indeed? Just as no one can be forced to believe, so no one can be forced to disbelieve. But do not let us be satisfied with deceiving ourselves that arguments like these take us along the road of correct thinking. If ever there was a case of a lame excuse we have it here. Ignorance is ignorance; no right to believe anything can be derived from it. In other matters no sensible person will behave so irresponsibly or rest content with such feeble grounds for his opinions and for the line he takes. It is only in the highest and most sacred things that he allows himself to do so. In reality these are only attempts at pretending to oneself or to other people that one is still firmly attached to religion, when one has long since cut oneself loose from it. Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanour. Philosophers stretch the meaning of words until they retain scarcely anything of their original sense. They give the name of ‘God’ to some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves; having done so they can pose before all the world as deists, as believers in God, and they can even boast that they have recognized a higher, purer concept of God, notwithstanding that their God is now nothing more than an insubstantial shadow and no longer the mighty personality of religious doctrines. Critics persist in describing as ‘deeply religious’ anyone who admits to a sense of man’s insignificance or impotence in the face of the universe, although what constitutes the essence of the religious attitude is not this feeling but only the next step after it, the reaction to it which seeks a remedy for it. The man who goes no further, but humbly acquiesces in the small part which human beings play in the great world -- such a man is, on the contrary, irreligious in the truest sense of the word."

- Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion.


In fact, the whole of The Future of an Illusion is worth a read.
Polymorphic spyware/scumware is annoying.

Each time I boot up my laptop a strange file (for which a search for its name returns no results on Google) is running in Task Manager, and its name changes with each bootup. I know it's the same file because I located the files in the c:\windows\temp directory, and all of them are there, with the same filesize, date modified and icon (adding insult to injury, that of a cute little dog). I've deleted them but are quite sure they'll reappear the next time I reboot, with a different file name of course.

Running Hijack This, Spybot - Search & Destroy, msconfig, services.msc and RootkitRevealer, I can't see anything suspicious. Maybe I need to go through services.msc again.

I might reformat, except that I just got my laptop back on wednesday, and setting everything up again is a pain. This is just like the last time I reformatted, and Vincent asked me to join Studio Traffic, which resulted in me getting hit by 20 spyware programs within a day of my reformat.

This is what happens when you unwisely run activate_crack.exe from an Astalavista site. Gah.

I just know some people's will respond with "just get a Mac", but this is like a small cut on your arm getting infected, and then being told to amputate the whole thing.


Addendum: I searched my computer for files with the same/similar file size/date modified, since I reasoned the polymorphic file had to be copied from a master exe...

... and found that OfcDog.exe in my Trend Micro OfficeScan directory had the same file size/date modified (down to the last second) and icon (the one of a dog). And other dlls in the directory had a similar date modified, so it was not a case of the spyware being smart enough to hide itself in the directory.

This is really odd. This is what happens when you use the Japanese Anti-Virus client which NUS installs for you.

Back to Grisoft's AVG free edition. I suspect it uses less resources too. But first I've to get around darling NUS's "we know better than you" policies (more on that in a future post): "Type the password to uninstall the OfficeScan client".

Maybe I should've formatted after all...

Addendum #2: Amazingly, the staff member who responded to my email gave me the password needed to uninstall Trend Micro. And they replied to my mail within an hour on a Sunday Afternoon too.

The staff at NUS Computer Centre's IT Care are fantastic!
"The decision to believe or not believe is not entirely in our hands. I might be happier and have better manners if I thought I were descended from the emperors of China, but no effort of will on my part can make me believe it, any more than I can will my heart to stop beating." - Stephen Weinberg

Random Playlist Song: Dietrich Buxtehude - Toccata In F

***

Varian: "There is only one good thing to say about the U.S. program of farm subsidies: it produces a never-ending source of examples for economics textbooks."

***

Someone: by the way.... you are seriously infamous...
an image of you got converted and is now a spray paint image in the game counter strike....
saw it at some lan shop
lol

Me: WTHOMG
where was this?
ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH

Someone: yah....
but the msg was Gab Sucks
lol
infamy!

