Trying to reduce teenage pregnancy rates with abstinence-only education is like embarking on a large scale weapons buildup to stop an arms race emerging, or encouraging gun owenership to reduce crime. Which does tell you a lot, really.

Human females have the largest breasts relative to those of other primates, and human males have the longest penises (though their testes are second in size to chimps). More interesting implications for Natural Law Theory.

***

"Dear students,

It has been brought to the attention of the Economics Society that a student has been selling “solutions” to past exams just outside tutorial venues.

For the past two weeks, the Economics Society has been conducting a similar sale outside LTs and along AS1 corridor, but never outside tutorial rooms.

We would like to warn that this student is not part of ENS and he has not obtained the approval of the Economics Department to sell the “solutions”. We would also like to warn that the Economics Society shall not be held responsible for the “solutions” sold by this student, should there be any mistakes in them.

Only the solutions on sale at our booth are genuinely produced by the Economics Society."


That's rich, considering that the solutions are the same, and that the notice promoting the sale of the original solutions reads:

"Please note that these solutions are only meant as references in your preparation for the exams. They are NOT model solutions provided by the lecturers concerned.

The solutions are compiled by former students independently without consulting the lecturers concerned.
Any memorization of these solutions and/or blind use of them in exams could potentially hurt your performance."

Translation: "The Economics Society shall not be held responsible for the “solutions” sold by us, should there be any mistakes in them."

"An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

***

I think I shall post occasional LJ friends-only entries in future; past LJ friends-only posts are in the memories folder.


I don't know why some people are so fond of "how to blog" lists or directions. If it's a personal blog (ie Not an official blog), the only rule should be that there are no rules. Be as with the wind.

[Addendum: Even if the lists are of 'tips' rather than rules, I'm not so sure not only of their efficacy, but of their point. Popularity is nice, but when your style gets cramped that's a different matter.]

***

YES!!! I've finally found new stuff on Asian Prince aka Wo-hen Nankan aka Tuan Anh, thanks to Yahoo (Google somehow doesn't pick these up).

- RangDong Entertainment - Tuan Anh Gold - Xiet Anh Trong Vong Tay

Label / Production: Tuan Anh Productions
Sale Price: $11.99

(Samples available, registration required)

- Vietnamese biography (anyone care to translate?)

- More incomprehensible Vietnamese

- CD covers with pictures that plausibly could be of him (You've heard of 'Where's Waldo'. Now let's play 'Where's Wo-hen?'!)

- An analysis of his songs (key, style)

- A poster of a past performance he took part in: "Trump Plaza Night, Atlantic City
11:30 PM Saturday, July 24 2004 Duration: 3:00"

- Comments on "Lam Truong's wife" - "Seriously, I thought all the male viet singers were gay too and "Tuan Anh" or something is their homosexual daddy."


Alert readers will notice that I've joined a fanlisting (see sidebar). Maybe I should set up an Asian Prince fanlisting.

And maybe I should ask the Vietnamese professor in USP whether he's heard of Asian Prince...

***

Stop The Ribbon Campaign!!!

"Pick up yr anti-ribbon here, put it on yr page, & protest the self-righteousness of webmasters who go out of their way to put together a cause on their page so that everyone who links to that cause links to the page of the webmaster who initially thought of the cause and decided to use the trigger mechanism of 'feel-good' and of ribbons to promote that cause.

the reason is simple.

when a person thinks that by doing something like putting a ribbon on his or her web page, he or she is suddenly helping to make the world a brighter place, they are absolving themselves of actually doing anything of import in the future, it is much the same as people who give money to their church and then ignore the starving and the homeless because they have already given to charity.

the very act of using ribbons whores the cause the ribbon is supposed to be representing.

so capture yrself a ribbon from up top, & link back to this page by capturing the URL off yr browser, & let the world wide web know you aren't taken in by their ribbonshit."

***

'Freakonomics': Musings of a 'Rogue Economist' - "A professor at the University of Chicago, Mr. Levitt uses statistics to examine matters of everyday life: His subjects range from abortion and crime to game shows. Some of the chapter titles from Freakonomics illustrate Levitt's wide-ranging curiosity: "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?" and "How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?" are two."

MIW [Ed: Mindef Internet World, not the Men In White] has set up a blog. They've got to be joking. Anyhow, as I expected, comments on the blog are moderated. I highly doubt my comments will be approved, since they likely will want to white wash the blog, as they do in all their PR efforts. [Addendum: They actually approved the comments that me and Mr Miyagi left. I still don't agree with comment moderation, but at least there's something to be said for this PR effort now.]

***

Someone on why it seems everyone in NUS (or at least in Arts) is attached: "the sacsals are all attached to the bengs
you have hormonal 20 smthgs who are startin to break free of mommy and daddy roaming wild. and skimpily dressed arts girls. i think it makes sense"


Someone else on the same: well, i guess its what u call "the fallout"
its just a term
its when everyone 'finds somebody' at the end of their freshman year
that'd be just about now lah

so yep, i'm not surprised

Me: science is different right haha

Someone else: hahahh... nolah, its a very common observation
in fact, songs have been written on it
"Are you ready for the fallout?" by Fastball for example

i spent some time pondering over why there's this fallout phase
i think its mostly to do wif insecurity.. like u noe, ure not really in the school unless ure attached to someone else in the school kinda thang

Me: but no one wants to be "in" NUS

Someone else: hahahh.. they may not say that, but everyone wants to "belong" somewhere and since they're in nus..

Me: ahh
your wisdom is an inspiration to light all ages


Screwed Up Girl on more ways that NUS is the Premier Institution of Social Engineering:

"Gabriel always said that NUS was THE school of social engineering, and in more ways than one. No, it's not JUST because there are lots of couples walking around NUS, and they think people will get attached there, with all their bashes and societies.No, it's not JUST a place where people of different races can get together and racial harmony. No, it's much more.... subtle.

Because all the guys are two years older than the girls, somehow there is more of an invisible "I'm senior, thus I know more than you, thus I'm smarter, thus you should shut up, and my grades matter more than yours because I need more job opportunities yadayadayada" Most of the time the guys I interact with don't even realize that that's what they're doing. But they are. It's like, when a guy speaks up in class, nobody interrupts him. But when a girl speaks up, somehow she will get interrupted by a GUY and then the guy just completely takes over the point. I mean like wth?!

Maybe it's just that there are lots of rude guys around but no rude girls because girls are all brought up to be sweet and nice and POLITE? (not that all my girl friends are like that. But most are.) Maybe NS made guys impolite."

[more]


Someone else commented that NUS pays well, since all the NUS professors have bloated from the pictures used in the module feedback exercise.

Ever since the censoring of the NUS Webcast incident, the webcasts have been reformatted so the real URL of the feed is unavailable, at least using IE (Those using Gecko-based browsers, at least, are not similarly affected!). Grr.

For pedagogical reasons, they should let us S/U (Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory - the module doesn't count towards our Vital Statistic, our cumulative grade) all modules taken in excess of graduation requirements.

Apparently the lab reports of USP and non-USP Science students are very different. Supposedly this is due to all the essay writing we do, but perhaps it's because those in USP are already better at such before entering the program.

Just over a quarter of the people taking the 'Foundations for Econometrics' module are from Science or Engineering. No doubt they're taking advantage of a loophole and using it as a breadth module (one outside their faculty). Which is quite sneaky really, since Statistics is hardly something foreign to their faculties, especially the Science students.

Quotes

[On instructor evaluation] The product you sold me is defective. I'm returning him for a full refund.

[On handing up stuff] Who will take this mighty responsibility upon their shoulders? Thanks ***, I knew you would.

Some mandatory draught (momentary drought)

[On instructor evaluation] I will vanish into the shadows, before all the cursing and the 'Dr *** is a big fat...' [start]

[On a counter] The reception, there. The 'ding ding' bell, there.

Not even mun'ly (monthly)

[On error values in regression] Everyday you have tsunami, right, how do you estimate GDP?

I don't know what USP is. That's why I come here. (didn't, came)

Monty Python game, or something (Hall)

Some very in'tyou'tive (intuitive)

Phua song distribution... 'Phua song' is French for 'fish' (Poisson)

I'm just differentiating. Moronic thing.

Hello, are you talking again? Pay attention. It's coming out. You don't believe me? Ahh!

Okay, I give you one minute to talk while I look for the transparencies.

This is what you have for the subsidy... *flashes graph* Nice or not?

You should come and see me... When I see your name and your marks are at the borderline, one mark for an A Star. I can give you one mark. You must have a personal relationship with me. So you must come and see me. What was I talking about?

You might have to go through a few I-T'ray'shions (iterations)

[On a National Geographic clip with no sound and only Old Chinese subtitles] Now you guys speak Mandarin, so you should be able to read this. Mother tongue specialists: start translating.

