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"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum" (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.) - Ambrose Bierce

Random Playlist Song: Trevor Pinnock - The English Concert and Choir: Handel - Messiah - The People That Walked In Darkness (bass, air)

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.


Random Trivia bit: The term 'arabesque' is of French origin and derives from the elaborate interlacing designs which are a prominent feature of the art and architecture of Arabia (some of these are similar to Celtic ornamentation of the kind found in the Book of Kells), as well as of other Middle Eastern countries.

The curvelinear lines of the arms and legs in the ballet position known as "arabesque" (a position in ballet in which the dancer stands "en pointe" on one foot and raises the other perpendicularly behind her) were apparently also thought to be suggestive of the Orient.

In music, the arabesque is a short, ornate, rather whimsical composition (similar to a bagatelle), usually for piano; some notable examples are by Schumann and Debussy.

In literature, the term generally applies to an intricate, fanciful, and grandiloquent style of writing (Edgar Allen Poe's 2 volume collection of stories, published in 1839, was entitled "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque").

***

KOTOR 2 (Knights of the Old Republic 2) is going to be out for the Xbox in less than a week, but I'll have to wait 2 months for the PC version. Among other things, it means it'll come out during term time.

Damn M$!

I shall have to content myself with monitoring StarWarsKnights.com religiously.

***

Someone: i got damn pissed [off]. and everytime i'm pissed [off], i go to ur blog HAHAHAHAHAHA

and then i read stupid things, and then i stop being pissed for awhile
which actually means, i visit ur blog v often, considering how often i get pissed

Me: I can set up a therapy service

Someone: therapy? xiaxue does better la
she'll belittle u so much, u'll just be so small
there'll be no space for self-pity

kimberly: what abt when I write stuff that pisses you off? then worse what haha

Someone: oh, if that happens i go to xiaxue
then i go to mr brown if all else fails

***

The madness of Singaporean youth about Singapore Idol used to puzzle me, till I realised that their energies are diverted to this manner of pursuits because while in other countries they'd be doing things like hiking (and other types of physical activities), smoking pot, spraying grafitti, taking part in demonstrations or engaging in political activism.

However, since they can't partake of those sort of activities here, they channel their energies to religion and Singapore Idol.


After hearing the 2 Singapore Idol finalists sing, I am aghast, for they both suck. De gustibus non est disputandum.


Someone: "little ah lians tYpInG liKe tHiS should get their handphones confiscated. damn... why couldn't they have SI during the Os or something? hurr."

Someone else: "Cos then YJC would have an entry score of 28 pts"

Yet another person: "The Powers That Be really ought to kill of any idiot who tYpEs liKe tHiS or sPeL lYk dIs because it's freaking annoying and it should be banned!!!"

***

My father is being paranoid again.

Somehow he thinks that my programs, such as Soulseek, are responsible for the spate of troubles plaguing the desktop, which is currently existing in an undead state - definitely not fully alive, yet not quite dead either. This ignores, of course, the fact that even after a clean format, with no programs installed except Windows XP, the desktop was already screwy and BSODing like nobody's business.

He claims that this is like a smoker going off cigarettes but still getting lung cancer. As if programs are capable of spoiling hardware (peeking and poking being a singular exception, as far as I know), and as if any software author would be crazy enough to do such a thing (and ignoring the fact that other people have no problems using those same programs).

When I pointed this out to him, he said that he wanted to be "safe", so no extraneous programs shall be installed on a hypothetical future desktop. I said he might as well call in the exorcist and feng shui master (Master Chew comes to mind), but the inconsistency of his logic did not faze him.

Therefore, in the spirit of being safe, given my seeming ability to screw up the computers I use, I shall not touch a hypothetical future desktop in any circumstances, not even to install software or do troubleshooting.

***

I Know What You Did Last Raya (Malay, U)

Directed by: Prof. Madya A. Razak Mohaideen

Starring: Erra Fazira, Azleen (Senario), Mazlan (Senario), Waheeda, Zamarul Hisham, Khatijah Tan, Eddy Yus

Genre: Comedy

Childhood friends Fazli, Lan, Syahida, Yassir and Mira are now young professionals living in the big city. The night before Raya, they travel back to their hometown together in Lan's Mercedes-Benz. Unfortunately, their journey is cut short when they accidentally run down an old man in white and his goat, killing both. After clearing any sign of evidence they continue their journey home vowing never to reveal what happened. But strange things start happening on Raya morning, and the five start to panic. When they return to the city, each of them begin to experience eerie events – someone is trying to kill them.


When I first heard of this show, I thought that the secret and sinful thing that they did last Raya was eating when they were supposed to be fasting.

***

In Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year 2004 list (how often each word was looked up), while 'Blog' comes in in 1st place, 'Cicada' gets 6th place, and - get this - 'Defenestration' is 10th.

***

Today's User Friendly Strip:

Rayn> hello sid060 how r u
sid060> Fine. Are the "a" "o" "y" and "o" keys missing from your keyboard?
Rayn> no why
sid060> Why can't you type out the words "are" and "you" instead of using "r" and "u"?
Rayn> i don't type very fast
sid060> there's something to be said for using both hands to type

Oh my god!

It's Wo-hen Nankan aka the Asian Prince aka Tuan Anh in a Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

Hallelujah!

"Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying." - Fran Lebowitz

Random Playlist Song: Trevor Pinnock - The English Concert and Choir: Handel - Messiah - For behold, darkness shall cover (Accompagnato (Bass))

For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.


Random Trivia bit: The French words for cheese and jam are "fromage et confiture"

***

History has to be rewritten as school bans BC and AD - "A secondary school has banned pupils from using the terms BC and AD when writing dates because they are deemed unsuitable in a multi-faith society."

One of the more egregious manifestations of political correctness is terming dates in BC and AD, BCE ('Before Common Era') and CE ('Common Era') respectively. Supposedly this is to show respect for non-Christians.

However, by the same token we should rename the days of the week: Tuesday (Tiu's Day), Wednesday (Woden's Day), Thursday (Thor's Day), Friday (Freyr's Day) and Saturday (Saturn's Day), the months: eg January (Janus) and the gods know what else, just as the Quakers did.

Besides which, terming dates which essentially have the same reference point (ie 1 AD) being before or after a "common" era is conceivably just as disrespectful.

***

There is no question about the intent of implying guilt by association. The most popular way to do this is to invoke the Nazis. If you're anti-euthanasia, just do what many "pro-lifers" do and mention the fact that the Nazis practised euthanasia. Never mind that the Nazi euthanasia programme was nothing about people exercising their free choice to end their own lives and everything to do with cold-blooded murder. Just suggesting a Nazi link is enough to cast proponents of euthanasia in a negative light.

The same trick can be applied to an astonishing array of beliefs and practices. The Nazis were very keen on ecology, compulsory gym classes and keep fit, forests, eugenics and public rallies. If you yourself object to any of these, then slip in a mention of Nazi policy next time you want your criticisms to pack an added rhetorical punch. And if you're being bothered by a vegetarian while you're trying to enjoy your T-bone steak, just remind your critic that Hitler too eschewed meat.

The problem with guilt by association is that it fails to do what any genuine criticism must do: show what is wrong with the thing being criticised. The fact that some bad people like or support it, or that it can be mentioned in the same breath as something bad, does not add up to a criticism. Would love be bad if the devil had loved? Should books be banned because Mein Kampf too was a book? Should we banish sauerkraut from our tables because Nazis ate it? Of course not. Nothing is bad or wrong simply because the hand of evil has touched it. If it is wrong, show why it is wrong and don't resort to innuendo to make it appear wrong by association.