Me: hahahaha I want to buy a rubber chicken to hang outside the shop

Someone: it's some lan shop in park lane... so i don't think you'd want to do that [Ed: Park Lane is in Selegie, beside Peace Centre.]

***

A: conservative Christians have already come up with a different explanation for Katrina, that unfortunately might be more plausible to most Americans than the idea of global warming.

Supposedly, god got miffed enough about this event to send a hurricane to stop it:

"The 34th annual Southern Decadence festival, which evolved over the years from a party for a few friends to a six-day street party attended by more than 100,000 people, runs this year from Aug. 31 to Sept. 5.

Unofficially dubbed the 'gay Mardi Gras,' Southern Decadence is filled with dozens of parties and thousands of uninhibited gay men frolicking in the street in search of beads and brethren."

Oh yeah, don't forget that many people are too willing to believe that the hurricanes that hit Florida last year, the tsunami, and Katrina are all proof that "the Rapture", the Antichrist, and the Apocalypse aren't far off.

B: A, insightful comment as usual. However, it seems to me that God could be a bit less sloppy in punishing people. I mean, flooding a whole major city and devastating an entire region just because a few gays were having some fun? Besides the highly questionable ethics exhibited by the deity, His seems to be getting worse by the century!

C: More than likely he's just dealing/ communicating with us on a level that we might understand. (you know, the US is very materialistic) And that's not a matter of questionable ethics, M. That is some aspect or another of information theory in use, I imagine.

I tend to prefer the idea that God could be inflicting some discomfort on the US for our influence in the Gaza thing myself.

A: Me <-- Bangs head on keyboard. Weeps.

With a "loving" deity like that, Cal, who needs enemies?

Heck, who needs Satan, for that matter? Your "savior" is worse than his alleged enemy! After all, nobody is accusing Satan of sending hurricanes or tsunamis. (Emphasis mine)

***

Francis Seow (allegedly): "I would have thought that you, oh mister big shot law student, would have realised that. But thank you for proving some points that I have often made over the years:

a) lawyers are often the most uncritical, unthinking, shallow and daft people around, despite their legal education; and

b) even the most rigorous legal education is in no way a reflection of actual intelligence."

***

Engineers struggle to make science sexy - "Less than half the new graduates with an engineering degree take up a career as engineers according to HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency), which revealed its latest annual survey last week.... But he points out that only 30 per cent of business students and 22 per cent of agriculture students enter their sectors, "so by comparison engineering is faring well"."

Armed man enters home, eats bowl of cereal, police say - "A man under the influence of drugs and looking for a free meal invaded a family’s home at gunpoint Thursday night, Sparks police said. When police officers arrived at the home in the 2000 block of South Mackenzie Circle, they said they found Daniel Jeppsen sitting on the couch eating cereal and milk."

America by the numbers" - "Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005)."
No wonder most Americans don't believe in Evolution.

Vibrating Soap - "Loosen up your aching body whilst showering yourself in hot running water or bathing in relaxing warm water. Truly innovative, the Vibrating Soap has a vibrating motor actually built into the soap itself."

Recovering Christians: Mind control and brainwashing - "When does relentless persuasion turn into subtle coercion? When can someone be said to be manipulated by another? If someone cheerfully does something of his own volition, how can we say that he is being brainwashed? Is advertising a form of mind control?"

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Why Singaporeans are so Lucky

This is the shit. Seen in a Singabloodypore comments box:


"You guys have to be fools not to realise how LUCKY Singaporeans are
read about the experience of this Singapore who went on tour to USA and come back fully understanding how LUCKY a country Singapore is.

--------------------

Singaporeans are lucky people. If you open up the newspapers in Singapore to read , there is nothing but good news and good ideas from the ruling government. There is daily hope that things will get better. Once a week someone in Singapore achieve something big - like urine power batteries. Everyone live in harmony with the government - even opposition in Singapore is nice and quiet. The government is virtually perfect based on what the Singapore news papers say and are always thinking of ways to improve the lives of Singaporeans. The govt of Singapore is always helping its people - recently to help the poor buy flats. It looks like Singaporeans are relatively problem free and happy - not much suffering in Singapore.

