Alexis was pimping an event called Real Love Works 2012 (it's not supported by SDN but MCYS is behind it and anyway it's in the SDN spirit so I've tagged it as such).
At Punggol Waterway this Saturday from 5:30pm-7:30pm, entry to this event is billed as "Free for all in love".
Description of the event: "Come celebrate the excitement and joys of marriage with Marriage Central at the launch of Real Love Works. Stroll down Punggol Waterway in this fun and unique walk with meaningful couple activities from tying a love knot on the Heart of Marriage, harvesting the flower of love, to capturing memorable moments with our iPhone "Love Journal" app and more! Cuddle up close to your spouse as you watch the sunset together and enjoy an evening of smooth jazz featuring popular artistes."
Meanwhile the registration form just asks for:
"Name of Contact person
IC no.
Contact no.
Partner’s name
Partner's IC no.
Partner's Contact no."
It doesn't ask for gender, or say you to have to be married. So I'm now looking for a guy friend (one I already know, of course - preferably married, even) to go with!
"faith is meant to be personal right? so why display it off? its either insecurity or arrogance. hence need to be banned. I would even ban the usage of Insha'Allah in every other sentence from a muslim as well...
anything to do with any religion have to be banned from workplace and if possible from public streets. You can wear it at home and at ur place of worship. anything other than that is a bomb waiting to explode.
I am totally against anything to do with family or religion displayed at workplace. its just a distraction from being focused on your job...
u dont let a drug addict wave his stash of marijuana in public do u?? Or do you let ur dominatix friend come to work on a latex suite with a whip?? same goes for religious nuts. displaying source of their addiction/perversion is hardly appropriate in any society."
(Reuters) - A school that barred a sixth grader after she dyed her hair pink with her parents' blessing to celebrate her good grades lifted its ban on Tuesday following an outcry from civil rights advocates.
After missing three days of classes, pink-haired Brianna Moore headed back to Shue-Medill Middle School in Newark, Delaware, on Tuesday after administrators reversed their decision after a call from the Delaware branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
"We're on our way right now," said Kevin Moore as he drove his 12-year-old daughter to school.
At his daughter's request last week, he helped dye her hair a shade called crimson storm, which has a pink hue, as a reward for improving her grades.
But when she showed up for school the next day, she was sent home and told not to return until her hair met school policy mandating a "natural color, brown, blond, black, natural red/auburn."
The ACLU soon got in touch with attorneys for the school district and asked, "Don't you think this is unconstitutional?" said Kathleen MacRae, ACLU executive director in Delaware.
Moore was invited back to school with assurances she would not be punished, said Wendy Lapham, school district spokeswoman.
"The hair is not going to be an issue," Lapham said.
"SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA—Members of the International Coalition for Equality criticized a newly unearthed mass grave Monday, saying it lacked religious and racial diversity. "The funereal pit is brimming with Croats, nearly 300 of them, without a single representative Serb," ICE spokesman Jacques Marchand said. "Exclusionary burial practices like this send a negative message to the world. Corpses of all races and creeds should be tossed together to decay in harmony." Marchand acknowledged that the grave did, at least, have a sprinkling of women and children."
"O, my America, my Newfoundland,
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,
My mine of precious stones, my empery ;
How am I blest in thus discovering thee !"
- John Donne
"Since 1994 Transpacific Marriage Agency (TMA) has specialized in introducing Japanese women to Western men for dating, romance, love and marriage. TMA's Japanese women clients are among the most beautiful women on earth, both in appearance and in their supportive attitudes towards men. However, they are not "mail order brides." A Japanese woman cannot be bought "off the shelf" – she needs to be attracted to a man for his own merits, not for his money or the country he lives in."
The ticker text is also hilarious:
"TMA's Japanese lady clients are gentle, kind, supportive, well-educated, slim, clean, feminine, and sincerely seeking lifetime partners." (emphasis mine)
"You never have to meet a TMA woman client without first knowing basic information about her and how she looks."
"Japanese women aren't seeking a man just to get a visa to live in his country."
"Japanese women know how to make a man feel like a man, and they can help you achieve your full potential in life."
"Even though Japanese women treat men like men, they maintain their own womanly dignity, spirit and individual femininity."
"Japanese ladies aren't the meek, obedient and completely subservient "girls in kimono" that some imagine them to be."
"The average Japanese woman has $50,000 in the bank. She is not looking for your money."
"TMA has seen many instances of men who were "below average" who succeeded in spite of initial low expectations."
"Please try to avoid photos that make you look intimidating, unfriendly, angry, goofy, depressed, or undignified."
"TMA's registration materials for women are all in Japanese -- imagine the difficulties this creates for scammers, almost all of whom are from outside Japan... Japanese women are not poor. The Japanese as a whole are very honest people. They aren't like the many scammers from Russia and various poor countries. The economic and social conditions that exist in those countries simply are not present in Japan. Our Japanese women join for one reason -- to find a marriage partner. They are not economic basket cases desperate for a Sugar Daddy. There is virtually no possibility that any of our women clients would ever try to scam you."
