"Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd." - Edith Sitwell
***
So far a few people (one from SMU, strangely enough) have discovered my dirty little secret. I wonder how many more will (wah, die liao).
***
The things you learn (on nature vs nurture, and Larry Summers):
"Moreover, the well-documented phenomenon of phenotypic plasticity suggests that even when there are genetically-based differences among organisms, appropriate changes in the environment can balance things out, or at least improve the response (in this case, math abilities) for most people.
The problem with the comments that have circulated lately is that they assume much more than it has actually been shown to be the case, and discourage any kind of environmental intervention. As an example, remember that we know of genetic diseases (such as phenylketonuria) that can be completely offset by a simple change in diet (in that case, no eating of the amino acid phenylalanine), i.e. by a change in the environment."
Fascinating. The things you learn from experts in the field.
The things you learn:
"I think that cleaning one's ears is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world!... the ear is sometimes supplied by the vagus nerve (cranial nerve X) haha (besides the great auricular nerve and CN V and VII, too) - the same nerve which sends parasympathetic nerves to your lungs and stomach etc - that is, your involuntary nervous system - so cleaning your ears induces a feeling of well-being and aids your digestion too (I'm not kidding)!!! :) The things one learns in medical school..."
***
Insecurity as a national trait
"A old joke in Singapore tells of how Singaporeans (particularly men) in general, have four fears. In Hokkien, (one of Singapore’s main Chinese dialects) these are “Kiasu”, Kiasi”, “Kia-bor”, and “Kia cheng hu”, which translate into “fear of losing”, “fear of death”, “fear of wife” and “fear of government” respectively.
But of these four fears, it is “Kiasi-ism” and its consequent “Kiasu-ism”, that has shaped Singapore today. We shall examine how this insecurity has played, and continues to play in the city state’s national character.
... the first opposition member of parliament in 13 years had been elected.
This was ‘softness’, in the eyes of the conservative PAP government- signs that this new generation was taking Singapore’s prosperity for granted.
... The anachronistic arrests of alleged Marxists in 1987 was played up to great effect; it seemed that the motherland was still under threat from internal enemies even in at a time when Glastnost in the Soviet Union and economic liberalization in China was discrediting Marxism-Leninism everywhere. Finally, in 1988, the government came up with the Five Shared Values that Singaporeans were supposed to share, namely;
Nation before community and society before self
Family as the basic unit of society
Community support and respect for the individual
Consensus, not conflict
Racial and religious harmony
If nothing else, this could be interpreted as a declaration of offensive intent against other values that were supposed to weaken the Singaporean will to survive. For what a tragedy it would be were Singaporeans to assume that additional help for the poor was a non-antagonistic value that would not compromise our economic competitiveness!
... While the fundamental goals of National Education are laudable, its dogmatic conclusions and an emphasis on making these pre-concluded messages more ‘appealing’ as opposed to leading youths to think for themselves about Singapore’s real problems may have served to undermine the very cause it seeks to promote. Many youths, particularly the more academically able, are inclined to see the whole package as mere propaganda. And rather than refute certain claims made by the government, they would rather throw out the baby with the bathwater... The government’s current efforts to get youths to be more involved with public affairs is perceived as an exercise in hot air simply because suggestions on reform are often dismissed as being too “sensitive”. Hence not a single legal gay rights group exists; Muslims continue to be excluded from certain vocations in the armed forces for their implicitly questionable loyalties; never mind the repeal of laws in Singapore that would have thrown a putative local Michael Moore in jail for making a Fahrenheit 9/11. Instead, we are treated to a moralising sideshow on the consequences of having a casino in Singapore.
This situation is a pity because a significant number of the best and brightest young Singaporeans have concluded that they are no longer comfortable with living in a country that seems to be irrationally paranoid. Others, having concluded that any argument put forward for the country’s insecurity must be a lie concocted by a sinister PAP government, seem to be willing to introduce loony public policy should they be placed in positions of responsibility. The author has personally listened, with some dismay, to seriously posited arguments put forth by otherwise highly intelligent peers, about the viability of replacing our entire armed forces with a few dozen nuclear tipped missiles- never mind that such a plan would never be endorsed by our military partners, let alone any of our neighbours."
Originally posted on the Young Republic mailing list.
***
Randy from This Is True on Political Correctness:
"Last week I had a story about how hundreds of celebrities were on the defense witness list for the Michael Jackson trial. The tag: "...Stevie Wonder is particularly upset at being named. 'Yeah I was there,' he admits. 'But I didn't see anything!'"
Yes, provocative. I got two types of responses to it. Peter in Japan: "Stevie Wonder, whether you like his music or not (I happen not to), is not deserving of such a comment. It is a poor, reused, overused punch line. It does not stand up to your usual standards of wittiness, and more importantly, it does not stand up to your usual standards of decency and fairness. You have poke and jabbed many deserving victims of their own stupidity, but Stevie Wonder is being made fun of because of his fame and his disability."
The other side is represented by Glenn in Alabama: "I'm sure you'll get some negative comments about this; my sister is blind and my parents said early on that they wouldn't treat her any differently. As a result, she told Helen Keller jokes, and we saw that moving the furniture was indeed a punishment (she'd come running up the hall and flip over the couch which wasn't there before -- even after being told not to run, and that the couch had been moved). When I met my [now] bride, I made some offhanded comment that made her think I was absolutely horrible towards my sister. Thankfully, she met the family anyway. Now, she makes as many jokes as the rest of us. It amazes me how many people talk louder to a blind person, or talk to you instead of them. So many people see any disability and think the person is incapacitated -- they rush to do everything for them (almost to the point of blowing their nose!) So, keep your skin thick."
Yes, I have several blind friends, and a lot of blind readers. (How many of my blind readers wrote to complain? You guessed it: none.) Blind people are fully capable of writing to complain if they're offended, and don't need patronizing sighted folks to "watch out" for them when it comes to jokes. If you really can't handle that I treat everyone the same (which many would define as "fair"), then you're not reading the right publication.
I ran the above in the Premium edition on Monday. Premium reader Jennifer in California replies: "I appreciate the comments made by Glenn in Alabama and by you concerning blind people and blindness-related jokes. Few 'sightlings' are capable of seeing the humor in blindness, and it was refreshing to read your jokes and comments. Thank you for pointing out, by the way, that we blind folk are perfectly capable of writing and complaining ourselves if we're offended.""
Many people just take things too seriously.
***
Serial meal thief sentenced to 90 days - "Elias I. Elias had his restaurant routine perfected: Order dinner and drinks, eat and enjoy, then fake chest pains when the bill arrived in order to skip out on paying it. The 13th time Elias did that since 2003, the restaurateur in Calais didn't buy it. When he called for an ambulance, he also called the police."
How can I avoid a holiday hangover? - "Take your vitamins. This is recommended mostly by guys selling vitamins. The experts are pretty scornful. Then again, it's not like anybody really has a better idea."
Institute for High Energy Physics - Interestingly, the URL is http://www.ihep.su/ - .su is the country code for the Soviet Union.
L'origine de Bert
Saturday, March 05, 2005
"The first time I see a jogger smiling, I'll consider it." - Joan Rivers
Random Playlist Song: Albinoni - Oboe Concerti Op 9 - #3 In F Maj - Allegro (The Academy of Ancient Music)
***
Someone: dude, your blogs are too damn long
Me: ah well. so how
Someone: how similan
write LESS
duh
important things are usually simple
if you have alot to say about something, chances are most of it is hogwash
occam's electric shaver
***
Christie was playing the Spirited Away theme and once again it struck me that it was the perfect music to eat shrooms to and start seeing funny things. I'll bet my hat that Howl's Moving Castle will be exactly the same sort of nonsense:
"Howl's Moving Castle follows the story of young Sophie Hatter, a bookworm, the eldest of three daughters, a girl doomed to an uninteresting life as a hat maker. Sophie resigns herself to her boring fate, but fate has other plans for her. Cursed by the Witch of the Waste with the body of a 90-year-old woman, she finds her way to the moving castle inhabited by the wizard Howl, said by all to eat the souls of young girls.
Howl has been cursed by the Witch as well, and is seeking the love of young girl to help him break the curse."
Now, don't that sound familiar?
Jiekai was saying that after ORD he wanted to grow a mullet. Then I took out my Asian Prince card, and showed him what a mullet looked like (at least on Asian Prince). I think he now has second thoughts.
For some reason, women in general either don't iron their clothes or iron them much less than men do. In part this is because their clothes require less ironing (bah). However, when it comes to something for which a lack of ironing is patently obvious (ie An office blouse of the same material as men's office shirts), they are not as fortunate.
***
Emergent Behaviour
"What is Emergent Behaviour?
Economies - beehives - financial markets - animal markings - team building - consciousness - locust swarms - mass hysteria - geese flocking - road networks and traffic jams - bacterial infection - town planning - evolution - the Web ... these are all examples of emergent phenomena where a collection of individuals interact without central control to produce results which are not explicitly "programmed"
Qualities of Emergent Behaviour
What can emergent systems do that other systems can’t?
1. They are robust and resilient. There is no single-point of failure, so if a single unit fails, becomes lost or is stolen, the system still works.
2. They are well-suited to the messy real world. Human-engineered systems may be “optimal” but often require a lot of effort to design and are fragile in the face of changing conditions. Importantly, they don’t need to have complete knowledge/understanding to achieve a goal (e.g. social systems in warehousing).
3. They find a reasonable solution quickly and then optimise. In the real world, time matters - decisions need to be taken while they are still relevant. Traditional computer algorithms tend to not produce a useful result until they are complete (which may be too late, e.g. if you're trying to avoid an oncoming obstacle) .
How it works
The individuals interact with each other directly or indirectly (via their environment). Interacting via an effect on, and response to, their common environment is called stigmergy. For example, termites work together to build termite mounds without any "queen" to co-ordinate activity and without any pre-existing plan of what to build. They change the environment and the changed environment modifies their behaviour.
Interestingly, through emergent behaviour "selfish genes" can cause apparently social behaviour By forming into schools (using simple emergent “flocking” rules), animals like fish and zebras reduce their individual chances of predation."
I wonder what the fundies say about this (with regard, of course, to their favoured assault on objective reality).
Another interesting observation is that there are no non-religiously motivated opponents to Ev*l*t**n [Ed: I don't want to trigger Cr**t**n*st Google Ads again], and no non-religiously motivated advocates of Int*ll*g*nt D*s*gn
Perhaps we should fund research on Int*ll*g*nt D*s*gn to find out more about the nature and character of the Int*ll*g*nt D*s*gn*r (see Organisms That Look Designed - The Argument from Irreducible Grotesqueness, the imperfection of organisms' biology and such, which all point to a sadistic, lazy, imperfect and not-so-intelligent designer)
Meanwhile, the fact that behavior can be coded for in genetic material (animals which never meet their parents all behave in a certain way, for example) should counter the constant declarations of intellectual heresy by the Politically Correct brigade.
Ditto for studies (Kanner 1943, Ehlers and Gillberg 1993) showing that boys are 3-4 times more likely to develop autism than girls, and 15 times as likely to develop high-functioning autism (aka Asperger syndrome) (Wing 1981). Since autism and Asperger's involve a propensity to systemise, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that males do better in the maths and sciences, which require strong systemising tendencies.
But then, just like fundies, they never did listen to reason. After all, their reasoning seems to go like so: "Nature and nurture are both involved in shaping human behavior. Since it is very hard to separate the effects of the two, we shall not even bother to try and can then magically ascribe EVERYTHING to nurture, lynching anyone who suggests that nature might in the least be involved."
***
New item on Anti-Halal Manifesto:
"Any printed or published materials, posters and advertisements that may offend the Muslim public are not allowed. Successful applicants are required to obtain Muis’ prior clearance for any advertisements in any form of mass media."
I hardly see how and why advertisements affect the ritual purity of the food.
7. Common ancestry of Pigs and other mammals, including humans
Pigs belong to the family Suidae and are related to peccaries and hippopotamuses. Are these then haram as well?
More broadly, all mammals are descended from a common ancestor. If pigs are impure and haram, what does this mean forchickens, cows, sheep and indeed humans?
In other halal related news, the last time I was at Long John Silver's Tiong Bahru branch, I saw a few images of the Chinese God of Fortune pasted on the wall above the cashier.
This means that they have violated the requirements for Halal Certification, since, according to the Application for Halal Certification (Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura), "figures of deities, if any, in the applicants' premises should be hidden from the public's view". Gasp. Shock. Horror.
I wonder if there's a hotline I can call to report breaches in Halal protocol.
***
Someone on her officer boyfriend: "i accompanied him to his General's home for a gathering and his Colonels, Generals and all were there. And they all seemed totally unsoldierly.. like they were employees of General Electric. they're all.. old and speak perfect English..and they sound like... *groan executives"
Thus is the reality of the SAF revealed.
AcidFlask on National Slavery:
"in fact, singapore is one of the few countries that mandates conscription of its citizens, yet provides absolutely no form of "alternative service" to conscientious objectors. that to me is the weak link in defending the standpoint that ns is not part of some giant social engineering mechanism."
Indeed, The Powers That Be claim that conscientious objection to National Slavery cannot be allowed since everyone would choose it, but funnily, that’s not what we see in countries which allow conscientious objection
***
Asked of Steven Pinker:
"Q: Your long curly hair has been compared to such 1970s rock stars as Peter Frampton, Roger Daltrey and Robert Plant, but you might look more like the 17th century philosopher Spinoza. Whom do you think you look like?
A: Then there's T. Rex singer Marc Bolan, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, and most often, conductor Simon Rattle. I, personally, would have to answer Bruno, the piano player in the TV show "Fame.""
***
Singapore's GIC secrets: Inching toward transparency - "Step aside, Sage of Omaha. You've got big-time competition in Singapore. Not even the legendary Warren Buffett has made the calls claimed by Singapore's Government Investment Corp. Indeed, the state- owned fund seems to have anticipated every major event of the past 20 years, including the 1987 stock market crash, the Gulf War oil shock of 1990, and the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. The fund's managers even claim to have gotten in early on Cisco Systems' amazing rise. That's quite a record. Problem is, unlike shareholders in Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, Singaporeans can't verify the GIC's boasts. Its portfolio, said to be worth more than $100 billion, is a state secret."
Mighty Dwarfing Super Ninjas - "Dug out of the video archives, a parody of a famous kids T.V. show. Its old and cheesy."
On a previous page, it's called as 'Mighty Dwarfin Super Ninjas'. Hmm.
Plush Microbes - So cute! Now you can sleep at night cuddling flesh eating bacteria to your bosom. I like Ebola, it's so worm like.
***
I was discussing with Screwed Up Girl why guys' hair is generally lousier than girls' hair (drier, more tangly, less shiny etc). Some possible reasons:
- guys don't use conditioner
- guys use [often a lot of] hair wax, gel and putty to style their hair, and this dries and damages it, since their aim is to make thier hair hard, stiff and spiky. OTOH females use expensive hair products (like my idol Wo-hen Nankan) which go in the other direction and aim to make hair soft, smooth and easy to style
- 'guys eat a lot of junk' (she claims that just as You Are What You Eat, Your Hair Is What You Eat, but I disagree)
I asked a classmate and she claimed that she didn't use conditioner, and that girls had nicer hair "because we wash our hair and comb our hair" (like guys don't!).
***
An anonymous contributor nominates the following for the "NUS bash names that reveals how sex-deprived NUS students are" series: NUSSU BizCom Bash 2003 Envy: Sin or Sense
The marketing's a hoot:
"Let your senses come alive with bash highlights such as:
Sizzling Hot Fashion Shows
Feast your eyes on our luscious models dressed in the trendiest clothes of the season. Guaranteed to blow your mind away!
SMS Crush Breaker Game (by SingaporeCupid)
Want to get to know that hunk or babe at the bash that night? Now you can with the SMS Crush Breaker Game proudly brought to you by SingaporeCupid! Register at the door and who knows what the night will have in store for you!
Indulge in our 'sinful' games to win other attractive prizes too!"
My No.1 fan adds: "In keeping with the theme Envy gave out goodie bags that were in red-black paper bags that were sponsored by Sins chocolates"
At one point in recent history, we had 3 bazaars going on in NUS. Wonderful. Maybe OSA should ask the ECAs to do something else to 'encourage entrepreneurial spirit'. I'm sure everyone is suffering from bazaar fatigue.
And now we are working on yet another essay for a "real reader", not a "homework assignment". Yet, normal people (ie real readers) are not interested in this sort of thing (most especially, close reading). Hell, if even I am not interested in this, I doubt normal people are.
Quotes:
It's a very clever class, because sometimes he offers it and calls it 'Simplicity', and sometimes he offers it and calls it 'Complexity'.
The probability that sears will exceed 1000 (sales)
Fortunately, what is shown in your textbook is the whole area under the sun (curve)
Jeero poin nine (Zero point)
[On the projector] 'No signal'. That means no class. Very good.
If you want to know what topics are available, you can go to IVLE *clicks link in Powerpoint slide and keeps getting 'A security problem has occured'* If we can overcome the horrible security problem that we seems to be having this afternoon (seem)
Any more questions regarding the essay? [Student: How many percent {of our final grade} is it?] Ask me something more interesting.
[On a 5 page final essay] 25%. Each page 5% [of your final grade]
[On promulgating discussion of the peppered moth on the online forum] It's another desperate attempt to get IVLE acting and booming.
[On Richard Dawkins on Natural Selection] We'll listen to him again. [Student: In English.] That was in English. He's an Oxford Scholar.
If you reproduce you automatically make replication arrows (errors)
Sell'mern used to be very expensive (salmon)
How would you catch bigger fish? [Student: Use bigger bait]
[On stalk-eyed flies] The girls like it when the guys have very long eyestalks.
[On a photo of a chihuahua and wolves morphing into dogs] Obviously the stone age people were not interested in this sort of thing.
I used to have a link to my lovely pigeon website. They replaced it with one only slightly less bizzare. Pigeon breeders - I will never understand them. They're so bizarre... [Student: Like the botanists?] Botanists are just weird. Pigeon breeders...
[On pigeon breeding] You can breed them for any bizarre fantasy you may have
[On the German Beauty Homer] One of them was called 'beautiful', but I didn't see anything beautiful about it
These people are really weird. You can kind of figure out by looking at them... Owners have hair like their pigeons.
If you think that pigeons are weird you should look at the goldfish.
Dog owners at dog kernels (kennels)
Some of the traits which they sim to prefer (seem)
[On the curve of the normal distribution] I know curves are usually not very popular at USP
[Student on defining 'survival of the fittest': If we take what we learn from the class {presumably as opposed to what actually happens}...] Think of all the nonsense you learn here, then.