(Bad Moves: Guilt by association)

***

A source:

You might be interested to know that promotion is not 'automatic'. From what I found out, the process involves CPC asking for 'recommendations' on promotion from your unit. This is normally just a de rigueur procedure, as every clerk will be 'recommended' for promotion unless good reasons are given against it (and backed by someone with authority). As SAF operations are shrouded in mystery, I feel that this insight is important to current NSFs not affected by the 6 months reduction. When I first came in, I was told that CPC 'automatically' promotes when the time comes. I surmise that maintaining the idea that promotion is 'recommended' serves to maintain the 'integrity' of promotion.


I know from my dealings with clerks that CPC has to 'ask' for recommendations, but from what I know even people who went to DB got promoted. In fact, if you're a troublemaker they'll probably want to promote you even more strongly to punish you. Unless you're such a pain in the ass that they can't wait to get rid of you.

***

Someone on why Santa Claus is communist: the northpole is a classless society, everyone is an elf, and everyone is proletariat, leadership is centred in a 'champion of the masses'-santa claus (who incidentally looks just like karl marx) . the presents that the elves made are distributed by santa, puttin resource allocation in the hands of the state. at the same time he is elevated to a god-like status

the idea that only good kids gets presents suggests a value judgement based on what is accpetable by the state. the whole operation is run in the 'spirit of christmas' ,making it an opiate of the masses (how ironic) and blinding the elves to the fact that they are being exploited and have becoem little more than a cog in machine. and everyone wears red

Me: what about the reindeer?

Someone: santa is the only one in the state who owns them...what do u think
he's the only one who possesses the means to leave the country

my theory is he managed to find a barren land in the coldest region of the north and over there found a race of inbreeding people with congenital birth defects-stunted growth and limited cognitive ability, dumb but hardworkers if instructed. there was extreme division of labor, os little skill was expected out of each elf

think of north pole as siberia

***

Why aren't the people opposed to casinos because they will result in many "social ills" opposed to the stock market as well? The two operate in essentially the same way, with essentially the same consequences - people becoming bankrupt and despondent, people jumping off skyscrapers and the like.

***

Scientific American: Flying Carpets and Scientific Prayers

How to talk about liberal education (if you must) - "A true liberal education, he says one in which learning is pursued for its own sake, and is based on the idea that broad literacy prepares students to act as educated, enlightened citizens requires a "community of scholars" who are not worried about job-placement rates, or the relevance of their work to government officials, and who view a life of scholarship "as a vocation," not simply a career. "We couldn't well imagine Socrates taking early retirement,""

Death before dishonour - "What is it about the power of shame that drives a father, brother, even a mother to slaughter a close family member? In the UK alone, 117 murders are being investigated as 'honour killings'. But over-sensitivity to cultural differences means that many victims are denied the justice that they deserve"

Blue-state philosopher - "If the 21st century becomes a Singer century, we will also see legal infanticide of born children who are ill or who have ill older siblings in need of their body parts. Question: What about parents conceiving and giving birth to a child specifically to kill him, take his organs, and transplant them into their ill older children? Mr. Singer: "It's difficult to warm to parents who can take such a detached view, [but] they're not doing something really wrong in itself." Is there anything wrong with a society in which children are bred for spare parts on a massive scale? "No.""

Math profs link particle actions, human free will - "The professors, John Conway and Simon Kochen, have proven what they call the Free Will Theorem. It says that given three assumptions, if particles' behavior is truly predetermined, then people cannot have free will. In other words, if the behavior of a particle is fully determined by its past, so too are all the so-called decisions people believe they are making."

Firing the canon - "If you are a literate, sentient human, then you know some Shakespeare and even if you haven't read Cervantes, you know about Don Quixote. If asked to name great composers, you will start with Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, or Mozart, Mussorgsky and Messiaen. You may never have opened Childe Harold, or Little Dorrit, but you can strike a Byronic attitude and spot a Dickensian character. Your sense of both the history and geography of the humanities extends from Plato to Charlie Parker, from Homer to James Joyce, from Trollope to François Truffaut. And if somebody mentions Rashomon, you know better than to blink and say "who?" The canon changes with national boundaries, and again for each generation. But at any time, there must be 1,000 names and notions to which most educated westerners would claim familiarity. Canonical names become labels: Chestertonian paradox, Swiftian savagery, Gibbonian irony and so on."

strongest man - "I try and hold a camera at arms length"
Idiot holds camera at arm's length for 4 minutes. One of the most stupid things I've ever seen (and that's saying something).

'Obesity tourism' is Mugabe's answer to feeding Zimbabwe - "Zimbabwe has come up with a bizarre proposal to solve the food crisis threatening half its population with starvation. It wants to bring in obese tourists from overseas so that they can shed pounds doing manual labour on land seized from white farmers."

***

I don't know why people like to crowd outside exam halls. It's terribly hot and stuffy.

Someone left her (for it is almost certainly a her) phone in her bag, and her SMS tone, which was the sound for announcements in KLIA, sounded 57 times in just over 2 hours. Argh. Meanwhile I saw someone with white nail polish playing with a stick of liquid paper, so maybe what I thought was nail polish was actually liquid paper.


Quotes:

What if the blood bank couldn't cope with the sudden influx of blood donors? (people needing blood)

[On a girl in a tube top] Who dresses like this for an exam? [Someone: Maybe it's an oral exam.

Maybe you should do your thesis on the sociology of Power Rangers

Guys with long hair / Burmese Bells / Search Referrals - 30th November 2004

"Red meat is NOT bad for you. Now blue-green meat, THAT'S bad for you!" - Tommy Smothers

Random Playlist Song: Trevor Pinnock - The English Concert and Choir: Handel - Messiah - O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion (Air (Alto) & Chorus)

O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain. O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, behold your god!

O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the lord is risen upon thee.

***

I saw a guy who looked like a foreign worker on the bus. He had great non-rebonded long hair, silky looking and with a natural shine (even discounting its semi-dry state), of a length roughly in between the shoulders and the proverbial bra strap level. Unfortunately, he sat next to me, so I could only steal occasional and surreptitious glances at him to admire his hair.

It's such a pity, though, that he wasn't an exception to the rule that guys with long hair (with the notable exceptions of Fabio and Wo-hen Nankan) look ugly.

***

This rest of this post is dedicated to search referrals, but besides my usual practice of spewing some trite comment beside some of the weirder entries, I have endeavoured to provide a slightly longer writeup on one:

ways to masterbate secretly

My suggestion to this person is to use Burmese bells:


What are now known by the Japanese name of rin-no-tama, meaning "tinkling balls," are a variation of what the Chinese once called "Burmese bells,", although they may have been no more Burmese than French letters are French. They were originally as common in southeast Asia as in China. The English traveler, Ralph Fitch, described them in the Shan States of Burma at the end of the sixteenth century. The men, he said, wore "bunches of little round balls in their privy members... They cut the skin and so put them in." The aristocracy had silver ones, "gilded and made with great cunning," which rang "like a little bell"; the lead ones used by poorer people rang "but little." The king "sometimes taketh his out and giveth them to his noblemen as a great gift." Less than a dozen years later, the Florentine merchant Francesco Carletti also reported on them, this time in Thailand. "The rattles," he said, were "as large as hazel nuts" and were made in round or oval shape. When two or three were inserted under the skin of the penis, they had the result of "enlarging the member, as anyone can imagine." He added that according to Niccolò dei Conti, a Venetian nobleman who visited Burma early in the fifteenth century, there had then been "certain old women who had no other calling then that of selling these rattles." Carletti thought the original idea of the bells had been to enlarge the penis to such an extent as to "rule out and render impossible the practicing of venery in illicit parts of the body even with men" - by which he presumably meant anal intercourse - while Fitch, rather more obscurely, claimed that they had been "invented because they should not abuse the male sex, for in times past all those countries were [so] given to that villainy that they were very scarce of people." Both authors added, however, that whatever the origins of the practice it was perpetuated by the fact that women considered the effect highly stimulating.

