"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." - William Blake

Random Playlist Song: Schnabel, Josef - Transeamus (Berliner Haendel Chor, Radio Symph. Orch., Guenter Arndt)

Transeamus usque Bethlehem et
videamus hoc verbum quod factum est.

[Full lyrics, score]


Random Trivia bit: An organization called SCROOGE was formed in 1979 in Charlottesville, Virginia. the acronym stands for the Society to Curtail Ridiculous, Outrageous and Ostentatious Gift Exchanges.

***

My sister has been trying to persuade me to rebond my hair ever since she came back. She says that, since my hair grows slower than normal people's, and includes many wiry strands too, it's taking forever to grow out so after rebonding it'll look neater.

The response from my panel of distinguished advisors is mixed. Some expressed horror, others urged me on (though probably more from a desire to laugh at me than anything else).

At any rate, after some observation, consideration and research, I have decided against it.

***

Captain Planet had a mullet!

A: Captain planet had a bad ass mullet, makeing him the best superhero of all time.

B: That makes no sense! If CP had a mullet - then ipso facto he must have a truck or a Hummer - thus making him the most unenviromentally friendly redneck on the planet! Go figure.

A: Oh I don't know. When you think about it, his mullet was the one power he never used. The bad guys could've exploded a nuclear bomb and Captain Planet could've flown down and smothered it with his mullet.

***

Someone: What is USP?
Me: It's where stupid people do stupid things and [so] take more difficult modules to pull down their CAP.
Some other USP person: Ultra Stupid People


Sometimes we wonder why we're in this vital statistic-depressing program.

***

What historians deduced about the existence of Christ

"The most compelling reason to conclude that the Gospels are fictions is based upon the silence of the Epistles. They are placed first because unlike the Gospels, they do not allude to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and because the epistles totally lack familiarity with the content of the Gospels...

The Epistles are also a stumbling block unto those who thought that there was an historical Jesus. If we assume that Paul was a preacher who traveled extensively and communicated with many of the first Christian communities, then his silence is telling. If the Gospels had already been written and circulated among the Christian communities, then Paul and the other authors would have been aware of these "eyewitness" accounts. And since the Gospels contain the sayings and teaching of Christ, then these missionaries, authors of the Epistles, would have relied upon the authority of Christ to instruct the early Christian communities.

But they don't. There are no sayings and no teachings of Christ in the Epistles. Moreover, there is nothing of Christ's life: nothing about his birth, nothing about Mary and Joseph, nothing about the town he dwelled or the places he traveled to. All we have is that Christ was crucified. But even that is lacking in historical and place references, for there is no mention of Pilate, no mention of Jerusalem. How is it that the much later Gospels describe that which the Epistles don't?

[...]

The Gospels are the works of different Christian communities (so it seems to me), and thus each put in their particular prospective. Over a dozen of them have come down to us, some in parts, other complete. Only four are considered inspired by God, though to a rational person, all are on an equal footing. Some of them had a wide circulation in past, and some such as the Gospel of Thomas is still widely read. As products of different communities, they have the Christ behaving according to their values. One such community, undoubtedly accepting the Greek sort of homosexuality, has Jesus lie the night with a young man he has risen from the dead. The Bishop Clement of Alexandria thought this account found in a version of Mark to be authentic and in one of his letters not only writes of it, but quotes their passage. This is just one example of how "the Gospel of Mark has gone through several stages in its compositional history. . . ." Thus not only are there changes made by the other Gospels of Mark's, but the history found in Mark varies between Christian communities and also over time.

[...]

I find the Gospels being treated as containing history to be a gross deception; moreover, I find the Gospels being treated as a book full of wisdom another deception. Though for sure there is much common sense, such as in the Wisdom Books. There are a few lofty moral ideas, such as the Sermon on the Mount. But the Bible contains many things that offend a person full of the wisdom of science and philosophy. One of many examples is the absurdity of the tale of Yahweh, the all-powerful god, having to torture his son to redeem man from the original sin. In other words, to get back at Satan for getting man to sin, the son of God is turned into a mortal who must be nailed to the cross, and only by this "sacrifice" will the all powerful God then remove his curse over man's original sin. Is not original sin an affront to the notion of just action. Would not you squawk if the government punished you for a crime done by your grandfather? The absurdities of faith are an embarrassment to those who apply the tools of philosophy.

Are not the Gospels naked, and are we not obsequious in our polite silence? Though we cannot hope to persuade those by reason who are without reason, we can expose those who still have an open mind to the truth about the Gospels."

***

The Ultimate Jam Session - It takes more than technology to solve the world's traffic problems. While Singapore succeeds with an iron fist, the United States waits for the invisible hand.

A young woman in a halter top is crossing the screen; her bosom bounces as she strides along, unaware she's being watched, and Ho and I fall into an appreciative silence. "We train our operators not to sit and watch pretty girls," he says finally, grinning sheepishly and changing the image to a real-time, CG schematic of the same intersection. Have the police ever used the video system to follow anyone? Ho repeats Tan's words exactly: "We don't abuse the system that way." How about the Internal Security Division?

"We don't abuse the system that way," says Ho. In Singapore, TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT might as well be stamped on the currency.

