"When women hold back from marrying men, we call it independence. Yet, when men hold off marrying women, we call it fear of commitment." - Warren Farrell

***

Jogjakarta trip
Day 2 - 29th April - Borobodur (Part 2)

Though we had been quite thorough at the lower levels of Borobodur, we were hitting diminishing returns so we quickened our pace somewhat.

Though there're supposed to be 3 levels to Borobodur, each seems to be divided into multiple sub-levels (maybe 2).




Buddha in niche






Stair down




Final gateway to the top level, and a peak through

Steeling ourselves, we made the final push through to the top.


In contrast to the bottom levels with their reliefs, the top level of Borobodur is austere and plain, representing Arupadhatu (the world of formlessness).


Topmost stupa


Buddha uncovered




Guy with nice hair


Exploiting Indonesian schoolkids for photographic purposes


View of the surroundings from the top



Top stupa


Top stupa





Broad view from base


View from side

To get our "free" (i.e. paid for in the exorbitant entrance fee) mineral water, we had to visit one of the two museums onsite - one containing a ship.


"The Ship Reliefs of Borobudur: depiction of the Glorious Age of Indonesian Maritime Culture and inspiration for the present and future"
I'm guessing Indonesian pirates have been plaguing the Straits of Malacca for millennia.


Reconstructed ship: Philip Beale's reconstructed Samudraraksa (based upon reliefs in Borobodur)

Then we visited the other museum, which we assumed contained some sculptures from Borobodur.


We assumed wrong. Almost all of the museum's contents were sad, unmarked rocks. Though that means they didn't remove sculptures from Borobodur itself. I'm ambivalent: when you place things in-situ it's a lot more authentic and atmospheric, but they also get damaged more easily and they're harder to appreciate individually (due to a lack of labelling)


Buddha head


"The unfinished Buddha statue of the main stupa"

Some of the friezes were explained in the museum. For example,


Abortion. Presumably this and others representing sloth and the like came from the hidden friezes section at the bottom. There was no bestiality, though - presumably it was too haram/vile.

Exiting the museum, we were unfortunate (or otherwise) enough to contemporaneously walk the long, treacherous path to the exit with some ang mohs, for it meant that we were beset by:


A horde of touts. I have no idea why anyone would want to buy those parachutes made of very flimsy plastic.


Ang mohs get shaded as they get bothered.


Touts smell ang mohs like dogs smell fear

One tout was hawking a blowpipe. I was tempted to buy it to shoot touts with.


Toy train which shuttles you around the grounds


Discriminatory pricing: locals pay 10% or less what foreigners pay.

We stopped for lunch before going to Prambanan.


"Mie Rebus". Just instant noodle soup.


Mie Goreng - costing 2.5x Mie Rebus, just to fry it.

Just as in Malaysia, the concept of fresh noodles didn't seem to exist in most food stalls, with sellers preferring to use instant noodles.


"Es Jeruk".
We had a hard time figuring out what it was. It had a slightly sour taste, but did not have any particular taste. Guesses included pomelo (but then it didn't have the bitter aftertaste) or lime (but it wasn't sour enough). After tasting purer versions, I realised this Es Jeruk was diluted Kordial Oren, and real Es Jeruk was supposed to be Jus Oren.


Ayam Goreng. Times Two.
Kampung chicken is not just tough and scrawny, it's also tiny. God knows why people like it.


Kampung chickens. Note the bald necks.

I then reminded CWN to go shopping for towels, as our rooms did not have any (I dried off au naturel, which didn't work as well as the last time I did so - in a drier climate).


Socks for tudung women (?!)

The bras in the same shop were also mostly unpadded. Assuming they were representative of Indonesian bras, the conclusion is obvious (if unsurprising).


"Merokok dapat menyebabkan kanker serangan jantung impotensi dan gangguan kehamilan dan janin"
Indonesia: where they tell you cigarettes cause impotence!


Bus to Prambanan. The one to Borobodur was even better - someone brought on a basket of chickens.

It was obvious that Indonesia was a sexist society, because men gave up seats on the bus to women.


Quotes:

[On mie goreng] No wonder people here all look so shrunken and unhealthy. Too much MSG in their diet.

"Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive." - William F. Buckley Jr.

***

Battleship Island - Japan’s rotting metropolis - "These days the only things that land on Hashima Island are the shits of passing seagulls. An hour or so’s sail from the port of Nagasaki, the abandoned island silently crumbles. A former coal mining facility owned by Mitsubishi Motors, it was once the most densely populated place on earth, packing over 13,000 people into each square kilometre of its residential high-risers. It operated from 1887 until 1974, after which the coal industry fell into decline and the mines were shut for good. With their jobs gone and no other reason to stay in this mini urban nightmare, almost overnight the entire population fled back to the mainland, leaving most of their stuff behind to rot."

