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Sunday, May 08, 2005

"A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats." - Anonymous

***



8 guys, a girl (not in picture) and a bachelor's pad - the third Young Republic gathering

No, we don't just sit around discussing Derrida, Foucault and other French idiots!


People complained about the gender ratio, but I pointed out that it was infinitely better than the first two gatherings. In any case, such is hardly surprising given both that the list and topics draw males predominantly, and that females either are overseas or probably have better things to do than, in the abode of He Who Must Not Be Named until 3 AM, offer (or alternately accept or spurn) false dichotomies offered about being oppressed by The System or rising above it, and doing/talking about other silly things males are fond of doing in their free time.

Perhaps we now have a chance of breaking the vicious circle, especially for the upcoming Summer Jamboree, when most people will be back from overseas, so the grumbles will be lower in intensity then. Maybe we can adapt the marketing strategies of clubs (but then limited amounts of booze were free for everyone in the first place, courtesy of our kind and generous host, so maybe not).

Ah, heck it. I'm not the one complaining anyway.

***

The public outpouring of grief at Wee Kim Wee's death seems much more profuse, extended and well-covered in the media than that at Ong Teng Cheong's death; apparently when the latter died, the news was only reported in page 2 or 3 of the Straits Times' Home section, and only after a few days too. Moral of the story: make sure everyone likes you, so you don't get a low key funeral.

***

In a LJ post:

Xeno Boy: Xenoboy is puzzled. when Molly writes "ref Xenoboy" is it XenoBoy who is the transgressor?

If so, XenoBoy has to figure out the following :

What is the insult?
Where is the insult?

Subsequently, XenoBoy has to figure out what is an "unreserved" apology and what is a "reserved" apology? And if you pre-fix or post-fix a nice quote to the apology, does it disqualify it as a unreserved apology and relegates it to the reserved category? Xenoboy likes to quote very much because he does not like to invent phrases.

XenoBoy pouts forth a proposal. If I lie in my apology but make it poetic, will I be invited to the birthday party? I do very much wish to have a dialogist session with Molly.

ahbohling: it must be genius when i don't understand what this comment is about (particularly if i understood what the post was all about) or at least someone more genius than me.

Xeno Boy: This is the reason why I have been blasted as failing in profundity and being ineligible to qualify for the kindergarten CNA and the primary level ST.

Me: Profundity for the sake of profundity is meaningless. Eschew obfuscation.

Empty jargon and bombast does nothing except give a faux reification of the content of discourse.

Cui bono?


Molly’s Faminist Manifesto

"The Don’ts
1. Men, do not expect women to cook for you, do the laundry or stay at home.
2. Do not boss women around.
3. Do not be naïve! Be mature and behave like a real MAN!
4. Do not bring a dainty, sophisticated and elegant woman like Molly to the hawker center when there is a nice hotel somewhere.
5. Men must not behave as though they are superior to women.
6. Never treat women as sex objects.
7. Never think that women cannot take up male tasks!
8. Never think that assertive women are less feminine! (Look, Xiaxue is no less feminine than Molly.)
9. Men must never treat women as intellectual inferiors.
10. Do not fall in love with another man.

The Do’s
1. Do open doors for women, pull out chairs for them—behave like a knight even if you do not wear any armor.
2. Take charge! Behave like a man! Do not be wishy-washy!
3. Be practical; succeed in your career.
4. Be romantic; don’t be so practical.
5. Men must ALWAYS maintain their masculinity!
6. Be open to women’s debate about the best bod in Hollywood. It’s not right for men to talk about Pamela Anderson’s breast, but it is every woman’s right to compare the butts of Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
7. Do carry heavy things for women; carry the lighter loads such as the nightgown that you have just bought her.
8. You must know how to make a woman feel like a woman!
9. Women are emotional and you must be sensitive to their emotions and avoid imposing an overdose of rationality on them!
10. Do not fall in love with another woman."

***

Gah.


On May 7th, 2005 at 1:46 am cakira said:
Sorry, but what is this MSN bug that everyone’s complaining about? I’m using the build of Jan 18 (0.4 alpha) and in very very few cases I’ve ever seem it (and I think it was my contact’s fault then). I was thinking about upgrading straight to this test build (the changelog is awesome!), but now I’m afraid. Is this problem new or not? (A wasn’t able to find it in the bugs system) Can I upgrade to this test build, should I upgrade to release 0.4 ou must I stay as I am, since I’m having no problems? Thank you!

On May 7th, 2005 at 9:09 am w1ckedsick! said:
I believe the problem started from 0.4 and still hasn’t been fixed.

