A contest I want to win

Malaysia Boleh!


"When you buy 3 cans of Carlsberg, you're entitled to 1 entry form which could win you:

Grand Prize 1 x Live Goat
First Prize 1 x Samsung Galaxy S II

Venue: Rumah Penampang, KDCA"

Liberalism and Tolerance

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Social networking sites and politics | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project



"Politics can be a sensitive subject and a number of SNS users have decided to block, unfriend, or hide someone because of their politics or posting activities. In all, 18% of social networking site users have taken one of those steps...

Liberals are the most likely to have taken each of these steps to block, unfriend, or hide. In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates"


Tom Lehrer sums up the intolerance of the philosophy of tolerance best: "I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!"

Addendum: Other research shows that liberals are ruder/less nice than conservatives (are they not nice?)


Liberal Intolerance and the Firing of Naomi Schaefer Riley:

"For a stark reminder that "liberal intolerance" is real, look at the brouhaha over Naomi Schaefer Riley's ejection from the Chronicle of Higher Education blog, Brainstorm...

Most left-of-center commentators who have weighed in... have condemned Riley and defended her firing. Their argument is that, while Riley has a right to her opinions and criticism of black studies is not racist, her post was so "lazy," "sloppy" and "ignorant" that such "know-nothing hackery" has no place on the blog of an academic publication. That's because Riley freely admits she did not read the dissertations she lampooned but relied on The Chronicle's summaries (not, as some have mistakenly claimed, the titles alone).

Is this a sloppy approach for a 520-word blogpost? First, let's turn the political tables. Suppose a left-wing academic blogger had poked fun at stupid Ph.D. dissertations from conservative Christian colleges arguing that homosexuality can be cured or that teaching evolution undermines students' morals—and based her post on a magazine's summary of the thesis topics. Would those tut-tutting at Riley's laziness demand actual perusal of such works?

Second, let's look at The Chronicle's general standards of quality in blogging—standards that Alterman suggests were lowered for Riley in order to appease the right by hiring a conservative.

There is Laurie Essig, a Middlebury College sociologist whose posts—mostly unrelated to academia—tend to be fact-free, muddled rants on the "white privilege" underlying the campaign against child-murdering Ugandan warlord Kony, the heterosexual oppressiveness of the happy endings of "Harry Potter," or the merits  of an attempted pie assault on Rupert Murdoch. One Essig post decries the "hysteria," "racism," and "class warfare" of concerns about unwed motherhood, making the unsupported claim that children of single parents fare no worse than their two-parent peers when they have similar resources. Another asserts that Americans "hate black women" but love Oprah Winfrey because she supports the values of "white supremacy" (by emphasizing individual choices) and "fulfills white longings for Mammy."

There is also Dave Barash, a University of Washington biologist and psychologist, who a month ago made a post titled "Major League Baseball Takes on the First Amendment." In it, Barash deplored the suspension of Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillén after he professed love for Fidel Castro, and his subsequent apology. So much for intellectual rigor: one need not be a constitutional scholar to know that a private company's decision to sanction an employee for offensive public speech is not a First Amendment issue. Shockingly, Barash's dedication to free speech does not seem to extend to Naomi Schaefer Riley.

Finally, what about the factual diligence displayed by some of Riley's media critics? Alterman—who writes that "conservative journalists specialize in attacks that ignore traditional standards of fairness and professional competence"—repeatedly makes the inaccurate claim that Riley slammed the thesis projects because she "didn't like their titles." He also throws in an aside about her earlier authorship of a Wall Street Journal column which "sought to blame women who dressed provocatively for 'moronic behavior' that allegedly invited rape." Alterman's source, however, is not Riley's column—which never mentioned provocative dress—but a left-wing website's angry recap . (Riley's actual point was that it's not smart to get so plastered at a college party that you can't refuse, or even remember, unwanted sex.) Surely, relying on a hostile summary to attack an op-ed column—which can be found and read in a few minutes—is sloppier than relying on a sympathetic summary to attack a dissertation."

N Vietnam 2012 - Day 1, Part 2 - Hanoi: Archaeological Sites

"Everyone is as God has made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse." - Miguel de Cervantes

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N Vietnam 2012
Day 1 - 24th May - Hanoi: Archaeological Sites (Part 2)

Next, I headed for the Citadel.


What have the French ever done for us?


Flag Tower from the other side - some shack


I'd no idea what this sign meant, but followed it into the citadel area.


World Heritage plaque


Car Park, and Vietnamese women wearing the traditional Ao Dai with Branded Bags


Citadel Gate




Flag Tower from Citadel




I'd though only ang mohs wore the hat. Apparently not.


Doan Mon Gate from front


Chinese characters on Doan Mon Gate


Some remains behand gate


More remnants


Colonial building


Gate Tower


View of Flag Tower


I found myself concluding that as with many things in Vietnam, this was just a third rate knockoff of a Chinese original


Apeing the Chinese continues today - note the man with his shirt pulled up


Another gate


Chinese Vietnamese Calligraphy

There was an exhibition on the city.


"Hanoi municipality imposes Western norms on the use of urban space"
Frenchified English


Bell. Again with no information in English.


Another colonial building

Apparently this area also housed the UNESCO outpost.


Dragon urn


Exit way for compound


Dragon steps


Bonsai setup


Vietnamese sign saying ???


UNESCO Drum. I had no idea what its significance was


More Bonsais


Another exit avenue

I also saw the Di Tich Hau Lau (Hau Lau monument) but as with the Flag Tower it was barren. It also had no information in English.




Sign only in Vietnamese


"Di Tich Quoc Gia Dac Biet"
Site sign


Another UNESCO sign: for Kinh Thien Palace Relic


Rundown gate for compound

Next I checked out an archaeological site just across the road.


Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be much beyond the foundations.


Photos of the site (onsite?!)

Power to the site seemed to have been cut - I entered a room with some explanations but there was no lighting and the airconditioning was off.


On the important discoveries


Historical Periods


Hypothesis about the Roof


There was a "Photography Room"


Unfortunately the "Photography Room" was empty...


...except for a Chinese Vietnamese altar, which I photographed

There was an area with excavations, but they weren't impressive (at least this and the previous area with the gate and colonial buildings were free to enter).




Morning communist ritual


Some English on the sitel there was little information in Vietnamese and none in English except what I snapped


Covered excavations


Shards. It's like the place was burnt to the ground and only the foundations were left.

Technically photography was not allowed but the staff were few and indolent, and some Japanese or Koreans (I didn't note down which) who looked like businessmen were snapping away.




"Thang Long Archaeological Site"


Vietnamese people weren't very friendly. They mostly looked indolent and didn't respond when I said hello (xin chào). Maybe it's better in winter.