If you had a life before this module, which I don't think you had, it was boring and seriously misguided... After this module you see the world in a new way.

[On playing Devil's Advocate] You can have an essay... Last sentence: 'I don't think any of this makes sense'... You get 5 points for amusing me.

[On the unique feature of human females compared to other primates] What's unique here? [Student: Erogenous attachment to mammary glands.] That's a very technical term. To put it bluntly - large breasts.

30% of Filipinos believe that children are god-sent. They have no idea children come from sex.

Your pigeon: your pigeon knows Picasso. Your pigeon also knows how to walk upright. So it must be closely related to us.

[Student on laughter in humans indicating interest: She can laugh all she wants but in the end say: 'We're only friends'] [Everyone: Aww!] This is false signalling. Next time that happens to you tell the woman: if you laugh, it means you must be interested in me.

[On uniquely human features] Big breasts: that's basically it.

[Professor: There's been lots of surveys showing women dind't think a longer penis mattered in sex.] LIARS! *Raucous laughter* [Other male student: {He speaks from} Personal experience]... The nerves in the vaginal lining only extend 3 inches in] [Female student: How does he know these things?!]

The larger penis size in humans is not very well understood. Here's an essay topic for you guys.

[On penis size] Anomaly. We must put it on our list. But it's not like Intelligent Design can explain it either.

Rare view of the module (review)

In Singapore a lot of people learn about Evolution not by learning about it and forming reasoned opinions about it.

[On ID proponents] It often comes from non-biologists. Chemists, physicists. Talking about things they probably shouldn't be talking about. Just like I shouldn't be talking about quantum physics.

They're offering a full ger'mutt (gamut)

Tray leers (trailers)

core don off (cordon)

What's the ray'sh'yearn'nell for this? (rationale)

A monopoly will generally lets to lower quantity and higher price (lead)

You are donning what [sweater] - Chelsea? [Student: This is RJC]

David Beckham has a hairstyle that looks like a grasscutter mowed him over.

[On his Indian and Chinese groupmates] Of course you can make out which of the 2 is Gundeep and which is Lina.

Lina wants to earn me (own)

[On budget hotels] They charge a daily rate of 40 to 80 dollars. Or a two hourly rate of 40 dollars. So they just - yah, you know.

Summer tay'vern compared with... better box (Tavern, Betel)

[On hotel room designs and budget hotel product differentiation] Yesterday's newspaper - [Mount] Fiji there. [Other student: Fetish] Other hotels: Underwater. [Other student: Even weirder fetish]

[On places other than Hotel 81] They don't have the 2 hour rule, so they maintain a clean image.

"Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care." - William Safire

***

Someone I asked about Marshall's Curse (see below): aren't u supposed to be the purveyor of all obscure information?

...


Hate mail on the previous poem:

Xenophiyl: "ur critisizing ur ex schl? how loyal, bastard. as bastardy as the idiot hu wrote it"

Response: "Quite apart from your inability to write properly, not only do you not get the point of the poem, you seem to have fallen prey to the curious conflation popular in our country that criticism and attack are necessarily the same thing; loyalty, patriotism and slavish adherence to the propagated line are treated as one and the same thing.

Indeed, often it is through spirited criticism aimed at improving the general condition that we show our loyalty."

***

The Associate: i generally hate lawyers

the SACSAL quotient in SMU is considerably smaller. lots of bananas who either can't afford to really go overseas or are too fucking dysfunctional to leave.

nw.t: i realise that i have a lot of friends who have reached out and made their dreamsof what their lives to be into reality. one of my oldest and best friends is now a technology writer for PCMagazine. another is a teacher. still another is ajournalist.

but i've been conditioned by my parents and my family my whole life that i have to slog and suffer in order to achieve something. do the hard sciences or the economics; avoid the arts subjects. study hard. don't bother about girls. which is part of why i chose my current career path. my cousins and i sneer at people who do artsy stuff as wimpy liberals "following their path" as opposed to discharging their responsibilities

looking back i have a lot of anger at being forced to be what i am, and,e ven worse, being not quite there either

Me: well
you were the one seduced by tapas
blame them not
we are all pressurised by society

He Who Must Not Be Named: true
oh well

Me: I was expected to apply to law or even engin
yet I eschewed that

it's part of the sinister chinese culture about doing only 'productive' things
following your pre-ordained path, filling your pre-ordained place

which I suspect was one reason why the Chinese got left behind after the Ming

***

More lessons that we, in National Education, can learn from the Fall of Singapore to the Japanese:

"What I find bitterly ironic is that National Education draws a militaristic, nationalistic lesson from WWII and the Japanese occupation of S'pore. It is ULTRA-NATIONALISM and the idolatry of the nation-state over the individual that produced the aggressive foreign policy of Japan and led to countless atrocities. Nationalistic fanatism was the force behind the evils of WWII, at least in the Pacific theatre of the war. But what does the govt do when they recount the events of 41-45 to our school children? "We must ourselves defend Singapore, do you want this to happen to you, we must have NS, blah blah blah blah"."

Ed: This was from YR.

***

Another guestbook entry that makes me go "what the hell?!". If anyone can figure it out, please tell me:

Name: Another Azn
Email: No Matter...@Hotmail.com
Homepage: Let c u find it..!
Where are you from?: My mother

Comments: Wow man u say alot... shit is that all hand typed.?. J/ wanted to giv u PROS for the site... Needs more picture... Live it up for Asianzzzzz...We here 2 stay!!!! U Da Man

***

Amusing review of Eye of the Dragon, the first "new" Fighting Fantasy book released in a decade (actually a previously written adventure by Ian Livingstone):

"Fighting Fantasy 21 - Eye Of The Dragon.

He's willing to tell you all the details you need to find this dungeon, and the treasure within. The catch? All you need to do is drink this vial of slow acting poison (to which he has the antidote) so he knows you'll bring him back a share of the treasure by way of reward instead of just absconding with the lot. Now at this point, anyone with half a brain would have stopped and thought "hang on, he's expecting me to drink poison?" and promptly told Henry Delacor where to get off. Not so with the hero in Ian Livingstone's latest below par tale. Nope, you take the poison and gulp it down without a second thought. No wonder you're always so short of funds if you're this stupid.

... In fact, a good portion of the book involves nothing more inspiring than simply wandering along very mundane corridors and deciding whether or not you want to open a perfectly ordinary door. Ho hum. You can see just how Mr Livingstone writes so many books. He just uses the same ideas over and over again. And they're not even particularly good ideas.

Push open a door and you find a whole variety of unlikely people and places beyond. One room even has a merchant. A merchant? What, he decided to set up shop not in a city but in a dungeon inhabited by hordes of monsters underneath Darkwood Forest? Yeah, right… Actually it was nice meeting the merchant because at least it introduced me to someone dumber than an adventurer who willingly drinks poison.

Other rooms contain pretty standard adventuring fare: a throne which adds a nice little boost to your SKILL if you sit on it*, dozens of items which seem to serve no little purpose and the usual monsters to kill. There are a few NPCs from time to time but their dialogue is so poorly written that it often seems like they've been replaced with cardboard cut outs while you weren't looking.

* An amazing magical device which can actually boost the fighting abilities of someone who sits upon it just so happens to be found in a dungeon beneath Darkwood Forest? Apparently so.

RATING: 1 out of 10"

Someone else: "EotD is a damn sight better than Crypt of the Random Trivia and Armies Of Pie-Eating. Let alone SkyLord. And it makes a change from yet another Chaotic threat that will destroy the world unless you make a LUCK roll."

***

食虫少女２
(Translation: The young girl who eats cockroaches - 2)

OMG WTH. Just when I thought the Japs couldn't get any wackier... This means that there was a part 1...

Someone: what is mars spirit...some sort of Jap fear factor, I guess...

japanese and koreans are alike...they try to attain the ideal for "Oriental Land of Manners" on one hand, and entertain more perverse entertainment than any other nations on Earth...

The most perverse film I saw last year was South Korean...they're good man...
Korean movies have very sadistic tendencies...the movie was OLDBOY, it featured incest, hammer-assisted teeth pulling, sliced off tongues, live squid eating and drug-induced hallucinations involving ants...

***

http://penisland.net/ - "Welcome to Pen Island, the best place to get custom made pens on the internet! "

eBay item 5566217149 (Ends 26-Mar-05 23:53:38 GMT) - Haunted Possessed Disney Stitch Teddy Dangerous? - It went for US$11,100.00.
Courtesy of phelan

14-Year-Old Learned How to Burgle Watching CSI - "A 14-Year-Old in Florida admitted to breaking into houses and breaking into over 100 cars - most of them in this week. When asked how the youth had learned his art he replied he watched CSI: Crime Scene Investigations to study up on it."

