"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea." - Robert Anton Wilson

or, if you prefer:

"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." - Mark Twain

Random Playlist Song: Asian Prince - Give It Up

"Like many of my other concerts, this one was sold out. Check out the audio recording of it below. The title of the song I sang roughly translates to Give It Up. It's a chart topper in Asia. It's a rap song that I wrote. I was inspired to write it after dating a black women." (Official site)

This is another rap by Asian Prince, recorded live at one of his concerts. I like the scratching of the DJ turntable. Sometimes I find it hard to hear what he's saying about the screaming of his adulating fans.

***

The April 2002 archives have been restored. Read about life in the old School of Military Medicine, when it was still at Ulu Pandan Camp!

People are holding the new Pope's (probably inadvertent) membership in the Hitler Youth against him. Will my inadvertent slavery in the Singapore Armed Forces be similarly held against me one day, I wonder?

Some parts of Sin City 2 look like a live action version of Happy Tree Friends cartoons.

***

My sources inform me that I was quoted during Evil Cult's debriefing on Sunday's concert. A dubious honour indeed. My standards may have gone up somewhat over the years, but their standard definitely has dropped, as a comparison of an MP3 of the same song done by them in the late 90s and 2003 reveals. And it seems the Evil One still remembers me! Joy.

Someone: I suspect that the difference in raw material makes a difference too....
i mean, look at RGS choir.... it's far from the 1997 one....

heck, it's far from our time.... and we were already not as good as our seniors


Someone: race blind.
bullshit. it's just keeping silent when you're the majority because you can enjoy your status quo position
and bearing the consequence of being minority in silence if you're not

pretending to be race blind, that's what it really is

i hate this whole idea of racial blindness
it's a lie. and one that continually perpetuates true racism in singapore. because underlying it all is distrust

Me: they bash people who don't subscribe to the fiction
why do you think this is so?

Someone: maybe they dont even realise this is fiction
and as they say in sociology - question the hegemonic ideals, our social constructs, you'll definitely meet angry ppl along the way

Me: that's why sociologists are so feared by the Powers That Be :)

Someone: yeah cos you're bursting their pretty little bubble worlds that they have took so long and hard to construct
where their citizens live under a haze of propaganda induced happiness

***

Conversation with a gay fundamentalist Catholic opposed to contraception:


Me: I think most catholics are not opposed to contraception
far better to prevent sperm and eggs from uniting than to have people die of AIDS

Him: of course, it's much easier to keep one's trousers on.

Me: ah, but humans are fallen
they can't resist temptation :)

Him: then live with the consequences.

Me: so in pursuit of some idealistic vision we create hell on earth

Him: no. but one lives with the consequences of one's actions.

Me: right.

Him: it's quite simple really.


This is the same sort of logic that causes people to crash planes into the World Trade Centre.

In any case the Church will have to live with the consequences too: the consequences of its having been responsible for the wholly avoidable deaths of untold numbers of people.

Oh well. Eppur si muove.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.


Someone, viewing the once-again accessible (probably thanks to complaints by fundamentalists) Chick Publications site, thought it was a spoof and asked what it was about.

Me: "What is the site about? Err. Basically it's a hate site.

They hate Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Catholic-Christians, the Pope, non-King James Bibles, Science, Evolution, the TV show Bewitched, homosexuals, the United Nations, D&D, Rock music, non-fundamentalists, supporters of a lasting and equitable peace in the Middle East, people who don't spank their children, common sense, reality and basically the essential teachings of the founder of their professed faith.

So much for love."

***

'The Ultimate Popup Blocker Test' as dubbed by Azrael (Warning: Very NSFW)

Cogito Ergo Bite Me - "For the love of wisdom, they spend nights tirelessly rereading one page of elderly connoisseurs long gone. For the love of wisdom, they lose the ability to speak with friends in “normal” language. And by God, for the love of wisdom, they wear trench coats. At UC Berkeley, philosophy is the thug gangsta of all majors—cuz you just don’t mess with that shit. It’s stereotypical but true that one out of every two philizzle mizzles is the person you hope won’t sit next to you on the BART train. Two out of three people whose fashion statements make you go “hrmph?” are among the ranks of philosophers. Eighteen of the zombies cast for “Dawn of the Dead” were just philosophy undergrads who got lost after their Phil 12A final (including the one who looks like Jay Leno)."

Breasts a treasure chest worth $2.2bn - "Mothers of Australia stand proud, your breasts are worth $2.2 billion a year. A study of breastfeeding by NSW Health says mothers should be counted as food producers and recommends breast pumps be GST-free, putting women in the same category as farmers... Julie Smith, an economist at Australian National University, calculated for the study that the 34 million litres of breast milk produced by Australian mothers a year was worth $2.2 billion. This was based on the milk's value in European milk banks, where breast milk is stored and sold."

GeographyIQ - World Atlas - Rankings - Net migration rate (All Descending) - It seems Singapore has the fifth highest net migration rate in the world. Afghanistan has the dubious honour of being in first place (must be all the refugees going back), while Qatar and Kuwait are 3rd and 4th respectively (must be all the Filipinos). Says a lot about the place, it does. Now we know why Singapore feels like a battery chicken farm. (Alternate source of statistics)

The Politics of Gender - ""It is terribly self-destructive," Steven Goldberg tells us, "to refuse to accept one's own nature, and the joys and powers it invests." In this scholarly and meticulous essay, Dr. Goldberg, Chairman of the Sociology Department at City University of New York, analyzes the distortions of gender studies, which have become a "sacred cow" of academia."
It is hosted on the NARTH site, yes, but otherwise the article makes sense.

Passing and the managed achievement of sex status in an "intersexed" person - "From Garfinkel, P. (1984) Studies in Ethnomethodology, Cambridge: Polity Press (Originally published 1967)... Agnes appeared at the Department of Psychiatry at U.C.L.A. in October, 1958 where she had been referred to Dr. Robert J. Stoller by a private physician in Los Angeles to whom Agnes had in turn been referred by her physician in her home town, Northwestem City... Agnes was born a boy with normal-appearing male genitals. A birth certificate was issued for a male and she was appropriately named. Until the age of seventeen she was recognised by everyone to be a boy. In the biography furnished to us over many hours of conversations, the male role was both consistently and insistently described as a difficult one and poorly managed. Her accounts exaggerated the evidences of her natural femininity and suppressed evidences of masculinity. Secondary feminine sex characteristics developed at puberty."
Once more unto the breach.