Future Dangerousness: The tricky sex offender case that could trip up one of the judges on the short list to replace Souter - "Doe is a tough one: It's about a convicted sex offender who cruised a park in Lafayette, Ind., admitting to "having urges" about a group of kids he saw there, although he didn't actually molest them. The city banned him from its parks. The district court upheld the ban based on his criminal record, his own deposition, and his psychologist's testimony that while she thought he'd learned to control himself, she couldn't guarantee he wouldn't offend again. The ruling Wood joined, and Williams wrote, defends the rights of what may be the most despised minority of all: pedophiles. But John Doe's thoughts took him right to the brink of harming real kids. Williams and Wood framed the case as being about Doe's freedom of thought and his right to some procedural protection. The other judges, who eventually overturned their ruling, framed it as being about his dangerousness. Which was it?"

My Day With The Google Goats - "I went to go visit the Google goats today — you know, the goats that were brought in to replace lawnmowers in Google’s ever-expanding quest to go more green." The environmental cost of transporting the goats probably outweighs that of lawnmowers

Kill Your RSS Reader - "RSS readers encourage you to oversubscribe to news. Every time you encounter an interesting new blog post, you've got an incentive to sign up to all the posts from that blog—after all, you don't want to miss anything. Eventually you find yourself subscribed to hundreds of blogs, many of which, you later notice, are completely useless. It's like having an inbox stuffed with e-mail from overactive listservs you no longer care to read... A year or so ago, I dumped RSS and began to look for a new way of reading stuff online. Eventually I found a system that works much better for me: bookmarks, browser tabs, and the middle mouse button. My technique allows me to scour the Web for great stuff far more efficiently—and with less guilt and more fun—than I could from the dull outpost of my RSS reader."

UK's bizarre holiday complaints - "The list even included one where a tourist complained that his honeymoon was ruined after he saw an aroused elephant, leading to feelings of inadequacy... In another complaint a British guest at a Novotel hotel in Australia said his soup was too thick and strong, not realising he had been supping from the gravy boat... One of the oddest complaints came from a female traveller who blamed her hotel for her pregnancy. "My fiance and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room."... Other complaints included 'there are too many Spanish people in Spain' and 'too much curry served in restaurants in India'."

Founder of Islamic TV station accused of beheading wife - "The founder of an upstate New York TV station aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes has been arrested on suspicion of killing his wife, who was beheaded, authorities said."
“Obviously, This Is The Worst Form Of Domestic Violence Possible”

A Prophetic and Violent Masterpiece - "Of Britain, at least, Burgess was certainly right. He extrapolated from what he saw in the prime manifestation of the emerging youth culture, pop music, to a future in which self-control had shrunk to vanishing, and he realized that the result could only be a Hobbesian world, in which personal and childish whim was the only authority to guide action. Like all prophets, he extrapolated to the nth degree; but a brief residence in a British slum should persuade anyone that he was not altogether wide of the mark."
In slums of all ages and societies, Burgess would've been right.

The Chinese Language, Ever Evolving - "Traditional characters and simplified characters never were two separate and autonomous language systems — they have always existed on a continuum. Many simplified characters are adaptations from common usage in Chinese cursive script; on the other hand, the inability to read traditional characters is to close oneself off to much of the Chinese cultural legacy — its history and arts — before the 1950s... A clash between traditional and simplified characters comes down to elitism vs. populism. A recent poll conducted by Sohu.com on whether to reinstate the traditional characters shows that more netizens oppose it. Behind the elitism/populism divide is the opposition between an archaistic nostalgia toward the illusory “purer” traditional Chinese literacy and a pragmatic and forward-looking modern drive... Many of the simplified characters had been in existence for more than a millennium. Manuscripts unearthed from ancient tombs and medieval caves suggest that some simplified characters now used were already in currency then. The reform in the 1950s only officially legitimated these underground “outlaw” vernacular characters... Calligraphy, the quintessential aesthetic form of Chinese writing, in fact favors simplification... every society has the division of labor between bankers and poets."

Doh! Pirates captured after attacking the wrong ship - "From a distance the large ship on the horizon looked like the perfect target, ripe for a successful spot of piracy. But as the Somali pirates sped toward the vessel sailing near the Seychelles, they were horrified to see two boats and a helicopter set off from their target and launch their own counter-attack. They had failed to spot, in the dazzling sun, that the 'merchant ship' they thought they were intercepting was, in fact, a French naval ship bristling with cannons, radar technology and armed commandos... Only one pirate was left on board the mother ship which had nothing on board except fuel and potates"
FAIL!

Study: Female Bisexuality Distinct Orientation, Not a Phase - "Women’s definitions of lesbianism appeared to permit more flexibility in behavior than their definitions of heterosexuality. For example, of the women who identified as lesbian in the last round of interviews, 15 percent reported having sexual contact with a man during the prior two years. In contrast, none of the women who settled on a heterosexual label at that point reported having sexual contact with a woman within the previous two years. Diamond wrote: "This provides further support for the notion that female sexuality is relatively fluid and that the distinction between lesbian and bisexual women is not a rigid one.""

Singaporeans are amazing. They can not just change L sounds to R sounds ('Don't pray pray') but also do the reverse, changing R sounds to L sounds ('Lendel')!
[PPBI: aiyar that's because r and l have the same place of articulation
the alveolar ridge
although the manner of articulation is different]

OH: "XXX knows it is very rude to do so, but cannot help but hang up on a PRC caller from an anonymous number who greets her in a formal manner."; lucky it's PRCs, or she'd be labelled racist.

