"A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat." - Katharine Whitehorn

***

Quotes:

Plato was very worried about the Sophists. Going around teaching people how to win arguments, how to be persuasive. Kind of like the Writing Program here.

The PAP has been very good at presenting crises in a certain kind of way. Crises and electoral prospects.

Out of the frying pan, into the boiling pot. Something like that. Or the other way round, whatever.

[Student: Can you not write on the whiteboard? Write on [a OHT on] the visualiser.] You cannot see? I see. *laughs from audience*

Don't be afraid of formula. It's easy to use formulas. (formulas)

[On reduction mammoplasty] You should go. [Me: You're just jealous right] You should go, then transplant the fats to me. Actually I don't need your fats. Just take from here. *grabs alleged lovehandles*

[On collusion] They just agree in the restaurant: 'You produce this'. The judge will say: 'You did it' 'It's a joke'. (It was)

[On the Prisoner's Dilemma] Half of economics is in the table I gave you. [The] Other half is [the] Battle of [the] Sexes. I think.

[On punishment for defection] Here, punishment will be eternal. You know, like the hell. (hell)

[On punishment and discounting] I came here, the taxi driver said 'HDB - 99 years. I want forever'... In Europe, 10 years is a lot... This taxi driver values the future a lot. You can punish him.

One country quite fastly developed (developed quite quickly)

who lee sale price (whole)

You know [a] monopoly is bad. What is worse than [a] monopoly? A chain of monopolies. *laughs from audience*

Now, what we will do is - if I can find my transparency. Where is it? [Student sotto voce: Hope you don't find {it}]

That's it for this topic. Now we go on to next week's lecture. You all should be forward-looking. Rational expectations.

Google is offering free gore'may food to its employees... Increase efficiency... NUS should do that too.

I'm an exchange student. Bangkok counts as a module for me.

[On televised parliament in 1985] Our newspapers merely string press releases from the various ministries together... until JBJ

[On a profile of Sylvia Lim in a magazine] Quite horrible. She was wearing a red, very revealing dress, about to sing jazz.

Low Thia Khiang is known to be a very constituency focused MP. Every funeral wake, he will be there. Every Hungry Ghosts Festival

[On gossip] Life is already so boring here. Let's be positive. [Me: Positive meh] There's more to bitch about.

[On why firms don't exit the industry even though they earn 0 profit] It's an agreement in Economics. If it's 0 [profit], he will participate... It is better to be active... There is a small utility to being active, so he will participate

I know Singapore is an economy which follows the rules.

The PAP racialises Singaporeans to such an extent that it is hard for us to think of ourselves as anything other than a member of a racial class.

If you want to become a PAP candidate, you don't join the PAP. You do well in your profession... People who join YPAP [Young PAP], thinking they're going to become PAP MPs - Oh God.

You only get power when you're invited to join the Cabinet... MPs are virtually powerless in Singapore. Some of the top civil servants are more powerful than MPs... Very often the Executive is checked by backbench MPs. In other more well-adjusted democracies.

[Student: He's pretty much the one who gave birth to Singapore.] Not gave birth. More like impregnated.

That became a founding moment. The croco- Oops. The tears... Became an iconic moment... [Student: In another class, we found out the video was only released in the 1990s]

Before he became Prime Minister, he has an image problem. 'This guy is genetically programmed to be a dictator! He has that *** laugh'... The PR machine goes into overdrive.

It's a very strange idea of stability. Not coups or revolutions. If a new party comes into power through elections, it's instability.

It tried very hard to criminalise the Opposition. '30 years ago, they cheated 10 cents on tax'. They have files on everyone, it seems.

[On closets waiting to be unlocked for deviance] We all have skeletons. *** probably has the most... How do you get so powerful without having skeletons?

New modes of expressing dissent. Humour and satire. The *** cannot deal with humour and satire... How do you deal with mighty and pompous people? You laugh at them... In court: ''What did you mean by '*** ***'?'' They look ludicrous... Technocrats defining what humour is.

There's a lot of hidden economics behind the mathematics.

Are you religious? [Me: No] Me too... Is your family religious?... It's hard for me, because they're Muslim... I don't tell them. I don't want to get blown up.

Are the people in your class morons?... The quality is going down. [Me: It was when they all started speaking Chinese]... Nowadays the [USP] students... I was in the Writing Centre. They were all chattering in Chinese.

Is it ner'sair'sur'ree? (necessary)

[On International Financial Regulation] The first country to put itself up for assessment was Canada, because I designed the system.

Regulation is really interesting. It's tough, it's stressful, but it's also fun.

sai'mulating market failure (simulating)

ASEAN is a talk shop, not an action shop... You cannot open up 100% to foreign banks unless your banking system [is non-existent], unless you're really weak. Unless you're Mexico- Mexico completely screwed up its banking system... *To someone who asked a question* Are you from Mexico? I already offended ASEAN.

[On microcredit] If you want to continue to enjoy all the oligopolistic privileges we give you... We won't legislate... But we want you to do it. If you don't do it, wait and see what happens. Moral suasion is a very powerful tool.

50% of Canadians thought deposit insurance covered unit trusts... We did a 2 month comparison [after a campaign]. Saturation... We did another survey. 48% of Canadians thought [so now]. 2%. Saturation advertising.

"To make dynamic economic models complete, various expectational formulas have been used. There is, however, little evidence to suggest that the presumed relations bear a resemblance to the way the economy works." - John Muth

Very good. So his infinite moving average of present and past disturbance terms with the coefficients being pi-i-s is also rubbish.

p = p bar + П0w + П1w-1 + П2w-2 + П3w-3 + П4w-4 + ...

MFTTW: "they are trying to forecast a stochastic process?
hahahaha"

"Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?" - Kelvin Throop III

"Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying." - Ronald Reagan

***

u r wt u wr:

- "juicy cherry"
- "I can please only one person per day"
- "Two boyfriends are better than one"
- "My sexual preference is often" (Contributed)
- "Tropical carnival" across the boobs and on the back "everybody needs to have some freedom" (Contributed by MFTTW - "tropical carnival on the boobs lah. i don't know what the back has to do with the front. it was a random shirt. you had to see it to appreciate it. [the carnival is for you to suck on them] nevermind lah. very abstract. hur hur. worn by prc leh]

Seen at a bazaar stall:
- 'I (Heart) Law Students'
- 'I've lost my telephone number, can I have yours?' (Isn't this usually a guy's pickup line?!)
- 'Treat me like an angel and I'll be your devil'

Second-hand clothes sale:
- [Topman 'S' top] 'Show me your tits and I'll show you mine'

I was observing that I wasn't seeing very few potential "u r wt u wr" tops as compared last semester, and someone claimed they were out of fasion. Damn, I thought my campaign was working. In any case I have since sighted many more examples.


I think I will expand "u r wt u wr" to contain all fashion observations.

I saw someone with a shawl so big that it covered everything she was wearing, at least from a frontal view. Only looking from the back could I saw her miniskirt (I wanted to set up a series of gradations, but couldn't decide where 'mini' fell in the scale between deci, centi, milli and micro - the same could be done for hot shorts).

Frigid Girl claimed that she saw a lot of what she called 'Superman' girls - those who wore spaghetti straps on top of other more substantial clothing. In Week 4 though, I only saw 3 of them the whole week (and one was okay because the outside was big and the inside was small). At first I thought it was just Economics and USP students, but then I took a walk through Business and Arts and I didn't see anyone (SACSAL or otherwise) in such garb. New Media girls must be really weird.

I notice a lot of people wearing black leggings below dresses with belts making the waists well-defined. Maybe they're afraid of being upskirted - you know, with the ubiquity of high-tech phones nowadays. Or maybe it's to make legs look less lanky.

[Addendum:

Someone: eh btw your latest post shows us how "out" of fashion trends you are

the "i heart law students" shirt was from last season's abercrombie tshirt collection but chances are the one you saw was prob fake
cos it's friggin expensive to ship the bloody thing here or i would have bought it
i think all in all to ship the shirt here i would have paid $40+ bucks

what else?
superman girls are in
it's caled "layering" and it's been in for a yr or so now
i refuse to do it cos i'm fat, so piling on layers will make me look fatter

and they're called black "footless tights"
very in also, but not possible for ppl with fat legs like mine
and no it's not cos they're scared of being up-skirted

personally i hate footless tights, which was why i declared myself a fashion hermit a while back until they go out of fashion
skinny jeans are in too

basically the SACSALs are rejoicing
fashion that used to flatter curvy women are now out of fashion
so women with no boobs and no ass having been rejoicing for the past yr or so

which is also why i'm calling a fashion time-out for myself]

I hate Macs

"Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark - unless you have been doing that, you surely can't have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. While I don't have anything against shameless promotion per se (after all, within these very brackets I'm promoting my own BBC4 show, which starts tonight at 10pm), there is something infuriating about this particular blitz. In the ads, Webb plays a Mac while Mitchell adopts the mantle of a PC. We know this because they say so right at the start of the ad.

"Hello, I'm a Mac," says Webb.

"And I'm a PC," adds Mitchell.

They then perform a small comic vignette aimed at highlighting the differences between the two computers. So in one, the PC has a "nasty virus" that makes him sneeze like a plague victim; in another, he keeps freezing up and having to reboot. This is a subtle way of saying PCs are unreliable. Mitchell, incidentally, is wearing a nerdy, conservative suit throughout, while Webb is dressed in laid-back contemporary casual wear. This is a subtle way of saying Macs are cool.