Institute for Backup Trauma - "The trauma of data backup can be a lifelong debilitating condition. Its victims come from all walks of life but all have one thing in common: each of them relied upon tape-based backup, which today Science has proven to fail nearly 50% of the time... ... Hello. I'm Dr. Harold Tawin Weck, the director of the Institute for Backup Trauma. It may be too late for people like Bob, Marcia and Phil, but it didn't have to be this way."
I do believe that's John Cleese.

Japan's virgin wives turn to sex volunteers - "Lustless matches put country on brink of demographic disaster... "The women who come to see me love their husbands and aren't looking for a divorce," he told the Guardian. "The problem is that their husbands lose interest in sex or don't want sex from the start. Many men think of their wives as substitute mothers, not as women with emotional and sexual needs.""

Archaeologist finds 'oldest porn statue' - "Stone-age figurines depicting what could be the oldest pornographic scene in the world have been unearthed in Germany."

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Photo Gallery (Safety First) - "On 9 April 2004, a DEA agent (who has not been identified by name in press accounts) delivered a presentation on gun safety to about 50 adults and students at an event sponsored by the Orlando Minority Youth Golf Association. Partway through his lecture, the agent picked up his .40-caliber duty weapon and held it up for the audience to see as he announced: "This is a Glock 40. Fifty Cent, Too Short, all of them talk about a Glock 40, OK? I'm the only one in this room professional enough that I know of to carry this Glock 40." Seconds later the gun discharged, wounding the agent in the thigh (or the foot, or the leg, according to various press accounts)."

***

So all 3 of my first drafts for the writing essays have been tossed. Ah well. This will probably be the last close reading essay I'll ever have to write.

The Psychology statistics module has nary a non-Arts student in sight. Must be a badly kept secret among the Science and Engineering students!


Quotes:

Just because the topic is not coming out for the exam doesn't mean that you shouldn't pay attention. I wish we could all leave.

You can think of multiple regression as a sneak preview of what is about to come. Not as exciting as Episode 3 of the Star Wars tri'lor'gy, perhaps. (trilogy)

Calculators, of course, are indispensable, unless you can perform calculations in your heads, in which case you shouldn't be taking this statistical course.

Please bring scientific calculators, not the kind you use to calculate the price of fish or chickens in the market.

I will be open to consultation at all times. Which means during office hours. For me, office hours is 11 am to 4 pm. Don't ask me why.

You can see me, but not in May. Because I will be away for a while. To prepare me for the torment of marking exam papers.

Ignore the shit of glass (sheet)

It's no problem for the human species, because we live in 3 dimensions. Cats and dogs see the world in black and white, and in 2 dimensions. I wouldn't try to lecture multiple regression to cats and dogs, but to you it's no problem.

Sum of squared residals (residuals)

[On multiple regression] Who can see more than 3 dimensions, please put up your hands. Maybe we can teach it to the aliens. The aliens can see in more than 3 dimensions. Euclidean N space.

[On seeing in more than 3 dimensions] Try very hard over the weekend. If you can, let me know. If you can't, never mind.

It is out there in mathematical space. Just like the truth is out there. *comparative silence* Not everyone got my last joke. 'The truth is out there' is a line from the X-files - my favourite TV show.

mare'trix (matrix)

For some reason Singapore maths teachers at the Primary and Secondary level are very fond of saying that anything divided by 0 is infinity. That is nonsense. I also learnt that [and thought that] - until I learnt that it was nonsense.

Quite dreyd'ful (dreadful)

*Phone rings* The F statistic is too interesting for me to be distracted.

This is the sort of multiple regression that you're going to do in your Econometrics lecture. You're going to go beyond this, and I hope you have a lot of fun...

They don't learn chem in chem engin. They only know how to operate the machines. They know squat about what happens in the machines. [Me: So they're just technicians] We don't know how to operate the machines.

[On the difference between Chemistry and Applied Chemistry] Instead of washing test tubes, we wash machines.

You wait till 9 or 10om, then you go up to the 7th floor, you see an Indian construction worker and his girlfriend. [Someone: What if it's the Dean of Engineering?]

[On one of the Miss Singapore Universe contestants] That looks like one of my friends. Who's a guy.

"My toughest fight was with my first wife." - Muhammad Ali

Random Playlist Song: Asian Prince - 25 Years

"In a fit of anger, I just started to freestyle on the mic. I was angry because I had a bad hair day, which is extremely rare. My hair wasn't being fluffy, like how it usually is. I went into my home studio, hit the record button, and started to freestyle. Afterwards, I decided to add a beat to the recording. Also, sorry for the angry tone in my voice." - Official site

In this, the first of 3 songs by Asian Prince (aka Wo-hen Nankan aka Tuan Anh) that I shall review, he does a funky rap in Vietnamese, presumably to commemorate 25 years in the music industry.

The rap starts off with a great deal of energy in his voice and a catchy beat. Simple tones are then added in - nothing too elaborate to detract from the silky quality of the artiste's voice, but interesting enough to add texture to the rap.

(I am not familiar with the terminology of modern music, and so can't say anything about the high tones and the low ones, though the latter remind me of someone plucking on a double bass)

***

Speculations on the drug policy in Singapore from Young Republic:

"Cannabis is not a dangerous drug, There are no proven health risks if used in moderation. It is not physiologically addictive. Cigarettes, which contain the highly-addictive nicotine, cause lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death in men in Singapore. Yet they are freely available at your nearest petrol station. Cannabis causes brain damage when used over a long period of time in large amounts. But again it is not physiologically addictive so if you decide to use it that is fully your choice. There has been no documented case of someone dying for cannabis overdose.

Therefore, to mandate death for trafficking cannabis is grossly disproportionate and therefore immoral. And I suspect the reason for it is that the govt couldn't be bothered to think of a proper drugs policy so they just said, oh never we can kill traffickers that will do."


On racism verus preferences:

"> Even from primary school,
> it's pretty much observed that children tend to congregate in clusters
> together with their own racial group, even if they are primarily
> english speaking. It's got nothing to do with racism, or prejudice.
> More likely, it's some in-built xenophobia within human's minds, which
> reject anything which is not familiar to them. For the same reason you
> don't see many Indians congregating in Chinatown (with the exception
> of the temple there), you don't see many Chinese congregating in
> Little India.

I shall put this down to the influence of National (mis)Education but I think you should recognise that overt racism of the 'yuck get away from me your dark-skinned nigger' sort is rather different from a desire to mix with ppl of your own race. The latter may simply to do with the fact that ppl like cultural familiarity. Ppl who prefer to mix with ppl of their own race do not necessarily *exclude* ppl of other races from their company. And they certainly do not explicitly diss other races as inferior or unwholesome."