"They'd chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation" - Sounds like Singapore to me

Seen in Comfort Cab - 'you are travelling with lim chin siong'. Must tell ISD!

I'm told that Greenpeace is banned in Singapore - except for the UWC campus.

The Killing Fields: Johor

Johor fast becoming 'killing fields' for Singaporeans

THERE have been numerous cases of Singaporeans being robbed and attacked in Johor, even when they offered no resistance. These brutes show no mercy, even to defenceless women.

It seems Johor is fast becoming the 'killing fields' for Singaporeans. The authorities there seem unable to curb such vicious attacks.

While the motto in Singapore seems to be 'Shop till you drop', in Johor it seems to be 'Chop till you drop'.

*name removed*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Maybe he thinks we should invade Johor à la Vietnam to stop the violence and genocide.

Then we can set up a Choeung Ek analogue to house the skulls of all the innocent Singaporeans who have been butchered with parangs.

I was listening to an account of the Russo-Japanese war. The Japanese troops were well-discipline and treated the common people well. The soldiers even raised money for the common folk. The degeneration in their behavior in the 20-odd years between the war and the Manchurian Incident, then, must've been due to the deleterious effects of their National Education.

An interesting idea is that Slavery was an advance in human morality because it meant you didn't need to execute people you defeated in battle.


Historical narratives are like hypotheses - they describe reality, not seeking to describe the totality of the situation, but to pare things down so they are tractable.

They are different because of wrong/incomplete facts, or personal bias, not because no true narrative exists.

With complete information and no bias, we can get one that completely describes the world.

Of course you can say we will never achieve this situation, but that does not mean we cannot get closer and closer to it.

A guy picks up a girl in a bar and brings her home, they begin making love. He starts sucking on one of her boobs and milk comes out. He asks, “Hey, are you pregnant?” She answers, “That wasn’t a nipple, that was a boil."

"Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it." - Stephen Leacock

***

YouTube - Reactions to female-on-male violence - Description from elsewhere: "If a man hits a woman on the street, the crowd will come to her rescue. But what happens when a woman gets violent towards her partner? You'll be shocked at some of the reactions!"
From the video: "From Moonstruck to Shakespeare in Love to Pirates of the Caribbean, women hitting men may be a Hollywood staple... "It is a big problem in this country. Men create more damage, but women hit more than men do"... 'Good for her. You go girl'. [She] just assumed he had it coming to him... Over and over again, when the victim is a man, so many women perceive him as guilty... 'He probably deserved it'. Linda seems to think our feisty model as a kind of role model... We watch and record for hours and hours as 163 just walk or jog by"
Perhaps a new corollary will help: "If a man hits a woman, he's a violent, psychotic bastard.
If a woman hits a man, it's because he's a violent, psychotic bastard."
Thus saith the god of power dynamics
Turning the Tables - article which is a transcription of this video
Keywords: cheer on, cheered on, our actors, sexism, double standards

Article and open letter to our government by an ex-journalist. Yeo Toon Joo, Peter, 61 - "The harsh treatment of those with dissenting views, and slapping down of those brazen enough to join battle with the PAP and MM Lee at the hustings, quickly scared off those who thought they had something to offer to the country, but not necessarily as part of the PAP political apparatus. Those with divergent, though not necessarily subversive, views were unmercifully smacked down. Others, seduced by the comforts and affluence their talents and training earned them in a prospering society (feed them so well they will never rebel), soon lost their idealism and passion for political sacrifice. It made political engagement not only a perilous pursuit but a wanton risk of losing all they had amassed materially, plus their personal freedom... A yen for scholarship (at government’s expense) alone is a poor prerequisite of leadership. Encouraging scholarship of our bright students through the lure of career and financial success could produce either more scholarship bond breakers or those who will work only for lucre (for those are the values you promote)... You could end up with people paid well enough and sufficiently smart either to not charge with you – or charge blindly even when good sense tells them they should not."

Star Trek: Spock, Kirk and Slash Fiction - "People have been writing fan fiction for almost as long as we've been telling stories. In 1614, when Miguel de Cervantes was slow to produce the second volume of "Don Quixote," an anonymous author wrote his or her own continuation of the saga to much acclaim. People being people, there has probably always been erotic fanfic, too, but it never had a name until the early 1970s, when "Star Trek" fans circulated zines postulating a romantic relationship between Captain Kirk and Spock... "I don't think I have ever belonged to a more diverse group," she says, adding that she's befriended women from around the globe and of all ages (slash's diversity doesn't extend to gender: surveys have found that the majority of K/S writers and consumers are heterosexual women)."

