N. China - Day 7, Part 4 - Pingyao: Shuanglin Monastery

"Without the aid of prejudice and custom I should not be able to find my way across the room." - William Hazlitt

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N. China
Day 7 - 5th November - Pingyao: Shuanglin Monastery (Part 4)

We then took an electric cart to the Shuanglin Monastery which was a way off from the city. I forgot to return my audioguide, but surprisingly it also gave commentary at Shuanglin Monastery (even though it was 7km from the city)


Monastery gate


Mural beside gate


Many-handed Buddha


Entrance gateway


Hall of the Heavenly Kings
On the left is Brahmadeva and on the Right, Sakra. You know this place is old (it dates back to the Song) because they have gods with Indian names.


On the left is Devanam, then Bstan-Srung and Indra. Bstan-Srung was called, in Chinese, "精美的护法天神" ("Exquisite Buddhist Doctrine Sky God")


Bstan-Srung


Hall of the Land God


Hall of Ksitigarbha (King of Hell)


Hall of Ksitigarbha (King of Hell). The monk Dao Ming is on the right. Presumably being a Buddhist monk doesn't save you from Hell.


Sakyamuni Hall


Sakyamuni Hall. Despite the name, the Indian individuals have been sinicised.


Hall of the Arhats - "18 Arhats making a pilgrimage to the bodhisattva"


Hall of the Military God. The big guy should e Sattra.


Hall of One Thousand Buddhas

While I was in the Hall of One Thousand Buddhas, a CCTV camera was watching me and as I snapped photos the guy shouted over the microphone at me, getting louder each time. Oops.

(If you're wondering why there're photos after this - I took them while kneeling in front of the doors of the halls - photography was not permitted inside the buildings, so I did it outside them)


Hall of Bodhisattvas


Guan Yin crossing the bitter sea with 18 protectors. There was something about the Yuan dynasty, and those at the side are Ming Kings.


Fat Cat


It was irritating that there were metal bars in all of the buildings. Actually there were internal routes in the halls - you could see wooden railings inside. Maybe too many PRC vandals necessitated further restriction to the statues.


Precious Hall of Mahavira


Altar: Amitabha in front of Vairocana


From left: Samantabhadra, then Sakyamuni (Sakyamuni is the Prime/First Buddha so I don't know why he's in second place here). The small guy is an attendant bodhisattva.


Losana then Manjusri


Hall of Loyalty and Righteousness. There's a body of a sleeping girl inside the sculpture.

(Peter Danford has nicer photos than mine)


The Desolate Countryside


Drying Maize


A wooden pavilion

We then took the electric cart back to Pingyao.


"Special features a light repast mood of pingyao"


"夫妻保健" ("Husband-Wife Health Maintenance")
This was the closest euphemism to a sex shop I could find in China.

We had some time before our train, so we confronted:


A row of identical-looking shops. About the only difference was that some offered Sichuan food (it's the only Southern cuisine popular in the North).


Someone else ordered this 蛋抄饼丝. This was a huge portion for only 5￥ (and he'd already had 2 mouthfuls).


Chinese Menu - note the variety and price


English Menu - note the variety and price


肉丝炒面
Shredded meat fried noodles


肉丝汤面
Shredded meat soup noodles

They had 刀削面 (knife-cut noodles) but the shape was weird.



In the train there was a Spanish couple above me. Two of them, in a bunk meant for one. So I spent a while in mortal peril.

I was thinking of taking off my shoes and putting them on the floor. Then this girl on a bunk below spat. Onto the TRAIN FLOOR. Where I would've left my shoes. So I threw them on top of my luggage. It is one thing to spit on the ground and walk off. It is another to spit on what will be your living space for an evening. Gah.


Surly man in train corridor
Incidentally this is the real 硬卧 （hard sleeper） - people can see your feet. There was no dustbin and individual lights (my previous hard sleeper had the latter) but they had the good old hot water flask. And annoyng music was played (whether for entertainment or to piss you off, I don't know)


I observed to my Qufu driver that life is cheap in China, and he agreed.

