Random Playlist Song: Bach - Art Of Fugue - Contrapunctus XIV [Uncompleted] (The Delme Quartet, arr Robert Simpson)
Random Trivia bit: Of the five rivers of the underworld (those which separate Earth from Hades), Phlegethon is the River of Fire.
The others are: Acheron - River of Woe; Cocytus - River of Lamentation; Lethe - River of Forgetfulness; and Styx - River of Hate.
Less Common Greek Mythology
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In anticipation of the new semester, here's something that Xephyris and I worked on in J2 (ah, those were the days):
The
1. Procrastination
Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow?
If anything was worth doing, it'd have been done already
2. Cutting Corners
What they don't know won't hurt them.
Why do anything that doesn't actually need doing?
If it really needed to be done, then you must have done it already.
3. Get others to do the work
Why work when others can do the work for you?
The delegation of responsibility is an important skill.
4. Wait until other people do the work
Patience is a virtue.
If a job is worth doing, then get someone in to do it properly.
5. Pass off other people's work as your own
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
If someone has taken the trouble to do something well, why waste the effort?
No. 6 is a new one:
6. Chill out
All work and no play makes Bob a dull boy
Don't just find time, make it!
Further inspirational thoughts:
"I always meet my expectations because I don't expect very much"
"There's no inspiration like desperation"
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The Genius of the SAF Mind by Oikono
Being locked up in the army camp and facing several belligerent officers for the past few days has made me ponder about how they think. As I argued for over 30 minutes with an officer last night, I noticed how their train of thought works: (generalization but applicable to most SAF people)
N.B. This post might be offensive if you are an SAF enthusiast or you are a regular. This post is meant to be a distillation of common SAF modes of thinking and does not apply to EVERYONE in SAF. If you belong to any of the categories and do not understand what is wrong with it, then...oh well, congratulations on being a full fledged military genius!
1) The Rules: You must follow the rules! I don't care what the logic behind the rules are. What matters most is the letter and not the spirit of the law!
2) The Rules are to be applied subjectively. That is it applies to you and not to me (because I have a higher rank)
3) You are NOT an individual. If I love Singapore, you must love Singapore too! Since I am an idiot, then you must be one too.
4) What I don't understand is clearly wrong!
(i.e. Recruit: Sir! I can't do a word document without Microsoft Words.
Officer: Huh? You are disobeying me?
5) To be a good person, you must be regimented! (bleh)
6) We rationalise how (badly) we treat you by telling you it builds character. (Plausibly true! But not a basis for treating human beings. Hmmmm...if you get cancer, let me show you the warmth of my heart by telling you how it builds character)
7) With great power comes great responsibility. Fuck lah! What lesponsibity? If anything goes wrong, its never our fault!
8) The Army: A Career that DEMANDS respect! We expect the respect (hey! we are regulars and officers!) without having done anything to earn it.
9) We gamble, smoke, race and visit prostitutes and we tell you that you can't play bridge in camp because its gambling. (Hey! The rules say that poker cards IS gambling...of course you can use Uno cards to play bridge. You could use Uno cards to gamble too but since its not Poker cards, its not gambling!)
10) I am a loser. Tell me why I signed on again? Ahhh...because I wish to compensate for penile inadequacy!
To officer Wins, I feel immense pity for you, as you are in a dead-end career, learning nothing, and having the intellectual liberation of a amoeba (sorry amoebas!). I loathe you, and I am sure you loathe yourself too, when you lie awake at night pondering your miserable existence.
***
Funky NTU modules:
Music: Adventures in Listening
Japanese Culture Through Chado (The Way of Tea)
Nature Appreciation: Singapore's Bird Life
Appreciation and Identification of Gemstones
Mind of Sun Tzu
Introduction to Tao for Effective Action Learning
Magic of Voice in the World of Singer
Suggested titles for the article on the NUS fee hikes that I was press-ganged into writing for the Arts Magazine - Insomniac:
"Only a Dike would agree to the Hike"
"Layoff the Dean and pay off the debts"
Gah.
Now to work on the "Why I hate Valentine's Day" article. This should be more fun.
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It seems someone has already got caught by the new draconian copyright law, though the source sounds dubious.
Someone on sg_ljers (Singapore livejournal community) says his friend's cousin's classmate was visited by the police.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/sg_ljers/701928.html (membership required)
I can't see them catching too many people, though, or very soon many people are going to downgrade to 56K connections.
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Someone on why conditioning your hair too often isn't good:
"ur hair will becum oily cos the conditioner isnt water soluble
did u know and then it will stay on ur scalp
block e oil pores"
Err. Right.
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What is Liberal Education? - "Liberal education, including all the traditional arts as well as the newer sciences, is essential for the development of top-flight scientists. Without it, we can train only technicians, who cannot understand the basic principles behind the motions they perform. We can hardly expect such skilled automatons to make new discoveries of any importance. A crash program of merely technical training would probably end in a crashup for basic science."
Demon-Haunted Brain - "Five centuries ago demons haunted our world, with incubi and succubi tormenting their victims as they lay asleep in their beds. Two centuries ago spirits haunted our world, with ghosts and ghouls harassing their sufferers all hours of the night. Last century aliens haunted our world, with grays and greens abducting captives out of their beds and whisking them away for probing and prodding. Today people are experiencing out-of-body experiences, floating above their beds, out of their bedrooms, and even off the planet into space. What is going on here? Are these elusive creatures and mysterious phenomena in our world or in our minds? New evidence indicates that they are, in fact, a product of the brain."