People will always have preferences; is it fair to blame them for possessing them?

Racism is best defined as irrational prejudice - a preference that has a foundation in fact is not racism. And as He Who Must Not Be Named, who has once more vanished into the night, points out, it's possible to dislike groups of people but still like individuals.

As I am wont to say, stereotypes exist because they are often true. They serve as a good guide for expectations, but when the specific product is not what you expect it to be, then you should change your views. If not then you're racist.

70 year old Caucasian grandmothers who draw Social Security pensions don't commit crimes, but 20 year old, unemployed black youths with tattoos do. Is targeting the latter unfair racial profiling? Go figure.

There is also the matter of there being a difference between possessing racist views and acting on them. About the former, it must be asked: is it a thoughtcrime to have racist views? Do we want to send elite squads in to brainwash racists until they attain enlightenment, or send them to re-education camps because we believe we hold THE TRUTH?

***

Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world

"Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome... in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

... The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy - the Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await discovery."

w00t!

Mr Masters in Classics: "oh fuck. no!
there's enough to study already, and more???
some of these writers are dead boring

but there are writers that even we classicists thank the gods that their work survive in fragmentary form. prolix and bad bad bad"

***

Damn! One of my favourite comedy sites has been blocked by the Powers That Be :(

Attempts to access Chick Publications gave me this message: "The website you are trying to access has been blocked by SafeSurf."

However, routing my requests through a proxy (a list can be found at http://www.atomintersoft.com/products/alive-proxy/proxy-list/), I was successful.

HOW CAN THEY DO THIS TO US?! I love Jack Chick; it's so damn funny!

[Ed: As of 6:11pm on 20th April, Chick.com works again for me. Maybe too many fundamentalists in Singapore complained about being unable to access one of their favourite sites.]

***

Another comment sent in without a return address:

"Eh you got notice that Sensei Master's assistant in Power Rangers show on Saturday is now a presenter on Singapore tv? That american chinese guy who looks like he always just woke up from bed that one. Ah yah how come you never notice? Feature him leh can? Ask him things about Kimberly. Ask him also to demonstrate some kingfu fighting moves. Maybe he got memorabilia from the show? Terror!!!"

Cam Watanabe is played by Jason Chan. I highly doubted he had come to Singapore to be a presenter, and anyway don't watch TV, so I had to dig around.

technoJoy: A Jason Chan Fan Site says that he was born in Malaysia in 1971 and is trained as a doctor. But he doesn't look that old! In fact he has a kind of boyish charm about him - CBTH (Cute, Boyish, Tanned, Handsome).

Meanwhile IMDB informs us that he is featuring in a 2005 movie called "Stealth", and appears in a 2005 TV show with 2 episodes (totalling 90 minutes) called "House of Harmony" as a "Michael Lee". Incidentally, that show features Fann Wong, but otherwise is produced and stars foreigners.

Plot description: "A beautiful Chinese girl, Meiling, has a forbidden love affair with a young American man in Singapore. He leaves Singapore and never returns. Meiling gives birth to their Eurasian daughter whom she names Perfect Harmony. When she grows up, Perfect Harmony journeys to America to search for her father."

Trailer (hosted on the MDA website): http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.ftp/mobjvid/hoh.wmv

More information from a Fann Wong fansite: "Shot on 16mm film, it will be broadcast on German television in the third quarter of next year. While there is no confirmed date for the show's broadcast in Singapore, there are plans for it to screen here by the end of next year." (I'll probably forget by then)

***

Some Malaysian joke I don't get:


The objective of STPM is to pass people?

How do you explain the fact that 87% of the students passed the examinations of the Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM) recently? When during your grandfather's time only 10% would have passed?

Are students getting smarter? Or are STPM questions getting easier?

Let me put things in their proper perspective.

During your grandfather's time, they would ask exam questions like:

In what year did Parameswara founded the kingdom of Melaka?

The correct answer was "1402", and they found that only 10% of the students managed to answer the question correctly. This didn't go down too well with the authorities, because the objective of the exams was to pass people.

I mean, what's the point of having exams if people fail?

So later, they found another way to ask the same question:

Parameswara founded the kingdom of Melaka in the year:
(a) 2001
(b) 2004
(c) 1986
(d) 1975
(e) 1402
Tick the correct answer.

The results were better in that 20% of the students passed. But it was still not good enough, so the authorities tried a different tact a few years later.

Parameswara founded the kingdom of Melaka in the year1402. True or false?

Well, half of the students guessed "True" and the other half guessed "False". Fully 50% passed. The results were getting pretty acceptable by now.

Most other countries would be satisfied with a 50% passing rate, but not us. We are a better country, because we are a boleh country.The authorities then cracked their heads and then came out with this one:

Read the following sentence carefully.
"Parameswara, the cousin of Proton-Iswara, founded the kingdom of Melaka in the year 1402."
Underline the name of the person who founded Melaka.

60% underlined "Parameswara", 30% underlined "Proton-Iswara" and 10% underlined "1402". Hooiyoh......60% managed to pass! So krever!

But for some reason, the authorities were still not contented.
So last year, they came out with this gem:

One day in the year 1402, Parameswara founded the kingdom of Melaka. Then he went home to have dinner. What did he eat?

13% handed in blank answers, 57% wrote "Maggi Mee", and 10% wrote "Kentucky Fried Chicken", and 20% wrote "Tree bark". The official answer was "Food" of course! After the marking was over, it was found that 87% of the students had passed. 87%............now that's pretty impressive!

So it's true. The students are indeed getting smarter.

***

SPASTIC - "the Society for the Preservation and Acknowledgement of Subjunctive Tense In Communication"
They must be making fun of mentally disabled people! Arr. Time to send in complaint letters.

My customised SAF Singlet has surfaced on the HardwareZone forums under the thread "SAF new Tshirt ..". Ho ho.

Review: Apache - The Tommy Seebach Band

"I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world." - Georges Duhamel

***

A joint effort by Enming and me - an effective way of relieving exam stress!

REVIEW OF THE MUSIC VIDEO “APACHE” BY THE TOMMY SEEBACH BAND

The short version: "it looks pretty screwed... Asian Prince could have starred in it..." - En Ming

Another short version: "The 70s was a really bad decade. I'm glad I didn't have to live through it" - Brother-in-Law

The long version:


(Ed: added in December 2013, not least since the original site is now down)

One look at this video reminds me why I am happy I no longer live in the 70s…from bell-bottoms to tasseled cowboy shirts and big moustaches, it clearly was the decade that taste forgot. It was also the decade of social activism…maybe…and whatever it is, because this apparently is some Native American Rights song…a touching anthem on the rights of the Apache.