Survival of the Foetus (fittest)
[On a NUS Shuttle Bus] No eating and drinking within bus premises (interior)
I can't go back to PGP. I'll get wet. [Me: You don't have an umbrella] I bet you do. You're the only guy who carries an umbrella around.
Arts is so different from Engin. There're colours [on the wall], there're plants growing. In Engin, there're no plants. The only plant we saw was on the ceiling - a creeper.
[On the Writing Module] This is graduate school level stuff.
Old absolute hammers (obsolete)
'He absorbs rap and hiphop naturally as if by Osmosis'. Who's the biologist in this room? No one? Ok, then we'll let Gabriel explain it. *I sputter*
*My handphone SMS ring tone of Krusty the Klown's laugh sounds* For a moment, I thought the teddy bear was talking to me.
[On rapidly flashing answers on Powerpoint] Please scream if you want to ask questions.
Let's have the toe'sers (toasts)
Spirited Away is: I take drugs, I go into a haunted house. [Correction,] I take much drugs - sorry.
I think if I have a wife who's bi[sexual], that would be so sexy... Watch them make out. Cigarette and cigar in each hand.
Depending on what sort of woman you want. [Someone: The non-possessive sort.] Are you sure that's a woman?
[On living opposite Nee Soon Camp] I live up north. They have really bad air pollution.
The problem is your blog is too intelligent. You should dumb it down, then you can advertise T-shirts and jeans.
I don't wear female footwear. I've decided that when I get married I'll wear boots.
Random Playlist Song: Albinoni - Oboe Concerti Op 9 - #3 In F Maj - Allegro (The Academy of Ancient Music)
***
Someone: dude, your blogs are too damn long
Me: ah well. so how
Someone: how similan
write LESS
duh
important things are usually simple
if you have alot to say about something, chances are most of it is hogwash
occam's electric shaver
***
Christie was playing the Spirited Away theme and once again it struck me that it was the perfect music to eat shrooms to and start seeing funny things. I'll bet my hat that Howl's Moving Castle will be exactly the same sort of nonsense:
"Howl's Moving Castle follows the story of young Sophie Hatter, a bookworm, the eldest of three daughters, a girl doomed to an uninteresting life as a hat maker. Sophie resigns herself to her boring fate, but fate has other plans for her. Cursed by the Witch of the Waste with the body of a 90-year-old woman, she finds her way to the moving castle inhabited by the wizard Howl, said by all to eat the souls of young girls.
Howl has been cursed by the Witch as well, and is seeking the love of young girl to help him break the curse."
Now, don't that sound familiar?
Jiekai was saying that after ORD he wanted to grow a mullet. Then I took out my Asian Prince card, and showed him what a mullet looked like (at least on Asian Prince). I think he now has second thoughts.
For some reason, women in general either don't iron their clothes or iron them much less than men do. In part this is because their clothes require less ironing (bah). However, when it comes to something for which a lack of ironing is patently obvious (ie An office blouse of the same material as men's office shirts), they are not as fortunate.
***
Emergent Behaviour
"What is Emergent Behaviour?
Economies - beehives - financial markets - animal markings - team building - consciousness - locust swarms - mass hysteria - geese flocking - road networks and traffic jams - bacterial infection - town planning - evolution - the Web ... these are all examples of emergent phenomena where a collection of individuals interact without central control to produce results which are not explicitly "programmed"
Qualities of Emergent Behaviour
What can emergent systems do that other systems can’t?
1. They are robust and resilient. There is no single-point of failure, so if a single unit fails, becomes lost or is stolen, the system still works.
2. They are well-suited to the messy real world. Human-engineered systems may be “optimal” but often require a lot of effort to design and are fragile in the face of changing conditions. Importantly, they don’t need to have complete knowledge/understanding to achieve a goal (e.g. social systems in warehousing).
3. They find a reasonable solution quickly and then optimise. In the real world, time matters - decisions need to be taken while they are still relevant. Traditional computer algorithms tend to not produce a useful result until they are complete (which may be too late, e.g. if you're trying to avoid an oncoming obstacle) .
How it works
The individuals interact with each other directly or indirectly (via their environment). Interacting via an effect on, and response to, their common environment is called stigmergy. For example, termites work together to build termite mounds without any "queen" to co-ordinate activity and without any pre-existing plan of what to build. They change the environment and the changed environment modifies their behaviour.
Interestingly, through emergent behaviour "selfish genes" can cause apparently social behaviour By forming into schools (using simple emergent “flocking” rules), animals like fish and zebras reduce their individual chances of predation."
I wonder what the fundies say about this (with regard, of course, to their favoured assault on objective reality).
Another interesting observation is that there are no non-religiously motivated opponents to Ev*l*t**n [Ed: I don't want to trigger Cr**t**n*st Google Ads again], and no non-religiously motivated advocates of Int*ll*g*nt D*s*gn
Perhaps we should fund research on Int*ll*g*nt D*s*gn to find out more about the nature and character of the Int*ll*g*nt D*s*gn*r (see Organisms That Look Designed - The Argument from Irreducible Grotesqueness, the imperfection of organisms' biology and such, which all point to a sadistic, lazy, imperfect and not-so-intelligent designer)
Meanwhile, the fact that behavior can be coded for in genetic material (animals which never meet their parents all behave in a certain way, for example) should counter the constant declarations of intellectual heresy by the Politically Correct brigade.
Ditto for studies (Kanner 1943, Ehlers and Gillberg 1993) showing that boys are 3-4 times more likely to develop autism than girls, and 15 times as likely to develop high-functioning autism (aka Asperger syndrome) (Wing 1981). Since autism and Asperger's involve a propensity to systemise, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that males do better in the maths and sciences, which require strong systemising tendencies.
But then, just like fundies, they never did listen to reason. After all, their reasoning seems to go like so: "Nature and nurture are both involved in shaping human behavior. Since it is very hard to separate the effects of the two, we shall not even bother to try and can then magically ascribe EVERYTHING to nurture, lynching anyone who suggests that nature might in the least be involved."
***
New item on Anti-Halal Manifesto:
"Any printed or published materials, posters and advertisements that may offend the Muslim public are not allowed. Successful applicants are required to obtain Muis’ prior clearance for any advertisements in any form of mass media."
I hardly see how and why advertisements affect the ritual purity of the food.
7. Common ancestry of Pigs and other mammals, including humans
Pigs belong to the family Suidae and are related to peccaries and hippopotamuses. Are these then haram as well?
More broadly, all mammals are descended from a common ancestor. If pigs are impure and haram, what does this mean for
In other halal related news, the last time I was at Long John Silver's Tiong Bahru branch, I saw a few images of the Chinese God of Fortune pasted on the wall above the cashier.
This means that they have violated the requirements for Halal Certification, since, according to the Application for Halal Certification (Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura), "figures of deities, if any, in the applicants' premises should be hidden from the public's view". Gasp. Shock. Horror.
I wonder if there's a hotline I can call to report breaches in Halal protocol.
***
Someone on her officer boyfriend: "i accompanied him to his General's home for a gathering and his Colonels, Generals and all were there. And they all seemed totally unsoldierly.. like they were employees of General Electric. they're all.. old and speak perfect English..and they sound like... *groan executives"
Thus is the reality of the SAF revealed.
AcidFlask on National Slavery:
"in fact, singapore is one of the few countries that mandates conscription of its citizens, yet provides absolutely no form of "alternative service" to conscientious objectors. that to me is the weak link in defending the standpoint that ns is not part of some giant social engineering mechanism."
Indeed, The Powers That Be claim that conscientious objection to National Slavery cannot be allowed since everyone would choose it, but funnily, that’s not what we see in countries which allow conscientious objection
***
Asked of Steven Pinker:
"Q: Your long curly hair has been compared to such 1970s rock stars as Peter Frampton, Roger Daltrey and Robert Plant, but you might look more like the 17th century philosopher Spinoza. Whom do you think you look like?
A: Then there's T. Rex singer Marc Bolan, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, and most often, conductor Simon Rattle. I, personally, would have to answer Bruno, the piano player in the TV show "Fame.""
***
Singapore's GIC secrets: Inching toward transparency - "Step aside, Sage of Omaha. You've got big-time competition in Singapore. Not even the legendary Warren Buffett has made the calls claimed by Singapore's Government Investment Corp. Indeed, the state- owned fund seems to have anticipated every major event of the past 20 years, including the 1987 stock market crash, the Gulf War oil shock of 1990, and the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. The fund's managers even claim to have gotten in early on Cisco Systems' amazing rise. That's quite a record. Problem is, unlike shareholders in Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, Singaporeans can't verify the GIC's boasts. Its portfolio, said to be worth more than $100 billion, is a state secret."
Mighty Dwarfing Super Ninjas - "Dug out of the video archives, a parody of a famous kids T.V. show. Its old and cheesy."
On a previous page, it's called as 'Mighty Dwarfin Super Ninjas'. Hmm.
Plush Microbes - So cute! Now you can sleep at night cuddling flesh eating bacteria to your bosom. I like Ebola, it's so worm like.
***
I was discussing with Screwed Up Girl why guys' hair is generally lousier than girls' hair (drier, more tangly, less shiny etc). Some possible reasons:
- guys don't use conditioner
- guys use [often a lot of] hair wax, gel and putty to style their hair, and this dries and damages it, since their aim is to make thier hair hard, stiff and spiky. OTOH females use expensive hair products (like my idol Wo-hen Nankan) which go in the other direction and aim to make hair soft, smooth and easy to style
- 'guys eat a lot of junk' (she claims that just as You Are What You Eat, Your Hair Is What You Eat, but I disagree)
I asked a classmate and she claimed that she didn't use conditioner, and that girls had nicer hair "because we wash our hair and comb our hair" (like guys don't!).
***
An anonymous contributor nominates the following for the "NUS bash names that reveals how sex-deprived NUS students are" series: NUSSU BizCom Bash 2003 Envy: Sin or Sense
The marketing's a hoot:
"Let your senses come alive with bash highlights such as:
Sizzling Hot Fashion Shows
Feast your eyes on our luscious models dressed in the trendiest clothes of the season. Guaranteed to blow your mind away!
SMS Crush Breaker Game (by SingaporeCupid)
Want to get to know that hunk or babe at the bash that night? Now you can with the SMS Crush Breaker Game proudly brought to you by SingaporeCupid! Register at the door and who knows what the night will have in store for you!
Indulge in our 'sinful' games to win other attractive prizes too!"
My No.1 fan adds: "In keeping with the theme Envy gave out goodie bags that were in red-black paper bags that were sponsored by Sins chocolates"
At one point in recent history, we had 3 bazaars going on in NUS. Wonderful. Maybe OSA should ask the ECAs to do something else to 'encourage entrepreneurial spirit'. I'm sure everyone is suffering from bazaar fatigue.
And now we are working on yet another essay for a "real reader", not a "homework assignment". Yet, normal people (ie real readers) are not interested in this sort of thing (most especially, close reading). Hell, if even I am not interested in this, I doubt normal people are.
Quotes:
It's a very clever class, because sometimes he offers it and calls it 'Simplicity', and sometimes he offers it and calls it 'Complexity'.
The probability that sears will exceed 1000 (sales)
Fortunately, what is shown in your textbook is the whole area under the sun (curve)
Jeero poin nine (Zero point)
[On the projector] 'No signal'. That means no class. Very good.
If you want to know what topics are available, you can go to IVLE *clicks link in Powerpoint slide and keeps getting 'A security problem has occured'* If we can overcome the horrible security problem that we seems to be having this afternoon (seem)
Any more questions regarding the essay? [Student: How many percent {of our final grade} is it?] Ask me something more interesting.
[On a 5 page final essay] 25%. Each page 5% [of your final grade]
[On promulgating discussion of the peppered moth on the online forum] It's another desperate attempt to get IVLE acting and booming.
[On Richard Dawkins on Natural Selection] We'll listen to him again. [Student: In English.] That was in English. He's an Oxford Scholar.
If you reproduce you automatically make replication arrows (errors)
Sell'mern used to be very expensive (salmon)
How would you catch bigger fish? [Student: Use bigger bait]
[On stalk-eyed flies] The girls like it when the guys have very long eyestalks.
[On a photo of a chihuahua and wolves morphing into dogs] Obviously the stone age people were not interested in this sort of thing.
I used to have a link to my lovely pigeon website. They replaced it with one only slightly less bizzare. Pigeon breeders - I will never understand them. They're so bizarre... [Student: Like the botanists?] Botanists are just weird. Pigeon breeders...
[On pigeon breeding] You can breed them for any bizarre fantasy you may have
[On the German Beauty Homer] One of them was called 'beautiful', but I didn't see anything beautiful about it
These people are really weird. You can kind of figure out by looking at them... Owners have hair like their pigeons.
If you think that pigeons are weird you should look at the goldfish.
Dog owners at dog kernels (kennels)
Some of the traits which they sim to prefer (seem)
[On the curve of the normal distribution] I know curves are usually not very popular at USP
[Student on defining 'survival of the fittest': If we take what we learn from the class {presumably as opposed to what actually happens}...] Think of all the nonsense you learn here, then.
Survival of the Foetus (fittest)
[On a NUS Shuttle Bus] No eating and drinking within bus premises (interior)
I can't go back to PGP. I'll get wet. [Me: You don't have an umbrella] I bet you do. You're the only guy who carries an umbrella around.
Arts is so different from Engin. There're colours [on the wall], there're plants growing. In Engin, there're no plants. The only plant we saw was on the ceiling - a creeper.
[On the Writing Module] This is graduate school level stuff.
Old absolute hammers (obsolete)
'He absorbs rap and hiphop naturally as if by Osmosis'. Who's the biologist in this room? No one? Ok, then we'll let Gabriel explain it. *I sputter*
*My handphone SMS ring tone of Krusty the Klown's laugh sounds* For a moment, I thought the teddy bear was talking to me.
[On rapidly flashing answers on Powerpoint] Please scream if you want to ask questions.
Let's have the toe'sers (toasts)
Spirited Away is: I take drugs, I go into a haunted house. [Correction,] I take much drugs - sorry.
I think if I have a wife who's bi[sexual], that would be so sexy... Watch them make out. Cigarette and cigar in each hand.
Depending on what sort of woman you want. [Someone: The non-possessive sort.] Are you sure that's a woman?
[On living opposite Nee Soon Camp] I live up north. They have really bad air pollution.
The problem is your blog is too intelligent. You should dumb it down, then you can advertise T-shirts and jeans.
I don't wear female footwear. I've decided that when I get married I'll wear boots.
Post ID: 110983763466136023
Thursday, March 03, 2005
"I think the world is run by 'C' students." - Al McGuire
Random Playlist Song: Bach - French Suite No. 1 in D minor, BWV 812 - 03 Sarabande
Noooooo... Gould's humming is driving me mad.
***
A hairband snapped on me. !@#$%^&*() Maybe my head's too big (and girls' heads are too small - draw your own conclusions).
Meanwhile my friend's flip-flops snapped on her when someone stepped on them.
Moral of the story: female stuff is poor quality since the girls will get sick of it before it spoils anyway
***
As a Happy Tree Friends fanclub member, I got a special link to view: "Out on a Limb - It's trouble in the trees for dimwitted Lumpy!"
Yay.
Tim after I sent him Ode to Nature (Princess Shayla & Merrick): what kind of song is this :(
Someone on the bullshit that is marketing (and indeed all of Business except maybe Finance): marketing, heh
it's a crock of shit, that one
i thought it'd be fun. boy was I wrong.
Me: so what do you learn! what do you learn!
Someone: NONSENSE! BULLSHIT! RUBBISH!
like how companies like challenger superstore put things in a pile so people will dig through it
or the rumours about coca cola's insidious subconcious signal marketing campaign
it's just putting words to common sense stuff that we already know
it's rubbish
they have stupid SWAT analysis techniques
Strengths, Weaknesses, Advantages, Threats
Yah, yah, so easy to identify all 4 ah
if your stupid analysis technique worked we wouldn't need psychoanalysts already ah
hell who needs doctors
jsut use teh SWAT
according to my tutor it can be applied to everything what
i'm so annoyed i'm typing in singlish
this is what marketing does to a man
don't take it
Addendum:
donaq: I think Business is pure crap too. Took a management module once and it gave me the eerie sensation of being a fried rice hawker. You know, you take the same stuff and keep flipping it in your wok. Around and around and around . . .
***
Singapore, HK diverging fiscal fortunes
"“Singapore...may benefit from a re-examination of some of its fiscal principles, especially in light of its strong performance during the difficult past 6 years,” [ said analyst Ping Chew.] “In particular, it may be useful for the government to examine whether its already ample resources are sufficient for further rainy days, and whether funds could be more efficiently managed if they are released into the private sector.”...
... [O]ver the past 6 years...Singapore managed to stay in the black with an average general government surplus of 5.8 percent. S&P figure contrast with that of the government which said in its last budget it was running a small budget deficit of 0.45 percent of GDP.
“Most governments around the world go to some trouble to re-jig their numbers to present deficits as surplus. Singapore tends to disguise surplus as deficit. If you look at the numbers in an international standardize way, Singapore is actually delivering a very large surplus once again,” Paul Coughlin told reporters. “This leaves open the question of whether the government could have done more to cushion its economy from the shocks,” he added."
(By way of The Singapore Commentator)
***
Jack and Jill in single mother shock
"Britain's most popular nursery rhymes, recited by generations of parents to their children, are teeming with references to bed-hopping royals and teenage sex, according to a book on the origins of 24 playground ditties.
While Jack and Jill may seem innocuous enough in their attempt to fetch water, they are in fact preoccupied with losing their virginity, says Chris Roberts, a social historian who has traced the adult stories behind the nursery rhymes. Jill possibly becomes pregnant and there are regrets later.
"The interesting bit is that, having successfully 'lost his crown', it's Jack who runs off rapidly - probably to tell his mates what happened," said Mr Roberts, 37, author of Heavy Words Lightly Thrown.
In an alternative second verse, the sexual association of the rhyme becomes more blatant. Instead of his head, Jack has a different part of his anatomy patched up with vinegar and brown paper.
The rhyme "Goosey, goosey gander, where do you wander? Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber" can be read as alluding to the spread of venereal disease - known as "goose bumps" because of the swelling."
***
Someone was trying to explain to me why the Japs like tentacle porn so much, and said that tentacles acted as proxies for the male genitals since they could not be shown onscreen.