The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign - the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show - probably the best sitcom of the past five years - in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, "PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers." In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, "I hate Macs", and then I think, "Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?" Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because "they are just better". Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul - that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.

Aside from crowing about sartorial differences, the adverts also make a big deal about PCs being associated with "work stuff" (Boo! Offices! Boo!), as opposed to Macs, which are apparently better at "fun stuff". How insecure is that? And how inaccurate? Better at "fun stuff", my arse. The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal "adventure" in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-'em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac's relationship with "fun".

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. Of course, that hasn't stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that's what we PC owners are like - unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you'll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming."

***

Comments on the site:

"I have some news for ihatecharlie. I work in a place where all the computers are new or new-ish Macs, and every one of the creatures freezes at least twice a week. The IT nerds have ruled out every potential cause they can think of, except the most obvious - Macs are rubbish."

"Haha - a very funny article, and pretty well spot on. Oh hang on, I'm using a Mac - oh well, still funny."

"I do love these anti-Mac troll articles. Not because they bring out the ‘smug self satisfied Mac users’ but because of the high level of intellectual debate such articles produce... possession of a Mac must bring with it social cachet, and the envy of PC users everywhere. “Real men use PCs: the Apple Mac as sexual signifier”. Hmm. There’s a PhD thesis in there somewhere."

"I see this is another well researched, well informed and totally accurate Guardian article!! Well Done! PS. For the Guardian readers out there, I was being sarcastic!"

"Mac users have virtually no sense of humor, and often appear to be the most anally retentive of boring nerds, though mercifully there are some exceptions. PC's play games, write documents and surf the net. They crash infrequently (my laptop running XP hasn't crashed for a year)and much more importantly do not attract tossers at a rate of knots... "

"The only real difference between Macs and PCs I can see? When Macs crash, they're (sometimes) a little more entertaining to gaze at while they're rebooting with their beveled edges and shiny surfaces after having crashed and fallen completely arse over tit right smack bang in the middle of a Pro Tools session."


My Little Bird: "it's like getting a girlfriend - the prettier she is, the more blind lemmings are going to queue up wanting to date her even if she has the heart of a praying mantis."

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde

***

A reply to an email I got:

>anyhow, i think it's sad if everything becomes a la carte. (was watching down with
>love last night. borrowed the phrase... if anything, the institution of marriage
>gives meaning to the essentially meaningless human relationships abound which i'm
>quite sure a lot of us are looking for.

Relationships do not have to be given meaning by institutions. I believe they can and are valuable in and of themselves (because not everyone looks for meaningless relationships), without needing to be vindicated by external forces. If your relationship was already meaningless prior to marriage, why should legal and social sanction replace what is lacking between you and your partner?

Marriage is an archaic institution which has outlived its time. It was conceptualized for an era where household conveniences, dry cleaners and fast food (for the men) didn't exist, women were poor, weak and needed protection, contraception/abortion didn't exist and as a stable framework for bringing up children. Some might bring up free sex, but prostitution is after all the world's second-oldest profession (the witch doctor being the oldest), and men value sexual novelty which you don't get in marriage. Now women can work and have legal protection and men have washing machines, so you really only need to get married to provide a child 18 years of family stability and a dual-parent environment, and that's not an issue if you don't intend to have children (which is another essay).

In today's society, we all live much longer than we would have millennia ago. You've heard of the Seven Year Itch. Now imagine a few decades with the same person. It's difficult enough to predict what pair of shoes you want to wear next week. Now imagine predicting your feelings over a period of 4 decades (assuming marriage in your late 20s and dying in your late 60s), and at a relatively young and immature age too (ie Late 20s).

As you know, our mutual acquaintance realized after about 8 years of marriage that she didn't want to be with her husband anymore: "The heart has reasons that reason cannot know". How many couples do you think still love each other after decades of marriage? Divorce rates are going up; it is fashionable to attribute this to immorality and immaturity among the young, but why should you stay chained to someone if you realize you don't want to be with them anymore? Far worse, I think, to be stuck in a loveless marriage for years, or even decades, unwilling to part because of fears about peer pressure and gossip. A related problem I have more sympathy for is the problem of finding someone else, if that is one's desire ("Sad my lot and sorry, What shall I do? I cannot live alone!" - Sir Joseph, HMS Pinafore, ie The fear of loneliness), but that segues into my unemployment theory of relationships which is another essay.

Commitment is another red herring often thrown up by defenders of marriage. But then signing a piece of paper does not true commitment entail. Indeed, I would argue that entering into a formal marriage contract shows a lack of commitment - if you lock someone in a room and he has to break the door down in order to escape, and he doesn't, does this show more or less commitment than if you put someone in a room and the door is open for him to walk out of, but he doesn't? A prisoner with a ball chained to his leg is not more committed than the inmate who gets to roam the yard freely. Quite the contrary, really.

Another problem with marriage is that it is romanticised. Some girls don't have a concept of marriage or wedded life but they have a *highly* detailed concept of their wedding. The guests, dress, flowers, music, decor, places they want to go take photos et al. A few have even planned their wedded lives down to what house they want and how many kids they want and what to name them. We (girls especially) have been socialized into deifying marriage and thinking it will somehow cast a golden halo over our lives, but life still goes on. You have to pay the bills, your partner still snores and you still suffer from heartburn after eating bak chor mee.

This is not to say that there is no place for romantic partnerships. There is ample space for these within the institution of cohabitation. Some are suspicious what advantages it would have over marriage. Cohabitation lacks legal sanction, there is freedom of entry and exit, there is no (less?) Romanticisation about lifelong partnership and True Love and it is a more accurate way of showing commitment, if that is valued.

I wanted to slip in something about how not having pre-marital sex is being irresponsible, but it's not that relevant so I'll do it another day.

Basically, marriage should be deromanticised and cohabitation destigmatised. The only scenario I can see marriage having a place in modern society is in the context of child-rearing.

(This post has been edited in minor ways since I sent the email. The thesis statement is, nonetheless, unchanged)

***

Someone: sex is a way to build intimacy. not for mere selfish pleasure

Me: why do you need marriage for that

Someone: because other means of intimacy are not that deep enough?
seriously i get put off by girlfriends who don't want to get married

Me: what is it about marriage that is so special?
when you kiss the bride does tinkerbell shower you with pixie dust?

Someone: just havng a close relationship with someone who loves you and whom you love
someone of the opposite sex

Me: break out of feminine irrationality
what is it about marriage that you can't get in other relationships?

Someone: to be able to serve and have sex with a man who loves you?
i can't do that to my dad/bro. That'll be incest.

Me: sigh
nevermind

Someone: marriage has a beauty in itself

Me: that's because you've been socialized into believing that

Someone: i don't think so
even if my parents quarrel, they still manage to work things out

Me: what is it about marriage that makes them "work things out"?

Someone: committment and love
that is beyound the surface

Me: which you don't need marriage for

Someone: yes you need marriage for that
we human being are too temperamental and selfish

Me: what does marriage have to do with that
nothing.

Someone: yes
it teaches you to sacrifice yourself

Me: why can't you have that in a normal relationship?

Someone: it's not protected
no promise, no vows

Me: but people sacrifice themselves outside of marriage
you're just blandly asserting that it is impossible outside of marriage. but it is. and it has happened.

so you say that humans need to be forced to love each other
if that's the case then isn't it a sham?

Someone: love is in itself also a deliberate act

Me: but you just said that marriage teaches you to love because it shackles you

in that case isn't it giving you false consciousness?
so basically marriage is a tool to fool and manipulate people into "loving" each other

Someone: no it's not
it is to make sure that people follow thier vows
that they had love and intended to love, they should continue to love now

Me: so it's to oppress people
and socialize them into a form of social and institutional hegemony

Someone: sort or, you can say that
else, let our animalistic nature oppress us?

Me: "It is one thing to say that I know what is good for X, while he himself does not; and even to ignore his wishes for its – and his – sake; and a very different one to say that he has eo ipso chosen it, not indeed consciously, not as he seems in everyday life, but in his role as a rational self which his empirical self may not know – the ‘real’ self which discerns the good, and cannot help choosing it once it is revealed. This monstrous impersonation, which consists in equating what X would choose if he were something he is not, or at least not yet, with what X actually seeks and chooses, is at the heart of all political theories of self-realization. It is one thing to say that I may be coerced for my own good, which I am too blind to see: this may, on occasion, be for my benefit; indeed it may enlarge the scope of my liberty. It is another to say that if it is my good, then I am not being coerced, for I have willed it, whether I know this or not, and am free (or ‘truly’ free) even while my poor earthly body and foolish mind bitterly reject it, and struggle with the greatest desperation against those who seek, however benevolently, to impose it."

I made some pork and red wine stew (adapted from Beef and Red-Wine Stew). Unfortunately I put too much wine. As usual.

MFTTW once claimed "There's no such thing as too much wine" (she now claims she never said that - she meant for drinking, not cooking, so maybe she was drunk when she told me that in the context of my first stew containing wine), but I think that besides the prohibitive cost of wine here, the flavour of the wine was too strong (ie Unsubtle) and it was a little sour when combined with the tomatoes. It didn't help that I forgot to put in any chicken stock, and had to substitute with chicken powder.

I also boiled it down too much. As usual.

The perils of not following recipes when your agaration skills are off (I remember my first carbonara, ugh).


Someone: is tat where u channel ur sexual energy to?
cooking?

"Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows." - David T. Wolf

***

Due to a lack of time (horror, imagine that) I will not blog about the SPI field trip, but in summary we heard a lot of dodgy theories (the guide claimed the reason why schools and army camps have lots of ghost stories is because the congregation of positive energies from people in the day attracts the spirits but they're too afraid of these energies to manifest, but when people go home they appear - someone pointed out that if that's the case shopping centres would be very haunted) and questionable stories (my favourite is how a lamp post fell on someone the day after he kicked and mounted the 2 stone lions outside this dilapidated red house in Pasir Ris - I wanted to abuse the lions with a fellow skeptic but he chickened out) but didn't see anything (supposedly because the positive energies from big groups drive them away, but really it's just a psychological phenomenon).

On the ground floor, I went into a lift where the buttons for level 4 and 6 were already pressed. I then pressed the button for level 3. A girl came in and pressed the buttons for levels 2, 5 and 7, which meant that all buttons from 2-7 were pressed. When the lift stopped at level 2, all the buttons reset. It must be some system to protect against idiots. They really need to install this in other lifts - I have been in a lift where the buttons for levels 2-24 were all pressed. It was assuredly an un-fun experience.

We had an ingenious introduction to Rawls where we took the identity of various people who would either support or be discriminated against by HDB policies, and then we shed our prior identities and debated on the assumption that we could be any of the identities formerly assumed by anyone.

The PGP waffle shop had a stall at a bazaar, so I got to try it. I was suspicious of the so-called maple syrup waffle selling for $1.40 (it's almost impossible to get maple syrup here), so I asked to look at the bottle of maple syrup. Sure enough, it was maple flavoured syrup. Nonetheless, I bought one, but the syrup flowed to the bottom of the paper bag. Gah. I don't know why the SACSALs flocked to the lousy waffle stall upstairs set up by the same culprits who sold the worst waffles in the world in the Arts Canteen (and still sell it at their temporary stall), ignoring this stall. Maybe they like their waffles limp and soggy (Clarification: They are soggy even when fresh. Wth). And now they're even smaller (the batter not even filling the whole pan), and someone bought one which was undercooked.

Since Economics in NUS is a pseudo-Science, it's a good group to look at when investigating questions about the Arts/Science student divide. Among other things, it nullifies the dress code theory of differences.

I think I learnt more about Economics in JC than I have so far or will in the next 2 1/2 semesters in University. Having done F Maths is much more helpful for doing Economics here than having done A level Economics. In part this is because we're very theoretical, but more importantly Economics at the post-graduate level is Applied Mathematics, and here at the Premier Institution of Social Engineering we take pride in teaching undergraduates post-graduate material (both the textbooks I'm using for my Honours core modules are post-graduate textbooks; a friend who did Graduate Macroeconomics said it was easier than Honours Macro, since many of them hadn't done our type of Honours Macro before).

Chris Lydgate's Lee's Law is in the Singapore-Malaysia collection, heh. Maybe the presence of such seditious books in there is why none of the material is supposed to be brought outside the room.

I got an idea for a business plan - summarise readings for people. Unfortunately, the problem of copyright infringement comes up, but maybe seminars on said readings can also be conducted to add value (and we can also trust in the honesty of NUS students, hurr hurr).

A Year 1 friend commented that people in NUS judge you by your vital statistic.

"Ads by Google: Singapore Xiaxue, Singapore Brown, Singapore Miyagi"

Naturally, none of them are related to Xiaxue, Brown or Miyagi.

"For many years, our institution ran a therapeutic community program for violent offenders that was thought to be especially effective for psychopaths...

Among nonpsychopaths, there was a significant negative association between participation and violent recidivism, while among psychopaths the association was significantly positive. The data suggested that the ''treatment'' made the psychopaths more dangerous. Morever, even though they behaved much worse than nonpsychopaths during therapy, psychopaths were just as successful at convincing the clinicians to recommend them for discharge and to give them leadership roles in the program...

It seemed that both psychopaths and non-psychopaths in the therapeutic community learned how to perceive the feelings of others, take the perspective of others, and delay gratification, but the psychopaths used these new abilities to facilitate the manipulation and exploitation of others."

--- The Construct of Psychopathy, Grant T. Harris; Tracey A. Skilling; Marnie E. Rice (2001)

About the NUS Architecture Course



"Admission Requirements

The general requirements for admission to the rational University of Singapore are:"


Credits for bringing it to my notice: miss taupok

"One thing they all share is the problem of illicit distribution, a problem inherently greater than faced by those who ran booze during national prohibition in the 1920s.

Despite the well-publicized 400-plus gangland killings in Al Capone's Chicago, the dize of bulky beer trucks and the permanent location of saloons made territorial monopoly and cooperation the norm. The result in most American cities during Prohibition was that competition was usually eliminated quickly and permanently, and a relative peace then normally reigned. But drugs, in contrast, are marketed in expensive little packets that may be sold individually on any street corner, a simple fact that continually tempts small-scale enterprisers to break existing rules. So long as drugs remain illegal - and in this country no end to their prohibition is in sight - then lethal arguments about individual transactions and territory will tend to push up murder rates.

Observers have been complaining about the effect of the media on criminal violence for nearly two centuries... Puritan ministers loved public hangings as opportunities to warn bystanders about original sin and the seventeenth-century equivalents of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.) But by the late eighteeneth century, free enterprise... [produced material] in which the exploits of criminals were romanticized or ''the system'' blamed for mistakenly condemning or even framing them... Moralists decried all of them and their effect on leading impressionable youth to commit violent crimes.

The problem with this outcry against the media is, however, that during most of the nineteenth century, while literacy and the mass market expanded, murder rates were declining. The same held early in the twentieth century, when the new ''movies'', featuring Tom Mix and shoot-'em'up westerns, were also subjects of pious disapproval...

Sociology... has tended to idealize life in small village communities and given us reasons for associating urban growth with crime... it must be recognised that this is historically a new development... cities for most of their history have usually helped in various ways literally to ''civilize'' their inhabitants. it has already been noted that medieval London was more peaceful than the English countryside... only old folks, and historians, remember that as late as the 1950s the Big Apple itself, New York City, had lower homicide rates than the national average...

[Despite the Second Amendment in 1791] White-on-white homicide rates remained quite low in the colonies and for several decades after independence. Not only were such killings relatively rare, but firearms did not figure very heavily in them. The simple fact is that neither the muzzle-loading muskets nor the cumbersome single-shot dragoon nor the dueling pistols of the era were well suited as murder weapons. However valuable as military or hunting weapons, they were expensive, hard to use, and rarely as close to hand as ax, knife, brick, or hoe when sudden anger flared. The revolution in civilian use of firearms began only with Samuel Colt's 1832 invention of the revolved: small, cheap, and easily hidden. By no coincidence, it was only when these deadly little weapons became widely available, beginning in the 1840s, that white-on-white homicide rates really rose and rates in places like New York began to soar above those for Liverbool and stayed there... The effect of revolvers on urban riots has already been noted; even more important was, and is, their effect on abrasive everyday human interactions; a man on a barstool or in a traffic jam with a hidden gun is a kind of booby trap, liable to explode without warning if bumped the wrong way...

Men and women who argue in bedrooms and kitchens, motorists in the grip of ''road rage,'' street kids dissed by peers and rivals would, in the absence of guns, perhaps indulge in drunken pushing matches, regretted or forgotten the next morning...

Yet there is some truth to the famous argument of the National Rifle Association... Even if all the gun killings were subtracted from our national totals... we would still have murder rates close to three times theirs. There is something in the American people that makes us more homicidal than the English or the French, even if we must resort to knives, fists, feet, teeth, and bricks...

For years, American historians tended to explain everything different about us in terms of this frontier experience, a thesis that remained popular for generations because we wanted to believe it... The only problem with this argument is that it simply does the fit the historical evidence...

A look at the map of American homicide shows little correspondence with the date when a given state or territory was founded, the nature of its experience with the Indians, or is later history of lethal violence. Minnesota was the site of the biggest Indian massacres in our history, South Dakota of the last encampments of Colonel George Armstrong Custer, and later of Sitting Bull; neither state has been much noted afterward for murderous behavior. New Orleans, in contrast, one of the oldest cities in the nation, and in some ways the most civilized, is now the most violent.

What the map does show is not the western but the southern wellsprings of American homicide... What applied most especially to dealings with slaves came to be applied to dealings with all others. And the value placed on reputation helped to foster what social anthropologists have called a ''culture of honor,'' in which a man's worth is measured by what others think of him, and how others behave toward him.

In a naturally violent society, the insistence on male ''honor'' comes easily to mean that what seems a trivial slight to outsiders must be answered immediately, physically if necessary... it may be contrasted, too, with the simple lesson that our others tried to teach us in order to keep us safe from schoolyard bullies: ''Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.''

Most of us eventually listen to our mothers, grow up and get married, or otherwise learn to somehow avoid dangerous confrontations over trifles. What distinguished the South was that the ''code of honor'' was... endorsed and exemplified by community leaders, settled men, statesmen...

An admiration for ''toughness'' has long been institutionalized in American law. In Great Britain, before a man may claim he has killed in ''self-defense,'' he has a ''duty to retreat'' in the face of another's aggression until his back is literally to the wall. In many jurisdictions in the United States there is no such legal duty, and in the popular imagination such retreat is easily confused with cowardice."