A little less cheer in those cheerleading routines, please - "Representative Al Edwards of Houston proposed last week to bar "sexually oriented" performances during sporting events at Texas schools. "The way they're moving their bodies, it's not twirling or doing the splits. Those majorettes are doing things that are sexual," said Edwards."
Associate Flesh Parade isn't popular in some quarters, it seems.

How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else) - Unfortunately, safe blogging tends to vary inversely with honest blogging.

Singapore Model United Nations [Conference] - I notice they do not have the support of the United Nations Association of Singapore (UNAS). Why, I do not know.

***

One of the ways the Economics Society raises money is by selling suggested solutions to past exams. Each set of answers is 2-4 pages long, costing them 5-10 cents to produce (assuming they are charged the normal photocopying rate), and is sold for $1 each - a fantastic level of profit, ignoring labour costs (zilch, since helpers are paid in ECA points). At least one entrepreneurial businessman (there might be more) saw a chance to erode the supernormal profit of this monopoly, and pirated the solutions - instead of 3 sets of solutions for 3 dollars, he sold 3 sets for a dollar, still making a profit. In the end sales were about half last semester's. A pity they didn't apply to real life the lessons they learnt in class :)

I think I'm becoming used to SACSALs. I don't even notice dyed hair anymore, and I doubt that's because the trend has ended, or that the sun has faded the dyes. "They speak with the damn China/Beijing accent. Nonstop... now I have to deal with a cacophony of fugly ah-lians, with voices like banshees in heat." - Azrael on SACSALs.


Quotes:

[On peer review] Don't let me give you your essays back. That's a classic Dr *** move.

[To me] Your hair looks different everyday

[On someone illegally zapping exorbitantly priced exam solutions for sale at a lower price] He's the pirated VCD seller... [charge a] two-part tariff.

The same as firm's one (firm one's)

[On Galton discovering that tall fathers have shorter sons, and vice versa] This is something that I can verify [personally] *laughs* You are making your own hypothesis already.

[On error terms in regression analysis] Why am I telling you these stories about the History of Science? Because that is my hobby...

I think everyone should know who Alfred Marshall is. If you don't know you should leave the room, you shouldn't be doing economics. *someone stands up* Just kidding, just kidding.

[On something about putting Price on the Y axis instead of the X axis, as it should be, since it's the independent variable] This leads to all sorts of misery for students today, and we call that Marshall's Curse. [Ed: Anyone who can clarify what Marshall's Curse is is invited to contact me.]

This word here is homo'scare'dare'city. If you find that hard to pronounce, blame Karl Pearson. (homoscedasticity)

Remember our ep'sai'lorn? (epsilon)

[Me on Screwed Up Girl] Girls making fun of a girl liking pink - what does that tell you?

As China assess to the, join the WTO. (accedes)

The pencil-sized battery in India. It was seven bucks. [Professor: Seven bucks?] Seven Indian rupees.

The government simply bills you out (bails)

[On the US and the Middle East] Either they try to be on good terms with those countries, or they attack them, for the oil.

You are supposedly to grant every nation 'Most Favoured Nation' [status] (supposed)

They could be buying hwheat (wheat)

If all the developing countries are in this shoe, this framework (situation)

A poignant poem by the_fell_bat, based on the song "Ti Tian" (Rice Fields) by Jay Chou:

理圣, 啊

等你飞回来
我的恋爱都谈完了
没关系, 慢慢来
这首歌我自己来
说到中学时期
RI 的一间间间课室
是我看过最丑的剧面

于是也看你们进外国最佳大学
莫名其妙在 NUS 的我
不会写词, 不像个诗人
坐着公车上学的我
看着窗外的树和草
是一种说不出的自由自在

(哦, 亲爱的同学啊...
哦, 跑到哪儿去啦...)

莱佛士初级学院
留着我们长大的梦
绕过天真
收考试成绩
人们的汗水夹杂着满足与欢笑
是我现在最舍不得的画面
恋, 也是我另一项参展作品

靠着回忆, 写个文章, 拿个奖状, 有个啥用
鼓励你多去回忆是吧？
哼我真想撕掉，放弃一切
怎么朋友不见
坐在一家饭店
坐在里面
看着西洋片

考试成绩, 被待为画, 挂在墙壁上
象征我国蒸蒸日上
一堆游客
偶而想看看新加坡观光景点
但只看到比你住的
再高一层的饭店

(哦, 亲爱的同学啊...
哦, 跑到哪儿去啦...)

修读文学, 没什么用
没用对还是不对
自私的人类狼不狼狈
破坏人生的生态, 会不会很累
注重数学科术
否认人生的苦诉
这样, 对还是不对

你说为了国事
请问干我啥事?
是不是只有计算机
纪录自然
拿数字, 给下一代, 给下一代, 回味
可怜, 可悲
人生心事都不如纪录片

闻不到绿意盎然, 只享受到乌烟瘴气

我不能教训你们, 我不是你们老师
我不是校长, 也不能给你们一巴掌
掌掌掌掌掌掌掌长长长长长
长篇大论

你们并不想听
我知道
但我没办法
我就是要写, 你们可能永远不能体会
显微镜底下的我们, 会更现实, 更自私
这种态度真的
很难

领悟


Rough translation by the_fell_bat:

"Lisheng, ah,

By the time you come back
My love affair will have been over and done with
It's alright, take it slow
I'll do this song by myself
Talking about secondary school days
The classrooms, one after the other, in RI
Are the ugliest sight I've ever seen"

And so I watched you all go to the best universities overseas
And I, strangely enough, the one in NUS
Can't write lyrics, don't seem like a poet
And I, the one who takes a public bus to school
Watching the passing trees and grass outside
It's a feeling of being without care that can't be expressed

(oh my dear classmates
oh where have you all gone)

RJC
All our dreams while growing up are left there
passing the time of innocence,
we receive our exam results;
Everyone's sweat and toil contains also satisfaction and happy laughter
It's a scene that I look back on now, unwilling to relinquish
Love, too, that's another one of my exhibits

Depending on memory, write an essay, get a prize, for fuck?
To encourage you guys to reminisce more?
I'd rather tear it up, give it all up
How come my friends have all gone?
Sitting in a hotel
Sitting inside
Watching Western movies

Exam results, treated as paintings, hung up on the wall
A symbol of our country's ever-progressing progress
A bunch of tourists
Sometimes want to experience Singapore's sights and sounds
But can only see a hotel
Taller than the one they stay in

(oh my dear classmates
oh where have you all gone to)

Delving into Literature, it's useless and ineffective
Useless - is that right, then?
Selfish Man, quite despicable isn't he
Making life unliveable, does it cause fatigue
Putting the sciences and mathematics on a pedestal
And denying what's bitter about life
Like this, is that right then?

You say it's for the country
I say, what the fuck do I care?
Is it that only a calculator can
Make a record of life
The numbers, pass them on, pass them on, to our descendants
to reminisce over
Pitiable, execrable
Life and the speakings of the heart are not even worth a documentary

Can't smell the green freshness, and can only enjoy smoky air

I can't teach you all a lesson, I'm not your teacher
I'm not your principal, and I can't give you all a tight slap
(phonic pun) nor a long-winded dissertation

You don't want to listen
I know full well
But I can't help it
I'm writing this anyway
You may never be able to understand
Under the microscope, we will all seem that much smaller, materialistic and self-absorbed
This sort of attitude
is really difficult to

Understand

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

***

I missed Mehta's performance. Damn.

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


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

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

***

You are an INCREDULOUS TWIT

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

What Retarded Quiz Fiend Are You?

Finally! A spoof of online quizzes!

***

A review of RI:

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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


Someone should bring Happy Tree Friends to Singapore!

***

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

More entertaining propaganda from the IRAS website:

"The leading tax administration in the world
A partner of taxpayers in nation building
An eXcellent team of competent and committed people."

Why can't Singapore adopt a damn pay-as-you-earn system? Don't they know that spendthrifts like me can't be trusted with our own hard-earned cash or we'll squander it recklessly on debauchery and credit card payments? We can't be trusted with our own base impulses! Fortunately, I have about 5 more months (approx) to build up a nest-egg which will be reaped by the Gahmen (sic) to go towards paying NSF salaries and building more MRT lines. I feel like such an integral stakeholder in this nation's infrastructure development.

I swear I'm going to march into my boss' office and ask for a salary increase to keep up with the inflation of cigarette prices. CIGARETTE SMOKERS HAVE DAMN LOW PRICE ELASTICITY BUT IT STILL HURTS IN THE LONG RUN.

Have finally reached the end of my tether wrt to my damn TV. Currently am using an old 17" provided by my landlord (who, in typical skinflint slumlord style refuses to pay for re-upholstering the crap sofas he provided) and am absolutely sick and fucking tired of mono audio input.