On May 7th, 2005 at 10:09 am pixador said:
@cakira: it’s safe to upgrade. This problem only affects very few people (and they keep complaining instead of providing network logs and details about their configuration).
If you haven’t experienced this problem before, you won’t have it now.

On May 7th, 2005 at 10:57 am w1ckedsick! said:
Don’t take his word for it, his only having ago at us because the dev team are frustrated they can’t fix it :p

On May 7th, 2005 at 11:04 am rainwater said:
Personally, I am not frustrated. I don’t see any good reports in the bug tracker on this topic, so it’s frankly not a big deal.

On May 7th, 2005 at 4:41 pm chaosblade said:
You sound like the frustrated ones, because a bug only a few select people have and wont properly report isnt getting fixed. You’re looking like a little kid, crying to his parents about a new toy they wont get him.


I've posted a network log before, but haven't been doing so recently because there's no option to cap the size of network logs, and since I got that 2GB network log some time back when I forgot to turn off network logging, running out of hard disk space to boot, I've been extremely traumatised.

But I finally got down to getting a network log with the latest MSN.dll, and lo and behold, in 14 minutes and trying to resend a short message twice (and only trying to resend a message twice), the network log ballooned to 15.1MB. I tried uploading the 15.1MB network log to the bug tracker but twice Firefox crashed and once IE claimed I didn't give them a bug id. The RAR (25kb) and ZIP (78kb) versions of the network log could not be uploaded because the file type wasn't allowed.

***

Emma Stuffs... | yes she does; we have proof - "A perfect side view of Ms. Watson... she is clearly lacking something from #1..."
This is hilarious. As is:

Trying Too Hard :: an Anti Emma Watson site - "where did those come from?! WHAT THE HELL?! And I think they look really wierd. like lumpy. REAL BOOBS DO NOT LOOK LIKE THAT!... OH BLOODY HELL! SHE'S GONE PAMELA ANDERSON ON US! dude the shirt is way too fucking tight... now to times in 2003! ..................... OH hey em! WHERE DID THE PAMELA ANDERSON'S GO?! O.K. you cannot say that her boobs look smaller because of her shirt being looser. Admittedly this shirt would probably make them look a little bit smaller because its black and not as tight,but probably just a size smaller, if anything, but she went from a C cup to like a AAA (yes they make triple A's. They're basicaly training bra's for flat people.)"

A plan to offshore . . . just 3 miles out - "Roger Green is a software entrepreneur. David Cook was once a supertanker skipper who spent 15 years hauling crude oil through the world's sea lanes. Now the two men have announced a remarkable venture called SeaCode, a company that plans to hire 600 superb software designers from every corner of the world and house them in a luxury cruise ship just out of reach of US immigration law -- but close enough to bid on multimillion-dollar US software contracts."

The death of privacy - "Why is it a criminal offence for a man to spy on his wife in his own home and not show what he is seeing to anyone else, but perfectly acceptable for the media to spy on celebrities, politicians and anyone else they take against and reveal their findings to millions?"

As many wars as nations - "We can already see that a common European version of the Second World War is not exactly probable. Each nation had a different experience, each one has fostered and exposed its own war myths, as recorded in photographs, memoirs, novels or films, changing with the passage of time and often internally contradictory. First of all, the versions told by the two main victors dominated. It was they who imposed their view on the war. The superpowers not only won the war and dictated the terms of peace, they also had the mass media to disseminate their triumph. Only against this background could the individual European countries start to establish their own myths, as a nation united in its resistance to the Nazi invader, even if, as in the case of Finland, Slovakia or Bulgaria, that invader was for some time an ally, patron or friendly ruler."

***

People were telling me tales of the Law Library Gestapo. Someone left a tube of Mentos (unopened) on the table, and his name got taken down. He was also told that if he was caught with food in his possession once more, he would be suspended from school (though we doubt that the Library Gestapo is so empowered).

Apparently in the past, bag searches for contraband (read: food) were carried out. And when the place is crowded, the Gestapo will chase non-Law students out because it is "their library". To which we rage, since we pay school fees as well (and indeed, since they have nicer facilities and a better staff:student ratio, their hidden subsidy is probably much greater than ours). If they want to be so closed and exclusive, maybe we should ban Law students from other libraries in NUS. Hell, we can ban them from the Arts and Business canteens also, then they can hide in their little faculty, having it exclusively to themselves.


I was in MPSH1 (one of our exam halls), and had no handphone reception. Maybe they have some secret jamming device to disrupt reception.


Quotes:

They call us SNAILS [Ed: Students Not Actually In Law School], we call them SLUGS - Stupid Law UnderGraduateS

Please leave the statistical tables on the table. Do not take them back with you, not even as a souvenir.
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