The Bourgeois Revolution: How the global middle class declared war on democracy - "For the first time in decades, democracy activists are beginning to wonder whether building a strong middle class solidifies or threatens freedom's global spread. Yet because the middle-class-equals-democracy theory has become so entrenched, if it is proven wrong, activists, democracy-promotion groups, and world leaders will not know how to replace it. In other words, they won't have a clue about how to actually build democracy... Soon after acquiring democracy, urban middle classes often grasp the frustrating reality that political change costs them power. Outnumbered at the ballot box, the middle class cannot stop populists such as Thaksin or Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Once the middle class realizes it cannot stop the elected tyrants, it also comes to another, shattering realization: If urban elites can no longer control elections, all of their privileges -- social, economic, cultural -- could be threatened."

Mugged By Our Genes? - "People whose identical twins are alcoholic — whether or not they themselves have any substance abuse problems — are more likely to have been robbed or gotten in trouble with the law than people whose fraternal twin is alcoholic... What connects our genetic inheritance to environmental experiences? Most likely it is personality, which is known to depend on genes... the “genes versus environment” debate is asking the wrong question. It is said that parents of one child believe that upbringing determines personality, but parents with two children believe in genetic tendencies. The evidence points to something more complex: genetic predispositions interact with circumstances to produce unique individuals... The interaction between genetic tendencies and life experiences may explain another puzzling finding: the heritability of many psychological traits — from intelligence to anxiety — increases as people mature... As people get older, they become more able to determine their own circumstances, and they may be able to choose environments that reinforce their natural personality tendencies. Apparently those of us who suspect we are turning into our parents as we get older may have a valid point."

Otto the octopus wrecks havoc - "A octopus has caused havoc in his aquarium by performing juggling tricks using his fellow occupants, smashing rocks against the glass and turning off the power by shortcircuiting a lamp."
Mmm... Tako...

Against Uncritical Pragmatism: Education for Doers Who Can Think and Thinkers Who Can Do; Kenneth Paul Tan - "Few Singaporeans would ever think to question the goal of continuous economic growth as the ultimate goal that makes all others possible. Pragmatism, initially an open-minded attitude, can therefore degenerate easily into an uncritical focus on technical mastery directed solely towards the achievement of a narrow and limited set of human aspirations, obscured and shielded from philosophical reflection, moral reasoning, and critique. Ironically, uncritical pragmatism can become a new dogma. The focus on ‘how to’ without thinking about ‘why’ encourages an ‘anything goes’ attitude that disregards the larger implications of one’s choices and actions."

"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism." - Carl Jung

***

Bunny Girl on the Christmas Cake theory: how abt fruit cake problem? unwanted from the start.


MFTTW: eh eh is cunnilingus haram?

Me: dont think so

MFTTW: shit now i'm going to have to google "is cunnilingus haram"
and i'm going to get 10,000 arab pornsites

Me: not to mention a bunch of DIY fatwa sites


Someone: i'm at ITE

the kids i see here,
sometimes i wonder if they are worth helping

they will come and amuse themselves by pretending to be buying
what are they trying to prove ?

Me: they may be just passing time

Someone: their choice of entertainment is deplorable

Me: you'd probably engage in it if you were there

Someone: doesn't mean it's right.

another pair came and asked a teacher to help him open a can of red bull
while i was talking to him

Me: no but it makes you question why you would complain about it

Someone: because more than anyone has given up on them
they have given up on themselves

i wanted to ask the teacher how long has he had to put up with
behavior like that
but he looked to have chosen this path knowing full well what he was
getting himself into
the look of resignation

i understand that the gentle touch is probably an approach to educate these kids
possibly even the preferred method
but left to me,
i'd probably have tolerated much less

do you know that Singapore Prison Service is just opposite Tampines ITE ?

i thought to myself
'yep, that's the way to scare them'


Someone else: there's ACJC porn
but only one person in my batch had it
his name was called sperm whale

Me: har
eh what ACJC porn

Someone else: uh

two ppl
wearing ACJC uniform
gradually undressing
and fucking
according to legend

Me: wait according to legend. that means it may not exist?

Someone else: dunno.. we tried to get it from sperm whale
he says he has it
but refuses to share

apparently it was on torrent for a while

Me: suspicious

!!!
can I buy the rights? haha

maybe apocryphal

what sort of stupid name is sperm whale
haha

Someone else: he's fat
and he masturbates alot

Me: this story is so screwed up

Someone else: they have like chuck norris facts about him..lol
like if you've watched a porn movie, and you think you are the first, he has already watched it twice


Me: "whoever wins, we lose"

Shianux: ya lor
aliens v predator

though the problem is they are all aliens
because fundies and feminists are all hive-mind creatures

predators are individualistic hunter species
so neither fundies nor feminists fit the type

fundies all unquestioningly obey their god like a hive-mind species

feminists all unquestioningly obey the god of "power dynamics"
like a hive mind species


Shianux: you know I've come to see the AWARE egm as a loss, not a win
particulary on how the supporters of the old exco behaved

so mainly, 2 problems: the behaviour of the supoprters at the EGM, and the CSE

Shianux: the problem is
this is a battle for hearts and minds
you cannot win by alienating people
that's what the supporters of the old guards did

I told you already about the CSE right
they should have let a lawyer vet through the whole thing
and use REAL neutral language

I gave you examples already yesterday, so easy to defend
the ones in the manual, omg, it doesn't sound neutral even if the word neutral is used

