On procéde à le dénouement.
Je me souhaite, 'bonne chance'.
Je percuterai en feu!
You can hear us push
Through the deepest bush
With a military air!
Monday, October 05, 2009
"The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime television." - Unknown
***
First principles of justice: Rights and wrongs
"Mr Sandel illustrates the old classroom chestnut—is it ever right to kill one innocent person to save the lives of several others?—with a horrifying dilemma from Afghanistan in 2005. A four-man American unit on reconnaissance behind lines stumbled on a shepherd likely, if let go, to betray them to the Taliban. They could not hold him prisoner. Nor, on moral grounds, would the serviceman in charge kill him. Released, the shepherd alerted the Taliban, who surrounded the unit. Three were killed along with 16 Americans in a rescue helicopter. The soldier in command, who lived, called his decision “stupid, lamebrained and southern-fried”. Which was right, his earlier refusal or his later regret?...
He returns also to an old charge against the late John Rawls. In “Liberalism and the Limits of Justice” (1982) Mr Sandel argued that Rawls’s celebrated account of social justice downplayed the moral weight of family feeling, group loyalties and community attachments. He repeats those “communitarian” charges here."
***
First principles of justice: Rights and wrongs
"Mr Sandel illustrates the old classroom chestnut—is it ever right to kill one innocent person to save the lives of several others?—with a horrifying dilemma from Afghanistan in 2005. A four-man American unit on reconnaissance behind lines stumbled on a shepherd likely, if let go, to betray them to the Taliban. They could not hold him prisoner. Nor, on moral grounds, would the serviceman in charge kill him. Released, the shepherd alerted the Taliban, who surrounded the unit. Three were killed along with 16 Americans in a rescue helicopter. The soldier in command, who lived, called his decision “stupid, lamebrained and southern-fried”. Which was right, his earlier refusal or his later regret?...
He returns also to an old charge against the late John Rawls. In “Liberalism and the Limits of Justice” (1982) Mr Sandel argued that Rawls’s celebrated account of social justice downplayed the moral weight of family feeling, group loyalties and community attachments. He repeats those “communitarian” charges here."
Post ID: 6058424002011447863
Progressives conflate and confuse Scholarship and Activism.
Just as marriage of Church and State soils both, so too does combining Scholarship and Activism intimately prejudice both.
The ideals in Scholarship are Objectivity and Reason, yet when you bring Activism into the mix you get emotional and your thinking gets skewed.
Meanwhile, Activism is supposed to be relevant to the improvement of people's lives, but when you bring in Scholarship you risk barreling down obscure paths chasing academic conceits.
What results, in the end, is a confused conglomeration which is compromised in its pursuit of both causes - advancing human knowledge and improving people's lives.
Just as marriage of Church and State soils both, so too does combining Scholarship and Activism intimately prejudice both.
The ideals in Scholarship are Objectivity and Reason, yet when you bring Activism into the mix you get emotional and your thinking gets skewed.
Meanwhile, Activism is supposed to be relevant to the improvement of people's lives, but when you bring in Scholarship you risk barreling down obscure paths chasing academic conceits.
What results, in the end, is a confused conglomeration which is compromised in its pursuit of both causes - advancing human knowledge and improving people's lives.
Post ID: 7692918042973326375
Sunday, October 04, 2009
"There comes a time in every man's life and I've had many of them." - Casey Stengel
***
[Ed: While posting this, I got the error: "A post may have at most 10 labels" - so I have held some of the observations over for the next time]
Money illusion: thinking more money necessarily buys you more real goods
Goods illusion: thinking more possessions necessarily makes you more happy
Data illusion: thinking more data necessarily enlightens you more
I was told that someone espied, in a double hall room with double beds, 2 PRC couples going at it (on either bed - not at the same time)
When people get older, they usually wish they had been more adventurous. They rarely wish they had been more strait-laced.
In a girl, it's called "self-esteem" and is something you cannot injure.
In a guy it's called "ego" and deserves to be punctured.
Men wouldn't treat women as conquests if women didn't present themselves as entities to be conquered
I am very amused that in RGS, the girls are/were reminded not to hug one another - because of H1N1.
A most unfortunate Twitter handle for a girl: @SaggyTAN.
No, this is not my overactive imagination talking again:
(Un)fortunately her user picture doesn't allow us to see if she really is Saggy.
Maybe she's a Sagittarius.
Then again, someone tells me he knew another girl called Saggy.
Citizenship classes in Singapore should teach - 'Singapore is hot and humid. Please bathe everyday'. Maybe they can sponsor this with the $10 million integration fund.
Judicial independence, vote secrecy, the anonymity of IVLE anonymous feedback and the like - even if they really do exist, it's telling that people think they don't. Either way it's sad for the institutions concerned.
No taxi driver's son, no matter how talented, will qualify for a PSC scholarship if he doesn't have a guarantor. Hurrah meritocracy!
Local journalism is about repackaging ministerial press releases. Because investigative and critical journalism are not nation-building.
The NDP cheerleaders were damn ugly. No wonder so many people are migrating.
[On The Cove] "If dolphins are so intelligent, why do they keep getting caught in tuna nets, or keep returning to Taiji every year?"
RT @samho_ outstanding. expressions in the army, 'lanjiao' is used to articulate your disagreement, while 'cheebye' is used to express you disgust
Most motivational shit is nice-sounding nonsense you want to agree with, but actually means nothing, or is false.
For example: RT @tinkertailor:
"What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger." Right. How about HIV?
***
[Ed: While posting this, I got the error: "A post may have at most 10 labels" - so I have held some of the observations over for the next time]
Money illusion: thinking more money necessarily buys you more real goods
Goods illusion: thinking more possessions necessarily makes you more happy
Data illusion: thinking more data necessarily enlightens you more
I was told that someone espied, in a double hall room with double beds, 2 PRC couples going at it (on either bed - not at the same time)
When people get older, they usually wish they had been more adventurous. They rarely wish they had been more strait-laced.
In a girl, it's called "self-esteem" and is something you cannot injure.
In a guy it's called "ego" and deserves to be punctured.
Men wouldn't treat women as conquests if women didn't present themselves as entities to be conquered
I am very amused that in RGS, the girls are/were reminded not to hug one another - because of H1N1.
A most unfortunate Twitter handle for a girl: @SaggyTAN.
No, this is not my overactive imagination talking again:
(Un)fortunately her user picture doesn't allow us to see if she really is Saggy.
Maybe she's a Sagittarius.
Then again, someone tells me he knew another girl called Saggy.
Citizenship classes in Singapore should teach - 'Singapore is hot and humid. Please bathe everyday'. Maybe they can sponsor this with the $10 million integration fund.
Judicial independence, vote secrecy, the anonymity of IVLE anonymous feedback and the like - even if they really do exist, it's telling that people think they don't. Either way it's sad for the institutions concerned.
No taxi driver's son, no matter how talented, will qualify for a PSC scholarship if he doesn't have a guarantor. Hurrah meritocracy!
Local journalism is about repackaging ministerial press releases. Because investigative and critical journalism are not nation-building.
The NDP cheerleaders were damn ugly. No wonder so many people are migrating.
[On The Cove] "If dolphins are so intelligent, why do they keep getting caught in tuna nets, or keep returning to Taiji every year?"
RT @samho_ outstanding. expressions in the army, 'lanjiao' is used to articulate your disagreement, while 'cheebye' is used to express you disgust
Most motivational shit is nice-sounding nonsense you want to agree with, but actually means nothing, or is false.
For example: RT @tinkertailor:
"What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger." Right. How about HIV?
Post ID: 2609858496746445905
"An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought." - Simon Cameron
***
Straits Times deleted Ris Low’s photo, but “sg-stupid.jpg” remains - "One cannot help but suspect if the journalists who took the trouble to dig out Miss Low’s past conviction and blowing it up in the media have a personal vendetta against her... This is the kind of gutter journalism we have in Singapore when the media industry is completely dominated by one single player under the control of the ruling party without any other competitors... Singaporeans should lobby for a change in the Newspaper and Printing Preses Law, break up SPH into various companies and liberalize the media industry in the future."
I love Temasek Review logic. ST calls Ris Low photo sg-stupid.jpg, therefore the law should be changed and SPH broken up. This is even better than the Shitty Times!
Cougar Cruise: Older Women Seek Younger Men - ""When people go on a cruise, all of their inhibitions go overboard. If you want to meet somebody of the opposite sex, this is the best way to do it," said Rich Gosse, chairman of the Society of Single Professionals, which came up with the trip idea along with the Singles Travel Co... "These cougar women tend to look younger and feel younger and have higher energy than most women their own age," he added. "They just can't date men their own age. The men can't keep up with them. The men they date that are their own age: all they want to do is sit on a sofa and watch TV."... For the first voyage, there aren't enough cougars and younger men -- called "cubs" -- to fill an entire cruise ship, so the cougar cruisers will set sail with other vacationers on a regular Carnival cruise out of the Los Angeles are on Dec. 4"
Do the cubs get discounted tickets?
It's true: all the taken men are best - "A new study provides evidence for what many have long suspected: that single women are much keener on pursuing a man who's already taken than a singleton... The most striking result was in the responses of single women. Offered a single man, 59 per cent were interested in pursuing a relationship. But when he was attached, 90 per cent said they were up for the chase. Men were keenest on pursuing new mates, but weren't bothered whether their target was already attached or not. Attached women showed least interest and were slightly more drawn to single men... Burkley and Parker speculate that single women may be more drawn to attached men because they've already been "pre-screened" by other women and found to be satisfactory as a mate, whereas single men are more of an unknown quantity"
FuturePundit: "I think there's a potential business here for a specialized escort service where women sell time with them in public places to guys who want to advertise their desirability"
Why women are changing their minds about men - "They found that as a woman's level of "resource control" increases - in other words as they become more financially independent - so does their preference for physical attractiveness in potential partners"
Preferences are context dependent. But dependent on framing, it might very well show that rich women go for even richer men.
YouTube - Moomedia Wedding Narrative - 10years in 6mins - "I like this piece because it is such a sweet story. Though adapted, a lot of elements were taken from their true life account. We had heaps of fun shooting it. This is Moomedia's first official MV shot almost entirely on the 5DmkII."
This is a nice wedding video.
cabel.name: Kashiwa Mystery Cafe - "At this cafe, you get what the person before you ordered. The next person gets what you ordered. Welcome to the Ogori cafe!... The Ogori cafe was an unforgettable travel moment, and an idea that has stuck with me: It was a complete surprise in our day. It encouraged communication between total strangers or, in this case, members of the Kashiwa community and a couple of weird guys from Oregon. It forced one to "let go", just for a brief moment, of the total control we're so used to exerting through commerce. It led you to taste something new, that you might not normally have ordered. It was a delight. Then, according to Noby, as quickly as it appeared, the Ogori cafe was gone."
unattended children will be shot. - "this hamfisted attempt at wit remains the scourge of retail establishments the world over."
