"You know they don't sell chewing gum there. And I hear the boys are way too cute for my liking" - American mother
WTH?!
As someone commented: "So Dark the Con of NUS"
So this is where my fee hike money goes!
[Addendum:
Someone in that video comments page: "those are actually letters of rejection. LOL! university acceptance usually come in big pakages."
The reason for all this skepticism and scorn? Chiefly, I think: how can anyone like, support or think well of a school with policies such as this?
Dear all:
It comes to my attention that several students are absent from tutorial 1. According to the Dean’s new policy, the departemnt will send you warning letters when you are absent for the first and second times. Starting from the third time, the department has to cc the warning letter letter to the Dean.
We look forward to seeing you all in tutorials.
(from interminableruminations)]
***
One of George Bush's lame justifications for his reckless tax cuts is that he wants to "starve the beast" of government. Of course, as any student who has rushed homework will tell you, that doesn't work.
Screwed Up Girl says that at Oregon, even USP students who have done the USP "writing" module have problems with writing: what they think are clear thesis statements are not accepted, and the Professors seize on other lines as "excellent" thesis statements. It looks like "writing" confuses people everywhere.
I saw part of a documentary on National Geographic where chimps attacked neighbors for meat they didn't need so they could distribute it to allies and withhold it from enemies - politics. No doubt this is a symptom of their Fallen state since they
[Keywords: demonic interference, demonic impersonation]
The BBC was showing a feature on economic growth in India, and they asked poor villagers if they'd give up the vote in order to get economic growth like in China. They unanimously said no. No doubt this is because the unwashed fools were too stupid to know what was good for them (it takes a higher degree of intelligence to recognise that economic growth is good for you than to grasp complex and abstract concepts like Democracy and the Right to Vote).
***
It's interesting finding out what the lyrics of Semoga Bahagia actually mean:
"Watch your behaviour, oh youths
Respect and honour your customs and traditions...
Soft-spoken is the lady
Energetic and tenacious is the man"
If you didn't tell me I'd think it was a Chinese song from Nanyang Primary School.
Maybe there's a reason they don't teach you what it means in Primary school.
***
Teaching Political Theory in Beijing
"I had taught at the National University of Singapore in the early 1990s. There, the head of the department was a member of the ruling People’s Action Party. He was soon replaced by another head, who asked to see my reading lists and informed me that I should teach more communitarianism (the subject of my doctoral thesis) and less John Stuart Mill. Naturally, this made me want to do the opposite. Strange people would show up in my classroom when I spoke about “politically sensitive” topics, such as Karl Marx’s thought. Students would clam up when I used examples from local politics to illustrate arguments. It came as no surprise when my contract was not renewed. In comparison, China is a paradise of academic freedom. Among colleagues, anything goes (in Singapore, most local colleagues were very guarded when dealing with foreigners)...
Human rights—or at least, the functional equivalent of human rights, whatever we want to call it—is what gives the point to sovereignty. Sovereignty only has moral value because it serves (usually) to protect the fundamental human rights of people in the state, and it loses its value once the state infringes upon, or fails to protect, those rights. I asked the student whether I, as a leader of a sovereign state, could kill millions of my people, then be justified in telling you not to intervene because you’d be trampling on my sovereignty. He agreed that I could not do so. I then asked him what moral value sovereignty could have if not its contribution to securing the fundamental rights of people in the state. He seemed genuinely puzzled, and then repeated out loud, to the whole class, “Mmm, what you’re saying is very different from what we’ve learned.”"
***
cheahchuwen on Slavery: "people just cant help but feel NS is 'hell', 'torture' and everything negative. They never see it as a way of changing the way of life, a form of paying back what the govt has given, a chance to learn about respect, and most importantly, learning about life, work, and play.
NS has alot to offer. Only those who say it robbed them of their lifelihood are just a bunch of ingrates."
Well said. I've added it to my Dachau post.