Me: but you know what people will say right
must fight against bigotry etc
to which my reply is. be martin luther. not jan huss

Shianux: yeah, but fight must fight smart what
not fight stupid

Me: and that this is why we had proposition 8 and the banning of gay marriage in so many states
backlash

Shianux: you win by winning people over to your side
not by shouting them down

Me: yah. for us the intentions don't justify the consequences
that's why in my why we should not campaign to repeal 377A post I said we should work on the ground

Shianux: not only that, even worse, the consequences are the opposite of what you want

Me: then morons like *** shot me
this is hwy moderates are few. cos you get whacked by both sides

Shianux: well, I changed my mind over to your perspective I guess
its like the more I read and think about the whole AWARE saga
the more I'm neutral
lol

honestly the smartest thing the old guard should have done
is just to let the new exco continue
that way they could be seen as being nice and gracious

I think a whole lot of people became too emotional

Me: neutral only ah

well they're woemn
hee hee

aiyah when you become emotional logic goes out the window
that's why women are less logical
cos they get emotional more easily

even the most logical and rational girl I know becomes irrational when emotions come into play

Shianux: lol u know
I think its safe to say that *** proves the stereotype of the crazy feminist
how ironic

Me: yes
ahem

Shianux: you know I think the worst fundies are probably women too
I think its so true to say that 女人是祸水

Me: 祸水?

Shianux: trouble

Me: hahahahahaha


MFM: psc scholar friends seem to lose their idealism

Me: well PSC Scholars can only survive if:

1) They don't care
2) They get co-opted
3) They never had the high ideals (i.e. Liberté, égalité, fraternité) in the first place
4) They quit

MFM: mm

Me: how long did your scholar friends survive with idealism?

MFM: they're not completely gone yet but I can see the erosion

Me: how long more do you give em?

MFM: couple of years

you are pragmatic in pursuit of certian goals, but those goals have to be ideologically justified

what happens with the co-opted is that they start buying the pragmatism as ultimate justification thing

Delicious videos on YouTube:




Definitely too long for me

Unfortunately it seems most of them are gay:


User description:
sexylonghairedmen

"I'm a gay longhaired guy, sorry ladies!!! My hair is almost to my ass!!!! Nothing more beautiful to me than a guy with VERY long hair!!!! LONGHAIRED MEN RULE!!!!!!

Age: 47

I'm an admirer of men with sexy long hair! I'm a male and have been growing my own hair out for 10 years or so. There is something about a man with a long silky mane that is soooo sexy!

Country: United States
Occupation: longhaired freak

Interests and Hobbies: long haired men, extra long hair on men, men with long hair, shoulder length, mid back length, butt length, knee length, and longer!!! I also admire men with beards and tattoos. If you're a longhaired man please feel free to add me as a friend!!!!"

A cute argument from Plantinga, who always manages to come up with all sorts of strange and tortured arguments for Classical Theism which miss the point:


Evolutionary argument against naturalism

In Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, he argues that the truth of evolution is an epistemic defeater for naturalism (i.e. if evolution is true, it undermines naturalism). His basic argument is that if evolution and naturalism are both true, human cognitive faculties evolved to produce beliefs that have survival value (maximizing one's success at "feeding, fighting, and reproducing"), not necessarily to produce beliefs that are true. Thus, since human cognitive faculties are tuned to survival rather than truth in the naturalism-cum-evolution model, there is reason to doubt the veracity of the products of those same faculties, including naturalism and evolution themselves. On the other hand, if God created man "in his image" by way of an evolutionary process (or any other means), then Plantinga argues our faculties would probably be reliable.

The argument does not assume any necessary correlation (or uncorrelation) between true beliefs and survival. Making the contrary assumption—that there is in fact a relatively strong correlation between truth and survival—if human belief-forming apparatus evolved giving a survival advantage, then it ought to yield truth since true beliefs confer a survival advantage. Plantinga counters that, while there may be overlap between true beliefs and beliefs that contribute to survival, the two kinds of beliefs are not the same, and he gives the following example with a man named Paul:

Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief... Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it... Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour.

Naturally, there're a lot of excellent responses from critics.

In addition, one approach I might take would be to draw all sorts of uncomfortable (to him and other apologists) corollaries from his conclusion à la the Argument from Irreducible Grotesqueness (and thus disprove it by contradiction, since it it is obvious our faculties are not reliable).

But naturally he would have some even more complicated fudge for that.

"If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon." - George Aiken

***

The Politics of Homosexuality
Andrew Sullivan

"Perhaps the least helpful element in the current debate is the assertion that this politics is simply bigotry. It isn't. Many bigots may, of course, support it, and by bigots I mean those whose "visceral recoil" from homosexuals (to quote Buchanan) expresses itself in thuggery and name-calling. But there are some who don't support anti-gay violence and who sincerely believe discouragement of homosexuality by law and "curing" homosexuals is in the best interest of everybody...

For conservatives, radical "queers" provide a frisson of cultural apocalypse and a steady stream of funding dollars. For radicals, the religious right can be tapped as an unreflective and easy justification for virtually any political impulse whatsoever...

[Radical homosexuality's] relationship with the views of most homosexuals - let alone heterosexuals - is so tenuous that at moments of truth (like the military ban) it strains to have a viable politics at all... The trouble with gay radicalism, in short, is the problem with subversive politics as a whole. It tends to subvert itself... [ACT UP] was constantly tempted to broaden its reach, to solve a whole range of gender and ethnic grievances. Similarly, each organizing committee in each state of this weekend's march on Washington was required to have a 50 % "minority" composition - even Utah...

More important, the notion of sexuality as a cultural subversion distanced it from the vast majority of gay people who not only accept the natural origin of their sexual orientation, but wish to be integrated into society as it is. For most gay people - the closet cases and barflies, the construction workers and investment bankers, the computer programmers and parents - a "queer" identitity is precisely what they want to avoid. In this way, the radical politics of homosexuality is caught in a political trap. The more it purifies its own belief about sexuality, the less able it is to engage the broader world as a whole. The more it acts upon its convictions, the less able it is to engage in politics at all.

For the "queer" fundamentalists, like the religious fundamentalists, this is no problem. Politics for both groups is essentially an exercise in theater and rhetoric, in which dialogue with one's opponent is an admission of defeat. It is no accident that ACT UP was founded by a playwright, since its politics was essentially theatrical: a fantastic display of rhetorical pique and visual brilliance. It became a national media hit, but eventually its lines became familiar and the audience's attention wavered, New shows have taken its place and will continue to do so - but they will always be constrained by their essential nature, which is performance, not persuasion...

As soon as radicalism was required actually to engage America, its politics disintegrated.

Similarly, "queer" radicalism's doctrine of cultural subversion and separatism has the effect of alienating those very gay Americans most in need of support and help: the young and teenagers. Separatism is even less of an option for gays than for any other minority, since each generation is literally connected umbilically to the majority. The young are permanently in the hands of the other. By erecting a politics on a doctrine of separation and difference from the majority, "queer" politics ironically broke off dialogue with the heterosexual families whose cooperation is needed in every generation if gay children are to be accorded a modicum of dignity and hope...

Far more subversive than media-grabbing demonstrations on the evening news has been the slow effect of individual, private Americans becoming more open about their sexuality...

Far from redefining gay identity, "queer" radicalism may actually have to define itself in opposition to it. This is implicit in the punitive practice of "outing" and in the increasingly anti-gay politics of some "queer" radicals. But if "queer" politics is to survive, it will either have to be proved right about America's inherent hostility to gay people or become more insistent in its separatism. It will have to intensify its hatred of straights or its contempt for gays. Either path is likely to be as culturally creative as it is politically sterile...

The contemporary liberal politics of homosexuality... is based on two assumptions: that sexuality is equivalent to race in terms of discrimination, and that the full equality of homosexuals can be accomplished by designating gay people as victims. Both are extremely dubious. And the consequence of these errors is to mistarget the good that liberals are trying to do...

Race is always visible; sexuality can be hidden... This is not to say that the psychological toll of homosexuality is less problematic than that of race, but that it is different: in some ways better, in others worse...

The internal inconsistency of this politics is that by relying on the regulation of private activity, it misses this its essential target - and may even make matters worse. In theory, a human rights statute sounds like an ideal solution, a way for straights to express their concern and homosexuals to legitimate their identity. But in practice, it misses the point. It might grant workers a greater sense of security were to come out in the office; and it might, by the publicity it generates, allow for greater tolerance and approval of homosexuality generally. But the real terror of coming out is deeper than economic security, and is not resolved by it; it is related to emotional and interpersonal dignity...

Antidiscrimination laws scratch the privileged surface while avoiding the problematic depths. Like too many drugs for AIDS, they treat the symptoms of the homosexual problem without being anything like a cure. They may buy some time, and it is a cruel doctor who, in the face of human need, would refuse them. But they have about as much chance of tackling the deep roots of the gay-straight relationship as AZT has of curing AIDS. They want to substitute for the traumatic and difficult act of coming out the more formal and procedural act of legislation. But law cannot do the work of life. Even culture cannot do the work of life. Only life can do the work of life.

As the experience in Colorado and elsewhere shows, this strategy of using law to change private behavior also gives a fatal opening to the conservative politics of homosexuality. Civil rights laws essentially dictate the behavior of heterosexuals, in curtailing their ability to discriminate. They can, with justification, be portrayed as being an infringement on individual liberties. If the purpose of the liberal politics is to ensure the equality of homosexuals and their integration into society, it has thus achieved something quite peculiar. It has provided fuel for those who want to argue that homosexuals are actually seeking the infringement of heterosexuals' rights and the imposition of their values onto others. Much of this is propaganda, of course, and is fueled by fear and bigotry. But it works because it contains a germ of truth. Before most homosexuals have even come out of the closet, they are demanding concessions from the majority, including a clear curtailment of economic and social liberties, in order to ensure protections few of them will even avail themselves of. It is no wonder there is opposition, or that it seems to be growing. Nine states now have propositions to respond to what they see as the "special rights" onslaught.