Why? Because most DVDs have stereo output, and depending on whether the audio stream is from the left, right or mono channel, it means fiddling around with the A/V cable every time I play a new movie. The final straw came when I was reaching into the innards of the TV cabinet to and vainly plugging the right sound channel cable into as many of the DVD player's output ports as possible to find out which one contained the dialogue stream (I could hear the background soundtrack just fine..gngngngn) when the whole player somehow slipped out of the cabinet, knocked over my mug of Coke, and spilt all over the parquet and seeped into my DVD wallets (which I had laid out on the floor to clear space for my audio-cable-dicking-around)

Anger. Rage. Frustration.

Ah well - the price one pays for the privacy and independence of living alone - along with having to develop an intimate familiarity with over 30 flavours of canned soup. My father bought a massive 50" Samsung plasma TV a month after I moved out (the previous family TV had been going strong for almost 9 years); the timing is suspect, but at least I no longer have to fight over TV access rights with my Wah Lai Toi-watching mother/sister/family retainer.

"Fiberglass (pool) cues? Ptui!"

9 months and I haven't done my own laundry once. However, a constant flow of relatives, family, and friends to and from Singapore, often with me begging for the small favour of conveying a discreetly packed suitcase, have largely ensured that laundry shipments continue apace from home. As disgusting as most of my friends find that behaviour, it's hard for anyone to empathize how fucking indolent I really am, nor how it's not the washing that irritates me; it's the damn ironing.

Besides, laundry used to get shipped from San Francisco to Hawaii because of comparative advantages in labour there. So I figure the same principle applies here; and so far have managed to prove wrong the critics who claimed that hauling laundry up and down was not a feasible long-term solution.

"What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it's the currency of the world."

Just watched Closer. It's a movie with exquisite conversations, and not much deeper meaning; the best kind to watch given that these days I find it difficult to look past the immediacy of instant gratification. The conversation between Clive Owen (of Privateer 2: The Darkening fame, heh) and Natalie Portman is particularly brilliant, and for the less verbally inspired, she looks great as a stripper.

"I hate retro. I don't believe in the future. So where does that leave me?"

I hope to have a similar break-up conversation to this one day:

"I'll sign [the divorce papers] on one condition. We skip this, we go to my sleek new surgery, and we christen the patient's bed with our final fuck. I know you don't want it, and I know you think I'm sick for asking, but that's what I'm asking. For old times' sake. Because I'm obsessed with you. Because I can't get over you unless - Because I think on some small level you owe me something for deceiving me so exquisitely. For all these reasons, I am begging you to give me your body. You be my whore, and in return I will pay you with your liberty. You do this, I swear I will not contact you again.

I'm going to the bar. I assume you still drink vodka tonic?"

"I'm doing this because I feel guilty, and because I pity you. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Feel good about yourself?"

"No. But I know you love a guilty fuck."

I like conversations. Snappy, witty dialogue, perfect, back-and-forth lines, that glimmer of shared understanding, an intimate verbal sympatico, the perfect moment when a line is delivered that makes absolute sense only to the people talking. A pity that real life isn't so exquisitely scripted; but in some ways it enhances the value of a good conversation when you get it - it was brought forth, spontaneously, crystallizing from context and circumstance (catalysed by alcohol, more often than not), like the first self-replicating macromolecule that rose from the primordial porridge.

Those few moments that work are almost enough to compensate for all the faux pas, the solecisms (solecisii? solecissa? what the fuck IS the plural of solecism), the uncomfortable silences, the embarrassing gaffes, the stammering, the breathing and the grasping for words that never quite fall into place until the conversation's over and you're walking away with your ears burning.

Almost.

"Depressives don't [want to be happy]. They want to be unhappy to confirm they're depressed. If they were happy they couldn't be depressed anymore. They'd have to go out into the world and live. Which can be depressing. "

It's always fun to see someone take pride in their work.

To wit re Gabriel's sentiments on institutional commentary as opposed to genuine cathartic diarizing: Why am I being taxed 20% - sans permissible deductions - just because I worked more than 3 but less than 6 months in Singapore in 2004? I'd have to be earning at least $160k to be hit with that kind of rate. Damn it, haven't I contributed sufficiently to the local GDP over the last year?

Well, at least in the entertainment sector; even Geylang whores pay taxes & draw CPF. The legal ones, that is. I'm told they get a special type of employment pass, a yellow card. And apparently this pass is only extended to ASEAN migrants, not PRCs. I suppose this is in line with the government's policy in enhancing cross-regional trade to fight off a flood of cheap Chinese imports. Furthermore, for males to work as pimps, apparently there's a plethora of requirements to do with age, education (probably the only job where you have to prove your formal education is insufficient before they take you on), and absence of alternate means to support your family. Or so I hear, of course.

My team at work comprises of an Ecuadorean, a Belgian, a South African, several Singaporeans, two Malaysians, several Indians^2 (ie. India Indians), a Canadian, a Lebanese and we have a Scottish boss. When I first joined, I was told: "We're like the UN, only with the unimportant countries."

Ironically, I speak more Mandarin in the office now than I ever did my whole working life; the Singaporeans like to assert their cultural identity I guess. The other Malaysian barely speaks Cantonese.

After a few years of working in the industry of lubricating Mammon's hind tit; of helping the obscenely rich get obscenely richer; of contributing to a system that is dedicated to the relentless accrual of meaningless increments of fabulous wealth, it occurs to me that I enjoy my work not in spite of its absence of redeeming moral value, but because of it.

However, you would think that, working in an international financial institution, I'd be surrounded by right-wing, conservative workaholics on eternal power trips and high living and a disdain for the working class. Not so - most of my colleagues despise Bush, we've had lots of frank conversations about how the system we work for essentially helps MNCs set up sweat shops in cheap labour countries, circumvent taxation regimes, obfuscate regulators and reduce human lives to units of productive labour; lines in a balance sheet, all in the pursuit of enhanced shareholder value. But no one really lets the moral qualms get in the way of a bonus; philanthropy is a luxury. Whereas alcohol is a necessity.

"At the end of the day, I think I do more good than harm. What other measure have I got?"

A couple of us actually went to Eritrea with Habitat For Humanity to build prefab housing. Bankers doing virtue.

So it's a Saturday morning, and my damn IRAS PIN doesn't work, so I'm collating my disjointed thoughts into a bunch of random paragraphs and whiffling. Scribbled thoughts:

-What's so great about moving on? I've got all the cigarettes I need, a decent place to stay, and hopefully I'll be able to upgrade this PC soon.

-Darwinia: retro gaming at its finest

-Is it worth paying $80 for a meal at Garibaldi's when $5.50 buys you the same level of sustenance at Maxwell Food Court?

-Had scattered my mail all over the living room in small piles. Realised that it has grown into a huge stack. Thanks to the auspices of GIRO however I don't really need to read any of the ones pertaining to household affairs like bills; and I don't get snail mail anyway. But I suppose I should at least see if there are eviction notices or the like

-I miss you.

-What is it with the private banking paradigm? I may be wrong on this, but on the one time I saw them in action, it was essentially one big fucker in a suit and brilliantined hair, and several exquisite Norns/Graces/Furies/Erinyes behind him managing his wardrobe, powerpoint presentation, and handing him documents. Magician's assistant, only without the sequins.

-Girls will almost always beat boys in the retail banking industry. There's a unit trust sales girl at Citibank whom I am told averages over a $0.5m sales a week purely by phone. Apparently she has the ideal phone sex voice. It's the same principle why the top mortgage and credit card contractors are almost always women - you're more prone to tell a guy to fuck off when he cold calls to suggest refinancing your housing loan (and, let's face facts, even in our modern society, these decisions are still predominantly made by men, although that is thankfully changing), but you'll at least give a girl the polite time of the day, particularly if she approaches you in person, with that starched power suit and wafting of Chanel. (okay, there's the horrible bank polo t-shirts they wear at roadshows in apartment showrooms and shopping center concourses)

-was told at a bar in Tanjong Pagar by a semi-drunk waitress/PR-type personage that wearing Y-front underwear inhibits penile growth. And that the large dicks of white guys are overrated because they go flaccid faster.

-should I be drunk at 1:30 in the afternoon? why do the effects of alcohol on the psyche seem to vary so greatly depending on whether sunlight is present?

-the MPH at Citylink Mall sucks. they have one tiny pitiful shelf for fantasy/sci-fi, and half of it is goddamned franchise crap from Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms. unfortunately it's the only bookstore on the way home from work, and it's a measure of my indolence that . these days it's hard to start relationships with books, so I stick to Terry Pratchett for easy reading. Unfortunately i'm running out of Terry Pratchett books to buy

-it's even harder to start with computer games. That's why I'm not going to play KOTOR 2 until I'm ready to enter into a meaningful relationship, to devote the time and care it merits. World of Warcraft taught me the dangers of jumping headlong into a passionate fling that dies out into emptiness after a while - it just wasn't the same after I got my horse.

-the Hooters at Clarke Quay is a joke. What's the point of a Hooters when the waitresses barely have hooters? Jalan Kayu roti prata is overrated. The owner at Thasevi's tried to pull a Soup Nazi when I asked for sup kambing - "NO SOUP!"

-menthol cigarettes don't kill sperm!!! Proven conclusively! My friend's friend who smokes a pack of Texas 5 menthols is expecting his first child. At least, I was able to use the phrase: "May your first child be a masculine one." in conversation

-why am i writing again? at this rate i'll end up posing - I mean posting - on the Young Republic list if I'm not careful

-surprising level of welfare at work. Boss has been ordering us to go home at 7pm. Whenever he walks out of his room in the evening and sees us slogging away there, he tells us: "stop. Go home." or "this is a marathon, not a sprint." hahahahaa. Not the attitude I expected from an investment banking environment!

-if they ban smoking from clubs, going to Zouk becomes fucking surreal. I can't imagine it without the perennial haze. and banning it from coffeeshops is as good as passing a death sentence on the hordes of ah peks who sit there with a bottle of ABC stout watching Stephanie Sun on the rack-mounted televisions

-cosplay is scary shit

-Someone was asking me why I seem to have so many Singaporean uni friends (well, it's not a large absolute number, but it makes up a large relative proportion of my tiny coterie of friends) Shouldn't I be developing peer groups who are working professionals? Networking and all that? Ease of conversation? Facilitated understanding? If nothing else, it makes me pretty lonely around exam time.

In memorial Wall 'O Quotes. Too difficult to maintain, too lazy to print out, nowhere to paste it on the wall without driving the paterfamilias into a cacophany of nagging.

Along with the last stanza from Tennyson's Ulysses, the only quote I have kept in my cubicle:

"The dignity of work comes less from its ideal promise than from the way we show, through it, a determination to endure what is difficult for the sake of discharging our responsibilities and contributing to society."
-Russell Muirhead

"A psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing." - Joey Adams

***

Some may be wondering at the meaning of what He Who Must Not Be Named said I warned him about, namely, the paragraph of badly organised, barely flowing and most importantly hardly intelligible thoughts that I lavished upon him in a prior organisation. Why he did that, apart from a desire to get back at me for the perceived offence of analysing in public his not-so-pithy quote about attaining ultimate happiness the way which well-nigh everyone in the world would, except for him and other adherents of the uniquely warped and ultimately self-destructive "all or nothing" philosophy, I do not know.

At any rate, such was an excerpt from my hurried scribbled notes on "Thoughts on honesty in blogging" that I shared with him, which his partial disclosure of has impelled me to publish in full, and in full, coherent sentences:


One reason for the popularity of some blogs is their refreshing honesty. The internet offers the promise of anonymity, yet honesty in blogging leads, especially with a sizeable readership, to 2 threats to this erstwhile anonymity: the exposure of the blogger's inner self, and the exposure of the blogger's Real Life identity. Real and Online Life can then collide, often with unpleasant consequences. (There is also the case where one grows to write for an audience, but this issue is beyond the scope of this rant, and will not be dealt with forthwith, if at all.)

Some manage to ameliorate either or both of these problems, yet this cannot occur without a corresponding decrease in the quality of their writing, and its becoming less compelling, due to the inevitable omission of certain details. Once in a while you might feel like sharing private thoughts or details with the world, either for catharsis or for the exhibitionistic thrill, but doing so repeatedly will inexorably catch up with you.

I have never been all that public a person, so the problem of blog privacy does not affect me that much, since even if hadn't gotten 952 hits yesterday, due to the cumulative effect of divers plugs by various kind people, and even if at least one of my family members did not regularly visit for unspecified reasons, the content published here would not be so different from what you see today. Further, I have few qualms than most about causing offence or insult if necessary, as I try to retain my intellectual honesty even with people I know and refrain from self-censorship.

Of course, this candour has frequently landed me in hot soup, most famously on the occasion when I was threatened with court martial. Thus, general rules I now follow are to criticise institutions rather than people, to assume that anyone and everyone is going to read what is written here and to anonymise people other than yourself as much as possible.

So the question might be asked: how self-conscious is Agagooga, and how much has Balderdash been affected by its popularity? A comparison of today's content with the 2001 archives might be instructive. Apart from a much less polished writing style, much more frivolity and the presence of many erstwhile contributors *vague glare*, the differences are not immediately obvious. But then there's a reason why this place was christened "Balderdash". The archives dating from my time as a Slave Soldier (Dec 2001 - June 2004) are more angsty, personal and disjointed, but then I had few qualms about treating blogging as a form of catharsis and attempting to purge my nightmares from my soul.

Slavery aside, the thoughts I pen (or keyboard, rather) are usually either public enough for private consumption, in which case I don't mind placing them here, or so private that I would not even want friends to read it, in which case I would not place them here, even if this blog got the traffic that Gabriel's Homepage does (~25 hits a day). Little falls in between.

***

The March 2002 archives have been restored. 4 months down, 9 months to go.

Some gems:

"There were 3 charged personnel who came for the Staff Parade during Guard Duty. One of them was charged for the sin of, lets wait for it, EATING CUP NOODLES. Gasp. The morning after field camp, they were supposed to consume field rations, but he had cup noodles and was charged for that."

"There was some talk of supernatural stuff during the first night, when our [uber nice] OC talked to us... As would be expected, much of the talk was about sex. I'm wondering if it's too explicit to publish here. Also, there's the matter of privacy :) Ah, this is a family blog, so I'll just let most of it lie in my notebook." [Ed: I'm not sure if I still have the notebook.]

"They were very evil. It's their last chance to torture us before they hand us over to the tender ministrations of the Regimental Sergeant Major and then we pass out. They had a turnout at about 11, after a suspiciously early lights off at 9:15. We rode away in the store tonner to scenes of torture that would not be out of place in a medieval prison. Pushups, crunches, alternate leg thrusts and the lot. It was much worse than the first field camp. Emmanual was lazy to join the Attn B / excused personnel in our doing of "sai gang", so he, with an official excuse, was punished along with everyone."

***

The following will likely be lost on those who are not plagued with forwarded emails and/or motivational platitudes:


People are like teabags - you should use them only once, then they become useless and you should throw them away.


A daughter complained to her father about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.

Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In one he placed carrots, in the second he placed eggs, and the last he placed ground coffee beans. He let them sit and boil, without saying a word.

The daughter sucked her teeth and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing. After about twenty minutes he turned off the burners. He fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them a bowl. Then he ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her he asked: "Darling, what do you see?"

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.

He brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft.

He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell she observed the hard-boiled egg.

Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee.

She smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. She humbly asked: "What does it mean Father?"

He explained that each of them had faced the same adversity, boiling water, but each reacted differently.

The carrot went in raw, bitter, hard, and uncooked. But after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became delicious, sweet and nutritious.

The egg had also been inedible. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became cooked, and the yolk could be separated from the white too, delighting health-conscious folk everywhere.

The ground coffee beans were unique however. After they were in the boiling water, their essence had been absorbed by the water and they were now tasteless and useless.

"Which are you," he asked his daughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean? "

How about you? Are you the carrot that starts out useless, but with pain and adversity do you soft and become delicious and edible?

Are you the egg, which also starts off useless? Were you a runny spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a divorce, or a layoff have you become bouncy and tasty? Your shell looks the same, but does it now conceal a delicious and tender interior?

Or are you like the coffee bean? The bean starts out ripe and flavourful, but is changed by the hot water, the thing that is bringing the pain, till it reaches its nadir when the water reaches 212 degrees Fahrenheit. When the water gets the hottest, the bean loses whatever flavour it had left and becomes fit only to throw away; its essence has been absorbed by the hot water, totally draining and destroying it, leaving it a shell of its former self. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get destroyed and become useless.

How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?

***

Someone: got an A [for his essay]
thank God
(what's he going to say now)

Me: what's he going to say about what?

Someone: thank God. but you didn't say anything. ok, don't say anything.

Me: yes don't say anything :)
you don't want me to say anything, nosiree.

(Also see: Christianity and its Discontents, Section 14 - Self-justifying nature of faith)

***

Someone: did u know that apparnetly singnet regulates the amt of bandwidth u get.. haha
like if u use p2p they direct all the traffic to u
so ur download speed slows down or something
so unethical leh

check put p-cube
they are using that
for starhub and singnet
unethical leh, since they actually promised us a certain amt of bandiwdth and never state what we have to use it for

Chee says he only needs to throttle P2P during the peak usage hours. During peak hours, P2P traffic is generally throttled to one-fifth normal speed. "We want to maintain 512 Kbps all the way to the desktop." (Controlling the Network in a DMCA World)

i say, BOLLOCKS

i was wondering how come my bittorrent downloads suddenly so slow
1000s of seeds
then still downloading at 3kbps
last time was 50+

***

The top overseas destination for Singaporean investment in 2002 was the Virgin Islands, with $18,581 million invested in stock there. This is followed closely by Bermuda at number 3, with $13,586 million. Hmm.

***

My mother strangely threw away the old toilet bowl scrubs, so where there used to be one in each toilet, there was now only one in the whole house. The logic behind this (as with much else she does, including the recent renovations) was beyond me and my sister, so I went to buy 2 more toilet scrubs.

I have long given up in the fight against my yeast infection. Nothing I try works - not even specialist products Selsun, Apple Cider Vinegar or Cetrimide wash. My sister, naturally, blames this intractability on our "insulin resistance", but then she is less bothered by the problem than I am. Luckily, it tends to be more acute than chronic, being manageable unless I am suffering from an attack - maybe Slavery was to blame for the preponderance of outbreaks I had then. Perhaps the next time I go to the doctor I shall enquire if oral antibiotics can be used, as for the more well known types of yeast infection.

***

For my lens analysis essay draft, I looked at the case of Agnes, a transsexual, through a commentary by John Heritage on a study by Harold Garfinkel - through the eyes of Wesley Collins in Power Rangers Time Force.

"More importantly, as Power Rangers they exist outside the pre-existing institutional realities of class, a state best illustrated when they 'morph', gaining superhuman powers and thus placing themselves outside the existing class structure."

I hope I don't get slaughtered.

Meanwhile Tim compared a vodka bottle to a phallic object and got an A for his last essay. We love close reading.


We were given a feedback form on our writing module to fill out. Besides the gripes about close reading which have been published many times here, I also mused that surely one very important skill in writing is to be clear, and that the texts we get are hardly paragons of clarity, and that even if one is cognizant with the vocabulary they use, to get at what they are saying requires many readings and much thinking - surely this is not what we are aiming for in our writing?

I'd actually scribbled some down points about the writing module, but did not have the text file with me on Friday, so I suppose I shall have to submit them during the currently ongoing module feedback exercise.

"In heaven all the interesting people are missing." - Friedrich Nietzsche

***

Another focus group! Too bad I'm not eligible again.


We're looking for working individuals aged 25-45 to take part in a 2-hour survey on Technology. Participants will be awarded S$50-S$80.

This focus group will take place on Mon, 18 April '05 and Tue, 19 April '05, at either 4pm or 6:30pm, and will last approximately two hours. Light meals will be provided.

If you're eligible, simply click on the respective link below to answer a pre-selection questionnaire, by Sun, 17 April '05, 10am. This questionnaire may close earlier once we have enough participants.

Only short-listed members will be contacted.

Requirements:

• YourSay member (signup)
• Working full time
• Own a mobile phone
• Singapore Citizen/Permanent Resident
• Proficient in English and articulate

***

I've found someone who uses 3 M$N Messenger accounts. As well as one each from ICQ, AIM and Yahoo (on Adium, and not the official clients, of course). Fwah.


Someone was actually deluded enough to write this in my guestbook:

Email: dontwantyoutofindout@hotmail.com

Message: "I think that you, and your ideas and info are crap. MSN is so much better than icq. In fact icq normally destroys the registry on most comps, accordingly msn does not have any of the faults that you claim and your anti-msn is more of a pro icq and in fact quite a joke. Another anti microsoft idiot trying to twist a good program with "what if's" and "this happened to me" without any proof!!!"


Ah, a Wo-hen fan!

"Dear Gabriel,

I had to write to you...I can't remember laughing so hard...tears!
At first it was really creepy.. :P
then you 'get it'!
Then you get to laugh at everyone elses reactions!

It was great.
Priceless.

thanks for the laughs!"

***

Someone: did I tell you about one of them [a PRC girl] who had a crush on me?
she tried to hug me, then cried because I hit her on the head and called her a 'fucking cunt'

That is so wrong, yet so funny.


A Malay friend on racism and "Canadian" Pizza:

"canadian pizza deliverymen keep gettin into traffic accidents.. the pay is low.. terrible hours.. most wd rather not work there, but they got no choice
that's what i feel aniwae, from the many pple i noe working in canadian

aniwae its a well-known fact lah, dat canadian staff are mostly malays.. tink i made the joke u made before too.. abt renaming it

in fact, the running joke in ntu abt MPE, mechanical & production engineering, is that it stands for Melayu Punya Engineering (malays' engineering), cos most malays end up der... and these are jokes by malay friends

i mean, if we can't laugh at ourselves, then someone else would aniwae right, so might as well be happy abt it

i used to know a singh in the army who'd crack singh jokes all the time

but it could be these [people who can laugh at their own race] are the exception rather than the norm

these are the very people eradicating rascim here man

for he [who] can laugh at himself, will never cease to be amused"

***

Prayer of the Fear-Filled Fundamentalist

"A fundamentalist Christian once came to my house and I offered him some food. “I hope you don’t mind,” he declined, saying, “I’d like to go home and pray about it first.”

Huh?

I too, grew up a Christian. I too, pray and give thanks before my meals. But this man was talking about a different sort of prayer. He needed to pray for guidance and discernment before he decided whether it was okay to eat the food that I had prepared.

He was afraid. He was afraid my food might be “unclean” because I might have been an agent of the devil...

She related how, if her son were to buy a house, he had to make sure that his neighbours were not Buddhists, Taoists or Hindus. He also had to make sure that, along the way from his home to the office, he would not have to pass by any Chinese or Indian temples.

Well, what if his neighbour decides to sell the house to a Buddhist, Taoist or Hindu? What if his company relocates? What if some non-Christian group decides to build a temple midway between his home and office?"

This sounds more like Saudi Arabia than Singapore.

***

Program Details for Singapore Rebel Teaser

"Teaser created to introduce Singaporeans to the hopefully forthcoming documentary looking at the Singapore Rebel. The Singapore Rebel was removed from the Singapore Film Festival after the director was informed that legal action my occur as a result of its screening...

Well there goes the promotion of Singapore as a centre of Asian arts. And all despite the recent call for a Singaporean Michael Moore by youth and media conference.

"In attendance was Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam some speakers referred 'to how wacky political websites and show business figures such as film-maker Michael Moore led the way in encouraging turnout among young voters during last year's US presidential elections.'""

***

Shamath's Riddle
by Jonathan Blake

In the course of the adventure in The Legacy of Vashna, a demoness named Shamath poses a riddle that is truly mind-altering if you stare at the details too closely and too long. In this article we are looking for a way to arrive at the correct solution.

If you have yet to encounter this infernal being with a penchant for puzzles and don't want to spoil any of the fun, please read no further. You have been warned.

"In addition to the loyal servants, there are two Dwellers of the Abyss."

We're about to get algebraic: if we say that n is the number of loyal servants, then for the total number of diabolic beings we have:

n + 2 (1)

"When the loyal servants and the Dwellers of the Abyss were counted together, their total number was doubled when my Lieutenants of Night arrived."

We're basically doubling the number of bodies:

2(n + 2) (2)

"But when my Lieutenants of Night arrived, the Dwellers of the Abyss had to leave."

>From that number, two are removed leaving a mixture of loyal servants and Lieutenants of Night:

2(n + 2) - 2 (3)

"Exactly half of the remaining number also departed, for they were beholden to the Dwellers."

We may astutely ask who among the loyal servants and the Lieutenants of Night leave. For reasons that we'll see at the end, we are almost forced to assume that it was purely Lieutenants of Night who were "beholden to the Dwellers". Dividing in half:

[2(n + 2) - 2] / 2 (4)

"From the remainder I picked the loyal servants to guard my throne of power. I chose them all, except for one who was known to me as a traitor. I executed the traitor before I set my loyal servants to guard my throne."

Remove the traitor:

[[2(n + 2) - 2] / 2] - 1 (5)

"While I am here to do Naar's bidding, how many loyal servants guard my throne of power?"

With that, Shamath leaves us puny mortals to answer her challenge.

Now for some algebraic reduction:

[(2n + 2) / 2] - 1 (6)

(n + 1) - 1 (7)

n (8)

So all that our algebraic skills reveal to us is that the number of loyal servants is n, the number we started with.

There aren't even any helpful contradictions when dividing the number of servants in half in step 4 because the number in the numerator is guaranteed to be even (although I don't imagine Shamath would really have any qualms about dividing one of her servants in half . . .).

Also, if we reduce the expression in step 4, we are left with n + 1. It must have been one lone Lieutenant of Night who remained behind and was executed as the traitor in step 5.

One hope would be to know how many Lieutenants of Night there were. This would reduce the problem down to a simple algebraic equation where l is the number of Lieutenants:

n + 2 = l

Alas, to date we have found no plausible clues to the number of Lieutenants of Night.