However, it turns out that this just-so story isn't strictly accurate:
"the ukiyo-e, or traditional japanese woodblock print, was one of the chief sources of entertainment for the common man and samurai alike. topics appearing on ukiyo-e were far ranging, it was possible to find pieces encouraging political dissention and rebelling against the shogunate (always couched in imagery and symbolism, to be blatant was to court with death), scenic landscapes of lake biwa and oshino hakkai, and of course, the topic of discussion, erotic prints in the form of pillow books. these erotic ukiyo-e had its origins from paintings of popular courtesans and mistresses, commissions from the rich painted by famous hands and utilised as mastabatory material. this utilisation of pleasure-prints became popular and filtered down to the common people, who could not afford to buy an actual courtesan and hence resorted to hand and painting (or sometimes, they utilised a false vagina consisting of a silken or hemp bag filled with warm konnyaku jelly) as a substitute.
however, due to the high price of paintings, especially those by famous artists, multiple prints like ukiyo-e were far more affordable (multiple copies could be purchased, so it did not mattter should it get stained when after used), and many well-known woodblock artists such as hokusai katsushika have also dabbled in this offshot of the traditional ukiyo-e, with each of them leaving behind their particular style and influence. it was also hokusai who came up with the famous ukiyo-e prints of mount fuji, and an equally well known (but perhaps in different circles) piece depicting a the wife of a fisherman being pleasured by a pair of octopi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dream_of_the_fishermans_wife_hokusai.jpg).
in fact, tentacular sex, or the fetishisation (is there such a word? sorry my english is not so good...) of the octopus as an object of sexual fulfilment is not a rarity in japan. since the late kamakura period [Ed: 1192 - 1333] the motif of woman and octopus entwined in erotic, sensual poses has appeared on netsuke, wood carvings, statuettes, prints, in prose and even at the back of religious scrolls. female nuns were also rumoured to masturbate to such scrolls with ivory phalluses because their vows prevented them from satisfying their urges in actual intercourse. the important point to note is that such couplings of woman and octopus are almost always portrayed as being very enjoyable and the octopus is supposed to be a better lover than an man, with its many suckered tentacles and so on...
... my final point would be that the japanese have been kinky from a very long time ago. +_+"
***
Five drown in baptism tragedy - "After the baptism of the males, one of them wanted to be baptised again. He was overcome by the Holy Spirit and wanted to go further into the sea and we had to try to restrain him. While we were busy a big wave hit us and pulled us in."
The Fashion of the Christ - This is hilarious
Pain and Suffering is Good for You?
"'The Vatican accused affluent societies yesterday of gobbling up too much of the world's health-care resources with their fetish for stay-young-forever medical cures, urging them to look to Pope John Paul II as a model for the inevitability of old age and illness whose stoic suffering should be imitated.
Vatican psychiatrist Manfred Lutz hailed the 85-year-old Pope as "the living alternative to the prevailing health-fiend madness."
Referring to the Pope's advanced Parkinson's disease and other illnesses, Dr. Lutz said: "Precisely in the handicap, in the disease, in the pain, in old age, in dying and death, one can . . . perceive the truth of life in a clearer way."
It was rather an abrupt turnabout for the Vatican, which has vigorously obscured -- even lied about -- the Pope's state of health in the past.'
But, if the Vatican really feels that handicaps, disease, pain and suffering are beneficial, then why does the Catholic Church continue to operate shrines such as Lourdes around the world where the afflicted can travel at great expense to seek a miracle cure?"
***
Abuses of surveillance cameras - "We are told that surveillance cameras are never abused by their operators, each of whom can supposedly be trusted not to use the awesome technology at their disposal to engage in despicable or outright illegal behavior. But this information is false: camera-operators are not angels; they are subject to the same prejudices, temptations and corruptions that we all struggle with; camera-operators get bored or arrogant and abuse their cameras on a regular basis. To confirm this, one only has to keep up with the news being reported from around the world, which is precisely what we plan to do here, on this page, in chronological order."
Hurrah for "security". Who will watch the watchers?
Rice with Everything in China - Including Relics - "Rice fills the bowls on many Chinese tables -- and also the cracks in its ancient buildings, and maybe even the Great Wall, Xinhua news agency reported."
On the protests against supposed gay imagery in cartoons: "Could it be that in their tender years they got a subliminal message from the cartoons they viewed; perhaps the cross-dressing Bugs Bunny passionately kissing Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, or Daffy Duck? Or was it the macho Popeye homoerotically fighting the testosterone-charged Bluto over the androgynous Olive Oil, with the sexually ambiguous Swee'pea lurking in the background? Or was it the less-than-subtle S&M roleplay between Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner? Whatever the influences, these protesters have an unhealthy obsession with sexual issues."
better living through buttermilk. because sour is the new sweet. - "Pei Chi: NICHOLAS LIU, back and in old form, making fun of other people's crappy blogs and inviting flame wars. Nicholas vs. The Internet, Round 40895204398590923845."
***
You have decided to go for a game of floor ball rather than prepare for your mid-term test in Economic Policy Analysis that is day after tomorrow. One can infer that
a) you have made an irrational choice.
b) you are doing poorly in your economics class.
c) the economic surplus from playing floor ball exceeded the surplus from studying.
d) you need to grow up.
e) the cost of studying is greater than the cost of playing floor ball.
!@#$%^&*()
Someone: if it's an econs test, then obviously c
if it's a review qn at the end of your teacher's review form then b
if it's a political sci class then answer is a
if it's a test given to u by your shrink answer is d
Me: when is it E
Someone: when is it E? oh
when it's a business test lor.. simple
Which of the following situations does not involve game theory?
a) Buying a pair of pants at Guess.
b) Pyonyang (North Korea) deciding to spend more on nuclear weapons.
c) A married Singaporean couple deciding to have a second child.
d) A student considering cheating on this mid-term test.
e) Intel debating whether to lower the price on its microprocessors.
***
My favourite misanthrope:
"From the Kalven Report (pdf file):
Compare and contrast with what Agagooga calls the Premier Institution of Social Engineering. The crucial difference being the last six words of the cheerful orange statement. Needless to say "upsetting" is something that nobody in that island of conformity wants, or possibly they don't really know if they want it but are told by politicians who only care for the citizens' own good that nobody wants it, which is utterly convincing to anyone (that is, nearly everyone there) who hasn't thought about it.
We must give it some slack for being a government-funded institution that is supposedly obliged to use tax revenue in only patriotic ways. Except, of course, that taxpayers are not allowed to decide whether, or how, they should use their own money to socially engineer themselves. But it's all for their own good, what do they care so long as they're getting well fed and entertained."
Another reliable source assures me that there's no point printing at the Science Library because:
1) You have to buy a card and the System Assistant will tick off the number of pages printed on the card itself (ie It's a manual system)
2) You can only send print jobs to the printer via their computers
3) There are long queues
Random Playlist Song: Bach - French Suite No. 1 in D minor, BWV 812 - 03 Sarabande
Noooooo... Gould's humming is driving me mad.
***
A hairband snapped on me. !@#$%^&*() Maybe my head's too big (and girls' heads are too small - draw your own conclusions).
Meanwhile my friend's flip-flops snapped on her when someone stepped on them.
Moral of the story: female stuff is poor quality since the girls will get sick of it before it spoils anyway
***
As a Happy Tree Friends fanclub member, I got a special link to view: "Out on a Limb - It's trouble in the trees for dimwitted Lumpy!"
Yay.
Tim after I sent him Ode to Nature (Princess Shayla & Merrick): what kind of song is this :(
Someone on the bullshit that is marketing (and indeed all of Business except maybe Finance): marketing, heh
it's a crock of shit, that one
i thought it'd be fun. boy was I wrong.
Me: so what do you learn! what do you learn!
Someone: NONSENSE! BULLSHIT! RUBBISH!
like how companies like challenger superstore put things in a pile so people will dig through it
or the rumours about coca cola's insidious subconcious signal marketing campaign
it's just putting words to common sense stuff that we already know
it's rubbish
they have stupid SWAT analysis techniques
Strengths, Weaknesses, Advantages, Threats
Yah, yah, so easy to identify all 4 ah
if your stupid analysis technique worked we wouldn't need psychoanalysts already ah
hell who needs doctors
jsut use teh SWAT
according to my tutor it can be applied to everything what
i'm so annoyed i'm typing in singlish
this is what marketing does to a man
don't take it
Addendum:
donaq: I think Business is pure crap too. Took a management module once and it gave me the eerie sensation of being a fried rice hawker. You know, you take the same stuff and keep flipping it in your wok. Around and around and around . . .
***
Singapore, HK diverging fiscal fortunes
"“Singapore...may benefit from a re-examination of some of its fiscal principles, especially in light of its strong performance during the difficult past 6 years,” [ said analyst Ping Chew.] “In particular, it may be useful for the government to examine whether its already ample resources are sufficient for further rainy days, and whether funds could be more efficiently managed if they are released into the private sector.”...
... [O]ver the past 6 years...Singapore managed to stay in the black with an average general government surplus of 5.8 percent. S&P figure contrast with that of the government which said in its last budget it was running a small budget deficit of 0.45 percent of GDP.
“Most governments around the world go to some trouble to re-jig their numbers to present deficits as surplus. Singapore tends to disguise surplus as deficit. If you look at the numbers in an international standardize way, Singapore is actually delivering a very large surplus once again,” Paul Coughlin told reporters. “This leaves open the question of whether the government could have done more to cushion its economy from the shocks,” he added."
(By way of The Singapore Commentator)
***
Jack and Jill in single mother shock
"Britain's most popular nursery rhymes, recited by generations of parents to their children, are teeming with references to bed-hopping royals and teenage sex, according to a book on the origins of 24 playground ditties.
While Jack and Jill may seem innocuous enough in their attempt to fetch water, they are in fact preoccupied with losing their virginity, says Chris Roberts, a social historian who has traced the adult stories behind the nursery rhymes. Jill possibly becomes pregnant and there are regrets later.
"The interesting bit is that, having successfully 'lost his crown', it's Jack who runs off rapidly - probably to tell his mates what happened," said Mr Roberts, 37, author of Heavy Words Lightly Thrown.
In an alternative second verse, the sexual association of the rhyme becomes more blatant. Instead of his head, Jack has a different part of his anatomy patched up with vinegar and brown paper.
The rhyme "Goosey, goosey gander, where do you wander? Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber" can be read as alluding to the spread of venereal disease - known as "goose bumps" because of the swelling."
***
Someone was trying to explain to me why the Japs like tentacle porn so much, and said that tentacles acted as proxies for the male genitals since they could not be shown onscreen.
However, it turns out that this just-so story isn't strictly accurate:
"the ukiyo-e, or traditional japanese woodblock print, was one of the chief sources of entertainment for the common man and samurai alike. topics appearing on ukiyo-e were far ranging, it was possible to find pieces encouraging political dissention and rebelling against the shogunate (always couched in imagery and symbolism, to be blatant was to court with death), scenic landscapes of lake biwa and oshino hakkai, and of course, the topic of discussion, erotic prints in the form of pillow books. these erotic ukiyo-e had its origins from paintings of popular courtesans and mistresses, commissions from the rich painted by famous hands and utilised as mastabatory material. this utilisation of pleasure-prints became popular and filtered down to the common people, who could not afford to buy an actual courtesan and hence resorted to hand and painting (or sometimes, they utilised a false vagina consisting of a silken or hemp bag filled with warm konnyaku jelly) as a substitute.
however, due to the high price of paintings, especially those by famous artists, multiple prints like ukiyo-e were far more affordable (multiple copies could be purchased, so it did not mattter should it get stained when after used), and many well-known woodblock artists such as hokusai katsushika have also dabbled in this offshot of the traditional ukiyo-e, with each of them leaving behind their particular style and influence. it was also hokusai who came up with the famous ukiyo-e prints of mount fuji, and an equally well known (but perhaps in different circles) piece depicting a the wife of a fisherman being pleasured by a pair of octopi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dream_of_the_fishermans_wife_hokusai.jpg).
in fact, tentacular sex, or the fetishisation (is there such a word? sorry my english is not so good...) of the octopus as an object of sexual fulfilment is not a rarity in japan. since the late kamakura period [Ed: 1192 - 1333] the motif of woman and octopus entwined in erotic, sensual poses has appeared on netsuke, wood carvings, statuettes, prints, in prose and even at the back of religious scrolls. female nuns were also rumoured to masturbate to such scrolls with ivory phalluses because their vows prevented them from satisfying their urges in actual intercourse. the important point to note is that such couplings of woman and octopus are almost always portrayed as being very enjoyable and the octopus is supposed to be a better lover than an man, with its many suckered tentacles and so on...
... my final point would be that the japanese have been kinky from a very long time ago. +_+"
***
Five drown in baptism tragedy - "After the baptism of the males, one of them wanted to be baptised again. He was overcome by the Holy Spirit and wanted to go further into the sea and we had to try to restrain him. While we were busy a big wave hit us and pulled us in."
The Fashion of the Christ - This is hilarious
Pain and Suffering is Good for You?
"'The Vatican accused affluent societies yesterday of gobbling up too much of the world's health-care resources with their fetish for stay-young-forever medical cures, urging them to look to Pope John Paul II as a model for the inevitability of old age and illness whose stoic suffering should be imitated.
Vatican psychiatrist Manfred Lutz hailed the 85-year-old Pope as "the living alternative to the prevailing health-fiend madness."
Referring to the Pope's advanced Parkinson's disease and other illnesses, Dr. Lutz said: "Precisely in the handicap, in the disease, in the pain, in old age, in dying and death, one can . . . perceive the truth of life in a clearer way."
It was rather an abrupt turnabout for the Vatican, which has vigorously obscured -- even lied about -- the Pope's state of health in the past.'
But, if the Vatican really feels that handicaps, disease, pain and suffering are beneficial, then why does the Catholic Church continue to operate shrines such as Lourdes around the world where the afflicted can travel at great expense to seek a miracle cure?"
***
Abuses of surveillance cameras - "We are told that surveillance cameras are never abused by their operators, each of whom can supposedly be trusted not to use the awesome technology at their disposal to engage in despicable or outright illegal behavior. But this information is false: camera-operators are not angels; they are subject to the same prejudices, temptations and corruptions that we all struggle with; camera-operators get bored or arrogant and abuse their cameras on a regular basis. To confirm this, one only has to keep up with the news being reported from around the world, which is precisely what we plan to do here, on this page, in chronological order."
Hurrah for "security". Who will watch the watchers?
Rice with Everything in China - Including Relics - "Rice fills the bowls on many Chinese tables -- and also the cracks in its ancient buildings, and maybe even the Great Wall, Xinhua news agency reported."
On the protests against supposed gay imagery in cartoons: "Could it be that in their tender years they got a subliminal message from the cartoons they viewed; perhaps the cross-dressing Bugs Bunny passionately kissing Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, or Daffy Duck? Or was it the macho Popeye homoerotically fighting the testosterone-charged Bluto over the androgynous Olive Oil, with the sexually ambiguous Swee'pea lurking in the background? Or was it the less-than-subtle S&M roleplay between Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner? Whatever the influences, these protesters have an unhealthy obsession with sexual issues."
better living through buttermilk. because sour is the new sweet. - "Pei Chi: NICHOLAS LIU, back and in old form, making fun of other people's crappy blogs and inviting flame wars. Nicholas vs. The Internet, Round 40895204398590923845."
***
You have decided to go for a game of floor ball rather than prepare for your mid-term test in Economic Policy Analysis that is day after tomorrow. One can infer that
a) you have made an irrational choice.
b) you are doing poorly in your economics class.
c) the economic surplus from playing floor ball exceeded the surplus from studying.
d) you need to grow up.
e) the cost of studying is greater than the cost of playing floor ball.
!@#$%^&*()
Someone: if it's an econs test, then obviously c
if it's a review qn at the end of your teacher's review form then b
if it's a political sci class then answer is a
if it's a test given to u by your shrink answer is d
Me: when is it E
Someone: when is it E? oh
when it's a business test lor.. simple
Which of the following situations does not involve game theory?
a) Buying a pair of pants at Guess.
b) Pyonyang (North Korea) deciding to spend more on nuclear weapons.
c) A married Singaporean couple deciding to have a second child.
d) A student considering cheating on this mid-term test.
e) Intel debating whether to lower the price on its microprocessors.
***
My favourite misanthrope:
"From the Kalven Report (pdf file):
The mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge. Its domain of inquiry and scrutiny includes all aspects and all values of society. A university faithful to its mission will provide enduring challenges to social values, policies, practices, and institutions. By design and by effect, it is the institution which creates discontent with the existing social arrangements and proposes new ones. In brief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.(Emphasis mine)
Compare and contrast with what Agagooga calls the Premier Institution of Social Engineering. The crucial difference being the last six words of the cheerful orange statement. Needless to say "upsetting" is something that nobody in that island of conformity wants, or possibly they don't really know if they want it but are told by politicians who only care for the citizens' own good that nobody wants it, which is utterly convincing to anyone (that is, nearly everyone there) who hasn't thought about it.
We must give it some slack for being a government-funded institution that is supposedly obliged to use tax revenue in only patriotic ways. Except, of course, that taxpayers are not allowed to decide whether, or how, they should use their own money to socially engineer themselves. But it's all for their own good, what do they care so long as they're getting well fed and entertained."
Another reliable source assures me that there's no point printing at the Science Library because:
1) You have to buy a card and the System Assistant will tick off the number of pages printed on the card itself (ie It's a manual system)
2) You can only send print jobs to the printer via their computers
3) There are long queues
Post ID: 110958275780872862
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
You try to make a suggestion to solve a problem more efficaciously instead of choosing from the two alternatives offered and you get eviscerated.
So much for encouraging independent thought, lateral thinking, the pursuit of knowledge and making the world a better place.
Such is the misery of the human condition.
Me: maybe he hates me
Someone: a lot of people do....
Me: haha thanks ah
So much for encouraging independent thought, lateral thinking, the pursuit of knowledge and making the world a better place.
Such is the misery of the human condition.
Me: maybe he hates me
Someone: a lot of people do....
Me: haha thanks ah
Post ID: 110976465272483195
Monday, February 28, 2005
"Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms." - Groucho Marx
***
Following on the heels of the critically acclaimed CrushCalculator, we now have the
Sex and Love Test, described as "The secret to sex and love and the universe....."
A description of the former for the uninitiated:
"Our program predicts your compabitility with your potential partner based on your input. The program will analyze your names using a patented set of complex mathematical and statistical calculations , taking into consideration factors like name origin and personality traits of certain surnames."
I can personally attest that the sequel is even more powerful and revealing in the insights it provides.
***
Under Communism, talk of race and religion was vigorously suppressed by the Party, giving an illusion of racial and religious harmony. After all, everyone was a comrade: equal in status and dignity.