YouTube - Chimpanzee doing sit-up
Damn Japs
THE LAST DAYS OF THE POLYMATH - "“Nowadays people that are called polymaths are dabblers—are dabblers in many different areas,” he says. “I aspire to be an intellectual polygamist... in the ideal polygamy I suspect there’s no number one wife and no number six wife. You have a deep connection with each person.”... Over the past 200 years the nature of intellectual endeavour has changed profoundly. The polymaths of old were one-brain universities. These days you count as a polymath if you excel at one thing and go on to write a decent book about another... Back in the early 19th century you could grasp a field with a little reading and a ready wit. But the distinction between the dabbling and doing is more demanding these days, because breaking new ground is so much harder... So many scientists are publishing research in each specialism that merely to keep up with the reading is a full-time job... “Even in relatively soft fields, specialists tend to develop a specialised vocabulary which creates barriers to entry,” Posner says with his economic hat pulled down over his head. “Specialists want to fend off the generalists. They may also want to convince themselves that what they are doing is really very difficult and challenging. One of the ways they do that is to develop what they regard a rigorous methodology—often mathematical... Depth is for monomaths—which is why experts so often seem to miss what really matters"
YouTube - How to welcome your mother in law
Dwarves found 'theme park' commune to escape bullying - "Everyone in the mountain commune in Kunming, southern China, must be under 4ft 3 ins tall and they run their own police force and fire brigade from their 120 residents. Now the group has turned itself into a tourist attraction by building mushroom houses and living and dressing like fairy tale characters"
JK Rowling lost out on Presidential Award because George Bush believed Harry Potter encouraged witchcraft
***
Straits Times deleted Ris Low’s photo, but “sg-stupid.jpg” remains - "One cannot help but suspect if the journalists who took the trouble to dig out Miss Low’s past conviction and blowing it up in the media have a personal vendetta against her... This is the kind of gutter journalism we have in Singapore when the media industry is completely dominated by one single player under the control of the ruling party without any other competitors... Singaporeans should lobby for a change in the Newspaper and Printing Preses Law, break up SPH into various companies and liberalize the media industry in the future."
I love Temasek Review logic. ST calls Ris Low photo sg-stupid.jpg, therefore the law should be changed and SPH broken up. This is even better than the Shitty Times!
Cougar Cruise: Older Women Seek Younger Men - ""When people go on a cruise, all of their inhibitions go overboard. If you want to meet somebody of the opposite sex, this is the best way to do it," said Rich Gosse, chairman of the Society of Single Professionals, which came up with the trip idea along with the Singles Travel Co... "These cougar women tend to look younger and feel younger and have higher energy than most women their own age," he added. "They just can't date men their own age. The men can't keep up with them. The men they date that are their own age: all they want to do is sit on a sofa and watch TV."... For the first voyage, there aren't enough cougars and younger men -- called "cubs" -- to fill an entire cruise ship, so the cougar cruisers will set sail with other vacationers on a regular Carnival cruise out of the Los Angeles are on Dec. 4"
Do the cubs get discounted tickets?
It's true: all the taken men are best - "A new study provides evidence for what many have long suspected: that single women are much keener on pursuing a man who's already taken than a singleton... The most striking result was in the responses of single women. Offered a single man, 59 per cent were interested in pursuing a relationship. But when he was attached, 90 per cent said they were up for the chase. Men were keenest on pursuing new mates, but weren't bothered whether their target was already attached or not. Attached women showed least interest and were slightly more drawn to single men... Burkley and Parker speculate that single women may be more drawn to attached men because they've already been "pre-screened" by other women and found to be satisfactory as a mate, whereas single men are more of an unknown quantity"
FuturePundit: "I think there's a potential business here for a specialized escort service where women sell time with them in public places to guys who want to advertise their desirability"
Why women are changing their minds about men - "They found that as a woman's level of "resource control" increases - in other words as they become more financially independent - so does their preference for physical attractiveness in potential partners"
Preferences are context dependent. But dependent on framing, it might very well show that rich women go for even richer men.
YouTube - Moomedia Wedding Narrative - 10years in 6mins - "I like this piece because it is such a sweet story. Though adapted, a lot of elements were taken from their true life account. We had heaps of fun shooting it. This is Moomedia's first official MV shot almost entirely on the 5DmkII."
This is a nice wedding video.
cabel.name: Kashiwa Mystery Cafe - "At this cafe, you get what the person before you ordered. The next person gets what you ordered. Welcome to the Ogori cafe!... The Ogori cafe was an unforgettable travel moment, and an idea that has stuck with me: It was a complete surprise in our day. It encouraged communication between total strangers or, in this case, members of the Kashiwa community and a couple of weird guys from Oregon. It forced one to "let go", just for a brief moment, of the total control we're so used to exerting through commerce. It led you to taste something new, that you might not normally have ordered. It was a delight. Then, according to Noby, as quickly as it appeared, the Ogori cafe was gone."
unattended children will be shot. - "this hamfisted attempt at wit remains the scourge of retail establishments the world over."
YouTube - Chimpanzee doing sit-up
Damn Japs
THE LAST DAYS OF THE POLYMATH - "“Nowadays people that are called polymaths are dabblers—are dabblers in many different areas,” he says. “I aspire to be an intellectual polygamist... in the ideal polygamy I suspect there’s no number one wife and no number six wife. You have a deep connection with each person.”... Over the past 200 years the nature of intellectual endeavour has changed profoundly. The polymaths of old were one-brain universities. These days you count as a polymath if you excel at one thing and go on to write a decent book about another... Back in the early 19th century you could grasp a field with a little reading and a ready wit. But the distinction between the dabbling and doing is more demanding these days, because breaking new ground is so much harder... So many scientists are publishing research in each specialism that merely to keep up with the reading is a full-time job... “Even in relatively soft fields, specialists tend to develop a specialised vocabulary which creates barriers to entry,” Posner says with his economic hat pulled down over his head. “Specialists want to fend off the generalists. They may also want to convince themselves that what they are doing is really very difficult and challenging. One of the ways they do that is to develop what they regard a rigorous methodology—often mathematical... Depth is for monomaths—which is why experts so often seem to miss what really matters"
YouTube - How to welcome your mother in law
Dwarves found 'theme park' commune to escape bullying - "Everyone in the mountain commune in Kunming, southern China, must be under 4ft 3 ins tall and they run their own police force and fire brigade from their 120 residents. Now the group has turned itself into a tourist attraction by building mushroom houses and living and dressing like fairy tale characters"
JK Rowling lost out on Presidential Award because George Bush believed Harry Potter encouraged witchcraft
Post ID: 6427960379463167013
More spam FAIL:
From: Dongli Zhang (some Bryn Mawr College email account)
Reply-To: ELIZABETHETTERS (some Hotmail UK account)
Subject: PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE THANK YOU.
Message: I am Mrs Elizabeth Etters, a devoted Christian. I have a foundation/Estateuncompleted {valued at USD 2,142,728.00 Dollars} and need you to help me finish it because of my health, Everything is available. Please contact me for more details. Private contact email: XXX. thank you.
Besides not even taking the effort to come up with a marginally plausible story, the idiot was dumb enough to send his spam from his college account (it's in the headers!) so I'm going to report him to his administrator, hoho.
From: Dongli Zhang (some Bryn Mawr College email account)
Reply-To: ELIZABETHETTERS (some Hotmail UK account)
Subject: PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE THANK YOU.
Message: I am Mrs Elizabeth Etters, a devoted Christian. I have a foundation/Estateuncompleted {valued at USD 2,142,728.00 Dollars} and need you to help me finish it because of my health, Everything is available. Please contact me for more details. Private contact email: XXX. thank you.
Besides not even taking the effort to come up with a marginally plausible story, the idiot was dumb enough to send his spam from his college account (it's in the headers!) so I'm going to report him to his administrator, hoho.
Post ID: 7376554597694433289
"He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace." - John Mason Brown
***
The Dead Sea Scroll and the Ancient World (Part 2)
Part 1
"Special Blessing Draw Box"
Mixing God and Mammon. Tsk.
In the third chamber, another talk was beginning, and this was the best of the lot.
The Boo Boo Man. Who had no Ph.D (I didn't manage to glimpse or snap his nametag).
The Boo Boo Man was very proud of the exhibition having a page of the Gutenberg Bible, and claimed that no less than Bill Gates had offered $100 million for a copy - but no one was willing to share it with him. This is nonsense, since sources indicate that he does have one in his possession (and estimate he paid *only* $23 million for it).
Boo Boo Man then claimed that before the invention of movable type by Gutenberg, it had taken 6 months to inscribe the Bible. This was misleading, as Gutenberg did not invent *Printing* - wood block printing had already been around for more than a millennium.
Then came the best howler of all - he claimed that Elizabeth I of England had beheaded "her sister" "Bloody Mary" to take the throne. I hope he gets his Ph.D soon! But besides avoiding Biology he should also steer clear of History...
The first Bible printed in Spanish (1569), by Cassiodoro de Reina. It's also called the Bear Bible because its cover shows a bear reaching into a tree for honey.
Polyglot Bible, 1599, in Syriac, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, English and Danish.
Miniature Bible chained to the pulpit, 1890.
Their Gutenberg Bible page, c. 1455.
Bible in Algonquin Indian
The best part of this panel is the claim that the Codex Alexandrinus was "transferred to Constantinople in 1621 and finally to the British Museum in 1627". Given that there was no such city in 1621 and no such museum in 1627, it makes you wonder if the person who wrote this was high on smoking Dead Sea Scroll fragments (Hans Sloane's collection formed the core of the Museum in 1758, but in 1627 he hadn't even been born yet).
This panel claims that the Codex Sinaiticus used to contain the whole Bible, and that it is a "complete Bible". In the sense that all the books were represented, this is true, yet this is a mischievous and misleading claim since the exhibition's agenda is to convince people that the Bible arrived by fax from Heaven.
Aside: there's a fascinating relationship between the Codex Sinaiticus and the rubbish bin.
More pottery
The gifts section was hilarious:
"How We Got the Bible
*Quote from 2 Timothy 3:16-17 on the Bible being perfect*"
Someone was flipping through it, and I read "The Bible is inspired by God" (I didn't take pictures as it was not polite). This would be a good exhibit for a lesson on logical fallacies.
A book by Craig Lampe, the father of the curator (who wrote the foreword for his father?!), with pages from the 1560 Geneva Bible and 1611 KJV.
The Roman coins had sold out already, but there were still Jewish coins.
I then went back to looking at the exhibition.
1649 Hybrid Bible - KJV with the Geneva notes
1560 Geneva Bible. Feel the waves of adulation.
The Pigrim's Progress. They didn't mention it here, but it's a religious allegory so no, it's not really a secular item.
Martin Luther's Sermons on The Letters of Peter and Jude, 1581
The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms, Isaac Newton. 1728.
"It is often claimed that William Shakespeare's phraseology influenced the making of the King James Bible. This is actually quite erroneous, for it was Tyndale who influenced Shakespeare. Scholars have counted over 5,000 instances in which William Shakespeare used the language of William Tyndale!"
I found some sources which claim Shakespeare based his language on Tyndale, but they were all evangelical Christian ones. The others talked about the latter having an influence on the former (many didn't even mention this, though that is unfair).
Greek NT, 1550
Counter-Reformation Bible, 1556
1519 Erasmus Bible
I overheard a conversation between one curator and someone - on usual weekdays they got 800 people, but the day I went there were 1,200.
There was also an activity room, where visitors (mainly kids) could do various things. Tellingly, virtually the activities had nothing to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls, even peripherally:
"Print Your Own Bible Lead Here!" (notice it's not "Print Your Own Dead Sea Scroll Here!")