In the process, the liberal politics of homosexuality has also reframed the position of gays in relation to straights. It has defined them in a permanent supplicant status, seeing gay freedom as dependent on straight enlightenment, achievable only by changing the behavior of heterosexuals. The valuable political insight of radicalism is that this is a fatal step. It could enshrine forever the notion that gay people are a vulnerable group in need of protection. By legislating homosexuals as victims, it sets up a psychological dynamic of supplication that too often only perpetuates cycles of inadequacy and self-doubt. Like blacks before them, gay people may grasp at what seems to be an escape from the prison of self-hatred, only to find it is another prison of patronized victimology...

[An alternative] liberal politics affirms a simple and limited criterion: that all public (as opposed to private) discrimination against homosexuals be ended and that every right and responsibility that heterosexuals enjoy by virtue of the state be extended to those who grow up different. And that is all. No cures or re-educations; no wrenching civil litigation; no political imposition of tolerance; merely a political attempt to enshrine formal civil equality, in the hope that eventually the private sphere will reflect this public civility. For these reasons, it is the only politics that actually tackles the core political problem of homosexuality and perhaps the only one that fully respects liberalism's public-private distinction. For these reasons, it has also the least chance of being adopted by gays and straights alike."

"I have just returned from Boston. It is the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there." - Fred Allen

***

Facebook | Singapore Men's Rights Watch

"The Singapore Men's Rights Watch was set up with the following goals:

1) To increase awareness of the lack of national-level support for men's health in Singapore.

2) To highlight that, in Singapore, prostate cancer fatalities rival cervical cancer fatalities, but most campaign sponsorship goes towards cancers that affect females only.

3) To highlight the lack of specialised health facilities and medical professionals for men. As opposed to personal gynaecologists, men typically have to be content with generic urologists.

4) To discuss the issue of equal pay for men and women in Singapore.

5) To increase awareness of the damaging (mis)representation of men and fathers in mass media. From The Simpsons to Night at The Museum, men and fathers are increasingly portrayed as lovable but emotionally-impaired, bumbling idiots.

On the other hand, it's very fashionable in Hollywood to represent most women/wives as strong, independent women who are morally and intellectually superior to men.

This has spilled over into everyday life, and into the dynamics of today's male-female relationships.

The long-term mispresentation of men could result in the undermining of the value of fathers, leading to the breakdown of families (like in the West).

6) To ask why violence against males in mass media is called PG humour, while violence against women gets an M18/R21 rating.

7) To increase awareness of the suicide rate of males. Studies show that males are four times more likely to die from suicide than females, although women are more likely to attempt suicide than men.

8) To raise awareness of the fact that substantial public money is spent on women's campaigns, while little is reserved for men. In other countries, this is the result of having a female vote-bank. In Singapore, the reason is not clear.

9) To discuss about the increasing pressure on males to fulfill traditional roles as good 'providers' - while taking on new roles as home-makers and caregivers in the family.

10) To raise awareness about the lack of protection and the lack of avenues to turn to for help in cases of marital disputes.

11) To discuss about the falling standards of men's tertiary education in developed countries. In the U.S., females significantly outnumber males at college level."


This wasn't really new to me, except for this point:

7) To increase awareness of the suicide rate of males. Studies show that males are four times more likely to die from suicide than females, although women are more likely to attempt suicide than men.

2 possible explanations for this (which are not mutually exclusive):

i) Women are trying to attract attention
ii) Women are so incompetent they can't even kill themselves successfully

Someone suggested an alternative explanation, that "once embarked on a stupid course of action men are less likely to reconsider their actions".

I rejected this because I doubt you are counted as having attempted suicide if you reconsider your actions and stop trying to kill yourself.

For example if, a minute before you fling yourself off your balcony, you come back into the building, that's not called attempted suicide.

Similarly if, 5 minutes before I slit my wrists, I change my mind and climb out of
the bathtub, this is not counted as a suicide attempt either.

Having suicidal thoughts or plans or fantasies does not count as making a suicide attempt.

The only way this explanation would be valid is if most women try to kill themselves but, once having undertaken the deed, try to reverse it. Some examples would include calling 995 after slashing their wrists or inducing vomitting after swallowing a whole bottle of sleeping pills, but this doesn't seem intuitively plausible to me (at least not more so than explanation #1).

"Scientia non habet inimicum nisi ignorantem."