I kept forgetting the golden rule of Third World Toilets. No, it wasn't "bring your own toilet paper" (in Greece, among many others, you don't have to, since people are not so accursed as in China that they will steal it if it's provided), but "throw used toilet paper into the bin, not the bowl". I hope I didn't choke any toilets.

In Beijing I saw more bicycles than electric bicycles. It was the reverse in Taishan/Qufu, probably because of further distances. In Pingyao it was about the same.

Samuelson on Forecasting

"When I say that as an economist I am not very good at making economic forecasts, that sounds like modesty. But actually, it represents the height of arrogance. For I know that bad as we economists are, we are better than anything else in heaven and earth at forecasting aggregate business trends - better than gypsy tea-leaf readers, Wall Street soothsayers and chartist technicians, hunch-playing heads of mail order chains, or all-powerful heads of state"

Links - 22nd February 2011

"Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated." - George Santayana

***

Why Are You People Defending Apple? - "The sinking feeling I’ve got in my stomach as I imagine a world where a significant number of the world’s computer users are locked behind a 30% toll being enforced by one of the most monolithic companies around."

Stop worrying that your twentysomething is lost - "Do you know what a loser is today? A loser is someone who doesn't take the time to get to know herself. A loser is someone who saw his parents earn a lot of money and not get happiness from it and still deludes himself that money will make him happy. A loser is someone who looks for fame or prestige. A loser is someone who lets someone else tell them what success looks like"

Belgian senator calls on 'sex strike' until political deadlock is broken - "Marleen Temmerman, a Socialist senator, has urged the bed partners of MPs, senators and party political leaders to keep their "legs closed" until the deadlock, which is closing in on a world record of 249 days, is ended... many Belgians fear that market turmoil could bring down their highly indebted country if it fails to end the crisis by Feb 17, when it will beat war-torn Iraq to set a new world record of more than 249 days without government... [When Kenya did the same,] "Kenyan prostitutes were offered financial compensation if they showed sisterly solidarity and participated in the sex strike. The impact has never been scientifically proven, but after just one week there was a stable government." Catherine Fonck, a Christian democrat senator, rejected the call. "I don't want to take part in a sex strike," she said. "Politicians are not there to strike, on the contrary, politicians are there arouse the country""

Plastic surgery is the next must-have career tool. Maybe - "All else being equal, a good-looking woman will negotiate better for a company than anyone else—even a good-looking man, according to research by Sara Solnick of the University of Miami and Maurice Schweitzer from Wharton. Good-looking women drive harder bargains than everyone else, and good-looking women get more concessions than anyone else"

The secret life of salesgirls - "Williams thinks that cheerleading talent does, in fact, correleate with talent for sales: "Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm – they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want"... Men who are attracted to you are more likely to buy from you. So what? Men who like to play golf are more likely to do business with other men who play golf. People have been given unfair preferences forever. Be glad you are the recipient of some of this... Do not tell human resources if you can help it. The job of human resources is to protect the company, not you, and when you have a harassment complaint, you are a problem to the company"
This blog is really good

Skirting the Line - "People of both sexes rate women who forgo makeup as less committed to their jobs... Few workers are likely to set a badly dressed colleague straight. In fact, competitive female coworkers often relish a rival's wardrobe faux pas... Both sexes perceive women with long, straight, blond hair as being sexy and those with short, highlighted hairstyles as smart and confident, but not sexy, finds Marianne LaFrance, a Yale psychologist. "More hair equals more femininity, but also less intelligence," she says. Likewise, high-maintenance hair makes others suspicious about a woman's competence"

The Fame Motive - "The urge to achieve social distinction is evident worldwide, even among people for whom prominence is neither accessible nor desirable. In rural Hindu villages in India, for instance, widows are expected to be perpetual mourners, austere in their habits, appetites and dress; even so, they often jockey for position... “Many compete for who is most pure,” Dr. Shweder said. “They say, ‘I don’t eat fish, I don’t eat eggs, I don’t even walk into someone’s house who has eaten meat.’... [those] who focused on goals tied to others’ approval, like fame, reported significantly higher levels of distress than those interested primarily in self-acceptance and friendship... famous people in particular are forced to judge themselves against ideals set by others"