Buy extracts from the KJV
Printing John 3:16 (not in the Dead Sea Scrolls) in Greek
Printing 1 John 4:8 (not in the Dead Sea Scrolls) in Greek
13th Century Bible
I was toying with telling them, at the end of the exhibition, that I was impressed by the Bible's integrity over the centuries, and the faith of all the people involved in preserving these religious texts, and that I wanted to know more about Christ. That would've been like a Wet Dream for them, but then Onanism is a Sin, so I decided not to lead them down the Path to Destruction.
"Free Will Gift For Guides. $2.00"
I think they meant "GOOD Will Gift"
Dead Sea product placement outside the exhibition rooms
Surprisingly, I didn't see anyone using their Camera Flashes during the exhibition - the crowd was remarkably well-behaved.
***
The Dead Sea Scroll and the Ancient World (Part 2)
Part 1
"Special Blessing Draw Box"
Mixing God and Mammon. Tsk.
In the third chamber, another talk was beginning, and this was the best of the lot.
The Boo Boo Man. Who had no Ph.D (I didn't manage to glimpse or snap his nametag).
The Boo Boo Man was very proud of the exhibition having a page of the Gutenberg Bible, and claimed that no less than Bill Gates had offered $100 million for a copy - but no one was willing to share it with him. This is nonsense, since sources indicate that he does have one in his possession (and estimate he paid *only* $23 million for it).
Boo Boo Man then claimed that before the invention of movable type by Gutenberg, it had taken 6 months to inscribe the Bible. This was misleading, as Gutenberg did not invent *Printing* - wood block printing had already been around for more than a millennium.
Then came the best howler of all - he claimed that Elizabeth I of England had beheaded "her sister" "Bloody Mary" to take the throne. I hope he gets his Ph.D soon! But besides avoiding Biology he should also steer clear of History...
The first Bible printed in Spanish (1569), by Cassiodoro de Reina. It's also called the Bear Bible because its cover shows a bear reaching into a tree for honey.
Polyglot Bible, 1599, in Syriac, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, English and Danish.
Miniature Bible chained to the pulpit, 1890.
Their Gutenberg Bible page, c. 1455.
Bible in Algonquin Indian
The best part of this panel is the claim that the Codex Alexandrinus was "transferred to Constantinople in 1621 and finally to the British Museum in 1627". Given that there was no such city in 1621 and no such museum in 1627, it makes you wonder if the person who wrote this was high on smoking Dead Sea Scroll fragments (Hans Sloane's collection formed the core of the Museum in 1758, but in 1627 he hadn't even been born yet).
This panel claims that the Codex Sinaiticus used to contain the whole Bible, and that it is a "complete Bible". In the sense that all the books were represented, this is true, yet this is a mischievous and misleading claim since the exhibition's agenda is to convince people that the Bible arrived by fax from Heaven.
Aside: there's a fascinating relationship between the Codex Sinaiticus and the rubbish bin.
More pottery
The gifts section was hilarious:
"How We Got the Bible
*Quote from 2 Timothy 3:16-17 on the Bible being perfect*"
Someone was flipping through it, and I read "The Bible is inspired by God" (I didn't take pictures as it was not polite). This would be a good exhibit for a lesson on logical fallacies.
A book by Craig Lampe, the father of the curator (who wrote the foreword for his father?!), with pages from the 1560 Geneva Bible and 1611 KJV.
The Roman coins had sold out already, but there were still Jewish coins.
I then went back to looking at the exhibition.
1649 Hybrid Bible - KJV with the Geneva notes
1560 Geneva Bible. Feel the waves of adulation.
The Pigrim's Progress. They didn't mention it here, but it's a religious allegory so no, it's not really a secular item.
Martin Luther's Sermons on The Letters of Peter and Jude, 1581
The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms, Isaac Newton. 1728.
"It is often claimed that William Shakespeare's phraseology influenced the making of the King James Bible. This is actually quite erroneous, for it was Tyndale who influenced Shakespeare. Scholars have counted over 5,000 instances in which William Shakespeare used the language of William Tyndale!"
I found some sources which claim Shakespeare based his language on Tyndale, but they were all evangelical Christian ones. The others talked about the latter having an influence on the former (many didn't even mention this, though that is unfair).
Greek NT, 1550
Counter-Reformation Bible, 1556
1519 Erasmus Bible
I overheard a conversation between one curator and someone - on usual weekdays they got 800 people, but the day I went there were 1,200.
There was also an activity room, where visitors (mainly kids) could do various things. Tellingly, virtually the activities had nothing to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls, even peripherally:
"Print Your Own Bible Lead Here!" (notice it's not "Print Your Own Dead Sea Scroll Here!")
Buy extracts from the KJV
Printing John 3:16 (not in the Dead Sea Scrolls) in Greek
Printing 1 John 4:8 (not in the Dead Sea Scrolls) in Greek
13th Century Bible
I was toying with telling them, at the end of the exhibition, that I was impressed by the Bible's integrity over the centuries, and the faith of all the people involved in preserving these religious texts, and that I wanted to know more about Christ. That would've been like a Wet Dream for them, but then Onanism is a Sin, so I decided not to lead them down the Path to Destruction.
"Free Will Gift For Guides. $2.00"
I think they meant "GOOD Will Gift"
Dead Sea product placement outside the exhibition rooms
Surprisingly, I didn't see anyone using their Camera Flashes during the exhibition - the crowd was remarkably well-behaved.
Post ID: 625436747051135002
"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." - Flannery O'Connor
***
This is priceless (perhaps more proof that modern liberalism kills your sense of irony and self-awareness):
Derailing for Dummies
Making Discrimination Easier!
"A simple, step-by-step guide to derailing awkward conversations by dismissing and trivialising your opposition's perspective and experience. Just some of the many issues you can apply it to:
*sexism* *whorephobia* *racism* *transphobia* *classism* *homophobia* *ableism* *kinkphobia* *fatphobia*
guaranteed, you can use it to marginalise anyone!...
You’re having a good time, sharing your knowledge about these people and their issues. This knowledge is incontrovertible - it’s been backed up in media representation, books, research and lots and lots of historical events, also your own unassailable sense of being right...
Apparently, they claim, you’ve got it all wrong and they’re offended about that...
By simply derailing the conversation, dismissing their opinion as false and ridiculing their experience you can be sure that they continue to be marginalised and unheard and you can continue to look like the expert you know you really are, deep down inside!
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE PRIVILEGE!
Just follow this step-by-step guide to Conversing with Marginalised People™ and in no time at all you will have a fool-proof method of derailing every challenging conversation you may get into, thus reaping the full benefits of every privilege that
you have.
The best part is, you don't even have to be a white, heterosexual, cisgendered, cissexual, upper-class male to enjoy the full benefits of derailing conversation! Nope, you can utilise the lesser-recognised tactic of Horizontal Hostility to
make sure that, despite being a member of a Marginalised Group™ yourself, you can exercise a privilege another Marginalised Group™ doesn't have in order not to heed their experience!...
If You Won't Educate Me How Can I Learn
If You Cared About These Matters You'd Be Willing To Educate Me
You're Being Hostile
But That Happens To Me Too!
You're Being Overemotional
You're Just Oversensitive - NEW!
You Just Enjoy Being Offended - NEW!
Don't You Have More Important Issues To Think About - NEW!
You're Taking Things Too Personally
You’re Not Being Intellectual Enough/You’re Being Overly Intellectual
You're Interrogating From The Wrong Perspective - NEW!
You're Arguing With Opinions Not Fact
Your Experience Is Not Representative Of Everyone
Unless You Can Prove Your Experience Is Widespread I Won't Believe It
I Don't Think You're As Marginalised As You Claim
Aren't You Treating Each Other Worse Anyway - NEW!
But You're Different To The Others - NEW!
Well I Know Another Person From Your Group Who Disagrees!
A In B Situation Is Not Equivalent To X In Y Situation
Who Wins Gold in the Oppression Olympics?
You Have A False Consciousness
You're Not Being A Team Player
You've Lost Your Temper So I Don't Have To Listen To You Anymore
You Are Damaging Your Cause By Being Angry
You're As Bad As They Are - NEW!
Surprise! I Was Playing “Devil’s Advocate” All Along!...
But That Happens To Me Too!
The Marginalised Person™ you’re dealing with has been subjected to this “othering”.
This means that their body is viewed as public property and the personal, intricate details of their lives and being are perceived as free information...
For example, people of African descent often express outrage and irritation at the fact many white people believe they can freely touch their hair. This invasion of their personal space is dressed up as flattery - “oh, what beautiful hair you have!” and permission is not sought or granted before the action is taken. “That happens to everyone!” you must exclaim. “My child has beautiful white-blonde hair and people are always touching it!”...
What this demonstrates is your total lack of understanding of what “othering” means in a practical sense. You’re ignoring the way your life is otherwise entirely immersed in a state of absolute privilege and revealing the fact you fail to comprehend the process of objectification and marginalising they go through all the time. When you are Privileged®, “similar” experiences simply do not happen on an equal footing because they do not otherwise reflect marginalisation. This obliviousness is highly insensitive and trivialising and will definitely cause them to grind their teeth!...
You're Being Overemotional
After all, proper “intellectual” discussions always involve detachment and rationality. What is “rationality”? It’s a way of approaching emotional matters devoid of sentiment, particularly prized by Privileged People® as it enables a continuing inequity of power that favours them: after all, if they aren’t emotionally attached to the topic by way of Lived Experience©, it is easier for them to be “rational”...
You're Arguing With Opinions Not Fact
If you really want to excel as a Privileged Person® you need to learn to value data, statistics, research studies and empirical evidence above all things, but especially above Lived Experience©.
***
This is priceless (perhaps more proof that modern liberalism kills your sense of irony and self-awareness):
Derailing for Dummies
Making Discrimination Easier!
"A simple, step-by-step guide to derailing awkward conversations by dismissing and trivialising your opposition's perspective and experience. Just some of the many issues you can apply it to:
*sexism* *whorephobia* *racism* *transphobia* *classism* *homophobia* *ableism* *kinkphobia* *fatphobia*
guaranteed, you can use it to marginalise anyone!...
You’re having a good time, sharing your knowledge about these people and their issues. This knowledge is incontrovertible - it’s been backed up in media representation, books, research and lots and lots of historical events, also your own unassailable sense of being right...
Apparently, they claim, you’ve got it all wrong and they’re offended about that...
By simply derailing the conversation, dismissing their opinion as false and ridiculing their experience you can be sure that they continue to be marginalised and unheard and you can continue to look like the expert you know you really are, deep down inside!
Just follow this step-by-step guide to Conversing with Marginalised People™ and in no time at all you will have a fool-proof method of derailing every challenging conversation you may get into, thus reaping the full benefits of every privilege that
you have.
The best part is, you don't even have to be a white, heterosexual, cisgendered, cissexual, upper-class male to enjoy the full benefits of derailing conversation! Nope, you can utilise the lesser-recognised tactic of Horizontal Hostility to
make sure that, despite being a member of a Marginalised Group™ yourself, you can exercise a privilege another Marginalised Group™ doesn't have in order not to heed their experience!...