--- Murder in America: A Historian's Perspective, Roger Lane (1999)

New items to add to last July's NKF post:
- [It] had a pristine, clean and pure image until people started investigating it, whereupon untold tales of iniquity suddenly came to light.
- though selling goods at a profit, [it] claimed it was a 'subsidy' since they were sold at below market rate

It's very annoying eating if you don't tie up your hair. Maybe this is one reason why girls take forever to eat.

Someone tells me that one reason you can get cramps is when the blood clots. So this is another reason to use tampons, since they stop the blood further up before it can clot.

Seen: "If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us."

To add on to the thing about girls in Hong Kong, the new line is: Someone said that if you think Singaporean girls are materialistic, anorexic, overdress, bitchy, emotional, fond of drama and sexist, it's even worse in Hong Kong. Over there, there's no such thing as going Dutch - the guy always pays. You might as well pay upfront and get something, right? Hurr hurr.

"By the way, I LOVE your stance on the Mac people - I'm a PC user (albeit one running Ubuntu Linux), and I agree, Apple followers are loyal to the point of brainwashing. For example, here's a typical conversation I've had with an iPod user:

"So, how do you like your iPod?"
"Oh, I love it!"
"Great. So how long have you had it?"
"Oh, well, I just got this one - it's my fourth one."
"Eh? What happened to all the others? They get stolen?"
"No, they all broke. But this one is so much cooler!"

Apple takes planned obsolescence to a whole new level and laughs at you while they're doing it."

"When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest." - William Hazlitt

***

"The history of economics comprises increasingly sophisticated observations of people's choices in markets and theoretical models suggested by these observations" - George Ainslie, Emotion: the gaping hole in economic theory. This is the best description I've seen yet.

Economic models must be tractable not only because you must get nice results, but because economists aren't that good at maths.

Also seen: "watch boys turn into men as they enlist into the army - naw, not really, just hulking chauvinists and despos"

I'm told that City Harvest cell groups have an offering session (donation drive) when they meet - they cull cash from you not just once but twice a week. Enming was really inspired when he called it Cash Harvest Cult.

I just found out that we learnt Hegelian Dialectic in S paper Economics (Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis). Wth.

The McDonalds Prosperity Burger is hotter than Long Beach Black Pepper crab. Wth.

So far, reaction to the "RK House - No Pork" pseudo-video has fallen into 2 broad categories: those predictably jumping on the "racism" bandwagon and expressing outrage and those who think it's very funny (personally I find it stupid, but not offensive). Those with more serious blogs mostly fall into the former category, and the more light-hearted blogs belong to the latter.

Sample: Singapore Angle, Xiaxue comments box, Singapore Patriot, Hear ye! Hear ye!, 我的心聲---留住記憶，分享回憶 - not funny, Wan's Site, Sakura-Sake 3.9 Feat. HAMASAKI AYUMI :: Secret, various people on Young Republic

But then, someone who frequents RK Eating House comments: "that RK video..all bullshit la! its funny but got no such person there who talks like that.. All fake one. All stage themselves. That RK eating house is in serangoon gardens there..i got go there eat so many times.. no pork la.. but there's no such person working there who talks like that.. I find it really really lame. LOL.", and one comment in Xiaxue's comments box is: "dat recording was done by my bf and his grp of frenz at the "indian" guy's house...but actually the ah neh is a chi...haha"

Amid all the furore, what is forgotten is that there's actually a Part 1, made by the same jokers. In Part 1 they go to some coffeeshop and disturb an Ah Beng waiter. Some choice bits (despite my near non-existent knowledge of dialect): asking for free samples of kopi peng, asking if the tea leaves in teh peng come from Cameron Highlands (and if they're ISO-certified), asking if they buy their Horlicks powder from NTUC, and ordering first teh peng, milo peng, horlicks peng and then changing it to some impossible order (ice kosong or something)

Essentially, the mode of amusement is the same - guai lan-ing someone, except that there's no religious element here. But since the guy's not Indian (Muslim?), no one says anything.

If you want to put anyone in jail under the Sedition Act, you should target the thousands who laughed at it rather than those who made it, since at least the latter were consistent in their attempts at humour. In other words, the people who made it did an Ah Beng version so they weren't targetting Muslims in general, but the people who laughed at it didn't laugh at the Ah Beng version, and therefore they're racist!!!11~OMGWTHBBQ!!~!

If Sacha Baron Cohen pretends to be anti-Semitic, he's a brilliant satirist.
If a non-Jew pretends to be anti-Semitic, he's racist and supports the Holocaust.

Damn, we need some Jewish comedians over here. Or at least a black guy - except that he'd be able to insult everyone except Jews.

[Addendum: The two jokers only asked the fake waiter for pork - they didn't throw it at him, force him to eat it or smear him with lard. The fact that so many Malays are waiters in Haram establishments suggests that there might be nothing inherently offensive about *serving* pork - one might compare it to driving a vehicle in which non-Halal materials travel.]


guojun: If they wanted to charge people for breaching the Sedition Act, they can go into any SAF camp and detain almost everyone.

Aaron, it is terrifying to be a minority - i am the sole Singaporean in my part of germany. But being the minority means being able, even forced, to go out, to see more, and to be more tolerant. I have endured jokes against me too by schoolchildren who didn’t know better.

So what was i going to do - charge them under the sedition act? I laughed it off, and joked with them. Intolerance only goes so far, and sometimes it is wiser and more gracious to take things with a pinch of salt.


got pork: i’m muslim and i’m not at all offended. People really need to have a sense of humour and stop acting like some self-righteous guardians of this and that.

lbandit: Looking (or rather listening) through the No Pok video, i truly could not detect any hint of racism. At most, i would say the video was about public mischief rather than racism. Gerald claims that the video was extremely insensitive to Indians and Muslims and downright racist. Mildly insensitive, perhaps. But racism? Seems like racism is invoked to make things sound more serious than it actually is.


As quoted about racism in Slavery: It couldn’t happen during my time 30+ years ago. We would not shoot each other but the muds from mudland.

We all made racist jokes in good humour and all laugh it off in good humour. Everyone understood that it wasn’t meant to be racist.

I remember my indian friends calling me cina kui or ah tee ah at times and I called them bayii, bangali, tambi, mamak but I don’t remember calling any keling. Malays were called mud. We poked fun at the bayii for their reputed tua kee. We poked fun at a short chinese for being well endowed “small boy big cock”. Even the bayii envied him, first time he saw in toilet, he exclaimed “wah lau! BIG FAT WORM!”. We openly envied the bayii for not having to wear that heavy stell helmet, the indians for not requiring to put on night camouflage. We always reminded them not to show their teeth during night training. Everyone laughed when one bayii sang “bengali one so long, mat salleh one so strong, melayu kenna potong, cina one macham sotong”.


Scott Adams: I decide when it’s time to move some group of people off the “protected list” and onto the firing range with the other legitimate humor targets. If I jump the gun, all hell breaks loose because it looks as if I’m kicking the weak. But if I time it right, it signals an important step in our collective enlightenment about the value of our fellow humans. And it means some group has demonstrated its value to the point where they can no longer be considered victims. You haven’t achieved equality until you’re a legitimate target for humor.

NUS Democratic Socialist Club: "Freedom of Speech - How Far Can We Go?"

When I came to NUS, I saw many JC students hanging around Science. At first I was heartened that the flower of the nation's youth had shrugged off the accumulated effects of 4 decades of depoliticisation. Then I saw a sign on the wall: "3 February 2007 - SRP Aptitude Test" (SRP = Science Research Program). Oh well.

I find it amusing that no photography/video/voice recording is allowed at this session. In fact, signs outside stated that no recording of any form was allowed. I wonder if this includes blogging and pen and paper. Unfortunately this session is also restricted to students from tertiary institutions and JC students (some of whom came in uniform despite being told that they didn't need to). Both these measures are probably meant to exclude the ISD agents who would otherwise come down and video-record the thing, but then they're taking photographs of us themselves, and the club *was* started in 1964 on the instigation of the PAP to counter the non-Democratic Socialist clubs we had in NUS at the time.

The 3 topics: Freedom of Speech in the Political Scene; Freedom of Speech in Media Coverage; Freedom of Speech in Blogging & Online Forums

The 5 speakers Mr Perry Tong, President of Youth Wing, Worker's Party; Mr Tan Tarn How, Senior Research Fellow at Institute of Policy Studies; Dr Cherian George, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Institute of Policy Studies & Associate Professor, School of Communication & Information, NTU; Dr Thio Li-ann, Professor, Faculty of Law, NUS, nominated Member of Parliament; Speech by Mr Wang, author of www.mrwangsaysso.blogspot.com

Freedom of Speech in the Political Scene (Speaker 1)

We have greater and greater freedoms, but there is a legal aspect. The government is praised (perhaps in a veiled way) for opening up, and that the [OB] markers are being shifted. I find it amusing that rights are taken to be privileges, and we should be grateful to the Powers That Are for granting to us poor peasants.

Opinion generators used to be newspapers, columnists, writers. Coffee shop talk and rumours have it that they are told what to write, but it's unverifiable. Now columnists and ST forum call government departments to task. There is more freedom for ordinary citizens to rail against inaptitude, apathy, bad service from government departments and private enterprise, but not in the political arena and for political commentators.

We need freedom of information to make political statements. When he writes on his blog he ends up with more questions than answers/statements. One institutionalised curb on freedom of expression is that we are unable to, with reasonable means to get facts to support statement to fend off legal implications. When politicians want to question policy, they can't get facts [Ed: Presumably only for certain types of politicians], so they speak in fear of legal retaliation, and there are questions raised about character credibility.

If we are a truly democratic society, our laws will be reflective society's values [Ed: Democracy is not the same as majoritarianism]. As a society, are we ready for more freedom of speech or not? We have to change society, it's culture and laws.

There is no real answer to the topic today, and there are stratas in society - those who push for more, and those who accept less/the status quo.

Freedom of Speech in Media Coverage (Speakers 2 and 3)

Speaker 2:
Freedom of the Press & Sustainability of Authoritarianism - Sometimes we're not aware of the curbs on us. We're like caged birds which can't see the bars of the cages. What happens in a society where freedom of expression is suppressed but where the desire for freedom of expression is not as strong as we imagine it should/can be.

How does the press play some stories to us? The press sometimes tries to 'fool' us, to convince us in a certain way. "They don't lie, they just give a different angle" - the press is sophisticated. They seldom or ever lie. He hadn't seen an outright lie in 16 years working there, because the government knows a press which lies loses trust, and a press which is not trusted loses its effectiveness as an instrument of nation building.

The only time it came close to that was in 1998 when there was the haze. When you looked out of your HDB window you can't see past the other block and when you drive you need to turn on your fog lights, but the ST/CNA said there was no haze. This was because we didn't want to affect the Indonesians. But quickly we realised this was not tenable. But the angle was that the haze wasn't so bad.

Accuracy is not truth: all the 15 blind men feeling the parts of an elephant are accurate but they can't come to the truth.

Of "residents", "foreigners" and "citizens": "123,000 jobs were created last year and economists estimate that some 70 percent of these jobs went to foreigners". CNA: "Middle class wage stagnation could lead to social stability".

A few hours later: "124,000 jobs were created last year and economists estimate that some 45 percent of these jobs went to foreigners" (there was an unannounced correction). "That's very bad journalism, but never mind".

Another few hours later: "Manpower Ministry data shows that 124,000 jobs were created last year and 45 percent of these jobs went to foreigners"

Chua Hak Bin at IPS Conference: MOM says that 40% of the jobs went to non-residents but if you include PRs, 70% went to PRs. "That's double the rate of the early 90s boom". The governent likes to lump PRs and citizens in one group.

"Reisdents" versus "non-residents" - why are no "foreign workers" "residents" but many "foreign talents" "residents". "Residents" versus "foreigners" - why are some "non-citizens" not "foreigners". Citizens vs PRs. Why the reisdent vs non-resident PRs.

"GST is to help the lower-income... so more money for social safety nets", vs Talking Cock response.

Do we know when we are being fooled? Do we know how we are being fooled? Most of us don't go "this is propaganda" when reading the ST. Media literacy is important: what is being said, what does it mean, who is saying this, why are they saying this, et al. Analysis of spin and propaganda.

More importantly: do we care that we are being fooled?

A: "Did you know that welfare is bad?"
B: "How do you know?"
A: "I read it in The Straits Times."
(lack of media literacy)

A: "Did you know that welfare is bad?"
B: "Who cares!"

"Fooling" vs "meta-fooling"
"Fooling" - When you're told something given as spin
"Meta-fooling" - You are fooled to the extent that you don't even care whether you're fooled, or whether the subject matter is important.

Democratisation theory: As societies get economic growth, capitalism itself, a middle-class, they tend to become more democratic (democratic effect of wealth). There should be a positive correlation between economic growth and democracy. eg Japan, Taiwan, South Korea.

"Sustainable Authoritarianism" - Not all will go the way of the Berlin Wall. Sustainable Authoritarianism doesn't refer to Cuba, North Korea, Turkistan (sic). Even the citizens don't want this. But if citizens want it, it becomes sustainable. If you can deliver the economic goods, then you can convince people that these material goods are more important than democracy. Convince = Fool?

Charissa: We need to look at the long run. In the timespan of hundreds of years (long run), this might not hold true.
Me: By the time we can tell, we'll all be dead.

Methods of fooling and meta-fooling: Education, Press, Political Culture. We've been brought up to think that things don't matter. Only if things affect us directly do we care.

Speaker 3:
You have to credit people for designing such an amazing and unique system of excuse. But this is an effective excuse for non-action, playing into the sensibilities of apathetic Singaporeans who want a long list of justifications for continuing in the way they have been. The system is very difficult to crack/replace/overhaul. The more you understand the system, the more justified you feel in deciding "there's absolutely no hope, let's go shopping".

Then again there's been no society on earth where fear/repression/government control has been enough of an excuse to suppress human beings who want to get things done. If we're a City of Fear, what about Iran, Indonesia etc? Unpleasant things happen to dissidents there. If they don't use it as an excuse, what excuse do we have?

How far can we go? It depends on where you want to go. It's where the Powers That Be want to take Singapore, then we can go a long way. There's nothing wrong with that. Political activism /= being anti-government.

Is this propaganda. Maybe I'm being meta-fooled: Internal dynamism is part of the reason for the party's success. The civil service buys into creative destruction etc. The public sector is deliberately using the Internet to cut across bureacracies so a civil servant in one ministry can use the net to help another. There're mailing lists across hierarchy. They are good at identifying smart young things.

Is the direction you want to go in expressly prohibited or is the government agnostic about it. There're some areas of activism here that if you take a firm position against them, you have to be careful. eg The death penalty: the few hundred campaigning against it have to be careful, since there're foreign voices talking about it also. Areas where there aren't strong governmental views: Animal rights. The process is far more interesting. You might run up against vested interests (eg More stringent controls on trade and MTI) but it's not an anti-national thing to believe that Singapore should not be a trans-shipment centre for illegal wildlife.

(Someone: "Singaporean no rights. Give animal rights")

Don't conclude from Chee that any form of activism/self-expression is taboo. That if you call strenuously for animal rights you'll become like Chee. If you make that claim you're making an excuse for your apathy and inaction. Where the line is varies across time. Like any good smart activist around the world you have to bide your time and look for opportunities because they shift. In the 1980s there were well-meaning social workers who felt they had to help domestic maids. They were imprisoned under ISA. 20 years later, there are well-meaning social workers who feel they have to help domestic maids. They're now a registered society. They're organising things not that different from their predecessors - photo exhibitions etc

Don't give up on your dreams/ideals. Just bide your time to make your case. Right now there're causes that may seem extreme. Stick to it and your time may come. In the 1990s I might be lablled things by the government by saying that government has failed Singapore by not promoting inter-racial/religious dialogue enough. Singapore's management model was keeping races in their silos. Stability by promoting distrust among the races. Cheating ourselves about the value of diversity - what we gain from each other is one of the most valuable things about Singapore. I was thought too idealistic and Western. But now they're talking about religious/racial harmony in a much more sophisticated way.

Another example: when I wrote the Air-Conditioned Nation, I included columns which had got me chided/ticked off. People asked if I'd get into trouble. When I came back from the US I got invitations to speak in schools - my book was used in secondary schools as supplementary reading. I was labelled a troublemaker but now my book is prescribed reading in schools.

2 questions to ask yourself:
1. How much trouble are you prepared for?
2. What is the maximum trouble you can expect?
(risk management)

Very few Singaporeans ask themselves these questions because they just want excuses. Usually nothing happens to people who open their mouths. Lightning rod treatment of Chee and JBJ - most citizens are not treated like that. If you aim to be a rising political star, you need to keep your taxes (and everything else) in order. Don't have too many assets that can be seized in a lawsuit. Make sure your family is supportive since you may be in for a rough ride. That's the bad news. The good news is you don't get the treatment that dissidents elsewhere get. You won't even get a black eye like Anwar, since the system here is too disciplined. No one will lose control and whack a high profile political prisoner - they're too disciplined.

Scrawny and pathetic looking police officer going to Chee and saying "Please do this". Chee will grandstand and go: "DON'T YOU KNOW THIS IS A FREE COUNTRY". I feel sorrier for the policeman. It's deliberate - calibrated coercion. Don't overplay their hand. It can send out the riot police or the SOF and seize people from their houses (like Anwar) but this is a rational and efficient government. We know the government has learnt - it's been 20 years since they last used the ISA against political opponents. LKY told Mahathir (about Anwar): Why did you use the ISA? You should've used civil proceedings. Brutal oppression does not go down well. It can backfire. It can make authoritarianism unsustainable.

If you say "I cannot sign this petition because I will be locked up under the ISA", you're a hypocrite. There's no evidence at all that such criticisms will get you in trouble. The instruments are still there - you have to read them for signs of desperation/irrationality.

Other forms of protest: people talk about OB markers, Catherine Lim, Mr Brown. Occasionally when they remember, they talk about me. I often feel bad about giving advice on OB markers - it's like asking Zinedine Zidane about anger management. But it's better to ask a footballer who loses all the time than a couch potato. I've lost the battle about predicting OB markers very often but I understand better than ordinary citizens. But even if you lose the game, nothing bad happens to you. You get scolded very publicly, you get called names. Beyond that it partly depends on if you've bosses who panic. Every time I've crosed the OB markers and been scolded, I've still been promoted. After the last time I got scolded I'm not acting head of Journalism.

Trust me, these nightmare stories generally don't happen. But you need to know if your bosses have testicular fortitude, and if they're in big establishment institutions and they know if a scolding is just a scolding. If your boss is over-eager to please the government, you're in trouble. That's probably what happened to Mr Brown. But he's not been victimised - he just lost his TODAY column, and knowing how much they pay for columns it's not a major house, he didn't have to sell his house.

The ST is treated as a very public forum. If you say something there you're entering a very public debate and they'll take you on. If you write in smaller media, ie Which nobody reads, it won't get a response. In most cases if you engage in public affairs it's not at that level yet, eg Blogging, student activities. There is no evidence of victimization of people like you. You may get a bad reputation - some profs will be suspicious of you, but some will encourage you. I would love to hear stories of how active individuals are victimised - I haven't heard any yet.

If you're just an individual having your say, there's no evidence the government is even interested in taking you on. Their success is because they know when to apply their coercion. If you make the transition from being an individual communicator to an organiser/mobiliser of larger groups. eg Petition, calling for people to meet somewhere, do something, you need to be more careful. You should get legal advice from people like Dr Thio. All activists need to do their homework.

Freedom of Speech in Blogging & Online Forums (Speakers 4 and 5)

Speaker 4:
The Singapore government has not seen it fit to create laws for bloggers. Every blogger in Singapore has the same constitutional rights. We have a constitution which purports to protect our rights. Our article 14 is quite different from America, which has a strong statement about free speech. Our free speech is subject to 8 restrictions so right off the bat it's qualified in Singapore but it's not so exceptional because in every court/country in the world courts will read in limits to speech. So we need to figure out the limits.

The governmental approach is 3-fold, and not strictly legal. There are legal/non legal methods of regulation. OB markers are not constitutional markers. The problem with them is that they shift, so the analysis may not be accurate. I like reading the previous speakers' articles in the State (sic) Times.

Not long ago a minister who ran in Aljunied said when you address a minister, remember (some malay words) 'boh dua boh soi' (Hokkien words) - which literally means 'bu da bu xiao' (in Chinese) (Thanks to Gwen for the correction), ie You need to be deferential and respect him. This is not about free speech, but your attitude. But in 2004 there was a change at a Harvard Law Club speech by the then-DPM: disagreement does not necessarily imply rebellion. Singaporeans should engage in public policy debates with rationality, objectivity and passion.

Free speech has a lot of useless views. Truth and falsehood are supposed to collide and out of many contending views, sense will emerge.

At one stage, the government was saying (but it probably does not apply anymore) that if you want to engage in politics you need to be a politician. This is rubbish since I tried to look for a definition of politics and in the Dow Jones case, there was some defintion of "domestic politics". The court defined it as anything pertaining to political ideas/structure of Singapore. So Singaporeans would not be able to talk about ANYTHING that affected them with a political link. eg Education.

The third bit: what you can or cannot talk about. eg Voltaire's reputed quote. How many of us really believe that? The legal framework of any state - in Singapore the taboos are only race/religion and the politics of envy, since the last could translate to a loss of political support. The former is the fear about tearing of social fabric.

Is a blog public or private? Can it be political commentary? They're not that divorced from traditional media, eg a Blog excerpting a ST article and highlighting fallacies [Ed: Hurr hurr]. Cherian made an important point about entering the Straits Times being playing with the big boys. If I write an academic article in a journal with 50 students reading it in 5 years, no one cares. But you can be marked if you go into the big arena - not someone changing the system from within, but overthrowing it from outside.

We're told political debate has to be serious, not trivial: Invective rather than genuine criticism of policy. One minister said we should promote factual and objective presentation rather than emotion, rhetoric and grandstanding. But this is not surprising cf Political Films act. They want to keep political debate serious and genuine, whatever that means.

Blogs are a hybrid environment, giving anyone the power of a printing press. But anyone can read them unless they're secured. Because there's that reach into the public domain there's a concern it'll translate into real world consequences. I read in page 2 of today's ST that the government is sending people into blogs to rebut people. If you're just private and spewing invective, no one will read you because no one can read vulgarity for more than 3 hours or in my case, 3 minutes.

The minister was asked what would happen if a lewd photo is on your blog, the minister: "We can't police everything". They will investigate only if someone makes a police report. The 3 fold approach: Laws, self regulation, education. The most that'd happen is a take-down notice from the MDA. It happened when a website soliciting for child sex got a take-down notice from them [Ed: Wth?! What/when was this].

You need to be careful about the laws on contempt of court and defamation unless you want to lose your homes. Free speech vs reputation (person or institution). If you criticise a judge or judgment, you might fall foul of contempt of court - lowering public confidence in administration of justice. In other countries you need to show a clear and imminent risk of downgrading public confidence. In Singapore you need to show an inherent tendency - this is broadly formulated.

Defamation suits - will they be used on Internet people? There've been no cases yet, but there's Jeff Ooi/Screenshots in Malaysia. The closest example I can think of is a student at the Uni of Indiana who criticised A*Star. He got a warning, took down the post and that was the end of story.

But there's also criminal law. In the penal code - under offence under sec 298. if you post something insulting/hurting the feelings of racial/religious groups it's a crime. The Sedition Act was an astonishing use. Normally sedition is something that tears down the state: Treason or leaking state secrets.

eg The so-called racist bloggers. This is in law, not an OB marker. The judgment was important: the punishment reflected the gravity of trying to upset social order - a seditious tendency. It was grave so they reacted firmly. If you post on your blog, will you cause a riot?

How do you define public order. Unfortunately here public order is defined broadly and rights narrowly. eg The Chee Siok Chin case. This is the first time in memory they've used it, sending 20 riot police down. I didn't know we had riot police but that's where tax money goes.

The judge himself said we in Singapore place a premium on public order. I'm doing research on what is it, how it is different from national security/law and order, and what threatens it. One facet is racial/religious matters.

Just because you have a right doesn't mean you have the right to use it. There's an unwritten contract - you need responsibility. Even Jeff Ooi - freedom of speech is not excuse an excuse for social irresponsibility. You have to define irresponsibility w/o forsaking free speech. In Singapore the Net is a powerful, important tool for free speech, because the press is not that free. The new media is promiment - there's a frustration with mainline media.

If the internet community can regulate itself it's alright, eg Wee shu min. Nothing happen from the government [Ed: That's because she supported their philosophy]. She was chastised by her peers. The law takes away your freedom when cannot you cannot regulate yourselves. Before uou can govern society you must govern yourself.

Speaker 5:
My name is not important. On the net the message is more important than the speaker/messenger.

Blogging from a technological point of view is constantly evolving. You have to bear that in mind - new features are coming which have consequences. Blogs are public/private. We know from past incidents that sometimes people write things intended to be private/for a small group of people but much more attention has been drawn than expected. Reach, audience potentially enormous.

*usual spiel about blogging, professional blogging, technorati, growing influence*

Legal worries: Defamation (Acidflask). I have a lot of inside knowledge on that knowledge. This is similar to NKF. None of you know what was being said, what the blogger posted. In my opinion as a lawyer the alleged post was not defamatory but excellent. What you expect of the bright author. The offending remark was left by a reader on his blog using comments. That's the only excuse you can use to initiate a defamation suit against him. In a law exam I would say the post isn't defamatory

Some cases are clear cut. Some are hard to tell. Sometimes we think the government is definite and fixed, but the mystery comes from the fact that we don't understand it. But that's not the case. When the DPP gets a funny case like the "racist bloggers" he'll be confused. It comes down often to ther judgment, ie Your luck. If the matter is considered to have serious policy implications, the DPP will check with the senior DPP who will check with the Attorney General. The judgment about whether the case should be escalated rests with the original DPP.

With the Sedition Act case it was probably interesting/novel, meriting a closer look because the charges were under that act which I never even heard of when I was a DPP.

Bloggers should worry about the Films Act also. eg The 2 unknowns who posted videos during the elections period. They'd be covered under the act.

The Penal Code has just been comprehensively reviewed. eg Section 298a making it possible to prosecute people for posting racially/religiously offensive remarks on your blog. It's always been there, it's just expanded now to cover either race/religion.

When you consider that all these acts/statutes exist it may seem that it is a highly dangerous thing to write on the net.

Audience poll: Many of you feel strongly about things but are afraid to express them online (including one of the speakers). Maybe I should reconsider what I write on my blog. But I think these fears are largely unjustified: you don't have to be afraid. There is not that much to be afraid of. I would say that there is plenty of room, more than enough space to express your views, most of the time.

It is important to understand that there's a big difference between law in theory and what happens in practice. But the laws are drafted in a wide sort of way. They potentially catch many situations. What may look illegal may not be - it's hard to get yourself in trouble. You've to write something not only illegal but so offensive and irritating that someone can be bothered to do something about it beyond flaming you. That he will kickstart the process, eg Philip Yeoh. The police are overworked, manpower is scarce. Sometimes they throw the police in a file and there's no followup. Even if there's a followup it may go to the DPP. The DPP may scold them for wasting his time for something nobody reads anyway. Scold the boy and let him off, end of story. So it's hard to get in trouble for writing stuff online.

5 reasons why I feel most of the time (qualifiers because I'm a lawyer) it's safe for most of you to express your full views online:

1. There're really only 2-3 danger zones. Race, religion, politics. If you don't write about those you're almost 100%. You can talk about so many other things.

2. Most blogs aren't read. I've 28-30,000 readers a month. So the probability that you will irritate someone enough is low.

You need to have been blogging regularly/a lot for a long time to get an audience. While you are blogging you are learning a lot and developing a sense of what can/cannot be said. You acquire this sense because blogging is interactive - comments. People will talk about you on their own blogs. cf OB markers. There's no formula or quantification but it helps me keep out of trouble. eg Alex Au, who writes on serious trouble but he doesn't get in trouble. In fact he was writing long before blogs became popular.