"Once I meet a lady and we like each other, how long will it take for us to actually get married?" (this is a question)
"I'm over 50, but only want ladies in their 20s and 30s. What are my chances?" (this is a question)
"Why doesn't TMA send me ALL the profiles in my preferred age range instead of sending them in smaller monthly profile sets?"
"Do you think YOUR profile will be more likely to be noticed by our women clients if we send it together with 900 other men's profiles, or if we send it together with 30 other men's profiles?... That is a hopeless system with a high failure rate, and we feel it also disrespects both men and women. It treats people like data entries, with photos, on a hard disk. It's a cold and heartless system, and TMA never used it."
"Why doesn't TMA allow me to search its entire database of women for characteristics like height and weight, etc.?" (this is a question)
"I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there." - Richard Feynman
***
The Power of Habit: How the history of toothpaste explains why you can’t lose weight. - "This, scientists say, is how habits emerge, and why they are so powerful: They create neurological cravings. Most of the time, these cravings emerge so gradually that we’re not really aware they exist. But as our brains start to associate certain cues (a doughnut box!) with certain rewards (yummy jelly!), a subconscious craving emerges. And so whenever we see the Dunkin' Donuts container in the break room we start craving a donut—even if, just moments before, we weren't hungry at all... Studies indicate that anyone can use this basic formula to create habits of her or his own. Want to exercise more? Choose a cue, such as going to the gym as soon as you wake up, and a reward, such as a smoothie after each workout. Then think about that smoothie, or about the endorphin rush you’ll feel. Allow yourself to anticipate the reward. Eventually, that craving will make it easier to push through the gym doors every day"
NUS students invited to ‘mentor’ newbie PRC MOE scholars like Sun Xu « THE TEMASEK TIMES - "Like Sun Xu, the new PRC MOE scholars will have their tuition fees at NUS paid for entirely by Singapore taxpayers on top of a generous living and housing allowance as well as a to/return ticket back home to China each year. Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Education & Ministry of Law Ms Sim Ann revealed recently in Parliament that the Singapore government spends some $36 million dollars on scholarships to over two thousand students each year, or about S$174,00 per scholar"
Are there human races? « Why Evolution Is True - "Nevertheless, even if most human variation occurs within rather than between races, there are statistical differences between human groups that can, when combined, be used to delimit them. Here’s a figure from the paper by Noah Rosenberg et al. (reference at the bottom) that uses these “multilocus” genotypes to distinguish human populations. Their study involved 1056 individuals studied from 52 geographic populations. The genetic analysis was comprehensive... At a sorting algorithm involving 5 groups, the authors note that the genetic clusters “corresponded largely to major geographic regions.” Those regions are roughly sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and the Middle East, Eastern Asia, Melanesia and Oceania, and the America... This shows the difficulty of answering the question of “how many races are there?” One could call Eurasians a race, or one could call Bedouins a race. It all depends on how finely you want to divide things up, and this is precisely what is expected if populations have evolutionary ancestry, which produces clusters of groups nested within each other. What is clear, though, is that human populations are genetically different, and can be diagnosed as genetically different using multiple pieces of DNA... It’s just as scientifically unsupported to say, for example, that there is no difference among populations in mathematical ability as it is to say that there are differences... The “sociological constructs” thing is simply political correctness imposed on biological reality. In view of the morphological and genetic differences among human populations, how can such differences be “constructs”?" "No one claims that races, either in humans or other animals, must be clear divisions. The best way to illustrate is by pointing out the problems with defining species– there are tons of species concepts. However, the fact that there is no clear concept doesn’t invalidate the idea of races and species."
"I challenge you to walk the color palette and tell me where red ends and orange begins. Clearly such notions as “red” and “orange” are meaningless."
"Asian women tend to have poorly defined Galton ridge patterns which means that they have (more!) difficulty using some kinds of biometric fingerprint sensors."
The Dull New Global Novel - "What seems doomed to disappear, or at least to risk neglect, is the kind of work that revels in the subtle nuances of its own language and literary culture, the sort of writing that can savage or celebrate the way this or that linguistic group really lives. In the global literary market there will be no place for any Barbara Pyms and Natalia Ginzburgs. Shakespeare would have eased off the puns. A new Jane Austen can forget the Nobel."
The Journal of Medical Ethics infanticide debate and “acceptable” free speech - "A controversial academic paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics has triggered a torrent of abuse, including threats of violence and death. Francesca Minerva and Alberto Giubilini, who wrote After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?, argue that given that those who accept abortion typically do so for reasons that have nothing to do with the foetus’s health (even where the foetus clearly is a potential person), then where abortion is permissible, killing a newborn should be permissible, on grounds of consistency. Not a palatable conclusion for many of us, though it could be read as a Swiftian modest proposal that ultimately attacks the morality of permitting abortion."