***

The Exercise Myth - "My lab at Tufts University summarized 36 years of published studies on exercise and weight, conducted between 1969 and 2005. What we found would frustrate anyone spending upward of $800 a year on a gym membership to lose weight. The averaged results of the studies showed that an hour of exercise per day results in an average fat loss of just six pounds over the course of several months... Research doesn’t have good answers to the question of why exercise doesn’t work for the average person as well as it seems it should, but I suspect the reasons are increased hunger (you eat almost as many extra calories as you burn) and reduced energy expenditure at other times (exercise may make you more relaxed and less fidgety). So, you end up fit, healthy, and less stressed out, but wondering why you still have pounds to lose... Which doesn’t mean you should tear up your gym membership—being fit remains good for your general health"

Seeking for relationship to marriage - "I'm a white collar working gal with a local uni degree... I'm a classy and inteligent... Norma l executive, dun send in. please... erasian"
I thought working girls were blue collar

Doodle: Easy Scheduling - "How does Doodle work?
1. Create a poll.
2. Forward the link to the poll to the participants.
3. Follow online what the participants vote for."
To some extent, this solves the coordination problem of finding out the option which most people are in favour of

Get your values out of my face - "Your rights to keep your child ignorant about sex ends where my tax dollars start to fund public medical programmes for STDs, juvenile delinquency schemes and prisons for people screwed up by being born to poor teenage mothers... People from well-off, educated families are the ones who are statistically the least likely to suffer from the problems of teen pregnancy and STDs. Yet they feel driven to restrict sex education for the people who need it most: Teens from lower-income families. But it makes sense. After all, the harm that these well-meaning people could cause will never affect them directly. They get to feel holy but will never experience the misery born of their actions."

Marks & Spencer caves in, cuts prices on big bras - "Britain's largest clothing retailer, Marks & Spencer, has backed down on its incendiary policy of charging a 2 pound ($3) surcharge for bras that are DD or larger in the face of a spreading consumer revolt... "They didn't want a lot of big-breasted women storming their meeting""
Of course, the price of other bras will have to go up to cross-subsidise well-endowed women. Hurrah!

Why MOE suspended Aware project - "GP lessons are meant to promote critical thinking and discussion on contemporary issues... They should also adhere to social norms and values of our mainstream society."

Igotanenvelope - "Igotanenvelope is a continuous art project where people leave empty self-addressed stamped envelopes in public places to be picked up and filled by others, who then send them back."
Doubt this will work in Singapore. You would get fined for littering, or endangering public safety.

YouTube - An "Intel Star" TV ad -- Sponsors of Tomorrow

The monetary-policy maze - "Macroeconomics in general has come under fire for depending too much on assumptions of efficient markets and its inability to incorporate the spasms of emotion that create economic manias and panics. “As a monetary policymaker I have found the ‘cutting edge’ of current macroeconomic research totally inadequate in helping to resolve the problems we currently face,” said Mr Blanchflower, a labour economist, in a speech he gave on March 24th."

Does micro-credit empower women : evidence from Bangladesh - "The effects of male credit on women's empowerment were, at best, neutral, and at worse, decidedly negative. Male credit had a negative effect on several arenas of women's empowerment, including physical mobility, access to savings and economic resources, and power to manage some household transactions."
What would be interesting would be the effects of female credit on male empowerment - in developed societies as well.

Saints and Sinners: The Science of Good and Evil - "What is surprising is how little attention science has paid to the dissenters in Milgram's experiments. Some participants did balk at following the command to torture their partner... De Waal once saw a chimpanzee pick up an injured starling, climb the highest tree in her enclosure, carefully unfold the bird's wings and loft it toward the fence to get it airborne... "We know that women tend to be more altruistic than men on average, older people tend to be more altruistic than younger ones, students are less altruistic than nonstudents," he says. "People with higher IQs tend to be more altruistic/cooperative." However, there is little or no correlation between altruism and standard personality traits such as shyness, agreeableness and openness to new experiences... "Consumer capitalism makes people feel they don't have enough, so they feel they don't have enough to give away."... panhandlers on my subway so often seem to do better with people who are scruffily dressed and struggling than with the pearls-and-pumps set... People who are emotionally secure, who view life's problems as manageable and who feel safe and protected tend to show the greatest empathy for strangers and to act altruistically and compassionately... "there are virtues that can be thought of as the product of trainable mental skills.""

Mikhail Pletnev Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . - "For modern music, I am not very keen of doing this music... Unfortunately, the modern musical language is more tending to be not touching, you know, because when even I see the score, I see more constructive things. I see more sonorous experiments. I see more mathematics. And this is not what I’m attracted to... I think there are two purposes [of music], two reasons why to play or not to play.  First is enjoyment.  You play nice tune, you enjoy.  It’s lovely.  Second, and this more when we talk about the more sublime — like Beethoven’s last sonata or Ninth Symphony — it tends more to be more
spiritual... A lot of modern music is like this. The proof of music is if you would like to re-listen to it or not. Sometimes you enjoy the music, but if people say, “No, I have understood it well; it’s enough,” I guess it means that it’s meaningless... when you listen to this modern junk age — which is not modern anymore — it comes back to these primitive sonorities produced by any object, even a stapler... if we’re talking about melodies, which for me is important, which touches me, the modern composers are afraid of melodies... If the melody comes, it comes in a very distorted way, somehow. The whole feeling is sort of frustration."

"There it was, hidden in alphabetical order." - Rita Holt

***

Singapore male fetish come true:


(from the OHMYGOD series of jing quek)

Someone had to ask me to explain (he's gay), so I outlined the appeal as:

- (Perceived) Youth
- Sexual variety (different women)
- Sexual simultaneity (at the same time)
- Uniform
- Reverse bukkake analogue

(Schoolgirls are a recurrent theme in his photography)