3. We are not extreme sorts of people. We're not terrorists, planning to start riots, intend violence towards any particular group. We don't have a need for censorship because our views are acceptable. The average citizen occupies the "average range". You may irritate people like Wee Shu Min, but you won't run into problems with the law.

5. (???) There is safety in numbers. James Gomez and Mr Brown. Mr Brown was perfectly safe in his podcast, because he captured a widespread sentiment both online and offline. If you went online you'd find so many bloggers sharing his feeling about turkwa. It'd be strange for the government to take action against Mr Brown but not the hundreds of bloggers who felt that way. It's not be possible to take action against them all.

eg My writing about Foreign Talent policies. I feel it is a pretty safe thing to do because it is a widespread sentiment. Many people share this view which is fair. The only thing I add to it is that I present it in a more entertaining/funny/interesting way, that's why I've more readers.


Q&A

Unfortunately Prof Thio left, because someone had this suggestion for a question:

"section 377 of the penal code criminalises homosexuality. however, the gvt goes above and beyond this measure by clamping down on free speech for gays, depictions and discussions of homosexuality in the media, etc. ask her if this clamping down is constitutionally defensible. HOHOHO, she's probably spontaneously split into two"

Question: Pseudonymity, Internet's role in America. How does self-censorship in the newsroom work?

Tan Tarn How's article on WP pulling out of Aljunied. Was it a planned cockup? Did you write it out of personal conviction? Was the atmosphere in the newsroom directing energies in negative direction?

Answer: Mr Wang: My real name is like Madonna's - it means nothing. For blogging purposes my name is Mr Wang. But many people do prefer to be anonymous, probably stemming from an original fear of being known. At one point I was known by my real name, but I changed my name because I didn't want to be identified. Now I'm much more comfortable speaking up online. It's more useful to be known as such.

As for Gayle, she just closed her blog. My feel is that she has become tired over the past because of her high profile blog. She'll disappear and when she's taken her break she'll come back because she's interested in social issues.

Tarn How: That was an important and interesting question. There're varying degrees of anonymity. Some people mean pseudonymity. Mr Wang is not anonymous since people know who he is. You can use a pseudonym but not be anonymous. That was the problem with the attack on Mr Brown. Then there's the question: if you think you're anonymous, are you? Do people know you are?

Unless you're breaking the law intentionally you shouldn't be anonymous. You should have the courage to stand by your views. When Mr Wang does public the real person is there. I discount everybody who posts on my blog and doesn't leave a name.

About how censorship works and to what extent we express the views we express when we're journalists, my operating principle is that if it's a comment I only write the views I believe in. There're people who're quite comfortable with the message being watered down. When you write an article you debate/dialog with the editor.

It's a myth that everybody who's a dissident is a dissident in every area. Many who criticse the government agree in other ways. The danger: all your pro-government articles are published, but none of your anti-government articles are published. I'm very supportive of the government, but what's the use of adding/saying it if everyone is already. Some journalists want to write an equal mix to be seen as non-partisan but the fact is that we shouldn't simplify journalism to pro or against. There's a range of views, sometimes they're pro, sometimes they're against.

Cherian: Burnout: not jsut because of the effort. But because of the expectations once you develop a loyal following. You're put in a fix because the reason you wrote in the first place was because you have views to share as an individual. Once you have a certain level of prominence you're appropriated as public property. Your fans feel you should be a champion just for certain causes and shouldn't hold views they don't like.

As a journalist you're paid to be skeptical. It's your public duty to ask tough questions of everyone, including the opposition. Whoever tries to fool the public. The opposition does that too. But your fanbase may feel betrayed. Gayle probably had that problem - "You shouldn't be saying such things because we have annointed you as the spokesman of our cause". It's an unfair burden to place on any writer and for readers who put writers in that position, it's a sign of immaturity.

Perry: My blog touches mainly on politics so according to Mr Wang I'm on the endangered species list. Being in the WP, we're like a catch all situation. We're expected to be representative of every single individual view there can possibly be from our supporters. Being a political party we often can't do that. We can be both left and right wing at the same time - being centrist, being nobody. But the party cannot remain anonymous and has to take a stand. So sometimes that's why we prefer not to make a stand - we cannot afford to. In most cases it's imprudent to do that. So the party has no capability wrt anonymous blogging. I subscribe personally to the view that I write on what I believe on, readers respond anonymously or otherwise.

If anonymity works for you, good.

Question: As a Singaporean concerned about apathy in Singapore I'm concerned to hear that we can't take a stand on most matters. Most of us are aware of the RK House No Pork video

Answer: Tarn How: Can you send me the video? I've been trying to look for it but it's been taken down. I'm editing a book about freedom of speech on the Internet and this is a good test case for race/religion.

Perry: Please send it to me too. It's not clear if it's satire or racism. Is it meant to be comedy, social commentary? [Ed: One could say that it's like Borat. Too bad the makers aren't Jewish or no one would criticise them.]

Mr Wang: I saw it in the office. When I went home the video was gone. *I play video*

*Talks about Char case*

If you go to Google and type "jesus christ funny cartoons" a lot of things pop up. The person Char debated was very irritated and called the police. There's a difference between no further action and stern warning. Stern warning - you have committed an offence but because you're young/stupid we'll get a senior police officer to scold you.

As an ex-DPP - the first thing I'd do is look at the offender. There're religious extremists who want to insult people of another religion, very strong intention. They are adults. They know what they're doing, the intention is very clear. Sometimes the offender is young and stupid. Like the teenager who vandalizes.

Another factor: actual harm caused. Often no harm is caused. Some little corner in cyberspace 3 people read. There's no social harm. In the sedition cases, the senior district judge in handing out his judgment talked about something called the offence principle. Offence vs harm principle. The latter - you can express views if it doesn't cause harm (riot, violence). I'm more with Harm. But not everyone agrees.

Tarn How: Liberal view. Thick skinned principle. You need people to be thick skinned for democracy. You need stuff offensive/extremely offensive to a certain group of people. My limits are broad. Unless you ask people to stand up and go round rioting or hurting other people. It doesn't mean you should be condemned: legal or social sanctions.

Why put them to sedition? The public order argument - I disagree with it.

Cherian: Singaporans have gotten the wrong message from these cases: "See there are crazy people on the Internet and we need to send the police in". What they overlook is that it's successful self-regulation. Other Chinese scolded them, and they were expelled.

The unfortunate thing is that in a typical Singaporean way when people get upset, the first thing they do is call the government. The police and DPPs are not itching for work. But kaypoh Singaporeans will make police report. I would like to see the public being less trigger happy. [Ed: But in other countries trigger happy idiots are told to go and die]

Question: Many of the comments posted about RK House were encouraging, by Singaporean students. It reflects how the attitudes/values of our young Singaporeans are. When we talk about self-regulation, I'd agree on social regulation because of social norming. In RK House even popular bloggers like Xiaxue say it's funny. This encourages them to continue. So this kind of humour is cool, not wrong. I can continue. Next time I can crack this kind of joke.

Self-regulation: a famous blogger like Mr Wang has an important role to play in shaping our mindsets. You have high readership, your own formula. What you say has a strong impact on people out there. In Xiaxue's case, if there was self-regulation it'd be dangerous - she was encouraging it. She was for it. How would her friends have taken it?

Cherian: All of you should write in to Mediacorp and ask them to axe her.

Interjection: I hope she won't kill me for breaking her rice bowl

Cherian: It's okay. Stand up for what you believe if she's an unworthy role model. Ask Mediacorp to axe her, not ask the government to arrest her.

Tarn How: Write to the church, MP to condemn her, but not take the law to her. There will be a backlash against Xiaxue and there's a campaign against her.

Mr Wang: Popular bloggers need unusual/different elements. Xiaxue thrives on controversy so if you do these things you make her more happy/excited. She gets more publicity. She's in the top 100 of 70 million blogs in the world. I'm just pointing out one aspect.

Comment: Freedom of speech comes from the individual. Feel strongly about something, wait for the right time, do cost-benefit analysis, make your move. Mr Tan's point about: Authoritarianism. Individual drive vs societal level movement. How do we know if freedom of speech is cherished in the first place?

Whose way? Where to go? New and Old media seem to be going in different trajectories. How do we concile that? Online platform: Forums, blogs, videos. Self-regulation is interesting because in a forum people will gang up on an offensive guy. Youtube video - people will put in comments. Where does self-regulation come in? Like RK House - encouraging comments. Where's the responsibility of state? What's the responsibility of individuals?

Do you blame Jeff Ooi for not monitoring his comments?

Question: This question was to be directed to Dr Thio. Hopefully Mr Wang can answer this with his legal knowledge. This is with regard to defamation laws and free speech in Singapore and the rest of the world. To what degree does defamation take place? eg Talkingcock.com making fun of Singapore ministers, Mr Brown's Mai Hum podcast. A foreign magazine being circulated in Singapore is being sued for defamation despite it not talking about Singapore's nepotism/despotism, they didn't even refer to Singapore. I know of a Taiwanese show where the actors will playact politicians/celebrities and make fun of them. If they did it in Singapore would they be sued for defamation?

Mr Wang: I don't want to get into nitty gritty details which are soporific. The first thing is that the law of defamation is pretty threatening in the sense that you don't have to actually get to the point where the other party has shown you're commiting he evil you're writing about. Your life can get unpleasant if you're threatened. I think Acidflask would've won if he'd gone all the way. Unfortunately it's so much eaiser and wiser to just say sorry and apologise. "I'm the bad boy, I promise to take it down straightaway". It's more practical.