Women themselves made use of the "Burmese Bell," at first inserting one in the vagina before intercourse, but later using them for solitary pleasure. In this case a pair of the little silver globes was necessary, one containing a drop of mercury and the other a tiny vibrating metal tongue; they gave a uniquely erotic sensation even at the slightest movement of hips or legs. Rin-no-tama bells for women became popular in the West in the eighteenth century and again in the late twentieth, though the modern set consists of three, not two, and the third is hollow.

- Sex in History, Reay Tannahill p. 173-174

***

The rest:

bcg treatment and chunks of flesh in urine

where can i find a picture of emma watson naked? - In your dreams.

disgusting phlegm fetish

"conflict theory"Matrix movie karl marx

praying naked muslim girls fucked in the mosque

cmpb strip pants
ns cmpb doctor bum

Raffles Institution porn Pictures

bollywood cpr scenes - No doubt they dance around a tree after resuscitation has been performed.

power rangers porn - http://www.fightingperverts.com/home.html

braless blog singapore
blog mgs lift skirt
singapore girl jc nude diary - They must be thinking of jAime's adventures. Too bad it's now down.

DIY dilbert boss costumes - I'd rather be Bob the Dinosaur, really.

why is the Thaipusam celebrated openly?

AHH PORN . COM

Philosophy politics and pretend economics EEEE

daniel radcliffe's opinion of Bush

sanitary pads fetish - I once saw a blog template featuring Sanitary Napkins.

emma watson's chest is smaller, and then its bigger - I thought that was Britney.

witch girls nude - Robes are needed for safety - what if the snakes' gall lands on you?

daniel radcliffe's sexy penis - How can a phallus be sexy? Erm. Nevermind.

pictures of naked fedex couriers

SCV halal

"nus" "racial quotas" - That's a new one.

sexual fetishes in the hundred acre wood

adventist moral tubal ligations

spanking raffles rgs

are gep student really gifted

critique "Malaysia, Truly Asia"

nude women making pepe - Pepe?!

pointy shoes yahoo group site:blogspot.com

anal bleaching

emma watson said she hate korea

industry spec palm olein - To clog up arteries as much as possible.

nude people in wheelchair are dancing

onionskin shorts

malay bust massage - I thought they go to the bomoh instead.

alt.sex.passwords hack kermit - Kermit and sex?!

"chuck jones" biography pornographic cartoons

mighty morphin power ranger superstore - Too bad Disney destroyed the warehouse.

pictures of women that have been airbrushed - I thought it's harder to find a non-airbrushed one.

Officer Cadet School Ringtone Singapore

Welcome to the original Older Men Porn website. We have over 1200 pictures of naked mature men, senior hairy men, - Yes. Someone actually typed this into a search engine.

"wo hen nankan" vietnamese - Finally, someone gets it. He's not Indian, damnit.

nude girls in ankle socks

naked mullet men

saddam hussein autographs

atheist pork photo

anime haters

how does marianas trench effect society nowadays

pictures of college guys armpits sexy hairless armpits hot underarms

islamic hentai - Haram! Haram!

power rangers fan fiction (porn) (lord zedd) (clinton)

circumcised blog girlfriend

poetry for depserate children

vagina speculum companies competition top 10

Malaysia Boleh website - offending article

difficult to enter nus law faculty

selamat hari raya greeting wav

sheares library porn - This was a Google search in Old Chinese. Hmm. Taiwan scholars?

unshaven nanyang girls

pretty scgs girls

F&N "The Fizzkidz" - Someone remembers that horrible drink that turn kids into cartoon characters.

Zhane and Astronema love fan fiction - That's not slash. Boo!

brazilian waxing pubic hair by muslim girls - Most important: is it haram?

preteen zaogeng - There's nothing to see.

rgs girls' brigade christian god

SCGS girls in toilet - Taking photos, no doubt.

boy corsetry "19th century"

pics of popes prick up close

"I love you islam" afterdate:20041115

hentai female body inflation

Steven Lim Naked

bikini blog scgs

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caleb, blog, singaporean, tall

hairy armpits actresses

blogger MRF Eisen Teo admin spec 6th platoon

"sphinx" + "chinx"

pictures of fat or obsese persons

model 39kg girl

taufik more educated than sylvester

tudung gals nude - Logically that's impossible.

lu xun slash yaoi

enslaved brazilian pussy

funky hairstyle malays

teenage mutant ninja turtles YAOI fanfic

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"pee in the bushes" wank

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+vegetarian +colleague +today +blog +guy +NUS

"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think." - Horace Walpole

Random Playlist Song: Trevor Pinnock - The English Concert and Choir: Handel - Messiah - Behold, A Virgin Shall Conceive (contralto, recitative)

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us.


Random Trivia bit: The first description of acupuncture is in "The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine" ("Huang Di Nei Jing") which was once believed to date back 4,700 years, but is now thought to have been written about 2,100 years ago.

***

LJ does have its occasional uses, despite my previous dissing of it, so I shall occasionally place some friends-only entries on it.

So now would be a good time for all the closet fans who use LJ to crawl out of the woodwork if they want to read something too controversial for even me to put here, exposed to the whole world (golly, just imagine that).

***

Some essays I'm hosting:

Mill and Social Mandates - "If someone cheated on his income tax cleverly enough, he wouldn’t get caught, but if that same person insisted on repeating every sentence he uttered in Pig Latin, he’d be ridiculed and mocked. Ergo, past a certain point people need to be protected from society’s dictates and pressure to conform."

Continuing Discrimination Against the Dalits: Reasons and Possible Solutions - "One of the ways from preventing abuse of power is to have a rigorous selection process for policemen and those in positions of power; only those with irreproachable integrity and honesty should be allowed to assume office. In practice, however, this is certainly no easy task. Besides the difficulty of ascertaining true character, the Indian civil service faces the problem of ‘bullets-to-ballots’: it is riddled with corrupt politicians and ex-criminals, a notorious example being the ex-Minister of Railways, Laloo Prasad. The Parliament itself currently has more than 100 of 542 lawmakers facing criminal charges. Against such a background, until the Indian government takes a firm and decisive stand against corruption and criminal acts by its servants, the plight of the lower classes will continue. It is vital that improper practices be prevented and harshly dealt with; audits and checks must be conducted on a random basis by an independent government agency to root out corruption." (Abdullah)

Proud to be “SingapoLian”: A Scrutiny on the Rise of “Ah Lian” Culture in Singapore - "By ditching conformity, “Ah Lians” seem to be predicating that the taste of the masses does not equate to good taste, conversely, the taste of “Ah Lians” is not the equivalent of bad taste. The notion of good taste is challenged by “Ah Lians” and it is legitimate. This is because there is no such thing known as “genuine good taste” (Bourdieu 56). “Legitimate good taste” is nothing more than the “taste of one particular class – the ruling class” (Gronow 11)." (Huiping)

***

Leninism, Asian Culture and Singapore By Chung-Kwong Yuen

Lengthy analysis published in Asian Profile, June 1999, and posted 27 Sept 1999 in response to Buruma & Mahbubani dialogue "Are Singaporeans Afraid to Think" in Straits Times.