When I went on tour in the US for one month and when I read the newspaper, I was horrified this country has so much problems. People going on strike because they think their pay is too low. Politicians arguing with each other on various issues. Unheard of in Singapore. The newspapers is full of criticism of the govt - obviously the Leaders in America are not as smart as Singapore leaders - nobody in Singapore can find anything wrong with the PAP. The people I met in America are generally unhappy with their lives and always talking about trying to change it - they dream of becoming rich, becoming movie stars, becoming singers, becoming this on that. I even met a 40 year old guy who was attending medical school - obviously he is unhappy with his job as a waiter. Contrast that with Singaporeans who are very happy with their current existence many are happy with their current jobs and don't dream much about the future.

When I was on tour, I found out America has poor public transport system - no MRT, few public bus. Can't imagine how they get around.

Their service sector is behind us by decades, I went the hotel restaurant to eat, the first day they were very nice to me. The second day I went back, they were not nice. I was offended, so like very good Singaporean I complained. They told me I did not tip them the first day. Waliao, in America must 'tip' to get service. In Singapore, I never have to tip!

Another day I wondered on to the streets and found a man distributing anti-government material. I read it and it accused the US govt of causing the suffering in 3rd world countries. Why does the US govt allow the people to accuse it? In singapore, this person would have been arrested. Another day, a Hispanic union group gathered in a rally accusing employers of discrimination - how can they do that? don't they know that busineeses if not given a free hand to do what they want will just invest in china or india. How come their union is not working with the employer to harmonise worker relations and persuade workers to accept their current conditions.

One day when I was on the "free and easy" part of my tour I found a way to take the bus around in Los Angeles. At my 3rd stop, a cyclist wanted to take the bus, the bus driver got down the bus and help him to mount his bicycle on a structure at the front of the bus. I was disgusted, how can he do that, it caused delay to every one on the bus. I'm surprised Americans put up with that. Half way through the ride, the bus got a bit crowded, just like Singapore people don't move to the rear. At the bus stop people trying to get up shouted loudly at the people in the bus to "move to the rear guys!! we can't get up!!". In Singapore, people would have kept quiet and waited for the bus driver to do something - if nothing is done they would have just waited for the next bus. This shows that Americans are impatient lot - unlike Singapore they don't trust the person in the leadership position(bus driver) to do his job.

As I move around in America, I realise the problem of older workers getting jobs is far worse that in Singapore. I saw very few old folks working in America - they are mostly sitting in parks or playing with their grand children. I guess they do that because they are unable to find a job. In contrary, we see many old folks in Singapore working as cleaners and at MacDonalds. We should be thankful that in Singapore even old folks can find jobs. In America, old folks are jobless and sitting around doing nothing. It is obvious the American government is unable to solve the structural unemployment problem and are unable to redesign jobs for older workers. These old folks in America must be suffering without an income and spending so much time in the park when they should be working.

I went to one place that was having an election for a Mayor. So much money wasted on posters and hundreds of people wasting time campaigning for the candidates. Why do they waste time doing that? In Singapore, instead of having so many people choose a president, we simply have a panel of 3 people to do it - it is cheaper and waste less energy. Obviously America has alot to learn from Singapore.

The only place I like alot is Las Vegas. Wow the bright lights and the wonderful casinos. Yes, I like it alot although one night at the jackpot machine, I don't know what happened to me and I lost $500. For some reason, I couldn't stop myself. But later when I watch the show with the pirate ship and girls in bikini, I felt much better and forgot my loss. Certainly I'll come back to Las Vegas. You can see that the Singapore govt also realise that most Singaporeans will like Las Vegas, so they are build 2 casinos in Singapore to bring Las Vegas to Singaporeans. See, how much the PAP govt cares about you, to make sure you're well entertained and have some excitement in your life.