Ah, here we are, opening in a forest clearing where we see this band playing.



On guitar, a rather regular-looking guy, considering it is the 70s.



On drums, we have a balding dude in a SAF chao-peng-kia (smelly boy soldier) pair of glasses who looks again, like a pedophile or a homosexual. But according to some Internet forum he was retarded, so he can be forgiven for looking funny.



The guy on bongo drums appears to be Smokey the Bear, or Chewbacca, depending on your pick.



The leading man of the band plays a three-tiered keyboard, and is dressed in the getup of a cowboy complete with tassels hanging from his sleeves, shoulders, collar and waist. His wide-gapped smile, big hair and moustache make him look like an idiot. Or perhaps, a pedophile, or just a plain creep. His hips swing to and fro in a manner that might be considered sexy – if only he were 10 years younger.

All of these happy musicians have a vaguely glazed look on their face - whether this is from smoking too much pot or due to their having suffered brain damage while writing and rehearsing for this song is uncertain. So they’re busy gyrating and grooving in the middle of nowhere and moving a little to their vaguely Western-sounding rock tune, which since is called “Apache”, is entirely appropriate. Then the lead singer turns to me, smiles his wide grin, as if hoping I enjoy the corny music as much as he does.



Then we see some scantily-clad, vaguely Native American woman with a hairband - who we can tell is just a white woman with a really good tan, comes out from behind a tepee which looks designed by and to fit a 5 year old child.



The lead singer, who I shall call Rhinestone Cowboy, turns to the screen, and says, “Apache…” while waving with a lustful look on his face.



Two more scantily-clad, “Native American” women emerge from behind the tent, and start dancing a rather badly choreographed, though elaborate dance, perhaps meant to imitate some obscure Apache scouting ritual. This being the era before boob jobs became popular, they all look quite modestly-endowed.



Rhinestone Cowboy then laughs (which is when we start laughing too).



The scouting ritual continues apace.



Another guy on an electronic guitar, looking like a mop-haired druggie, does a little riff…



Then we see the scantily-clad “Native American” dancers, coming into the foreground of the video, I have no idea if this is supposed to be a way you shoot a music video where it takes the focus off your band, but boy is it innovative!



Then the dancers surround the singer, performing their authentic Native American scouting and bird call ritual dance… Rhinestone Cowboy stands around, gyrating his hips as usual and looking very pleased that he’s getting all the attention since his brethren have slaughtered all the young Apache males.



They do so for quite a while, with Rhinestone Cowboy occasionally belting out an “Ohh!” into the camera with expansive hand gestures, before the lead singer (if he can be called that) hisses the word “APACHE!” and then lets out his loud, maniacal laugh, glorifying as he is in the decimation of the Native American tribes…



The dance continues…before the Rhinestone Cowboy launches into a heroic speech about the rights of the Apache: “Brave warriors, riders of the plain…”



(Meanwhile we get to peer up the crotch of the most normal guy in the group)



… and he dances into the midst of the authentic Native American women and engages in an exchange of cultures between the West and the Amerindian, participating in their ancient and arcane dance ritual…continuing his impassioned defense of the Native American Apache and how they must be free to “make their own lives” while the dancers keep chanting “Apache pache boy” around Rhinestone Cowboy, perhaps initiating him into their tribe officially…



Then he laughs again…perhaps in joy at the success of his initiation…



The video ends with the Native American woman surrounding Rhinestone Cowboy in an elaborate ritual proclaiming his status as the Great White Warrior for defending the rights of their tribe.



To which he responds again in much laughter, and chases the dancers around his multi-tiered keyboard in an re-enactment of an ancient wildebeest hunting ritual…

He shall from now be known as APACHE PATCHY BOY!


Evaluation: This is no doubt a racist music video commissioned by the US government (or the New World Order, if you like) to rub salt into the wounds of native Americans by humiliating their culture and traditions!!!

The bowdlerized Apache rituals and distorted characterization of the Other are clear evidence of the possession of a Native American form of Orientalism by the makers of the music video.

Thus are potential enemies of the Illuminati warned off and prevented from interfering with Zionist plans.

Wha!! OMG!!11!!OMG1111!!!OMG111!!11one11!~!!one!!eleven!!!11!!!!


Watch the music video now!

***

"i'm just disgusted by the interest generated and the obvious we must bring him down at all cost attitude.." - Essentially, that's the reason why I (and a few others, I hope) are so repulsed by the whole Cheng Zhang affair.

Some say that as a future policy maker, he cannot hold racist views. Yet one can think abortion is morally wrong, yet disagree that it should be banned. One can also think that all non-believers go to hell, and that one has a personal duty to save them, yet not institute a policy of mass conversion if one is in a position of power. So why can't one be racist in personal belief yet be neutral in decision making? Besides which, a cursory search would reveal that current governmental figures have also had a history of making remarks that could possibly be construed as racist.

Some also mock his lousy password protection (only his root domain was protected, and then with an easily bypassed javascript hack), yet if your obviously private diary with a rudimentary, if ineffective lock is on the shelf and your mother picks it up and reads it, is she to blame to violating your privacy? Or are you to blame for leaving it open to the world (or your household, at least)?

Besides which, his blog was called "cLuB mAmAsAn DoLlY" (god, you'd think they'd
know not to take his posts seriously with such a name).


Another interesting insight: "How much of this persecution has to do with some innate anti-gahmen sentiment, anti-elitism sentiment? If it was just another guy on the street, would you be baying for his blood?"

Perhaps it is due, as AcidFlask observes, to the puncturing of the myth of infallibility in a meritocracy. In any case I am heartened by the few voices of reason which have joined mine in the SPUG thread

Another soundbite: "has anyone even considered the notion that u can make racist comments without being racist? esp when u're pissed off at someone"


Thoughts on Young Republic:

"Just to point out that public policy is never made in
a vacuum. It's never made solely on one person's input (possibly unless your surname is Lee or Goh).

Attempts to root out racism in people are usually fruitless when it comes to choosing decision-makers, simply because people will lie when asked if they're racist.

It's much better to check policies and laws for racist effects, and correct those. The best way to do that is to involve different, interested parties (here, people of other races) and allow them to participate in the decision-making process."