"It is therefore no wonder that, as the country became more wealthy under the PAP government, the party organization has all but lost its identity as a political party. It has ceased to have a party ideology that is distinct from the policies of the government... The leaders, the government, the important national institutions, and the country as a whole are so closely identified with each other that it is difficult to oppose one without coming under suspicion of being also opposed to the others; being against what policies the PAP has worked out for the country is almost automatically considered unpatriotic. Further, given the career situation, it is easy to believe that the government and its network of trust encompass the best educated and most able people of Singapore; to oppose all these must mark one as a disgruntled incompetent or a deliberate spoilsport, motivated by alien thinking. The idea of several political partiesof equal legitimacy competing for power as alternative governments, seems very remote from reality.

[...]

The process of younger people being introduced into government has been called PAP's political renewal, but it seems to be renewal to a very set pattern. Political career is now viewed as an extension of a normal career, like promotion in a company from operational staff to executive, instead of an alternative calling for people with particularly political interests. There is of course nothing wrong with the idea that only well educated and already successful persons should run the country, but the set pattern does raise the question "is there any other way to succeed?" If one is not selected as a government cadet at 18, does not have an Oxbridge/Ivy League degree and is not plugged into the network at an early stage, will there be any opportunity in life of reaching high places at all? In theory, any school child has the chance to do well at A Level examinations and qualify for a government cadetship. In practice, the chance of a child from a wealthy or upper middle class family is very much greater. Its parents can afford to hire domestic tutors, have a home library, buy computers and take the child on frequent overseas trips to widen their exposure. Whereas the better off children are whisked to school in cars by parents, or in some cases by family chauffeurs, poorer children spend long periods of time each day travelling by public transport or walking. They do their homework in cramped and noisy homes, sometimes in the shops and hawker centres where their parents work as there is nobody at home to keep an eye on them, whereas wealthy families hire Filipino maids to take care of the children's needs.

[...]

Contrary to the rather priggish image of the country, sexual mores are far from conservative. Single American and European business executives working in Singapore, while they may complain about other things, rarely mention difficulty of meeting girls and getting sex, and the preference of some girls for such boyfriends has produced the term "Sarong Party Girl" to denote the type. Divorce rates, as high as those in Taiwan, Hongkong and Japan, are rising. Abortion is available on demand, with the number at nearly 15,000, in a country where live births are under 40,000 per year. The number of abortions indicates widespread pre-marital sex: since contraceptives are freely available (in fact, packets of condoms are displayed at most supermarket cashiers booths), one would guess that for every teenager that gets pregnant, at least 10 would have used contraception.

[...]

I see two practical shortcomings in the Singapore system: the difficulty of finding imaginative leaders and its vulnerability to infiltration by foreign agents. The system has the tendency to promote conformity, and those who thrive in the system are people who are good at conforming, or at least, at appearing to be conforming. The cautious and the sly have a better chance of survival than the frank. Such survival characteristics do not however associate with the vision and real convictions that the system needs in leaders. Obedience is not the same thing as loyalty, which often requires one to speak out and point out problems. It is not surprising that, despite the vast increase in the number of well educated people and the more effective machinery and database for identifying candidates, the government has often complained of the difficulty of finding enough good people to stand for parliament, especially those with ministerial potential.

There is a security risk in the practice of recruiting cadets and sending them for overseas studies before posting them to fast rising career tracks, because a foreign government can easily identify promising targets for agent recruitment. A combination of the cadet's admiration for the host country, money, career assistance, participation in exciting secret ventures, and blackmail since young people living alone in a foreign country could easily commit indiscretions, may be used towards recruitment success."

***

Greek Lawyers Threaten To Sue Over Gay Alexander Film - "The upcoming film Alexander and Oliver Stone its director are being threatened with a lawsuit for portraying Alexander the Great as a bisexual. A group of Greek lawyers announced Friday that they have served Stone and Warner Bros film studios with "an extrajudicial note""
Considering that the evidence that he was bisexual is better than that for Jesus being gay, their fury is curious. Besides which, he was Macedonian, not Greek.

CacheLogic - P2P Traffic Analysis - BitTorrent alone took up a third of bandwith.

Cook's Thesaurus: Exotic Tropical Fruit - "feijoa = feijoda = pineapple guava. Notes: To eat feijoas, just cut them in half and scoop out the pulp with a spoon. They also make terrific preserves and syrups. Look for them in large supermarkets. If they're hard when you buy them, allow them to ripen at room temperature until they give a bit when you squeeze them, then store them in the refrigerator."

Vocal clip of a vocal trainer called Brett Manning, the techniques of whom, taught in a US$199 home program, supposedly give one a 5-octave range. Allegedly, he can sing as high as Mariah Carey.

Singapore: past, present and future - by Francis Seow - "Singapore’s chief justice – believe it or not -- receives more than the combined salaries of the Lord Chancellor of England, the Chief Justices of Australia, Canada, and United States Supreme Court."
I think it would be more effective, at least from a pedagogical point of view, if he did not make his bitterness and hatred obvious, leading people to think that he had a hidden (or otherwise, as the case might be) agenda. His analysis of the weaknesses of the opposition, however, is surprisingly incisive.

I am sian.

I was looking for the most god-awful, garish and tasteless blog template on BlogSkins.com to put up for a day or two, but couldn't find one disgusting enough.

At least someone shares my sentiments on blog templates:

"Y'know, there are an awful lot of .. well... AWFUL blog templates out there. Every time I get in the mood to change my site layout and go looking for templates, I always end up discouraged. I mean, I was browsing through literally HUNDEREDS of blog templates - and 95% of them were just pure shit. The other 5% were too girly.

Looks like I'm going to have to brush up my CSS formatting SKILZ if I want to modify my blog template ... not that I haven't modified it already, being the 3l33t h4x0rz that I am. Dude."

***

The readiness of Americans (more so than other people, seemingly) to believe out-of-this-world conspiracy theories is mystifying.

Americans seem fascinated with conspiracy theories. The theories seem to have a good deal of incontrovertible and irrefutable evidence behind them, but this ignores the overwhelming preponderance of evidence against them (see previous post on AIDS). For example, we all know that the UN is a sinister World Government controlled by the Illuminati, Freemasons and god knows who else, but for a world government they don't seem to be doing a very good job. Hell, they have enough trouble getting simple motions passed, so I doubt they can do a very good job in ruling the world.

There's also a delusion that "they", with the complicity of the media, don't want you to know the truth, but the "mainstream media" frequently does uncover scandals: eg Bill Clinton and his exploits with various women, Abu Ghraib, Iran-Contra and Watergate.

You can't fool all of the people all of the time, after all.

I would think that 99.9% of American conspiracy theories have about as much truth in them as the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

I'm guessing that it has something to do with the reasons why so many of them believed that Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found in Iraq, that they've been kidnapped by aliens and that Man was created in his current form 10,000 years ago. It must be pretty scary to live in such a world.

IMHO, religious apologetics, Creation 'Science' and conspiracy theoretics share most of the same techniques - misrepresentation of the other side, ad hominem attacks, selective interpretation of evidence, ignoring the sheer bulk of contrary evidence, absurd arguments and basically working backwards from a pre-determined conclusion to come up with theories and postulates that nicely fit the facts, rather than the other way around.

(See also: Why I hate the madness of these conspiracy theories)

"Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania."

- Dorothy Parker

Random Playlist Song: Trevor Pinnock - The English Concert and Choir: Handel - Messiah - And He Shall Purify (chorus)

And he shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.

***

The International Square Earth Society

"It is a well-established Biblical fact that the Earth is flat and immobile. Every good Biblical literalist knows the Scriptural passages which demonstrate that the Earth does not move and that its surface is not curved: Daniel 4:10-11, Matthew 4:8, Joshua 10:12, 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 93:1 & 96:10 & 104:5, Isaiah 45:18; the list goes on and on.

