Sunday, April 10, 2005

"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?" - Tom Stoppard

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I missed Mehta's performance. Damn.

This is what happens when your concert kaki flies to Canada and you don't bother to check what concerts are coming up...


Now my mother's blaming me for not helping her type out her exam papers - even though she never asked me to help. Why do I live in this house?

Saturday's Straits Times had an article about racism, and it seems many people gave their comments. Maybe I shan't be so skittish next time (the paragraph about the dumb blonde jokes had its points supplied by me, so at least something I said got used).

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You are an INCREDULOUS TWIT


You tend to think quiz results are amazing, and are constantly stunned by how much they reflect your inner being. What they really reflect is how ridiculously gullible you are. Go back to school, you nincompoop.


Finally! A spoof of online quizzes!

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A review of RI:

"RI has a little bit of a split personality. Sometimes, it behaves like it is a faux Victorian public school, hence the teak furniture in the library, the silly ceremonies with gowns and ties, the Houses, the boarding school, the sanctioned abuse of younger boys by older ones, and the inflated sense of its own importance (I shall pass over the buggery and that sort of thing, but I suppose that fits in quite nicely with the public schoolboy theme). At other times, it thinks it is a junior wing of The Government, and most particularly, Mindeath. This explains the militarism, the Morning Assembly with silly drill commands, the Big Brother-like atmosphere, the obsession with regulating everything, the will to power attitude with regards to everything from school league tables to sporting triumph, the glorification of the physical over the mental..."

Also on that blog: the amusing observation that "FFI" stands for "Free From Injury" - how fitting!

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Why so much fuss about ‘a piece of clothing’?

"Up to the age of about sixteen, most children merely reflect the religious views of their parents. Most children do not have sufficient education and knowledge at early ages to make an informed belief choice. Their parents should be restricted from imposing religious attire on them. For children the veil is not a matter of choice. If they are veiled, it is their parent’s decision, not theirs. Banning the veil for children is similar to banning child labour, and protecting children from abuse and providing them with access to education. What seems often to be overlooked in discussion about the French ban is that dressing children in religious attire imposes a belief system upon them, and is therefore a form of indoctrination. Do we support the rights of parents and schools to indoctrinate children or do we uphold the rights of children to be free from indoctrination?

It has been argued that “freedom of belief includes the right to manifest your faith in public and Muslim girls should be free to choose whether to wear the veil or not." The key question however is this. Whose freedom is being exercised? For many girls and women living in Islamic communities, it is the Islamic regimes, sheiks and mullahs; the elders, or husbands, fathers and male relatives who decide for them; they have virtually no freedom of personal expression outside the home - and young girls none at all. For women from Muslim origin everywhere, the veil is a symbol of oppression and religious domination. Contrary to what apologists claim, their veil is anything but a choice. Veiling women and the Koran’s and Sharia’s edicts on women separate them from any right, and brutally violate their basic human liberties. Women have ‘accepted’ the veil under an enormous pressure, and often through acid-throwing, threats and intimidations. Few women have the real freedom not to wear the veil. The very same Islamists who brutally impose the veil on women and girls through acid-throwing, flogging, imprisonment and torture in Iran, Iraq, Algeria and Afghanistan, oppose the banning of veils for young girls in schools in the West, and call it a restriction of freedom of expression. This is utterly hypocritical."

I'm not so sure about the last part, since plenty of women in developed non-Islamic countries wear it voluntarily.

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Dear Store Owner,
You would make me and plenty of fans mighty happy if we could come in and get our hands on some of the great Happy Tree Friends products.

Did you know they are available direct to retailers? You could have stuff like DVDs, Apparel, Toys, Accessories, Stationery Products and more -- right in your store!

You can just visit their online store to see all the cool products and place your wholesale order today! It's easy! Just go to http://happytreefriends.com/wholesale/

If you need more information, just call 415-865-2700 x210 or email wholesale@mondomedia.com.


Someone should bring Happy Tree Friends to Singapore!

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Fabled Lands #1-6 are on sale on eBay... and the top bid is 48.50 pounds. Ouch. I already have #1-4 though...

So Universities Hire Liberal Faculty--This Is News? - "Conservatives are lonely on American campuses as well as beleaguered and misunderstood. News that tenured poets vote Democratic or that Kerry received far more money from professors than Bush pains them. They want America's faculties to reflect America's political composition. Of course, they do not address such imbalances in the police force, Pentagon, FBI, CIA and other government outfits where the stakes seem far higher and where, presumably, followers of Michael Moore are in short supply. If life were a big game of Monopoly, one might suggest a trade to these conservatives: You give us one Pentagon, one Department of State, Justice and Education, plus throw in the Supreme Court, and we will give you every damned English department you want... Conservatives seem unconcerned about the political orientation of the business professors. Shouldn't half be Democrats and at least a few be Trotskyists?... Once the right to decide the content of courses is extended to students, the Holocaust deniers, creationists and conspiracy addicts will come knocking at the door--and indeed they already have."

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Earn $10! (For NUS students only, I think):

Do take time off to complete this survey from the Information Systems Departmemnt (sic) of SOC.

Below is the URL of the online survey form: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=26890980875

There will be $10 given as a token of appreciation for completing this survey, which would take approximately 20mins to complete.

Upon completion, please send an email to David Phang with the date
and time of survey completion. His email is phangcw@comp.nus.edu.sg.

The deadline for the survey is this coming Friday (15/4/2005), 11:59pm.


We were given a self-evaluation form for our essay asking us how we thought we could improve it.

But if we thought we could improve our essays, we would've improved them already. Why wait for the self-evaluation forms?


My sources inform me that there are a not insignificant number of NUS/NTU girls working in bars, though they're mostly SACSALs - "they're ah lians - in thinking and character and behaviour. just that [for the few of them from NUS law] their primary mode of communication is english (although they can speak mandarin as and when, of course)". I wonder what form of employment the guys undertake.
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