So perhaps the algebraic route was intended to be a one of those infamous red herrings. Is there something in the language of the riddle that is the real clue? If there is, I cannot see it.

Perhaps there's been an omission. It's impossible to tell what it may be.

So to summarize, although I know the correct answer to Shamath's riddle, I don't know how to correctly arrive at that answer. I don't know anyone who does. If you were looking for that solution, I am sorry but you've come to the wrong person.

If you were looking for the section number of the answer to Shamath's riddle, I'm not telling. Better luck next time.

However, if you know how to arrive at the correct solution, please contact the Project Aon volunteers. You'll be helping us sleep better at night.

http://www.projectaon.org/contact.htm

***

Woman finds freedom laws mean no free man - "When the government introduced its new freedom of information laws, Angela Wright seized on them as a chance to find an unattached man in uniform. Wright sent an email to her local police force asking about "eligible bachelors within Hampshire constabulary between the ages of 35 and 49 and details of their email addresses, salary details and pension values", the Guardian reported on Saturday."

Marathon ironing session, here I come.

(Yes, it still beats doing essays, term papers and studying)

"All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why."
-James Thurber

Word of the day: "dithyramb"

It was 11:44pm, SST.

I sat in the lambent glare of my twin monitors; the lights in adjacent cubicles having being turned off to reduce costs and hence increase shareholder value. My sleeves, long since rolled up (at 4:30pm, to facilitate wolfing a hasty snack of potato salad) , rasped irritatingly against the chair as I leaned back as far I could, pushing its torsial tolerances to the limit.

On the screen, I could see numbers exploding before me, a cascade of values and candlecharts and trendlines whirling at the click of a macro, exploding into a series of notional values that writhed their way across columns and cells, living their brief, spasmatic lives of information, until a new flood of data washed in, coerced into channels by VB code as compelling as scripture, watching as a notional fortune beyond the dreams of avarice was born, and lived, and died.

I was wearing a headset, one of those with a thin fiber optic mike, the sort you see harrassed yet fixatedly-smiling travel agents wear while they spend interminable minutes keying in an elaborate itinerary of the worst possible hotels and crappiest sights you can spend your money on. Clicking blindly on buttons, control panels, occasionally keying in a correction; or alt-Breaking to modify a line of code; I occasionally feel, at my work, that I am not driving the data; that the data is driving me; I watch its ebbs and flurries like a Genoan rabbi mouthing the words of the Torah - only for me it is like a prayer wheel; a phsyical manifestation in phosphor dots and figured text and stratified lines serving as a paltry physical representation; sad metaphor of an impossibly telluric current - an endlessly profane temurah of, not something so crude as mere money, but of finance, of vol skews and dispersion trades; spread calls and podiums, delta and gamma, sensitivity and duration, ad majoram Dei gloriam.

In my ear, like the antithesis of a guardian angel, I heard the cultured, faintly sardonic voice of the Black. The Black, it is whispered in our corridors and amidst fearful huddles around the pantry cofee machine, earns more gelt in a year than some small South Pacific nations' GDP, of which a small portion is spent financing a massive yearly Bacchanal in a Cornish castle where he watches exquisite 15-year old Shan prostitutes who have been kidnapped and trained in all the arts of profane pleasure since infancy by the descendants of the keepers of the Abbasid caliphs' seraglios. He is said to sit on a throne carved exclusively from the left tibias of analysts who have displeased him (even the most fervid and vaporously perverse disposition shies from imagining to what uses the other 205 bones of an analyst can be put to use); and he drinks deep from a golden chalice rumoured to have been part of the Last Supper's dinner service filled with a mead brewed from the fermented blood of terminated contractors.

As I carried out the instructions of that dispassionate voice, blending a tapestry of figures and values and risk and return and profit and loss; I was no better than a Mammonite golem, responding only to shibboleth jargon, an extension of will carried across telephony and finding execution in my volitionless form. Occasionally, in a dead voice, I would rasp back a number, a figure, and once in a while, when my synapses could manage it, an entire sentence of near-objection or suggestion.

And yet, despite the brilliance of the Black and my own feeble attempts to condense his nuances into a meaningful set of numbers, we soon came to an impasse. Disaster. Nearing midnight, Singapore time; nearing 4:00pm, London. Trading hours would close soon; and the Elect of Hiddukel, those modern-day alchemists who have mastered the aescultation of Value from Nothing (ah, the wonders of leverage and off-balance sheet instruments!); they awaited word from the Black to complete the Great Work of the Day (and it is, as always, a daily miracle made casual, the endless cycle of creation from chaos; and an irony that it is the vicissistudes of chaos - or, in the word of the truly initiated, Volatility, that makes such measuredly inspired creation possible) . And the Black awaited the result I had rashly promised him earlier; with only dire consequence to follow in the wake of failure.

I was faced with numbers that I , barely an adept, a journeyman in the dark arts, could scarce comprehend; a conundum as beyond my grasp as literacy is to today's youth. Hoarsely, desperately, I whispered, "I can't do this. It doesn't make sense."

Cold tones: "Double the vol; use the old reference time-series."

I did as instructed. "I still can't get a figure. It's hashing out. Maybe we should call - "

"No time. I need to get this mail out to the Butcher. His minions (yes, he used the word "minions") need to know how much they can put on without busting - "

Attempted voice of reason. A half-remembered lesson from one of the online courses we are required to take, as part of the Bank's policy of self-improvement. "Handling Difficult Interactions."

"Maybe if you told me how you calc- can I get the spread off Bloomberg? Or Reuters? I tried the OAS but I couldn't get a quote -"

Harsh snarl cut me off. "And I know you couldn't find anything. There's nothing there. Not for these guys. You're not going to find shit there. Fuck. Christ. What a fucking palaver. (The first time in my life I have heard the word "palaver" in speech. One of the most aesthetically satisfying wonders of what I do is that I am surrounded by people who use words and figures of speech I have only read in books, like the Irish "begorrah" and, in Scottish brogue, "his days are noom-bered.") Alright. What do you think it should be?"

"Erm. Aren't you supposed to tell me that so I can pump it into KOBOLD and get the var? (codename for one of the myriad many systems we have. All of which are have outlandish names that reveal nothing their function, like ODE, ETRUSCAN, PULSAR, VERITY, FRAMELIGHT and MEE POK(locally developed platform))"

I heard muttered imprecations, like a dire curse. I knew then that the fate of my employment hung uneasily in the balance. For although he was not my direct master in the hierarchy (a hierarchy of immense convolution; of parallel and functional and regional accountabilities, a massive chart in which me and my coterie of colleagues in Singapore don't even occupy a box, being merely a footnote in an appendix on Section III-47b. Our immediate boss has his name underlined a few pages before that. His boss occupies an octagon with several others), I knew he had patrons and dimly-glimpsed connections which, (although as invisible amidst the aether of corporate politics as gravitation across parsecs, was just as effacious), coupled with his own finely honed malice, could end my employment in an instant if he so wished.

I have grown very attached to my apartment. Packing would be unbelievably sian.

"Jesus. Fuck. C'mon. Give me a number, man. We didn't hire you for nothing."

Sweat. Tension. Fear. I tore a ligament twisting in my seat across to the Bloomberg terminal; I called up a candlechart, a GPC, strings of historical vols; all of which would have woven a tale of meaning and contrived extrapolation to an experienced analyst; all of which meant confusion, sound and fury (sound coming from the insistent beep of my voice mail) , signifying nothing. I babbled. I made justifications that sounded lamer than the excuses a four-year-old-child gives to his mother to explain the trail of cookie crumbs leading from the kitchen to his bedroom. And I still couldn't give an Answer. The Black sounded more and more irate with every passing moment; harshly pointing out inconsistencies, errors, and flaws with my desperate, flailing guesses. Finally, on the verge, I blurted: "How would *you* do it? Factor analysis? Historical spreads? Run a Monte Carlo calc off PENDULUM? I need time to do that!"

Expecting a torrent of invective, or, worse, a cold statement that would end with me miserably spending the rest of the night updating my curriculum vitae and my jobsdb.com.sg profile, I did not expect an almost affable silence, as he appeared to consider what I was saying. Rashly emboldened, I threw more facts, problems, parameters, circumstances at him, explaining exactly why I, in my limited experience, even more limited remaining mental energy and an even more parlous pittance of expertise (which I had managed to conceal with the most profound mummery born of desperation during my job interview) , was unable to derive the number we required to complete the tapestry of figures he intended to present as a supplication to the Synarchs.

He considered everything I said, and I could hear the Black's rage in the void between continents. When I concluded with the words required of all who have been defeated by life - "So how?" - the silence grew, and blossomed.

I stole a glance at the clock tuned to London time. 4:34pm.

I awaited the words that would save, or damn me.

Then he said: "Use the Force."