But far too many lazy Biblical literalists today ignore the plain fact that the Bible also tells us that the flat Earth does not have curved edges. Even the late, great Charles K. Johnson, the valiant fighter for the Truth who carried the message of the earlier Zetetic Astronomers forward into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by founding the International Flat Earth Society, made the grievous error of assuming that the Earth was shaped like a circular disk. Nothing could be further from the Truth.

"What can I do in my community to make the heathenous Round-Earthers see the light?"

Show them this webpage. Take out your own bible, and show them Revelation 7:1, Isaiah 11:12, and the two Job passages. If that doesn't convince them, you can use your bible to hit them on top of the head and shout, "Earth square!".

Hold Square Dances where you hand out International Square Earth Society literature. March in picket lines in front of globe manufacturers with signs reading "Earth square!", "Satan says the Earth is round," "No round Earths", etc.. Boycott Rand McNally. Buy square Earth maps and place them prominently in classrooms and on bulletin boards. Yell at the school board and demand "equal time" for the "equally valid" scientific theory that the Earth is square, while reminding them that the notion of a round Earth is "just a theory." Hold up signs saying "Rev 7:1" for the cameras at football games. There's so much one person can do to spread the Word that it's impossible to list all the possibilities here."


The Bible And Christianity - The Historical Origins - Perhaps the most complete account I've read of the history of and constant revising the main book of christian mythology, from pre-history to the KJV.

The most interesting (or new, at least) part for me was the account of the six great revisions of Judaism, especially:

1) The Exodus story being a version of the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt
2) The merging of Elohim and Yahweh

Perhaps the most interesting article also on that site is a secular view of the origins of Islam. Similar views on Christianity are a dime a dozen, but one on Islam is rare indeed.


Kathryn Kuhlman, from “Occult ABC” by Kurt Koch, 1978

"One year after meeting with Kathryn, the state of all twenty-eight people said by her to have been healed was as follows: Ten had not been healed, seven had experienced an improvement in their condition, eleven had diseases in which the mind can play an important part. In the whole of this extensive report, there is not one clear case of healing from an organic disease. So for all the trouble taken by Mrs. Johnson, for which I thank her again, nothing has been proved.

Ex 113 Another case, that Dr. Nolen followed up, was that of a woman who was said to have been cured of lung cancer. In his own words, "When I contacted her, Leona told me that she had not had lung cancer at all. 'I have Hodgkin's disease,' she said, land some of the glands in my chest are involved. But since no one else got up when Miss Kuhlman said that someone with lung cancer is being cured, I figured it had to be me. I've been back to my doctor and he says he can't see any change in my x-ray. I think I breathe better, but it's hard to tell, since I never had much trouble breathing anyway.' "

Dr. Nolen also obtained from Kathryn Kuhlman a list of eight people who were alleged to have been cured of cancer. Again the result of his investigations was completely negative. " (All emphases in original)

Methinks similar principles apply elsewhere.


Interview with Azar Majedi: "I would like to make one point clear. Criticising Islam, ridiculing it, no matter how harshly, falls within the concept of freedom of expression and criticism, and is not racist. However, insulting people by reference to their religion or race is racist. We need to make this distinction very clearly because we find tendencies among the left who consider criticism of Islam as racist. Islamophobia is an invented concept by Islamists and their apologists, a concept that condemns any criticism of Islam as a racist act. I believe Islamophobia is as hypocritical as it is reactionary. We should raise the banner of unconditional freedom of expression and criticism."

Interesting point.

***

The Crusade Against Evolution

"In an era when the government is pouring billions into biology, and when stem cells and genetically modified food are front-page news, spending even a small part of the curriculum on bogus criticisms of evolution is arguably more detrimental now than any time in history. Ironically, says Ohio State University biology professor Steve Rissing, the education debate coincides with Ohio's efforts to lure biotech companies. "How can we do that when our high school biology is failing us?" he says. "Our cornfields are gleaming with GMO corn. There's a fundamental disconnect there."

[...]

In a democracy, every idea gets heard. But in science, not all theories are equal. Those that survive decades - centuries - of scientific scrutiny end up in classrooms, and those that don't are discarded. The intelligent design movement is using scientific rhetoric to bypass scientific scrutiny. And when science education is decided by charm and stage presence, the Discovery Institute wins."

Ah well. There are always the textbook disclaimer stickers. My favourite one is: "This book was anonymously donated
to your school library to discreetly promote religious alternatives to the
theory of evolution. When you are finished with it, please refile the book
in the fiction section."

***

Why god, Why- answering what Power Rangers is and why adults watch it

"For some people, PR is their generation of super heroes. For others, including myself, PR's ideas helped boost my creativity in writing and drawing, and has become a stable consistency in my life since it's debut on August 28, 1993. Like in any fandom, the PR fandom has it's share of nervous-wreck members who validate people's opinions that PR fans have serious issues. On the other hand, some of the older fans use PR as either an escape from frustrating times in their lives (like any show, movie or book), or something to fuel current interests like art or writing.

Who are these Ranger fans?

They range from average Joes to anything imaginable. They are out there, and they are abundant. They're people with real emotions and life issues who share a common interest in a television show. They may be ridiculed for whatever ignorant reason, but they'll always have a thriving fandom to back them up.

Hopefully, this Q&A has informed new fans just how big Power Rangers really is today, and has reminded us older fans what continues to make it a great place to be."

***

We are being watched:

Someone: u think ISD & SID so free to monitor all of u all???

Someone else: Duh! Its all automated lah via various engines the looks at forums, email list, emails, etc. Also there are dictionary searches to catch "sensitive" words.

I am not being paranoid, I know it for a fact because I have a friend working on one of their applications, plus I have been actively involved in the gay rights in Singapore and have seen garmen mechanics in action before more than once, plus trading war stories with other ppl like journalists, other ngos, etc, etc....

SPUG is definitely in their monitoring list....

***

Relative thinking

""If you asked me to name the leading relativist in the world, I couldn't," says Robert Eaglestone, a senior lecturer in the department of English at Royal Holloway, "because they just don't exist. Relativism has always been a bogeyman used to scare people. No-one's ever lived up to the straw figure of the full-blown relativist constructed by their opponents. If you read any of the usual suspects - Derrida, Rorty, Lyotard, Kuhn - with care, you'll find that none of them ever suggests that 'anything goes'."

Somehow the 'real' relativists always seem to be somewhere else, somehow their wacky notions always seem to evaporate on closer inspection, to turn into something perfectly sensible. But if these relativists are just a tiny minority in academia, or if they really don't exist at all, then why does everybody believe that the humanities are overrun by shifty foreign nonsense? Why does the 'anything goes' caricature of the modern intellectual stick? Why do we distrust everything that snowy-haired French philosophers say?"

***

Tech-related

Human PacMan hits real city streets - "The classic arcade game PacMan has resurfaced on the streets of Singapore using "augmented reality" technology developed by military-backed scientists at the University of Singapore."

Pirated software used to create help content in Microsoft's Windows XP - "Nine WAV audio files located in the folder " "Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav" in the Windows installation directory include a signature of "Deepz0ne", a member of former cracking group "Radium""

The Rule of Threes - Soapbox - "The One-third of a Second Rule: As frustration levels rise, so too do our attempts to get things done quickly. We click here... click there... highlight this file or that... stab at the delete key... click OK... OOPS! Here comes the one-third of a second rule - this is the amount of time that usually elapses between clicking OK and the OOPS."

LART - "Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool. In the collective mythos of scary devil monastery, this is an essential item in the toolkit of every BOFH. The LART classic is a 2x4 or other large billet of wood usable as a club, to be applied upside the head of spammers and other people who cause sysadmins more grief than just naturally goes with the job. Perennial debates rage on alt.sysadmin.recovery over what constitutes the truly effective LART; knobkerries, automatic weapons, flamethrowers, and tactical nukes all have their partisans. Compare clue-by-four."