John R. Malott: The Price of Malaysia's Racism - "The leading Malay language newspaper, Utusan Melayu, prints what opposition leader Lim Kit Siang calls a daily staple of falsehoods that stoke racial hatred. Utusan, which is owned by Mr. Najib's political party, has claimed that the opposition would make Malaysia a colony of China and abolish the Malay monarchy. It regularly attacks Chinese Malaysian politicians, and even suggested that one of them, parliamentarian Teresa Kok, should be killed... Almost 500,000 Malaysians left the country between 2007 and 2009, more than doubling the number of Malaysian professionals who live overseas. It appears that most were skilled ethnic Chinese and Indian Malaysians, tired of being treated as second-class citizens in their own country... TalentCorp, the government agency created in 2010 that is supposed to encourage overseas Malaysians to return home, is headed by a Malay, with an all-Malay Board of Trustees"

A Preliminary Report on an Intervention Designed to Reduce Grandmother Death Resulting From College Exams - "The rate of grandmother mortality rose 10-20 times just prior to the period of exams... Adams (1990) speculated that the most likely cause of death was inordinate grandmotherly stress at the thought of her grandchild taking a difficult exam. This interpretation was further strengthened by findings that the worse students had been performing in the class, the greater the likelihood of at least one grandmother dying prior to an exam. Grandmothers probably experience particularly acute stress at the thought of their grandchildren taking a test in which they are unlikely to do well... we have instituted the following intervention, designed to reduce the frequency of premature grandmother mortality. Students are informed that, should they miss a major multiple choice exam, they will have an opportunity to take the brutal essay makeup... The main intervention -- simply informing students that, if they miss the main exam they could take the brutal essay makeup -- dramatically reduced the grandmother mortality rate"

Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Linked - "If you sign in as a 15-year-old girl and look under the Sixth Commandment, one of the questions is: “Do I not treat my body or other people’s bodies with purity and respect?” If you sign in as a 33-year-old married man, that commandment offers this query: “Have I been guilty of masturbation?”... The app also tailors the questions if you sign in as a priest or a “religious.” For instance, if you say you’re a female and try to select “priest” as your vocation, a dialogue box appears that says “sex and vocation are incompatible.” So much for modernity. Under the Sixth Commandment, men and women are asked: “Have I been guilty of any homosexual activity?” Priests, however, are not. They are asked if they flirt"

Parisians are 'rude and smelly' - say their own tourist chiefs - "The charter of committments for Parisians reads:
• I will take the time to give information to visitors.
• I will make use of my foreign-language skills to reply to them in their language.
• I will recommend to visitors things I appreciate about Paris.
• I am proud of my city, the No 1 tourist destination in the world."

Homeopaths Without Borders
I thought this was a joke. PZ Myers suggests calling it "Quackery Without Scruples"

IT'S OFFICIAL: The Smartphone Market Is Now Bigger Than The PC Market A question I asked: Why are there crazy cat ladies, but no crazy dog men? | Formspring - "Cos women tend to have an inherent inexplicable need to take care of something after a while. Men don't. Or at least there's a much lower occurrence of such cases"

Customs officers 'destroy World Cup shirt' - "the customs officers wrongly believed it was a counterfeit"

One Man, One Vote, One Time - "As exhilarating as revolution can be and as desirable as elections are, in the Middle East they have too often ended in tyranny"
So Egypt is now 'free'. Time to see hope turn to disappointment once again. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose... (see also: Obama and The Vacuity of 'Hope' from 2008)

Poll shows Egyptians favour democracy and stoning for adultery - "95%: Say it’s good that Islam plays a large role in politics
54%: Believe men and women should be segregated in the workplace
82%: Believe adulterers should be stoned
84%: Believe apostates from Islam should face the death penalty
77%: Believe thieves should be flogged or have their hands cut off"

John Zogby: 2010 Poll: Egyptians Dislike Obama, See U.S./Israel as "Threats," Want Clergy More Political