"Even if he has done wrong, allow me to point out a few people and organisations that have done much much worse. The ST Forum has published the letters of a number of homophobic people and organisations with the intent of spreading hatred towards these homosexuals. I would strongly urge that if a witchhunt is going to be launched, do not apply any double standards and go after them as well. Particularly Focus on the Family and their homophobic supporters."


"But I'm just thinking, remember some months ago when somebody posted that Michael Barr article on the "racism" of Lee Kuan Yew on this mailing list and commented on it? I think it was *** but can't remember exactly. In any case, for the interested ones the url is here: http://www.sfdonline.org/Link%20Pages/Link%20Folders/Human%20Rights/barr2.html and the argument is exactly as per what Gabriel says: that one can be racist in the sense described by Barr and *** without letting that influence his policy decisions.

Looks like Cheng Zhan isn't really that different from the great and illustrious founding father of our nation. Especially regarding the comments on sociology. Just a thought."

One essay down, one more essay to go.

And now it is time to KO [Ed: KO = Knock Out = Concuss = Sleep ≠ Knights Online].

"When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the Worldwide Web.... Now even my cat has its own page." - Bill Clinton

***

"Excuse me, are you RI alumni?"

"Is your name Gabriel?"

"Balderdash."

"It's the hair."


Gee, what were the odds, especially in such a big place as Victoria Concert Hall (VCH)?

It's happening so often, maybe I should rebond my hair so I'd be unrecognisable. Oh wait, that'd make me stand out even more. On the up side, though, Shen Ting once again tried to point me out to some of his associates, but they didn't know who 'Agagooga' was (Yes!).

In other news, going to Vocal Exploits X and XI and comparing them to Vocal Exploits XV (and probably one or two more in between that I can't remember) is a good lesson illustrating graphically the Second Law of Thermodynamics. About the only things that get better every year are Punch's chimpanzee noises and how retarded they act. And this considering that 8/14 of the songs on the programme were also sung at the RI concert earlier this year, and that 2 of the rest had been sung the year before.

***

Pizza stolen from delivery man's motorcycle in West Coast Rd

"SINGAPORE : A pizza delivery man lost a Hawaiian pan pizza to an apparently hungry thief on Thursday evening.

Police said the part-time delivery man, who is in his 20s, was at block 729 of West Coast Road.

He left his motorcycle and the delivery box, which could not be locked, to deliver fast food to a unit.

He came down 20 minutes later to find a hot pouch and the Hawaiian pan pizza in it missing.

The hot pouch is worth $120 and the pizza $25"


I know it's a slow news day - but what the hell?!

"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?" - Clarence Darrow

Random Playlist Song: Bob Ricci - Wonderbra (Oasis Parody)

Today was gonna be the day I was gonna tell you we were through,
Until I came to your house and I noticed something new with you.
I couldnt believe my eyes I kept on thinking to myself,
Theres something wrong.

Coz usually your breasts are always saggin,
They hang so low that on the floor they're draggin,
But today I've gotta say they seemed to be in place,
But I don't know how.

I thought maybe,
You think I could be going crazy,
But then I saw,
Saw your Wonderbra.

I'm not embarrassed anymore when I'm walking down the street with you.
And now every girl in town says they're gonna go and buy one too.
I don't believe that any girl should have to be without - Wonderbra.

My mum's got one and now she's in her glory,
Well Dad's got one but that's another story.
There are just so many girls who are jealous of the too,
And they all say wow!

You know it's crazy,
She's usually at home makin gravy,
But that's my Ma,
In a Wonderbra.

I said it's crazy, (I said it's crazy,)
She's usually makin gravy, (makin gravy,)
But thats my Ma, (that's my Ma,)
In a Wonderbra.

***

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

***

"It might be a suicide attempt. Who knows? If I were a foreign student in Singapore, I would commit suicide too. Why the hell do I choose Singapore as my exchange programme and not somewhere else? *falls from third floor and dies*"

--- On the Canadian foreign student who fell from the third story of Prince George's Park Residences in NUS


Xephyris: I have this theory about modern music
you know how all of it is compressed to be really loud?
I've found that make if you don't make many pop songs really loud, they lack "body"

Me: abuden
that's why they crank up the bass also

***

ivy_leaguers: bad = good

People rant about the cons of Ivy Leagues, and other US universities:

"i'm a junior at harvard and i truly hate the school. i'm not just saying it because i go here, so i can. i really mean it.

first, let me preface by letting you know that it recently leaked that harvard is 5th-to-last in a boston globe survey of 31 "elite institutions" on student satisfaction. last year -- on the day of the harvard/yale game, no less, when school spirit should have peaked -- our campus magazine ran a cover story about the happiness of yale students compared to the discontent of harvard students. maybe i'm one of the few who'll openly admit it, but i'm not the only one who believes "harvard sucks."

by far the worst aspect is the student body. lots of kids will gush about how the people at harvard are the "best" part about their college experience. truth is, harvard students are extraordinarily dull, boring, and bland for all their accomplishments. the most apt term is probably "medium." you've never seen such a congregation of smug, self-satisfied, fake, medium people in your life. apparently, achievement is not an indication of personality. i'm almost always politely fake-laughing or bored out of my mind when talking to a classmate. on top of that, they're generally not even that kind or nice. it probably comes with the territory of thinking you're hot shit. harvard students reading this may self-righteously protest this description, but... that might be because they fit neatly under it...

you can't minor in anything here. actually, you can't double major either, without committing yourself to writing a senior thesis that combines both concentrations.

we have a core curriculum. it's shit. it offers some good classes, but mostly, they're huge courses that are either wildly broad or narrow and useless. they're also generally inferior to department courses. in short, the core effectively eats up 7 electives. if the goal is "breadth", i don't understand why we can't just have distribution requirements that we can fulfill with department courses.

as if the core did not already restrict your academic freedom, we also have to take Expos (mandatory writing class freshman year; i actually enjoyed my expos), and there's a foreign language requirement if you don't pass out of it with APs or SAT IIs. it's stupid, because it only requires 1 year of a foreign language, so often people will just take an elementary year-long course, surrendering 2 electives, and then never touch the language again.

advising here sucks. everyone knows it. people talk endlessly of fixing it. nothing ever gets done about it.

we have zero school spirit. everyone knows this too, and accepts it. we're too awesome for school spirit. what little spirit we have, we derive from dissing yale, whose students, as it turns out, are HAPPIER than ours. that's pretty sad, harvard." (Emphasis mine)

***

Archives of The Rafflesian

8 Jan 1887:

A little ditty ....

"Here shall Rafflesians prove their utmost skill
And here display the true force of their will
Here shall they join to show all that their school
Shall glorious in the Straits for ever rule."