Spyware Lurks On Growing Number Of Home Computers - The galling part: "Many of the free spyware-removal software are loaded with spyware."

Weird news

Ladies, say goodbye to toilet queues - A week-old New Paper article. I never knew there was a rule for the ratio of cubicles in male and female toilets. The ladies can always learn how to pee standing up.

Judge throws party, hands down life sentence - "A judge threw a party complete with balloons, streamers and a cake to welcome a former fugitive back to her court -- and sentence him to life in prison."

"I express my deep regret at the taxpayer's death" - "A Polish taxpayer died from a heart attack after a demand for immediate payment in full of 80,000 zlotys ($23,560) following a mistake by the tax office."

Youngsters Play Hollywood Spirituals in A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant - "A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant is a self-proclaimed "bizarre new holiday classic — part avant-garde performance art, part children's theater — based on the actual principles of Scientology and the seriously unbelievable life story of founder L. Ron Hubbard.""

Bush Shirt Leads To Poll Strip - "When an election worker told Debbie Dupeire that her Bush-Cheney T-shirt was illegal at the polls, Dupeire didn't get mad. She got undressed. Dupeire ripped off the T-shirt and voted Tuesday in a sports bra, too afraid to lose her place in a long line. Under state law, candidates' names cannot be displayed within 500 feet of a polling place. "

Would you buy a car that looked like this? - "The Society of Motor Manufacturers says that "environmental factors are very low on people's list of priorities when it comes to buying a car". So the New Economics Foundation is looking at the model of tobacco labelling as a way to help people kick the SUV habit. Canadian government research, backed by World Bank findings, shows that there is a direct relationship between the size of warnings and the effect on personal behaviour. "The larger the health warning message," reports Health Canada, "the more effective it is at encouraging smokers to stop smoking.""
They should look at smoking in Singapore before saying anything.

ID card doubts - Blunkett blames dead German philosopher - "Home Secretary David Blunkett said today that the German philosopher Immanuel Kant is to blame for scepticism about the government's plans for a compulsory national identity card."

Singapore

"The Unusual Character & Extra Value of Singapore Journalism" - A list of the 46 (count them) affidavits that journalists in Singapore filed in the first 4 months of 1997 against an opposition politician

Big Brother is watching, make no mistake.... - "I was walking along Boat Quay recently and saw four ladies standing on a bar in a pub, each writhing to music in a sexually-suggestive manner. This is not reform. This is not liberalism. This is sleaze. And sleaze should not be equated with freedom. The most important aspect of freedom, which is aligned to the freedom of the media, is the freedom to be wrong. And it's that freedom that Singapore needs to cultivate."

Misc

Here W comes to save the day!!!

Alice’s Adventures in Charles Dodgson’s Mind - "Dodgson was also quite interested in photography, especially
photographing young girls and women. There is much mystery surrounding the life and behaviors of Dodgson. He was said to be shy, but he had many female friends who he mostly kept contact with through letters. He seemed to lack confidence and devoted much time to pursuing young girls and befriending them... Many researchers believe that Charles Dodgson held an obsession for young girls, and some even believe that he was a pedophile."

flat is beautiful - "This community is for girls who have always been put down for having small breasts. who says having small breasts is a bad thing? flat is beautiful!"

communication skills - zefrank - Passive Aggressive Communications Solutions - Punctuation Substitution. "By associating punctuation with simple phrases, you greatly increase the vocabulary at your disposal."

I Like You.. I really like you... - "Did not get that mortgage you were after? No more cash? Feeling bad? No one likes you? Nothing we can do with your mortgage or cash problems, but we can make you feel better.. We can even like you!.."

Traditional Saami Joik of Norway - "The Saami, the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, have a unique unaccompanied vocal style called joik... A joik is a musical description of a subject which has inspired the singer, such as a family member or a friend."

The History Of Banned Rock and Roll - "From Rock and Roll's very begining, there have been those who have tried to control what others should hear."

Economic `Armageddon' predicted - "Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley, has a public reputation for being bearish... His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic ``armageddon.''"

Who Needs Harvard? - "Krueger and Dale studied what happened to students who were accepted at an Ivy or a similar institution, but chose instead to attend a less sexy, "moderately selective" school. It turned out that such students had, on average, the same income twenty years later as graduates of the elite colleges. Krueger and Dale found that for students bright enough to win admission to a top school, later income "varied little, no matter which type of college they attended." In other words, the student, not the school, was responsible for the success."

"You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone." - John Ciardi

Random Playlist Song: Random Playlist Song: Trevor Pinnock - The English Concert and Choir: Handel - Messiah - But Who May Abide The Day Of His Coming (alto, air)

But who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire.


There is no definitive musical text for Messiah because of the many changes Handel was obliged to make during the seasons it was performed. Some numbers were recomposed, such as "But who may abide", which is best known as the alto virtuoso piece composed for the castrato Guadagni in 1750. Others were customised for the soloists available, such as another version of "But who may abide" transposed up for an additional soprano soloist in 1754.


Random Trivia bit:

Convicted of murdering a couple with a pickaxe in 1983, Karla Faye Tucker begged Gov. George W. Bush for mercy. Instead, he mocked her desperate plea in an interview with a reporter from "Talk" magazine by whimpering "Please don't kill me."

***

XenoBoy: Good writing. The tangle of your thoughts spill like gossamer, blurring
between insight and borrowed words. Alfianesque. Personally I prefer a
more manifesto approach.

Erm. I assume that this is supposed to be good. Though I'm not sure if gossamer can spill.

***

SourceForge.net Team: When the SF.net team sends out a site-wide email, we sometimes see replies that look like this: "Hey! I didn't ask to be on this list! You spammer. I hate you! I hate your dog! (insert other colorful phrases here)."

Heh, I thought replying to spammers only encourages them.

***

The Private Society at LSE


Email 1:

Dear XXXXX,

Peruse http://www.xtq.com to join the discreet private society networking club for LSE students only.

LSE has yet to produce a compelling student directory to expedite information exchange amongst students, including a colloquium for students to compose his or her phone number, address, instant messenger name, course work, interests, clubs, jobs, and the like. Without waiting for administrative action to correct this loss, I took it upon myself to develop and launch a community specifically for those of us adept enough to exclaim ourselves as London School of Economics students. Unquestionably, the world is cognizant of our reputation as the pre-eminent school in the cosmos for the study of business. Our alumni are beyond compare in their global triumph, influence and clout. I appeal to you as a world class student to join this premier sodality. My website is for us high achievers to network amongst ourselves in order to engender the most goodwill in our deliberating as LSE students.

If you feel the need to catechize or supply remark, my preferred email address is privatesociety@gmail.com. Thank you for your participation in one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. Only LSE students are permitted to join at http://www.xtq.com

The Private Society


Email 2, titled: clarification about joining The Private Society

Dear XXXX, We have received several attacks from irate students, and we deem it necessary to clarify our position. Our website is for proud LSE students. Emails from students that denigrate the significance of themselves as LSE students is unfortunate. Regardless, upon consideration of select comments, we tend to agree with the assessment that our initial email promulgating our site was excessive, if a bit "pretentious," as one student put it.

On the contrary, we seek to network LSE students amongst each other. One cannot appreciate this simply by reading words; they must be a part of it. But we ask that if you join the private society -- which you are entitled to do as a LSE student -- then we ask you do so to the fullest. We request you fill out your profile completely and especially post a picture of yourself in order to fraternize with fellow private society members.