If You Won't Educate Me How Can I Learn
If You Cared About These Matters You'd Be Willing To Educate Me
You're Being Hostile
But That Happens To Me Too!
You're Being Overemotional
You're Just Oversensitive - NEW!
You Just Enjoy Being Offended - NEW!
Don't You Have More Important Issues To Think About - NEW!
You're Taking Things Too Personally
You’re Not Being Intellectual Enough/You’re Being Overly Intellectual
You're Interrogating From The Wrong Perspective - NEW!
You're Arguing With Opinions Not Fact
Your Experience Is Not Representative Of Everyone
Unless You Can Prove Your Experience Is Widespread I Won't Believe It
I Don't Think You're As Marginalised As You Claim
Aren't You Treating Each Other Worse Anyway - NEW!
But You're Different To The Others - NEW!
Well I Know Another Person From Your Group Who Disagrees!
A In B Situation Is Not Equivalent To X In Y Situation
Who Wins Gold in the Oppression Olympics?
You Have A False Consciousness
You're Not Being A Team Player
You've Lost Your Temper So I Don't Have To Listen To You Anymore
You Are Damaging Your Cause By Being Angry
You're As Bad As They Are - NEW!
Surprise! I Was Playing “Devil’s Advocate” All Along!...
But That Happens To Me Too!
The Marginalised Person™ you’re dealing with has been subjected to this “othering”.
This means that their body is viewed as public property and the personal, intricate details of their lives and being are perceived as free information...
For example, people of African descent often express outrage and irritation at the fact many white people believe they can freely touch their hair. This invasion of their personal space is dressed up as flattery - “oh, what beautiful hair you have!” and permission is not sought or granted before the action is taken. “That happens to everyone!” you must exclaim. “My child has beautiful white-blonde hair and people are always touching it!”...
What this demonstrates is your total lack of understanding of what “othering” means in a practical sense. You’re ignoring the way your life is otherwise entirely immersed in a state of absolute privilege and revealing the fact you fail to comprehend the process of objectification and marginalising they go through all the time. When you are Privileged®, “similar” experiences simply do not happen on an equal footing because they do not otherwise reflect marginalisation. This obliviousness is highly insensitive and trivialising and will definitely cause them to grind their teeth!...
You're Being Overemotional
After all, proper “intellectual” discussions always involve detachment and rationality. What is “rationality”? It’s a way of approaching emotional matters devoid of sentiment, particularly prized by Privileged People® as it enables a continuing inequity of power that favours them: after all, if they aren’t emotionally attached to the topic by way of Lived Experience©, it is easier for them to be “rational”...
You're Arguing With Opinions Not Fact
If you really want to excel as a Privileged Person® you need to learn to value data, statistics, research studies and empirical evidence above all things, but especially above Lived Experience©.
Post ID: 5011683533731849075
Saturday, October 03, 2009
I am shocked. I am amazed. I am scandalized.
For the first time that I can remember, NONE of the 10 Most Popular Stories on the Straits Times Website are about sex (it's not unusual for half of them to be involve sex).
For the first time that I can remember, NONE of the 10 Most Popular Stories on the Straits Times Website are about sex (it's not unusual for half of them to be involve sex).
Post ID: 8809480563780891690
"Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to." - Ambrose Bierce
***
Keeping Singlish at bay
John Lui
(via q u i r k y h i l l)
Speak well but don’t feel too bad if a temporary surrender is called for
The funny thing about peer pressure is that it comes from people who would hate to think of you as one of their peers.
That is the whole point, really. The pressure is to change you so you can be allowed into the group.
As much as people mock Miss Singapore World Ris Low – the young woman who caused an online uproar with her mangled pronunciation – they are outnumbered.
People who speak like her are in our schools and workplaces and I have lived among her kind – the kind who say ‘crips’ for crisp – during the various periods of my life when I lived as an exile in the Land Of The Lost Consonant.
Delicate reader, you may gasp and tremble at the tale to follow, but verily did I walk among people for whom ‘hor’ was like a comma or full-stop for the rest of us.
I broke bread around the lunch table with those who felt the vowel in ‘there’ was plastic, meant to be stretched for pointing out items far away and shortened for things nearby.
I remember one person telling me to go look ‘over there’ for a form, to be found behind some papers at the end of the hall. The vowel in that word rattled about in her nasal cavity for so long that I swear I heard it nest and raise offspring. Oh, and there was that ever-helpful chin-point too.
Like a messiah bringing news of the wonders of grammar and diction, I arrived at one small publishing company as editor six years ago. As I entered, I tsk-tsked over the noticeboard proclaiming a ‘mixed volleyballs finals’ and that staff should not ‘disturbed the servers in the computer room’.
The sheriff just rode into town, I thought. Time to clean up. Time to send some grammar bandits to jail. Sorry, gaol.
As it turned out, my plans did not take into account my arch-nemesis, Julia. Every office has a Julia. She is the alpha female, the leader of the pack, the loudest of the loud. She is the namer and the shamer. She anoints and she condemns. She giveth and she taketh away.
She was a graphic artist, but her soft power in the lunch room far exceeded that of the vice-presidents. Julia’s speech was Singlish and she was damned proud of it. She declared that anyone who did not speak it and who did not have the excuse of being born outside Singapore was pretending to be above his station. I was, at first, accepted into her circle and I was grateful that through her, I could get access to people who mattered.
But little did I know that her operation was like that of a cult. It starts with gentle ribbing (’Wah, why must take so long to say?’) then it escalates into outright scolding (’Eh! Can talk faster or not?’). I imagine this is what Maoist re-education and self-criticism must be like. I began to doubt myself. After all, the president and all the vice-presidents of the company, presumably an outpost of an American multinational, used Cantonese among themselves when they were bonding and in high spirits, and a self-conscious, mumbled English when they were sombre and about to break bad news at town hall meetings.
Good English, or rather, the effort made to use it, was associated with bad times. Bad English was for friends.
The four years I spent there were a strange period in my life when there was pressure to dumb-down, or rather, friend-up, my speech. Like a ham radio operator, I carefully dialled in the correct diction frequency so I could communicate with the tribe and therefore belong. On Survivor Island, everyone does it to win a million bucks. I did it so Julia and her pack would not turn me into the butt of communal jokes.
Deep inside, I shrivelled up a little every time I used ‘nor’, ‘nuuu’ and ‘nah’ to assign ownership of pens and staplers to various persons. If one did not know how to use these three vocal sound effects properly, Julia’s suspicions would be aroused. Lunchtime could be awkward time.
Now that I have safely escaped Stalag Julia, I can say that I was only pretending to speak Singlish. Take that!
I am not alone in being an undercover Good English speaker. In national service, using the incorrect lingo to one’s trainers could turn you from an anonymous recruit to ‘marked man’. Using long words is not as bad as not knowing your left foot from your right on the parade square, or not being able to field-strip a rifle in under a minute, but it is unwise to flaunt one’s enunciation to someone who could make you do enough push-ups to shift the Earth from its orbit.
So kudos to the freaks who let their linguistic flags fly high. A colleague told me of a classmate at the Anglo-Chinese School who was hit on the head by a rugby player for speaking in a manner the player deemed too posh and prissy. In spite of being threatened with more beatings, he did not drop his manner of speech. That, ladies and gentlemen, is courage.
I sought the advice of Mr Goh Eck Kheng, the chairman of the Speak Good English Movement, to ask him the best way to resist the Singlish nazis. When the Ris Lows of Singapore gang up on you, what do you do?
‘Look at it in a bigger context,’ he said. Young people, for example, are pressured to go to the right clubs and wear the right clothes. It is not just a speech issue but an issue of overall conformity.
‘If you want to belong to the in-group you will succumb. But it means giving up your identity to be an anonymous digit in a larger group,’ he said.
Wise words.
So stop the race to the bottom. As the tide of slurred speech and rushed vocalisations rushes in, be the rock and stand fast, he said.
But this is what I say: Be the you that you want to be, even if it means being an outcast. But if you see Julia coming, make a temporary surrender. Good English is nice, but lunchtime is a meal.
The Straits Times, 19 September 2009
***
Keeping Singlish at bay
John Lui
(via q u i r k y h i l l)
Speak well but don’t feel too bad if a temporary surrender is called for
The funny thing about peer pressure is that it comes from people who would hate to think of you as one of their peers.
That is the whole point, really. The pressure is to change you so you can be allowed into the group.
As much as people mock Miss Singapore World Ris Low – the young woman who caused an online uproar with her mangled pronunciation – they are outnumbered.
People who speak like her are in our schools and workplaces and I have lived among her kind – the kind who say ‘crips’ for crisp – during the various periods of my life when I lived as an exile in the Land Of The Lost Consonant.
Delicate reader, you may gasp and tremble at the tale to follow, but verily did I walk among people for whom ‘hor’ was like a comma or full-stop for the rest of us.
I broke bread around the lunch table with those who felt the vowel in ‘there’ was plastic, meant to be stretched for pointing out items far away and shortened for things nearby.
I remember one person telling me to go look ‘over there’ for a form, to be found behind some papers at the end of the hall. The vowel in that word rattled about in her nasal cavity for so long that I swear I heard it nest and raise offspring. Oh, and there was that ever-helpful chin-point too.
Like a messiah bringing news of the wonders of grammar and diction, I arrived at one small publishing company as editor six years ago. As I entered, I tsk-tsked over the noticeboard proclaiming a ‘mixed volleyballs finals’ and that staff should not ‘disturbed the servers in the computer room’.
The sheriff just rode into town, I thought. Time to clean up. Time to send some grammar bandits to jail. Sorry, gaol.
As it turned out, my plans did not take into account my arch-nemesis, Julia. Every office has a Julia. She is the alpha female, the leader of the pack, the loudest of the loud. She is the namer and the shamer. She anoints and she condemns. She giveth and she taketh away.
She was a graphic artist, but her soft power in the lunch room far exceeded that of the vice-presidents. Julia’s speech was Singlish and she was damned proud of it. She declared that anyone who did not speak it and who did not have the excuse of being born outside Singapore was pretending to be above his station. I was, at first, accepted into her circle and I was grateful that through her, I could get access to people who mattered.
But little did I know that her operation was like that of a cult. It starts with gentle ribbing (’Wah, why must take so long to say?’) then it escalates into outright scolding (’Eh! Can talk faster or not?’). I imagine this is what Maoist re-education and self-criticism must be like. I began to doubt myself. After all, the president and all the vice-presidents of the company, presumably an outpost of an American multinational, used Cantonese among themselves when they were bonding and in high spirits, and a self-conscious, mumbled English when they were sombre and about to break bad news at town hall meetings.
Good English, or rather, the effort made to use it, was associated with bad times. Bad English was for friends.
The four years I spent there were a strange period in my life when there was pressure to dumb-down, or rather, friend-up, my speech. Like a ham radio operator, I carefully dialled in the correct diction frequency so I could communicate with the tribe and therefore belong. On Survivor Island, everyone does it to win a million bucks. I did it so Julia and her pack would not turn me into the butt of communal jokes.
Deep inside, I shrivelled up a little every time I used ‘nor’, ‘nuuu’ and ‘nah’ to assign ownership of pens and staplers to various persons. If one did not know how to use these three vocal sound effects properly, Julia’s suspicions would be aroused. Lunchtime could be awkward time.