Hurriyya - WikiIslam - "According to the late American scholar of Islam, Franz Rosenthal (d. 2003), Islamic culture historically has nothing corresponding to the Western concept of freedom as "a fundamental political concept that could have served as a rallying cry for great causes." A Muslim “was expected to consider subordination of his own freedom to the beliefs, morality and customs of the group as the only proper course of behavior”"

u r wt u wr - 22nd February 2011

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Sir Winston Churchill

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u r wt u wr:

- I like being on top
- 'Looking for Mr Happy'
- 'It is love and lonely about you
- 'I ♥ money'
- 'I am a wonder of the world'
- 'Just here waiting for you'
- 'Look at the cat's nose' (I tried to but it was very hard, as she was so well-endowed it was hard to find the cat's nose. The T-shirt is probably just to get guys to pay attention to her rack)
- 'Garçon manqué' (This means 'tomboy')
- 'Make me pretty. Like a princess' (she really needed it)
- 'Remember Lot's wife. Avoid the backward glance' (this didn't need saying, as she was nothing to glace at - let alone twice)
- 'Girl is a fairy' (at first I saw 'hairy')
- 'You give me fever'
- 'I would like to be a fashion victim' (Her friend was PRC. Maybe she was too)
- 'Young nasty bitch & flashy'
- 'Just did it'
- [8 year old girl] 'I'll show you my game'
- 'Sweet Sixteen' (there was a crown on top of the first letters)
- [Woman in her 40s] 'I'm a Tease' (I was told she'd had Botox)
- Some girls -something- all the luck'
- [Woman in her 50s] 'Pick me. Choose me. L♥ me'
- 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' (I could see why she wore this)
- 'Peach of the summer'
- 'European casual the d day in normandy'
- 'Animal animal animal'
- 'Sweet kiss with my sweetheart'
- 'This tshirt is not a fake' (I wondered what else was not fake)
- 'Sexy lips' (those on her face were not impressive. Presumably she was referring to the other set)
- 'The boys ♥ me'
- 'Bundle up wear juicy'

Surreptitious Machinations

Since taking a quantum leap into the Smartphone Era, I've been getting strange SMSes and calls from Italy (a +39 3 number).

SMS contents:

EnTA MEN REn ALIA
MESSADGIO SENSA PAROLE
CHIAMA   ME

(Google Translate only renders the last 3 words intelligibly, as "Words. Call me")

Some have suggested that it's Hot Italian Girls looking for me, but when I picked up this morning I heard a gruff Italian man grunting at me.

I hope it's not the Mafia.

Most Singaporeans are still against homosexuality

"I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves." - August Strindberg

***

Here is some evidence against the claim that those who are against homosexuality in Singapore are mainly conservative/fundamentalist Christians.

From a recent presentation on Homosexuality in Singapore: Perceptions, Public Opinion, and the Media by Benjamin H. Detenber (NTU):

"Homosexuality is generally regarded as a deviation from social norms in collectivistic Asian societies

Asian societies generally tend to express greater disapproval toward homosexuality as compared with Western societies...

Gauging Public Opinion 2010:
–CATI survey with 959 Singapore citizens and permanent residents aged 18 and above
–Probability sampling (RDD) and survey conducted in 3 languages
–Response rate: 36.6%

Attitudes toward gay men and lesbians (N = 918)
Negative attitudes 65%
Neutral 10%
Positive attitudes 25%

Acceptance of homosexuals
Acceptable 45%
Neutral 15%
Unacceptable 40%

Small but significant shift in ATLG from 2005... However, after controlling for other factors (e.g., demographics, religiosity) the change was non-significant

−Muslims had the most negative attitudes towards gay men and lesbians
−Freethinkers were the most accepting of gay men and lesbians...

–Intrinsic religiosity a much better predictor of ATLG and acceptance than extrinsic religiosity
–Western orientation as significant predictor of ATLG and acceptance
->Homosexuality may be regarded as a “Western import” in Singapore

Support for censorship
Should be stricter 54%
Just about right 25%
Should be less strict 21%...