Now, the Black's erudition is as legendary as his megalomania. He is said to, like Odin, know two-nine charms, who bartered an eye with Mimir for wisdom, who knows how to cut, read, stain, prove, evoke, score and send the runes. He can call forth torrents of value; he can oneiromance profit from disaster (in the wake of the Pope's death, his strategy was "long Kleenex, short Durex.").

In less pretentious terms; here is a man with a Master's degree from Berkeley, who knows more quant than I will ever in my lifetime; who has worked in the industry for 12 years (he once candidly told us that he had had an offer from Enron before joining us which he had intended to take, but *his* boss, a luminary driving an Aston Martin Vanquish in NY, had persuaded him over a caesar salad to come join us), who earns more money than I will in my lifetime barring a lottery win, and meanwhile there are pissed off Big Swinging Dick traders waiting for his word so that they can have the parameters to execute a 200x200 arb trade of potentially up to 80vols profit (Addendum: someone urged me to mention the monetary value involved in this transaction to lend context to the reader. Although she started hitting me on the head when I launched into a disquisition into the differences between notional, book and market value, the final number is approx 175m USD, which is actually a fairly paltry sum. Another of the reasons why my work affords so much sadistic entertainment - rounding errors of up to a few million USD are considered OK) ; which if I have miscalculated can lead to a catastrophe akin to the sinking of Atlantis (ie. reduced profit and hence reduced shareholder value, to be rectified by the cost reduction and sadistic utils accrued through the scourging of incompetent employees, namely myself) or, even worse, cause them to withhold from making a trade, the opportunity cost of which will be exacted through their baying howls for blood (most certainly mine - for as Tony Soprano put it: "Money flows up, shit flows down.")

And the Black is telling me to use the fucking Force!

(normally I would not profane the Jedi way, but this was a trying time)

So I closed my eyes, and I meditated on the litany. Knowing that my feelings of anger would lead me to hate, and hate would lead me to the Dark Side, I sought to find that feeling of inner peace and oneness with that which connects all living things, that would unerringly guide me to my answer.

And as the scales fell from my eyes, I moved a pivot table; called up another spreadsheet, entered a few formulae - and I grasped an answer, like a revelation; my chemical wedding with the Ineffable, a moment that is, was and will always be.

I repeated the answer to the Black; an answer that was paltry compared to the revelation that had preceded it.

I could hear the grinding of mental gears as The Black ran my poor invocation through his grotesquely convoluted mind; and I held my breath as he said, grudgingly, like a miser parceling out guineas, in words of highest praise. "Good guess. I'll run with it. See you tomorrow." And the phone went dead.

"I hate those who see my life as an illusion of passion."

It's been about 9 months now since I moved down here, and longer than that since I blogged on Balderdash. Much water under the bridge, as the saying goes.

Gabriel himself has warned me:

"paradox of popularity - people read because you're honest, but as your readership grows you've to become less honest as real life and online life collide, with real world consequences. never very public a person. not much diff. few qualms offend/insult if necessary, try to retain intellectual honesty even with people I know. fewer qualms than most, but almost court martial of course. safe: criticise institutions, not people. assume everyone gonna read. self conscious, write for audience? 02 archives. Many read, members fam. the stuff I write is either too private for even friends to read (and this v rare now that slavery is ended) or public enough for everyone to read. very little in between. once in a while you feel like being exhibitionistic and share private stuff with the world. catharsis sometimes. other times the thrill."

I think about that; and I think about why I stopped blogging. Mainly it was due to an absence of anything meaningful or original to add to the blogosphere - the gamut of blogdom these days encompasses the entire spectrum from the degenerate, to the banal, to the profoundly intellectual, to the pretentious, to the heart-rending, to the sadistic, to the juvenile - the prime disadvantage of a geometrically progressive increase in hyperlinks is that it raises the probability that someone reading what I've written has seen it all before, and done better. Also, it was partly out of a niggling fear of unintended chains of consequence (small, incestuous, net-linked world), and partly because I detest monologues to a profane audience, although those of you who know me in person might claim otherwise:)

But in the end, Gabriel had provoked me by his bald misrepresentation of one of my more cherished opinions to come back on.

Dom: "you should start blogging again. you could probably get a loyal following yourself (like gabriel)"

me: "probably, but it's also partly the same reason why i stopped trawling irc for one night stands. it's too much effort for virtually no payoff. the needle vs haystack factor is kind of daunting."

Unlike Gabriel who prefers quotations, links, articles, political opinions, and intellectual essays, I have a penchant for wholesale ranting about the effluvium of my daily experiences, meta-blog feelings, mise en scenes.

In any event, onto a careful dissection of his facetiousness.

>"I find, though, that the author's premise of "one and only one chance, otherwise the >ignificance of all is nullied" is fallacious."

The author's premise does not draw itself in such invalid syllogisms. The basic axiom, which context you have warped, is that there is "one and only one chance" at attaining a very specific End. (and you know what End that is). It does not intend the obviously fallacious argument that there is only one chance for everything.

>But to adopt an "all or nothing", "one time or never" approach (which he claims to favour in his >dealings and actions, despite the dictates of reality) is surely ridiculous.

I admit I favour this; I also confess that reality forces compromises on me I find distasteful and insulting but necessary and compelling. However, unlike you and your amoral cynicism, and your base deification of the lowest common denominator in all your dealings with humanity, I believe in, to facilely praraphrase Oscar Wilde: "looking at the stars, even when lying in the gutter". Whereas I find nothing but contempt for the humanity in the aggregate, it is only in the sense of the individual that we can be morally accountable and accounted for - and exalted.

Even in your atrophied emotional state, Gabriel, don't you think it's debasing to simply believe that you can keep moving on, keep looking for something better; that the Moment which you had, and cherished - and lost - can simply be replaced at the drop of a hat by the endless pursuit of meaning through replacement?

To sum up:

a) that quote was meant to represent a very specific set of circumstances and situation
b) it does not apply to all situations - for instance, if i failed to brew the elixir of immortality on my first try, it is a circumstance that demands I try again to attain a tangible success which is measured not in fruitless attempts, but in the finality of duration. i am not demeaned in anyway by trying again and again in this case until i succeed or shuffle off this mortal coil, although there might be an opportunity cost in that the time spent on research could be spent on other pursuits of entertainments.
c) however, in the very specific situation that quote refers to, it is an observable condition in human affairs that we are increasingly willing to forego - particularly in this one aspect of our lives - what we thought was meaningful in the pursuit of immediate gratification; churlishly squandering it when it is ours; and lamenting after it only it in its absence. "That which we obtain too cheaply; we esteem too lightly."
d) while I respect the rights of others to hold a contrary opinion, it does not preclude me from seeing their attempts at "moving on" and "second chances" as a futile, puerile illusion, and from expressing my scant regard of it as so

Parable on the frank and utter evil of the human race.

A few weeks ago, a Devastator (Siege Tank in or Starcraft parlance - to help organise the Byzantine power structure of my workplace, I prefer to use Dune 2/Command & Conquer units to define levels of authority) from London came to visit us, along with a Heavy Tank.

(the Black is also a Devastator; he reports to several Death's Hand/Hands of Nod, who in turn report to Ion Cannons, all the way up to the Padishah Emperor/Cain. At the other extreme, there's me - the splat that remains after a a Harvester runs over infantry units. My immediate senior is a Rocket Trooper or a Trike).

The Devastator was amazingly friendly; he gave me some spurious words of praise (which proves that the time invested in tongue-to-ass skill enhancement have paid off), and basically moved around like a Cardinal amongst the clergy (ie. ring-kissing, genuflections, fervent prayers for deliverance, many benedictions). Anyway, it came to pass that the Devastator was working on the PC next to mine; when he asked me if I could help him print out a document which he e-mailed to me (his account was misconfigured, it appears).

Now, as I printed it out, he stood over me, and ordered me to delete the document (and to show that we are truly a meritocratic environment, he displayed his technical acumen by asking me to empty my Recycle Box.) as it was highly confidential. As I adhere to the highest standards of professional and ethical behaviour, I had kept a copy, and I perused it after the Devastator had rolled off for a power lunch with several other Heavy Tanks and Carryalls.

The document pertained to a global departmental re-org - and as it was a working copy, it included a lot of personal annotations and comments by the Devastator. Most of it was pretty brutally candid denunciations of processes and personal flaws of key individuals. However, what struck me was, under the topic of "Efficiency Gains - Headcount Reduction", a highlighted footnote:

"It would be economically feasible to put some of these poor bastards out of their misery."

Now, at this point I will confess I felt suffused by a radiant awe at the frank and utter evil of the Devastator; and I find myself wondering if that footnote will remain in the final presentation to the Ion Cannon/Weather Dominator/Death's Hand council.

To add insult to injury, the entire initiative has been codenamed, "Project Baboon."

I amused myself for a moment wondering if I was one of the baboons.