For all the high tech wonders of Singaporean ITS, the dirty little secret of the island nation's traffic success is decidedly low tech. Multi-agency infighting is avoided because Singapore has, essentially, only one agency. Local, state, and national government are one. More important, the people, unlike Americans, do what they're told. They made a Faustian bargain with their first prime minister 40 years ago, when the country was newly independent from Britain and desperately poor. Lee Kuan Yew promised to make the people rich if they'd cede him total control over every aspect of their waking lives, forgiving all manner of surveillance, badgering, and indignities. (This is the country, after all, that bans chewing gum.) Both sides have delivered on the bargain. Singaporeans are rich enough to drape themselves with a dazzling assortment of cell phones and disc players, but they seem less akin to sovereign citizens than to employees in a nonunion company. Dissent, individualism, and disrespect are tolerated here to about the extent they're sanctioned in the executive ranks at IBM. Like a board of directors, the Singapore government can examine such problems as traffic congestion, decide what's best, and implement solutions without consulting the rank and file. So Singaporean ITS is a kind of control experiment, unfolding in a politics-free environment exactly as its engineers would script it.

In 1975, Singapore's engineers looked at their country and saw that an alarming 10 percent of it was already paved. More than half of all workers were commuting by car, and traffic was a mess, but building roads forever was not an option. Without having to wait for public sector approval or private sector action, government invested S$200 million (US$110 million at current rates) to wire almost every strip of asphalt.

Now we know just how Orwellian we are

***

Are Potatoes Good for You?

J B Jeyaretnam Supporter's Site - Looking at the title graphic, one is inclined to think this a parody site. And the webmasters proclaiming that they are from the Sammyboy Forums does not help their credibility either. They even have pictures of JBJ surfing on to the site itself. Wth?!

SC4208A - COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF HUMAN RIGHTS - "This module is mounted for students throughout NUS with interest in human rights."
So why do we need to have done 7 Sociology modules to qualify for this one?!

Lord of the Rings: an allegory of the PhD? - "After Frodo has completed his first project, Gandalf (along with head of department Elrond) proposes that the work should be extended. He assembles a large research group, including visiting students Gimli and Legolas, the foreign postdoc Boromir, and several of Frodo's own friends from his undergraduate days. Frodo agrees to tackle this larger project, though he has mixed feelings about it. ("'I will take the Ring', he said, 'although I do not know the way.'")"
I love literature *g*

Ooooh, ahhhhhhh (and a groan from the women's rights campaigner at the back) - "By its very nature, pornography is made for the voyeur rather than participant. But a new nightclub in Edinburgh is aiming to combine pornography with the only activity which perhaps provokes more general embarrassment: karaoke. The somewhat unusual hybrid is being called pornaoke."

Curious case of the author and his bassoon - "An internationally best-selling author is risking his reputation as a high-brow cultural luminary by leading the world's worst orchestra. Fed up with the artistic acclaim that has greeted his Botswanan detective novels, Alexander McCall Smith has forged an alternative career as the principal bassoonist for The Really Terrible Orchestra."

Eighth-Grader's Family Fights Suspension Over Pill Mistake - "Chloe Smith, 14, was kicked out of school Friday when drug dogs "hit" on her locker. Administrators found prescription hormones in her purse and enforced the school's zero-tolerance drug policy"

Bronx man holds up deli in his own neighborhood, shoots self with own gun - "When the Alshabi heard a shot, he assumed his co-worker had been shot. Not so: instead, Whitley had accidentally shot himself in the face and fled, leaving a blood trail along the way."

Man rescued from clothing bin - "When they arrived they found what at first glance appeared to be a woman wearing a tight mini-skirt trapped halfway inside the bin, hanging head-down inside. A closer inspection revealed that it was a 35-year-old man from Glebe."

'Ouija board' appeal dismissed - "A murderer whose original trial was ruled unsafe because jurors consulted a ouija board has lost an appeal against his conviction at a subsequent retrial... A retrial was ordered after it was revealed that four jurors at Young's original trial consulted a ouija board, which some people believe can be used to contact the dead."

The Worst Jobs in Science: The Sequel - "Think your job’s bad? Try dragging a bedspread around tick-ridden thickets, pausing regularly in the 100-degree heat not to squeegee the sweat from your brow but to tweeze dozens of the tiny pests into a collection jar. Reconsidering your career choice? Imagine training for years as a veterinarian, only to find yourself engaged in labwork designed to make the tail-wagging puppies in your charge sick, knowing all the while that when the study is over, the pooches will be euthanized. Having a bad day? Just be glad you’re not spending it in minute examination of unusual growths on a dozen or so people’s posteriors."

Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth - "Boosting people's sense of self-worth has become a national preoccupation. Yet surprisingly, researchshows that such efforts are of little value in fostering academic progress or preventing undesirable behavior"

Why the truth gets you nowhere - "Truth cannot be the first casualty in our daily war of words, Schopenhauer suggests, because it was never the bone of contention in the first place. "We must regard objective truth as an accidental circumstance, and look only to the defence of our own position and the refutation of the opponent's . . . Dialectic, then, has as little to do with truth as the fencing master considers who is in the right when a quarrel leads to a duel.""

Why men are attracted to subordinate women - "Men are more likely to want to marry women who are their assistants at work rather than their colleagues or bosses, a University of Michigan study finds. The study, published in the current issue of Evolution and Human Behavior, highlights the importance of relational dominance in mate selection and discusses the evolutionary utility of male concerns about mating with dominant females."

Blinded By Science - "How ‘Balanced’ Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality"