"When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice." - Marquis de la Grange

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Soul Searching - "I believe, that in order for Singapore to endure, the country has got to stand for something more than efficient processes and non-corrupt governing. Because there will come day when processes will fail and people in power found corrupt. Realistically speaking, a “dose of bad government” is an inescapable probability as evidenced by all manners of civilisation since man’s infancy. Will Singaporeans have anything to hold on to when that happens? Are we staying only because Singapore affords us shelter, and will we leave when the winds change?"

The future of journalism in a post-newspaper world - "In the United States, there is growing interest in the idea of foundation/endowment-backed journalism. This makes eminent sense. Call it a Civic Journalism Service (CJS), made up of 50-100 full-time professional journalists focusing exclusively on those genres of journalism that are clear cases of market failure: public affairs reporting, in particular. You will hear knee-jerk criticisms of such a model, mainly from commercial news media: how to ensure that a CJS isn’t influenced by its funders, for example. The truth is that there are enough best practices to learn from worldwide; it’s just that it has never been in the interest of the mainstream profession to highlight models that put their own to shame. Positive examples include the Guardian in the UK, published by a trust; the public-funded BBC; and the foundation-owned St Petersburg Times. They show that it is possible to institutionalise editorial independence far more effectively than most commercial publishers have been willing to."

Holding Lee Kuan Yew accountable – Part 1 - "There's nothing wrong, of course, about making bad predictions. Let's be fair, everyone at some point has made calls that have turned out embarrassingly wrong. Mr Lee has made, and will make, his fair share. The difference with the MM's words is that they drive policy formulation which involves spending of billions of dollars of public monies. Once spoken, these words precipitate PAP groupthink; few dare to tell the Mr Lee that he is wrong, let alone hold him accountable for his errors in judgement which have catastrophic consequences. Oracle of the East he is not but you wouldn't know that if you spoke to the servants with whom the MM surrounds himself and on whom he lavishes made-in-heaven salaries. These highly intelligent individuals apparently go into a synaptic short-circuit when they are in his presence and suspend all form of independent thinking."

Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act (Singapore) - "It must be realised that if you abolish the powers of arrest and detention and insist on trial in open court in accordance with the strict laws of evidence of a criminal trial, then law and order becomes without the slightest exaggeration utterly impossible, because whilst you may still nominally have law and order, the wherewithal to enforce it would have disappeared. The choice in many of these cases is either to go through the motions of a trial and let a guilty man off to continue his damage to society or to keep him confined without trial"

Chair Kills Boy by Anal Penetration - "A fourteen-year-old boy was killed after the chair he was sitting on exploded, propelling sharp chair parts into his rectum, causing extensive bleeding, which he succumbed to before medical attention could stem the flow."

The gospel according to Darwin - "If evolution is an unfalsified hypothesis, then so is every fact about the real world; so is the very existence of a real world. This kind of conversation is swiftly and rightly sidelined. Evolution is true in whatever sense you accept it as true that New Zealand is in the Southern Hemisphere. If we refused ever to use a word like “true”, how could we conduct our day-to-day conversations? Or fill in a census form: “What is your sex?” “The hypothesis that I am male has not so far been falsified, but let me just check again”. As Douglas Adams might have said, it doesn’t read well. Yet the philosophy that imposes such scruples on science has no basis for absolving everyday facts from the same circumlocution."
I now have something to tell the people in Science Studies and Agnostics...

China tycoon's mistress contest ends in tragedy: report - "A married Chinese tycoon who could no longer afford to support his five mistresses during the economic slowdown held a contest to decide which one to keep, local media reported Tuesday. The contest took a tragic turn when one of the mistresses, who was eliminated based on her looks, drove her former lover and the four other women off a mountain road in an apparent fit of anger, the Shanghai Daily reported."
HWMNBN: Moral of the story - never let women drive

YouTube - Nutella - "Difference between German and French Nutella explained... "As you can see, there is here a obvious incompatibility between French bread and German Nutella""

Comprehensive study of 'time twins' debunks astrology - "Scientists have once and for all debunked astrology's central claim -- that our human characteristics are molded by the influence of the sun, moon and planets at the time of our birth -- in the most thorough scientific study ever conducted on the subject. For several decades, researchers tracked more than 2,000 people -- most of them born within minutes of each other. According to astrology, the subjects should have had very similar traits."

Which drink do you drink? - "A recent magazine survey, interviewed fifty bartenders and they were asked if they could identify a customer’s personality on what drinks they ordered? Although interviewed separately, they concurred on almost all counts...
If Women Drink... Water
Personality: Pretentious and is looking for a serious relationship.
Approach: Don’t...
If Men Drink... Bacardi Breezer, Red Square, Archers Cooler, Smirnoff Ice, etc
He’s gay (blatantly) - don’t turn your back or pick up any dropped change."

Does the Tip of a Snapped Towel Travel Faster Than Sound?

Peranakans – Going the way of the Dodo? - "Felix Chia, well-known author the book, The Babas, notes that the Peranakans are a dwindling minority race which will become extinct in a matter of time. He says:”The Baba, a product of an accident of history, is a time traveler; he has come, and he must go.”"

Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose - "urban, liberal, feminist, latte-drinking, overeducated, intellectual, unapologetically p.c. american patriots"
The person who sent this to me called this "fat chick blog". My take on it: "fat chicks blame everyone else for their problems and yet bizarrely have un-fat avatars, which provides bountiful fodder for deconstruction"

Iran acid victim seeks eye for an eye - ""I don't want to blind him for revenge," Bahrami said in her Tehran apartment. "I'm doing this to prevent it from happening to someone else.""
Right.