LOL Shakesville, Disagree with Melissa = Rapist - "No Melissa, the only people who behave like rapists are RAPISTS. Its insulting to victims of rape to compare the heinous crime of rape to people that annoy you on the internet" Sadly LOL Shakesville was last updated a year ago
Yoga Fans Sexual Flames and, Predictably, Plenty of Scandal - NYTimes.com - "Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult — an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise... The rites of Tantric cults, while often steeped in symbolism, could also include group and individual sex. One text advised devotees to revere the female sex organ and enjoy vigorous intercourse. Candidates for worship included actresses and prostitutes, as well as the sisters of practitioners... scientists have measured sharp rises in testosterone — a main hormone of sexual arousal in both men and women. Czech scientists working with electroencephalographs have shown how poses can result in bursts of brainwaves indistinguishable from those of lovers. More recently, scientists at the University of British Columbia have documented how fast breathing — done in many yoga classes — can increase blood flow through the genitals. The effect was found to be strong enough to promote sexual arousal not only in healthy individuals but among those with diminished libidos... Since the baby boomers discovered yoga, the arousal, sweating, heavy breathing and states of undress that characterize yoga classes have led to predictable results... If yoga can arouse everyday practitioners, it apparently has similar, if not greater, effects on gurus — often charming extroverts in excellent physical condition, some enthusiastic for veneration"
When Technophobia Becomes Toxic - "Responding to the bleating of activists, policymakers have subjected the testing and commercialization of genetically engineered crops to unscientific and draconian regulations, with dire consequences. A groundbreaking study of the political economy of agricultural biotechnology concluded that over-regulation causes “delays in the global diffusion of proven technologies, resulting in a lower rate of growth in the global food supply and higher food prices.” Current policies also create “disincentives for investing in further research and development, resulting in a slowdown in innovation of second-generation technologies anticipated to introduce broad consumer and environmental benefits.” Everyone involved in food production and consumption has suffered: consumers (especially in developing countries) have been subjected to avoidable health risks, and food producers have placed themselves in legal jeopardy for selling products known to have “design defects.” Public policy that discriminates against and discourages vital innovations in food production is not policy that has the public’s interest at heart."
Breast-feeding as religion - Dennis Prager - Townhall Conservative Columnists - "In Norway, for instance, it is now illegal to advertise baby formula... I acknowledge having no scientific basis on which to challenge the many scientific studies that point to the health benefits of breast-feeding... Is there a shred of evidence that adoptive mothers bond less with their children? Do women who cannot breast-feed bond less well with their child? Do women who breast-feed one child and bottle-feed the other love the breast-fed child more? Are men incapable of equal love of their children?" Amusingly I usually see these arguments coming from the other side of the aisle
Fortune cookies pulled from Linsanity flavor: report - "There seemed to be a bit of an initial backlash about it, but we obviously weren't looking to offend anybody and the majority of the feedback about it has been positive" As with all allegations of offence, the veto complainers have over ideas - even if most others welcome them - drives everything down to the lowest common denominator. As with cases where people are offended by nudity, obscenity or homosexuality, offence is in the mind of the beholder; "If you don't like it, don't buy/watch/read it"
Flight of the Conchords Ep 8 'Foux Da Fa Fa' - YouTube I'm amused because the person through whom I found this found it amusing, but if the video had been gently mocking Zulu or Malay, she would probably have been epileptic
Laura Maggi Le Cafe: Busty barmaid serves up drinks in skimpy outfits - "Some customers were travelling up to 70 miles just to have a coffee in her bar... 46 per cent of respondents said partners of her male customers should be ‘asking themselves why their partners prefer Laura to them’... Bagnolo’s mayor Cristina Almici said... ‘We can’t stop people from going to her bar and I know it is very popular with men in the town – personally I don’t see any problem with how she looks or dresses. If anything, it’s the men who go there who have a problem.’ She added, however: ‘My husband is certainly not allowed to go there’"
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers DVD news: DVD Plans for Power Rangers - "Factory has signed the deal to distribute DVDs (and Blu-rays, if they wish, although that's not initially expected) from Saban Capital Group's Saban Brands division. That includes the Haim Saban-created series Power Rangers, including all incarnations of the show from 1993 to 2009"
Me: Nationalism and jingoism, especially when stirred up for political purposes, do not respect the principle of self-determination.
Someone: i would like to go to your house, and use my self-determination principle to decide your kitchen is mine.
Me: First I'd kick all the Argentines from Patagonia and the Misiones, then I'd deport all of the mestizos and whites from the rest of Argentina
Someone: LOL that's a pretty clear answer that shows your racism.
Me: LOL tell that to all the victims of the genocide during la Conquista del desierto
Someone: in fact, let's talk about the american conquer, or about neardental victims.
Me: You brought up history, not me.
Historical note: La Conquista del Desierto or the Conquest of the Desert, which involved genocide by Argentina against the "real" natives of Patagonia, took place in the 1870s.