Here are some comments we received. We found them particularly amusing, so we thought we would pass them along:

From Neshwa Chantal Boukhari

n.c.boukhari@lse.ac.uk: "wtf? (in case you are unfamiliar with this abreviation it stands for in my humble vernacular: WHAT THE F***??) whats with the inappropriate use of unecesarily hi-faluting language? gees at 3 am - thats so not the way to go. youll never reach your target audience of 'us high achievers' with such high pretention. sounds like a society for swats and hacks. im taking my significantly high IQ elsewhere... my own rival society perhaps... im not paid to write your copy for you. but just generally be less pretentious - its aweful - and if you arent capably of that then i suggest its probably not worth joining. really in all that crap thats written i couldnt extract what this thing is in aid of."

From Charlie Whitehorn (he later joined

the society after discussing with us) ""what the f*** is this site?"

From Simon Peter Guildford s.p.guildford@lse.ac.uk: "Please unsubscribe my e-mail address from this ridiculous spam bullshit."


Email 3

Dear XXXXX,

We apologize to those three student that had their names and emails accidentally included in teh last email we sent. This was absolutely human error and was not intended. I am sure all three of those people are upstanding individuals. That was a draft version and we made the error of selecting the wrong version when we sent it out. Please accept our apologies. We are sending this email as an apology for our so-called "spam." We did not intend this to disrupt peoples' lives. We have decided to not send anymore emails to students for while. If we decide to submit something, I assure you we will give more thought to what we submit.

"PS"


Note the PS at the end with nothing following it.

***

Techno Prince on his exams: "ANNABEL CHONG... I was screwed over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again."

One of the best analogies I've heard recently :)

***

"Groups such as "Focus on the Family" appear to me to be exercising their God-given right of free speech and thought with more than the usual assertiveness of late... The very idea that people should NOT want to form families and choose rather alternate modes of life is clearly a notion that will rock the very foundations of this earth and wreck unimaginable disaster upon this chosen nation. If truth be told, even telling innocent virgins about how they could minimise the risk of nasty genital sores, immune system failure or that live-long plaque known as babies by putting on a safety jacket is tantamount to telling them that's it ok to do whatever you want to your body. Sorry, that's not even right: it should be that the jackets don't even work at all, so don't even ask, don't tell and don't do anything until our Heavenly Father has thoroughly approved your license to fuck (and only in the right positions, sans unnatural barriers).

To our society's moral crusaders, such good work is surely a vital step into converting this nation into a veritable Kingdom of God. The effort to suppress all forms, expressions and manifestations of lust in this land will be a spiritual battle that will not be yielded. After all, it's by far the most abominable of all sins, a hideous demon that eats into the very core of humanity, compared to the paltry misendeavours that are pride, anger, envy, sloth, covetousness and gluttony."

(Focus on the Family, The Annotated Budak)

***

We can get rid of leg hair without pretending that we do a lot of cycling/swimming or any other sport that would require aerodynamic legs.

We absently hum tunes from musicals without anyone being suspect of our sexuality.

When we buy a vibrator it is glamorous. When men buy a blow up doll it's pathetic.

Should we wake up looking like something the cat dragged in, we can fix it with cosmetics.

We can have partners that are years younger than us without being called dirty old perverts.

We can scare male bosses with mysterious gynecological disorder excuses.

Our boyfriend's clothes make us look elfin and gorgeous. They look like complete dorks in our clothes.

We have total control over our eyebrows.

It's cool to be a daddy's girl. It's sad to be a mommy's boy.

We can cry to get out of speeding fines.

The thrill of surprising people by being good at darts... and pool... and football.

We live longer, so we can be cantankerous old biddies wearing inappropriate clothes and shouting at strangers... men die earlier so we get to cash in on the life insurance.

We know that games are fun, but don't believe there's a direct correlation between the size of our scores and the size of our... womanhood.

Taxis stop for us.

We get drunk quicker and cheaper.

We have no desire to arrange our possessions in alphabetical order. Ever.

We've never fancied a cartoon character or the central figure in a computer game.

It does not enhance our social standing to understand the inner workings of a 'ruck' (or any other football thing). But we look incredibly cool if we do.

***

Curse of the Mummy Review

Ah, FF59: the legendary final campaign of a once-mighty empire (current resurgence notwithstanding until it turns up some new spoils). Was it really only nine years ago? Looking back it's easy to wish for a more memorable final engagement, but in the absence of forward planning on Penguin's part, this is what we're left with - a frankly half-arsed, semi-literate slog through just about every Ancient Egyptian cliché known to man.

PLOT

The epic, age-spanning background to your mission in Curse of the Mummy serves as its only appropriate quality for a series finisher, even if the story wrapped around this framework is paper-thin. You can't help but be interested in a scenario which pits you against an enemy born before the shaping of the continents. True, after the first few encounters you realise with a heavy heart that this mighty confrontation is going to boil down to a hackfest with a Skill 13 boss followed by a slim chance of escape from the latest in a long line of collapsing temples - bloody terrible architects, these Disciples of Evil - but hey, that's FF for you. In fact that's pretty much fantasy in general. But it's still a shame that the ambition and scope hinted at in Akharis' origins couldn't stretch to spicing up the reader's quest with a few more tricks and twists, or in fact stretch beyond the Background section at all.

WRITING

There's also an air of naïveté throughout which manages to be irritating rather than charming, as seen in scenarios such as the one in which you can reduce all future battle damage by 1 Stamina point simply by rubbing yourself all over with embalming fluid. You know - like all the best heroes do.

Lastly, the story gives off mixed messages, one of the most aggravating of all gamebook faults. The best outcome from even the very first encounter doesn't arise from the most sensible choice, and although you receive the standard punishment throughout the book for displaying greed over caution, in order to make good your escape at the end you'll have to ignore all that and go against every instinct you've got. Well, except the one that tells you not to rely on such simplistic things as logic and experience when it's Jonathan Green you're dealing with.

ENCOUNTERS

In terms of traps, sorry to say there's even less imagination on show. Closing walls, plummetting ceilings, pits full of spikes, toppling statues... and plenty of them resulting in instant death, which is nice. There's also the obligatory maze, this one half-flooded for novelty but hampered in its challenge by the fact that it's largely unpopulated and possible to escape within three paragraphs, so the only way you know you've been in a maze at all is the text congratulating you on managing to escape "at last". It's fairly obvious that all those "you are at another crossroads", "you are hopelessly lost" and "look: another poxy Crocodile" entries were an easy way to bump the book up to a handy 400 paragraphs when the rest of it was done and dusted.

MECHANICS

Standard FF rules plus an extra Poison attribute, which doesn't do a lot except add to the already extensive range of ways in which you can die horribly long before the end... Also, it was a pleasant (if minor) surprise to see the sheer number of options available at the manly one-on-one with Mr. Akharis, possibly the widest range of attack strategies presented by any FF boss, but ultimately few of them are worth attempting as they either do negligible damage or hinder you as much as they do your evil nemesis. This *could* be because Akharis is a canny little tinker who's built up considerable immunity to all possible attacks during his long sleep and subsequent resurrection rituals, but I think it's probably more to do with the book being a bit rubbish.

DIFFICULTY

The stupidly hard fights and the sheer *volume* of stupidly hard fights are, as you'd expect, the main culprits. Within a mere few paragraphs of setting out, you'll find yourself in an unavoidable scuffle with a Skill 10, two-attacks-per-round Giant Scorpion, and it only deteriorates from there. Get anywhere near the final confrontation and there'll be so many enemies in your face, all the time, that you'll stand very little chance of making it through *and* surviving the constant bombardment of crucial rolls against Luck and Stamina. You can even run into a gratuitous Skill 14 enemy well before the end if you're the unluckiest bugger alive (but hey, at least you won't be alive for long).