Defamation can also be used to silence critics where they kinda know something is wrong and they're trying to raise an important issue but they don't have all the evidence. This is what happened with NKF. Years ago when NKF was a good not bad word, some individuals said something about NKF and tried to suggest it didn't handle its finances properly. NKF sued them, and they lost. One of them paid out 50k which is a lot for the individual. Much later on we find that the allegations were probably true. Too bad for those 2 individuals. They knew something was wrong but didn't have the evidence to prove it.

A different story was with SPH. SPH pulled out the best litigation lawyer in Singapore. But the law of defamation is a pretty scary thing. There are some defences. One is the scope of fair comment, when you're talking about some public issue. You've some latitude to make some comments, not much. That's why reviewers of music and books can say "That was a really lousy album or book. Don't buy". It's under fair comment.

Satire: That's a very interesting point. There is a practical aspect to this. Not really a legal aspect. When you use satire or humour or comedy to make your point, in practical terms that's a very good defence because the person looks really ridiculous trying to sue you, so they'll back off.

The lawyer asks: "What did you mean when you say turkwa like this or like that?". Fo a person like Lee Kuan Yew you don't want to be in a position where you go to court and get asked questions about tur kwa. You look stupid.

Reasonable man's test - what will the reasonable man think? I don't think it's a defence here. The fact that it's a joke does't make it non-defamatory. I could make very insulting jokes about Lee Kuan Yew. I'd be in trouble.

The so-called victim, who may really be a victim, he's better off leaving you alone because if he sues you he draws attention to this and more people become aware: "*** is like a tur kwa man or something". It's not a good position to be in, they leave you alone. You may not want to draw attention to that anymore.

For example at some point somebody really hated my blog. I can't remember the name. He started to make some remarks about every single post I posted. I was wondering: what should I do. I just ignored him. That was probably the better thing to do. If I write about him, suddenly he is the one getting 30,000 readers. He just died due to lack of attention.

Perry: The comments/questions seek an absolutist stance. Will I get shot, will I die, will my parents live on after me, will my children have anything to live on after everything is over and done with.

Pragmatism vs realism. Pragamatism in my view is where you approach an issue from the stand of inferiority or not being able to change the situation. Indict me for attempting to invoke thought and provoke you to action. Where law is concerned at the end of the day it's in your hands. Laws are a depiction of the custom of the land, society. At the end of the day it's in your collective hands through the ballot box or otherwise to change it. If we all feel strongly enough about self-regulation we should take action promoting such legislation. Defamation laws - face to face and offline only

I've had to waste tax payers money to invoke police action on someone who attempted to impersonate me. Why do I do this? I'm operating under the fear of defamation or porential defamation in the future. I hope I'm trying to change this, to become a lawmaker/legislator to impact the laws of the land. An absolutist position is easy to take but we should take into consideration: what about the person sitting next to you. Is he/she going to believe in the same thing down to the last letter?

Unfortunately, if you bring the future to the present you tend to get shot first. If you're too fast forward for your time society tends to shoot first and ask questions later.

On racism in Singapore:


A: I just want to say that I experience far less racism in Britain than I do in Singapore, where in so many aspects of so many encounters -- the way I speak, the way I dress, who I date, what I find amusing or interesting -- I am unceasingly judged on the basis of whether I am "Chinese" or "Singaporean" enough for my interlocutors. My skin colour is everything to many people in Singapore, but people here just don't give a damn. And I'm not talking about big city Londoners: I never get half so many stares walking down the high street with my boyfriend in small Westcountry towns (about as white as they come) as I do on Orchard Road. Anyone who's ever been in an interracial couple in Singapore can probably relate similar experiences. And ask many Indian, Malay or Eurasian people about "barely concealed racism" and I bet many of them will tell you there's no advantage on that score to being in Singapore over being in Britain.

I'm not saying you don't have to struggle against racial stereotype -- I do often get the sense that a fair number of people assume I'm incapable of irony, for instance, from the get-go. But by far the majority of my daily interactions indicate to me that people are more than willing to relinquish stereotypes and take me on my own terms, without regard to racial classification, given even half a reason why. Sadly I can't say the same about my experiences in Singapore.


B: Well as for racism in academia, I think I can safely say that there is
more racism -- even against Chinese people -- in Singaporean academia than in British academia (at least in Oxford, I can't say for other universities). I note how NUS has a penchant for employing an endless series of second-rate White faculty, who (if sufficiently pliant) quickly get promoted to department head (I'm thinking of *** in particular) over similarly if not better qualified candidates who merely had the misfortune of being born not-White.


C: Moving to London made me realize what a multi-cultural, multi-racial city is really like.

"I simply cannot understand the passion that some people have for making themselves thoroughly uncomfortable and then boasting about it afterwards." - Patricia Moyes

***

Quotes:

Hollywood is famous for this. They steal ideas from Asian cinema and call it parody, and when asians make VCDs they cry murder.

The actvity in the IVLE forum is amazing. It's like you have a portable screen.

I don't like essays that meditate. Ramble. Transcend into another realm.

I also tend to reward people who have strange central theses... strange not as in 'cannot be understood'.

[On a race] After you fire the rifle, after you fire the pistol, everyone is off.

Dare'tro't (Detroit)

[On meritocracy] Merit is defined by you, your circle, your elite uncaring face.

A lot of the top students in secondary schools, instead of going to the good JCs like RJ they go to the middle JCs so they can remain at the top. [Instructor: Oh, I thought you said they had a more enlightened idea.]

[On circulation of elites in a multi-party democracy] In a country like ***, there's virtually no political competition. They begin to ossify. They think about staying in power... Kicking off political competition... They forgot why they came into power. You have a problem... You've one guy who's really strong, his name is ***.

[On perpetuation of power] Focusing their energies on telling these stories of vulnerability, rather than making the economy good.

[On being close-to-earth] When they go to events, they drink water.

Let's face it. Singaporeans are working class. Let's not take any leap of faith and imagine 80% of Singaporeans are middle class.

He said he generally agreed with her. The principal of RJC said he disagreed with what she said but he respected her right to say it. [Student: Wow.]

It takes us, in a way, back to Singapore's fear of Marxism... In the 70s, Marxism was something that people thought about. It wouldn't demonised in the silly way it is today.

When you look at National Day rallies, reifying a class as if it actualy exists. Patronising the class. Urging it to go on.

This TV show, the Arena. RI, this elite school. Loyang Secondary, this neighborhood school. RI - you could see the arrogance on their faces.

[On submerging consciousness] One way of thinking about it is that the things that really matter aren't talked about. The fact that race is talked about so much may be an indicator that it isn't so important.

I find it quite ironic that we're sitting in USP and talking about elitism. *uproarious approval from audience*

*Strange disembodied sound* What's that? Oh, it's my phone.

[On keeping options open to people] The option of feeling hat it's like having metal going through flesh... It may not be pleasurable.

A Neo-Marxist argument, that the market offers a false choice. Colgate, Darlie. It's the same thing branded differently.

I just realised I was actually looking at your hair during lecture and I realise it's quite nice. [Me: Thanks]

[Student on empirical values in the Lucas model: What kind of number will lambda be?] I don't deal with numbers, I deal with theories. I don't know, sorry.

I apologise for not keeping track of time. i decided last Saturday or Sunday to buy a watch.

I told the dean: We have the most talented school of Public Policy in the world. I'm amazed by the courage of these students to sing and dance and parade themselves... When I saw those 4 scholars from Beijing, I thought: the future of public policy in China is bright... If on the brink of a nuclear war in the Korean peninsula, Kim Jong Il. Let's make a rule... Why don't we get all the comedians to settle the issue?

That's the first fron'damental problem (fundamental)

A lot of public policy programmes in the world are driven by irrational exuberance of their benefits... Privatization privatization privatization... Everyone is pushing privatization. You have to understand the economics of the good [first].

When you think of Geylang, even prostitutes have warranties... They have certificates saying they don't have STDs.

In Singapore it's regulated by the government. As long as the money goes to the government it's okay. All other gambling is banned. Except during Chinese New Year.

[On anti-nicotine gum] You cannot buy unless you're a smoker. [Student: How can you prove {that}?] You smoke, then you buy it.

[On Hari-Kiri] You must dis-semi-bowel yourself (disembowel)

What happened in the past - I gave students takeaway exams. There was a lot of collusion and downloading from the Internet. I got reprimanded by my vice-dean. (take home)

[Me: Why don't you tell us about sexuality from a female perspective?] Orh. We just lie there, open our legs and let it go in lor.

Lit screws with the mind. That's the secondary reason why I'm so screwed up.

Kay'nee'zhearn economics (Keynesian)

My favourite taxi driver will always say: One People *draws one vertical stroke*, One Nation *draws another vertical stroke*, One Singapore *draws S*. Dollar sign... He says 'you get to the hawker centre, the sugarcane machine. You know what I mean'... I learn about Singapore from taxi drivers.

One thing that I discovered is that when you upload [notes] in Powerpoint format, someone somewhere in the world will steal the slies and use it as their own.

q1 + q2 > big (written) (?)

[On consulting] You do pretty much what your customer wants you to do. Just like a prostitute.

The good news is that if there's no project, there's nothing to do. At all... Wake up late, go out in the day... [If you] Go to work, there's nothing to do. Might as well stay at home.

[On his Alma Maters] The only thing I remember about Raffles is elitism.