You can see for yourself how lucky singapore is as a country. People above 60 are still able to find jobs and continue working. Everyone living in harmony happily. No time wasted on debates and protests. No confusing concepts to deal with. After my tour in America, I'm so glad that we have such a good government that put the smile on the faces of Singaporeans everyday...and when I open up the newspapers, I can see everything is fine and dandy. Our citizens are obedient and trust their leaders.


Addendum: This was written by Lucky Tan from Diary of a Singaporean Mind
Someone: hahahaha
FUN!
i just turned my voice female using garageband, and it sound just like the real thing!

hahahahah
i'm going to have so much fun with this

Me: wah

Someone: give me something to read
i'll record and send to you

Me: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

Someone: cb..
Great Expectations: The Evolutionary Psychology of Faith-Healing and the Placebo Effect

"Experimental studies have shown that placebos, as well as being particularly effective for the relief of pain and inflammation, can for example speed wound healing, boost immune responses to infection, cure angina, prevent asthma, lift depression, and even help fight cancer. Robert Buckman, a clinical oncologist and professor of medicine, concludes that “Placebos are extraordinary drugs. They seem to have some effect on almost every symptom known to mankind, and work in at least a third of patients and sometimes in up to 60%. They have no serious side-effects and cannot be given in overdose. In short they hold the prize for the most adaptable, protean, effective, safe and cheap drugs in the world’s pharmacopoeia.” Likewise, another medical authority, quoted in a recent review in the British Medical Journal, dubs placebos “the most effective medication known to science, subjected to more clinical trials than any other medicament yet nearly always doing better than anticipated. The range of susceptible conditions appears to be limitless...

My view is this. The human capacity for responding to placebos is in fact not necessarily adaptive in its own right (indeed it can sometimes even be maladaptive). Instead, this capacity is an emergent property of something else that is genuinely adaptive: namely, a specially designed procedure for “economic resource management” that is, I believe, one of the key features of the “natural health-care service” which has evolved in ourselves and other animals to help us deal throughout our lives with repeated bouts of sickness, injury, and other threats to our well-being."


Gloriously jargon-free and easy to follow, the author makes a prima facie case for the evolution of our favourable response to placebos, though the paper isn't concluded as well as it could have been, especially since there's no restatement and summation of the thesis (heh heh).

***

The Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction

"While other disciplines of science explored the periodic -- physicists with their pendulums, biologists with circadian rhythms, and mathematicians with sinusoidal waves -- chemistry, until recently, was bereft of this study. Although there had long been evidence that the rate of some reactions changed repeatedly, many chemistry luminaries thought it would be contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics for a chemical reaction to oscillate. However, applying the concepts equilibrium thermodynamics to non-equilibrium systems proved erroneous.

Yet this thinking so held the day that when Boris P. Belousov, director of the Institute of Biophysics in the Soviet Union, submitted a paper to a scientific journal purporting to have discovered an oscillating chemical reaction in 1951, it was roundly rejected with a critical note from the editor that it was clearly impossible. His confidence in its impossibility was such that even though the paper was accompanied by the relatively simple procedure for performing the reaction, he could not be trouble. Arthur C. Clarke best captured this spirit of this folly with Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.""
Economics and Physics Envy

"The discipline of economics had gone the route of many social sciences. They had contracted "Physics Envy." That's the disease that gets you thinking that the only way to be respectably scientific is to do things the way the physical sciences, especially physics, do them.

As Jared Diamond has pointed out in his magnificent book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, social sciences cannot use the same experimental methodology that physical sciences use. Social sciences deal with human systems which are messy in the extreme and often not susceptible to double-blind, controlled experiments.

Diamond suggests several ways that social sciences can be scientific without succumbing to Physics Envy. We might apply them to economics, except that economics is not a science at all. Instead, it's philosophy, using mathematics to dress itself in the clothes of science.

Today's economics either regurgitates the obvious with a few equations thrown in or falls back on reasoning to replace experiment. Also with a few equations thrown in."

***

Gene Expression: Physics Envy

"In my previous post on this subject, I asserted the non-applicability of higher mathematics to economic analysis, arguing that true functions (in the mathematical sense) are missing from all economic relationships.

The root of the problem lies in the belief, held by academic economists, that deep down and in some mysterious way -- maybe only statistically -- the laws of supply and demand are like the laws of physics -- as, for example, the laws governing the attraction and repulsion of electrons and protons. But consider:

In physics, the law which describes the inverse relation between distance and force between charges (or masses) is not just a rough approximation, qualitative description, or statistical generalization. Rather, it is an extremely precise description, to roughly 20 decimal places of significance, in which measurement error plays a very small part... physicists will be the first to admit that even the most powerful mathematical machinery they are able to bring to bear on a problem can deal successfully with only the very simplest situations, beyond which their equations are useless. Thus, for example, their equations can be solved for the two body problem but not the three body problem in Newtonian mechanics; they can solve the Schrödinger equation when there is only one proton and one electron interacting, but not when there are even two protons and two electrons, let alone anything more complicated than that.

Furthermore, on those occassions when physicists do make complex predictions -- such as that nuclear fission would occur en mass, before the first atom bomb was tested (to choose an historical example) -- they do so with caution, double checking all their calculations, and hoping that they haven't overlooked something, or might accidentally set the atmosphere on fire."
"Household tasks are easier and quicker when they are done by somebody else." - James Thorpe

***

A question I just asked on Young Republic. Replies here are equally welcome.


I'm sure everyone knows what's happening in New Orleans now.

What do you think would happen if something similar happened to/in Singapore? Would we see parang-wielding mobs looting the CPF building as the Merlion was toppled by drunken breakdancers? Or would decades of social engineering kick in and ensure that, adhering to our Asian Values (TM), everyone would help everyone else, regardless of race, language or religion, and we would all pull through, ending up as a stronger country ever more ready to cut wages to be competitive in the face of global trends?
For the benefit of those on the RSS feed:


New blog picture

Friday, September 02, 2005

Overheard about "ASPIRE 2005" (ASIA PACIFIC STUDENT LEARDERSHIP [sic] WORKSHOP 2005), an international conference organised by the University of Malaya with participants and speakers from all over the Asia-Pacific:


"got e key to go to our room
that's where e shock came

e room sucked to e core
e whole hostel smelled like a zoo(due to stray cats' peeing in e hall...e cats could get to e 6th floor--where we stayed...to quote a hongkong fren...e smell was like elephants' poo)
e whole place was dirty(surprising since UM invited international students and it's pretty obvious that not much of cleaning has been done to e hall)

i had to share my room with someone (who was quite a nice person)
but we only had 1 key among ourselves

and upon opening the door
it was another big shock
e room was dirty
with no tiles(ie cemented floor)
e mattress was thin like a sheet of paper(ok la..not that thin...but it's thin enuf for me to feel e BED itself when i slept on it)
no blanket was given(later was given a bedsheet to be used as blanket---e v thin n rough kind)
there was no lan point or phone line in e room
there was no wireless internet access either

we left our room to go join some icebreakers conducted in e hall(and since we were already v late...we were quite extra)


started next day having quite a lousy breakfast(everyth was v sweet...this was e prelude to e rest of e meals provided by UM) On later days, they told us to come for breakfast at 7am and knocked on our doors at 7 in e morning cos they think we oversleep, but when we went to e canteen no one was there and e caterer only came at 8am.
had e 1st dialogue which was titled “China’s Economic Overheat & Its Impact on the Asia Pacific”.

e scheduled speakers were ppl like Dr. Mahathir Mohammad and Mr. Zhou Xiaochuan (Governor of People's Bank of China)
but e speakers that turned up was ASEAN secretary-general(not too bad) and manager of the central bank
this is quite a disappointment cos basically e panelist has been "downgraded" drastically...
i have looked forward to Mahathir and e governor of central bank speaking cos it's not like everyday u get to meet such bigshots and listen to them talk

this is followed by a screwed-up discussion(participants were split into grps to discuss e issues raised and to present our findings on e 3rd day) moderated by a student from malaysia(UPSI=teaching college)
he was dominating e whole discussion and making nonsensical deductions
in e end he got reprimanded by someone in e grp for his gibberish...which made him shut up and everyone else v happy

then we had second dialogue(Kyoto Protocal – It’s role and the Mechanism in Achieving it.) and again none of e scheduled speakers came
2 malaysian meteorologists came
e talk was pretty boring but not as bad as e 3rd one which was to come e next day

had opening dinner at night
reached e hotel at abt 7 plus but dinner only commenced at 9,30pm
their guest-of-honour(education minister of malaysia) was so late
and e whole dinner transformed into a pre-celebration of e national day of malaysia

e national anthem of malaysia and UM's anthem were played
numerous speeches were delivered before we could tuck in

and after e dinner
ppl started singing community songs of malaysia and e whole dinner turned into someth like a pseudo-pre-celebration of e national day
e malaysians felt very high after singing i think
but it was v weird for them to do such things since there were so many international students around
shouldn't e focus of e dinner be on students and e workshop(and not malaysia itself???)

reached hostel at abt 1am
went to shower
and e bathroom sucked to e core again
there was no showerhead(jus a pipe sticking out from e wall)
no heater
no toilet roll(on e 1st day of e workshop...was provided later)
and e toilets did not smell too nice

u can imagine bathing at 1am without heater
it was freezing cold and e water jus gushed onto ppl who are showering cos there was no showerhead
we showered everyday at 1-2 am cos we ended like that everyday
it's mad


next day had e 3rd dialogue(The Significance of Cooperation Amongst Asia Pacific Universities in Moulding Quality Graduates for a Globalize World)which was crappy to e limit
2 deans from UM spoke cos none of e scheduled speakers came again
e speakers were unprepared and sounded more like promoting ppl to go n study in UM than to assert any opinion for e topic matter

then we had to prepare for presentation
which happened to be e time in which ppl from my grp found out wad we have done thus far was pretty much nonsense
i got shoved/forced/coerced to presenting e 1st qn
and someone else was forced to present e 2nd qn
e moderator guy volunteered to present e 3rd qn


presentation started at 9pm and ended at 12,30pm
this was e 1st time in my life i did a presentation at 12 midnight
had to greet my audience good morning

i think there's someth drastically/awfully/totally wrong with e way e programs have been scheduled
we shldn't end every day at 1 am plus
it's crazy considering we r supposed to wake up and have breakfast by 8am


e next day i went to kampong lonek(a kampong in negeri smebilan)
spent e whole morning on e bus..reached e destination at 12 plus in e afternoon and we were again shoved/forced/coerced to walk under e sun to take a walk ard e village

e trip turned out to be pretty ok except that it was v hot and e food wasn't v gd
but e non-muslims had to wait for e muslims twice cos they had to pray and we sat ard doing nothing much

i dun think muslims from other countries pray that much,do they?


we had dinner at some R&R station(e pitstops for ppl driving along north-south highway..and obviously good food was impossible to get there)
in e end i skipped dinner and jus drank ice blended chocolate at this pirated starbucks called Shalala cafe
apparently they had nothing to sell except nasi lemak and ice blended chocolate
dunno how ppl do business like that
it was at this time when 4 of us from e same bus got together and started complaining v loudly in e cafe(all 4 of us found nothing that was palatable and jus kept ourselves occupied by complaining non-stop)
ppl from UM heard us
e crew in e cafe were staring at us
but who cares
haha
this was when we formed this grp to rebel against e UM ppl
e working attitude of e crew at Shalala was exactly e same as e ppl from UM(specifically e malays in UM...e chineses in UM were quite kind to us...i dun understand this racist behavior of e UM ppl...if they wan to organise an event like this...no point thinking along racial lines...it shows how narrow-minded you are and it reflects badly on e uni,e country and everyth else)


anyways we then carried on with e bus journey at abt 7 plus and reached putrajaya at 12 midnight(amazing...this is e time ppl visit night safari i think..not for phototaking at e administrative capital)