However, when the Communist Parties collapsed, hitherto hidden racial and religious tensions burst to the fore, and some countries degenerated into civil war and inter-racial/religious strife.
Pretending that problems do not exist and denouncing those who try to discuss such problems does not solve said problems, just as capping a boiling kettle does not stop the buildup of pressure. It only ensures that when the release of pressure comes, it will be spectacular and disastrous.
Propaganda Lessons are fond of giving us "lessons that we can learn from history", though oddly the lessons I learn are different from those that they want me to learn. For example the lesson they want us to learn from the Fall of Singapore in World War II is that we can only trust in ourselves for our defence, but the one I've learnt is that even a dedicated force of professionals cannot defend Singapore, so how can the demoralised and incompetent SAF, mostly made up of slave soldiers succeed? [Ed: Yeah, I know this point isn't on ground as solid as the previous one, but I'm making a pedagogical point about the credulousness of Propaganda lessons.]
However, in this case perhaps this is one lesson that we can learn from the Collapse of Communism.
[Addendum: If pretending that nothing is wrong does not result in strife, that might mean that the dangers and possibilities of said strife are inflated in the first place.]
Panelist 1: you should noe that in communist countries they have racist policies
well i think pogroms, discriminatory policies and forced relocations in the FSU
Panelist 2: if you're referring to Singapore, I disagree; I think that the means of repression has so neutered the vast majority of individuals with regards to many issues that it's not relevant.
Panelist 3 (Johnny Malkavian): pressure is there, but people will just grumble, pretty much forever.
again, you have to look at how the supression is done.
if by suppressing, you break the people's will to revolt, then it will work
the idea is to break them, not try to ignore the problem
let us look at nazi concentration camps
i'm quite sure the last thing those people will do is to try to escape
i thnk the term is.. learned helplessness
i don't know enough about the commies to know if they broke their will or not
but you asked me if suppression works, and i told you you have to look at how it's being executed
Panelist 4: it doesn't even say anything about trusting ourselves
fall of sg was mistake by churchhill
why would our leaders be any more capable than him
lesson is, even the most 'qualified' leaders cannot be trusted
Panelist 5: is there going to be an article on what makes the SAF demoralized and incompetent in comparison to the armed forces of Switzerland, Taiwan, Sweden, Israel etc..
[Ed: Guest submissions on this are welcome; I don't have the necessary skill/expertise to tackle this topic]
***
I tried to upgrade to the latest Omega Radeon Catalyst v2.6.0.5a (5.1) drivers but they refused to install.
So much for: "They work with ANY RADEON VIDEO CARD built/powered by ATI, including all Mobility chipsets (M6 and up). The Omega Drivers are compatible with all ATI Radeon cards (it doesn't matter if they are DDR, SDR, PCI, PCI-E, AGP, Mobile, Retail, OEM or 3rd Party)"
Attempts to reinstall my old ATI drivers have failed - now I've to reinstall them every bootup or else scrolling is painfully slow and jerky. Ah well, until I get down to formatting my laptop I can always play games without 3D graphics engines, like Civilization III or Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Or study for my mid-terms and do my essays, since it's probably too much bother to dig up the CDs for the former.
I've found a fellow Singaporean Sentai fan! Yay.
***
A succinct summary of why foreign students are so loathed by many native Singaporean students studying locally (no, it is not due to xenophobia):
"Why does the MM need to go all out to protect SIA? Why does IDA need to regulate the telcos? Why not have a free for all? Better still, throw money at foreign companies to compete against Singtel and SIA in Singapore, the way we throw money at foreign students by raising the fees for Singapore students.
The FT policy in Singapore doesnt give equal treatment to foreigners -- it is biased in the favour of foreigners, in particular, those from PRC. There is no need for a pass in English, pass in L2, pass in humanities and what nots. Foreigners are not required to leap through and survive the same hoops Singapore students have to, at every stage of our education.
Foreigners can enjoy generous scholarships if they do well in one subject, whilst Singaporeans with straight As but flunk their L2 are dumped in Arts faculty.
Singaporeans who break their scholarship bonds are shamed publicly. Foreigners can break their bonds and nothing is said.
When talented foreigners form 1% of the cohort, it is called a challenge. When the same single focus foreigners form 25% of the cohort, it is called crowding out.
Nobody wants to study a subject that they can only do second best in. You are going to see less and less Singaporeans doing science and engineering because of this. And since the ace foreigners leave singapore after they get their top honours, Singapore will be very short of good scientists and engineers. In turn, companies will complain, and more foreigners will come in, and the cycle repeats until the companies leave, and Singapore hollows out.
Aussie unis make BIG money from Singaporeans because we pay more fees. Singapore unis LOSE BIG money from PRC students because all of them are here on generous scholarships, and quotas are set in university hostels to accomodate them, so they dont have to suffer from the local public transport system."
***
Tym too attains Straits Times-free Nirvana:
"How's it do on local coverage? That runs the gamut from ribbon-cutting events by some bigshot to nonsense news, e.g. some joker cavilling about taupok in JCs or Zoe Tay's new baby (who gives a fuck?). Not much of it is hard news, even though they try to present it like it is. And as mr brown's implied in his Today column, local blogs can fill that void quite easily. So what's ST left to do?
... I've actually been ST-free for several weeks now. On the one hand, I kinda don't really know what's going on. On the other hand, my life doesn't seem to be adversely affected by it, so maybe I didn't need to know what was going on in the first place."
Attain Straits Times-free Nirvana, and you need not read about who got killed, raped, molested, knocked down by a van or conned into buying a Magic Stone.
Or read about the latest subjects that obsessive and anally-retentive idiots rant shrilly about; if you wanted to read that, there's always the Chinese Newspapers that we were (or at least I was) forced to read during Chinese lessons to find out the latest issues bothering the Chinese Community: such subjects of earth-shaking importance as the phenomenon of 避年 (Bi4 Nian2), where people who know better go overseas during Chinese New Year (evidently it did not strike the letter writers that it was the attitudes and behaviors of those such as they which pissed the people who left during Chinese New Year off). Or blogs, for that matter.
To say nothing of error-filled and illogical op-eds and naively positive spins on government policies.
***
New piece of Hate Mail (Not-so-calmone must be so jealous!):
"Senders email: xxx_xxx@xxx.xxx
Message:
you are the lousiest writer i have ever seen. your list is full of typos, hasty generalizations, ad hominems - every possible fallacy i can think of! it's the longest list of bullshit i have ever read!!!"
Har? I assume (s)he was referring to 'How Girls Waste Time'. (S)he had the courtesy of leaving a return email address, but my reply bounced, so maybe it was fake.
***
A reliable source informs me that printing at the Science Library costs 4 cents a page. Which actually makes it cheaper than printing at home, if one buys one's own paper and doesn't make double-sided printouts.
But no one wants to go down to godforsaken Science anyway, so.
Quotes:
Too early in the morning is 8 o'clock. I had a 8 o'clock lecture yesterday. They should make that illegal.
[On fur colour in humans] Ang Moh.
[Here we have] A monkey in alcohol looking very depressed because it was the last of its kind, and it was attacked by a dog.
Do we have a Life Science student here? Too bad. I like to torture Life Science students.
buy'lair'tear'ial symmetry (bilateral)
[On Sharks' method of shedding teeth] If I had been designed by an intelligent designer I would have had one of those.
[On a shark's jaw whose bottle was labelled saying that human remains were found in its gut] Where're the human remains?
[On a crab display] This display is mostly here because the director of the museum loves crabs. He not only studies them, he also eats them.
[On the crabby/craggy (?) rock crab] It looks like a black pepper crab.
cocoa's trees (coconut)
What other primates do we have [in Singapore]? They're annoying. People feed them. [Me: Children]
[On preserving birds] Arsenic is not there not for people to steal them (so people don't)
The British Museum used to have a Dodo... The curator cut off a head, cut off a wing: he burnt the rest... He went mad... You know museum people: *looks around shiftily*
[On Ernst Mayr] When he was 96, people were referring to him as 'the late Ernst Mayr'. They thought he was already dead, but he was still alive.
[On the perils of museum life] No dead animals coming out: *adopts zombie bunny pose* 'I'm gonna stuff you!'
There is an error in your book. I put a correction of it on the web but that correction is still not correct.
***
Following on the heels of the critically acclaimed CrushCalculator, we now have the
Sex and Love Test, described as "The secret to sex and love and the universe....."
A description of the former for the uninitiated:
"Our program predicts your compabitility with your potential partner based on your input. The program will analyze your names using a patented set of complex mathematical and statistical calculations , taking into consideration factors like name origin and personality traits of certain surnames."
I can personally attest that the sequel is even more powerful and revealing in the insights it provides.
***
Under Communism, talk of race and religion was vigorously suppressed by the Party, giving an illusion of racial and religious harmony. After all, everyone was a comrade: equal in status and dignity.
However, when the Communist Parties collapsed, hitherto hidden racial and religious tensions burst to the fore, and some countries degenerated into civil war and inter-racial/religious strife.
Pretending that problems do not exist and denouncing those who try to discuss such problems does not solve said problems, just as capping a boiling kettle does not stop the buildup of pressure. It only ensures that when the release of pressure comes, it will be spectacular and disastrous.
Propaganda Lessons are fond of giving us "lessons that we can learn from history", though oddly the lessons I learn are different from those that they want me to learn. For example the lesson they want us to learn from the Fall of Singapore in World War II is that we can only trust in ourselves for our defence, but the one I've learnt is that even a dedicated force of professionals cannot defend Singapore, so how can the demoralised and incompetent SAF, mostly made up of slave soldiers succeed? [Ed: Yeah, I know this point isn't on ground as solid as the previous one, but I'm making a pedagogical point about the credulousness of Propaganda lessons.]
However, in this case perhaps this is one lesson that we can learn from the Collapse of Communism.
[Addendum: If pretending that nothing is wrong does not result in strife, that might mean that the dangers and possibilities of said strife are inflated in the first place.]
Panelist 1: you should noe that in communist countries they have racist policies
well i think pogroms, discriminatory policies and forced relocations in the FSU
Panelist 2: if you're referring to Singapore, I disagree; I think that the means of repression has so neutered the vast majority of individuals with regards to many issues that it's not relevant.
Panelist 3 (Johnny Malkavian): pressure is there, but people will just grumble, pretty much forever.
again, you have to look at how the supression is done.
if by suppressing, you break the people's will to revolt, then it will work
the idea is to break them, not try to ignore the problem
let us look at nazi concentration camps
i'm quite sure the last thing those people will do is to try to escape
i thnk the term is.. learned helplessness
i don't know enough about the commies to know if they broke their will or not
but you asked me if suppression works, and i told you you have to look at how it's being executed
Panelist 4: it doesn't even say anything about trusting ourselves
fall of sg was mistake by churchhill
why would our leaders be any more capable than him
lesson is, even the most 'qualified' leaders cannot be trusted
Panelist 5: is there going to be an article on what makes the SAF demoralized and incompetent in comparison to the armed forces of Switzerland, Taiwan, Sweden, Israel etc..
[Ed: Guest submissions on this are welcome; I don't have the necessary skill/expertise to tackle this topic]
***
I tried to upgrade to the latest Omega Radeon Catalyst v2.6.0.5a (5.1) drivers but they refused to install.
So much for: "They work with ANY RADEON VIDEO CARD built/powered by ATI, including all Mobility chipsets (M6 and up). The Omega Drivers are compatible with all ATI Radeon cards (it doesn't matter if they are DDR, SDR, PCI, PCI-E, AGP, Mobile, Retail, OEM or 3rd Party)"
Attempts to reinstall my old ATI drivers have failed - now I've to reinstall them every bootup or else scrolling is painfully slow and jerky. Ah well, until I get down to formatting my laptop I can always play games without 3D graphics engines, like Civilization III or Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Or study for my mid-terms and do my essays, since it's probably too much bother to dig up the CDs for the former.
I've found a fellow Singaporean Sentai fan! Yay.
***
A succinct summary of why foreign students are so loathed by many native Singaporean students studying locally (no, it is not due to xenophobia):
"Why does the MM need to go all out to protect SIA? Why does IDA need to regulate the telcos? Why not have a free for all? Better still, throw money at foreign companies to compete against Singtel and SIA in Singapore, the way we throw money at foreign students by raising the fees for Singapore students.
The FT policy in Singapore doesnt give equal treatment to foreigners -- it is biased in the favour of foreigners, in particular, those from PRC. There is no need for a pass in English, pass in L2, pass in humanities and what nots. Foreigners are not required to leap through and survive the same hoops Singapore students have to, at every stage of our education.
Foreigners can enjoy generous scholarships if they do well in one subject, whilst Singaporeans with straight As but flunk their L2 are dumped in Arts faculty.
Singaporeans who break their scholarship bonds are shamed publicly. Foreigners can break their bonds and nothing is said.
When talented foreigners form 1% of the cohort, it is called a challenge. When the same single focus foreigners form 25% of the cohort, it is called crowding out.
Nobody wants to study a subject that they can only do second best in. You are going to see less and less Singaporeans doing science and engineering because of this. And since the ace foreigners leave singapore after they get their top honours, Singapore will be very short of good scientists and engineers. In turn, companies will complain, and more foreigners will come in, and the cycle repeats until the companies leave, and Singapore hollows out.
Aussie unis make BIG money from Singaporeans because we pay more fees. Singapore unis LOSE BIG money from PRC students because all of them are here on generous scholarships, and quotas are set in university hostels to accomodate them, so they dont have to suffer from the local public transport system."
***
Tym too attains Straits Times-free Nirvana:
"How's it do on local coverage? That runs the gamut from ribbon-cutting events by some bigshot to nonsense news, e.g. some joker cavilling about taupok in JCs or Zoe Tay's new baby (who gives a fuck?). Not much of it is hard news, even though they try to present it like it is. And as mr brown's implied in his Today column, local blogs can fill that void quite easily. So what's ST left to do?
... I've actually been ST-free for several weeks now. On the one hand, I kinda don't really know what's going on. On the other hand, my life doesn't seem to be adversely affected by it, so maybe I didn't need to know what was going on in the first place."
Attain Straits Times-free Nirvana, and you need not read about who got killed, raped, molested, knocked down by a van or conned into buying a Magic Stone.
Or read about the latest subjects that obsessive and anally-retentive idiots rant shrilly about; if you wanted to read that, there's always the Chinese Newspapers that we were (or at least I was) forced to read during Chinese lessons to find out the latest issues bothering the Chinese Community: such subjects of earth-shaking importance as the phenomenon of 避年 (Bi4 Nian2), where people who know better go overseas during Chinese New Year (evidently it did not strike the letter writers that it was the attitudes and behaviors of those such as they which pissed the people who left during Chinese New Year off). Or blogs, for that matter.
To say nothing of error-filled and illogical op-eds and naively positive spins on government policies.
***
New piece of Hate Mail (Not-so-calmone must be so jealous!):
"Senders email: xxx_xxx@xxx.xxx
Message:
you are the lousiest writer i have ever seen. your list is full of typos, hasty generalizations, ad hominems - every possible fallacy i can think of! it's the longest list of bullshit i have ever read!!!"
Har? I assume (s)he was referring to 'How Girls Waste Time'. (S)he had the courtesy of leaving a return email address, but my reply bounced, so maybe it was fake.
***
A reliable source informs me that printing at the Science Library costs 4 cents a page. Which actually makes it cheaper than printing at home, if one buys one's own paper and doesn't make double-sided printouts.
But no one wants to go down to godforsaken Science anyway, so.
Quotes:
Too early in the morning is 8 o'clock. I had a 8 o'clock lecture yesterday. They should make that illegal.
[On fur colour in humans] Ang Moh.
[Here we have] A monkey in alcohol looking very depressed because it was the last of its kind, and it was attacked by a dog.
Do we have a Life Science student here? Too bad. I like to torture Life Science students.
buy'lair'tear'ial symmetry (bilateral)
[On Sharks' method of shedding teeth] If I had been designed by an intelligent designer I would have had one of those.
[On a shark's jaw whose bottle was labelled saying that human remains were found in its gut] Where're the human remains?
[On a crab display] This display is mostly here because the director of the museum loves crabs. He not only studies them, he also eats them.
[On the crabby/craggy (?) rock crab] It looks like a black pepper crab.
cocoa's trees (coconut)
What other primates do we have [in Singapore]? They're annoying. People feed them. [Me: Children]
[On preserving birds] Arsenic is not there not for people to steal them (so people don't)
The British Museum used to have a Dodo... The curator cut off a head, cut off a wing: he burnt the rest... He went mad... You know museum people: *looks around shiftily*
[On Ernst Mayr] When he was 96, people were referring to him as 'the late Ernst Mayr'. They thought he was already dead, but he was still alive.
[On the perils of museum life] No dead animals coming out: *adopts zombie bunny pose* 'I'm gonna stuff you!'
There is an error in your book. I put a correction of it on the web but that correction is still not correct.
Post ID: 110935357622605757
Saturday, February 26, 2005
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." - Sir Winston Churchill
***
And so, after my grand adventure the other day, I got home and installed KOTOR II on my laptop. And then found out that it didn't work: it kept dumping me back to the desktop when the game engine fired up after the introductory movie, and that no patch was available (though one is on the way).
Research revealed that the system requirements for KOTOR and KOTOR II are the same (which was why I assumed that the latter would work on my laptop), and both do not support the ATI RADEON 7500 chipset, since it only has drivers up to the OpenGL 1.3.4650 standard, when KOTOR II requires OpenGL 1.4. And so, while waiting for a patch, I attempted to install and play it on the desktop.
Amazingly, it only took 2 installation attempts (punctuated, of course, by a sponteneous reboot) to install the game, even though it's spread across 4 CDs. Playing it was a different matter. Although the hardware detection utility passed the desktop, the game kept Crashing To Desktop (CTD) either during startup and before the opening screen, at the beginning of the opening movie (I see the words "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away..." fading in, and then the game hangs) or after character creation and the opening movie (ie The same place as the laptop, except that the laptop at least shows me the opening frame before dumping me back to Windows while the desktop shows some mysterious blue-tinged shapes - perhaps they are the Sith Lords alluded to in the game's title).
A search on the net reveals that I'm not the only one with a Radeon 7500 who has problems (DriverHeaven.net - Severe Kotor II problems, Obsidian Forums), so hopefully they'll release a patch to solve our problems, especially since the Radeon 7500, though old, is still owned by quite a few people.