This was 4 decades after Britain re-established control over the Falklands making this case, if nothing else, more historically relevant than the "Malvinas", even if one ignores the Iberian conquest of the Americas (which resulted in the replacement of native Americans by whites and mestizos), which were a mere 3 centuries before 1833 (which in turn is only about 2 centuries before the current date)
"Marianne insists throughout the course of her narrative that she is not an author (“je ne suis point auteur”) and that she knows neither how to write nor how to express complex abstractions. The fact that she tells her reader this in the midst of a narrative characterized by extreme verbosity and a penchant for philosophical digressions is a significantly ironic point not to be overlooked.’She begins her story by complaining to the friend to whom she is writing her memoirs that she has no literary competence...
The above passage should not, however, convince us that Marianne truly believes her lack of verbal style renders her ineffectual as an observer of the human condition. While advertising her naïveté, she, like the primary voices of Marivaux’s journals, also believes that it is this very naïveté that validates her observations and makes them all the more genuine"
--- Face Value: Physiognomical Thought and the Legible Body in Marivaux, Lavater, Balzac, Gautier, and Zola / Christopher Rivers
"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." - Juan Ramon Jiminez
***
Me: A: Insulting people is not a good way to get them to agree with you
A: @Gabriel they're not going to listen to my argument anyway and are going to argue from their
Own prejudices and biases, So I might as well tell them what I think of them. Of you think and act like a fundamentalist cumbubble, I'll call you that.
Me: Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries
A: ...
Ok lets make this simple. Anyone here been raped? No. Anyone here knows anyone who's been.raped? Chances are no.
So what are you arguing from? Ignorance.
All this discussion about whether she was raped is meaningless if you keep discounting everything. You dont know if she was so no point even raising that. No ones saying anyone deserves to be raped so fouridine kpet throwing up that red herring.
So what the FUCK are you arguing about?
Seriously. What the hell are you idiots arguing about?
...
[In another thread]
A: *some photo with text*
"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd."
-- Bertrand Russell
One of my favourite philosphers.
Me: "People who have been properly brought up are supposed not to insult other people" - One of your favourite philosophers
A: 'People should mind their own fucking business' - Me
B: Easily resolved - A is a BR fan who was not properly brought up. =D
A: I've been brought up well enough to recognise dumbfucks when I see them.
Me: "When people move about, act, and transact in public arenas, they are implicitly consenting to be seen and noticed. Even philosopher Jeffrey Reiman, who favors a strong right to privacy and for whom respect for privacy is expressed as "a complex of behaviors that stretches from refraining from asking questions about what is none of one's business to refraining from looking into open windows one passes on the street" (1976, 43-44), concedes that the social demands of privacy do not include "the right never to be seen on a crowded street" (p. 44). practically speaking, it is not only implausible that one would not be noticed, but imposes an unreasonable burden on others, requiring that they actively restrain themselves by averting their gaze or not telling others what they saw... In other words, if people make no effort to cover, hide, or remove themselves or information about themselves from public view, if they willingly yield information into the public domain, if they let the proverbial "cat out of the bag," it is unreasonable for them later to "get it back" or suppress it"
--- Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life / Helen Fay Nissenbaum
"Ministers will argue that because it is not a “requirement” of the Christian faith, employers can ban the wearing of the cross and sack workers who insist on doing so"
To justify this, one could use research which 'shows' that seeing the objects of another religion harms one; when psychic harm is taken to be real harm, the floodgates are opened.
"Non-Christians feel less self-assured and have fewer positive feelings if a Christmas tree was in the room... Christians, however, did report feeling more guilt when a tree was in the room, which, claim the researchers, suggests the holidays can be stressful...
"I don't think it's really going to undermine anyone's experience of Christmas to tone it down. We're not suggesting 'no Christmas' or 'no Christmas displays at all,' but in contexts where we really do value respecting and including diversity in terms of religion, the safest option is not to have these kinds of displays""
The best way to be inclusive and diverse, then, is to do nothing - so you don't offend anyone.
If exposure to manifestations of homosexuality raises some people's blood pressure, should we avoid such manifestations?
"One wonder what would happen if subjects were tested on a variety of other things that might make them feel excluded. After all, McGill University philosopher Charles Taylor, an expert on the 'politics of recognition,' says, we're all members of one minority or another.
It got me wondering about other things that can get people into a mood of feeling they don't belong.
Like being among university grads and not having a bachelor's degree. Going solo to a party where most people are couples. Being Somalian while living in a neighbourhood of ethnic Chinese. Being a female on a mostly male soccer team. Having a mental illness among people who are emotionally stable. Walking on a beach full of men and women with sculpted bodies. Being a boy at an elementary school where 19 out of 20 teachers are female. Working at a minimum-wage coffee shop job serving well-off Vancouverites...
It suggest a hyper-sensitivity on behalf of non-Christians, treating them as "victims" of so-called mainstream culture. Curiously enough, as a religion writer I almost always find, anecdotally, that Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists are highly enthusiastic people about Christmas, which has become a giant secular holiday as much as a Christian one. These religiously active minorities sometimes seem to like Christmas's public trappings more than Christians themselves"
"I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room." - Blaise Pascal
***
"My rapist doesn’t know he’s a rapist you taught him it wasn’t his fault. I drank too much, flirted and my shorts. Too short. I was asking for it. He left me in a parking garage staircase. My (ex)boyfriend spit in my face. He called me a slut, he called me a whore. I deserved it. My friends gave me dirty looks. They called me trash, not realizing, it could have been them. This culture, your culture, my culture, told them, told me, this was my fault. And I suffered. But, my rapist doesn’t know he’s a rapist. I am not ashamed. I will take a stand. Slutwalk DC 2011"
A possible alternate view of the story: "she was wearing short skirt, had some drinks and flirted with some guy at the bar, then had sex in a stairwell, regretted it and told her boyfriend, who called her a slut, broke up, told her friends, called her a slut, now she calls the guy a rapist"
"Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated" - Catharine MacKinnon
Someone identifies the problem here as "accusing a woman who (whether she's lying or not) for being rape because she wore short skirts and flirted with the man". Yet, since drinking and flirting are normal precursors to intercourse in a hookup setting, they give us some reasons to think that it was consensual.
Similarly, in a murder trial, if the defendant had gotten into a loud argument with the victim and if one were Googling "how to kill someone" the night before, they would be taken as reasons to believe that the defendant was guilty.
Of course the usual question came up: "So what if she really was raped? U saying she deserved it?"
Of course, "she deserved it" is a very loaded phrase. Does anyone "deserve" any bad end? Let's take 3 examples:
"Fantasy writer David Eddings, 75, said he was using water to flush out the gas tank of his broken-down Excalibur sports car, when some fluid leaked. In a lapse of judgment he readily admitted, Eddings lit a piece of paper and threw into the puddle to test if it was still flammable. The answer came in an orange torrent.
The fire raged through the garage and a quarter of the way into the office that occupies the lot next door to his home... "One word comes to mind," the renowned wordsmith said as he stood in a pajama shirt and slippers. "Dumb.""
Did David Eddings deserve to have his house burnt down?
2) Alternatively, let us look at a Darwin Award winner from 2011.
"Protesting motorcycle helmet laws, an Onondaga, NY man was participating in a bare-noggin protest ride when he was killed via flipping over the handlebars. The motorcycle accident injured the noggin of Mr. Contos, 55, fatally damaging a brain that was unable to determine the physics of the situation"
Did Mr Contos deserve to get fatal brain damage?
3) To take a more personal example, if I forget to lock my house door when I go out and find that my house has been burgled, did I "deserve" to get burgled?
I am very sure that anyone who said that she "deserved" to get raped is going to say that in at least some of these 3 examples, the victim also "deserved" to have the misfortune visited upon him, so this is not indicative of "rape culture" or any such nonsense, but rather a more general worldview about personal responsibility.
In any event, sidestepping the question of whether any of these 4 people (or indeed anyone) "deserves" any bad thing that happens to them, we can say that they could've taken steps to prevent these bad things from happening.
***
It is time to elect a new world leader, and only your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates.
Candidate A: Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. He's had two Mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.
Candidate B He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.
Candidate C He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer and never cheated on his wife.
Which of these candidates would be your choice? Decide first, no peeking, then scroll down for the answer.
"So little time and so little to do." - Oscar Levant
***
[On it taking 2 hands to clap] "Geylang is just a part in Singapore which is who of nice food and lust. Being a lady myself. If I ever caught my bf there being with a fling or pros, I will blame tat I didn't take care of my own relationship well." (the comment comparing "SG WIFE" and "PRC GAL" is hilarious)
I finally found out the answer to a question that'd been bugging me for 17 years: Angel Grove High = the Ulysses S. Grant High School in Los Angeles.
For cities that have more than one Hard Rock Cafe (e.g. Singapore with Changi and the City) do the T-shirts read differently?
夫妻相 may be sweet, but it could mean you're related
I realise the French Fuck is very misnamed.
Any "temporary" ban on shark finning would become permanent. Just look at whales.
Why is dodgy health advice so popular? I'm tempted to tell people to eat 3kg of raw bitter almonds to maintain their health.
WOO HOO! Under the Road Traffic Act you can run down cats (but not horses, cattle, asses, mules, sheep, pigs, goats or dogs). Where is the Cat Welfare Society?
For all the Argentines talk about the Falklands, they keep quiet on Patagonia and the Misiones.
Suspecting some who condemned Iraq 2003 as illegal also condemn the UN for being useless for Syria 2012.
Amused that Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School - a SAP school - got Gold for Indian Dance (with Chinese students dancing). Even more amused that someone making this observation was told that he sounded racist.
If bourgeois pigs will always be bourgeois pigs, pig farmers will always be pig farmers.
People only say "correlation is not causation" when they don't like the result.
"Liberals believe in evolution in a classroom setting. Conservatives deny evolution in the classroom, but are more willing to believe in it in the real world... they act like humans have a genetic legacy that includes a sexual division of labor, group differences, hereditary traits, etc"
I got a phishing email - sent to someone else's address and CCed to more than 90 other addresses. Well done.