–People with higher levels of Asian orientation may be more conservative & prefer to preserve the societal status quo
–Media exposure, parasocial interaction with gay and lesbian characters, as well as attitudes toward these minority groups “are mutually reinforcing”
–Perceived effects on self better predictor of censorship support than perceived effects on others or the perceptual gap
•People seem to be more concerned about their own self-interests than the moral well-being of others
•Perhaps homosexuality is not as noxious as pornography or media violence"

On why if you jaywalk and get knocked down by someone 10-15kmph above the speed limit, it's the driver's fault

"A little more moderation would be good. Of course, my life hasn't exactly been one of moderation." - Donald Trump

***

Re: Fine, ban for accident killing former national sprinter

A MOTORIST who caused the death of former national sprinter Tan Eng Yoon in a road traffic accident was fined $9,000 and banned from driving for five years on Tuesday.

Mohammed Iskandar Ariffin, 33, a safety supervisor, admitted to failing to keep a proper lookout while driving and causing his car to hit the 82-year-old pedestrian along Upper Thomson Road on Jan 30 last year.

Mr Tan, president of the Singapore Olympians Association, was heading home after attending the 6.30am mass at the Church of the Holy Spirit when he was knocked down.

He had crossed the first two lanes and was on the extreme right lane when Iskandar's car collided into him.

Iskandar was then travelling at about 70 to 75kmh, above the 60kmh speed limit.

Mr Tan died about 2 1/2 hours later in hospital despite resuscitative efforts.


Someone: it's called "contributory negligence'

Me: So this is like the cases where someone breaks into a house, falls down and hurts himself and sues the owner?

Someone: no, there is another principle that covers that
illegality voids any negligence there may be

besides, in your example, the homeowner does not seem to have been negligent in any way

Me: If the homeowner didn't install railings, so the thief fell off the staircase?

Why doesn't the illegality of jaywalking void this negligence?

Someone: aiya you have to make me dig out my year1 notes
ok it's not a simple simple concept but basically there there are a few principles
1. whether the illegality is of a sufficient degree such as to void negligence. being involved in something ill...egal "in general" does not necessarily void negligence (Ooi Han Sun v Bee Hua Meng involved workers working without work permits and who were injured on the job due to employer's negligence. technically the workers were involved in an illegal act, but employer was still held liable for their injuries)
2. whether the illegality is the "source" of the claim (say, a burglar cannot claim that his stolen goods were, in turn, stolen)

one way to look at it might also be that.. well, the driver was also doing something illegal..

there is a strong line of cases involving traffic accidents where drivers are held (partially) liable despite technically having right of way (Road Traffic Rules do not exempt motorists from having to take care even if they have the right of way)

see section 3(1) of CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE AND PERSONAL INJURIES ACT

also, it may be partly a public policy thing
considering that motorists have compulsory motor insurance whereas not all pedestrians have personal injury insurance

Me: orh
Though I note that it's only a traffic offence when you're 20kmph above the speed limit

Links - 14th February 2011

"It is always the best policy to speak the truth--unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar." - Jerome K. Jerome

***

STOMP - Singapore Seen - So stupid! Guys destroy iPad to build skateboard - "STOMPer iMad thought that it was stupid of these guys to wreck an expensive iPad just to use it as a skateboard."
Comments: "apple product sucks thats why you can find so many ipads, iphones being smashed and destroyed on youtube"
"Ppl got money they can do whatever they wan also can with their own things lik that also wan comment go home sleep la"
"They do this just to screw Steve Jobs, I remember another video of a iPad and a iPhone 4 during it's release date last year, where those American dudes used a .50 (12.7x99mm) Caliber Rifle to shoot the appliance."
"its called being creative u dumb f u c k"

How smartphone users see each other, Android vs. BlackBerry vs. iPhone [COMIC]

Apple says NO! to iPad Cutting Board - "A few months back we received a call from Apple lawyers and we were told to stop selling them. The reason given was based on “likeness” issues. A Wood cutting board. Lord have mercy on my soul."
"We didn't call it anything like that with name iPad in it."