Now that I have safely escaped Stalag Julia, I can say that I was only pretending to speak Singlish. Take that!
I am not alone in being an undercover Good English speaker. In national service, using the incorrect lingo to one’s trainers could turn you from an anonymous recruit to ‘marked man’. Using long words is not as bad as not knowing your left foot from your right on the parade square, or not being able to field-strip a rifle in under a minute, but it is unwise to flaunt one’s enunciation to someone who could make you do enough push-ups to shift the Earth from its orbit.
So kudos to the freaks who let their linguistic flags fly high. A colleague told me of a classmate at the Anglo-Chinese School who was hit on the head by a rugby player for speaking in a manner the player deemed too posh and prissy. In spite of being threatened with more beatings, he did not drop his manner of speech. That, ladies and gentlemen, is courage.
I sought the advice of Mr Goh Eck Kheng, the chairman of the Speak Good English Movement, to ask him the best way to resist the Singlish nazis. When the Ris Lows of Singapore gang up on you, what do you do?
‘Look at it in a bigger context,’ he said. Young people, for example, are pressured to go to the right clubs and wear the right clothes. It is not just a speech issue but an issue of overall conformity.
‘If you want to belong to the in-group you will succumb. But it means giving up your identity to be an anonymous digit in a larger group,’ he said.
Wise words.
So stop the race to the bottom. As the tide of slurred speech and rushed vocalisations rushes in, be the rock and stand fast, he said.
But this is what I say: Be the you that you want to be, even if it means being an outcast. But if you see Julia coming, make a temporary surrender. Good English is nice, but lunchtime is a meal.
The Straits Times, 19 September 2009
Post ID: 8768648650947578428
Friday, October 02, 2009
"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way." - Carl Sandburg
***
Frigid Girl: the study of lit is very different from enjoying lit
it's the difference of enjoying underwater world and cutting up the squid in underwater world for calamari
Someone: is easy to be used as a girl
u just lie there and let the guy fuck u
Me: oh
I teach you a position
it's called cowgirl
Someone: haha i also know
dont need u to teach me
MFTTW on Gtalk: what is your gtalk
well i can't add you now obviously because my contact list is broken, which is the source of hte problem
Me: I add you lah
MFTTW: orh ok
[MFTTW]@gmail.com
Me: yay another avenue to harass you
ok if you see sexybabe adding you that's me
MFTTW: omg
i think u added me before i may have blocked you
ok i'll go check when i get my access back
Me: THANKS AH
MFTTW: HOW I KNOW AH
Frigid Girl: i just watched the most screwed up french movie on earth
it's gonna be tested when sch reopens
this guy going off with his brother's wife
that woman going off with her childhood lover in front of her kids
(mind this all happens under one roof)
2 lesbians seducing mencos they fell out with each other
and then one of them ends up having sex before her entire extended
family cos they want to be 'liberal''
maybe you should move to france
and what if the qn is "why do they want to have sex"
what the hell
so much sex in the movie
won't be surprised
the nameofthe movie is milou en mai
MFTTW on bitching to me instead of confronting someone: i don't want tos tart a twitter flame war
and i'm non confrontational
:D
Me: bah
more like you like to bitch behind people's backs
MFTTW: hahahahaha
well i am female
HAHAHAHAHA
please lah
only you never bitch behind pple's backs
even most guys i know do it
anyway she has her legions of fans
later i kena lynched by psychotic lesbians
Someone: eyeliners
are damn pleasurable
trust me
if u were a girl
u'd think so
hahahaha
...
it's ok to indulge in some girly stuff
but if u indulge in all of them
u must be too free
or too rich
hahaa
Me: yes. see: how girls waste time
PPBI on the story of "Agagooga" and "N!ôrlãn": you have an overactive imagination
but nvm
i like!
you should have been born a girl
Me: why
PPBI: then you can go rgs and be weird
Me: ...
I went RI and was weird
PPBI: weird girls are cute
weird guys are losers
yesyes everyone loves women, etc
Malaysian: the more i read about singaporean news/forums the more depressed i get about this country
is that normal?
Me: hahahahaha
Malaysian: no honestly
i mean policies are one thing
it's the attitude of people that irks the hell out of me
I find this country one where her people are almost devoid of empathy and it kinda reminds me everytime of this quote from a movie "But the one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying. In spite of everything you've done for them, eventually they will hate you. Why bother?"
so sad
Me: so why are you here
Malaysian: *shrugs*
beats me
maybe it's like the matrix
Me: no, cos malaysia is even worse
Malaysian: well
i don't even want to think about that country
Me: ^^;;
so patriotic
Malaysian: yeah
the best way to love something is to wipe it from memory
Me: hahahahahahaha
***
Frigid Girl: the study of lit is very different from enjoying lit
it's the difference of enjoying underwater world and cutting up the squid in underwater world for calamari
Someone: is easy to be used as a girl
u just lie there and let the guy fuck u
Me: oh
I teach you a position
it's called cowgirl
Someone: haha i also know
dont need u to teach me
MFTTW on Gtalk: what is your gtalk
well i can't add you now obviously because my contact list is broken, which is the source of hte problem
Me: I add you lah
MFTTW: orh ok
[MFTTW]@gmail.com
Me: yay another avenue to harass you
ok if you see sexybabe adding you that's me
MFTTW: omg
i think u added me before i may have blocked you
ok i'll go check when i get my access back
Me: THANKS AH
MFTTW: HOW I KNOW AH
Frigid Girl: i just watched the most screwed up french movie on earth
it's gonna be tested when sch reopens
this guy going off with his brother's wife
that woman going off with her childhood lover in front of her kids
(mind this all happens under one roof)
2 lesbians seducing mencos they fell out with each other
and then one of them ends up having sex before her entire extended
family cos they want to be 'liberal''
maybe you should move to france
and what if the qn is "why do they want to have sex"
what the hell
so much sex in the movie
won't be surprised
the nameofthe movie is milou en mai
MFTTW on bitching to me instead of confronting someone: i don't want tos tart a twitter flame war
and i'm non confrontational
:D
Me: bah
more like you like to bitch behind people's backs
MFTTW: hahahahaha
well i am female
HAHAHAHAHA
please lah
only you never bitch behind pple's backs
even most guys i know do it
anyway she has her legions of fans
later i kena lynched by psychotic lesbians
Someone: eyeliners
are damn pleasurable
trust me
if u were a girl
u'd think so
hahahaha
...
it's ok to indulge in some girly stuff
but if u indulge in all of them
u must be too free
or too rich
hahaa
Me: yes. see: how girls waste time
PPBI on the story of "Agagooga" and "N!ôrlãn": you have an overactive imagination
but nvm
i like!
you should have been born a girl
Me: why
PPBI: then you can go rgs and be weird
Me: ...
I went RI and was weird
PPBI: weird girls are cute
weird guys are losers
yesyes everyone loves women, etc
Malaysian: the more i read about singaporean news/forums the more depressed i get about this country
is that normal?
Me: hahahahaha
Malaysian: no honestly
i mean policies are one thing
it's the attitude of people that irks the hell out of me
I find this country one where her people are almost devoid of empathy and it kinda reminds me everytime of this quote from a movie "But the one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying. In spite of everything you've done for them, eventually they will hate you. Why bother?"
so sad
Me: so why are you here
Malaysian: *shrugs*
beats me
maybe it's like the matrix
Me: no, cos malaysia is even worse
Malaysian: well
i don't even want to think about that country
Me: ^^;;
so patriotic
Malaysian: yeah
the best way to love something is to wipe it from memory
Me: hahahahahahaha
Post ID: 821914395744774255
"Anyone who works is a fool. I don't work - I merely inflict myself upon the public." - Robert Morley
***
University of Florida E-Learning System Support Team's
ZOMBIE ATTACK
Disaster Preparedness Simulation Exercise #5 (DR5)
"Part 1 of this exercise will be to identify characteristics of a zombie outbreak that might precede official
notification. These might include:
a. Disappearance of isolated citizens, initially in relatively remote areas;
b. Increasing numbers of gruesome unexplained deaths and disappearances, especially at night;
c. Identification of difficult to kill, flesh-eating perpetrators;
d. Recognition that the numbers of perpetrators is rapidly increasing and that those previously identified as victims have reappeared as perpetrators;
e. Increasing isolation of survivors;
f. Breakdown of peace-keeping and medical services;
g. Documentation of lots of strange moaning.
Part 2 of the exercise will be a discussion of how the overall impact of a zombie outbreak will affect use of
and support for the course management system and will address such issues as:
a. In general, zombified users will be inarticulate and unable to clearly describe technology problems and use cases;
b. Some support staff may be infected and unable to effectively and efficiently carry out their support responsibilities;
c. The rapid breakdown of civil society and declining numbers of uninfected users may have adverse budget impacts resulting in a reduction in staffing levels;
d. The spread of ZBSD to institutional administration may complicate policy making;
e. Conversely, the spread of ZBSD to institutional administration may simplify and streamline policy making resulting in dramatic improvements in administrative responsiveness and service delivery;
f. Additional security measures will need to be implemented at service delivery points (i.e. the Hub and SSRB).
Phase 3 of the exercise will cover important operational topics such as:
***
University of Florida E-Learning System Support Team's
ZOMBIE ATTACK
Disaster Preparedness Simulation Exercise #5 (DR5)
"Part 1 of this exercise will be to identify characteristics of a zombie outbreak that might precede official
notification. These might include:
a. Disappearance of isolated citizens, initially in relatively remote areas;
b. Increasing numbers of gruesome unexplained deaths and disappearances, especially at night;
c. Identification of difficult to kill, flesh-eating perpetrators;
d. Recognition that the numbers of perpetrators is rapidly increasing and that those previously identified as victims have reappeared as perpetrators;
e. Increasing isolation of survivors;
f. Breakdown of peace-keeping and medical services;
g. Documentation of lots of strange moaning.
Part 2 of the exercise will be a discussion of how the overall impact of a zombie outbreak will affect use of
and support for the course management system and will address such issues as:
a. In general, zombified users will be inarticulate and unable to clearly describe technology problems and use cases;
b. Some support staff may be infected and unable to effectively and efficiently carry out their support responsibilities;
c. The rapid breakdown of civil society and declining numbers of uninfected users may have adverse budget impacts resulting in a reduction in staffing levels;
d. The spread of ZBSD to institutional administration may complicate policy making;
e. Conversely, the spread of ZBSD to institutional administration may simplify and streamline policy making resulting in dramatic improvements in administrative responsiveness and service delivery;
f. Additional security measures will need to be implemented at service delivery points (i.e. the Hub and SSRB).