There was a competition, with a prize of $1, won by the one whose answers most closely reflected the collective answers.

Competition Number 2: 5 February 1887, answers in 5th March 1887

1. Greatest nation - British - 54 votes
2. Most civilized nation - British, 30 votes
5. Laziest nation - Turks, 25 votes
6. Most barbarous nation - Turks, 25 votes

It does not say what the total number of votes was.


March 1888:

'There has been no circumstance of late which deserves our attention more than the secession from this school of a large number of boys belonging nearly to every class. The manner in which they have left us for the Anglo-Chinese and other schools reminds us not so much of the importance of these schools as of the boyish eagerness to see a theatrical performance or anything that may be regarded as a novelty. We are very sorry that they have fallen into the youthful trap which their rashness has placed before them. On the other hand we are extremely grateful that we have lost only the refuse or that portion of the School which we can well afford to spare.'

The same issue reports on the football match against St Joseph's Institution: 'Very few of the Josephites understood the game.'

Moral of the story: The more things change, the more things stay the same.

***

No Concept of Liberty

"Every honest person with a modicum of medical knowledge would be able to point out that the health risks of cannabis use are not significant. Yes, it is true that cannabis causes mental health problems if heavily used. But cigarettes cause lung cancer and heart disease, and alcohol causes liver cirrhosis when heavily used. What is the fucking difference between the good (and rich) people at Salem or Marlboro or Absolut or Chivas Regal and this poor man who supplies pot?...

The reason our reptilian legal system is so fucked up is because our judges and legislators think that human lives are pawns in their little real-life game of SimCity. Some are even so clever as to claim utilitarian justification for this shit. Well, if so they have adopted the most crude and indefensible form of utilitarianism conceivable, one that no thinking, humane person could ever accept."

***

Someone: http://www.acjc.edu.sg/
your ultimate proof God doesn't exist - ex rugby capt [Ed: A "Lee Wei Kong"] hit by taxi on his way to church. paralysed now.

Me: Ah, my child, there you misunderstand the goodness of God

This incident shows us that we are nothing compared to his greatness. It also shows us his infinite mercy - the rugby captain could have been killed, yet God in his wisdom and mercy chose to spare him from death.

The ex rugby captain will hereafter be more devout and will dedicate his life to God, for his greater glory.

Someone: hahaha
to that i say fuck off

Me: to that I say: your god is a monster

[Addendum:

A little bird says: "hey you won't believe what my brother told me about the ACJC rugby captain thingy...
he's there right now, he should know...
the rugby captain is not a believer...
in fact he went to the church to meet his GF...

Original Someone: THAT IS NOT THE WAY THE SCHOOL SITE PUT IT!
misleading information!
sue them!

For the record, the school website says: "The next few weeks were heartbreaking for his family, friends, teachers, other ACS parents and church. After three and a half months, Wei Kong’s progress is a testimony to his will to survive, his parents’ love, his friends’ support and God’s grace." (Emphasis mine)

However, Barker Road Methodist Church lists "Lee Wei Kong" as a church member, so.

Corroboration from blog readers regarding this matter is solicited.]

***

Feedback on How Girls Waste Time:

"one of the BEST expose on the feminine gender. EVER. At least on a non sensical blog (not withstanding that I still enjoyed reading it.) Its like a trashy novel that turns out to be a page turner. Ode to the researchers of this page. Haha. And a bigger ode to all the silly oofs who came up pages of rebuttals (50 odd points of rebuttal per comment??), maybe they out to be going to beauty paegents and cooing "World Peace" for every question asked (ref: you know what movie). Good on you, all those who came up with the page. A good analysis of the more vixenated of the two sexes.
I don't however profess to be a homophobic male sexist. Just someone who likes a pinch of salt. Haha.
Just the thought of that RS girl rebuttal makes me laugh.
Have fun you all. And as Bob Dylan would say "Don't think twice, its alright""

***

Draw a pig personality test - "[Draw] a pig and find out what your drawing of a pig says about you and your personality"
Wth?! Haram, haram! Meanwhile you can buy Puffed Pig Snouts online. Huh?

What's with Malays and Cats? The (Un)truth about cats and dogs: Animals as bodies of racialised significations on Singapore TV - "The dog, compared to the cat, is considered to be a more intelligent animal. It can be taught to perform tricks, to obey instructions, to respond to its master’s voice and presence. It is considered loyal, where the cat is temperamental. The dog’s stable affiliations are contrasted against the cat’s mercenary unpredictability. When one proposes significations such as these, the cat as effigy becomes disabling: we are reminded of certain stereotypes with very real ramifications. The marginality of the Malay community in Singapore is often described as due to the disability to conform to the demands of a Confucianist state. Dogs would make the most perfect Confucianist citizens because of their instinctive tendency to imprint on another party the status of a pack leader, to whom the dog offers unquestioning obedience. On the other hand, cats, by nature solitary and independent, represent the feral elements of society which require rehabilitation and institutional correction."
It's not surprising that this close reading of "Aksi Mat Yoyo" comes from a poet.

What a way to go - "Super-volcano, robotic rebellion or terrorism? Kate Ravilious asks 10 scientists to name the biggest danger to Earth and assesses the chances of it happening... Earth swallowed by a black hole: At the time this was the largest particle accelerator to have been built, making gold ions crash head on with immense force. The risk was that this might form a stage that was sufficiently dense to be like a black hole, gathering matter from the outside. Would the Brookhaven labs (and perhaps the entire Earth) end up being swallowed by a black hole created by the new accelerator?"
I think they ran out of ideas. Or maybe this is a joke.

Dr Bob's Skeptical Quiz - "Q: These are OMON troops (Russian Black Berets - k counter-terrorist troops of the MVD). Why should you not look at them in a mirror? A: If you looked at them in a mirror and they had their back to you, you'd see the word HOMO (OMON backwards in Cyrillic letters) written on the back of their uniform. Of course seeing this would make you laugh and point, which would lead to you getting smacked around by an angry Russian soldier."

Asian Prince did use to have a fanlisting, but the site's now down... Fortunately one can get an idea of what it looked like in its glory days thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine; it seems he only had 4 fans in his fanlisting. Ah well, genius is rarely appreciated in its time. Anyhow I've tracked the creator back to his livejournal. Perhaps something will come of this!

Mullet Marathon - "In 2002, a mullet commando unit was sent to a hair stylist for a crime they didn't commit. These men prompty escaped from a maximum security salon to the Orlando underground. Today, still wanted by the fashion police, they survive as runners of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can catch them, maybe you can run with the Mullet Marathon."