What Is Academic Work? - "The [good] paper does not say to its audience, “Go out and change the world,” but “Here is my take on these issues and what do you think?”... The kind of questions asked also marked the occasion as an academic one. Not “Won’t the economy implode if we do this?” or “Wouldn’t free expression rights be eroded if we went down that path?”, but “Would you be willing to follow your argument to its logical conclusion?” or “Doesn’t that amount to just making up the law as you go along?”"
This is why scholarship and activism are inimical (at least when practised simultaneously)

The last Japanese man remaining in Kazakhstan: A Kafkian tale of the plight of a Japanese POW in the Soviet Union

Plans to help older low-wage workers - "One proposal is for Individual Unemployment Credits to support workers during their involuntary unemployment period. Workers who are involuntarily unemployed should be allowed to take a loan from their CPF account based on a percentage of their last-drawn salary, with a cap for three months... The loan has to be paid back upon employment"
Even when you're above 65 you have to pay back money borrowed from yourself? CPF is such a scam

What is the name of the extinct plant that may have inspired the symbol for heart-shaped Valentines? - "Ancient coins from Cyrene, a city-state where Libya is now, show an impression of a silphium seed, and it’s a shape that you know very well... Silphium only grew in the wild and could not be cultivated. Much like the heart it symbolizes, attempts at domesticating the plant may have been the cause of its demise"

What I want from a restaurant website - The Oatmeal - "What I get instead... Can't copy/paste anything because it's in flash"

Average female face: The Face of Tomorrow Mike Mike project - "Describing someone as average-looking is rarely seen as a compliment. But most of us would be quite happy to look like a computer-generated depiction of the 'average' English woman, Welsh woman, or even the average Burmese. More than 100 women of 41 different nationalities and ethnicities were photographed in cities all over the world in an effort to find common regional features"

White blood cells pitted against each other in ‘Blood Wars’

Vietnam rings in Year of the Cat - "Exactly why and when Vietnam dumped the rabbit and adopted the cat for its version of the 12 signs of the horoscope taken from China is up for debate and may have been partly the result of a complex translation error... “It’s appropriate that the Vietnamese swapped the cat into the calendar in place of the rabbit. Rabbits are a kind of rodent and the rat is also a rodent. The animals should be different... This expresses a balance of yin and yang in the cosmos that is more complete, that better unifies the contradictions, and so it is richer and better to have the cat”... In Vietnam, rabbits are considered food. Cats also appear on the occasional menu as “little tigers,” although the practice of eating them is technically banned"
They should pit a Chinese and a Vietnamese and let them argue over their mumbo-jumbo, post-hoc rationalisations

What effect has the internet had on our sex lives? - ""Older media are dominated by a view of sex as scandalous and dangerous, and its whole depiction of sex has been pretty predictable"... Our exposure to a seemingly bottomless pit of debasement doesn't mean we're becoming more adventurous, however. Dr Petra Boynton, a sex educator and online relationship agony aunt, says that people still come to her with exactly the same questions and concerns that they always have – men about their anatomies and women about their relationships – it's just that the language they use now is more explicit. And there's no evidence that people who meet online are more likely to hook up quicker than people who meet offline... Boynton believes [online sexual content] is far more intimate than what you can get from the pages of a magazine and reflects more closely the entirety of the sexual experience. This is potentially transformative... in a culture that ridicules, vilifies and commercialises sex, this is laden with politics"

Sociologist Harry Collins poses as a physicist. - "The judges couldn't tell the impostor from one of their own. Collins argues that he is therefore as qualified as anyone to discuss this field, even though he can't conduct experiments in it... if a sociologist can understand physics, then anyone can understand anything... "You can be a great physicist and not know any mathematics," he said. To take an extreme example, you needn't have solved gravitational equations to know that you shouldn't jump out a window... [Sokal] is famous for an experiment a decade ago that seemed to demonstrate the futility of laymen discussing science"
Sokal's hoax did not demonstrate the futility of laymen discussing science, but of people talking rubbish (in particular, of using literary techniques to shoot off and make wild claims)

Unshielded Colliders: Faraday, Feynman, and Philosophy - "As late as the middle of the nineteenth century, Faraday thinks we should aspire to be philosophers. By the middle of the twentieth century, Feynman is happy to ridicule philosophers... I find this change in attitude very puzzling. All the more so, since Feynman routinely complained that physics students were learning computation without having any real understanding because they weren't asking why the calculations went the way they do, which is basically the philosophical spirit that Faraday wanted to encourage!"
One comment: "Perhaps part of what happened was that scientists co-opted the parts of philosophy that they found interesting and tractable and left to the philosophers the parts that never really interested them anyway."