What's particularly grating is that even when a fight needn't be all that challenging, the author feels obliged to raise the stakes either by giving the enemy arbitrary extra powers, engineering the situation to cripple your Attack Strength, or both. Take for example the shoal of weedy, hand-sized Skill 6 Snapperfish, now capable of dealing damage of 3 Stamina and 1 Skill with each and every hit while you stumble around in waist-high water at -2 AS. Even worse, the Vizier Amentut, apparently not formidable enough already at Skill 9 Stamina 8: no, surely to balance it out he also needs a one-in-three chance of trimming a tasty 1 Skill and 2 Stamina from your current *and* Initial scores with every successful hit, plus the power to boost his own life-force by absorbing and converting your Stamina losses. I mean, why not? IT'S ONLY FAIR.

A second Livingstonian trait is the unflinching focus on item collection. At times I was reminded of Trial of Champions by the book's insistence that I search everywhere and pick up as many random objects as possible, in the hope of having the right ones for the inevitable "if you don't have Item X, YOU DIE" sequence at the end - but then it also veered off to include the charming "if you *do* have Item X, YOU ALSO DIE" variation, which made me want to mutilate, raze, kill and defile.

***

Kureshi:

The anti-malaria measures that SAFTI is implementing are really getting on my nerves. Let's see:

Long 4 in or near vegetated areas, including Wings that are located next to large patches of vegetation (that includes my Wing). Come on, that's not going to help. They can bite through clothing. I found out during ATP.

Regular fumigating of affected areas and edge of vegetated patches. That doesn't help either. I've been bitten just minutes after the foggers leave. I'm waiting for the day I see a mosquito on my leg while the foggers are still fumigating the area. The fogging's getting pretty intrusive too - they've fogged our rooms about 3 times now.

No SOC/SEOC training, as the route is located near vegetation. Come on, exposure for 10-30 min isn't going to contribute much to your chances of contracting malaria (especially for my Wing, since we're located right next to vegetation). And because of this rule many of my friends had their SEOC test (veto factor for commissioning) unnecessarily delayed. Meaning 3 more weeks for 'special SEOC 5BX' before they passed the test and were exempted from it.

Use mosquito nets when you sleep. Come on, this one really rubs me the wrong way. The nets are irritating, I dont' sleep well in them, and if you don't close them properly they're not much help (come on, once you're in bed how do you tuck the last flap under the mattress?).

Now, this is just classic SAF-not-using-their-brains-when-implementing-measures. I don't know if they're just being lazy, but putting off any and all activities that increase your exposure to mosquito bites isn't going to solve anything. The problem is malaria, not the mosquitoes (though mosquitoes are part of the problem). Don't just implement the obvious measures; How about some maloprim/mefloquine (aka malaria pill, but that sounds nastily disease-causing) indents? Enforce usage of anti-mosquito devices (preferably electric - non fire hazard) in bunks? Biological measures (insert mosquito predators into vegetated areas)?


Ah, but that's because it's dengue fever they're warding off, not malaria.

***

10 Reasons why PAP will still be here for the next 50 years

1. Singapore, sad to say, has a too small population to support 2 major political parties, which is required if another major political party wants to take over the incumbent position of PAP. LKY is simply a rare political talent that surfaces only once in a blue moon, not only in Singapore, but in the world.

2. Singaporeans have to get rid of their "kiasu, kiasi and kia jeng hu" attitude, which means our "afraid to lose, afraid to die, and afraid of the government" attitude (sorry for any misspelled hokkien words). "Kiasu" implies that we are afraid to lose out to the others if we don't support our incumbent party, especially when it comes to receiving government incentives. "Kiasi" implies that we are afraid that we'll be condemned, or to be invited to coffee by our ISD, if we criticise or fail to support our government. Lastly, "Kia jeng hu", ie afraid of the government, well I don't think I'll need any further elaboration on that. These attitudes are simply too entrenched in Singaporeans. I think we need several more decades before we can change these attitudes.

3. There's a high chance that our politicians will not suffer from any scandalous rumours, such as a certain Mr. XXX has a mistress, unlike politicians from other countries for example our poor old Bill Clinton. Being discreet is a virtue in our ruling party and having just one official print media that is extremely pro-government will ensure that there is minimal chance that our politicians will be plagued with such scandals, unless he's from the opposition party, who happens to like taking "artistic photos".

4. There is low corruption in Singapore. The high salaries that our Ministers receive means there is no need for them to resort to corruption. Or perhaps, there might be other more "official" ways for "clean corruption" to occur, just that my ignorant mind just couldn't think of how it can happen for now.

5. The "top brains" in our countries will choose to either work for some big shot MNC, either locally or overseas, migrate, start their own business, or join the ruling party. Joining an opposition party is probably one of the last goals of some of our brainiest people around.

6. Our CPF and high national reserves are at stake if PAP suddenly stop ruling Singapore.

7. If our government suddenly decides to pursue ambitious or undesirably policies like waging wars with certain countries, it'll be the day when there will be falling snow flakes and not rain on our bright sunny island. Hence no worry, we'll never produce any "Bushes" in our country.

8. Our GRCs "electoral tactic" just works too damn well.

9. There are still plenty more years before our grandma and grandpa, or parents for some of us, will stop telling us that voting for opposition is a wrong thing to do, and LKY is Singapore's saviour and therefore we must support PAP.

10. According to some of the project research carried out by some groups from one of my modules (I don't know how accurate this is), some of our nation's future hope, that is the young bright undergraduates from our local university, still thought that Mr. Goh Chok Tong is our current Prime Minister. Let's assume that there is this scenario say 30 years later, when the PAP is no longer in existence. This group of people might still be saying, "Ey, I thought PAP is still running our government?"

The only way that PAP can ever cease to be our dominant party is probably when there is internal party conflict, which might result in a party split. Otherwise, seriously, I don't see how PAP will ever lose its popular vote.

(Sanz)

Re:

2. We also need less basis for people to have these misconceptions (or otherwise, as the case might be).

4. The Hotel Properties Limited Condominium discounts?

5. Which results in a vicious circle. The opposition is pathetic and gets sued to bankruptcy, so no one joins it. So it stays pathetic.

6. ??? I don't think our reserves are in the form of cheques marked: "Payable only if the PAP is in government"

7. Bush has increased his support by waging his wars. And we always have the siege mentality that we're cultivating to unite our people in a common cause.

8. Don't forget the $13,000 deposit.

***

AIDS: The Great Con Trick

"HIV does NOT cause Aids. HIV does not cause anything.

A staggering statement given the hype and acceptance by the scientific establishment and, through them, the public that the HIV virus is the only cause of Aids. HIV is a weak virus and does not dismantle the immune system. Nor is Aids passed on sexually. There are two main types of virus. Using the aeroplane analogy, you could call one of these virus strains a "pilot" virus. It can change the nature of a cell and steer it into disease. This usually happens very quickly after the virus takes hold. Then there is the "passenger" virus which lives off the cell, goes along for the ride, but never affects the cell to the extent that it causes disease."

More conspiracy theory crap. Some points conspiracy theory theorists may want to consider:

- Nearly 500 scientists agree with Luc Montagnier that "HIV is not capable of causing the destruction of the immune system which is seen in people with Aids", but how many disagree with him?

- Why do HIV-infected people in poor countries who do not have expensive anti-AIDS treatments die more quickly of AIDS than those in rich countries that have the cocktails that prolong life for decades?

- HIV antibodies only appear when the HIV is present

- Since AIDS weakens the immune system, it is not unreasonable for people to die of unrelated diseases

- Do poor people in Africa have access to the drugs he blames for causing AIDS?

This writer probably believes the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion were real,
and that the UN is an evil world government. Oh, and don't forget the Illuminati, Black Helicopters and Alien Mind Control Waves.