"10千万女人寻求一个男人为了今晚做爱" - Even if you want to BS you shouldn't be so outrageous
"How can you not have watched Citizen Kane? I thought you're a Europhile"
"Spiritual but not religious on dating sites means the person is a cuckoo, mystical, new age kind of person" (this is from Rationally Speaking)
"why does the HPB website tell me to go for pap smear when i click on screening info for Men? arghhh"
"I wanna write 'I miss you' on a rock and throw it at your face so you know how much it hurts to miss you."
RT: @FlareonRRRAGE: From now on, whenever a girl asks me "do guys really think about sex every 7 seconds?", I will look them in the eye and lick my lips.
RT @skinnylatte: I marvel at how Malaysians are celebrating a play about racism by one of Singapore's very own racists.
RT @querulus The name "Natasha" is "Ah Satan" backwards, but nobody freaks out about that.
RT: @sickipediabot: Give a man a fish, and he'll feed himself for a day. Beat him to death with his own shoe, and he won't be hungry anymore.
"This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it." - William Goldman
***
Evgeny Morozov: The IGod: Steve Jobs’s Pursuit Of Perfection—and The Consequences. - "The piece about Jobs in Der Spiegel shed no light on his personality, but it stood out for two reasons. The first was its title: “Der Philosoph des 21 Jahrhunderts,” or “The Philosopher of the Twenty-First Century.” The second was the paucity of evidence to back up such an astonishing claim... For Jobs, consistency was truly the hobgoblin of little minds (he saw little minds everywhere he looked) and he did his best to prove Emerson’s maxim in his own life... He talked up the virtues of contemplation and meditation, but did everything he could to shorten the time it takes to boot an Apple computer... Jobs famously expressed his utter indifference to the customer, who in his view does not really know what he wants. Apple’s most incredible trick, accomplished by marketing as much as by philosophy, is to allow its customers to feel as if they are personally making history... For much of the last decade, Apple was not just selling gadgets; it was also selling technologically mediated therapy... If gadgets and devices in their ideal form exist independently of reality and are to be discovered by epistemologically privileged designers, then the science of making customers out of thin air can be justified only on the grounds that the designer is a kind of prophet who has access to a higher truth and needs to spread that truth as widely, as evangelically, and as remorselessly as possible. Those who attack Apple as a quasireligion are more correct than they know... Jobs wanted every household in the world to have an Apple product so that he could teach the bastards proper aesthetics: this was emancipation from the top down. It is a strange way to promote empowerment... Ironically enough, the most consequential of Apple’s threats is not to the physical but to the virtual: the company may eventually suffocate the Internet. Apple’s embrace of the “app paradigm”—whereby activities that have been previously conducted on our browsers shift to dedicated software applications on our phones and tablets—may be destroying the Internet in much the same way that the automobile destroyed the sidewalks and the playgrounds... his own tragic limitations were on full display when Rolling Stone asked him about the future of technology—whether genetic research and cloning “were pushing it all too far.” He rolled his eyes. “You know—I’d rather just talk about music. These big-picture questions are just—zzzzzzzz,” he said, and started snoring. The philosopher of the twenty-first century, indeed." For a book review, very little of the article is about the book
Lindsay Lohan Hosts Saturday Night Live - iVillage - "A wine-chugging Cinderella then introduced her husband Prince Charming, whom the other housewives can tell is secretly gay.
"Here's some good advice: Never marry a guy who's really into shoes," Cinderella slurred."
Cold Oil French Fries (Chips) Absorb Less Oil - "Absorbing oil has nothing to do with how long the potatoes fry for but how high they’re fry at, because that high temperature will drive away more moisture"
Factors that affect fat uptake during French fries production - "Very high temperatures shorten the life of the fat. Raising the temperature of the fat higher than 185°C causes the fat to break down more rapidly due to an increased rate of oxidation and polymer formation in the fat... On the other hand, if French fries are cooked at lower temperature, or the ‘boiling action’ on the surface ceases due to a lower heat input, the crust does not form on the surface. This allows extra fat to penetrate into the core of the French fries... When fat-containing food such as chicken, sausages, and other meat products are fried, some of the fat from these foods is extracted during cooking and replaced with the cooking fat. This exchange of components, including fat and salt, changes the composition of the frying fat
during the cooking process. Moreover, this extracted fat is in a natural unrefined state that is more unstable and causes darkening of the fat. Potatoes fried in this fat are of reduced quality. Therefore it is preferable to use a separate fryer for the cooking of French fries and the same fat should not be used for frying of different foods"
Blocked on Weibo - "What's not allowed on China's version of Twitter"
not sticking your dick in crazy - "you love your dick.
why would you KNOWINGLY
stick it in crazy.
this is a public service announcement.