A race to the wire as old hand at Morse code beats txt msgrs - "Dotty and old-fashioned means of communication can still be the best. Morse code has seen off the challenge of the text message in a contest pitting the best in 19th-century technology against its 21st-century successor."

How gibberish put scientists to shame - "Pages of computer-generated gibberish, containing such gems as “contrarily, the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea”, have been accepted as an academic paper at a scientific conference in the United States in a victory for hoaxers. Convinced that many scientific conferences would accept almost any research for the right fee, three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology celebrated yesterday the submission of their gobbledegook masterpiece, Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy."
So the Sciences aren't immune either. This is one up on the Alan Sokal affair.

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Critters (Save Toby) - "Despite their resemblance to plush toys, rabbits do not like to be held, petted, or carted about, which means those who think they're taking on animal companions they can hug and squeeze to their hearts' content discover only after the fact that the sort of critter they thought they were bringing into their homes isn't at all what they ended up with. Consequently, any number of cute, fluffy pet bunnies are unceremoniously turned loose outdoors (where they live, on average, for three days), killed by their owners, or are handed over to animal shelters and rescue groups."
Aww.

President's Segway tumble seems a tiny bit suspicious - "President Bush meant to fall off his Segway. Oh, I'm sure of it. What we've got here is a clever conspiracy — a pre-emptive strike to save the oil industry from a technology that could sap its power."
Conspiracy theories are so fun.

Let's see who has the stamina to get through the latest list of...


Search Referrals:

greek costume rental in singapore

torturing army boys in singapore

student melbourne university singaporean char kway teow

homosexual websites by singaporean students

rebonding benefits risks hair japanese - Erm. Don't tell me your hair might drop off.

secondary 1 malay boys naked(handsome) - History of Circumcision is the top search result for this.

how to tie a toga fitted bed sheet

picture of singapore chij girl touching another girls ass - In comparison to this, "chij student fuck porn" is pretty tame.

sensual butt plug

Pictures of Haram food - - Mmm.

"kinky phrases" - They should look at my earch referrals.

"manta ray in my pants" - <______O>;;;;;;;;

men with boobs

article on sumiko tan

monk "pasta primavera" - Not all monks are vegetarian.

bagpipe course in singapore

tanks logo hari kebangsaan malaysia - ?!

make a fake lightsaber out of a toothpaste tube

SDP POWER RANGERS - They'll always be defeated by Emperor Grumm.

SCONES ACJC

brand of kate beckinsale bathing suit in coke commercial

why is there so much space inside a bag of potato chips? - Good question.

boobs pictures indian exposes frog teenage cetera

menses rjc blog

scgs, blouse

engin poster sexy

lyrics - i kicked him with my converse shoe/ all the way to timbuktu

char kway teow origins

arwen's tits

Carth erotic fanfics

What were the performers of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music wearing?

female genital mutilation video

smm platoon ghost haunted medic

silicone injection cleopatra breast

sheena's uniform fetish sheena's d cups - Ho ho ho.

Millions of people doing Google Image Searches and looking for pictures of Jodie Marsh (This is a description, not an actual search referral) - I have no idea why

hot 16 year old teens with ankle sock fetish

mini dissertations on job insecurity in steel industries

raffles credit card rafflesian - We have our own card?! The ORA VISA?! http://www.rafflesian.com/event/attach/Rafflesians'_Card.pdf

"deodorant bottle" porn pics

photo gallery of curly hair Indian girls

what happened to life in mono blog?

"sex passwords" "we are the best"

clitoridectomy pics

jap female pee characteristics

unsatisfied "long service award"
"long service award"laughter gift
"long service award" is insult by the employer - I totally agree.

salbutamol in pork - So you can treat asthma by eating pork!

malay guy picture

accessory naviculae - Someone wants to downgrade too!

yong pung how humble servant

classified ads Chieftain MBT photo for sale in uk private owner 2005 feb 28 - I want one too.

gabriel's cooking school
gabriel's funeral home - It's a franchise, like NTUC Income

BreadTalk should tap local Muslim market. - Nooooooooo...

sarah hanging execution schoolgirl

phua chu kang critique

true testimony of power rangers

"gynaecologist"blog rgs

Jacob's Ladder Tekong

sumiko tan, naked - !!!

cultures no breast support sag - No evidence for that. Go get a boob job.

"toilet queue" + desperate

Academic study in the phenomenon of cosplay

the rape of emma watson

undertaker in homosexual fanfiction & pictures - I defer to the Yaoi Fangirls.

who hates steven lim, sg - Who doesn't?

"power rangers" pregnant tori

derrida "most confusing" quotes

geocities discreet homepage horny

bookbinding exam and quiz questions

've noticed a recent trend that is growing more and more rampant among posters and it's been bugging the (be)jesus out of me: posting Bible verses on your page. So, not wanting to feel left out of the loop, I have decided to do the same. Except mine are so

singapore army general demoted for wrong sexual conduct

take down ns cmpb doctor weblog
"gabriel seah" blog singapore "SAF"
"gabriel seah" blog singapore "SAF" court - wth?! !@#$%^&*()

GABRIEL'S INCARNATION

defenestrating eggs - I must try that some day.

horseriding cult girls photo

gay pasta carbonara

vaginal contraction pictures - Funky.

hurricanger slash fanfic - Somehow I don't find sentai slash. Maybe it's all in Japanese.

are digimon cards haram

sungei gedong girl - The androgynous woman, maybe?

hitler jugend cosplay

clitoris pulling video movie sample clip 20Mb

sajc girls fucking

singapore combat rations satay

haircut .avi .rm fetish

Bastila Shan underwear picture

Emmy Rossum voice enhancement

good reasons why acjc is better than rjc

chastity "lick my pussy"

law "teddy bear" NUS library

cjc abortion acjc

Random CCTV cameras in odd smelling communist japanese fish factories

"closing down sale" epilator

netball wav girls screaming

Songkok Maker

voodoo doll that you can kill with many things for palm os

Does Daniel Radcliffe see Emma Watson's bare feet?

photocopy breasts

how often singapore girls masterbate

ntu chiobu

wear school uniform after graduation

nus girls pictures - These people have a coach?!

feynman norse mythology

accidents that happened with heelys - Another of my fantasies.

statistics of semen swallowing

ripley's believe it or not boob implants

"erotic elves" stories

abortion+sinagapore+malays

blogs of methodist girls school in singapore

emma watson condom - Mmm merchandising.

bangladeshi porn -japan -japanese -gay

dumb singaporean men

who likes to get high and masterbate

pso magic rock moola properties

akira fubuki immoral

why our scholars bitter with red tape acidflask

"lu rui-en" - Why am I the top result for this?!