What Is Your Organization’s Productivity (how many man-days per month do you work)? - "Projects are immediately 25% behind schedule when they start. As a result, project teams need to work 25% over time every day in order to catch up. Which means, instead of leaving the office at 5:30pm, they need to leave at 7:30pm at the earliest. OT should only be used to handle unexpected problems and unforeseen work that lands on one’s lap, and to handle these promptly, project staff end up leaving for home at 8:30 or 9pm. If they were to take a quick rest or meal break in the evening, their knock-off time would be pushed back to 9 or 9:30pm"

In Malaysia, Youth Group to Educate Against Valentine's Day - "Valentine’s Day “promotes sinful activities,” says Mr. Nasrudin. Indeed, it’s the only day that does so... In recent years, the government has drawn widespread criticism for allowing Islamic religious officials to sentence a woman to caning for drinking beer (the caning sentence was commuted by the Sultan of Pahang to a stint at a children’s home)... Government officials last February said they had caned three women for having sexual intercourse outside of wedlock"
Nothing short of Talibanisation will stop people proclaiming that a country is a moderately Muslim country
Addendum: Malaysia Arrests 100 Muslim Couples for Celebrating Lovers' Day

Dear Straight Dude: My Girlfriend Is Pissed At Me « Thought Catalog - "I understand your need for logical, reasonable discussion of emotions but the first thing you need to know about emotions is that they follow a very sort of convoluted, not-immediately-apparent logic... if you try to force your logic and “facts” on your girlfriend – the two of you are likely to quickly become estranged"

Bacon jam recipe: make it at home

How to render lard - "People think that cooking with lard will make everything taste of pork, but this is not true; its flavor is neutral. What it does, however, is create incredible texture and structure. With lard, you’ll fry chicken that is both moist and crisp. With lard, you’ll make a tender pie crust that flakes. With lard, you’ll make airy French fries that crunch. With lard, you’ll cook refried beans that caress your mouth like velvet. With lard, you’ll steam tamales that are soft and fluffy. And with lard, you’ll bake ginger cookies that snap. But the best thing about lard is that it’s not bad for you. It has less saturated fat (the bad fat) than butter, while it also has more than twice as much monosaturated fat (the good fat) than butter. And it has none of those pesky trans fats—that is, if it hasn’t been hydrogenated to prolong its shelf life"

Stereotype Accuracy: Toward Appreciating Group Differences - "Understanding stereotype accuracy is crucial to both social psychology and to its applications (e.g., to improving intergroup relations). The goals of this volume are to reduce commonplace errors in modern social science by challenging the off-hand and undocumented claims appearing in the scholarly literature that stereotypes are "typically" inaccurate, resistant to change, overgeneralized, exaggerated, and generally destructive"

Accessing WikiLeaks Violates Espionage Act, USAF Says - "“That has to be one of the worst policy/legal interpretations I have seen in my entire career,” said William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office"
To their credit, they quickly retracted it, unlike what might happen in some other countries

Salaries top out at age 40 - "People eventually start to realize that they are not going to get to the very top. They see that only one out of 100 web designers is the director, and only one out of 50 directors is a VP. Al calls this the funnel effect, and he says many people recognize this and start to trade time for money; people see that chasing the increasingly smaller raises is not as fulfilling as doing a wide range of other things with their time... One of the most common but least-talked about career moves is to get to a relatively high spot and then see how much you can cut back in terms of effort and still maintain that level of salary and/or prestige"

Giraffes are heartless creatures‏

RI/RJC alumni particulars harvesting

A message I got on FB:

"If you know of RI/RJC alumni who are interested in receiving updates on RI and alumni news, kindly direct them to the following RI Announcement page: http://www.ri.edu.sg/main/announcementdetail/?id=81, where they can access a link to update their contact information and particulars."

More directly, the link is to a Google Spreadsheet here.