KEEP YOUR DICK OUT OF CRAZY." "Don't stick your dick in crazy"
Is decoupling real? « Consider the Evidence - "Since the 1970s, income growth for middle-class American households has become decoupled from growth of the economy... The measure [below] includes all sources of cash income. It adds in-kind income (employer-paid health insurance premiums, food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid benefits), employee contributions to 401(k) retirement plans, and employer-paid payroll taxes. Tax payments are subtracted... The story is virtually identical"
Airlines Studying the Science of Better In-Flight Meals - NYTimes.com - "Until recently, airline food seemed in terminal decline — another victim of widespread cost cuts in this long-troubled industry. Industry experts trace the problem back to 1987, when American Airlines removed a single olive from its salads to save a little money... "Ice cream is about the only thing I can think of that tastes good on a plane""
Facebook faces flak over surname mess - "The All Assam Chutia Students' Union (Aacsu) on Saturday raised serious concern against a social networking site blocking the accounts of thousands of Chutia community subscribers believing the accounts to be fake and fabricated. Chutia, pronounced Sutiya, is a community in Assam while the word is a commonly-used derogatory term in Hindi... The students' organization also decided to burn an effigy of the social networking site... "We think it may be a deep-rooted conspiracy against our community""
Why should my bike subsidize your car? - "Drivers do not bear the true economic costs of their choices, let alone the environmental ones. Instead, the supermarket takes the cost of providing the parking and, since we all pay the same prices for grocery items, redistributes it among everyone who shops there. In effect, cyclists, walkers and those who take public transit subsidize the parking of those who don’t." Comments: "The analysis is defective. There would be no food store there without roads to bring in the food. Cars pay for the roads thorugh fuel taxes. Bikers are "free riders' who do not pay for the roads. Bikers want roads to ride on, and food in the store, but both require cars and trucks. Reducing externalities is a legitimate goal. But you can't cherry pick only the cost's you dont like."
"How dare you carp about an “unequal” burden you and your tree hugging sect pay! I am a resident of Northern Virginia and part of the taxpaying citizens who built and maintain a bike trail for your less than 1% of the population to use absolutely free. Included in this amenity are several multimillion dollar flyovers, parking areas and rest areas. The quality of this path is maintained by tax dollars that even your sect pays – though you are only 1% of the tax base. So suck it up, Dude, you got the clean end of the stick!"
MODEL-MORPHOSIS - T Magazine Blog - NYTimes.com - "The photographer Greg Kessler captures the transformations of the Fall 2012 Fashion Week in Paris" I actually prefer the Before shots of many of them
African voices respond to hyper-popular Kony 2012 viral campaign - ""This is me talking about the danger of portraying people with one single story and using old footage to cause hysteria"...
She urges those concerned about human rights in Africa to "think before you give"...
"I was concerned at the simplicity of the approach that Invisible Children seemed to have taken"...
"The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening"...
He says he wants to "bang my head against my desk" to "make the dumb-assery stop""
Malaysia safest country in Southeast Asia, 19th in the world - "Malaysia has been recognised as the safest country in Southeast Asia and 19th the world, in the Global Peace Index (GPI) report for 2011, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein." Evidently their education system isn't very good, since they misunderstand what the GPI measures
Girl who posed as a boy to molest teen girls is jailed - "She wore hats and baggy clothes to hide her real identity when she met them. Barker sexually assaulted one girl up to 20 times, and the other one up to ten times. She also fooled her victims' families, and was rumbled only after one girl began suspecting her "boyfriend" was not who he claimed to be. Her alter ego Aaron Lampard was arrested for sexual assault — and her real identity was revealed when cops took off her hat and her long hair tumbled out. The fraud charge came after Barker tried to win compensation by breaking her own jaw, then claiming she had been assaulted by one of her fake male characters" And you thought the Chinese kungfu stories of women disguising themselves as men were improbable
The writer of 'Sh*t My Dad Says' on why your team doesn't give a damn about you - ""This doc, he got real sweet on one of the strippers there. And he started coming back from lunch and telling everybody how he was sure this girl was sweet on him too, and that she was telling him he was different than the other guys, and blahbitty fuckin' blah. This goes on for a few months. Then, on Valentine's Day, he shows up at the titty bar with a bunch of flowers to ask this stripper to be his girl or whatever. Guess what happened."
"She said no."
"No. He never even asked her, 'cause when he walked in she was grinding her ass on some guy's hard-on...
"What he failed to recognize — that any sane human being would — is that a stripper is always gonna be just nice enough to you to keep you coming back, but at the end of the day, she doesn't give a fuck about you. You're just a hard-on she rubs up on for money. That's her job. And guess what? That's the same goddamn way the San Diego Chargers and any other team feels about you""
Use the Equipment!
- Art canvas and paints
- Woodworking tools
- Welding tools"
This sounded dodgy.
3 days of flying insect splats on the windscreen
I thought this was going to be my meal - pork crackle and vanilla malt milk; a fish and chips shop was closed and would be for at least 20 more minutes (if they respected their stated opening time), and there were no sandwiches on sale in the supermarket (only roasting chickens).
Luckily, my palate and stomach were saved by a KFC (well).
KFC menu
Lunch. The gravy was tastier than in Singapore (no surprise given how Australians love gravy). The fries sucked though - they were hot but not crispy. Perhaps they were meant to be dipped in the gravy - I did this anyway, especially as there was a LOT of gravy (see above about Australians).