"Bad Choirs"

nus porn singapore

long eraser nipples

reduce NKF spam M1

Jaywalking "nobel prize" seattle

funny picture girl wearing rollerblades

suit shirt tie prostate executive rape cock hole

singapore irc party group sex # -gay -lesbian

"breast implants" + evil

"muslim exception" singapore

this house believes that a woman's intelligence is proportionate to the length of her skirt debating british parliamentary

girls painted as cows

better ways to masterbate

grow boobs men

how do us girls masterbate

Zha'hai'allav'a - I'm top for this!

chij bf fuck me blog

power rangers fetish

The Speculum Story Page

transformation of the main female characters body in kotor

"raffles girls" sex

procodin - I'm the top for this on Yahoo?!

mgs scgs accent

"how many orifices"

men in panties with sanitary napkins

Vellupillai Prabhakaran nude photos

horny girl in nus chemistry

naked singaporeans teenager girls bra panties pictures sexy breasts firm - Yeah right. I thought they all need/wear Wonderbras. At least those in NUS Arts do.

teen pregnancy the next big fad

erotic power rangers

emma watson hatelisting

nigerian swear words

food contest rice krispies bikini

pretty girls from RGS

difference between rgs girls and scgs girls

sajc zaogeng - Oddly enough, I know of a more suitable site to get such, but I shall not disclose its location.

is it normal to look at scgs girls


If you got all the way here, congratulations. You deserve a cookie.



I last posted such a list 2 months ago. Perhaps I should post them monthly so each batch will be shorter.

The tooth fairy teaches children that they can sell body parts for money. - David Richerby

Random Playlist Song: Virginia Kegel - I want a Boob Job for Christmas (Han points out the significance of the name "Virginia Kegel". Sorry, I'm TSAF.)

Woman:
Every Christmas morning, underneath the tree
Lots of lovely presents, are waiting there for me
And though I'm quite delighted, it's hard to get excited
Who needs another sweater? Hey Santa
There is something that I'd like a whole lot better!

Are you listening, Santa?
I've been a good girl this year
And there's only one thing that I want

I want a boob job for Christmas, big old knockers out to here
It would make me proud to be endowed like the Playmate of the Year
I want a boob job for Christmas, make them big and make them wide
The only blimps as big as these say "Goodyear" on the side

Male chorus:
Heaving hefty happy hooters
Squishy gushy g'lactic shooters
Loads of curvy cleavage on display

Woman: Woo!

Male chorus:
Lusty busty watermelons
Each as big as Mount Saint Helens
That is what she wants this holiday

Woman (speaking):
Santa, give me this one gift.
It's not my spirits that are sagging, it's my boobs that need a lift!
Oh Santa, you know this Christmas season, give me a pair of juicy jugs
And you can be the first to squeeze em!

Woman:
I want a boob job for Christmas, spongy silicone balloons
Who needs a boat? I can stay afloat with my bulging chest pontoons.

Male chorus:
Bursting beeping bouncing bozos
Wild and wiggly whopping waldos
Nestled in a cup that's Double D

Woman (speaking): Yee hoo!

Male chorus:
Massive milky meaty mammaries
Big and 'nuff to feed 2 families
Santa won't you listen to her please?

Woman (shouting): Santa, please!

Male chorus: Brr!

Woman:
I want a boob job for Christmas
And when you've done that Santa dear
If it's okay, send my way
A nose job come next year

[Addendum: Thanks to Prowl for suggesting the word "pontoons".]

***

heathcliff24:

"You can pimp me in any way you like. I'm very cheap and sellable."

Thus saith he.

***

The furore erupting over the blog of a certain racist PSC scholar "Cheng Zhan" is disturbing and reminiscent of a vigilante lynch mob.

The sort of witch hunt is counter-productive. Replying to venom with venom doesn’t solve anything. Plus, you just drive this sort of sentiments into the ground, where it doesn’t disappear, but merely festers.

This is beginning to look like McCarthyism.


Another voice of reason: "I’m scared much more by the vitriol in some of these responses than what the guy actually wrote.

Comeon, the boy is an undergraduate, 21 at most, writing in a personal blog. Maybe some of his attitudes are screwed. Maybe he needs a lesson in anonymity or political correctness… but calling him a retard, a piece of excrement, a bastard who needs to be shamed, deserving of incarceration in an asylum?

I honestly doubt he’ll go anywhere in the civil service (in any modern work environment, for that matter) with this attitude. Let him learn his lessons in the real world; he’ll either get burnt and we never need to worry about him again, or he’ll move on as a better (or at least more sensible) person."

***

On the problem of defining predators and parasites:

"Well, the real problem here is that you have been exposed to too much science as defined by physicists and chemists. They look at the world in a peculiar way and come up with clear-cut definitions for things like speed, energy, work etc... Then they built a body of theory around those definitions. In the end they are really proud about how clean their world is and don't realize that it is an artificial simplicity that is of limited value (e.g., physicists have yet to figure out how to predict where a tennis ball will come to a rest if I were to throw it with a certain velocity against the wall of SR6... So, what use are all these clean definitions?).

Biologists live in the real world that is messy and where exact definitions frequently fail but they realize that it is nevertheless useful to categorize phenomena. They tend to characterize the extremes and state that there is a gradient in between. Try that approach for "predator" and "parasite" and your confusion will vanish."

Heh heh. I wonder what the physicists and chemists would say... Inter-disciplinary rivalry!

My brother in law was trained as an electrical engineer (a paper engineer only, though) and claims that Biologists are failed Chemists (since Biology is "just" a sub-discipline of physics and chemistry, describing the chemical interactions), and that Chemists are failed Physicists (since Chemistry is "just" a sub-discipline of Physics, since at the atomic level it's all Physics).

So I told him that Physicists are failed Mathematicians. He conceded that, and said either that or they want something more tangible to work with. I then said that everyone is a failed farmer, but he failed to get my point...

***

Someone: if only programming lecture had mendelssohn's sonata as BGM [Ed: BackGround Music]
i love webcasts :)

Me: then what BGM does it have

Someone: girls slapping boys on their backs
there's a better way of saying that but i don't care really

it's true though. you asked what BGM mah. and some suppressed giggles, and a lot of handphone vibration noises

Me: got slap meh
that's not BGM what

Someone: got. silly girls. talk too loudly, slap so hard.


wth.

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)