Phase 3 of the exercise will cover important operational topics such as:
- Situational work practices such as covering windows, barricading doors, and distinguishing between zombie moans and other moaning encountered in the workplace"
Post ID: 8721765447058003197
"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey
***
How I Became A Keynesian - "Second Thoughts in the Middle of a Crisis"
The Butterfly Tales... - The One About The iPhone - "The iPhone sucks – or at least mine does. The phone keeps restarting so often that I’m sometimes convinced it is on an eco-friendly sleep mode. It hangs more frequently than inmates on death row and the damn ‘Home’ button is faulty. If you are an iPhone user, you deserve an award for patience, a plague for putting up with this crap or you deserve a hug at least However, a peculiar scene started unraveling before me. There were actually more people sending in their iPhones for repair than there were actually people buying it"
Barack Obama's Smile Never Changes
Must be Botox
Spanking lowers a child's IQ, researcher says - "Straus suggests that the chronic stress created by regular spanking creates post-traumatic stress symptoms in children. PTSD is linked to lower IQ. Economic status also underlies both spanking practices and IQ"
Again, Science Reporting Headline FAIL
What REALLY makes a woman want to sleep with a man? - "Women whose partners had similar genes reported wanting to have sex less often. They had less motivation to please their partner sexually compared to the women going out with men with dissimilar genes. Women with MHC-similar partners also reported more frequent sexual fantasies about other men, particularly at the most fertile phase of their ovulation cycle. And their sexual fantasies about other men did not just remain in their heads. They also reported higher rates of sexual infidelity... Men with a high shoulder-to-hip ratio begin having sexual intercourse at an early age - 16 or younger... But be warned: they have more affairs while in a relationship... In our studies, we found that some women had sex with men simply because they'd been impressed by their dancing"
Addendum: Another article on this book: Why women have sex - ""We never ever expected [the reasons women sleep with men] to be so diverse," she says. "From the altruistic to the borderline evil." Evil? "Wanting to give someone a sexually transmitted infection," she explains... 73% of Russian women are in love, and 63% of Japanese women are in love... Only 61% of Russian men are in love and only 41% of Japanese men are in love. Which means that 12% of Russian women and 22% of Japanese women are totally wasting their time."
Some of the very unromantic reasons why women sleep with men - "We [have] been fed a Utopian myth that men and women have sex purely because they're crazed with lust for each other - or, in a long-term partnership, because they still adore each other. Any woman past the age of 16 knows what idealistic nonsense this is... 1,000 women were interviewed about their real reasons for saying 'Yes' when they could have said 'No'. Boredom, winning favours and to get rid of a headache were high up the list... In this light, feminism's eagerness to persuade women to have sex only when we experience knee-trembling desire seems naive... The book claims 84 pc of women have sex simply to keep their partners quiet or to get help with the chores. You may feel shocked at the hint of prostitution - the bartering of our bodies for a bit of DIY - but within a committed relationship is it truly so different from any other trade- off which ultimately nets both participants what they want?... '[He] started to sing to me in French... When he got to the third verse, I thought: 'I can't stand any more of this.' So I locked my fingers in his, to stop him strumming, and dragged him upstairs - just to shut him up."
Kiss the Girl... Continued - "Surely it won't hurt
If you go for the shirt
Now that you kissed the girl
(Sing with me now)
Shalalalalala forget the face
It's on to second base
Go on and feel the boobs
Shalalalalala unhook her bra
It's just like Mardi Gras
In New Orleans with the dudes"
HDB's version of subsidy, affordability and fair prices - "The HDB sells flats base on market price instead of cost as this is the fairest way of pricing new flats. A market base pricing approach ensures that all groups of buyers enjoy similar discounts to the market and would be fair to those who are buying other HDB flats today"
This is curiously reminiscent of SAF notions of "fairness" - basically making everyone suffer (not to mention exactly the same as the old NKF's "subsidy"). But there's at least one group of people this is fair for: the flat builders.
Blood Lamp: Lamp Powered By Blood For A Cause - "As excessive blood loss is dangerous to one’s life, similarly overexploitation of natural resources, to produce extra energy, effects the environment and our quality of life."
GAH
Playing second fiddle to foreigners despite having a birthright - "AN ELECTRONICS firm that advertised last week for a “preferably non-Singaporean” engineer has added fuel to a worsening controversy in this migrant city... A similar storm broke some years ago when another company told a fresh Singaporean graduate during a job interview that his chances were slim if he had to report for annual reservist duty. “We prefer a foreigner who has no such obligations,” the executive had added. Besides, they are much less costly to hire... The foreigners, hungrier and without family responsibility here, generally work longer hours for less pay – something that married Singaporeans with a home mortgage to pay cannot possibly match. A small industry has risen to recruit them in large numbers – as indicated by a recruitment agency, with this advertisement: “Do you find it difficult and expensive to hire local staff? Why not consider hiring foreign talents?”"
Singapore: the only country in the world which treats foreigners better than its people
YouTube - Jizz In My Pants - In light of recent events this is quite sad.
[Addendum: A response - "Puke In My Mouth" -MsTaken.com]
Unhygienic German men voted the worst in bed while lazy English come second in the battle between the sheets - "The survey, carried out by global research website OnePoll.com, asked women from 20 countries to rate nations on their talent in the bedroom and give reasons for their answers."
Why is there no ranking of female lovers? Do they just need to lie back and think of [their respective countries]? It is better to be the Object than the Subject - you have less work to do.
Household Hints With Sex Toys - "Use a Rabbit Vibe to mix up a single serving smoothie right in your glass. The rotating motion of the shaft blends the ingredients. Also works great mixing hot chocolate or pureeing cream soups... To keep an opened bottle of wine from going bad, stick a buttplug in the neck. A slender beginner’s model works best."
Tainted love: Are we wrong to treat incest as a taboo? - "The bizarre case of Patrick Stuebing and Susan Karolewski has captivated the world since the couple crashed into the headlines in 2001 with the birth of their first incestuous son (two of their four children are disabled). Not just because their self-proclaimed love seems to break one of the modern world's last taboos. But also because last week the couple's lawyer, Dr Endrich Wilhelm, lodged a plea with the country's highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court, in a bid to attempt to overturn Germany's ban on incest. According to Dr Wilhelm, there is simply "no moral or legal basis" for incest to be a criminal offence today... [this] is a clear example of Genetic Sexual Attraction"
Happily, it is legal in progressive France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal, Turkey, Brazil and Japan
***
How I Became A Keynesian - "Second Thoughts in the Middle of a Crisis"
The Butterfly Tales... - The One About The iPhone - "The iPhone sucks – or at least mine does. The phone keeps restarting so often that I’m sometimes convinced it is on an eco-friendly sleep mode. It hangs more frequently than inmates on death row and the damn ‘Home’ button is faulty. If you are an iPhone user, you deserve an award for patience, a plague for putting up with this crap or you deserve a hug at least However, a peculiar scene started unraveling before me. There were actually more people sending in their iPhones for repair than there were actually people buying it"
Barack Obama's Smile Never Changes
Must be Botox
Spanking lowers a child's IQ, researcher says - "Straus suggests that the chronic stress created by regular spanking creates post-traumatic stress symptoms in children. PTSD is linked to lower IQ. Economic status also underlies both spanking practices and IQ"
Again, Science Reporting Headline FAIL
What REALLY makes a woman want to sleep with a man? - "Women whose partners had similar genes reported wanting to have sex less often. They had less motivation to please their partner sexually compared to the women going out with men with dissimilar genes. Women with MHC-similar partners also reported more frequent sexual fantasies about other men, particularly at the most fertile phase of their ovulation cycle. And their sexual fantasies about other men did not just remain in their heads. They also reported higher rates of sexual infidelity... Men with a high shoulder-to-hip ratio begin having sexual intercourse at an early age - 16 or younger... But be warned: they have more affairs while in a relationship... In our studies, we found that some women had sex with men simply because they'd been impressed by their dancing"
Addendum: Another article on this book: Why women have sex - ""We never ever expected [the reasons women sleep with men] to be so diverse," she says. "From the altruistic to the borderline evil." Evil? "Wanting to give someone a sexually transmitted infection," she explains... 73% of Russian women are in love, and 63% of Japanese women are in love... Only 61% of Russian men are in love and only 41% of Japanese men are in love. Which means that 12% of Russian women and 22% of Japanese women are totally wasting their time."
Some of the very unromantic reasons why women sleep with men - "We [have] been fed a Utopian myth that men and women have sex purely because they're crazed with lust for each other - or, in a long-term partnership, because they still adore each other. Any woman past the age of 16 knows what idealistic nonsense this is... 1,000 women were interviewed about their real reasons for saying 'Yes' when they could have said 'No'. Boredom, winning favours and to get rid of a headache were high up the list... In this light, feminism's eagerness to persuade women to have sex only when we experience knee-trembling desire seems naive... The book claims 84 pc of women have sex simply to keep their partners quiet or to get help with the chores. You may feel shocked at the hint of prostitution - the bartering of our bodies for a bit of DIY - but within a committed relationship is it truly so different from any other trade- off which ultimately nets both participants what they want?... '[He] started to sing to me in French... When he got to the third verse, I thought: 'I can't stand any more of this.' So I locked my fingers in his, to stop him strumming, and dragged him upstairs - just to shut him up."
Kiss the Girl... Continued - "Surely it won't hurt
If you go for the shirt
Now that you kissed the girl
(Sing with me now)
Shalalalalala forget the face
It's on to second base
Go on and feel the boobs
Shalalalalala unhook her bra
It's just like Mardi Gras
In New Orleans with the dudes"
HDB's version of subsidy, affordability and fair prices - "The HDB sells flats base on market price instead of cost as this is the fairest way of pricing new flats. A market base pricing approach ensures that all groups of buyers enjoy similar discounts to the market and would be fair to those who are buying other HDB flats today"
This is curiously reminiscent of SAF notions of "fairness" - basically making everyone suffer (not to mention exactly the same as the old NKF's "subsidy"). But there's at least one group of people this is fair for: the flat builders.
Blood Lamp: Lamp Powered By Blood For A Cause - "As excessive blood loss is dangerous to one’s life, similarly overexploitation of natural resources, to produce extra energy, effects the environment and our quality of life."
GAH
Playing second fiddle to foreigners despite having a birthright - "AN ELECTRONICS firm that advertised last week for a “preferably non-Singaporean” engineer has added fuel to a worsening controversy in this migrant city... A similar storm broke some years ago when another company told a fresh Singaporean graduate during a job interview that his chances were slim if he had to report for annual reservist duty. “We prefer a foreigner who has no such obligations,” the executive had added. Besides, they are much less costly to hire... The foreigners, hungrier and without family responsibility here, generally work longer hours for less pay – something that married Singaporeans with a home mortgage to pay cannot possibly match. A small industry has risen to recruit them in large numbers – as indicated by a recruitment agency, with this advertisement: “Do you find it difficult and expensive to hire local staff? Why not consider hiring foreign talents?”"
Singapore: the only country in the world which treats foreigners better than its people
YouTube - Jizz In My Pants - In light of recent events this is quite sad.
[Addendum: A response - "Puke In My Mouth" -MsTaken.com]
Unhygienic German men voted the worst in bed while lazy English come second in the battle between the sheets - "The survey, carried out by global research website OnePoll.com, asked women from 20 countries to rate nations on their talent in the bedroom and give reasons for their answers."
Why is there no ranking of female lovers? Do they just need to lie back and think of [their respective countries]? It is better to be the Object than the Subject - you have less work to do.
Household Hints With Sex Toys - "Use a Rabbit Vibe to mix up a single serving smoothie right in your glass. The rotating motion of the shaft blends the ingredients. Also works great mixing hot chocolate or pureeing cream soups... To keep an opened bottle of wine from going bad, stick a buttplug in the neck. A slender beginner’s model works best."
