"Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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Damn. I'm going to be paying more (S$7.70 at least) to ship my stuff from the US with vPOSTUSA than with the default International shipping. Should've checked before using the service...

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Someone: one thing bugged me though: isn't 'NEGRO spirituals' rather racist?

Me: Political correctness is insane. Negro Spirituals is what they've been called for a long time, and Negro Spirituals is what they're referred to in the literature and by those in the field.

If you'd like, you can go bowdlerize pieces of classic literature and replace the word "Negro" with something else: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/bs.asp?ss=text&s=Negro

Really, it's like claiming that using the terms "pork barrel politics" and "underdogs" to refer to Muslim contexts is insensitive to Islam, that the nursery rhyme "baa baa black sheep" is racist (toddlers in Oxfordshire now sing “Baa baa, rainbow sheep”), how some coffee houses rename "black coffee" "coffee without milk" and that the term "Dutch Courage" unfairly impugns the Holes from Holland. Or how British policemen are not supposed to use the phrase "nitty gritty" because it is racist. If you want to go on a PC witch hunt you can purge all the history, culture and richness from the English language until you're left with Newspeak.

Maybe you confused the term "Negro" with "Nigger". And considering that they call each other "Nigger", it's not clear why they should take offence is non-"Niggers" call them that.

Back to the term "Negro", we have:

- United Negro College Fund
- Negro League Baseball
- National Council of Negro Women
- The Journal of Negro History
- The National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs
- National Association of Negro Musicians
- The Official Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League
- Many places around the world which have "Negro" in their names

Perhaps we should get them all to change their names. Instead of seeing daggers where none exist, the Politically Correct inquisition should focus on real issues, like discriminatory hiring practises, helping disadvantaged communities, reaching out to poor kids and the like. Unfortunately, it's always easier to earn political brownie points by waving the banner of "sensitivity" and launching high profile cases, even if it does nought to help substantially and/or materially the people in whose name such action is undertaken.

Really, it just boils down to Occidentalism. As someone observed to me: "If a white man attacks anybody from another race, it is racism. If a non-white attacks a white man, it is not really his fault. We should look at the root causes. Ha!"

Hypersensitivity to racism is in itself a subtle form of racism. To quote an Associate of mine: "I do not exclude my gay friends from the subject of my jokes, because they know I treat people of all sexual orientations equally and dont put any of them on pedestals"

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Someone: I am a young and I believe that the youngs can change many things. My question to myself is that: What can I do to change this bad things as a young? And what can we do friends?

Me: You can write papers, go to vapid conferences on taxpayers' money, meet young people from all over the world and network for future personal benefit, talk a lot, agree that something must be done, come up with policy proposals that bureaucratic flunkies will either ignore due to their inflated sense of self-importance or dismiss because they're (really) older, smarter and wiser than all you young uns, and ultimately in the end change nothing.


Someone else: verbifying "network" is so singaporean

Me: it's US actually

network, v.
3. intr. orig. U.S. To engage in social or professional ‘networking’ (see NETWORKING n. 4).
1980 M. S. WELCH Networking 3 This book will show you how to network.
1982 Working Woman June 84 (caption) Recreational activities offer time to network with colleagues. 1983 Washington Post 20 Apr. B7/2 If you've networked with people when you were doing a film, you have a natural interest in seeing their reaction to the film.
1984 South China Morning Post (Business News Suppl.) 27 Jan. 8/7 Most female executives need to network with men more than women.
1988 Times 25 Mar. 21/1 She wanted publicity for her charity and seized the opportunity to network.

Someone else: ah
so i will mental rewire :)

Me: yeah
like marketing to mean going to market is not singlish :P

ah, self-orientalism!

Someone else: you wan to buy frower? only dirty-four fiftee