"There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers." - William James

***

Stolen GPS leads police to hideout - "When thieves broke into the company's office earlier this month they stole more than $13,000 worth of equipment including a demonstration pack, a laptop computer and a half-dozen in-car navigators... But five days later, a thief plugged the software in which alerted Fleetlink to the precise location of its stolen equipment. "We were fairly confident he was going to be silly enough to plug it in because it looks like something to plug in," said business development manager Murray Griffith."

Prison offers inmates pole-vaulting lessons - "Inmates at the young offenders’ institution are learning how to vault 13ft high bars. But the governor insists that their new skills will not be put to use for escape bids – because the jail walls are 20ft high and topped with razor wire."

Wacky Uses - This is True description: "the site is pretty good: it includes wacky uses for everyday products (who knew Alberto VO5 hair conditioner prevented silver tarnish? And since you used up the bottle, you can use Reddi-wip as a hair conditioner.) There's also a weird facts section ("To this day, the ingredients in Worcestershire Sauce are stirred together and allowed to sit for two years before being bottled.") A fun way to waste an evening."

Men motivated by 'superior wage' - "On receiving a paypacket, how good a man feels depends on how much his colleague earns in comparison, scientists say. Scans reveal that being paid more than a co-worker stimulates the "reward centre" in the male brain."
The study on Harvard students was problematised, but this is yet more evidence confirming the relative wealth theory, which also fits in with Evo Psych.

Why Give to Wikimedia? » Blog Archive » Why Wikipedia Does Not Run Ads - "Read, if you will, through the comments left by our donors: “Giving back to a repository which has given so much to me.”"
HAHAHAHAHA this was my comment

Big Boys Don't Cry -- and Other Myths About Men and Their Emotions: Emotional Intelligence - ""Emotions live in the background of a man's life and the foreground of a woman's," says psychologist Josh Coleman, PhD, author of The Lazy Husband. "Testosterone dampens feelings in men, who compartmentalize and intellectualize more... In 125 studies in various cultures, boys and men were consistently less accurate at interpreting unspoken messages in gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice. Men also react less intensely to emotions -- and forget them faster. In an experiment at Stanford University, photographs of upsetting or traumatic images triggered greater activity in more regions of female brains. Three weeks later the women remembered more detail about the pictures than the men. In similar ways, the researchers speculated, a woman may continue stewing over a tiff or slight her husband has long forgotten... Many men remain confused about how much they can dare to share. "In one breath a woman says she wants us to be emotionally open," says Westover, who is divorced. "In the next she wants us to be her rock. Women are asking us to perform these incredible emotional gymnastics, and it is messing with our heads. Men don't have a road map or a role model to show us how to be both emotional and strong.""

Notorious MDA: The Singapore government raps - "From time to time someone will ask me why I left Singapore for China. This is a fair question. I lived there for nearly a decade, Mrs. Imagethief is Singaporean, and I have great affection for the place. Usually I give some longish explanation about various professional and personal frustrations that were beginning to set in. From now on, however, I'll simply be able to point people at this video on YouTube... It is often remarked that the Chinese government considers the Singapore government a role model for successful technocratic authoritarianism. Whatever the Chinese government learns from Singapore, let us pray that it does not absorb the idea that rapping bureaucrats is a good idea... Unfortunately, a pigeon with a nail through its skull would still have the brain power to predict the inevitable result of this project: a catastrophic piece of self-ridicule that drags out for four-and-a-half painful minutes every reason why government involvement in creative industries is a disaster. And why Singapore's media industry is, like the site of a bad plane crash, so much lifeless wreckage."

Asian media vows to make western media cry - "On average Asian media suck. Especially news media... I blame government. Governments, by and large, should not involve themselves in media. But Asia's governments cannot, for the life of them, keep their grubby mitts off the media. And damned if they don't have a near mystical talent for boiling the life out of it... too much government involvement and you get soul-destroying headlines like... Well, just for fun, let's see what the top story on the Straits Times website is right now... Good gosh, two government headlines in a row. And this is typical. Back in Singapore we used to joke about what the above-the-fold government headline of the day would be... This story is rewritten across the region. As long as Asian governments manage their news, censor their films, and interfere explicitly in culture then their newspapers will be treated as propaganda, their most talented artists will flee overseas and their people will wolf-down tawdry but lively foreign culture... 'Delegates of Asian media attending the BFA conference reached the consensus that Asian media should shoulder a responsibility for broadcasting "a harmonious Asia" with "a harmonious Asian image" and provide a value of "harmonious region" to tell the world a real Asia.'"
In comments: "Having just moved to Singapore from Beijing I looked forward to a good English language daily. I am still looking forward to a good English language daily. Straits Times is a curious paper. Heavy on pages but light on content. It is at most a 20 minuted read - a record perhaps for a paper in four or five sections. The Forum stands alone for sheer numbness. It makes China Daily's 'Odd News" look good. A colleague of mine came to visit from Europe and was obsessed by the ridiculousness of this page and as far as I know she still checks it out online and distributes it to fiends... no mention of Singapore media can pass by without honouring Mediacorp. It would take too long to give proper critique of this multi-stationed entity but let me just say, thank god for cable. nd if anyone doubts me, take the chance to catch up with one of Mediacorp's latest high rating hits The Peak (I think you can view it online). A passionate drama set in the exciting world of, wait for it, keppel fels shipyard! It has to be seen to be believed."

Materialistic Singaporeans - "A new China immigrant from Shenzhen recently wrote on the Internet of his five-month stay here, and of his shock at finding a Singapore so vastly different from the “nice” place he had heard about. “Everyone here seems to be crazy about money. “Why is this happening here? Back in China, we are also concerned about money, but not like this; every other thing is about money here,” he commented. “In the office, people are always talking about 4-D, en bloc property, shares or higher salaries. There was also an idiot who blew S$2,000 on a soccer match last week. That’s a lot of money to lose in a single day. “I know of two girls in my office who moonlight as insurance agents and sleep around with clients. All that for money.”"

Children say money can't buy happiness - "A new report shows wealth plays no part in making adolescents happy. Instead, the overwhelming influence on children's emotional state was the age of the child and its sex. Put simply: the older a teenager gets, the more miserable he or she becomes. And girls are a lot more miserable than boys... A loving, large family contributes most to adolescent bliss. Boys were happiest when their fathers were unemployed and stuck at home for company - an indication that poverty does not always mean unhappiness. But that was offset by a slight swing in favour of two-parent households. An only child tends to be less happy."