Incidentally, the game cannot be returned or exchanged for another, since "the hardware requirements are already printed on the box". Ah, the joys and rewards of buying original software; many (most?) pirated CD shop uncles would have let you exchange your CDs if the game didn't work.
So now I may choose from a wide variety of unsavoury options:
i) Give up
ii) Try to sell off the game to recoup my losses
iii) Write a vehement editorial condemning the evils and immorality of money-grubbing capitalism
iv) Wait (, probably) in vain for a patch (since particle effects are the only part of KOTOR II that needs OpenGL 1.4, providing an option to disable them should solve the problem)
v) Fix my desktop
vi) Get a new computer sans monitor and peripherals assembled
vii) Go somewhere else to play the game
viii) Wail, gnash my teeth, beat my breast, rip my shirt while smearing ashes on myself and shake a fist at the heavens
ix) Retreat into asceticism and ponder the meaning of life
x) Wait for The Associate aka He Who Must Not be Named aka mindgame aka nw.t. to dig up some beta drivers for my graphics card for me
All of which are testaments to my sad, sad life. Moral of the story: Buying original games isn't necessarily good.
Add to this the fact He Who Must Not Be Named's pulling of a Harry Potter on me last weekend. I swear, the next time he does that, I shall soundly thwack him or lace his ice with cockroach dung. Or even splash his name and picture all over the seedy highways of the internet.
"Agagooga's desktop computer is totally screwed and so crashes unpredictibly, estimated at the (conservative) rate of 10 times an hour with intensive use (eg Number crunching with Excel, opening a browser window with 30 tabs, burning a CD-R or copying 200MB files to an external hard disk).
Assume that the number of crashes per hour follows the Poisson distribution.
Find:
i) The mean and variance for the number of crashes in a 3 hour session of Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords (KOTOR II) (ie How many times he will have to restart his game in a 3 hour session and the variance of this result)
ii) The probability that he will be able to play KOTOR II for a whole hour without the game crashing
iii) The probability that, with his rash of bad luck, he will get a crash every minute"
Of course, since I can't even get into the stupid game, these questions are moot.
Someone: you know, if you were a lecturer in nus... i can imagine how my midterm tests and tutorials and probably exams will be
we'll be learning little bits of your life throughout the sem
you've got the mentality of a porno star
in a weird way hahahahahah
exhibitionist hahahahahaha
***
A friend of mine has been written into a fanfic. Maybe I need to become more active in PR forums, then maybe someone will write me into one too!
***
Crimethink on life in mono:
"Yet nobody ventures even a mention of why there is such a climate of fear in the first place. There is no mention of the famed “OB markers” which keep many away from being vocal about an opinion, especially a dissenting (some say disparaging) one. Or about the automatic deference expected of our culture, that demands “respect” for elders and for leaders, such that the point of debate over the issuing of an opinion is no longer about the arguments or their context, but shock awe and horror at the utterance of the “D” word (despot) – surely an act of incivility? How does anybody, literally, afford to be vocal about your dissent, in a place like this? This is not a full time job many have the stomach or pockets to take on."
The comments thread is also worth a look.
life in mono is current down, due to bandwith overload.
Against Nature: Why Nature Should Have No Say on Human Sexuality - "The homophobe who relies on ‘nature’ to defend his bigotry against gay parenting, for example, in all likelihood will have no problem at all consuming food containing preservatives, artificial colouring, artificial flavouring, and sweeteners, shaving his naturally present facial hair, keeping his naturally long hair short, using deodorant to control naturally occurring perspiration, using a car or train to get to work (rather than the ‘natural’ method - walking), sitting in air conditioned buildings, and wearing clothes made from humanmade fibres. He will moan about the ‘bad weather’ (rain, and so on), despite this weather being perfectly natural, and rush to the chemist when he catches a cold (which he will also moan about, despite the germs being natural). Nature = good is clearly a false equation. In reality, we find some elements of the natural world ‘good’ (and we use these to define ‘nature’), but most of it ‘bad’ (which we tend to conveniently ignore)."
Some Economists Say the President of Harvard Talks Just Like Them
"He prefaced his discussion by saying he would "adopt an entirely positive, rather than normative approach," looking at how the world is, rather than how it ought to be. He ended with a call for "marshaling of evidence to contradict what I have said."
Despite his caveats, some women's advocates were outraged that Dr. Summers entertained, let alone endorsed the hypotheses that family arrangements or innate abilities might have anything to do with the success of women in science. Nancy H. Hopkins, a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has campaigned for more hiring and promotion of female professors, walked out on his remarks and later told reporters, "I felt I was going to be sick."
In lambasting his nonjudgmental, empirical approach to the question, opponents are not merely challenging Dr. Summers's brash manner or his evaluation of the data. They are attacking the very method economists use to address social policy questions. And, not surprisingly, some of his most outspoken supporters are fellow economists."
***
Existential Angst
"I’ve finally come to a very real and very critical place in my development. This world is full of more horrors than joys, more pain than beauty. It has always been this way and no matter what we may tell school children we cannot change the world. The world will not markedly improve, even if it manages to survive the abuses humanity showers upon it. If there is any God or a force greater than humanity I feel more like a science project than a beloved child, more like a freak show than praise-able subject. If there is a God I don’t think he/she/it is showing up anytime soon, and my gut instinct would say there is no such force. So what then? If there is no potential for bettering humanity, and no Higher Power to dance for, then what is the point of contributing, of being good, of existing at all? And where do I possibly go from here?
See, it’s a slippery slope all this existential theory.
So I’m at the library, seeking the philosopher or guru who can clarify the meaning of no-meaning. Sartre said meaning was in individuals, individual moralities and ideals and behaviors. Sartre managed to fight for the greater good against Nazi Germany and continually shit all over Simone who loved him more than anyone in the world. Jean-Paul Sartre was definitely a man. Karl Marx came up with a lovely, lyrical portrait of utopia, and fully admitted it was impossible for humans to achieve. This indisputable fact is one which millions have chosen to over look. Jesus said, “Love one another”, a gift his followers seem only able to give to those who are just like themselves. Scientists say the answer is in nature, technology, progress. They seem to expect me to see life while they autopsy atoms and grin. New Agers look into crystals, and ancient rituals, and spiritual energies and find a form of religion that is soft, benign and utterly incoherent. Whatever form it takes religious thought is a comforting way to quickly answer, and therefore deny, the real world...
I’ve grown tired of seeking in these rows of books. There is much wisdom and foolishness here but no one work which answers all." [Ed: Emphasis mine - on why reading is overrated.]
***
http://www.rafflesian.com/event/attach/Rafflesians'_Card.pdf (if the link doesn't work, try this or this and scroll to "Mon, 28 Feb 2005 ORA EGM")
There's an ORA UOB Visa Credit Card. Wth?!
***
And so, after my grand adventure the other day, I got home and installed KOTOR II on my laptop. And then found out that it didn't work: it kept dumping me back to the desktop when the game engine fired up after the introductory movie, and that no patch was available (though one is on the way).
Research revealed that the system requirements for KOTOR and KOTOR II are the same (which was why I assumed that the latter would work on my laptop), and both do not support the ATI RADEON 7500 chipset, since it only has drivers up to the OpenGL 1.3.4650 standard, when KOTOR II requires OpenGL 1.4. And so, while waiting for a patch, I attempted to install and play it on the desktop.
Amazingly, it only took 2 installation attempts (punctuated, of course, by a sponteneous reboot) to install the game, even though it's spread across 4 CDs. Playing it was a different matter. Although the hardware detection utility passed the desktop, the game kept Crashing To Desktop (CTD) either during startup and before the opening screen, at the beginning of the opening movie (I see the words "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away..." fading in, and then the game hangs) or after character creation and the opening movie (ie The same place as the laptop, except that the laptop at least shows me the opening frame before dumping me back to Windows while the desktop shows some mysterious blue-tinged shapes - perhaps they are the Sith Lords alluded to in the game's title).
A search on the net reveals that I'm not the only one with a Radeon 7500 who has problems (DriverHeaven.net - Severe Kotor II problems, Obsidian Forums), so hopefully they'll release a patch to solve our problems, especially since the Radeon 7500, though old, is still owned by quite a few people.
Incidentally, the game cannot be returned or exchanged for another, since "the hardware requirements are already printed on the box". Ah, the joys and rewards of buying original software; many (most?) pirated CD shop uncles would have let you exchange your CDs if the game didn't work.
So now I may choose from a wide variety of unsavoury options:
i) Give up
ii) Try to sell off the game to recoup my losses
iii) Write a vehement editorial condemning the evils and immorality of money-grubbing capitalism
iv) Wait (, probably) in vain for a patch (since particle effects are the only part of KOTOR II that needs OpenGL 1.4, providing an option to disable them should solve the problem)
v) Fix my desktop
vi) Get a new computer sans monitor and peripherals assembled
vii) Go somewhere else to play the game
viii) Wail, gnash my teeth, beat my breast, rip my shirt while smearing ashes on myself and shake a fist at the heavens
ix) Retreat into asceticism and ponder the meaning of life
x) Wait for The Associate aka He Who Must Not be Named aka mindgame aka nw.t. to dig up some beta drivers for my graphics card for me
All of which are testaments to my sad, sad life. Moral of the story: Buying original games isn't necessarily good.
Add to this the fact He Who Must Not Be Named's pulling of a Harry Potter on me last weekend. I swear, the next time he does that, I shall soundly thwack him or lace his ice with cockroach dung. Or even splash his name and picture all over the seedy highways of the internet.
"Agagooga's desktop computer is totally screwed and so crashes unpredictibly, estimated at the (conservative) rate of 10 times an hour with intensive use (eg Number crunching with Excel, opening a browser window with 30 tabs, burning a CD-R or copying 200MB files to an external hard disk).
Assume that the number of crashes per hour follows the Poisson distribution.
Find:
i) The mean and variance for the number of crashes in a 3 hour session of Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords (KOTOR II) (ie How many times he will have to restart his game in a 3 hour session and the variance of this result)
ii) The probability that he will be able to play KOTOR II for a whole hour without the game crashing
iii) The probability that, with his rash of bad luck, he will get a crash every minute"
Of course, since I can't even get into the stupid game, these questions are moot.
Someone: you know, if you were a lecturer in nus... i can imagine how my midterm tests and tutorials and probably exams will be
we'll be learning little bits of your life throughout the sem
you've got the mentality of a porno star
in a weird way hahahahahah
exhibitionist hahahahahaha
***
A friend of mine has been written into a fanfic. Maybe I need to become more active in PR forums, then maybe someone will write me into one too!
***
"Yet nobody ventures even a mention of why there is such a climate of fear in the first place. There is no mention of the famed “OB markers” which keep many away from being vocal about an opinion, especially a dissenting (some say disparaging) one. Or about the automatic deference expected of our culture, that demands “respect” for elders and for leaders, such that the point of debate over the issuing of an opinion is no longer about the arguments or their context, but shock awe and horror at the utterance of the “D” word (despot) – surely an act of incivility? How does anybody, literally, afford to be vocal about your dissent, in a place like this? This is not a full time job many have the stomach or pockets to take on."
The comments thread is also worth a look.
life in mono is current down, due to bandwith overload.
Against Nature: Why Nature Should Have No Say on Human Sexuality - "The homophobe who relies on ‘nature’ to defend his bigotry against gay parenting, for example, in all likelihood will have no problem at all consuming food containing preservatives, artificial colouring, artificial flavouring, and sweeteners, shaving his naturally present facial hair, keeping his naturally long hair short, using deodorant to control naturally occurring perspiration, using a car or train to get to work (rather than the ‘natural’ method - walking), sitting in air conditioned buildings, and wearing clothes made from humanmade fibres. He will moan about the ‘bad weather’ (rain, and so on), despite this weather being perfectly natural, and rush to the chemist when he catches a cold (which he will also moan about, despite the germs being natural). Nature = good is clearly a false equation. In reality, we find some elements of the natural world ‘good’ (and we use these to define ‘nature’), but most of it ‘bad’ (which we tend to conveniently ignore)."
Some Economists Say the President of Harvard Talks Just Like Them
"He prefaced his discussion by saying he would "adopt an entirely positive, rather than normative approach," looking at how the world is, rather than how it ought to be. He ended with a call for "marshaling of evidence to contradict what I have said."
Despite his caveats, some women's advocates were outraged that Dr. Summers entertained, let alone endorsed the hypotheses that family arrangements or innate abilities might have anything to do with the success of women in science. Nancy H. Hopkins, a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has campaigned for more hiring and promotion of female professors, walked out on his remarks and later told reporters, "I felt I was going to be sick."
In lambasting his nonjudgmental, empirical approach to the question, opponents are not merely challenging Dr. Summers's brash manner or his evaluation of the data. They are attacking the very method economists use to address social policy questions. And, not surprisingly, some of his most outspoken supporters are fellow economists."
***
Existential Angst
"I’ve finally come to a very real and very critical place in my development. This world is full of more horrors than joys, more pain than beauty. It has always been this way and no matter what we may tell school children we cannot change the world. The world will not markedly improve, even if it manages to survive the abuses humanity showers upon it. If there is any God or a force greater than humanity I feel more like a science project than a beloved child, more like a freak show than praise-able subject. If there is a God I don’t think he/she/it is showing up anytime soon, and my gut instinct would say there is no such force. So what then? If there is no potential for bettering humanity, and no Higher Power to dance for, then what is the point of contributing, of being good, of existing at all? And where do I possibly go from here?
See, it’s a slippery slope all this existential theory.
So I’m at the library, seeking the philosopher or guru who can clarify the meaning of no-meaning. Sartre said meaning was in individuals, individual moralities and ideals and behaviors. Sartre managed to fight for the greater good against Nazi Germany and continually shit all over Simone who loved him more than anyone in the world. Jean-Paul Sartre was definitely a man. Karl Marx came up with a lovely, lyrical portrait of utopia, and fully admitted it was impossible for humans to achieve. This indisputable fact is one which millions have chosen to over look. Jesus said, “Love one another”, a gift his followers seem only able to give to those who are just like themselves. Scientists say the answer is in nature, technology, progress. They seem to expect me to see life while they autopsy atoms and grin. New Agers look into crystals, and ancient rituals, and spiritual energies and find a form of religion that is soft, benign and utterly incoherent. Whatever form it takes religious thought is a comforting way to quickly answer, and therefore deny, the real world...
I’ve grown tired of seeking in these rows of books. There is much wisdom and foolishness here but no one work which answers all." [Ed: Emphasis mine - on why reading is overrated.]
***
http://www.rafflesian.com/event/attach/Rafflesians'_Card.pdf (if the link doesn't work, try this or this and scroll to "Mon, 28 Feb 2005 ORA EGM")
There's an ORA UOB Visa Credit Card. Wth?!
Post ID: 110914397977487221
Friday, February 25, 2005
"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." – John F. Kennedy
[As someone points out: not a bad quote for the guy who started Vietnam... not bad at all...]
***
I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.
I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
[As someone points out: not a bad quote for the guy who started Vietnam... not bad at all...]
***
I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.
I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Post ID: 110926667188019571
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error." - John Kenneth Galbraith
***
This is for my No. 1 fan blah blah: Yah 有性格
***
My cell phone rang in the church and everyone looked at me.
I answered it and someone told me to turn it off.
I told them it was god and he was furiously angered at them, and he would smite them with his holy fist.
I proceeded to scream "Repent!" at the top of my voice.
long story short, I dont have to go to church anymore
[Editor's note in response to a query: No, I did not actually do this.]
***
Oikono and friends were bored enough to engage in some Cosplay.
Luckily, unlike the sort that Singaporeans are so fond of, this did not come off as grotesque (maybe the sepia-toned photos have something to do with that).
***
Florence Foster Jenkins
"Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–26 November 1944) was an American soprano who became famous for her complete lack of singing ability...
From her recordings, it is apparent that Jenkins had little sense of pitch and rhythm, quite a limited range, and was barely capable of sustaining a note. Her accompanist can be heard making adjustments to compensate for her tempo variations and rhythmic mistakes. Nonetheless, she became tremendously popular in her unconventional way. Her audiences apparently loved her for the amusement she provided rather than her musical ability. Critics often described her work in a backhanded way that may have served to pique public curiosity.
Despite her patent lack of ability, Jenkins was firmly convinced of her greatness. She compared herself favourably to the renowned sopranos Frieda Hempel and Luisa Tetrazzini, and dismissed the laughter which often came from the audience during her performances as coming from her rivals consumed by "professional jealousy". She was aware of her critics, however, saying "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing.""
Available on Amazon.com: The Glory (????) of the Human Voice
It has rave reviews: "One day, when I entered my second semester of theory at the University of Pennsylvania, our instructor was playing a CD. This was not out of character, for he always greeted our entrance with some sort of music to accompany our "settling in" conversations. However, this time, instead of people chattering, we were actually paying attention. Spellbound, we heard the absolutely marvelous vocal massacre that was being perpetrated, and reveled in its glorious awful highs and lows.
When I finally managed to buy the CD for myself and put it on a party I attended, the same thing happened, followed by a massive explosion of laughter."
***
Unintelligent Design
"Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock's tail or the human male's nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety...
The gravest imperfections in nature, though, are moral ones. Consider how humans and other animals are intermittently tortured by pain throughout their lives, especially near the end. Our pain mechanism may have been designed to serve as a warning signal to protect our bodies from damage, but in the majority of diseases -- cancer, for instance, or coronary thrombosis -- the signal comes too late to do much good, and the horrible suffering that ensues is completely useless.
And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist, which ought to trouble Christians who believe in both original sin and the doctrine that a human being equipped with a soul comes into existence at conception. Souls bearing the stain of original sin, we are told, do not merit salvation. That is why, according to traditional theology, unbaptized babies have to languish in limbo for all eternity. Owing to faulty reproductive design, it would seem that the population of limbo must be at least twice that of heaven and hell combined."
***
Singapore girls - a challenge to love: STAR
"This has prompted a newspaper reader to urge her well-educated peers to revisit some the traditional feminine traits.
Her letter followed reports that more Singaporeans, including young professional males, were turning abroad for brides.
She said she had worked in Vietnam and found the girls there feminine, their speech melodious.
“They work hard without complaining, carrying loads of cloth and vegetables in the market stalls and food places. Simple, gentle and hardworking, it's hard not to fall in love with them,” she added.
As for the Malaysian ladies, she finds them “neither loud nor argumentative, (but) pander to the boys' needs. Not as doormats, but as cheerful assistants, who see it as their obligation to help their men without expecting anything in return.
“Not that they are stupid - oh, no, the Malaysian girls I know are smart and hardworking, with careers of their own.
“But when it comes to matters of the heart, they play the docile, giggly girlfriend with as much aplomb as their Vietnamese counterparts. Again, it's easy to see where their attraction lies.”"
How disgusting.
***
On the placing of Out Of Print (OOP) gamebooks on the web (ala Home of the Underdogs, which interestingly enough is run by a female. A female into both computer games and gamebooks - that's something you almost never see!):
RE: Re: The Underdogs. The truth about copyright.
A: Dear xxx,
Your bashing on the underdogs site is being mostly unnecessary, and, despite legalist quotations, inaccurate:
1. Piracy implicates an intention to deceive so as to illegally distribute (in any imaginable format). The Underdogs site is public and notorious, it is not in a p2p network or in a private ftp server, it is announced as what it is, a portal which provides people with information, materials and (in some cases only) stuff which qualifies as "abandonware". Gamebooks fall quite close to the sphere of 8-bit and pre-Pentium era computer games.
2. Related to 1., the administrator is quite easy to reach and has no qualms about retiring any download with the holders of either intellectual property rights or distribution copyright (you forgot to note in your well documented mail that they are not the same thing. As a professional writer myself I have great respect for intellectual property, but I know distribution and editorial copyright for what it is, piracy with a letter of marque). He also links to sites where the original games can be bought, either in their original form or in those "compilations" which came into fashion a few years ago.
3. Check the gamebooks listed. Your apocalyptic comment on how e-distribution destroys hopes of publishing houses taking interest in a relaunch does not take into account things like: ICE's Middle-Earth Quest gamebooks. As you may know, ICE lost Tolkien Entreprises' license to publish Middle Earth gaming materials. Part of that license loss came out apparently for the fact of them having published gamebooks (TE does not accept the publishing of new Middle Earth fiction, and a gamebook to them was more book than game). So ICE's books are actually "abandonware". Same for stuff like "Crystal Maze". Can you give me the name of a publisher which would ever consider relaunching a gamebook based on a tv quiz show from the 80s??? You can apply the same stuff to Knightmare.
4. For the other stuff, well, most of the books were issued by publishing houses which dwindled, disappeared, merged, etc. Also by authors who have moved to greener pastures (out of necessity or choice). Like you, they can ask their materials to be removed, if they consider that their IP is being jeopardized.
5. You don't curb yourself for a second to see if there's nothing to be said about the fact that it is standard policy now to make most non-best-seller and non-classic books OOP as fast as possible. Gamebooks are a minority affair. You cannot go to most national libraries or documentalist centers and ask for a whole collection of Lone Wolf 1-28. That somebody takes the time and effort to make available at least an e-copy guarantees that the work is not lost in the midst of time. Fine, gamebooks are not the Epic of Gilgamesh or a Shakespeare sonnet, but the idea of books, any kind of books, being lost in the mists of time in the 21st century is still appalling.
6. On that respect, I do not see publishing houses taking steps and measures to keep their back inventories, even if it's just a pre-publishing draft, an archive copy or a .pdf. Excepting in a few companies of the gaming world and of academic writing, "print on demand services" or at least e-book services for "oldies" are a rarity. Some good exceptions are ICE, which provides .pdfs for old Rolemaster, the Time Machine gamebooks, available as an e-book purchase, and the D&D ElectronicSoftwareDownloads. But that would not be the case with defunct companies, or even with reckless ones. I had a small degreen of involvement with WotC's ESD project (to make the whole of pre 3e D&D stuff available as pdf) and it was dreadful how they had to call for collectors and fans to contribute their copies of old stuff, because TSR and subsequently WotC did not manage to keep a whole archive of their publications.
7. That means that a company can hold the rights of a book which is not even in their archives, files or possession anymore, only on contractual documents. That is tantamount with speculating with real estate by buying buildings, make no investment and let them collapse. Speculation and irresponsibility with one's property when it affects the common interest (like a publisher sitting idle on OOP books) is basically a crime.
8. Back to 3. That a book is available in electronic format does not imply that somebody continues interested in getting a copy. I have been enjoying project aon, plus some stuff from underdogs, but that has not prevented me from investing quite a bit over a thousand dollars in OOP gamebooks. Even after getting access to LW 13-15 (and prospectively many more titles), Greystar, the whole Blood Sword, Falcon, Golden Dragon and Dragon Warriors RPG, I have purchased copies of those books through ebay, antiquarian bookstores or online OOP book services. I like having copies of 80s gamebooks and RPG supplements, and no amount of .pdfs is going to change me. Another thing is if I cannot access a single book of a series, just because it is clearly overpriced in OOP (within reason, some old gamebooks are expensive, but some dealers are just insane) or just unavailable at any price for months of years. I see a good service to be able to download a copy, continue the storyline or use RPG info even if my collection stays incomplete.
9. Without sites like underdogs I would not have a clear picture of some series. If I am going to spend over $50 in a paperback book, I want to know if I really like it. You cannot flip through pages of Bloodsword or Fabled Lands in a bookstore, you cannot risk putting just $6 in a book you may not like, as it is hard to find most titles for cover price. So, for the OOP, to have an e-copy accessible is quite a necessity. collectors will always want to buy. They also want to see what they're buying.
10. As for reprints. I wonder if there's not a vast majority of people who have e-copies of FL, Bloodsword, LW, whatever, and, regardless, would be willing (or even longing) to buy the series from a publisher who reprinted them! The "feel" of a gamebook is something quite hard to capture in a pdf, or even in a lettersized printout! The problem comes when you start thinking if the reprints are worth it. I was quite thrilled by the news of wizardbooks reprinting FF till I saw it materialize: besides a hefty price, even for a paperback, the original covers (I don't know if for copyright issues with illustrators or for some insane marketing persuasion) were dropped and some flashy gaudy, bad taste new ones included; books which had maps in the original omitted them in the reprints, and you can buy an original in mint-near mint state for half the price of the reprint! They did not, and I don't believe they are, reprint the "rares" (think of Curse of the Mummy or Revenge of the Vampire, which can reach 3-figure prices).
11. That's what makes Mr. xxx's email a bit suspicious to my ear. Call me paranoid, but he sounds a lot like the anti-Warlock scans rants of Mr. Dave Holt some time ago. A certain desire to blur out the "old world" of gamebooks from the picture, so there's no life outside Wizard Books and the "official sites". I have on my nightstand a copy of "The Pickup Artist" by Terry Bisson, an interesting novel on a future where government destroys "old" art and books to make room for the new ones. I don't know if that's the schema of things, but given the oddjob efforts by wizardbooks, I wonder if all this copywriting rant is not covering a fear of competence, the competence that comes from just paying an educated visit to underdogs, but also to abebooks, ebay or any other marketplace and see the plethora of gamebooks of varying quality which can be acquired and enjoyed. If the fledging gamebook industry of now fears the competence of the past, probably it is just because the effort now is being half-hearted, competence in writing and art was never a bad thing.
A: A couple more notes
>Surely the main point is that if a product is available free on the
>Internet, there is no incentive for a publisher to pick up the out
>of print book and publish it.
Surely the main point is that a publisher is insulting buyer's intelligence by overcharging the product he is selling.
Let's see. The recipe to make a book:
1) get an author with an idea, or commission it, you get a manuscript. But oh, now most publishers only take computer-formatted documents. How much is that? Jon will know too. You get a small percentage of the sales. If you are an obscure author, like me, like Jon Sutherland, like most gamebook writers, normally you get an advance on that, which can go from a few hundred to a few thousand. The publisher's percentage is always quite higher than the author's (normally something like 10/90 or under). That has been like that since Egyptian papyri.
2) Get paper and ink. You know about globalization? Taking wood from the Amazon and manufacturing paper in Asia (I saw 3 paper manufacturers close in my -European- country just because of that), prices have gone down from the more expensive materials (and less abusive) 30 years ago?
3) Edit and format. You have to pay a proofreader for that. But check how many contracts force the author to self-proofread, and how many unemployed MAs and BAs get to work as proofreader for big publishing house courtesy of ultra-nice and fair temp-job agencies. See their salaries and cry.
4) Make the 1st draft. only that drafts are not drafts anymore. they are pdf documents. Maybe some people in the list have not even known those printing machines with metal letters and signs where you had to compose each page by hand. Now you need a computer and some professional book-editing software, something like Acrobat pro. OK, you need some investment in that equipment, and in those big professional printers, but then, it's a far cheaper process than traditional printing. Plus maintenance costs of a computerized printing mainframe are far lower than those of printing presses.
5) Continue with the whole print run.
6) Bookbinding. See 2. The rule of cheap plastic materials, for binding, covers and so on, lowers prices even more.
7) Distribution and marketing, you can say oil prices raise, but only recently. Wages go down. Production of commercials, ads, poster sings, etc, is cheaper now as per 4.
So, the question is, excepting for 1), which is fixed in screwing the author as much as the publisher can, everything seems to have dropped:
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN BOOK PRICES GO DOWN?
No, they raise every year, just wonder, do they pay the author better? No friends, I can assure you. Do they use better quality materials?? As cheap as you can go, a paperback now crumbles as good as it did in the 70s. Well, law is, prices never drop, they always raise. And the cash flows into the publishers' pockets. Publishers which, in turn, are fewer and fewer, as small companies tend to be absorbed by larger editorial and media holdings, which makes production even cheaper.
So, what happens if you don't buy a book because you have a bootleg?
Authors and workers don't get less money. They already almost verge on minimum salary levels, and slavery is illegal excepting in certain countries where maybe they make paper and covers for a few big media companies. Companies won't stop publishing, and they won't stop not taking risks. If somebody does not resuscitate an OOP, it is not because it circulates the internet. You could also say that they don't publish it because you can buy it for one buck at a used bookstore or check it out from the public library, and I hope Jon Sutherland does not hate used bookstores and public libraries. That book-burning thing is sooo 30s. It is because they don't want to take risks and don't see a commercial exit (something ok for somebody who is doing business). Check E.R.Burroughs or Clark Ashton Smith for good examples of scifi authors which were (partly) public domain and, nevertheless, have been published again because of certain market conditions which caught the eye of publishers. If you get a photocopy or scan of a book you cannot afford, cannot find because you live in Antartica or in my home town, or you just want to give a try but feel half-hearted about introducing into your library, you're taking a small percentage from a huge money-making cushion most publishers of commercial literature surround themselves with, normally at the expense of the author, the workers and the material providers. That cushion does include in fact a careful monitoring of self-competence. Print runs these days are shorter than a few decades ago. It is very useful to turn books into seasonal items, so that you always have to go for the new one and not for the backlist, therefore assuring that any new launch, regardless of its literary quality, is a success. No wonder some countries have high VAT for books, with luxury tax levels equal to those applied to furs, gold and designer's clothing. If books are seen like a fashion article and not like a necessity for humans' wellbeing.
[more]
***
This is for my No. 1 fan blah blah: Yah 有性格
***
My cell phone rang in the church and everyone looked at me.
I answered it and someone told me to turn it off.
I told them it was god and he was furiously angered at them, and he would smite them with his holy fist.
I proceeded to scream "Repent!" at the top of my voice.
long story short, I dont have to go to church anymore
[Editor's note in response to a query: No, I did not actually do this.]
***
Oikono and friends were bored enough to engage in some Cosplay.
Luckily, unlike the sort that Singaporeans are so fond of, this did not come off as grotesque (maybe the sepia-toned photos have something to do with that).
***
Florence Foster Jenkins
"Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–26 November 1944) was an American soprano who became famous for her complete lack of singing ability...
From her recordings, it is apparent that Jenkins had little sense of pitch and rhythm, quite a limited range, and was barely capable of sustaining a note. Her accompanist can be heard making adjustments to compensate for her tempo variations and rhythmic mistakes. Nonetheless, she became tremendously popular in her unconventional way. Her audiences apparently loved her for the amusement she provided rather than her musical ability. Critics often described her work in a backhanded way that may have served to pique public curiosity.
Despite her patent lack of ability, Jenkins was firmly convinced of her greatness. She compared herself favourably to the renowned sopranos Frieda Hempel and Luisa Tetrazzini, and dismissed the laughter which often came from the audience during her performances as coming from her rivals consumed by "professional jealousy". She was aware of her critics, however, saying "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing.""
Available on Amazon.com: The Glory (????) of the Human Voice
It has rave reviews: "One day, when I entered my second semester of theory at the University of Pennsylvania, our instructor was playing a CD. This was not out of character, for he always greeted our entrance with some sort of music to accompany our "settling in" conversations. However, this time, instead of people chattering, we were actually paying attention. Spellbound, we heard the absolutely marvelous vocal massacre that was being perpetrated, and reveled in its glorious awful highs and lows.
When I finally managed to buy the CD for myself and put it on a party I attended, the same thing happened, followed by a massive explosion of laughter."
***
Unintelligent Design
"Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock's tail or the human male's nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety...
The gravest imperfections in nature, though, are moral ones. Consider how humans and other animals are intermittently tortured by pain throughout their lives, especially near the end. Our pain mechanism may have been designed to serve as a warning signal to protect our bodies from damage, but in the majority of diseases -- cancer, for instance, or coronary thrombosis -- the signal comes too late to do much good, and the horrible suffering that ensues is completely useless.
And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist, which ought to trouble Christians who believe in both original sin and the doctrine that a human being equipped with a soul comes into existence at conception. Souls bearing the stain of original sin, we are told, do not merit salvation. That is why, according to traditional theology, unbaptized babies have to languish in limbo for all eternity. Owing to faulty reproductive design, it would seem that the population of limbo must be at least twice that of heaven and hell combined."
***
Singapore girls - a challenge to love: STAR
"This has prompted a newspaper reader to urge her well-educated peers to revisit some the traditional feminine traits.
Her letter followed reports that more Singaporeans, including young professional males, were turning abroad for brides.
She said she had worked in Vietnam and found the girls there feminine, their speech melodious.
“They work hard without complaining, carrying loads of cloth and vegetables in the market stalls and food places. Simple, gentle and hardworking, it's hard not to fall in love with them,” she added.
As for the Malaysian ladies, she finds them “neither loud nor argumentative, (but) pander to the boys' needs. Not as doormats, but as cheerful assistants, who see it as their obligation to help their men without expecting anything in return.
“Not that they are stupid - oh, no, the Malaysian girls I know are smart and hardworking, with careers of their own.
“But when it comes to matters of the heart, they play the docile, giggly girlfriend with as much aplomb as their Vietnamese counterparts. Again, it's easy to see where their attraction lies.”"
How disgusting.
***
On the placing of Out Of Print (OOP) gamebooks on the web (ala Home of the Underdogs, which interestingly enough is run by a female. A female into both computer games and gamebooks - that's something you almost never see!):
RE: Re: The Underdogs. The truth about copyright.
A: Dear xxx,
Your bashing on the underdogs site is being mostly unnecessary, and, despite legalist quotations, inaccurate:
1. Piracy implicates an intention to deceive so as to illegally distribute (in any imaginable format). The Underdogs site is public and notorious, it is not in a p2p network or in a private ftp server, it is announced as what it is, a portal which provides people with information, materials and (in some cases only) stuff which qualifies as "abandonware". Gamebooks fall quite close to the sphere of 8-bit and pre-Pentium era computer games.
2. Related to 1., the administrator is quite easy to reach and has no qualms about retiring any download with the holders of either intellectual property rights or distribution copyright (you forgot to note in your well documented mail that they are not the same thing. As a professional writer myself I have great respect for intellectual property, but I know distribution and editorial copyright for what it is, piracy with a letter of marque). He also links to sites where the original games can be bought, either in their original form or in those "compilations" which came into fashion a few years ago.
3. Check the gamebooks listed. Your apocalyptic comment on how e-distribution destroys hopes of publishing houses taking interest in a relaunch does not take into account things like: ICE's Middle-Earth Quest gamebooks. As you may know, ICE lost Tolkien Entreprises' license to publish Middle Earth gaming materials. Part of that license loss came out apparently for the fact of them having published gamebooks (TE does not accept the publishing of new Middle Earth fiction, and a gamebook to them was more book than game). So ICE's books are actually "abandonware". Same for stuff like "Crystal Maze". Can you give me the name of a publisher which would ever consider relaunching a gamebook based on a tv quiz show from the 80s??? You can apply the same stuff to Knightmare.
4. For the other stuff, well, most of the books were issued by publishing houses which dwindled, disappeared, merged, etc. Also by authors who have moved to greener pastures (out of necessity or choice). Like you, they can ask their materials to be removed, if they consider that their IP is being jeopardized.
5. You don't curb yourself for a second to see if there's nothing to be said about the fact that it is standard policy now to make most non-best-seller and non-classic books OOP as fast as possible. Gamebooks are a minority affair. You cannot go to most national libraries or documentalist centers and ask for a whole collection of Lone Wolf 1-28. That somebody takes the time and effort to make available at least an e-copy guarantees that the work is not lost in the midst of time. Fine, gamebooks are not the Epic of Gilgamesh or a Shakespeare sonnet, but the idea of books, any kind of books, being lost in the mists of time in the 21st century is still appalling.
6. On that respect, I do not see publishing houses taking steps and measures to keep their back inventories, even if it's just a pre-publishing draft, an archive copy or a .pdf. Excepting in a few companies of the gaming world and of academic writing, "print on demand services" or at least e-book services for "oldies" are a rarity. Some good exceptions are ICE, which provides .pdfs for old Rolemaster, the Time Machine gamebooks, available as an e-book purchase, and the D&D ElectronicSoftwareDownloads. But that would not be the case with defunct companies, or even with reckless ones. I had a small degreen of involvement with WotC's ESD project (to make the whole of pre 3e D&D stuff available as pdf) and it was dreadful how they had to call for collectors and fans to contribute their copies of old stuff, because TSR and subsequently WotC did not manage to keep a whole archive of their publications.
7. That means that a company can hold the rights of a book which is not even in their archives, files or possession anymore, only on contractual documents. That is tantamount with speculating with real estate by buying buildings, make no investment and let them collapse. Speculation and irresponsibility with one's property when it affects the common interest (like a publisher sitting idle on OOP books) is basically a crime.
8. Back to 3. That a book is available in electronic format does not imply that somebody continues interested in getting a copy. I have been enjoying project aon, plus some stuff from underdogs, but that has not prevented me from investing quite a bit over a thousand dollars in OOP gamebooks. Even after getting access to LW 13-15 (and prospectively many more titles), Greystar, the whole Blood Sword, Falcon, Golden Dragon and Dragon Warriors RPG, I have purchased copies of those books through ebay, antiquarian bookstores or online OOP book services. I like having copies of 80s gamebooks and RPG supplements, and no amount of .pdfs is going to change me. Another thing is if I cannot access a single book of a series, just because it is clearly overpriced in OOP (within reason, some old gamebooks are expensive, but some dealers are just insane) or just unavailable at any price for months of years. I see a good service to be able to download a copy, continue the storyline or use RPG info even if my collection stays incomplete.