I'd been told that the kualiti of KFC in Australia was lower than in Singapore, but I found it to be about the same. The fillet burger was bigger than in Singapore and the mayo was more sour.
We then returned the car at the airport. Hertz had a full tank option - at a price of $1.54/l (to fill the whole tank), one could return the car with as little fuel as one wanted. However this was not worth it as one would want to keep some fuel in the tank as a buffer: in town fuel was $1.629/l, which was only 5.8% more.
Alice Springs Airport - with empty Tiger queue, and French tourists.
Tiger allows one to bring 2 items of baggage weighing 10kg on board. Perhaps this is to compete in the local market.
"Fly the Flag" (condom publicity)
What about lesbians? They are excluded from the publicity
"As of 1 July 2008 access through this door will be restricted to personnel from the AFP, ARFFS and Airport Operations and Security... Maximum penalty exceeds $5,000"
Presumably before that visitors could waltz past. And "exceeds $5,000" is very vague.
Alice Springs Airport allowed visitors to go past security screening. I guessed this was because the shops were all past screening, and it was too small to make a real distinction between the passenger and visitor areas.
I'd my stick out, so the lady at the counter asked if I wanted a buggy to get to the plane. How nice.
They didn't check MR's photo ID. Domestic flights are slack.
There was a sign saying that one could not walk or ride on the conveyor belt for baggage. But they always do that at Changi...
"William & Catherine: Their Lives, Their Wedding"
This was $45, barely 3 months after the wedding. This seemed a bit cheap, but they're not crazy about their monarch.
The airport shop called hair ties "metal free elastics".
The bookshop sold Nuts magazine, but it was British. Cultural imperialism!
"Some girls. My life in a harem" by Jillian Lauren (the girl who was in a Bruneian harem) was on sale. I doubt it's on sale in Singapore, since that might cause a diplomatic incident.
There was a magazine with very WTF copy:
Landing in Darwin we found it to be hot but bursting in life compared with Alice Springs.
I think this was what I thought was "Porkies" but was actually "Pokies"
Brochure on petrol sniffing. Of course, this is for the aborigines' benefit. Amusingly there are links to be drawn between petrol sniffing and the inhalation of substances for religious purposes.
Mitchell Street, a multicultural street crowded with young white partygoers.
For dinner I had pizza at "Mitchelli's the Pizza Place", which claimed to have Darwin's best pizza. I crossed my fingers, hoping it was better than what I'd had on Lygon Street in Melbourne. I wasn't confident, yet the other options: Vietnamese and Thai among others, didn't really excite me.
Menu. Carbonara pizza??? It has no egg or even cream sauce.
You can see their priorities - the alcohol menu is longer than the one for food, despite it being a "casual pizza place"
10" Jester: a tomato base, mushrooms, ham, tiget prawns and cheese
It was horrendously stacked, but the same rule one applies to prata can be applied to pizza - too many toppings ruin them.
Excess of toppings aside, it was mediocre. Despite the lack of an Italian legacy to live up to it was about the standard of Papa Gino's in Melbourne. Again I couldn't really taste the tomato base, and it was a bit cremated; I'm not a diehard follower of the Italian tradition (I like California Pizza Kitchen, even Japanese pizza) - I just ask for my pizza to taste good.
"Happy high herbs. If you're not happy about the bans on the synthetic weed products: MAKE SOME NOISE!!!"
We then went to stock up on supplies for our journey the next day.
"Ideal for: BBQ's" (sic)
Would you use pittes for pizza???
"Real Stock" (there's no pork though)
What do the Aussies normally use? Fake Stock?
"In a Biskit Crispy Bacon"
They had chu qian yi ding instant noodles.
"Chocolate biscuits" is a different category from "biscuits"
They also have "longlife milk"
Which contrasts, of course, with "freshmilk"
Cole's had no People or Picture magazines. There was Maxim but the pictures were all "proper".
I was unable to find Krimer and other Krap.
There was also a category of "audio visual"
Vegemite scrolls. Ugh.
"We Need You! Help round up our abandoned trolleys."
Cruel humour or empowering?
I took a walk by the seaside (the Esplanade) and encountered:
Wtf sprinklers. Among other things they watered the pavement.
In The Esplanade there was also:
Wtf toilet. The most surprising bit was the muzak: Burt Bacharach gives me constipation.
Free condoms
Draconian approach to alcohol
Strange booth to sit in
Solo tastes better than Lift - it has more body (both are citrus soft drinks). The edge reminds me of Schwepps bitter lemon, except it's not bitter but cuts gently.
No one used foursquare in the Northern Territory; I got many mayorships.
There's so much deadly wildlife in Australia, yet you have men walking around in shorts.
Most restaurants boasted that they were "fully licensed". Are there half-licensed places?
I like to think of myself as a Renaissance Man, who champions the values of the Enlightenment and aspires to the Cardinal Virtues of Prudence, Temperance, Justice and Fortitude.
I am also a student of the Misery of the Human Condition.