on e way we were busy complaining loudly on e "ill-treatment" of participants
throughout e whole journey we were treated to Siti Nurhaliza's(famous malaysian singer) MTV
not that many of e ppl on e bus could understand
only e 2 or 3 malays sitting in front wanted to watch that lousy vcd(which had prob playing after being played continuously for many times throughout out journey..started skipping and in e end was turned off--good riddance)

reached putrajaya and had a super-unbelievable experience
was shoved from places to places for photo-taking but there was nothing much to take actually
cos it was too dark and we were too far away from e buildings(roads were sealed for their national day celebration)

in e end we left putrajaya at 1 plus and arrived at UM at 2am(fell asleep on e way)

had KLCC tour on tues
it was better than previous days although it was also v rush
got to have 1.5 pathetic hours to shop at petronas towers
in e end grabbed a top and a jacket without half an hr cos e 1st hr was spent on eating(i had to buy clothes for e closing dinner--din bring enuf clothes cos i though there would be enuf time for me to shop around..according to e original schedule...but by now everyone reading this shld have realised nothing went according to e original plan...i wished i could sue them for deceiving the participants...we were drastically misled)

went to some handicraft centre which no one showed much interest(and we spent more time there then KLCC...we were complaining loudly abt lack of shopping time)
and went to KL tower after that(someth i dreaded cos i have been there twice before just recently)
my 3rd visit was spent on oogling at ppl in swimming pools near e KL tower using e binoculars in e tower..anyways i din start this oogling..forgot who it was but many ppl were doing e same thing... i guess e 5 days of torture so far had turned everyone more pervertic..haha


then returned to UM for closing dinner
e food sucked
i took one mouthful of veg and puked cos it was strong in pesticides smell
din continue eating

anyways i found myself feeling full all e time when i was in KL
i think e food couldn't whet my appetite

took many pics with e other participants cos most ppl were in traditional costumes


and then went out for supper at chinatown area
watched fireworks(released to celebrate national day)
and then returned to UM

e last day in KL was spent shopping
but i could only get a wallet cos we were stuck in e jam for a very long(traffic jam due to high traffic in KL...as it was a public holiday)

then rushed our way back to UM
got out luggage and took a limo back to KLIA

... hereby i conclude my report on my KL tour
all in all it sucked
to quote my fellow participants
"you get what u pay..paying 20USD for 5 nights of accommodation and food means u get 20USD worth of treatrment"
"aspire is totally bullshit"
"aspire sucks"

but someth good came out of it as well
made friends with many ppl cos we bonded together as we braved e bardship

... i felt like i was a POW when i was in KL
no words can describe how glad i am to be back"


Ma-laysia boleh!
A sad tale of the parochialism that often afflicts Singaporean Chinese and Malaysians; assuming language proficiency in another even when it is obvious none exists and refusing to converse in a language both parties understand: yax-471 Here, the first thing people register is your race

"2 pm at Han's diner in the basement of Park Mall. The lunch crowd had not quite dissipated and the staff were still busy. A couple walked in and moved to find their own table, discussing between themselves, in English, whether to take the one on the left or another one further in.

From the guy's accent, I figured he was an American-born Chinese (often acronymed as ABC). There are an increasing number of them in Singapore as we draw more and more professionals from all parts of the world.

The woman seemed to be a Singapore-born Indian or of mixed parentage. Her accent was identifiably Singaporean.

Just as they had decided on the table to their left and were about to sit down, a waitress went up to them.



"Nimen shi liang wei, shi ma?" the server said to the guy. She ignored the woman companion.

"I'm sorry?" ABC said.

"Nimen shi liang wei, zhuo nabien." The waitress pointed to a smaller table with two seats. The table the couple preferred had four.

By her gesture, ABC could guess that she wanted them to sit at the smaller table. "This table is taken?" he asked in his unmistakeable accent.

"Zhuo nabien; nimen shi liang wei."

The couple got up and walked out.

The waitress didn't seem to care. She then turned to another customer, a silver-haired Caucasian man who had been gesturing for service for some time.