9. Without sites like underdogs I would not have a clear picture of some series. If I am going to spend over $50 in a paperback book, I want to know if I really like it. You cannot flip through pages of Bloodsword or Fabled Lands in a bookstore, you cannot risk putting just $6 in a book you may not like, as it is hard to find most titles for cover price. So, for the OOP, to have an e-copy accessible is quite a necessity. collectors will always want to buy. They also want to see what they're buying.
10. As for reprints. I wonder if there's not a vast majority of people who have e-copies of FL, Bloodsword, LW, whatever, and, regardless, would be willing (or even longing) to buy the series from a publisher who reprinted them! The "feel" of a gamebook is something quite hard to capture in a pdf, or even in a lettersized printout! The problem comes when you start thinking if the reprints are worth it. I was quite thrilled by the news of wizardbooks reprinting FF till I saw it materialize: besides a hefty price, even for a paperback, the original covers (I don't know if for copyright issues with illustrators or for some insane marketing persuasion) were dropped and some flashy gaudy, bad taste new ones included; books which had maps in the original omitted them in the reprints, and you can buy an original in mint-near mint state for half the price of the reprint! They did not, and I don't believe they are, reprint the "rares" (think of Curse of the Mummy or Revenge of the Vampire, which can reach 3-figure prices).
11. That's what makes Mr. xxx's email a bit suspicious to my ear. Call me paranoid, but he sounds a lot like the anti-Warlock scans rants of Mr. Dave Holt some time ago. A certain desire to blur out the "old world" of gamebooks from the picture, so there's no life outside Wizard Books and the "official sites". I have on my nightstand a copy of "The Pickup Artist" by Terry Bisson, an interesting novel on a future where government destroys "old" art and books to make room for the new ones. I don't know if that's the schema of things, but given the oddjob efforts by wizardbooks, I wonder if all this copywriting rant is not covering a fear of competence, the competence that comes from just paying an educated visit to underdogs, but also to abebooks, ebay or any other marketplace and see the plethora of gamebooks of varying quality which can be acquired and enjoyed. If the fledging gamebook industry of now fears the competence of the past, probably it is just because the effort now is being half-hearted, competence in writing and art was never a bad thing.
A: A couple more notes
>Surely the main point is that if a product is available free on the
>Internet, there is no incentive for a publisher to pick up the out
>of print book and publish it.
Surely the main point is that a publisher is insulting buyer's intelligence by overcharging the product he is selling.
Let's see. The recipe to make a book:
1) get an author with an idea, or commission it, you get a manuscript. But oh, now most publishers only take computer-formatted documents. How much is that? Jon will know too. You get a small percentage of the sales. If you are an obscure author, like me, like Jon Sutherland, like most gamebook writers, normally you get an advance on that, which can go from a few hundred to a few thousand. The publisher's percentage is always quite higher than the author's (normally something like 10/90 or under). That has been like that since Egyptian papyri.
2) Get paper and ink. You know about globalization? Taking wood from the Amazon and manufacturing paper in Asia (I saw 3 paper manufacturers close in my -European- country just because of that), prices have gone down from the more expensive materials (and less abusive) 30 years ago?
3) Edit and format. You have to pay a proofreader for that. But check how many contracts force the author to self-proofread, and how many unemployed MAs and BAs get to work as proofreader for big publishing house courtesy of ultra-nice and fair temp-job agencies. See their salaries and cry.
4) Make the 1st draft. only that drafts are not drafts anymore. they are pdf documents. Maybe some people in the list have not even known those printing machines with metal letters and signs where you had to compose each page by hand. Now you need a computer and some professional book-editing software, something like Acrobat pro. OK, you need some investment in that equipment, and in those big professional printers, but then, it's a far cheaper process than traditional printing. Plus maintenance costs of a computerized printing mainframe are far lower than those of printing presses.
5) Continue with the whole print run.
6) Bookbinding. See 2. The rule of cheap plastic materials, for binding, covers and so on, lowers prices even more.
7) Distribution and marketing, you can say oil prices raise, but only recently. Wages go down. Production of commercials, ads, poster sings, etc, is cheaper now as per 4.
So, the question is, excepting for 1), which is fixed in screwing the author as much as the publisher can, everything seems to have dropped:
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN BOOK PRICES GO DOWN?
No, they raise every year, just wonder, do they pay the author better? No friends, I can assure you. Do they use better quality materials?? As cheap as you can go, a paperback now crumbles as good as it did in the 70s. Well, law is, prices never drop, they always raise. And the cash flows into the publishers' pockets. Publishers which, in turn, are fewer and fewer, as small companies tend to be absorbed by larger editorial and media holdings, which makes production even cheaper.
So, what happens if you don't buy a book because you have a bootleg?
Authors and workers don't get less money. They already almost verge on minimum salary levels, and slavery is illegal excepting in certain countries where maybe they make paper and covers for a few big media companies. Companies won't stop publishing, and they won't stop not taking risks. If somebody does not resuscitate an OOP, it is not because it circulates the internet. You could also say that they don't publish it because you can buy it for one buck at a used bookstore or check it out from the public library, and I hope Jon Sutherland does not hate used bookstores and public libraries. That book-burning thing is sooo 30s. It is because they don't want to take risks and don't see a commercial exit (something ok for somebody who is doing business). Check E.R.Burroughs or Clark Ashton Smith for good examples of scifi authors which were (partly) public domain and, nevertheless, have been published again because of certain market conditions which caught the eye of publishers. If you get a photocopy or scan of a book you cannot afford, cannot find because you live in Antartica or in my home town, or you just want to give a try but feel half-hearted about introducing into your library, you're taking a small percentage from a huge money-making cushion most publishers of commercial literature surround themselves with, normally at the expense of the author, the workers and the material providers. That cushion does include in fact a careful monitoring of self-competence. Print runs these days are shorter than a few decades ago. It is very useful to turn books into seasonal items, so that you always have to go for the new one and not for the backlist, therefore assuring that any new launch, regardless of its literary quality, is a success. No wonder some countries have high VAT for books, with luxury tax levels equal to those applied to furs, gold and designer's clothing. If books are seen like a fashion article and not like a necessity for humans' wellbeing.
[more]
Post ID: 110906607337433436
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
"Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts." - Clare Booth Luce
***
I was asking around for where to buy cheap original games, and 2 independent sources referred me to:
Computex Computer Services (aka Ah Lim's shop), in Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre,
and one referred me to this Hardwarezone thread with more information. I called Ah Lim up on Saturday, and he said Knights of the Old Republic II (KOTOR II) was sold out, and to come on Tuesday at about 2pm. I enquired about the price, but he was skittish, only assuring me that he would give me a "very good price". However, someone had told me that you could save $20 by Final Fantasy XI there, so I assumed that buying KOTOR II might deliver similar savings.
So today I boarded the 153 at Bukit Merah. The bus driver was this grumpy chinese woman who, when I asked her where to get off, mumbled incoherently in the hope of fending me off. However, I was not to be deterred, and wore her down with my persistence until, giving up, she read off her time sheet and gave me an ETA for Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre.
The ETA came and went, yet I didn't see any place that looked vaguely like it was Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre. Experience had also given me faith in the helpfulness of bus drivers in hollering from their seats when passengers' destinations were reached, so I held out for a shout that never came. I was deadened by my confusion, and thrown into a state of apoplexy until I reached Hougang Interchange.
At Hougang Interchange, I called up Computex Computer Services and was given vaguely vague directions, and was asked to ask the bus driver where to get off. So I took the 153 back in the other direction. The bus driver this time was a burly and hairy Indian man with a earring in each ear, but he seemed friendly enough. He tried to describe me where to get off, but in the end he said he would tell me when to get off. And so I sat on the bus, looking around as it moved on for the ever-elusive Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre.
When I started to see road signs for Braddel, my Magnakai Discipline of Divination told me that something was wrong. I went up to the driver and asked if we had passed Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre already. He looked confused momentarily, then replied flippantly: "Pass already, pass already".
And so I got off the bus near Carmichael Road (the location of Patch's demesne, incidentally), and trusted in my stout two feet, sturdy (new) pair of walking sandals and battered but reliable umbrella (for the sun was beating down from above most harshly).
After a long and hard trek, with the four winds tousling my long and silky locks, I finally sighted Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre in the distance, and it was plain why the place couldn't be seen from behind the window panes a moving vehicle: coming from one direction, a huge viaduct in the centre of the road obstructed any view of the shopping centre and especially the letters spelling out its name. Meanwhile, if you came from the other direction, you'd only be able to see the letters spelling out the shopping centre's name if you squinted through the back window of the vehicle and knew where to look, since the letters were not present on the other side of the building. Besides which, the shopping centre, or at least the building with the letters and the bulk of the shops, did not front the main road - it was buffered by another building. So only one traversing by land and so familiar with the lay of the land would be able to determine the location of the place, at least on a first trip.
Descending a steep slope, I found myself staring at an unscaleable fence. Cursing my luck, I had to ascend back to the level of the main road before I could descend another less steep slope some way in front, to reach the shopping centre.
Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre itself was an interesting place, run down and with half of the shop units untenanted. Stepping into it was like travelling through a time warp: the place had a seedy 80s feel, complete with the snack bars that you used to find at Bukit Timah Plaza and Katong Shopping Centre (though I think the latter still has them), the smell from which mixed with the generally musty smell of the place emanating from various unmentionables to produce what I call the "Seedy 80s Shopping Centre" scent: one that used to be able to be sampled at Katong Shopping Centre, Bukit Timah Plaza and to a lesser extent, Far East Plaza. Besides the shop hawking half-decade old fashion, a tattoo parlour (where more than half of the photos of satisfied customers' tattoos were of women, strangely), a shop selling school uniforms and the aforementioned snack bars, there was a sauna, relexology centre and KTVs.
Almost immediately after my stepping into the building, the fire alarm went off (it just isn't my day). The tenants seemed unperturbed, however, no one panicked and after a while the alarm was turned off. A faulty alarm, I assume.
While looking for the toilet, I stumbled across 'Hougang de Sauna' which had 2 hostess-type women clad in sultry black clothing leaning on railings in a bored fashion; one was playing with her child. They paid me no attention, because it was obvious that I was more of a tourist than a potential patron: my attention was captured by what seemed to be a Buddhist prayer room: it had a small waterfall and a pond which contained a water jet spouting from the mouth of a golden fish, a garland-draped altar with an idol in the centre and various pots for joss sticks. The room was naturally ventilated, and oddly enough roofed with zinc sheets, some of which had translucent portions to act as skylights. And words on the door announced that the room was open every Thursday, and on the first and fifteenth of the month, from 10am-6pm:
"Rules & Regulations
1. Praying for peace of mind, good health and success in business
2. Seeking of lucky numbers is prohibited [Ed: This struck me as odd because you could pray for business success]
3. Anyone caught with abuse will be barred from worshiping
4. No burning of joss-papers"
In the end, I managed to locate the shop, which had a very friendly proprietor, and bought KOTOR II for $49; not being familiar with the market, I thought it was being sold at $69.90 at least elsewhere, but Melvin informs me that it retails in most places for $54.90. I also got 5 Sony DVD-Rs for $1.40 each (at the NUS co-op they go for $2.20 or thereabouts, even with the discount card). So in the end I saved but $9.90, almost half of which I burned in transport fees, to say nothing of the time wasted. But at least I had an adventure, of sorts.
My recommendation would be that only those living in the East or Northeast visit the shop, unless you're buying large quantities of merchandise. And for those who appreciate clearer directions than on the HWZ thread: the nearest MRT stations are Serangoon and Kovan, and if you go by bus you should stop around the crocodile farm or the start of the long viaduct.
***
Me: I just had an adventure
Someone: wat adventure?
sex ah :P
hahaaa
Me: sex with you ah
Someone: wtf?
how come i didnt noe
was it good?
was i good :P
im bored
Me: I can tell
maybe it was a doppleanger [Ed: Doppelganger]
Someone: so was it good
the sex i meant
Me: not telling
haha
Someone: hahahahhaa
hahahahha :P
okok
u're not the kiss n tell kind
Me: haha you never kiss me what
how to tell
Someone on why he's not doing business: business will confirm get cheated one......... I so gullible.......
***
After looking at many pictures of moobs, I've come to the conclusion that mine don't actually look too bad. Yay.
***
I was asking around for where to buy cheap original games, and 2 independent sources referred me to:
Computex Computer Services (aka Ah Lim's shop), in Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre,
and one referred me to this Hardwarezone thread with more information. I called Ah Lim up on Saturday, and he said Knights of the Old Republic II (KOTOR II) was sold out, and to come on Tuesday at about 2pm. I enquired about the price, but he was skittish, only assuring me that he would give me a "very good price". However, someone had told me that you could save $20 by Final Fantasy XI there, so I assumed that buying KOTOR II might deliver similar savings.
So today I boarded the 153 at Bukit Merah. The bus driver was this grumpy chinese woman who, when I asked her where to get off, mumbled incoherently in the hope of fending me off. However, I was not to be deterred, and wore her down with my persistence until, giving up, she read off her time sheet and gave me an ETA for Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre.
The ETA came and went, yet I didn't see any place that looked vaguely like it was Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre. Experience had also given me faith in the helpfulness of bus drivers in hollering from their seats when passengers' destinations were reached, so I held out for a shout that never came. I was deadened by my confusion, and thrown into a state of apoplexy until I reached Hougang Interchange.
At Hougang Interchange, I called up Computex Computer Services and was given vaguely vague directions, and was asked to ask the bus driver where to get off. So I took the 153 back in the other direction. The bus driver this time was a burly and hairy Indian man with a earring in each ear, but he seemed friendly enough. He tried to describe me where to get off, but in the end he said he would tell me when to get off. And so I sat on the bus, looking around as it moved on for the ever-elusive Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre.
When I started to see road signs for Braddel, my Magnakai Discipline of Divination told me that something was wrong. I went up to the driver and asked if we had passed Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre already. He looked confused momentarily, then replied flippantly: "Pass already, pass already".
And so I got off the bus near Carmichael Road (the location of Patch's demesne, incidentally), and trusted in my stout two feet, sturdy (new) pair of walking sandals and battered but reliable umbrella (for the sun was beating down from above most harshly).
After a long and hard trek, with the four winds tousling my long and silky locks, I finally sighted Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre in the distance, and it was plain why the place couldn't be seen from behind the window panes a moving vehicle: coming from one direction, a huge viaduct in the centre of the road obstructed any view of the shopping centre and especially the letters spelling out its name. Meanwhile, if you came from the other direction, you'd only be able to see the letters spelling out the shopping centre's name if you squinted through the back window of the vehicle and knew where to look, since the letters were not present on the other side of the building. Besides which, the shopping centre, or at least the building with the letters and the bulk of the shops, did not front the main road - it was buffered by another building. So only one traversing by land and so familiar with the lay of the land would be able to determine the location of the place, at least on a first trip.
Descending a steep slope, I found myself staring at an unscaleable fence. Cursing my luck, I had to ascend back to the level of the main road before I could descend another less steep slope some way in front, to reach the shopping centre.
Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre itself was an interesting place, run down and with half of the shop units untenanted. Stepping into it was like travelling through a time warp: the place had a seedy 80s feel, complete with the snack bars that you used to find at Bukit Timah Plaza and Katong Shopping Centre (though I think the latter still has them), the smell from which mixed with the generally musty smell of the place emanating from various unmentionables to produce what I call the "Seedy 80s Shopping Centre" scent: one that used to be able to be sampled at Katong Shopping Centre, Bukit Timah Plaza and to a lesser extent, Far East Plaza. Besides the shop hawking half-decade old fashion, a tattoo parlour (where more than half of the photos of satisfied customers' tattoos were of women, strangely), a shop selling school uniforms and the aforementioned snack bars, there was a sauna, relexology centre and KTVs.
Almost immediately after my stepping into the building, the fire alarm went off (it just isn't my day). The tenants seemed unperturbed, however, no one panicked and after a while the alarm was turned off. A faulty alarm, I assume.
While looking for the toilet, I stumbled across 'Hougang de Sauna' which had 2 hostess-type women clad in sultry black clothing leaning on railings in a bored fashion; one was playing with her child. They paid me no attention, because it was obvious that I was more of a tourist than a potential patron: my attention was captured by what seemed to be a Buddhist prayer room: it had a small waterfall and a pond which contained a water jet spouting from the mouth of a golden fish, a garland-draped altar with an idol in the centre and various pots for joss sticks. The room was naturally ventilated, and oddly enough roofed with zinc sheets, some of which had translucent portions to act as skylights. And words on the door announced that the room was open every Thursday, and on the first and fifteenth of the month, from 10am-6pm:
"Rules & Regulations
1. Praying for peace of mind, good health and success in business
2. Seeking of lucky numbers is prohibited [Ed: This struck me as odd because you could pray for business success]
3. Anyone caught with abuse will be barred from worshiping
4. No burning of joss-papers"
In the end, I managed to locate the shop, which had a very friendly proprietor, and bought KOTOR II for $49; not being familiar with the market, I thought it was being sold at $69.90 at least elsewhere, but Melvin informs me that it retails in most places for $54.90. I also got 5 Sony DVD-Rs for $1.40 each (at the NUS co-op they go for $2.20 or thereabouts, even with the discount card). So in the end I saved but $9.90, almost half of which I burned in transport fees, to say nothing of the time wasted. But at least I had an adventure, of sorts.
My recommendation would be that only those living in the East or Northeast visit the shop, unless you're buying large quantities of merchandise. And for those who appreciate clearer directions than on the HWZ thread: the nearest MRT stations are Serangoon and Kovan, and if you go by bus you should stop around the crocodile farm or the start of the long viaduct.
***
Me: I just had an adventure
Someone: wat adventure?
sex ah :P
hahaaa
Me: sex with you ah
Someone: wtf?
how come i didnt noe
was it good?
was i good :P
im bored
Me: I can tell
maybe it was a doppleanger [Ed: Doppelganger]
Someone: so was it good
the sex i meant
Me: not telling
haha
Someone: hahahahhaa
hahahahha :P
okok
u're not the kiss n tell kind
Me: haha you never kiss me what
how to tell
Someone on why he's not doing business: business will confirm get cheated one......... I so gullible.......
***
After looking at many pictures of moobs, I've come to the conclusion that mine don't actually look too bad. Yay.