Tainted love: Are we wrong to treat incest as a taboo? - "The bizarre case of Patrick Stuebing and Susan Karolewski has captivated the world since the couple crashed into the headlines in 2001 with the birth of their first incestuous son (two of their four children are disabled). Not just because their self-proclaimed love seems to break one of the modern world's last taboos. But also because last week the couple's lawyer, Dr Endrich Wilhelm, lodged a plea with the country's highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court, in a bid to attempt to overturn Germany's ban on incest. According to Dr Wilhelm, there is simply "no moral or legal basis" for incest to be a criminal offence today... [this] is a clear example of Genetic Sexual Attraction"
Happily, it is legal in progressive France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal, Turkey, Brazil and Japan
Post ID: 6923851209369825752
"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid." - George Bernard Shaw
***
Steven Weinberg on Physics Imperialism (claiming all other branches of Science are subordinate to Physics):
"So far, I have been speaking in a style that is sometimes called physics imperialism. That is, the physicist provides a set of laws of nature that explain everything else and all the other sciences appear to be offshoots of physics. I want, at least in part, to disavow this. I do believe there is a sense in which everything is explained by the laws of nature and the laws of nature are what physicists are trying to discover. But the explanation is an explanation in principle of a sort that doesnt in any way threaten the autonomy of the other sciences. We see this even within physics itself. The study of statistical mechanics, the behavior of large numbers of particles, and its applications in studying matter in general, like condensed matter, crystals, and liquids, is a separate science because when you deal with very large numbers of particles, new phenomena emerge. To take an example I have used elsewhere, even if you tried the reductionist approach and plotted out the motion of each molecule in a glass of water using equations of molecular physics to follow how each molecule went, nowhere in the mountain of computer tape you produced would you find the things that interested you about the water, things like turbulence, or temperature, or entropy. Each science deals with nature on its own terms because each science finds something else in nature that is interesting. Nevertheless, there is a sense that the principles of statistical mechanics are what they are because of the properties of the particles out of which bodies are composed. Statistical mechanics does not have principles that stand alone and cannot be deduced from a deeper level.
As it happens, that deeper level has usually been a more microscopic level. If we ask any question about nature—why the sky is blue or the grass is green—and keep asking why, why, why, we will get a series o answers that generally takes us down to the level of the very small.
There is a sense in which the kind of thing that elementary particle physicists study is especially fundamental, hut in no way does it threaten the separate existence or the special importance of other sciences. Because we physicists think we are moving toward the final answer, the work we are doing is not necessarily more worthy of support than the work of other scientists."
***
Steven Weinberg on Physics Imperialism (claiming all other branches of Science are subordinate to Physics):
"So far, I have been speaking in a style that is sometimes called physics imperialism. That is, the physicist provides a set of laws of nature that explain everything else and all the other sciences appear to be offshoots of physics. I want, at least in part, to disavow this. I do believe there is a sense in which everything is explained by the laws of nature and the laws of nature are what physicists are trying to discover. But the explanation is an explanation in principle of a sort that doesnt in any way threaten the autonomy of the other sciences. We see this even within physics itself. The study of statistical mechanics, the behavior of large numbers of particles, and its applications in studying matter in general, like condensed matter, crystals, and liquids, is a separate science because when you deal with very large numbers of particles, new phenomena emerge. To take an example I have used elsewhere, even if you tried the reductionist approach and plotted out the motion of each molecule in a glass of water using equations of molecular physics to follow how each molecule went, nowhere in the mountain of computer tape you produced would you find the things that interested you about the water, things like turbulence, or temperature, or entropy. Each science deals with nature on its own terms because each science finds something else in nature that is interesting. Nevertheless, there is a sense that the principles of statistical mechanics are what they are because of the properties of the particles out of which bodies are composed. Statistical mechanics does not have principles that stand alone and cannot be deduced from a deeper level.
As it happens, that deeper level has usually been a more microscopic level. If we ask any question about nature—why the sky is blue or the grass is green—and keep asking why, why, why, we will get a series o answers that generally takes us down to the level of the very small.
There is a sense in which the kind of thing that elementary particle physicists study is especially fundamental, hut in no way does it threaten the separate existence or the special importance of other sciences. Because we physicists think we are moving toward the final answer, the work we are doing is not necessarily more worthy of support than the work of other scientists."
Post ID: 7902824972145686426
"After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood." - Fred Thompson
***
Economic growth and social progress did not serve human beings. On the contrary, the primary function of citizens was to fuel economic growth - a weird reversal of values. The reign of Moloch had begun
Focus on needs of residents, not profit
I REFER to last Thursday's report, 'Town councils to be assessed individually'.
I am 52 years old, and have been unemployed for the past 18 months. Before that, my earnings were fitful, especially after my business collapsed and I lost part of a leg to diabetes.
So, I fell behind in my service and conservancy (S&C) charges. The first time it happened, my town council, the Jalan Besar Town Council, took me to court.
The result: the arrears of $432 I owed for not paying a year's worth of S&C charges for my three-room flat ballooned to more than $1,000.
My new debt included court penalties and late payment charges.
When I tried to settle subsequent S&C charges to avoid a fresh spiral of hefty penalties for non-payment, I was rejected. The town council ruled that I had to settle the old debt before I could pay the new charges.
Naturally, this led to more penalties as my fresh S&C arrears spiked. So, I am now some $3,000 in debt to my town council.
I have appealed to my Member of Parliament for help many times but the final reply invariably remained unchanged: pay up.
The spiral of debt a resident accumulates can be daunting because of the unremitting add-ons of penalties by which an unforgiving system of collection turns monthly arrears into substantial debt.
Town councils shouldn't be surprised if residents like myself, who face tough times, wonder why we aren't being helped via the excess revenue collected; revenue which is instead ploughed into loss-making investments.
Shouldn't any excess revenue be refunded to residents via rebates?
If town councils are keen to invest, set up a fund offering soft loans to residents to tide them over tough times and pay service and conservancy charges.
In fact, what's wrong with providing soft loans for subsidiary concerns of families, like private tuition, renovation or even a family holiday? So what if some of the loans go bad? Better to lose money by lending to residents than to banks whose only motive is profit.
Town councils should focus single-mindedly on helping residents, and not on making profit or squaring the bottom line.
Lim Beo Thiam
I wonder if one of their KPIs is fees collected and profits made.
***
Economic growth and social progress did not serve human beings. On the contrary, the primary function of citizens was to fuel economic growth - a weird reversal of values. The reign of Moloch had begun
Focus on needs of residents, not profit
I REFER to last Thursday's report, 'Town councils to be assessed individually'.
I am 52 years old, and have been unemployed for the past 18 months. Before that, my earnings were fitful, especially after my business collapsed and I lost part of a leg to diabetes.
So, I fell behind in my service and conservancy (S&C) charges. The first time it happened, my town council, the Jalan Besar Town Council, took me to court.
The result: the arrears of $432 I owed for not paying a year's worth of S&C charges for my three-room flat ballooned to more than $1,000.
My new debt included court penalties and late payment charges.
When I tried to settle subsequent S&C charges to avoid a fresh spiral of hefty penalties for non-payment, I was rejected. The town council ruled that I had to settle the old debt before I could pay the new charges.
Naturally, this led to more penalties as my fresh S&C arrears spiked. So, I am now some $3,000 in debt to my town council.
I have appealed to my Member of Parliament for help many times but the final reply invariably remained unchanged: pay up.
The spiral of debt a resident accumulates can be daunting because of the unremitting add-ons of penalties by which an unforgiving system of collection turns monthly arrears into substantial debt.
Town councils shouldn't be surprised if residents like myself, who face tough times, wonder why we aren't being helped via the excess revenue collected; revenue which is instead ploughed into loss-making investments.
Shouldn't any excess revenue be refunded to residents via rebates?
If town councils are keen to invest, set up a fund offering soft loans to residents to tide them over tough times and pay service and conservancy charges.
In fact, what's wrong with providing soft loans for subsidiary concerns of families, like private tuition, renovation or even a family holiday? So what if some of the loans go bad? Better to lose money by lending to residents than to banks whose only motive is profit.
Town councils should focus single-mindedly on helping residents, and not on making profit or squaring the bottom line.
Lim Beo Thiam
I wonder if one of their KPIs is fees collected and profits made.
Post ID: 668115663172415551
Thursday, October 01, 2009
"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives." - William Dement
***
The Dead Sea Scroll and the Ancient World (Part 1)
Part 2
1.5 weeks after it closed, 3 weeks after I went and long after everyone else has put up their photos and comments, here's my review of the "The Dead Sea Scroll and the Ancient World" exhibition, which I went to despite Paul's damning indictment (I wanted to see the lies and half-truths):
Crowd queuing up. I managed to get a group ticket off one group which offered a spare to me.
Before we were allowed to look at the exhibition, we were herded into a room where we watched a video with bad sound, where a "Biblical Archaeologist" droned on. A "Biblical Archaeologist" is like a "Christian Scientist" (i.e. a practitioner of "Christian Science") or a "Marxist Economist".
We were also given a handout - a printout of the Wikipedia article for the scrolls. How cheapskate.
The exhibition was divided into 3 rooms, and in each a talk was given at random intervals, so I went for all 3. As some have pointed out, the name was misleading as it was mostly an exhibition of Bibles and a glorification of the Bible, so they had lots of rubbish to say; indeed, the only bits of the "Ancient World" (which I define as before the Fall of Rome) in the exhibition were the scroll fragments and some clay products, and almost everything else dated from the Renaissance and later.
The first talk was by a "Dr David Byrd". Casual digging did not let me uncover the source of his Ph.D, but the church he presumably belongs to (Folsom Point church of Christ) had an article called "Darwinists Squirm Under Spotlight" in one newsletter, so you know it's not in Biology (or maybe it's in "Christian Biology").
"Dr David Byrd"
He also claimed that Luther had told Tyndale to "create the language" because Middle English had no rules. He also claimed that "everything about Modern English" had been created by Tyndale in translating the New Testament from Greek to English. In reality, while Tyndale did make some contributions*, numerous books on the history of the English Language do not seem to mention him, and Volume 3 of The Cambridge history of the English language mentions him seven times (versus 100 for Shakespeare).
* - "Tyndale is credited with coining such words as 'Jehovah', 'Passover', and 'scapegoat', and such phrases as 'let there be light', 'the powers that be', 'my brother's keeper' and 'the salt of the earth'" --- The History of English / Scott Shay
Certainly, he is not the "Architect of the English Language", despite the attempt of this website (run by the father [Craig Lampe] of one of the exhibition's curators [Joel Lampe]) to spam the web with such references.
Byrd also claimed that 4,000 translations of the King James Bible (KJV) exist, and 1,000 languages exist in written form only as KJV translations. Knowing the fetish that many fundamentalists have with the King James Bible, this was surprising only in scale. Given that the Bible exists in some form in only 2,479 languages (and in totality in only 451), even a charitable interpretation of his claim is untenable (more detailed but older statistics).
After his talk I wandered around a bit. There were quite a few quotes from Luther pinned up. I was disappointed that his classic quote,
was not there (I can't find a source for this, but he did also say: "Reason, that pretty whore, comes in and thinks she's wise, and what she says, what she thinks, is from the Holy Spirit, who can help us, then? Not judges, not doctors, no king or emperor, because [reason] is the Devil's greatest whore", which means more or less the same thing).
However, there was this gem on education:
"I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth."