"Order already?" she asked him. She’s evidently able to speak English."

***

Hackstadt.com - Exploding Whale

"CONGRATULATIONS!
You have reached the definitive Exploding Whale website on the Internet!"

They have the original video! *throws confetti*

Thursday, September 01, 2005

"My favorite animal is steak." - Fran Lebowitz

Random Playlist Song: Brahms - Symphony No. 4 in e minor, Op. 98 - III. Allegro giocoso

***

More random stuff that lands up in my mailbox:


"asia terror threat

we take seriously french anti-terrorism magistrate jean-louis bruguière's claims that al Qaeda is preparing an attack on an asian financial center. french counterterrorist sources tend to publicly reveal such threats only when their information is particularly well developed and when available countermeasures to prevent the attack and capture the attackers are considered insufficient. there's little use in speculating on the timing of such an attack (other than the obvious 9/11, which would coincide with japan's snap elections), and both the targeting of financial centers and of countries which support the united states are consistent with broader al qaeda strategy. additionally, it is worth noting that the cities explicitly targeted were sydney, singapore, and tokyo--there's no desire on the part of al qaeda leaders to target china (hong kong or the mainland) and to broaden international opposition to their terrorist movement accordingly.

having said that, it is worth reiterating that al qaeda as a broad movement remains considerably less capable of marshalling global resources in a coordinated way than it was prior to the september 11 attacks, the result of a coordinated focus on known and suspected leaders and financial channels. to the extent that there's an exception to this diminution of capacity, it would be in east asia. counterterrorist efforts there are clearly weaker, but the domestic groups that directly aid (or at least help conceal) terrorist cells are also far less in evidence."

***

"Singapore is a dream for every public planner :) It's especially easy to impose e.g. a gas tax, which would require a long and nationwide political process in other countries."

***

Vegetarian furore as Gandhi is used to promote eggs - "Devotees of Mahatma Gandhi, a vegetarian to the point of neurosis, have been engaged in a furious row after the Father of the Indian Nation was chosen as a "brand ambassador" for eggs - a food he never ate... The leaflet quotes from a 1948 article by Gandhi entitled Key to Health in which he challenges the received wisdom among India's strict Brahmins that eggs are "flesh food" and not to be eaten. "In reality, they are not," Gandhi wrote. "Nowadays sterile eggs are also produced. The hen is not allowed to see the cock and yet it lays eggs. A sterile egg never develops into a chick. Therefore, he who can take milk should have no objection to taking sterile eggs.""
This all smacks of a religious dispute.

The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory - ""Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how." "Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God can do whatever He wants.'""

Curiosities from Japan's porno shops. - "As everyone is well aware, Japan is absolutely brimming with bizarre shit, particularly when it comes to adult material. Tentacle rape, bestiality, people shitting on each other... They've got it all. So when I stumbled upon a seven-floor adult superstore, I knew I was going to walk out with some amazingly weird stuff. First, though, there's plenty of pervasive material available right out on the street, before you even make it into a porno store. For example, these delicious-looking treats I found at a market - "Yokohama Bust Pudding""

Church: God Punishing GIs Over Gays - "Members of a church say God is punishing American soldiers for defending a country that harbors gays, and they brought their anti-gay message to the funerals Saturday of two Tennessee soldiers killed in Iraq. The church members were met with scorn from local residents. They chased the church members cars' down a highway, waving flags and screaming "God bless America.""
With all the links on alternate sexuality I post, I wonder if people think I'm gay. Hmm...

Photo Gallery (Tube Stake) - "Claim: Photograph shows bulletin warning London Underground travelers not to run on the platforms or concourses. Status: False... A Customer Service Advisor for the Central line confirmed for us that the bulletin shown in the image was not one actually posted by Transport for London ("I'm pleased to tell you that it's a hoax. Somebody has a very strange sense of humour."). It appears to be a digitally altered version of a genuine photograph of a bulletin which was displayed in a photo gallery on the BBC's web site."
I knew something was up with that picture. Good ole Snopes.
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