Post ID: 110905979827795222
"The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood." - Logan Pearsall Smith
***
A source told me that as of 2004, 河谷中学 (He2 Gu3 Zhong1 Xue2) had ended its communist hair rules (at least for females). I wonder if Anglican is now the only secondary school in Singapore with such restrictions.
[Addendum: A reliable source has informed me that Paya Lebar Methodist Girls School (PLMGS) also has ridiculous said hair rules. Which is odd, since it doesn't immediately strike me as being a communist school.
Another tells me that when we were in JC, the rule in AHS was lifted.]
***
In the Mix
"THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
The habit of sitting around discussing the meanings of songs people find cryptic has been a longstanding pop tradition. From "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" to "25 or 6 to 4," nothing has been taken at face value. Everything is subject to exegesis, as though any use of symbols, no matter how obvious, made a song deeper. How could "Puff the Magic Dragon" be a children's song? What does "Puff" mean anyway?
There's a trace of that crypto-divination in Eminem's "Stan" (for my money, one of the finest singles of last year). "Stan" alludes to a fairly common urban legend, that Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" is about Collins helplessly standing in the distance watching a friend drown and seeing that someone else nearby could've saved his friend but didn't. ("You know that song by Phil Collins, "In the Air Tonight?" / About that guy who could have saved that other guy from drowning?") In reality, the Collins song is little more than a song about his impending divorce from his first wife. It's a little ironic, isn't it, that the person who himself complains about overly literal interpretations of his text gives in to the same thing?
Me, I'm ornery and I never believe in conspiracy theories. Best one I've heard, though, is the ludicrously elaborate one that claims the Pet Shop Boys stands for "Pray Eternally To Satan, He Offers Peace, But Owns Your Soul."" [Ed: Emphasis mine]
I can't stop laughing.
***
My manual dexterity is insufficient to perform the required actions, but Enming offers a walkthrough for the flash game Hapland:
turn on all the windows before you begin
then shift the arrow
after which you get the stick figure out of the manhole and get him to fire one rock to hit the bridge over
adjust the pointy thing near the bell so the other end points upwards...
then hit the bell with the second rock
fire the two bombs (the two green things in the cannon are bombs...after the rocks) on low...and when they hit the bridge, bounce them so they explode in mid-air.
fire the blue pass low so that it ricochets off the surfaces to reach the guy in the cave
then jerk the lever once more and send the guy into the launcher.
get another man out of the manhole, let him fire, as he flies near the top of the hill, click the steel arrow so that he is not impaled...
he will land safely on the hill, then click on him to push the tower over
click the gun turret on the cannon to lower it
when the tower is pushed, click on the bell until it falls on the sharpened see-saw, this will flip the rock over and explode the land mine
then get the man out of the house, he will enter the other house and light the torch
AT THE SAME TIME get the man out of the cave...
time them both so that when the man gets into the house and activates the switch that causes the rocks to fall, the rocks would fall on the dog that drops out of the exclamation mark box...
just make sure that you get the man out of the house and the other man out of the cave so that once the man gets into the house, he can drop the concrete that will kill the dog...after this happens, both torches will be lit and the goals will be accomplished.
***
Singapore Sucks: Total(itarian) Defence - "Youths are too apathetic, the government of Singapore says. They watch MTV and spend their time trying to sneak into Zouk. After years of suppressing dissent and promoting the "values" of a one-party state, the motley crew of aging cadres have become seedless Abrahams. Perhaps in the seventies and eighties they thought they would live forever. But they will not, and they have realized that a mausoleum is no substitute for a state."
Though he is as fond as Xenoboy of using big words, at least here they do not sound awkward and actually mean something.
Ultimate Christian Wrestling - "UCW is an exciting Christian Outreach Ministry that uses Professional Wrestling as a vehicle to minister to the world. UCW is a family oriented company, focused on clean and spiritually educational entertainment. UCW exists to minister the Gospel of Christ to the Lost and to see lost souls saved. Our long term goal is to have prayer placed back in public school. With your help, and the help of other dedicated Christians, we will achieve just that. UCW is carrying out the Great Commission of our Lord."
I'm quite sure that this is a joke.
Clueless Robber Gets No Respect - "A Minneapolis man allegedly tried to rob a grocery store last month, but tripped himself up when he put his gun on the counter so he could scoop up the cash. The store clerk lost no time in grabbing the gun himself, and chased the gunman out of the store"
Reading about so many gun robberies, you wonder why people can still oppose gun control and claim that their opposition is grounded in rationality.
***
I wonder what lecturers hate more during lectures - students sleeping or students talking loudly.
Quotes:
I prefer your old blog. I'm not interested at looking at all the websites you looked at over the day
[On Secondary School life vs NUS life] life was good. i didn't know what orientalism was.
Inside a squirrel *Draws a deformed squirrel* This looks like a squirrel, doesn't it? You guys are gonna have nightmares tonight.
[On biologists not adhering to the reproductive definition of species] First you ask whether they are a botanist or not. If they're a botanist you don't trust anything they say about species.
[On ending reproductive isolation] Eventually the plants will reproduce with the animals, and you get some unimaginable creature.
[On 2004] Last year was a bad year for evolutionary biologists. They all died.
[On Donoghue] The fact that he talks about whether species exist outside the mind tells you about the confused mind of a botanist.
After we finish speciation, we move on to the next subject. Does anyone know what the next subject is? [Student: Sexual selection] You wish.
Actually in a triathalon, if you're a triathlete and you're riding on a bike, there's a good chance that your [evolutionary] fitness is very low.
[On the relentless march of modern technology] If there is some chalk, I will write on this board, but nowadays chalk is a very scarce commodity.
[On the Uniform Distribution] This distribution has nothing to do with school uniforms, or police uniforms, if you were hoping for that (?!)
Now you have to know how to integrate. Not integrate with your friends or with the school.
How long before the next person arrives in the queue - which is very useful - not just because you're kaypoh [Ed: nosy] - if you go into business. Last time they called it 'Operations Research'. Now - 'Management Science'. They want to make it sound good - 'science'.
I thought these comments would liven up the class, but some people are just closing their eyes.
The final exam and the mid-term test is open-book. You can bring in anything you like, including your favourite comics. (are open-book)
[On the normal distribution] There is one distribution to rule all of them, like the Lord of the Rings tri'lorgy - One Ring to Rule Them All. *laughs from audience* What's so ticklish about that? I thought it's quite a good analog'gee. You're all giggling. (trilogy, analogy)
Carl Frederick Gauss (Friedrich)
You want to impress your friends at a party, you want to turn people off, you talk about the normal distribution. If you want to turn people off some more, if you want people to leave you alone, you tell them: 'I was studying the Gaussian Distribution yesterday'.
[On th probability density function for a normal distributed random variable] When you go out into the working world - all the businessmen, all the statistically illiterate people, they will be talking about the bell-shaped curve. You can talk about the Gaussian Distribution, and you can write down this formula. You'll be one up against your colleagues.
[On finding the points of inflection in a normal distribution] You can prove this by differentiating the equation. Probably more productive than going to a disco on Saturday night.
[On sending errata to textbook authors] I hope they will send me a free copy for pointing out the errors in the book.
If you want to check it up, look for this book: Kendall's Advanced Theory of Statistics. There're always a lot of copies lying around in the library, because no one wants to read it.
That's what beauty parlours are trying to do. They're trying to turn people from platykurtotic to leptokurtotic.
I like cats. Some of them have very fat and ugly tails. But the normal distribution has a very nice tail that's nice and thin.
[On Murdoch and Barnes' Statistical Tables] You'll be given this red book, which has hon students in NUS for decades. (haunted)
Any other questions? Class participation graded ah.
A Colonel Sanders suit... All of us wouldn't want to be caught dead in it.
[On the shopping experience giving consumers satisfaction] Probably not a thing for guys, but girls! You love to go shopping.
[On the failue of the government's policy of encouraging entrepreneurship and scholarship simultaneously] Usually the entrepreneurs are the school dropouts.
[On the GEP retarding entrepreneurship] For those of us who came from THAT particular program, we know that we're the top 1%... Those of us from THAT particular program: we can do whatever we want, but they want you to become a President's Scholar... Only 20-30% go into the private sector
[On the teacher leaving the class to let the students engage in independent discussion] Where's his webcam?
[On an essay] So you got a B+ without a thesis? So we don't need a thesis. First question answered!
I don't think a normal person is interested in Churchland. [Someone: If they're interested in Churchland, they're not normal]
[On close reading] It's getting something out of nothing.
We should mark each other's papers and take the average. So you give the other person A+
He said what we write is too shallow... He has a PhD in Philosophy... It's not our problem, it's his problem (fault that's it's too shallow, fault)
[On deep analysis] The more you wirte, the more you realise you dare'rer'vate (deviate)
[On the Engineering writing module compared to the USP one] You should look at these 3 page readings. I can finish it in 3 minutes. I take twice as long to read a single paragraph [from our readings]
[On writing essays for general readers rather than the teacher] We write for the sake of readerS. Not [a particular] reader. [Someone: The reader. The reader.]
Provided the judger will be fair enough (judge)
Here's a revised schedule for you, so you can frame and show your parents and be proud of. (that)
[On the expected value of an opinion poll being 3.5] There are a lot of macroeconomists so it doesn't matter if we cut one into half.
You can start a society in NUS: Asian Prince Society
[On Asian Prince] I see people putting up his picture.
[On the door to the secret vaults of a museum] This is like the gate to hell over there.
***
A source told me that as of 2004, 河谷中学 (He2 Gu3 Zhong1 Xue2) had ended its communist hair rules (at least for females). I wonder if Anglican is now the only secondary school in Singapore with such restrictions.
[Addendum: A reliable source has informed me that Paya Lebar Methodist Girls School (PLMGS) also has ridiculous said hair rules. Which is odd, since it doesn't immediately strike me as being a communist school.
Another tells me that when we were in JC, the rule in AHS was lifted.]
***
In the Mix
"THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
The habit of sitting around discussing the meanings of songs people find cryptic has been a longstanding pop tradition. From "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" to "25 or 6 to 4," nothing has been taken at face value. Everything is subject to exegesis, as though any use of symbols, no matter how obvious, made a song deeper. How could "Puff the Magic Dragon" be a children's song? What does "Puff" mean anyway?
There's a trace of that crypto-divination in Eminem's "Stan" (for my money, one of the finest singles of last year). "Stan" alludes to a fairly common urban legend, that Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" is about Collins helplessly standing in the distance watching a friend drown and seeing that someone else nearby could've saved his friend but didn't. ("You know that song by Phil Collins, "In the Air Tonight?" / About that guy who could have saved that other guy from drowning?") In reality, the Collins song is little more than a song about his impending divorce from his first wife. It's a little ironic, isn't it, that the person who himself complains about overly literal interpretations of his text gives in to the same thing?
Me, I'm ornery and I never believe in conspiracy theories. Best one I've heard, though, is the ludicrously elaborate one that claims the Pet Shop Boys stands for "Pray Eternally To Satan, He Offers Peace, But Owns Your Soul."" [Ed: Emphasis mine]
I can't stop laughing.
***
My manual dexterity is insufficient to perform the required actions, but Enming offers a walkthrough for the flash game Hapland:
turn on all the windows before you begin
then shift the arrow
after which you get the stick figure out of the manhole and get him to fire one rock to hit the bridge over
adjust the pointy thing near the bell so the other end points upwards...
then hit the bell with the second rock
fire the two bombs (the two green things in the cannon are bombs...after the rocks) on low...and when they hit the bridge, bounce them so they explode in mid-air.
fire the blue pass low so that it ricochets off the surfaces to reach the guy in the cave
then jerk the lever once more and send the guy into the launcher.
get another man out of the manhole, let him fire, as he flies near the top of the hill, click the steel arrow so that he is not impaled...
he will land safely on the hill, then click on him to push the tower over
click the gun turret on the cannon to lower it
when the tower is pushed, click on the bell until it falls on the sharpened see-saw, this will flip the rock over and explode the land mine
then get the man out of the house, he will enter the other house and light the torch
AT THE SAME TIME get the man out of the cave...
time them both so that when the man gets into the house and activates the switch that causes the rocks to fall, the rocks would fall on the dog that drops out of the exclamation mark box...
just make sure that you get the man out of the house and the other man out of the cave so that once the man gets into the house, he can drop the concrete that will kill the dog...after this happens, both torches will be lit and the goals will be accomplished.
***
Singapore Sucks: Total(itarian) Defence - "Youths are too apathetic, the government of Singapore says. They watch MTV and spend their time trying to sneak into Zouk. After years of suppressing dissent and promoting the "values" of a one-party state, the motley crew of aging cadres have become seedless Abrahams. Perhaps in the seventies and eighties they thought they would live forever. But they will not, and they have realized that a mausoleum is no substitute for a state."
Though he is as fond as Xenoboy of using big words, at least here they do not sound awkward and actually mean something.
Ultimate Christian Wrestling - "UCW is an exciting Christian Outreach Ministry that uses Professional Wrestling as a vehicle to minister to the world. UCW is a family oriented company, focused on clean and spiritually educational entertainment. UCW exists to minister the Gospel of Christ to the Lost and to see lost souls saved. Our long term goal is to have prayer placed back in public school. With your help, and the help of other dedicated Christians, we will achieve just that. UCW is carrying out the Great Commission of our Lord."
I'm quite sure that this is a joke.
Clueless Robber Gets No Respect - "A Minneapolis man allegedly tried to rob a grocery store last month, but tripped himself up when he put his gun on the counter so he could scoop up the cash. The store clerk lost no time in grabbing the gun himself, and chased the gunman out of the store"
Reading about so many gun robberies, you wonder why people can still oppose gun control and claim that their opposition is grounded in rationality.
***
I wonder what lecturers hate more during lectures - students sleeping or students talking loudly.
Quotes:
I prefer your old blog. I'm not interested at looking at all the websites you looked at over the day
[On Secondary School life vs NUS life] life was good. i didn't know what orientalism was.
Inside a squirrel *Draws a deformed squirrel* This looks like a squirrel, doesn't it? You guys are gonna have nightmares tonight.
[On biologists not adhering to the reproductive definition of species] First you ask whether they are a botanist or not. If they're a botanist you don't trust anything they say about species.
[On ending reproductive isolation] Eventually the plants will reproduce with the animals, and you get some unimaginable creature.
[On 2004] Last year was a bad year for evolutionary biologists. They all died.
[On Donoghue] The fact that he talks about whether species exist outside the mind tells you about the confused mind of a botanist.
After we finish speciation, we move on to the next subject. Does anyone know what the next subject is? [Student: Sexual selection] You wish.
Actually in a triathalon, if you're a triathlete and you're riding on a bike, there's a good chance that your [evolutionary] fitness is very low.
[On the relentless march of modern technology] If there is some chalk, I will write on this board, but nowadays chalk is a very scarce commodity.
[On the Uniform Distribution] This distribution has nothing to do with school uniforms, or police uniforms, if you were hoping for that (?!)
Now you have to know how to integrate. Not integrate with your friends or with the school.
How long before the next person arrives in the queue - which is very useful - not just because you're kaypoh [Ed: nosy] - if you go into business. Last time they called it 'Operations Research'. Now - 'Management Science'. They want to make it sound good - 'science'.
I thought these comments would liven up the class, but some people are just closing their eyes.
The final exam and the mid-term test is open-book. You can bring in anything you like, including your favourite comics. (are open-book)
[On the normal distribution] There is one distribution to rule all of them, like the Lord of the Rings tri'lorgy - One Ring to Rule Them All. *laughs from audience* What's so ticklish about that? I thought it's quite a good analog'gee. You're all giggling. (trilogy, analogy)
Carl Frederick Gauss (Friedrich)
You want to impress your friends at a party, you want to turn people off, you talk about the normal distribution. If you want to turn people off some more, if you want people to leave you alone, you tell them: 'I was studying the Gaussian Distribution yesterday'.
[On th probability density function for a normal distributed random variable] When you go out into the working world - all the businessmen, all the statistically illiterate people, they will be talking about the bell-shaped curve. You can talk about the Gaussian Distribution, and you can write down this formula. You'll be one up against your colleagues.
[On finding the points of inflection in a normal distribution] You can prove this by differentiating the equation. Probably more productive than going to a disco on Saturday night.
[On sending errata to textbook authors] I hope they will send me a free copy for pointing out the errors in the book.
If you want to check it up, look for this book: Kendall's Advanced Theory of Statistics. There're always a lot of copies lying around in the library, because no one wants to read it.
That's what beauty parlours are trying to do. They're trying to turn people from platykurtotic to leptokurtotic.
I like cats. Some of them have very fat and ugly tails. But the normal distribution has a very nice tail that's nice and thin.
[On Murdoch and Barnes' Statistical Tables] You'll be given this red book, which has hon students in NUS for decades. (haunted)
Any other questions? Class participation graded ah.
A Colonel Sanders suit... All of us wouldn't want to be caught dead in it.
[On the shopping experience giving consumers satisfaction] Probably not a thing for guys, but girls! You love to go shopping.
[On the failue of the government's policy of encouraging entrepreneurship and scholarship simultaneously] Usually the entrepreneurs are the school dropouts.
[On the GEP retarding entrepreneurship] For those of us who came from THAT particular program, we know that we're the top 1%... Those of us from THAT particular program: we can do whatever we want, but they want you to become a President's Scholar... Only 20-30% go into the private sector
[On the teacher leaving the class to let the students engage in independent discussion] Where's his webcam?
[On an essay] So you got a B+ without a thesis? So we don't need a thesis. First question answered!
I don't think a normal person is interested in Churchland. [Someone: If they're interested in Churchland, they're not normal]
[On close reading] It's getting something out of nothing.
We should mark each other's papers and take the average. So you give the other person A+
He said what we write is too shallow... He has a PhD in Philosophy... It's not our problem, it's his problem (fault that's it's too shallow, fault)
[On deep analysis] The more you wirte, the more you realise you dare'rer'vate (deviate)
[On the Engineering writing module compared to the USP one] You should look at these 3 page readings. I can finish it in 3 minutes. I take twice as long to read a single paragraph [from our readings]
[On writing essays for general readers rather than the teacher] We write for the sake of readerS. Not [a particular] reader. [Someone: The reader. The reader.]
Provided the judger will be fair enough (judge)
Here's a revised schedule for you, so you can frame and show your parents and be proud of. (that)
[On the expected value of an opinion poll being 3.5] There are a lot of macroeconomists so it doesn't matter if we cut one into half.
You can start a society in NUS: Asian Prince Society
[On Asian Prince] I see people putting up his picture.
[On the door to the secret vaults of a museum] This is like the gate to hell over there.
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