The Geneva Bible was also glorified a lot. However, in this case it *did* have the significance accorded to it.
After the talk was over, I wandered into the chamber where the Dead Sea Scroll fragments were, where I found another talk beginning.
The video playing in the room was subtitled in Malay. HURR HURR
The speaker in this room called the Dead Sea Scrolls "the find of the 20th century". This was debatable (what about King Tut?) but not outrageous, like many of the other claims, but for what it's worth, this was the least contentious of the three talks (which explains why I have nothing else to say about it).
"The Closure of the NT Canon"
This claimed that in 1 Timothy 5:18 (dated to AD 62) "Paul refers to Luke's gospel as Scripture". The latter is dated to AD 57-59.
The passage in question:
"For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward."
The first line refers to Deuteronomy, but the latter appears in
Wikipedia:
"Many contemporary scholars regard Mark as a source used by Luke (see Markan Priority)... This view also believes that Luke's prediction of the destruction of the temple could not be a result of Jesus miraculously predicting the future but must have been written with knowledge of these events after the fact... These scholars have suggested dates for Luke from 75 to 100. Support for a later date comes from a number of reasons. The universalization of the message of Luke is believed to reflect a theology that took time to develop. Differences of chronology, "style", and theology suggest that the author of Luke-Acts was not familiar with Paul's distinctive theology but instead was writing a decade or more after his death, by which point significant harmonization between different traditions within Early Christianity had occurred. Furthermore, Luke-Acts has views on christology, eschatology, and soteriology that are similar to the those found in Pastoral epistles, which are often seen as pseudonymous and of a later date than the undisputed Pauline Epistles"
This seems a stronger argument than the one arguing for earlier dating (further down in the same entry).
In any event, references to paying the laborer his wage can be paraphrased from the Old Testament: "He that defaudeth the laborer of his hire is a blood-shedder" comes from Ecclesiastes, "Woe unto him... that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work" is from Jeremiah and Proverbs reads "The recompense of a man's hands shall be rendered unto him"; this recurring theme appears elsewhere in the Old Testament as well.
Even if you accept the early dating of Luke, it is presumptuous to claim that this is a recognition by Paul of Luke as Scripture (alternatively, it was presumptuous of Paul to make that claim), since there were many gospels and other apocrypha floating around in the first few centuries of Christianity.
Indeed, if you have even some doubt about the early dating of Luke, it is reasonable to postulate that causation runs in the other direction - Luke talks about the labourer and his reward because that is how Paul phrases it.
"Small changes and variations in manuscripts affect no central Christian doctrines, nor do they change the message" Again, the claim of Bible accuracy was trotted out, anticipating any objections people might raise based on inaccurate copying. Indeed, small changes and variations are not an issue - the big problems go much deeper.
"Very rarely are any fragments shown outside Israel, and even rarer are ones presented in the context of the overall history of the English Bible" They don't have to talk about where -they- got their scroll fragments from, because they're loaned from the Bible Museum in Phoenix but it's a sure-win bet that at least one of them was acquired through less than honourable means. More to the point, why would you need to present Dead Sea Scroll fragments "in the context of the overall history of the English Bible", given that the Dead Sea Scrolls are not in anything resembling English and don't even have half of the modern Bible (i.e. the New Testament)?
Microform Bible flown on Apollo 13 and 14
Dead Sea Scroll Non-Biblical Fragment: 4Q418. 4QInstruction Sapiential work "A"
Dead Sea Scroll Biblical Fragment: Bible:Exodus 17:6
Dead Sea Scroll Biblical Fragment: Bible:Leviticus 23
You will notice that now the Dead Sea Scrolls have become... "the greatest archaeological discovery of all time". Wow.
Dead Sea Scroll Biblical Fragment: Bible:Psalm 11:1-4 (sic)
~250 year old Torah scroll
Cuneiform and pottery, from 3200-3100 B.C. and 2000-1700 B.C.
The ancient pottery seemed thrown in as an afterthought, since it has no link at all to the rest of the exhibition. I was half-expecting some nonsensical claim that the Sumerian cuneiform character for "boat" meant "8 people in a vessel".
(To be continued...)
***
The Dead Sea Scroll and the Ancient World (Part 1)
Part 2
1.5 weeks after it closed, 3 weeks after I went and long after everyone else has put up their photos and comments, here's my review of the "The Dead Sea Scroll and the Ancient World" exhibition, which I went to despite Paul's damning indictment (I wanted to see the lies and half-truths):
Crowd queuing up. I managed to get a group ticket off one group which offered a spare to me.
Before we were allowed to look at the exhibition, we were herded into a room where we watched a video with bad sound, where a "Biblical Archaeologist" droned on. A "Biblical Archaeologist" is like a "Christian Scientist" (i.e. a practitioner of "Christian Science") or a "Marxist Economist".
We were also given a handout - a printout of the Wikipedia article for the scrolls. How cheapskate.
The exhibition was divided into 3 rooms, and in each a talk was given at random intervals, so I went for all 3. As some have pointed out, the name was misleading as it was mostly an exhibition of Bibles and a glorification of the Bible, so they had lots of rubbish to say; indeed, the only bits of the "Ancient World" (which I define as before the Fall of Rome) in the exhibition were the scroll fragments and some clay products, and almost everything else dated from the Renaissance and later.
The first talk was by a "Dr David Byrd". Casual digging did not let me uncover the source of his Ph.D, but the church he presumably belongs to (Folsom Point church of Christ) had an article called "Darwinists Squirm Under Spotlight" in one newsletter, so you know it's not in Biology (or maybe it's in "Christian Biology").
"Dr David Byrd"
He also claimed that Luther had told Tyndale to "create the language" because Middle English had no rules. He also claimed that "everything about Modern English" had been created by Tyndale in translating the New Testament from Greek to English. In reality, while Tyndale did make some contributions*, numerous books on the history of the English Language do not seem to mention him, and Volume 3 of The Cambridge history of the English language mentions him seven times (versus 100 for Shakespeare).
* - "Tyndale is credited with coining such words as 'Jehovah', 'Passover', and 'scapegoat', and such phrases as 'let there be light', 'the powers that be', 'my brother's keeper' and 'the salt of the earth'" --- The History of English / Scott Shay
Certainly, he is not the "Architect of the English Language", despite the attempt of this website (run by the father [Craig Lampe] of one of the exhibition's curators [Joel Lampe]) to spam the web with such references.
Byrd also claimed that 4,000 translations of the King James Bible (KJV) exist, and 1,000 languages exist in written form only as KJV translations. Knowing the fetish that many fundamentalists have with the King James Bible, this was surprising only in scale. Given that the Bible exists in some form in only 2,479 languages (and in totality in only 451), even a charitable interpretation of his claim is untenable (more detailed but older statistics).
After his talk I wandered around a bit. There were quite a few quotes from Luther pinned up. I was disappointed that his classic quote,
Whoever wishes to be a Christian, let him pluck out the eyes of his reason
was not there (I can't find a source for this, but he did also say: "Reason, that pretty whore, comes in and thinks she's wise, and what she says, what she thinks, is from the Holy Spirit, who can help us, then? Not judges, not doctors, no king or emperor, because [reason] is the Devil's greatest whore", which means more or less the same thing).
However, there was this gem on education:
"I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth."
The Geneva Bible was also glorified a lot. However, in this case it *did* have the significance accorded to it.
After the talk was over, I wandered into the chamber where the Dead Sea Scroll fragments were, where I found another talk beginning.
The video playing in the room was subtitled in Malay. HURR HURR
The speaker in this room called the Dead Sea Scrolls "the find of the 20th century". This was debatable (what about King Tut?) but not outrageous, like many of the other claims, but for what it's worth, this was the least contentious of the three talks (which explains why I have nothing else to say about it).
"The Closure of the NT Canon"
This claimed that in 1 Timothy 5:18 (dated to AD 62) "Paul refers to Luke's gospel as Scripture". The latter is dated to AD 57-59.
The passage in question:
"For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward."
The first line refers to Deuteronomy, but the latter appears in
Wikipedia:
"Many contemporary scholars regard Mark as a source used by Luke (see Markan Priority)... This view also believes that Luke's prediction of the destruction of the temple could not be a result of Jesus miraculously predicting the future but must have been written with knowledge of these events after the fact... These scholars have suggested dates for Luke from 75 to 100. Support for a later date comes from a number of reasons. The universalization of the message of Luke is believed to reflect a theology that took time to develop. Differences of chronology, "style", and theology suggest that the author of Luke-Acts was not familiar with Paul's distinctive theology but instead was writing a decade or more after his death, by which point significant harmonization between different traditions within Early Christianity had occurred. Furthermore, Luke-Acts has views on christology, eschatology, and soteriology that are similar to the those found in Pastoral epistles, which are often seen as pseudonymous and of a later date than the undisputed Pauline Epistles"
This seems a stronger argument than the one arguing for earlier dating (further down in the same entry).
In any event, references to paying the laborer his wage can be paraphrased from the Old Testament: "He that defaudeth the laborer of his hire is a blood-shedder" comes from Ecclesiastes, "Woe unto him... that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work" is from Jeremiah and Proverbs reads "The recompense of a man's hands shall be rendered unto him"; this recurring theme appears elsewhere in the Old Testament as well.
Even if you accept the early dating of Luke, it is presumptuous to claim that this is a recognition by Paul of Luke as Scripture (alternatively, it was presumptuous of Paul to make that claim), since there were many gospels and other apocrypha floating around in the first few centuries of Christianity.
Indeed, if you have even some doubt about the early dating of Luke, it is reasonable to postulate that causation runs in the other direction - Luke talks about the labourer and his reward because that is how Paul phrases it.
"Small changes and variations in manuscripts affect no central Christian doctrines, nor do they change the message" Again, the claim of Bible accuracy was trotted out, anticipating any objections people might raise based on inaccurate copying. Indeed, small changes and variations are not an issue - the big problems go much deeper.
"Very rarely are any fragments shown outside Israel, and even rarer are ones presented in the context of the overall history of the English Bible" They don't have to talk about where -they- got their scroll fragments from, because they're loaned from the Bible Museum in Phoenix but it's a sure-win bet that at least one of them was acquired through less than honourable means. More to the point, why would you need to present Dead Sea Scroll fragments "in the context of the overall history of the English Bible", given that the Dead Sea Scrolls are not in anything resembling English and don't even have half of the modern Bible (i.e. the New Testament)?
Microform Bible flown on Apollo 13 and 14
Dead Sea Scroll Non-Biblical Fragment: 4Q418. 4QInstruction Sapiential work "A"
Dead Sea Scroll Biblical Fragment: Bible:Exodus 17:6
Dead Sea Scroll Biblical Fragment: Bible:Leviticus 23
You will notice that now the Dead Sea Scrolls have become... "the greatest archaeological discovery of all time". Wow.
Dead Sea Scroll Biblical Fragment: Bible:Psalm 11:1-4 (sic)
~250 year old Torah scroll
Cuneiform and pottery, from 3200-3100 B.C. and 2000-1700 B.C.
The ancient pottery seemed thrown in as an afterthought, since it has no link at all to the rest of the exhibition. I was half-expecting some nonsensical claim that the Sumerian cuneiform character for "boat" meant "8 people in a vessel".
(To be continued...)
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